PhilArmstead.co.uk

I think it's a safe bet that 2012 is not going to be the year I come to my senses and embrace dubstep. I once heard Yngwie Malmsteen say it was impossible to take musical influence from Jimi Hendrix because Hendrix didn't create music, he just made sounds. Well if you can say that about Hendrix then you can say it a thousand times over for dubstep.

It seems that giving it the usual "it sounds like what a stroke might feel like" summary is needless because the people that like it already seem to accept this. I think they agree that yes, it does sound like somebody throwing pots and pans down an escalator but they like it anyway. I think it wouldn't be out of place at all in an off-shore detention centre in which terror suspects were alternately water-boarded and kept in solitary confinement.

There are exceptions to every rule however—except this one, maybe—and there is one of these songs I can stand to listen to without feeling the urge to confess to assassinating JFK or whatever else it would take to make it stop. I can't see it being the first of many though.

You know what phrase has always irritated me? "You couldn't make it up."

It doesn't say much for a person's creativity if he or she thinks that a night of heavy drinking, for example, topped off by having to spend an evening in A&E because somebody drunkenly climbed and fell from a tree is outside the realm of imagination. Have these people not read fiction? How are drunken hijinks or sporting moments (to use another common example) more absurd than the concept of Animal Farm?

This phrase seems to me like it could be grouped with "humans only use 10% of their brains", among others, in that it only applies to people who think it's true.

I've been thinking about cancer lately. Somebody close to me has it (or had it, depending on how well the surgery to excise it went) so it has been on my mind. In that time I've had a couple of thoughts.

Firstly I think it's entirely inaccurate to refer to the process of dealing with cancer as a fight or a battle. I don't know why but it seems to be the only disease we say that people actively struggle against. You don't see on headstones "here lies Arthur, 66, who died after a long fight with heart disease." Cancer seems to be the only one. I've seen it though. The secondary treatments radiotherapy and chemotherapy are the furthest thing from active battle you can imagine.

I've been told that the experience of sitting for hours as you watch poison drip in to your veins is close to Zen-like levels of boredom. You are drowning in passivity.

I get why people say it though. Who wouldn't want to feel as if they were actively fighting an illness. I'm just curious why this disease in particular is referred to in this way given, as I said, the stunning inactivity of the patient.

My second thought is that I feel sorrier for female sufferers than male ones. It's a horrific condition either way: it is the condition of having a living (sort of) entity inside you that grows and spreads and has the the solitary purpose of shortening your years. But for men it is this and nothing more. To be sure, this alone is bad enough but for women it has the added pang of seeming like a grotesque parody of childbirth.

Women have the ability to sustain a life within them which, over the course of months, grows and then, if they are lucky, they give life to it. Cancer, contrarily, is unwillingly being a host to an entity that grows and spreads and which, over the course of months if unlucky and years if luckier, takes life.

It's unfortunate for men and women who are afflicted but I think I feel additional sadness for women for this reason.

Anyway, that's all I was thinking. It's probably not of any interest to anybody except me but it was in my head so I thought I'd write it down.

I am so bored by all this talk about Jeremy Clarkson. I really am. Every time I see somebody defending or criticising him I die a little and it makes me wonder what sort of people it would take to do either. And yet, here I am talking about it too. I have become a part of this process and I have become boring too. I'm going to get my money's worth while I'm here though so hopefully I can stop rolling my eyes quite so much every time I hear about it.

On the one hand, there are a lot of people upset with Jeremy Clarkson, but for me it comes down to a simple question: does Clarkson matter? I think the answer is an obvious no. I wouldn't seek him out for guidance or wisdom on any matter including cars, which appears to be his main area of expertise but which seems worthless to me in any case.

The fact is that he isn't important. At all. He isn't a political scientist, he isn't a respected social commentator and he isn't funny by intention or accident. He isn't a respected anything and what he says is meaningless. This is why I find it staggering that 20,000 people have complained about him. This kind of response is disproportionate to how many people ought to care what he thinks in the first place.

I think what he said was that people who are striking about pension disputes should be shot in front of their families. I gather he was joking when he said it—although it would be difficult to tell because the statement is intrinsically not funny and neither is he—but it doesn't matter to me either way. Even if he was genuinely sincere, in that he thought execution was a fitting response to protest, I still wouldn't expect so many people to complain because his opinion is worthless.

To complain about Jeremy Clarkson is like getting upset with your spouse because you dreamed that she cheated on you. It might not be pleasant but it has no bearing at all on reality. Nothing is different about the world today than it was before Clarkson made his fatuous comment and that's because his ideas and thoughts aren't enlightened or worthy of respect. That is the first thing I have to say about this.

The second is aimed at the other group of people, those who seek to defend him. What they are essentially doing is acting as Jeremy Clarkson's mouth-piece. Their continued support of his comments—I think there was also something about how people that commit suicide on public railway lines are selfish—is what is allowing this debate to roar on and fill up the news sites I try to read. These people need to shut up too because without them, this debate would end.

The 20,000 people that are giving Clarkson more credit than he deserves (by caring what he says) would have nobody to argue with, they would go away and so would all this nonsense. I hope this happens soon because it's embarrassing to see how many people think it's worth arguing about.

Is it just me or does growing older make you more likely to burst in to tears at things a younger version of yourself would have found unmoving? So many times, since turning 21, I've found myself breaking down in to humiliation and wailing at things that a man really ought to respond better to. This makes it impossible to re-watch certain films because I know ahead of time what's coming and so I descend in to hysterics earlier and earlier every time.

I've just this minute finished a video on TED about an 18 year old girl who campaigned against the atrocities being committed by Joseph Kony (a Ugandan leader who ranks at #9 on the world's most wanted criminals). Her work—and, it has to be said, that of others—led to a bill being submitted to the U.S. Senate, which was then signed as a law by Obama, which is aimed at cracking down on this leader's antics.

The story itself is remarkable enough but then you throw in the music, the montages of her pleading on air with Oprah Winfrey for backing, the tearful emotion she herself was showing during her talk... Needless to say I was in pieces by the end. I like to think I would have been moved no matter what, but the level of hysteria and garment rending we're talking about is embarrassing.

It's not even just at big things like this either. I think I cried at the King's Speech, which isn't even a sad film. Was it the King's Speech or was it Alien? Either one is ridiculous. I think it was the King's Speech, when (spoiler alert) he begins making the speech, the horns of Beethoven's 7^th Symphony start playing and you see Helena Bonham-Carter inhale and puff up her chest.

Yeah, it was the King's Speech, because I remember being grateful when the adorable girl from Outnumbered delivered a line at the end and it caused me to laugh and stop crying.

See what I'm saying? That's not even a sad scene. It's about a man that stands in a room and mutters "fuck, fuck, fuck," to himself in between lines of a speech which declares the inception of what would go on to become known as the worst war in history.

Jesus Christ. I've just remembered that it's not even films that get me know. Have you seen that John Lewis advert yet? God I'm pathetic, but that little boy rushing in to his parents' room with his gift wrapped up... If it wasn't for the fact a child could never afford an item from John Lewis, I would have become dehydrated from crying.

Anyway now I need to offset from all this emasculation by doing something powerful and manly. I bought some beautiful vanilla pot pourri yesterday, so I think I'll arrange that in to nice shapes.