Leon Maughan
-
5 thoughts after 6 nights in America
I love the USA, its a Disney masterpiece, it’s a cheesy pop key change. American culture assumes the best in you and rubs off on you. It is however, boring talking about stuff you like, its much more interesting to pick through the confusing, unsatisfying aspects of experience – here are 5 things that stick…
-
What Jessie J taught us about money
In 2011, Jessie J waited patiently for Coconut Man, Moonhead and Pea to be ready before she bravely imparted some wisdom onto the world. Money is brilliant and fascinating. Two years after Price Tag came out I remember standing mesmerised in the bathroom, opening the Barclays mobile banking app and seeing my current account balance…
-
Ziggy and the worry hole
I don’t really think of myself as having anxiety. I’ve never had medication for it and I’m aware a lot of people do – so I figure I can’t be that bad. However, a massive part of my life consists of hanging around overthinking about the 1 thing on my mind – and it’s always…
-
Dr Strange and the Multiverse of your ordinary life
The moment I gave up on the new Dr Strange movie was when they labelled the different universes as ‘Earth-838’ or ‘Earth-616’ – implying strongly that there’s around 1k versions of Earth in the multiverse. I love sci-fi when its in the neighbourhood of feeling plausible (this is why I loved LOST) and I immediately…
-
Maybe I don’t want to recycle
What do these two things have in common? In both cases it is implied that an unpleasant task falls on the shoulders of the individual in order to allow space for corporations to maximally thrive. Effectively asking people to take responsibility where its not in their interest to. ‘Privatise the profits, nationalise the debt’ In…
-
Truth, lies, good and bad
The war, reading the Guardian, being overwhelmed by ‘takes’ on Twitter, watching Russell Brands videos on it, and having to deal with a Chinese viewpoint at home has got me thinking a lot about right and wrong. In the west we have a belief that open, free, uncensored information will always lead to lies being…
-
Why being funny is the highest British value
Last summer I spent 2 weeks in the UK, after probably my longest time ever out of it. This time I brought Hao – despite living in Europe for 4 years it was his first time in Britain so I got to also view the country through the alien perspective: “The cars are more colourful…
-
How I lost 30 kg
Judging from my photo library I think it was probably Tuesday 7th June 2016 and I weighed about 120 kg. It was about 6pm and I’d just come back from ALDI to buy dinner. I looked at the carrier bag of food I’d laid out on my desk, some microwave Haggis and Potato meal, some…
-
Toxic Englishness
When I saw this 10 second clip of Michael Gove clearly high on something strong, standing in the Commons ‘at work’, something made me angry, something clicked. It’s not that ‘they despise us’ or ‘they’re laughing at us’, although given their classist conditioning both these things will be true. It’s that the Tory front bench…
-
Chicken conspiracy
The chickens came before us – 10 million BCThe chickens could fly then, across the sea The world had felt wrong til the plot did thickenThe truth is we’re just serving the needs of big chicken We think that they’re innocent, flightless and weakThey have us where they want us, right in their beak Today…
Got any book recommendations?