ARSES

Who are you? How do you define yourself? If something, anything, happens do you respond to it based on the values and social norms that were downloaded onto your cranial hard drive as you were reared and socialised by family, school, religion, media, and all the rest? Is that really your response or just an instruction? Is your sense of 'self' merely a construct formed by external cultural and societal forces? What are you other than a range of predictable responses and a few personal memories and traumas that you have placed into a formalised context that depends on the aforementioned external influences? Is there a self there at all? Are you there at all? How free a thinker are you? Do you even really think and, if you do, do you ever find yourself thinking something and then stopping yourself thinking it because it seems disconcertingly transgressive or embarrassingly absurd?

Do you think you're a rebel because you dress like a rebel or are you actually a rebel? What is a rebel? What are you rebelling against? How are you rebelling? Is that really the best you can do? Is that actually rebelling? Are you just playing the part of the rebel in an agreed upon cultural game?

I went to art college. They asked me to make something and to give of myself so I shat on the floor. I was following instructions but interrogating those instructions and showing them up for what they were by carrying them out. Why? Because we must be constantly awake and make no lazy assumptions. Every moment of every day our true selves are smothered by the externally constructed selves imposed upon us by whatever culture presides at the time. We must remove the blinkers. We must reject and then we must reject rejection and learn to accept nothing. Does that make sense? Why not? What is sense? Ceci n'est pas une pipe!

Language too is blinkers. What is language but a way of placing boundaries on thought and expression? If we could ditch language and communicate telepathically we could say so much more. Dogs are more genuine when they snarl and whine and sniff each others' arses. We are just trading agreed assumptions and myths. Even when we're telling the truth we are lying.

Last week I held a protest against protesting. It turned into a riot against rioting so I threw a molotov cocktail at a molotov cocktail. Then I told a woman that I loved her but that I didn't know who she was or what love was and neither did she and she said that love was a feeling and I said that I didn't know what a feeling was and she said it was just a feeling and I said that I had a feeling she was just told that by someone who heard it from someone else. Later we got married and divorced at the same time and then I sniffed her arse and whined and then I snarled.

I am most awake when I am asleep. I will not sleep in a building. I will not live in a house. A house is a contract and a house is a series of assumptions. When I lived in a house I slept in the bath, I shat in the kitchen sink, and I ate my dinner from the toilet bowl. When it got dark I hung my pyjamas over the windows and I dressed in curtains. Then I sat in the fireplace and set fire to the rest of the place. I will not live in a house or an apartment. Apartment. Apart-meant. Where we are 'meant' to live 'apart'. Apart from others and ourselves. What is a roof but a blindfold?

I live in a forest. I eat nuts and berries and when I eat the wrong berries I get a sore tummy. I shout and roar as I endure the cramps but I do not call a doctor because a doctor will just say this is a stomach, this is poison, this is illness, and then it will be decided that my stomach is ill because I ate the wrong berries and that I ate the wrong berries because my head is ill and I am not adhering to the all powerful Adherable and I should be locked away. I only trust one type of doctor. I only trust the proctologist. The proctologist sniffs people's arses and so knows more than any other because up our arses is where our heads can be found.

We only think we are people in the same way that we think that there is a world and there is a universe. That is all just an idea. It's not even our idea, we were just told the idea. The truth is that there is nothing. The Big Bang was just an idea that got out of hand and spread out into the void. If we think about something else maybe it will all just go away. What will we think about? We will think about nothing. Nothing at all. We will think about nothing and it will be easy because even when we think that we are thinking about something we are thinking about nothing.

And now I must go. Using language has made me feel cheap and dishonest and besides, I've still got a pain in my stomach and it's really getting bad but maybe that too is all in my head and my head is up my arse and everything is a load of arse. Someone call a proctologist!

THE MAN ON THE STREET

When asked if he wrote his songs for the man on the street, Sid Vicious said: 'No, I've met the man on the street and he's a cunt.'

ALSO. . .there's another right c word of a fella over on the RABID DOG CHRIST blog. Click the link and check it out.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

What use is food for thought eh? I mean, you can't eat it. What use is food you can't eat? If someone gave you food for thought you'd get hungry and all you'd be thinking about is how hungry you are and you'd have no time to think about the food they gave you for thought. Food for thought my arse! How's that for food for thought?

And here's more food for thought for you, why does everyone say earthquakes are San Andrea's fault? What did San Andrea ever do? Unfair!

And a final bit of brain dinner for you, physicists keep talking about neutrinos but what about old-trinos, eh? What about them? Quantum physics is a bit ageist isn't it? Have a mind chew on that food for thought!

That is all!

. . .jeepers, I'm beginning to sound like The LOL Generator or, worse still, Jimmy Carr. This blog really is dying on its arse. It used to be good though. Do you remember the one about the blacks? That was a bit of a laugh. Some of The Mother stuff was good too wasn't it? And there used even be some kind of food for thought stuff but sure what use is that? Ah well, if it keeps up at this rate I can always get a job writing the opening gags on The Craig Doyle Show.

REVENUE ZOO

To generate more revenue, the zoo have renamed the animals after sponsors. It's working out grand. I was there yesterday. I arrived in time to see the Avivas getting fed and I got a look at the new baby Coca Koala bear (very cute). The Fyffes are still their old selves, jumping about the place and screeching and picking nits out of each other. The Goldman Sachs are very fierce though. I hope they never escape their enclosure. They'd run riot and wreck the place.

My favourite has to be the Tayto, with its big ears and long trunk. Funny, I remember the Tayto the zoo used have in the eighties. Ironically, it died because people kept throwing it Taytos and its stomach went all banjaxed.

Anyway, the zoo is a great day out. Very educational for children too, teaching them all about animals and fiscal responsibility going forward.

AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FEATURE FILM

I’m making an American independent feature film. It’s about a girl in a heavy anorak who hangs around in woods at wintertime. She goes to a diner and orders coffee but she can’t pay so the woman who runs the place (and wears a check shirt) takes pity on her and gives her a job. The heavy anorak girl never speaks of her past to the café owning woman who wears a check shirt and the café owning woman who wears a check shirt never asks any questions but she does observe and notices a scar on the heavy anorak girl’s wrist on a rare occasion when she takes off her heavy anorak and rolls up the sleeves of her check shirt (she wears a check shirt too, under the heavy anorak).

The café owning woman who wears a check shirt is having a sexual relationship with a check shirt wearing trucker who frequently passes through but he’s no good and makes a pass at the heavy anorak girl. The café owning woman who wears a check shirt tells the check shirt wearing trucker never to come back. There is tension between the heavy anorak girl and the café owning woman who wears a check shirt for a bit after that. The heavy anorak girl offers to leave but the café owning woman who wears a check shirt says that won’t be necessary.

Then the heavy anorak girl adopts this dog she finds hanging around the bins and she takes it for walks in the woods but then the café owning woman who wears a check shirt lays rat poison and the dog eats it and dies. Then they wrap the dog in a check shirt and bury it in the woods and then the café owning woman who wears a check shirt looks at the heavy anorak girl and says ‘you know you can stay as long as you like’. Then the camera lingers on the heavy anorak girl but she says nothing and it is impossible to know what she is thinking and I won’t even tell the actress what to pretend to think and then we’ll cut to black and the film ends to music like this:

I’m thinking of casting Zooey Deschanel as the heavy anorak girl so people will be surprised and go ‘wow, she really has depth’. I’m thinking of calling the film either Margaret in Spring and Mid-Winter or Rusty Trombones.

 ALSO. . .

Speaking of films, why not check out today’s presentation on FUGGER FILM FEAST! – yes, this is a link.

DIVEBOMBERS

Normally in bed by this time, I was barely awake. Being dragged down the promenade by my mother. Crashing sea to one side of us, flashing amusements to the other. Confusing. I had pins and needles in my foot. I must’ve slept on it funny in the bus on the way. ‘Do you see the Divebombers?’ Mam kept asking. I did. On the outskirts of the official amusement park, in a desolate clearing between Freddy’s Casino and Alonzo’s chipper. . . DIVEBOMBERS! Two chambers of death suspended high in the air by creaky rusty arms. Burning rubber stank off the massive fan belts whirring through the chugging spluttering tractor engine at the base. Chamber occupants screamed as they were violently yanked into the starry skies and then mercilessly flung to earth. ‘Deadly’.

Two Rory Gallagher look-a-likes collected fares from a queue of happy nervous victims. One of the Rory Gallaghers wore a denim jacket with Horslips patches on it. He was smoking a Major. My father. ‘Serge, Serge’, Mam called out to him. (She called him Serge but I could’ve sworn the other lad called him Proinsias.) My father’s eyes bulged when he spotted us, the way people’s eyes bulge when they push open a cubicle door and find you banging up. His head was the same shape as mine. The wrong shape. My parents spoke for a bit in that frequency kids can’t access. My father took me over to a candy floss stand. It was seven pence for a candy floss. He asked me if I had fourteen pence. I did, my savings for a Judge Dredd comic. I gave it to him and he bought a candyfloss for me and a candyfloss for Mam. Mam was delighted when he handed over hers but he kept picking bits off it for himself so she got nearly none. I didn’t like mine and missed that week’s Judge Dredd story.

We spent that summer with my father in his old caravan. He was out working all the time. Mam and I went to the beach for cold swims but spent most days indoors, listening to the rain belting off the tinny roof and playing I Spy.

The summer pissed off before anyone really noticed it had arrived. There were less people about the town and the water got colder and colder. My father didn’t come back one night and then didn’t come back the next day. A man came to the door and asked us for money for the caravan. Mam didn’t have any and he started shouting. We got the bus back to Nana’s house. A passenger started talking to Mam and told her how a Divebomber came loose the night before. ‘It came right off and landed on the candy floss stand’, the passenger said all gleeful, ‘three dead and they say the same thing happened in the Isle of Man last year’. My mother went pale. I never found out what happened to Judge Dredd that week. 

THE RATIONALITY OF REALPOLITIK

I, Fugger, the people's blogger, was recently invited to address the RAND Corporation. The topic of my talk was The Rationality of Realpolitik. I had a white board and coloured markers and everything. My talk went down very well. I'm providing a transcript below for you to enjoy. I kept it nice and short because in an era where everybody is busy Twittering their hashtags, it's best not to keep them long. Anyway, here's what I said:

We are 'rational actors' in a system that provides 'selective incentives'. If those 'selective incentives' do not appeal to some then we can only assume that they are 'irrational actors'. We have certain 'disincentives' that can be applied to 'irrational actors' unless those 'irrational actors' have other incentives that dovetail with our system of 'rational actors'. 

You see, in order to meet the needs of our system of 'rational actors' we must sometimes facilitate a certain set of 'dovetailing' 'irrational actors' (example: religious fundamentalists) in order to overcome another, 'less dovetailing', set of 'irrational actors' (example: secular tyrants). Once the 'less dovetailing' set of 'irrational actors' have been overcome (or reduced to crushed bone, ash, or something resembling barbequed meat) by the 'dovetailing' set of 'irrational actors' our system will set about overcoming the 'dovetailing' set of 'irrational actors' by supporting yet another set of 'irrational actors', often the remnants of the formerly 'less dovetailing' set of 'irrational actors'. And so it goes on. And on. And on and on. Forever. And ever. Until, eventually, someone comes along and decides that we (yes, we: me, you, your mom, your pop, your kitty and your dog) are the 'irrational actors' and overcome us (or reduce us to crushed bone, ash, or something resembling barbequed meat). Do you follow me? Do you get the idea? Don't you think it's clever? Don't you find it all devastatingly 'rational'?

I received a standing ovation. I was a bit chuffed to be honest but I'm not sure if they were applauding what I said or applauding the massive cock and balls I drew over the map of Syria on my whiteboard.