MYTH OF THE COOL
Cool isn’t well. For a few decades now it’s been struggling with the expectation of being ahead of everyone and everything, of being a visual voice for what we ‘should’ like because someone else said so. It’s a slow road to self-hate when you think about it. We are choosing to like something based on someone else’s feelings and taste.
What does this mean?
It means we either have no taste of our own (which we all do, and fuck ‘em if they think our taste is or isn’t ‘cool’) or it means we have lost the art of understanding our feelings such is the pressure to buy into the right song/band/shoe/phrase/painting/diet/bike/hair/blog/book/pet.
Why can’t we just like something without it having to be rated in any way? Why must something be cool for it to catch on then immediately be relegated to uncool? If we as a species took all the effort we put into categorising cool and channelled it into fixing things we’ve broken, like lamps, or tyres, or economies, we’d be happier, if a little more tired trying to get the hardened glue off our fingernails.
MAXWELL OVERBOARD, MURDOCH OVERDOSE?
I’m sorry that I keep writing about News International. It’s not that I hate them, but having defecated in their own nest, they know that half of Britain is brimming with schadenfreude as we speak. The whole beautiful debacle has sent my head into rabid prophecy mode. The latest of which is the feeling that Murdoch may disappear soon without warning and without trace. Don’t get me wrong, he’s an astounding man but I have this unease that he’s about to come a cropper. Whether it’s his own doing, or the grim reaper, or an assassin, or just my misguided instinct who knows – the tealeaves are hard to read in a PG bag.
As far as we know, Murdoch’s empire is not in the mess Maxwell’s allegedly was at the time of his belly flop into the sea from the deck of his yacht, Lady Ghislaine. Well, not yet. Sky is doing its damnedest to distant itself from the washing of the family laundry in public. Is this because they know something we don’t? It’s about time Andy Gray and Richard Keys resurfaced as panto villains.
So Rupert, if you’re reading, take care. And keep the apologies coming.
CRAZY HAIR
Rebekah Brooks is no normal redhead. She is as close to a human Hydra as most of us will ever see. Her rusty corkscrew javelins hide a plain complexion (a tenner says Nicole Kidman will play her in the film of this whole episode) and also conceal what we really think about her. Call me superficial but her hair gets in the way. Ignoring for a second any other rational reason as to why she’s kept her job, could it be because of how she looks and not how she thinks, writes or acts?
If you doubt me and you no doubt will, then cast the net further afield. Malcolm Gladwell has no ordinary barnet. It’s another extraordinary dandelion-fro. Sure, he writes a good book based each time on hunch, but if he had the hair of say Steve Rider, would we give him and his words the time of day?
Even Einstein wore a comic bush. Had he presented his breakthrough theories with a flat, dull, mousey crop, combed to the side, we might have fallen asleep in mid-equation.
Look, I’m not saying crap hair gets you nowhere because it’s de rigeur for Silicon Valley billionaires. But I am saying outlandish hair can make a mediocre talent appear to to be genius.
So, work that look or wear a hat. As for me, I’m off to ram my fingers in the mains in the morning just before that meeting with the new publisher.
THE END OF THE NEWS OF THE WORLD
For once they’d rather not sensationalise the front page. They’d rather play it down, sweep it under the carpet along with the countless other bilious acts of heroic investigative journalism. In their 168 years they’ve broken the stories that others feared to print, even if they turned out to be false. In many ways, this paper is, and always had been, a work of fiction. Indeed, this scandal is playing out like a screenplay, no doubt to be optioned by C21st Fox.
The truth has barely surfaced yet. By the end of the week the following events will unfold for the following players (and make the movie worth watching a year from now).
- Andy Coulson - will be arrested, or have gone missing and stay missing, or commit suicide.
- Rebekah Brooks – affair with Rupert Murdoch will leak out, then she is hit by a black cab and falls into a coma, only to die a week on Sunday, the first day in 168 years that the world has lived without the News Of The World.
- Rupert Murdoch – will seek political asylum and in fleeing will suffer a heart attack displacing the planned front page of SORRY printed 4000 times.
If Harold Camping had been right with his Nostradamus-style prediction that the world would end on May 21st 2011 then the Murdochs would have evaded this mess and their final headline could well have been:
THE NEWS OF THE END OF THE WORLD
INJURY TIME IN 2011′S FIRST HALF
As the sixth month shuts its door on us, we could turn and walk back from where we came.
Or we could take a completely different direction.
The second half of 2011 could be better than the first. It should be. It must be. It has to be. It can’t not be.
There are a number of ways of ensuring it treats you well.
- Hope. Get up in the morning for it. Wash with it, breathe it in and let it swirl around your body. Drink it, think it, talk it, walk it.
- Be obvious. This is the new name of the incubator that launched twitter with the question: what are doing right now? At the time it seemed absurd to comment on your every move, then it ran away to be something a whole lot else.
- Fuck it. An old friend of mine wrote a book about this. He gave me an early copy. It applies to everything in life that slows you up. It works. Say fuck it.
- Do if you want to get. Do lectures prove this. After a generation of entitlement, we’ve suddenly re-awoken to the principle of hard work gets you somewhere, whatever the field you’re in, irrespective of any of the usual prejudices.
- Write your own rules. No manifesto out there will be as good as the one lurking in you. Steal from them all. Mongrelise your own motto and live by it, changing it as and when you damn well like. But do live by it. We’ve all become gods at sitting behind technology pretending we’re living when we’re just stalling. One day all this will go away and be superseded by something easier that makes the first to find it so much richer.
- Give away money as soon as you have enough. it doesn’t matter to who and why. Start a foundation before your get rich and it’ll make you rich. Watch Untitled Practice.com.
- There isn’t a 7.
TUNISIAN GREENGROCER 2
If Mohammed Bouazizi can cause the dethroning of 16 of the 22 Arab states, what might occur if a fishmonger in Tesco chose to slit his throat in front of impatient customers in order to bring to attention his innermost feelings? It’s a sick thought but possibly a prescient one too.
As recent as the 1980′s, suicide attacks were as few as 5 per year, whereas in Afghanistan alone 1224 people were killed and 2100 wounded last year. Self-sacrifice pollutes human history. As the world’s population grows and political dictatorships crumble, it is only a matter of time before activists fell commercial and capitalist bullies with the taking of their own lives.
TIME LIES
60 seconds is quicker than a minute. It just is. This is not a trick of the counting mind. Stare at a clock with seconds counting down and time will pass by in less time than it takes to stare at a minute hand swing round to its next increment.
But there’s more to it. Time counted down goes faster than time totting up. It fools our mind into thinking about the end, a dramatic end, a death if you like. This fatality causes mild panic in our hearts and causes them to beat like mad and hence distort the rhythm of our breathing. If you feel I’m lying and not time itself then bid on ebay and watch the time left clock eat away at your nerves, slowly accelerating until the last few seconds are mild hyperventilation. As I write I am 4m 51s away from deciding the fate of a vintage puzzle for my 2 year old’s birthday. If I fail to read the signals of time and stall, it will be because I was not in the moment.
So, this phrase – in the moment. Is this true time or suspended time? We can only say when we’re there, in there, inside that bubble of time feeling giddy with happiness.
Guess what. I slipped out of the moment and missed my bid. I didn’t win my ebay item. Time ate me up. I am now in search of lost time.
Marcel…Marcel…where and when are you Marcel?
MEDIA-PARLIAMENT JOB SWAP
Politicians and correspondents are hardly lovers. They relish ripping each other’s integrity to pieces. For decades now, the world (and its dysfunctional human machinations) has been run by journalists via the media and more latterly via the freedom of speech through social networking.
So, in light of the hypocrisy surrounding Andrew Marr’s infidelity, the time has come for a job swap experiment.
If Sky = Tories, the Beeb = Labour, ITV = Lib Dems and C4 = others, then we can announce a refreshing reshuffle in the cabinet and opposition for the summer of 2011, knowing that Britain will be better off with the following people in positions of power.
Prime Minister: James Murdoch
Deputy Prime Minister: Adam Crozier
Leader of the Opposition: Mark Thompson
Leader of the Lib Dems: Adam Crozier
Chancellor: Michael Wilson
Shadow Chancellor: Stephanie Flanders
Foreign Secretary: Jeremy Paxman (he’ll defect soon, just wait)
BBC CEO: Ed Milliband
ITV CEO: Nick Clegg
C4 Joint CEO’s: Alex Salmond & Caroline Lucas
SKY CEO: David Cameron
And so on…
Now, imagine they form a media-political coalition across all media owners and political parties. Yes, really. It could, with a hurricane of goodwill, put an end to our national self-destructive civil war of words and opinions on how to run the country and motivate its citizens to drag us back into the black.
Let’s have an online referendum on it.
All those in favour of a job swap, say ‘AYE’.
OSAMA BIN LADEN: DIED 2-5-11, RESURRECTED 5-5-11
In 3 days time he’ll rise from the dead. We’ll witness a miracle that would make Jesus Christ turn in his grave. Osama Bin Laden will appear in a new hidden corner of the world with a real time broadcast message informing the world of his next intentions – a coalition with Kim Jong-il. The cynicism of modern man will kick in and deny that he was ever killed as it’ll be easier to stomach as news, instead of this bungled post-mortem. The CIA will be crucified if you pardon the verb for not hauling him up before The Hague and giving the world the chance to turn the moral screw deep into his heart. Al Qaeda will unilaterally disarm in return for Montana. Obama will agree. The world will struggle on and Miromax will buy the rights. And if you doubt this, you’ll doubt anything.
HARD TO GET HOLD OF
Is where it’s heading.
Privacy is what publicity wants to be when it grows up from its pubescent phase of entitlement and adoration.
We will relinquish our exits and fort knox-ify our entrances – goodbye facebook, linkedin, twitter & co.
This will cleanse the whole of society in a self-diagnostic manner.
We will feel better, even those who held 50 conversations at once without ever truly being in any one of those conversations.
Spoken language will shrink.
Body language will rise.
And we’ll all live bovinely ever after.