The Idler

Country Diary 94

THE VEGETABLE PATCH IS now almost completely sown and planted. There are about seventy broad beans plants, now about three inches high. Then come twenty or so lettuces and cut-and-come-again plants. Then ten cabbages. Then a large patch of radish sown with parsnip. Then a block of peas, Telephone and Hatif d’Annonay. Then a block of rocket, also parsley (Gigante di Napoli), Mizuna and Salad Bowl. On the other patch, I planted about seventy seed potatoes (Maris Bard, Orla, Amorosa and Colleen). Also a block of turnips and a block of beetroot. There is now only one block left unsown, and I will have to decide whether I go for beans or carrots. The problem is that I wanted to grow a lot of beans, and I have three packets of different bean seeds to try, and they are: Cherokee Trail of Tears climbing French bean; Cosse Violette purple climbing bean, and Minidor yellow dwarf French bean. Maybe I should have not bothered with all those potatoes. I wonder if I could grow some of the beans in pots in the front garden, or even in the flower beds? (more…)

Resist the “New Busy”: Join the Old Lazy

I have been shocked, horrified and appalled by a new campaign to promote Microsoft’s email service, Hotmail. The creative team has created an aspirational model for us to aim at, a new category of happy, hard-working superbeings called “the new busy”. In common with the “superhuman” Blackberry advertising campaign of a couple of years ago, this brainwashing campaign suggests that just by using Hotmail, you will be transformed into something more efficient than the average human being. The “old busy” were stressed out and tired, but the new busy are fresh-faced, full of upbeat energy and relentlessly cheerful. It is positive psychology gone bananas. The campaign, which is global, is peppered with sentences such as the following (I don’t think it is grammatically correct to begin a sentence with “because”, but anyway). And it’s a lie, anyway:

“Because we know that having a full calendar means having a full life.”

This is presumably all excellent news for the corporations. If Hotmail can somehow make it cool to be busy, then management – ie, the art of extracting the maximum amount of money from each employee – is made a hell of a lot easier. The campaign also provides the self-improving new busy with some ideas about how to fill up that calendar in their quest for a “full life”. These range from the insane—”Would be open to taking a class in their sleep,” to the horribly twee and patronising—”Make pancakes into exotic shapes.” The new busy, we understand, “make beavers look lazy” and are schooled in the arts of aggressive optimism: “Have 100 good reasons why it will work.” As ever with such conditioning campaigns, we do not hear any mention of beauty or truth.

Truly, this is merely the latest form of Calvinism, or the corporate attempt to create happy slaves. Luckily for us, the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has written Smile or Die, a devastating attack on the American cult of positive pscyhology, which I would urge everyone to read. It’s a trend that is coming over to Blighty, where whooping and high-fives are appearing in our offices. The new busy, I’d suggest, can be easily identified by their blinkered, self-important stupidity. The new busy is the new slavery.

We must all resist this brave new world with every core of our beings and get grumpy, uncommunicative and pessimistic. In other words, let us embrace the old lazy.

Idler 43: Back to the Land

The new edition of the Idler, our Back to the Land issue, is now finished and has been delivered to the printer. It features a major interview with David Hockney who has also contributed two sketches. Essayists include Paul Kingsnorth, Harry Mount, Penny Rimbaud, Jay Griffiths and Simon Fairlie, plus there is new work from Clifford Harper, Alice Smith and Stanley Donwood. There is also a conversation with the idling anarchists Ian Bone and Ray Roughler-Jones. The book has been typeset by Christian Brett who also designed the cover. It is bound in yellow cloth. Order it now and we will send it out to you in the early days of May, or subscribe. Click on the Shop button above (and marvel at the lovely new shop layout). TH

The New Idler for 2010, featuring David Hockney