MAD BASTARDS

Mad bastards. 
Loads of mad bastards. 
Heaps of mad bastards. 
Swathes of mad bastards.  
Hoards of fanatical mad bastards. 
A horrendous cloud of mad bastards.
Mad bastards travelling the world.
Mad bastards flowing across borders. 
Mad bastards roaring their heads off. 
Mad bastards with a hatred of women. 
Mad bastards with a love of rifles. 
Mad bastards barbecuing people alive. 
Mad bastards playing soccer with human heads. 
Mad bastards with smartphones. 
Mad bastards uploading mad shit. 
Mad bastards looking for 'hits'. 
Mad bastards looking for 'likes'. 
Mad bastards with Twitter accounts. 
#MadBastards. 
Mad bastards with names like Abu Mahd B'Ahstard. 
Mad bastards coming in handy. 
Mad bastards doing the dirty work. 
Mad bastards of realpolitik. 
Mad bastards that are with us. 
Mad bastards that are against us. 
Mad bastards turning on us. 
Frankenstein created mad bastards. 
Mad bastards in search of their master. 
Mad bastards hating their creator. 
Mad bastards - what are they thinking? 
Mad bastards - what are they going to do next? 
What should we do about all the mad bastards? 
Where would we be without the mad bastards? 
You've got to love mad bastards. 
If we didn't have mad bastards, we'd end up looking like mad bastards ourselves.

Mad bastards - taking the heat off us for the last thirty five years.

PINGBACK IN THE AFTERLIFE

Remember when the internet died? Remember that? The day it all went down and never got back up. You lot didn't know what to do with yourselves. You were all addicted to the internet. All of you. (I wasn't, I just liked it so much I used it all the time.) You lot didn't know what to do without your Facebook updates. You couldn't imagine how you'd get by with no one Twittering your hashtags or admiring your selfies.

Some of you started improvising, shouting out your Tweets to passersby. You opened the windows of your homes and roared out things like 'I watched the new Marvel comics movie last night and it sucked!' The nasty anonymous trolls amongst you improvised too, popping out from behind corners, wearing balaclavas and shouting things like 'I'm glad your family died in a fire'. The end of Chatroulette also meant the return of flashers to our public parks. Those guys didn't get many 'likes' I'll tell you that. Likes were now conveyed when somebody passed you on the street and roared something at you and you gave them a thumbs up before rapidly moving on without really engaging. When someone did force others to 'engage' they were usually met with the acronym TLDL (too long, didn't listen) but when someone was brief and to the point, saying something that didn't really have a point because what's the point in that, they got the post-internet version of a retweet - as in they'd roar something and cause a person who heard them to roar out exactly the same thing whilst pointing a finger at the person who roared it in the first place. A couple of long held Facebook traditions were also maintained with people saying they'd attend events they were invited to and then not attending them and people allowing others insight into their private lives in the post-Facebook way of leaving their keys out for others to gain access to their homes and have a look around - once the home had been specifically altered so all the right things were left lying about to make the home owner look tasteful, sophisticated, well-adjusted and all that kind of shit.

Oh, what a superficial bunch of sorry cun... Jesus, I almost typed that out loud?

Anyway, this continued for a while until everyone started to feel a bit silly and strangely empty. Remember that, when you started feeling a bit daft and redundant? Remember how it got to the stage where you lot didn't know what to say to each other or how to act around each other? Problem was that everyone eventually realised there was nothing to share or react to. You had to start instigating and you'd forgotten how to do that without the use of a modem. It was impossible to make things go viral. Al Qaeda and affiliates even stopped beheading infidels. There didn't seem to be a point if they couldn't upload it. People wandered the streets forlorn. It seemed a cold world without all the liking and sharing. The internet was gone and in its place was nothing. Nothing at all. There was just the sound of the wind and that's a scary distant sound that reminds you that the world keeps doing its own thing and you don't matter all that much. I find that notion comforting myself but I suppose that's just me.

So, that's it. Our over reliance on the web made culture tabula rasa. I suppose our generation will die out. We'll exit this life like socially awkward guests leaving a crap party. The future generations will have to create the cultural content of the future anew. I wonder what they'll come up with. I wonder will it just be the same kind of thing all over again. Is all the need for attention in our DNA? Anonymous internet trolling, is there a gene for that? We'll have to wait and see. Not that we'll be around to see it. I don't know though, maybe we'll get some kind of pingback in the afterlife.

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.