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.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI

(pictured: you set her free, now get the T)

I think Aung San Suu Kyi is deadly. Soldiers locked her in her gaff for ages and she didn't go mad. Half the people you see around outside are barking but Aung San Suu Kyi couldn't even go down the road to buy smokes or a Lucozade or whatever and still she kept her shit together. I love her. I think she's as cool as the Dalai Yoda off Australian Masterchef. Anyway, I wrote a bit of a poem type song thing for her because she's in Dublin today signing copies of her new graphic novel in Forbidden Planet. I'm hoping to head down there and sing it to her. It goes a little something like this:

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Aung San Suu Kyi,

They locked you in your gaff

and threw away the key.

Ooh ooh ooh,

Aung San Suu Kyi.

I guess when you were there you played lots of Nintendo Wii.

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Aung San Suu Kyi,

You were stuck indoors for ages

watching boxsets on TV.

Ooh ooh ooh,

Aung San Suu Kyi.

I bet you've seen The Wire even more times than me.

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Aung San Suu Kyi,

You were bored shitless in your gaff

but now you're free.

Ooh ooh ooh,

Aung San Suu Kyi.

Wait 'till you see the movies, now they're all in crappy 3D.

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Last time you left the gaff,

Happy Mondays were number three.

Ooh ooh ooh,

Aung San Suu Kyi.

You gotta see Shaun Ryder, the guy's become a monstrosity.

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Now you're getting prizes,

and joining Bono for tea.

Ooh ooh ooh,

Aung San Suu Kyi.

Are you taking calls from the guys in Shell and BP?

Oh yeah baby,

are you taking calls from the guys in Shell and BP?

C'mon sugar tell me,

are you taking calls from the guys in Shell and BP?

Which you gonna lobby for honey,

Please take them calls from the guys in Shell and BP!

There is no alternative baby,

Ya gotta take them calls from the guys in Shell and BP!

(repeat to fade)

It's good isn't it? Well, the first half is. It kind of falls apart after that but what do you expect with the amount I've had to drink? I'm going to sing it to her in my Tom Jones voice.

THE MATCH

Four-Nil but the lads can still do it if they focus and commit to stability and we can still apply for goals from the ESM and it's just a question of knuckling down really at the end of the day and the nation could do with a lift after all the doom and gloom y'know fair is fair and the Eucharistic Congress and stealing Trevelyan's corn and dreams and songs to sing and Brush Shiels and Joe Duffy and Funny Friday and I painted a shamrock on my arse and there's absolutely no official record of what took place on the night of the bank guarantee but sure this is it really isn't it and Obama's visit was great and the Queen was on great form wasn't she and I'm off to Dundrum Shopping Centre so we should make Michael O'Leary the minister for health and happy birthday The Late Late because we're a good team so we'll get there and we're getting there and are we there yet and will we ever get there and you'll never beat the Irish and the property market has bottomed out going forward.

Anyway, I voted Yes.

CLICHES

'Would you think at all. . .' says I to Clafferty, pausing to raise a pint to the lips. 'I mean to say, would you ever be of a mind to consider', continues myself to himself, 'that we might be cliches?'

'I've little doubt of that fact', says Clafferty as he downs his last and prepares to return home and face the wrath of herself.

In other news: Why not check out Fugger's new film blog? It's not a film festival, it's a film FEASTival! Click the link below:

FUGGER FILM FEAST!

A BLOG POST FROM THE FUTURE

An observation drone followed me all the way home the other day. It was whirring away about eight feet above my head and making me nervy. I wasn't a happy man. When I got home I rang the security company that made the drone and asked what was up. They said they weren't sure and asked if I had been involved in any suspicious activity. I said I hadn't. Then they checked their database and asked about this blog.

'You seem to be quite off message Mr. Fugger', they said.

'So?' I said.

'Well, we're just keeping an eye out that's all', they said.

There hasn't been any terrorist activity since the 2012 Olympics atrocity but it still seems we all need watching out for. I have never written anything even remotely in support of violence but, as Sir Kevin Myers recently argued in the newspaper, scepticism is, in and of itself, a form of violence. No, the argument didn't make much sense to me either but most people seem to have embraced his logic.

'I like the drones', is a typical pronouncement of the man on the street, 'they make me feel safer and if you've nothing to hide why worry?'

I considered making my own drone to watch the drone that was watching me. It's a simple matter of making a remote control aircraft with a camera attached that sends the images to your laptop. Then I remembered that homemade drone manufacture is illegal. This is to prevent terrorists making drones and flying them into cars and so on. That has never happened but it probably would if it was allowed to. Besides that, as Sir Myers argued on a recent TV panel discussion, 'what's the point in being watched if you are watching back'. The audience applauded.

The drone followed me all the way as I visited the Mother in the old folks home. My drone met her drone (they've been following her since the first day the state outsourced law enforcement) and the two drones seemed to get along very well. The Mother said the world had come to a sorry pass. She said it was Orwellian but then she remembered that Orwell's analogy was about communist countries so 1984 couldn't possibly apply to us. Then she went off and joined the other oldies as they did that new form of extreme Tai Chi to the tune of White Riot by The Clash (the oldies love the tunes from their own day). I headed off. My fuckin drone followed.

In the following days and nights the drone bothered me more and more. It was whirring outside my window late at night. The noise off the thing combined with the perpetual hum from the coastal fracking operation and the two sounds really did my head in. The lack of sleep eventually caused me to lose it and one morning I opened my kitchen window and fucked a saucepan at the levitating shithead. I hit it and it made a funny noise and crashed into a lamppost. It wasn't long before security personnel arrived and I was carted off to the community assistance centre (formerly known as the cop shop).

They smiled and spoke gently as they scanned my retina, took my prints, and attached an electronic tag to my ankle.

'Why are you so disagreeable Mr. Fugger?' one asked.

'Because the world has become disagreeable.'

'I don't think most people would agree with you there Mr. Fugger.'

'That's because most people have lost the ability to disagree with you.'

'Me?'

'Yeah, you lot.'

'And just who are us lot?'

'The powers that be. The servants of the establishment.'

'This all seems a bit nebulous Mr. Fugger. Could you be more specific?'

'If you don't know it's too late for you.'

'Do you not like being protected Mr. Fugger?'

'Not when I'm treated like the thing that I'm supposedly being protected against.'

'There is no need to feel that way Mr. Fugger.'

'Yes there is, you've tagged me.'

'We're only protecting our property Mr. Fugger.'

'There are more important things than property.'

'Like what Mr. Fugger?'

'Liberty for a start.'

'Aren't you free Mr. Fugger?'

'No.'

'Well, let's imagine for a moment that you are correct Mr. Fugger, which you are not but let's imagine for a moment that you are. What would you do with your freedom if you had it?'

'Well, I'd. . .'

(I paused.)

'You'd what Mr. Fugger?'

'I'd. . .'

(There was a longer pause as I thought about it.)

'Are you happy Mr. Fugger?'

'Huh? Yeah! Sure! . . .sometimes.'

'Are you happy with your lot?'

'In some ways.'

'We don't think you are Mr. Fugger.'

'And how would you know?'

'We've been watching you remember.'

'Oh yeah.'

'And we haven't been watching a happy man Mr. Fugger.'

(I said nothing.)

'We think you're seeking catharsis by transposing the source of your woe on to our little system. A system everyone, all the rest of us, have agreed upon Mr. Fugger. A system that only wants to see you safe and secure and happy.'

'Yeah, as long as I can pay for it right?'

'Money greases the wheels Mr. Fugger, most have agreed to that social contract, the exceptions being internet malcontents and, of course, terrorists.'

'You're saying I'm a terrorist now?'

'No, Mr. Fugger, I am saying that you are a very unhappy man.'

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was the anxiety caused by my arrest, but something about that last thing he said caused tears to run down my cheeks. I was silently crying and soon I was loudly sobbing. My head was on the security person's chest and he was cradling me and saying 'there there, there there'. I felt a right fool but I also felt I had broken through something, something inside my own head. Why was I so defensive? Why did I kick against a world that was only there to make things easier for me? A world that was only watching me so it could watch my back. Why did I accuse the world of denying me freedom when it was me who was denying myself freedom. It dawned on me that the real source of my misery was fear. A fear of my own freedom. I didn't know how to handle it and so had made myself prisoner of the fantasy of societal unfreedom. My God but this fella was good. Within the space of a short conversation he had shown me that my prison was self-imposed and that I could actually be a free and content man. All I had to do was shut up. All I had to do was shut the fuck up and go home and watch the telly or call a friend and talk about the telly or whatever else we wanted to talk about because we were free to talk about whatever we wanted as long as we didn't talk about not being free because to entertain such notions was, in and of itself, a threat to freedom.

I was allowed to return home later that day. When I got back I climbed into bed and tried to get some well needed sleep. The ankle tag bothered me a little but the drone had gone. It seemed I didn't need watching anymore or maybe the tag was doing the job. Either way, I no longer minded. Ultimately, I was only being protected from the enemy. Ultimately I was being protected from myself. I dozed off to the gentle hum of the fracking and I was happy. I was a happy man because tomorrow was another day and anything was possible. I was a happy man because I was free. I was a happy man because the future belonged to me. It belongs to to all of us. Enjoy it. You must.

INVENTIONS

Did you know that swimming trunks were invented by a man called Clive Togs? Yeah, it's true. That's why they are sometimes called 'togs'. And did you know that the chair was invented by Lady Agatha Chair, an 18^th century noblewoman and wife of the 7^th Earl of Westmeath? She found standing up to be 'frightfully common' and so fashioned a chair from the corpse of an Irishman. This novel idea led to the chair designs we know and sit upon today. Asides from that, did you know that chairs were considered luxury items and unaffordable to the working class? Yes, working class people only started getting access to affordable seating and actually sitting down in the wake of WW2 and the birth of the welfare state (which, by the way, was dreamt up by a British civil servant called Reginald Welfare-State).

Did you know that racism began as a children's chasing game and that homophobia was originally a parlor game from the late 19^th century? Yes, it's true. And, most interesting of all, did you know that 'war' was originally a popular board game for the whole family until one day someone said, 'hey, let's try this for real'. True. It's surprising where things come from.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to perfecting a new card game I'm inventing called 'Complete Global Economic Collapse and Breakdown of Societal Cohesion'.

TRULY IRISH

Ah sure we just can't govern ourselves. We pissed the cash against the wall and outsourced the care of our kids to an ecclesiastical paedophile ring. It's an embarrassment really. Best just to let others govern our affairs. After all, they know what's best for us. They're grown ups. They're more sophisticated than us. Just look at the clothes on them and the way they carry themselves. They have dignified poise whereas we're just a bunch of emotionally damaged drunks staggering about the place. They go to war too. They go to war to protect their interests whereas we just go to war with ourselves. It's not easy going to war to protect your interests. It demands mature deliberation. Can you see us maturely deliberating? No, me neither.

We are certainly disrespected abroad and we are probably hated. It has come time to change that. It has come time to tidy ourselves up. It has come time to have a wash and a shave and do as we're told. The time has come to cop on. And that is what we have done. That's what we did on Thursday. We bowed our heads in supplication and handed the keys of the car back to Daddy before we crashed it again. Some might extend that analogy to point out that Daddy was in the passenger seat, drunkenly demanding we overtake traffic and keep switching lanes, but that kind of talk is disrespectful. Have more respect for Daddy. After all, he's a grown up.

Some of us still live in the past and talk about risings and rebellions but supplication is the game these days. There's no shame in it. We gave the whole independent nation thing a go. We really did. But, you see, there's something wrong with us. There is something seriously wrong with us that we refuse to take responsibility for ourselves, that we can't invest in ourselves or have faith in ourselves, or even consider that self-improvement is a remote possibility. We have failed ourselves so many times that we have dismissed ourselves entirely. Quite right too.

We're very lucky that they're helping us out. We should remember that every single morning. Every single morning we get out of bed we should give thanks. They are very kind. We're really not worth the bother. We're as bad as the Greeks. Sure if the Greeks go all that will be missed is a bit of feta cheese and if we go all that will be missed will be the odd sack of spuds.

Let's get serious people. We're a joke. The people of Ireland took the right decision on Thursday for the right reasons. I, for one, am proud of Ireland. For the first time in my life I am proud of Ireland because Ireland has at last realised that it should be ashamed of itself.

Ah the auld shame, now that is what it means to be truly Irish.