Lady Gaga, climate change, Gladwell and Armageddon

If time were a set of teeth chewing up infinity, Twitter and Facebook would be the cavities undermining its structure, and StumblUpon its customisable, widget-friendly gingivitis.

You see, I know this fact keenly because I am trying to write up my dissertation. Back in the days of yore, when people still relied on email to avoid face-to-face human contact, procrastination used to take more useful forms. Cleaning the dishes, or making a grilled cheese sandwich, or emailing people who you actually know are all distractions from the work you might be doing, but they are in fact things which produce some tangible effect. Nostalgic for these simpler times, I have tried to direct my current crise de concentration towards useful ends. Namely, new conspiracy theories and pop culture metaphors.

Specimen One: That Malcolm Gladwell’s learning condition is going to lead to the end of the world. In a fit of inspiration, while trying to nail down my “critical framework” chapter, it occurred to me that Gladwell must surely be suffering from ADD. An insight that is, I think, clearly borne out by his writing style. Which is exceedingly irritating to someone like myself whose approach to reading non-fiction is pretty much “just give me pure unadulterated argument or die, a slow painful death because I’d really rather be reading a cussing novel”. Because he interrupts every point with a digression into an anecdote or a whatever-I-skipped-it-anyway. But is it a clever ploy to keep you entertained? Hell, no! He just doesn’t have the capacity to follow his own argument without diverting to some passing nonsense, the poor thing. Yet people love it. They lap up his seeming inability to stick the point. Anyways, link this with the fact that his book kind of indirectly legitimises spending time on social networking sites, Facebook causing the financial crisis, the Large Hadron Collider and Gladwell is obviously an unwitting Angel of Oblivion who has come to herald the coming apocalypse.

Moreover, you can tell he is a demigod because of his exceptionally long fingers and beautiful ‘fro.

Specimen Two: My mind was dwelling on Mr Gladwell partly because the posters for his new book are everywhere, and partly because I have to give some props to a man who can turn the complicted theories of some subterranean computer nerds into a book that my mother would buy. I have been thinking about this magical ability to turn ideas into mainstream memes. Because I’m something of a climate-change nerd, and I find it’s not easy to broach it in everyday conversation without visual aids or bribery. It’s a problem I often face as I’m given to talking in a voice that’s both, and reinforcingly, earnest and dull.

It’s probably because in real life you have to rely on your tone of voice to communicate exclamation point! I’ve tried ending my all sentences with a rising intonation? But I’ve been told if you’re not American that can be really irritating? So I’ve decided that perfecting my pop culture references and metaphors is the way to go.

I’ve been trying these out on some of my friends. They say they really suck but, on the up side, if I put them on the internet for scrutiny my learning curve will probably be steep: The glaciers are melting at an alarming rate! This is like in your favourite Technicolor James Bond film when the cunning playboy gets a message that says “you really cussed up that last mission”. And on the package it says “This package will self-destruct by 2050”. You see, the glaciers are the message, and the package is the planet. (Alas, pop culture metaphors, like all forms of communication, are not great at conveying uncertainty.)

Do you remember the finale of Buffy Season Two? When she has to push a really sharp sword through Angel’s heart because, after experiencing a moment of true happiness during their first coupling he loses his vampire soul, goes evil, and opens up the hellmouth under Sunnydale, which can then only be closed by pushing him into it, even though that tardy-bint Willow gets his soul back only moments too late? Well, that is like ocean acidification. Because it is so sad.

Likening South Africa’s signing of the Copenhagen Accord in a blatant ploy to buddy up to China to Peggy sleeping with Pete Campbell in Mad Men Season One. You shout “No, Peggy, no! It’s bad for your self-esteem! He’ll only ignore you afterwards!” But she does it anyway.

Last, but not least, I’m currently working on a knockout one that likens Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance to the US Senate’s relationship to big business with the Climate and Energy Bill up for a vote. I mean if one examines the scene where she dances in front of the black-clad men and sings “I want your ugly/ I want your disease/ I want your everything as long as its free/ I want your love, love, love, love” and then wears a polar bear as a cape it is CLEARLY what the video is about. I am, however, having more trouble accounting for “walk walk fashion baby/ work it move that bitz crazy” and the raptor hands.

As you can see from these attempts I haven’t watched much TV in the last decade. (“No Gossip Girl? No The Wire? Nary a Smoke Monster nor a desperate home executive?” you cry, and I hang my head in shame.) But I’ve learnt the error of my ways. I’ve realised TV’s amazing potential to serve as shorthand for complex biophysical phenomena and socio-political issues. Now I’m going to get to work watching a whole bunch of it, and then I’m going to talk crap for hours about it with my connector and maven friends. And then I’ll twitter and FB these important conversations. But I’ll definitely make sure to finish a section of my dissertation by dinner time. Say, “methodology”.