2014 PREDICTIONS

The edition of Old Fugger’s Almanac for 2014 has been released. Here’s what it says is in store for the year ahead. How many of these predictions will actually come to pass? Remember, I got everything right enough…ish last year kind of. So, here are the Old Fugger’s Almanac predictions for 2014…

1. There’ll probably be another fucking earthquake.

2. The first ever world leader to be made with a 3D Printer will prove popular with the world's first ever 3D Printer made voters.

3. People will complain about ‘ghostfood’ and culinary psychics will be called upon to exorcise haunted plates.

4. During a controversial appearance at the 2014 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, Miley Cyrus will perform cunnilingus on herself.

5. The mystery of who the fuck actually buys Hot Press magazine will remain unsolved.

6. Saoirse Ronan will undergo gender reassignment and change her name to Ronan Saoirse.

7. Prediction 8 will be this prediction.

8. This prediction is prediction 7. (See, I told you. That’s one I’ve got right already)

9. Expect a mind-blowing introduction to 3D entertainment without glasses called Real Life.

11. Mass attendance quadruples when the Catholic Church replaces transubstantiation with a raffle.  Winning tickets will be drawn from the tabernacle and whoever wins will get all the cash that was collected in the baskets.

12. Amy Huberman will cut the ribbon at the launch of a new property bubble.

13. A fatal virus will exclusively target right wing internet posters with Family Guy avatars. The death is protracted and agonising and there is no cure. I repeat, THERE IS NO CURE!

14. RTE will set out in a brave new direction and commission more lifestyle programmes. (You can absolutely count on this one coming to pass.)

15. Clouds are given the vote but people fear tropospheric mists of condensed vapour mightn’t be all that bothered about participating in the democratic process. The €7.5 million spent on airship polling stations is considered by many to be a waste but the party contributor whose company won the profitable bid to make the airships expresses delight.

16. The FIFA World Cup final in Brazil will be ruined when the ball is kicked right out of the stadium into a nearby garden and a grouchy neighbour refuses to give it back.

17. Economics correspondent Sean Whelan will have a breakdown on the Six-One News tearfully admitting that he knows ‘fuck all about fucking fuck all’. He will be replaced by Jim Power.

18. During the summer, you’ll be drinking a can of fizzy orange and a bee will fly over and start hassling you. It won’t piss off and you’ll be forced to leave the can on a wall and forget about it.

19. Later in the summer of 2014, you will leave the sliding glass doors that lead to your garden open as well as the door to your fridge and a badger will sneak into your kitchen and get inside the fridge and then you’ll come into the room and see the fridge door open and close it and later that night your daughter will get up for a midnight snack and go into the kitchen and not bother turning on the light and open the fridge and loudly scream when a frosty badger leaps out at her and runs for the sliding glass doors and smashes against them because you closed them too and then, concussed and angry, the badger will skid around the linoleum making a really weird high-pitched sound and your daughter will never recover from the trauma and never fully trust you again. Remember, this is just a prediction and it is still within your power to ensure the events described in the preceding long sentence do not come to pass.

20. Bloggers will continue to blog, Facebookers will continue to facebook, Tweeters will continue to tweet and journalists will continue to do whatever the fuck it is they think they are doing and all of this content will continue to rise like steam and merge with the psychic ether forming a kind of layer of trivia over everyone’s heads that blocks out the sun and prevents us all from seeing anything worthwhile, going forward. LOL!

And that’s the end of today’s trivial little listy distraction. Happy New …yeeaaauuuugh

GOOD NEWS FOR CHRISTMAS!

 (pictured –  Jesus and Krishna, Marvel Team-Up)

Jesus was born on Christmas day two thousand and thirteen years ago and was murdered thirty three and a bit years later for blaspheming that he was God. He did claim he was God alright but he also said that everyone else was God too. Christians don't talk about it much but that's what he said. I swear, take a look at John 10:34. No one seems all that concerned about it, which I find a bit odd. I mean, you'd think followers of the Good News would pay more attention to the Good News, seeing as it's such good news and all.

Jesus said he was God and we are all God and that's pretty interesting because it means that if we are all God but don't know it then God him/her/itself has forgotten that he/she/it is us too. Are you with me? God forgot God was us so God sent God to remind us that we are God and then we killed God because God was saying God was us and we'd rather not be God because that kind of raises the bar a bit and also democratises the whole set up a bit too much which won't do at all because it suits some of us a lot more to have the rest of us believing that we are less Godly than them. Are you still with me? Are you sure? That was a long old sentence and there was a lot going on in it. It does sum it all up though, the paradoxical nature of the strange game God is playing with himself/herself/itself/ourselves.

It's like this - imagine if you worshipped yourself but then you forgot you were you but continued to worship yourself, wishing that you were you. That's what seems to have happened here. It's a bit of a tragedy. But the Good News is that you are actually you and that's not all, it gets better, you are not just you but you are also God. Great isn't it? I can't really imagine better news than that. You are God!!! And I am too and so's everyone else. Hindus say that we don't realise we're God because we're trapped behind a thing they call the veil of Maya. I reckon some of us are behind several of Maya's veils. You know the type I mean. Deterministic sorts with ulcers. Absolutists. Boring fuckers who are convinced that they are the opposite. People who think about their cars a lot. Those fuckers are completely Mayaed out of I reckon. But, you know, I try not to judge. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that. So, no matter how much I'd like to, I won't chuck a rock through their windscreens and I'll just hope they find enlightenment when they drive around the next corner. No point being angry with myself after all. Lord forgive me, for I know not what I do - and neither must you because you're me too and both of us are the prick in the car apparently.

It's a bit mad the way the Hindus and Jesus believe the same thing isn't it? I don't suppose they could really have the same message though could they? I mean, Hindus don't even have Christmas. It's only Christians that have Christmas. That's because Christians reckon they are the ones that are favoured by God. I suppose it makes sense that God would favour himself/herself/itself/ourselves. Maybe God favours those examples of himself/herself/itself/ourselves that have forgotten they are him/her/it/us. Maybe God favours the forgetful out of pity. Self-pity. Maybe it's due to self-pity that God (a.k.a. us) sits around on his/her/its/our own birthday stuffing his/her/its/our face with chocolate complaining how shit the telly is, wrapped in layers of Maya he/she/it/we gave him/her/it/us for Christmas. Maybe that's it. Or maybe not. Or maybe both. Or maybe neither. Or maybe all of the above. God knows really, ...even if he/she/it/we isn't/aren't sure himself/herself/itself/ourselves.

Are you still with me after all that?

No, ...thought not.

Happy Christmas anyway.

MUSIC IS TRUTH!

Instructions:

Press play on the top video. Then quickly scroll down to the second video and press play on that. Then quickly scroll back up and watch the top video as both play. Then listen as the cosmos speaks the truth behind the words.

Good laugh isn't it?

ENDA AND THE EXIT

So, I was asked to write the televised address to the nation that you’ll all be watching on Sunday. Enda’s rehearsing it off the teleprompter right now. Here’s what you can expect:

What a week it has been, not just for Ireland but the world. We lost a truly historical figure. As I wrote in the book of condolences - ‘Noble savage Simba, you did not go gently into that good night for you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din’. The ‘good night’ and ‘Gunga Din’ bits are quotes from literature that I thought it statesman like to include, although I’m not sure they have books over there. Either way, Simba is gone now. Yes, Simba is gone but such is the circle of life that we not only say adieu to good things but bad things also. Tonight I can happily tell you all, all of you in your homes and on the streets of Ireland and those laying bereft in the gutter and at the bottom of remote lonely lakes, that the time has come for us to bid adieu to the bailout.

Now I know it wasn’t easy and has been quite the test, not just for you, the people of this nation, but for the Fine Gael party. Difficult and unpopular decisions had to be made but the party has gotten through this, maintaining healthy support from the populace and, you know, perhaps, just maybe, the populace itself will also make it through these times with some semblance of quality of life. Who knows? I wouldn’t count on it but stranger things have certainly happened so we can hope and what are we without hope? I will tell you what we are without hope. Without hope we are Luke Ming Flanagan and Clare Daly. Jaysus, who’d want to be either of them yokes? (chuckle gently to yourself here Enda)

(pause)

(reassume the serious expression and proceed) The important thing is that we made it. Fine Gael made it and is looking at another term in office under my stewardship. I saw us right. They doubted me, Lucinda, Leo, Coveney, all the young bucks, Bruton’s babies, but I saw us through. As would be expected of any great leader, I strode forward, I stood proud, I put my hand up and I asked mammy Merkel - ‘an bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an markets’ and mammy said yes. Yes we can. To quote another marvellous black fella - ‘is feidir linn’. Do you member the uplifting afternoon he spent with us in Dublin? Him and Jedward and Amy Huberman. Was Amy Huberman there? She probably was. It was lovely wasn’t it? I had a lovely time myself and there’ll be more lovely times ahead too. That I guarantee. Lovely times ahead, for me certainly and perhaps even for some of you. Just sit tight and wait and see. You never know. In the heel of the hunt, whether there are lovely times ahead for you or not is neither here nor there. Small tragedies are not recorded by history but large triumphs are and the Fine Gael party has certainly triumphed. We are exiting the bailout! Do you know what that means? Do you realise the ramifications? I don’t. I admit that. But I do know that it sounds good and so did ‘is feidir linn’ and you all bought into that remember? Jesus, yeah, you did. Unbelievable. To be perfectly honest, I really thought this job would be a lot tougher than it is.

Anyway, to conclude. Personally, and on behalf of the Fine Gael party, I would like to thank you, the Irish people, the citizenry of this nation, for the support, stoicism, patience, timidity and astonishing gullibility you have exhibited over the course of this difficult period. Fine Gael (now incorporating Labour), couldn’t have pulled this off without your dutiful compliance and patriotic lassitude. Go raibh maith agaibh. 

I now return you to the usual programming. Room To Improve should be on. Do you like that? Fionnuala loves it. I rarely get the chance to see much television myself. Those state assets don't sell themselves you know.

DO ME A FAVOUR LORD SHIVA AND GET THE F**K OUT OF MY OFFICE!

'Hope fuels the fool because the fool doesn't know what to hope for.' That is the legend that hangs over the entrance to the Fugger Life Coaching office.

There's a lot of discontent out there. There's a lot of people limping through their lives, hobbled by their discontent. A lot of these people come around to Fugger's life coaching office. I get them to sit down and tell me all about it and they do. It's always the same. They are unhappy. All of them. Some want to be understood. These people usually are understood, perfectly understood. The real problem for these people is not that they are misunderstood but, in fact, that they are not understood in a way that they would like to be understood. They would like everyone to understand them as fantastic individuals but others understand them as flawed individuals. Instead of acknowledging that they may actually be flawed, the people that come to my office take the easy option and decide that they are misunderstood. Do you understand that? No, neither do I. I tell these people that they are indeed misunderstood and the person that understands them least is themselves.

Other people often tell me that they wish they were, and I quote, 'fucking dead'. I am forced to point out to these people that their problem is not that they wish they were 'fucking dead' but really that they wish they were 'fucking alive' or maybe just 'fucking'. I'm not sure if that's what these people want to hear but it's what they need to hear. They usually ask me what they can do about it and I tell them to stop wanting things and maybe to try and just let things happen.

You see, the problem for many is that they won't let things happen unless things happen exactly as they want them to. Take the great many who come to me complaining that they are 'unloved'. I tell these people that, unless they are child eating cannibals or something, they are doubtlessly loved by someone but probably just not by the person they wished they were loved by. Then I tell them that the person they wished they were loved by is probably visiting some other life coach complaining about not being loved by some other person and that this other person might well love the person I am talking to and also be feeling similarly unloved. Do you follow me? You probably don't. You often get confused by those perplexing sentences I construct for that very purpose. Apologies. I'll make myself clearer. It's like this, Tom comes into my office complaining that no one loves him. By 'no one' he means Jane. Then I tell him that Ann loves him. Then Jane comes in complaining that 'no one' loves her and I ask if by 'no one' she means Ann and she admits she does and then Ann comes in complaining that 'no one' loves her and she means Tom. It's a Möbius strip of discontent. The Universe's little joke. Lord Shiva playing a game with himself. A strangely miserable game but perhaps entertaining in its misery, like Eastenders or something. I tell those that feel unloved that everyone feels unloved and this is the ultimate irony of the cosmos because everything in the cosmos is the one thing. 'It's as if the top of your head longs to touch the sole of your foot because it fails to realise that they are already connected', I say. It's in response to this that I'm often told by my clients that I'm being far too spiritual and not at all pragmatic. That's when I say that spiritual is pragmatic and that it seems to me what the client actually means by pragmatic is magic, as in a magic solution to all their problems that will bring them their desires on their specific terms. I then conclude by reminding the client that I am a life coach and not a fucking genie and, pointing to the words over the door, I say 'do me a favour Lord Shiva and get the fuck out of my office'.

Yes, my clients often complain that my coaching fails to make them happy and they usually ask for their money back. This is when I remind them of two things. The first is that money doesn't make you happy. The second is that life is not about being happy anyway but actually about feeling fulfilled and fulfillment often comes by a circuitous route that involves a great deal of unhappiness. Take a mountaineer who feels the need to conquer a daunting peak. Climbing to the peak will probably be a miserable and trying experience but the compulsion for fulfillment drives the mountaineer on. When my clients finally understand this they usually return to the topic of the money I've taken from them. (It's very hard to shift people away from the thought of money) 'If money doesn't make one happy Mister Fugger', they ask, 'then why don't you give me a refund?'. My clients often adopt a smug expression when they ask this question, thinking they have turned my own logic against me. This is when I tell my clients that they'll find not getting a refund more fulfilling than actually getting a refund because if they don't get a refund they'll enjoy moaning about it all the time and moaning is obviously what makes them feel fulfilled because actually addressing their fucking problems certainly doesn't seem to do it for them. If this seems unfair to you I'll remind you that the clients and me are one and the same anyway as we are both of the same cosmos so they don't need a refund as they never lost the money in the first place. Remember too, you are also us so if you still think it's wrong for me not give a refund you should remember that you are me so you are also not giving that refund and, like the clients, we are also being denied the refund just as the clients are denying themselves the refund. It sounds complicated but it's simple enough to grasp really, once you're enlightened. We are all one. We are all Lord Shiva's sock puppets, albeit unaware that we are mere avatars in his cosmic game of Eastenders.

****

Look, I hope I'm not coming across as esoteric and heartless. That's not my intention. I know that life can be rough and sometimes it can be very very rough. I also know that depression and sadness are terrible things but discontent, well, discontent is quite another thing. Discontent is caused by a sense of entitlement that is based on cultural norms and today's cultural norms come from the unsophisticated narratives found in popular large screen dramas, advertisements and other kinds of things where all problems are portrayed as solvable and everyone, ultimately, gets what they want. This is nonsense. Even if it were true, once you got what you wanted you'd probably start to want something else. 'Want' is the problem. 'Want' is an addiction. 'Want' is a state of mind. We are indoctrinated to 'want' and not just 'be'. Sure, 'want' makes money but money doesn't make you happy. Mine is the true War on Want! Quit wanting! That should be all you want.

Consider it this way, a thousand years ago my clients wouldn't have had the time to be discontentedly wanting all the shit they want, they'd just be happy enough to have made it to the end of the day without being mauled to death by some kind of gigantic bear.

Do you understand? Are you feeling illuminated? Good. Now, do me a favour Lord Shiva and get the fuck out of my office.

(Remember – although greatly enlightening (and a bit up its own arse these days), visiting fugtheworld.blogspot.com cannot replace a therapeutic relationship with a reliable mental health professional - you crazy fool.)

MY LITTLE PIECE OF PRIZE WINNING ART

I entered the Fasinex® Liver Fluke Drench Art Prize for 2013 with a piece of art that no one was allowed to see. No one, not even the judges, knew what my entry was. They didn't know if it was a painting, a sculpture, a musical composition, a dance performance, a film, an installation or whatever else it could be and I wasn't saying. The idea was that I would only reveal my piece once it had won the prize and that if something else won the prize then no one would ever see my piece and be forever unsure if the right decision had been made.

I thought this was very clever. I imagined it would throw the judges into a quandary, wondering if they were making the right decision. What if they chose another piece and mine was better? They would forever wonder if they had been fools. I imagined this would haunt whoever beat me for the prize too. I could imagine the winner sitting at home, regarding their prize and wondering if it was really deserved. I could imagine the niggling the winner would feel for the rest of their lives. Winning the coveted Fasinex® Liver Fluke Drench Art Prize would be the crowning achievement of any career. Imagine the persistent gnawing that the prize might not be rightfully yours.

My mystery piece created quite a buzz. People speculated in the press and online as to what it might be. Someone suggested that my piece might even be the prize itself, which would be very clever in a reflexive interrogation of the very process itself type of way. Others said that the excitement generated by my stunt might be the art itself and that, if this was the case, my piece deserved to win because I had really got people thinking. 'Thinking about what?' others asked. 'Nothing', they were told. Yes, I had everyone thinking about nothing and this act in itself raised important questions – What is nothing? Why are we thinking about it? Do we think about nothing in other ways? Do we think about nothing a lot? Should we be thinking about other things? What other things should we be thinking about? Is there even a point in thinking? If there is a point in thinking, what is the point in thinking and if there is a point in thinking why haven't we thought of it before? 

Oh, I had sent the art world into a right cognitive whirlpool and no mistake.

But no, my art piece wasn't 'nothing' and it wasn't the prize itself. It was something else and this something else won.

The day came when, in front a celebrity audience that included the likes of Matthew Collings and Don Conroy, the esteemed President of the Irish Farmers' Association handed the Fasinex® Liver Fluke Drench Art Prize to me. I gave an acceptance speech, talking about how art has dominated my life since the day I decided to expand my investment portfolio and speaking of how my journey had brought me to this moment, receiving such a coveted prize from as venerable a man as the President of the Irish Farmers' Association. I wept a little too, I don't mind admitting. Then someone shouted up from the audience - it may have been Collings, it may have been Conroy, it might've even been Mary from Anything Goes. Whoever it was that shouted out, they got a chant going and the chant was this: 'show your art, show your art, show your art'. So I did what they demanded. After months of build up the crowd were extremely tense, all staring up in expectation, eyes wide and mouths a little open. I reached out and pulled back the curtain that obscured my piece. My art was revealed and those assembled were finally unburdened of their curiosity.

'But what was your piece?' 'What was it Mr. Fugger?' 'Tell us now for fuck's sake like!', I hear you, my readers and acolytes, insist from the other side of cyber space. Well, I'll tell you what my art piece was. I won't keep you in suspense any longer. To drag this out any more would be taking the piss and, as regular visitors to fugtheworld well know, I'm not one for piss taking. I'm not one to tease. I'll tell you what my piece was now before this gets irritating, perhaps even cruel. I'll tell you what my art was now before you get pissed off and just start speed reading to the end of this blog post to find out. So, without further ado, I will inform you what my art piece was. It was this – it was a laptop set on a plinth and on the screen of the laptop was a live webcast and the webcast was of you, yes you, you there, right now, at this very moment, sitting, reading a blog post called 'My Little Piece of Prize Winning Art'.

Nobody knew who you were or understood the significance of your being there. Everyone got a bit passionate. A bit angry. They came over all French and wine glasses were flung at the stage. I had to grab the laptop and flee but I'm safe now and I have you here with me. I'm looking at you as you read this very blog post. You, yes you, my little piece of prize winning art.

(There was a generous cash prize too but if you think I should share it with you you can piss off. You were all my idea.)