FUGGER COMMUNICATIONS

My job is to make you aware of summer blockbusters, international acts of aggression and new family packs of fish fingers. My click farms provide the trends you hashtag on twitter. I don't just promote products and points of view, I alter the fundamental perception of reality itself. You check the facts but my public relations company, Fugger Communications, makes the facts. I email the media and they cut and paste my press releases into all your heads.

When it comes to geopolitical conflicts, Fugger Communications is unique in that it often works propaganda for both sides. Let's imagine that nation A is at war with nation B, well both A and B will hire Fugger Communications to make the other look bad and to make themselves look better. Fugger Communications (Unit F-15E, Nangor Road Business Park) doesn't pick sides. I take both assignments and execute them with the utmost due diligence and standards of excellence going forward.

The main task is to build a wall of nonsense that the truth can't penetrate. I tell a lie, I counter it with another lie and then I tell a third lie to counter the second and then I add a fourth and so on and so on. One brick after another in a Tower of Bable. It's a game of He Said She Said but I'm playing it alone and getting paid by both himself and herself. That's PR for you. It's a lovely earner. No one wants to hear the complex realities anyway. (TLDR.) Folks just want simple stories to reassure them that their side is the good side and the other the bad side. (There are never two bad sides or any shades of grey whatsoever). As for those the conflict does not directly involve, they like a choice of readily understood backstories that allow them to pick a side and enjoy the show, commenting on the plot as it unfolds as if experts. Those who don't buy into my narratives are usually pretty clever but, thankfully, apathetic. If the Holocaust was unfolding today, they're the kind of people who'd groan at the sight of a Nazi death camp and change channel to watch something 'less depressing'. Family Guy probably (warmed by the 'knowingness' of their cold laughter). They're the 'smart cookies'. They matter least. Really, they don't matter at all.

The only other people who don't buy into my spins on events are those caught up in those very events – seeing reality unfold at ground level. These people are of even less concern to me because they're either the ones making the decisions or the ones being killed by the ones who are making the decisions. I need not fret about the latter because the dead testify to nothing and the former are the ones who hired me in the first place.

Helping the opposing leaders of two warring nations achieve their ends by convincing everyone else that all the suffering is worth it leaves me feeling no moral qualms or shake my certainty that I'm performing a service to all parties. You see, to do other than disseminate simplistic propaganda would be severely unkind. The alternative would be to allow people realise the truth - that it is not worth it and that there is nothing they can do about it. Imagine how everyone would feel then, stripped of the compensation of jingoistic righteousness? The truth would kill their hope and leave them in despair. The truth is something to be avoided at all costs because the truth is cruel. The truth is no one's friend. In fact, it is the truth that is the real enemy. The only war truly worth fighting is the war against the truth. I am fighting that war. The fact that I'm handsomely paid to do so is neither here nor there, I am fighting the war against the truth for all of us.

Knowing that I'm making the world seem a less complicated, frightening and futile place than it really is allows me to sleep easy in my bed. As for the rest of you, you can just go back to sleep easily.

There's no need to thank me.

Just stay glued to your TV.

MORE NONSENSE

(pictured above – Aonghus wearing earrings Mary made him)

It's just random observations and memories today. I don't feel like drawing them together into some contrived whole. Life is just a series of unrelated sensations and reactions anyway. Narrative cohesion is an ex post facto lie you tell yourself. At least that's what Aonghus McAnally kept saying on Anything Goes when I was a small boy and I've found it to be true ever since.

So, um, here goes I suppose...

I used to own a cat that used a dog I used to own as a horse. I videoed them and tried to upload the footage to Youtube but it was 1989 and the Internet hadn't been invented yet.

Silly of me really. I should have known. I didn't even have a computer.

...anyway...

Did you know that if you crush butterflies into a paste and spread it on a sandwich and eat it you can fly out the window?

Yeah, ...seriously, I swear...

Ah no, that was just a dream you had. Can you remember it? Maybe you haven't had it yet. Maybe you'll have it tonight because you read about it here. Either way, it's your dream.

Speaking of Anything Goes do you remember Mary? She used to show you how to make things out of bird skulls and marla and all that kind of thing. I remember this time she was dressed up as a sexy magician's assistant – heels and fishnets. That was probably the first time in my life I found myself muttering the words 'not bad, not bad at all'. I've probably muttered those words to myself about eight or nine billion times since. Mainly when I'm remembering Mary in the fishnets.

That's a true story that, not that that's really a story.

Hmmm. They probably still have the footage of Mary wearing the gear in the RTE archive somewhere. Someone should really fish it out. They could release it on DVD. I'd buy it or download it illegally at least.

...so, you know, ...that's an idea anyway...

Did I tell that I was recently denied a blood transfusion because I don't use Google+? Yeah, I was. 'Fair enough', I didn't think to myself. You wouldn't have thought that either if it happened to you.

I also hear that CNN is changing its name to Fox News Lite. They say the rebrand will help make it clear that they're not nearly as mad but basically the same. 'Fair enough', I do think to myself there.

Ryan Tubridy was talking angrily into his mobile the other day and I heard him saying the words: 'I've fucking had it with the Scheler Concept of Ressentiment'. That's what he said. Those exact words almost exactly. I think. I'm not sure. I wasn't there. I was somewhere else. But I was speaking to him on his mobile at the time and that's how I know it's true.

Did you know that the Communications and Management Institute Dublin are awarding diplomas in something called Psycholinguistic Subterfuge? Yeah, they are. Apparently there's a lot of employment opportunities in that area. Whatever that area is.

...still, nice to earn an honest wage.

So, tell me, is the kid in the picture above cute or creepy? I can't decide. Cutely creepy? Creepily cute? Who knows? Maybe if we close our eyes she'll go away. Close your eyes then and I will too and we'll open them after a count of three and hopefully she'll be gone. Ready? OK, let's do it. One, two, ...thrrrreeee. Open your eyes!

Fuck, she's still there.

Hold on, you didn't close your eyes. You cheated!

Ah, don't worry. I didn't close my eyes either. I tend not to close my eyes anymore. You never know what'll be there when you reopen them.

So, that's about it for today. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll probably be writing about the future of internet in the next post, now that it's been invented, but that's it for today ...unless, ...did I tell you about Mary in the fishnets?

I did?

Oh yeah, I see it up there near the top of the post.

OK so, you can go but don't forget to come back. If you don't keep visiting Fugger you'll end up spending your time elsewhere and getting indoctrinated into notions that life makes sense, which it doesn't. That's just more nonsense.

So, it's goodbye for now then.

You know I love you very much.

Especially when you're in your magician's assistant gear.

Not bad, not bad at all.

(That post was probably inspired by Bumhand's spamming on the JPRBDF)

FUGGER 400!

Health care cuts will incentivise the sick to get better. Facilitating the culture of illness is unfair on the tax payer. Malingering is no longer an option. Get up from your beds and show some self respect. I’m well. I like being well. It’s good to be well. Wouldn’t you like to be well? Let’s fight the infirmity trap! Don’t think about giving up! Quitting isn’t an option! We’re scrapping the body bag allowance so keep breathing! Keep the blood flowing! Let’s keep those hearts beating! Let’s Go Ireland! We’re turning the corner again! We’re back on track! One cochlear implant is more than enough! No more needless expenditure! Reform! Probity! Rugby! Amy Huberman! New shoes! Is Féidir Linn car stickers! This is Fugger’s 400^th post! Can I have a job in public relations?

 

I AM NOT A LIAR, I AM A WIZARD!

The scientific method is considered the most disciplined means by which to discover the 'truth'. Science is also thought of as the banisher of superstitious beliefs in 'untrue' things such as magic. Ironically however, it is through science that I, Professor Fugger, have discovered that magic exists. Let me explain...

The laboratories of the Fugger Institute have recently been researching if fizzy drinks are harmful to children. Coincidentally, this research is sponsored by a fizzy drinks manufacturer. The fizzy drinks manufacturer offered its financial support on the condition that the institute discover that their product is in no way harmful to children. The Fugger Institute accepted this offer despite knowing that it would corrupt the integrity of its findings. The important thing is that the institute continues its research and if this is to be the case then money is required. It's a small lie in the cause of a larger truth. The larger truth will also be for sale though, just as all truth is ultimately for sale to the highest bidder.

You might say: 'for shame Professor Fugger, you're a disgrace to all scientific endeavour' but you would be missing an important factor - the ultimate factor. You see, the very first discovery of the Fugger Institute was that there is no 'truth'. We used beakers and test tubes and microscopes and large colliders and nomothetic and idiographic questionnaires and put rats in mazes and gave monkeys electric shocks and there wasn't an inkling, not one iota, not a single particle of truth to be found anywhere. All is perception and objective fact is a fallacy. In short: the truth does not exist. So, if the truth doesn't exist then selling the truth is making money out of nothing and making something out of nothing defies the principle of mass conservation and is therefore magic. Q.E.D.!

( I have forwarded the Fugger Institute's findings to all media outlets, public relations firms, political figures, and cash strapped academics so as to counter any unnecessary qualms or pangs of guilt on their part for lying and/or obfuscating the 'true' 'facts'. I am sure this will be appreciated by the parties concerned in the unlikely event of said qualms or pangs actually occurring. )

You've probably already heard that we've stopped wearing lab coats down the institute and started dressing in pointy hats and capes with stars on them. We've quit using all the regular scientific apparatuses too and taken to waving wands about and throwing eyes of newts and the like into bubbling cauldrons. You should drop down. It's great craic altogether. We've even had the words 'alakazam, alakazoo' engraved into the plaque at the institute's entrance. The commissions are flying in. I'm working on a study right now that is set to prove that cigarettes are good for bone calcium – sponsored by Philip Morris International. Hey presto – another load of dosh out of thin air!

Now, repeat after me – 'I am not a liar, I am a WIZARD! ...going forward.'

THE STORIES STORY

 

Once upon a time there were stories and these stories helped people make sense of things. These stories lived for a long time and got to be very very old. Some of the very first stories were from Arnhem Land and came in the form of songs. Those who sang these stories believed they were singing reality into existence. What is a rock before it is named a rock and given a story about how it came to be a rock? The answer: well, nothing at all really. Perception is everything.

Not all stories were to be taken as truth but all of them were there to help their audiences deal with reality. Stories were analogous and elastic. There were fables, cautionary tales, epic poems, and morality plays. Even when tragic, it was said these stories could purge the soul with pity and fear. These stories provided solace and guidance and held great power. This was noticed by certain people and the power of stories was harnessed and then everything changed.

New stories came to be. Rather than born of the communities to which they were applicable, these stories were constructed in laboratories by committees and sent out into the world. The new story teller was not the shaman or the seanachaí. The new story teller was the PR consultant and the behavioural psychologist. The new stories did not tell us how to live, instead they told us what to want and they told us who to hate. These stories did not sing, they scuttled. They scuttled all over the globe like cockroaches and the people of the world initially loved them but soon grew tired of them and then became disgusted by them. The people of the world went back to making up their own stories instead of listening to these new ones.

But there was a problem. The people of the world had been listening to the scuttling stories for a very very long time. The cockroaches had crawled in their ears and eaten away at the parts of their brains they used for making up stories and the cockroaches had laid eggs in there. The people of the world started making up their own stories of ‘truth’ but it was literal truth and it was absolute truth and it was not analogous or elastic or interpretable truth. And these new stories were full of confusion and loss and rage and they didn’t sing and they didn’t scuttle, they screamed. And these stories were screamed over and over and there were a great many of them and most of them were about how you could not trust the rest of them. And these stories went to war and none were on the same side and they donned armour and waved swords about the place, all over the place, and instead of singing reality into existence theses stories screamed reality into extinction. A rock was no longer a rock. A rock was a cover to an Illuminati passageway or a terrorist booby trap or an MI5 bugging device. A rock ceased to be a simple rock and became the source of great anxiety.

And then something awful happened. Something really awful happened. And no one knew why it happened or how it happened so they started to scream stories about why and how it happened and these stories clashed and clanged and clattered and the noise was unbearable and the noise went on and on and on and on until the human race lost its communal mind.

And that is the stories story and if you take my advice you’ll stop listening to stories for a while and if something happens, something really awful happens, cover your ears and listen to no stories and don’t even try to make up your own stories because you are fucking terrible at it because you have forgotten how. You are no story teller but a story will one day be told and you will be in it and we will all be in it and we better hope it has a happy ending.  

 

ARMS TRADING

(pictured above: Fugger Lump Hammers celebrity endorsement, 'If A Job’s Worth Doing. . .')

I’ve recently gotten involved in the arms trade. Let’s face it, people are always going to fight and if I don’t sell them weapons someone else will so it may as well be me. Now I realise I can’t compete with the like of BAE Systems or anything so I’m not exactly selling self-propelled artillery to developing nations or any of that. No. I’m much more small scale. I sell things like knuckle dusters and slash hooks to warring Traveller clans.

I don’t feel bad about it. If the warring parties didn’t use my weapons they’d just be bashing each other’s heads in with rocks or something. At least this way someone (i.e. me) gets to profit and jobs are created and, in these difficult times, that’s good for the economy as a whole.

There were journos complaining about me in the local papers though. They were going on about some kid who got shot full of pellets as she crossed a halting site and lost an eye and blah blah blah. They traced the pellets back to my company and started filling their pages with fuzzy pictures of me looking sinister, getting in and out of cars and going to the shops with my hood up.

I realised I had to put a stop to all this bad press so a subsidiary company I own (one that sells lump hammers) bought a significant amount of advertising space in their rags. They don’t like to bite the hand that feeds, the old hacks. Then I sent out a press release saying I’d donated some money to a traveller resource centre. In truth, none of the resource centres would take my money so I had to set up my own. No one used my resource centre and it didn’t even strictly exist but it’s the thought that counts. Anyway, next thing I knew, the papers were portraying me as a ‘philanthropic lump hammer entrepreneur’ and said my resource centre would ‘herald a new spring for the Traveller community’. They didn’t even mention the weapons side of the business. Nice one.

The Internet is a bit harder to control though. Bloody activists were all over it calling me a hypocrite because I make donations with one hand whilst profiting from misery with the other. Well, I hired a PR company to flood the forums with the following counter-argument: These people are going to kill each other anyway and at least some of the profits made from arming them goes toward their resource centre. When people argued back, the PR people pulled a masterstroke. They started referring to those who opposed the arms sales as ‘anti-resource centre’. I thought that was bloody genius. That PR company was money well spent.

Do you need anything yourself? How about a lump hammer? They get the job done. They’re duel purpose actually.

THE CULT OF FUGGER

There are few patterns to be found in human experience and there is no predestination. It’s fundamentally random. Nothing is meant to be and people are neither blessed nor doomed. However, humanity has an inbuilt ability to see patterns. We noticed the seasons and the tides and all the things that have routine in this world. This led to our mastery of cause and effect. We became fisher men, hunters, farmers, and inventors. To a certain extent, we began to control our destinies. BUT, not everything operates on the principle of cause and effect and not everything has a pattern. Seeing patterns where none exist is a common flaw in humanity. This flaw is called apophenia. Apophenia steps in at those frustrating and anxious moments when we realise we’re not in control of events. We panic and begin to construct patterns and causes where there are none to be found. This leads us up garden paths. It convinces us that our futures can be read in the movements of stars or that we can be saved by rituals. Sometimes, deep down, we might almost know what the future holds based upon past observation and sometimes when we have a problem we know what the solution is. Despite this knowledge, we often still seek refuge in apophenia. Instead of facing the future (which may be challenging) we seek succour in things like horoscopes. Likewise, addressing a problem sometimes requires great effort so instead we drop to our knees and say a novena because that’s easier. But remember, God only helps those who help themselves and Fugger is going to show you, my darling reader, how to help yourself by taking advantage of apophenia. And let me tell you, we are talking BIG CASH here.

What you need to do is start a cult. To do this you first need to construct a robust but entirely apophenic (is that a word? who cares, it is now) narrative. Then you go around acting as if you have exclusive insight and that you alone know the truth (a.k.a. your narrative). This narrative should tell people what they want to hear. That is key, you tell people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Psychologists do this all the time: ‘You can’t relate to your kids because your Dad laughed when you were seven and fell in a duck pond now give me €400 and get out of my office’. A decent narrative, no matter how irrelevant, will make people go ‘oh yeah’, particularly if it is one that gets them off the hook of taking responsibility for their own behaviour. It’s the same with horoscopes, ‘you’re a total no-hoper because Saturn was around when you were born but give me some cash and I’ll tell you how Jupiter is going to help you next June.’

OK, so to recap, what you need to do is create a narrative and link it to the cause and effect of people’s lives whilst making them believe that you are the oracle of said narrative and, therefore, indispensible to them. Got that? Good. Now let’s proceed. The next step is finding suckers. The Internet is great for this. You set up a site, leave posts everywhere and reel them in. Then you hold a conference (charge people in but not too much at first, you’re not in Deepak Chopra’s league yet). At this conference you will find yourself standing in front of a small selection of visibly desperate strangers, the type of people who sit next to you on the bus and stink of TCP. It’s not an ideal congregation but you have to start somewhere. Remember, if you get this part right, the Tom Cruises and Travoltas will come later. Anyway, to start things off, get the assembled up and dancing about. Liberate them of their inhibitions, release their endorphins and raise their goose-bumps with some good tunes (a bit like at a U2 gig, which is effectively an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about). Then, when they are feeling good about themselves, you lower the lighting, adopt a no nonsense demeanour, and introduce them to stage one of your narrative. The narrative should always come in stages so they have to keep coming back for more and buying the books, audios and DVDs that will be available from a stall in the lobby.

Before you know it, you’ll be attracting a better class of adherent and rolling in dough. Not to mention riding any member of the congregation that takes your fancy. ‘Come with me my dear and I will show you the enlightening art of the oven-ready position.’ It worked for David Koresh (or so they say but that might have just been a narrative the U.S. media constructed to justify burning the Branch Davidians to death, who knows, we’re all at it really when you think about it, it’s called lying or public relations).

Now, one other thing I should mention is to try and throw in a bit of shame. This is optional but shame really is great. If you can make people feel ashamed of themselves you’re on to a winner. People hate feeling ashamed so if you can incite shame in them you can set yourself up as the sole source of absolution from that shame. They’ll come to you on their hands and knees and beg forgiveness for the transgression of your choosing and you’ll be in a position to say ‘I forgive thee in exchange for sweet sweet cash, now go in peace jabroni’. Make sure that the shame they feel is caused by something unavoidable. Make the follower feel disproportionate shame for farting or something that they are bound to do occasionally. Make farting (or whatever you decide upon) seem like the very worst thing a person can do. ‘And lo’ he did fart and our lord Kangerok, Monarch of the Upper Realm, did weep and despair of mankind’. That kind of thing. Got it?

So, now you’re on the road. There are of course other incredibly important elements you will need to learn in order to put your cash-generating/cult-forming plans into action but to know about them you will need to purchase my audio-listenable CD and book sets from Daphne (a deliciously oven-ready 36-24-36) as you exit through the lobby. Thanks for listening and remember, you are the master of your own destiny . . .and the destiny of others.

(Below is a perfect example of how to start a cult conference)