Baking and eating cake is one thing. Selling it and pretending that it’s ‘art’ or much better than investment banking is interesting. And the fear of grown people moving away from childhood playtime in the kitchen with mother because the prospect of failure is all too real is probably a pathology with a name.

Cake is the window dressing for big misogynists who jam them into windows, juxtapose them with stupidly expensive products to somehow make the object fetish a homely experience that you could rack up in your own oven to sell more high heels. But the uber-mensch of evil has to be the cupcake. The crude, coloured symbol of a world where no one works anymore, even if they wanted to. And a symbol that – despite being saturated in fat, evil and pointlessness – is bizarrely popular and a lucrative product.

In tandem with the global economic meltdown, the cake has sprung up like an floury atomic mushroom as the salvation to afternoon sugar dives, recently redundant city workers and dentists who wondered where the quality cavities were going to come from if everyone started taking on public health messages on board. Bakeries carve a profit margin from customizing their goods by making them different colours. Or different sizes. Or flavours. Some decide to make them macho.

The so-called resurgence of the cupcake in pop culture is pinned on Sarah Jessica Parker’s malnourished character wolfing one on the steps of a NY bakery. It has been said, completely unreasonably, that the cupcake is a selfish cake which chimes with a culture of self-preservation at all costs and explains why a single woman in her 30sis seen eating one in the first place. But there’s little point in analyzing why a woman eating a cake by herself and not portioning it out into birdlike pieces to share with her hatstand friends is equivalent to sitting on a big box shouting: IT’S MINE, ALL MINE AND YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY. I SPIT ON EMPATHY AND WOULD STRANGLE UNBORN CHILDREN IF I COULD. A fictional character who exists to avoid meaningful sexual relationships, deify a daddy-figure and write sentences on a laptop that can later be used as solipsistic groin-searching soliloquy is entertainment of the point-laugh-pity variety, not a baked good endorsement.

Where it’s come from is best left to spurious home-economics analysis. The cupcake market, however, reveals endemic social problems that should have been left on a doily but have somehow crept into the mass market. They’re basically fairy cakes which have infected the world with their abundant, undercooked, smelling-slightly-of-raw-egg presence in fetes, church halls and anywhere where you have to bring and buy. They should be brilliant because simplicity is good. Anyone can make them. Everyone does. And when bourgeouise social duty calls upon young and old to make a culinary contribution, invariably, they’re shit.

After today, I might have to get one. I knew already that people CAN take decent pictures on them – Jemima’s website Jebaloo, or London: mostly through an iphone can testify. Her blog proves the good ishot is not just a fluke, even if it takes an ex-professional photographer to coax more than motion blur from the very basic photo function. If you’re still sceptical, more proof positive exits in the form of 100 amazing iphone photos by people who are also obscenely good. But it was only when my Smena 8M packed up (okay, I forgot that you have to do EVERYTHING on the charming Soviet fucker and wrecked yet another film by exposing to light) and I didn’t have any 35mm film that I borrowed an iphone to do some test shots.

To my surprise, it picked up more than pixels. Even better, when the jpegs were dropped into photoshop, they didn’t look absolutely terrible…

It’s a devious medium, I know. I used to think that films like The Mighty Ducks, A League of Their Own and even Jerry Maguire (you can – just about – count it as a sports comedy) promoted the underdog, gave hope to the unstoppable loser and promoted the soft values of gooey-centered liberalism. Overcome difficulties, stay together, play together. It could be a mantra for Relate, except if you think back to the heartwarming staples of your childhood (and the head-soothing hangover fillers of your occasional Sunday), you’ll realise that they aren’t flicking the V to alpha bullies, they’re the beta machinations of the status quo yelling at you to straighten up and fly right.

Take Dodgeball. The premise is quite innocent: Peter LaFleur (Vince Vaughan) has thirty days to raise $50,000 to make good on a mortgage default that threatens to see his bunch of misfit members being bulldozed by Globogym. When holding a carwash doesn’t bring in the hard dollars, the only obvious course of action is to watch 1950s style training videos, enter a dodgeball team coached by a dodgy coach played by Rip Torn. If this were a film review without a spoiler (which it isn’t) I’d state something shitty and trite like: complications abound, proving to the Average Joes that sometimes, winning is more than playing the right shot, it’s about knowing who you’re playing for. Or ‘grab life by the balls’, which is the actual tagline. But it isn’t about seizing figurative team testicles or a modern day parable about not underestimating your opponent in a 92 minute version of David and Goliath starring Ben Stiller. Dodgebal espouses far shallower, boring virtues.

The first – being part of the team means you get to take one for it – focuses around the seeming triumph of team sports over sexuality. LaFleur has to save his gym which is going to be shut down with the legal help of Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor) on behalf of White (Stiller). Because his gym is going to be shut down, LeFleur seeks salvation in dodgeball. Veatch, sick of being hit on by White, is more inclined to join LaFleur’s dodgeball team because it’s opportunistic payback and means that she can kiss girls without being sexually harassed by her employer. And because team sports are obviously magical, Veatch reveals that she is actually bisexual and obviously lusting after Peter. The loser-turned-lothario through cardio formula works equally well for Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s characters in Baseketball. Once again, mortgage foreclosure is the central catalyst for all ensuing action. In brief: unemployed turned homeless friends Coop and Remer (Parker and Stone) make up a new game that doesn’t require hours in the gym to win, argue a bit before they are finally reunited, this time with girlfriends.

The central concern here is not the crude message that you have to be ‘in it to win it’ – exhorting people to sit in semi-darkened isolation alone with their thoughts and a penknife is no formula for larks. It’s just fundamentally annoying to have team games held up as the epitome of everything sexy about human endeavour. That somehow working up a sweat will transform sexuality (mainly female) into something co-operative and appreciative of losers who run fuckawaful gymnasiums for the socially weird. Or transcend fiscal holes as a fast track to solvency and, once again, provide an out for loose spenders who can’t meet their mortgage payments but don’t see long-term unemployment and homelessness as reasons to get a job or prevent them from getting a girlfriend. Perhaps I missed the point. Maybe these films released in 2004 and 1998 are actually messages from the future transcribed into Hollywood treatments about the impending global financial crisis. In that case they’re genius for seeing a future in which foreclosure is possible for every middle class middle American, ultra-scary for suggesting that entering far-fetched national competitions (which probably cost more than the average street in Detroit in 2009 to take part in) are the answer to the economic equivalent of a black hole.

The second overarching piece of evidence that sports comedy equals dark sanction for social ill? The coach figure. It’s not John Candy’s fault that his performance as Irv Blitzer defines the generic archetype (even though he’s only actually starred one sports comedy, Cool Runnings). He’s to be applauded for that. But he can take the blame for covertly championing alcoholism, the implication that if you ain’t playing the game you’re blatantly a washed-up misfit and that despite all evidence suggesting addiction and dependency, the coach is still coach. And being an authority figure means that you should listen to coach at all times, no matter how unsuitable they may be. This logic at large in Dodgeball, where Rip Torn’s coach character is presented as the once mighty, now fallen through the means of latent insanity and wheelchair usage. That isn’t so much worrying but downright discriminatory. However, kudos must be given to the Mighty Ducks for presenting the triumph over adversity narrative via the means of a convicted criminal (drunk driving) put in charge of a children’s ice hockey team as a means of rehabilitation. The flaws in this are self-evident, right?

Which is why I really like Napoleon Dynamite. For all of the film’s weird quietness and heavy anti-hero apathy, it is wise. For it knows that far from winning, the underdog who swallows the doctrine of ‘do team sports well or die’ turn out like weird Uncle Rico, playing with their balls by themselves in the yard.

Things That Might Not Work Out by Jennie Albone – Ignite London 18 November 2009 from hurryonhome on Vimeo.

It’s a dark art, talking. It got lost somewhere and IMS, powerpoint and the internet got the blame. In English classrooms throughout the country, students flail through Speaking and Listening assignments unable to connect with their audiences, talk in sentences and do more than read off what’s projected on the wall. Successful consultancy firms are investing in presentation skills training for their workforce because ’soft’ skills like eye contact and not soiling your bespoke suit actually, really matter.

It’s exciting, then, that events exist for people to talk passionately and knowledgeably about things. That these events draw capacity crowds. Crowds of polite, interesting people who don’t hurl things like insults or faeces at the speaker.

I have to confess something at this point. It’s not as shameful as revealing your greying thong to traffic lights in an epic binge Britain session. Or that your monthly spend on hair extensions exceeds the GDP of most countries (or, perhaps more apposite, the fiscal deficit). But, I’ll be honest, until a few months ago I’d never heard of Ignite or O’Reilly media.

You might not have either, and that’s okay. Basically, O’Reilly supports Ignite (and various other ventures) as a powerful but benign older brother, as well as spreading innovation knowledge through services, conferences and technology books. The Ignite concept is innovative in and of itself. Speakers have five minutes in which to enlighten their audience about a chosen topic without faffing, deviating or shameless self-promotion. And to make sure it only takes five minutes, they have twenty powerpoint slides – changing every 15 seconds – to make that point.

I keep saying ‘they‘ or ’speakers’. Partially because I want to retain some detachment from the clearly deranged girl in the video at the top of this post. And also preserve the belief that my discourse isn’t actually comprised of ‘um’ filling with a bit of ‘nice’ and ‘yeah’ garnish. But mainly because this is a worldwide event in which people from diverse industries and specialisms come together to talk.

Particular favourites from November 18th were: Ben Hammersley’s, ‘The Sex Lives of the Great Renaissance Masters’, Matt Baker’s Diarrhoea and Dodgy Doners: What’s Special About Bacteria’, Ashley Beningno’s error(e) 404: Italy as a Country Not Found and Matt Edgar’s ‘1794 – So Much to Answer For’. Possibly a purely personal subjective preference, but you’ve got to love anything based on sex, death, bowel movements or heavy-duty sarcasm (preferably not a heavily sarcastic bowel movement).

In a generally greying, get-your-coat-it’s-freezing-and-we-can’t-afford-the-central-heating, hang on a sec – Greenland’s got oil and it’s prepared to sell-out and burn out for it, basically bastard upcoming winter, thanks have to go to Amy Thibodeau and Dan Zambonini for organising the first Ignite London event. Because valuing speech doesn’t have to mean standing outside in an inhospitable London November and watching scary fundamentalists compete at Speaker’s Corner.

The truth, that the UK is in fact populated by knicker-flashing ladettes who – when they’re not vomiting over walls and decorating traffic lights with their comedy hen headwear – are terrorising the law-abiding menfolk with their brutal beatings and street justice. That this ‘frightening’ wave of ladette violence (up 300% in seven years) in the ’streets of no shame’ comes from our schoolgirls (the ‘worst for binge drinking in Europe’) who graduate to ‘marathon pub crawls’ in headline-hitting freshers weeks before drinking to ‘hold their own’ with male colleages in the workplace.

And that, Daily Mail, is why we can never co-exist peacefully. Not because I don’t like your ‘truth’ and the bizarre power you’ve afforded women and their tanked-up reign over the city streets after dark. Not because your selective shots of the nation turned to a circle of sambuca hell bear a sinister resemblance to the candid images of female celebrities you deride on a daily basis. No, it’s because you’ve willfully jumped on the Binge Britain bandwagon and refused to connect it with a history of over consumption combined with dubious stastistical analysis.

People get drunk. Even the Institute of Alcohol studies concedes that ‘heavy sessional intake’ and ‘drinking to get drunk’ are not a new phenomenon; it is reported ‘at least as far back as the Vikings’. This – binge – is not a new thing. Take London. It was notorious in the thirteenth century for the ‘immoderate drinking of the foolish’. In 1751, Henry Fielding remarked on the ‘new kind of drunkenness’ that sprang from gin and threatened to ‘destroy a great part of the inferior people’. Dostoevsky, that ‘everyone is in a hurry to drink himself into insensibility’ (1832). So no surprise then that in 2008 over 1/3 of adults exceed the daily drinking limit (ONS).

What the Office of National Statistics doesn’t highlight in bold with an alliterative, apocalyptic headline is that the survey format that collects drinking data has changed since its inception in the 1970s. Whereas the survey now asks about the size of wine glasses it didn’t originally. A trivial detail perhaps, but one worth factoring into judgements about drinking habits. Especially since wine consumption seems to have doubled in the last ten years.

I know, I know. Statistics just aren’t considered sexy unless they’re inflated to the size of a newly-divorced celebrity glamour model, but it’s worth mentioning that the standard error of this survey has increased between 1997 and 2008.

And the profile of these burgeoning ‘bingers?’. The kids, by statistical accounts, seem to be alright. 19% of men and women over the age of 65 conduct their heaviest drinking sessions alone. 22% of men and 14% of women over the age of 65 drink every day compared to 8% of men and 25 of women aged 16-24. And the knicker wielding women of front page fame? It seems that on the day they has most to drink, women drinkers were ‘most likely to have been drinking with a spouse or partner’. Try googling ‘posse of senior citizens wreak havoc and wreck civic amenities in happy hour gone horrible’, or ‘degenerate housewives: women in relationships drink more’. Any luck? Not even on google image?

Dear Daily Mail. Alcohol causes serious problems. Its abuse and misuse is a serious problem which causes untold damage to hundreds of thousands of people, their families, friends and loved ones in this country each year. It puts a strain on the health system and emergency services. It is not a pastime, a defence for date rape or a harmless hobby. But equally harmful is ridiculous journalism that refuses to engage with the issues and favours publishing pictures of hen parties with cellulite because that satisfies a sense of schadenfreude. If you must indulge in trite titillation, please do so responsibly and only in moderation.

It seems that the terminal to-do list has replaced the eternal whisperings of Keatsian beach contemplation. The most humble tasks now come complete with the requirements that you give over your basic details, undergo health and safety training and complete an evaluation form for monitoring and quality control purposes. The reason? I’m not sure – perhaps if I subscribed to the mailing list then there might be a link on Twitter to the answer. Somewhere.

Like the pointless propensity for forming orderly, disgruntled queues and retaining immense pride in a sporting prowess we don’t have, ridiculous bureaucracy is increasingly a mark of Britishness. Imagine, if you will, moving to Britain in your mid twenties to embark on an adventure in existential freefall and shared houses that are also (structurally) falling. Visualise finding a job (apparently there ARE some – the papers told me so) and looking round broom cupboards in Kilburn. And then, imagine doing this without seven forms of ID, including references from your last five landlords and utility bills which clearly show your address.

Um. Yeah. Tricky one that. Luckily, banks will accept library cards as forms of photo ID. Because, well, they’ve got your face on it and show where you live. A problem solved for this quick-thinking individual, a giant crater of WTF created. And an impressive number of logic issues raised. Not to mention the five years off my life in incandescent rage at having to spend three months obtaining a parking permit – if only I’d known that reading was still culturally validated.

Because that is the problem. Paperwork exists but, like the protagonist in Avenue Q, it is both hilarious and lacking in purpose. The weight of a million forms with sober typefaces and reassuring cuboid tickboxes with important bits underlined look official. They might have a polysyllabic name. An (hushed tones of awe and wonder) Act of Parliament that says you must do them or face DIRE CONSEQUENCES. But they are as rigorous as an eighteen year old gap year student with a chronic weed habit and a bag of Doritos. Paperwork does not work out.

Take the Enhanced Criminal Records Bureau application form. Or, if you like acronymns (and therefore should probably go and audit something instead of reading blogs by arts graduates) the CRB. Its reason for being: to ensure that young people are properly safeguarded. That the people who work with them are who they say they are and don’t have convictions that render them unsuitable for working with vulnerable, malleable young minds.

A good rationale. Morally sound. In principle – dare I say it – it could even work. The forms are pretty impressive too. Four pages of ink-filling in block capital boxes and a bibliography of suitable proof of identity, divided neatly into Groups 1 and 2 with added subclauses for transparency and ease. Except when you actually read what constitutes an ‘acceptable’ form of ID, you might want to head for the autumnal trees and hope that the council haven’t introduced health and safety (sorry, sorry, H&S) procedures for shimmying up them.

Didn’t renew your passport? Got no driving license because you listened to Boris and bought a bike? Fine, fine. Well, you can’t use your library card – but you can produce an original copy of your firearms license. And the court summons you got for accidentally discharging it whilst liberating your savings from an unhelpful cashier? That’s right – you’re good for Group 2 proof. As long as its less than three years old and shows your current address, of course.