MULTI-PLATFORM FUGGER

I'm thinking of repackaging myself as a multi-platform event. I'll no longer be just a man and a blog but an app and a Twitter account and a movie and a book and a glossy magazine and a comic and a podcast and a live stream and a first person shoot 'em up and a cake recipe and a meteorological condition and a provocative undergarment and a political ideology and an intimate compliant and a comedy routine and a wrestler's finishing move and a brand of dog food and a car hire firm and a place to store hazardous waste and a new hairstyle and a song in the pop charts and a dance move and a witty slogan and a new wave in fashion and so on and so on.

I want all these new strands of me launched at exactly the same time on the same day to much fanfare. I want to be the thing everyone thinks about, simultaneously, for at least an instant before they decide they don't really like me and come to hate me and set about starting a backlash. But starting a backlash will be no use because, as well as a man and a blog and an app and a Twitter account and a movie and a book and a glossy magazine and a comic and a podcast and a live stream and a first person shoot 'em up and a cake recipe and a meteorological condition and a provocative undergarment and a political ideology and an intimate compliant and a comedy routine and a wrestler's finishing move and a brand of dog food and a car hire firm and a place to store hazardous waste and a new hairstyle and a song in the pop charts and a dance move and a witty slogan and a new wave in fashion and so on and so on, I will also be my own backlash.

There will be no escape. Every route will be closed off and the world will be trapped in a hellish circuit with me as the starting point and me as the finish and me as all points between and even if I am dead I will go on, branded into your culture and onto your brains, permanently burnt into your retinas, forever at the tip of your tongues. I will be the source of every 'like' and every 'dislike' given. The parts of the world that do not concern me will creep by in the background and when anyone tries to discuss them others will change the topic to me. Me! Fugger! The blog, the man, the event, the range of action figures, the clothes line, the schism, the healing of that schism, the religion, the atheism. It'll be Fugger this. It'll be Fugger that. Fugger will be the source of all confusion and the source of all clarity. Fugger will be first word that babies utter and Fugger will be the solitary word on all your tombstones. Face it, when I am repackaged as a multi-platform event you will all be truly Fugged.

And so it will go, on and on and on until something else comes along and gets hashtagged instead and lays me finally to rest. R.I.P. Fugger, Multi Platform Event. We'd miss you if we could remember you but I'm afraid that we can't. So much happens now and it happens so fast. No one's got time to recall the past. Like what came before Fugger, ...what the Hell was that? It was probably the Crazy Frog or some kind of crap. No one can be expected to remember that far back.

JUST JENNY

Jenny was glad to have finally found a reason for being. She'd had trouble finding any reason but was actively searching. Her lack of interest in just about everything had isolated her. She was always on the periphery of conversations at her school, simulating interest and nodding and pretending to laugh or gasp at the right times but never truly engaging. She was no one's best friend or worst enemy. She was just Jenny. 'Oh, it's just Jenny', people said. Even her mother said it. Just Jenny, someone adults kept alive and healthy to see what might become of her. Well, she had decided what she was going to become and, my oh my, what she became.

Despite her persistence, Jenny's online forum contributions and Facebook posts always went unacknowledged. That is until Aarzam from Luton (a place in England) started responding to her because she responded to him. He kept going on about God and justice and all this stuff and Jenny asked him what he was talking about. What followed was a correspondence that lasted for months. Jenny didn't really care what they were talking about, the important thing was that they were talking. Jenny never had a point of view on anything so she consciously decided to adopt Aarzam's point of view on everything. Not everyone agreed with Aarzam, in fact some people thought he was crazy or evil, but he got people's attention and attention was something Jenny craved.

Anyhoo, as the girl in question would put it herself, this all led to Jenny being stopped at the airport and asked to step into a back room to answer some questions. She told them, flatly (everything she said came out flatly) that her destination was Syria and that she was joining her boyfriend. The airport security were nonplussed by this strange girl in a homemade burka fashioned from a bed sheet dyed black. Things became even more confusing when they asked Jenny where she was from. South County Dublin was the answer but her accent was clearly United States. She told them her 'mom' spoke like that too. She was asked if her 'mom' was American. 'I don't think so', Jenny said. They asked Jenny if she had ever been to the United States. Jenny said she hadn't. They asked Jenny why she had an American accent. Jenny wasn't aware that she had an American accent and said it might be because she 'watched a lot of shows'.

So, like, anyways, things turned into a really big deal. Aarzam had been seen in a viral where a non-unionised freelance journalist got beheaded. Jenny became the opposite of famous, infamous, for a while but then she just became famous when she renounced her newfound beliefs and ran a mini-marathon in aid of something, she wasn't quite sure what. This was all on the advice of an agent Jenny's mother employed. 'We're going to need someone to handle this Goddamn fucking shit storm', was Jenny's mother's reasoning.

The newspapers and the TV went crazy and spoke to the other kids in Jenny's school and they said that she always seemed like she was keeping secrets. Jenny didn't know they thought that about her. It was kind of cool. Better than boring. Jenny went from being 'Just Jenny' to 'Jihad Jenny' in the space of a few days. Some professor guy called Schlemp wanted to talk to her for a book he was writing called 'Online Anomie International: Islamic Extremism and the Search for Likes'. They were going to make a movie too with Saoirse Ronan acting as Jenny. 'She's OK I guess, she's kind of old though', Jenny told Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show. Ryan asked Jenny if she'd lift her burka and give the audience a peek at her pretty face. Jenny did. There was a big round of applause and then Ryan gave everyone a hamper of beauty products.

Jenny's mother was really happy with how the whole thing panned out but she was 'really pissed' at first. There was silence in the car when she picked Jenny up from the airport but then she suddenly exploded. She screamed and slapped her open palm against the steering wheel.

'How the fucking motherfuck did you wind up facebooking with a bunch of Wahhabi crazies?'

'Jeez Mom, take it easy. I don't even know what Wahbabbi or whatever is. I just made friends with a Muslim boy is all. What's the big deal?'

'Just made friends with a Muslim boy?' Jenny's mother repeated, emphasising her incredulity.

'Yeah', said Jenny, 'he kind of like listened to me'.

'And what the heck were you saying that made him listen to you honey?'

'I dunno', replied Jenny, her voice trailing off. 'Just stuff I guess, ...just, y'know, ...stuff.'

#

I read an op-ed about a breaking international incident and agreed with it at once. With great haste, I found myself in total and utter concurrence. I instantly tweeted as much. I rapidly put a link on Facebook. There was no time to lose. Things were happening fast and I didn't want to get left behind. 'This fucker's trending like a boss', I said to myself.

I made up my mind before my mind even had a chance to make itself up. My parietal and frontal lobes hadn't even talked things over before I'd adopted an opinion. There was no time for deliberation. I wasn't about to miss out on this potentially historic multi-platform event. Things were rolling live. Click farms would be going into overdrive. Retweets would be ricocheting throughout the net for the entire afternoon and maybe into the early evening. The game was afoot and I'd picked my side. You have to be on one side or another side otherwise you're in no man's land and getting shot at by both sides. I fought bravely and amassed a few favourites and got a lot of 'likes' from people who agreed with me or thought they should agree with me or were worried they'd stand out if they didn't agree with me. I paraphrased Graham Linehan and tweeted it @stephenfry. I didn't get a 'reply'. Then the season premier of a new HBO show came on so I hashtagged the fuck out of that baby instead.

I'm a foodie. I'm an atheist. I'm a Dylanologist. In the future, when our descendants look in their history books for the typical person who bore witness to the end of civilisation, they'll see my selfie. Me in my beanie, a beardy, wearing a Livestrong wristband and swearing to #GetKony.

BLOOD IN THE WORDS

I've nothing to say today. This has happened before hasn't it? Nothing to say but still feeling compelled to say something. A bit like a journalist. Have you ever asked a journalist why they became a journalist? It's quite funny. You can see faint wafts of smoke coming out of their ears. It's one of the few questions they don't have an answer to. They have answers to lots of other questions of course but even then they are the wrong answers, which is fine because there are no right answers – not that a journalist would know that. I always wanted to be a journalist myself. 'Why did you want to be a journalist Mr. Fugger?' I hear you fart out your mouth. I'll tell you why. I always wanted to be a journalist so I could cut and paste press releases from PR companies and then spend about ten minutes paraphrasing them and then get paid for it. Why the fuck else would I want to be a journalist? It's hard to become a journalist though. You can't just wander into the profession. You have to have certain qualities. You have to be either thick or dishonest. These aren't qualities you can pick up. You have to be born with them. A big ego helps too. Dumb but confident, that's the trick really – like a politician. Oh, and you have to be kind of half able to write ...a bit. Only then can you be part of the vanguard of chatter that is officially deemed to be of interest. You go on about stuff like you care about stuff and then you forget about stuff because there is some new stuff to go on about. Then at the end of the year you compile all the stuff in a list. Then, maybe, you can get a book out of all the stuff you went on about. And then, if you play your cards right and don't have a mumbly voice, you can get on a radio panel or TV show and talk about stuff. Paraphrased PR company press releases will float from your gob and flow into the ears of the nation, psychically cementing a great big narrative that will harden and become fact. Fact, resolute, grey, bang your head against it, FACT!

You can also mention your favourite bands a bit.

After about thirty years of journalism your liver will pack in and you will die. Other journalists will write about what a character you were and no one will mention the article you wrote about sterilising the longterm unemployed. You'll be buried in some graveyard and a nearby yew tree will suck up your blood and bleed it out every time its bark is cut. That's kind of romantic isn't it? A fitting tribute. It'll be the first time you put your blood into anything.  

HATE HER WAY

(Special guest blogger Breda)

 

Now, this isn't just about me but I am asking that the dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty rug munching arse pokers my gay brothers and sisters allow me to express my views. You know, I am not just asking here, I am actually imploring. Tears are rolling down my face as I type this just as tears flowed from the eyes of my good friend John after the death of Katy French. That's quite a lot of tears let me tell you and some of them are genuine. Genuine tears, how very sad. You would weep too if you found yourself barricading your entire family into your house like Anne Frank or the cast of Night of the Living Dead had to. This, of course, isn't about me but the other evening Ben, my little boy, asked 'mammy, are the people from the internet coming to get us', and I was forced to say 'of course not love, we're just playing a game'. I was forced to lie to my child and, unless it is an exercise in mental reservation, a lie is a sin. I might go to Hell if I don't receive confession before the event of my death. Imagine the irony if I ended up in Hell as an indirect result of trying to save a dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty heap of pox ridden poo baiters my gay brothers and sisters from that same eternal damnation. How fair is that? 'How fair' I ask you as salty Katy French tears spout from my doleful ducts. The Doleful Ducts of Breda O'Brien. Hmmm, that might be a nice byline for this piece ...but I digress, this isn't about me. This is about the nazi queer war against preservation of traditional values. Traditional values like the right of a child to come into this world at the foot of a grotto via symphysiotomy and be greeted by both a mother and a father and not two dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty objectively disordered salivating micky gobblers gay people.

These are my values and I only want to defend them without being accused of holding the prejudicial and discriminatory views that I hold. Let me make it perfectly clear that I reject, with every fibre of my being, the intolerance and hate that I seek to uphold with every fibre of my being. When will people realise that hate is not hateful when it comes from a loving place. My hate is a hate of love and there would be more love in this world if people learned to hate my way. But this isn't about me.

I'd like to conclude by thanking Mr. Fugger for allowing me this space to express my increasingly maginalised views. With the climate of hate that currently pervades the communications landscape, myself and my fellow Iona sufferers are forced to avail of any platform, no matter how pitiful. (No offence to Mr. Fugger, RTE, The Irish Times, The Independent, etc. etc. etc.).  

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

THE SUPPLEMENT

The weekend supplement, it's just copy really. You just type stuff for people to read over a coffee. It doesn't have to be that interesting. It can be a bit interesting if you like but that might take a while to get together and you've other stuff to be doing like going out to dinner or maybe staying in and having a bottle of wine. Maybe you could write an amusing piece about staying in and having a bottle of wine. Amusing, not funny. Staying in for dinner and having a bottle of wine is the new going out for dinner and having a bottle of wine. Yeah. Or maybe some pop cultural nostalgia. List the ten best Irish bands of the eighties or movie sequels that were better than the first film. Or you might review something everyone else is reviewing. I also hear there's a new organic food market on the open top of a double decker that travels South County Dublin. Email the guy that set it up and get a few quotes. Or maybe just rehash a few received urbane wisdoms, the consensus of the cognoscenti. What Richard Did is the best Irish film of all time. Hmm, top ten moments in What Richard Did. Or maybe something about somebody who happens to be a kind of 'somebody'. What next for Kathryn Thomas? Or you might fancy providing a chuckle, not a laugh - too boisterous, just a chuckle. How about a bit on funny ads from the eighties? Or how about just words, any words that come to mind. Any old words in any kind of order. Does it even matter what order? Does it even matter if the words are in order? Does it? Does even it order matter the if words in are? Just type and cut and paste words and reach the word count. Clogs are popular again. There's a French Film Festival on or maybe something about speed dating or something or something else or something. Hmmm. Have we done speed dating this quarter? Let's do speed dating then. Go to an event or pretend you did. Rosanna Davison attended an Osteoporosis fund raiser. Almost reaching requested word count now. Hmm, ...ideas - puff pieces and light pieces - Ryan Tubridy's quirky/ironic garden gnome collection. Weightier piece - 'What's Troubling Joe?' about Joseph O'Conner. Get a picture of Joseph O'Conner staring moodily into middle distance on Dunlaoghaire seafront. That might work. Or what's Mahdi al-Harati up to these days? What does a brave rebel do on a Sunday afternoon? Maybe a piece called 'At Home with Al-Harati'. Does he still live in Firhouse? Check it out. Lots of ideas there. Nothing too, y'know, engaging in that demanding way. Just stuff to set the brain in neutral and coast. The advocacy of complacency. We all deserve it. We work hard. Our brains get tired. We spend enough time thinking. Thinking is something you should only do to make money. There's no other reason to be bothered with thinking. That's what I think. But enough thinking. There's copy to be produced. The meat of culture must be mechanically separated and made digestible. It isn't that hard a task.

The main thing to remember is not to spill wine on your laptop.

UNBELIEVABLE EH?

People believe what they want to believe even if they know, deep down, that what they believe is entirely unbelievable and that they don't actually believe it at all. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it is more efficient to believe the unbelievable or perhaps it is advantageous. Either way, belief seems largely to be a matter of choice.

Let me explain why I (choose to) believe this:

A few months ago myself and a few mates (Corbo, Duggie, Phlegmo, Aine Manning and her fat sister whose name escapes me right now) staged a chemical attack. We rented the gymnasium at the local recreation centre and took footage of ourselves weeping and wailing over sheets with bunched up coats, bags and cushions arranged under them so as to make the sheets look like shrouds draped over dead bodies. We made it so that some of the 'bodies' were smaller than others, like little kids. We put on a pretty good performance. Then we uploaded the footage to the internet saying that it was a recording of a chemical weapon attack in some hot country. I'm not sure what hot country we picked but it was one of those places they mention a lot on the telly.

Well, let me tell you, there was a right 'to do' altogether. Our video went viral and got on the news. Some people said that the footage was staged and didn't even originate in the hot country, pointing out that two of the people in the video were wearing O'Neills Dublin tops (oops, messed up there). Luckily these doubters also suspected that we were members of the Illuminati or giant lizards or something so no one took their suspicions seriously. In fact, most people chose to consider the footage genuine so as not to be associated with the nutters that didn't. World leaders bought it too and went on the telly saying that it was unacceptable for such a thing to happen and threatening to bomb the hot country in question, which I'm not sure would have helped but anyway...

Next came phase two of our experiment. We released a second video on the net that featured us pulling back the sheets to reveal that there were no bodies under them and just a load of bags and cushions and that. It was always our aim to demonstrate to the world how easily it could be duped – for the LOLs like, you know - and this is where it got interesting. Imagine our surprise the next day when the world's media reported that the hot country in question had developed a weapon that could transform people into bunched up coats and bags and cushions. The 'international community' (whoever the fuck that is) demanded that the hot country surrender its 'Clothes/Bag/Cushion Tranformo Weapons', which, of course, the hot country couldn't do because it didn't have any such weapons and no such things even exist. Inevitably the hot country was bombed to shit and lots of other videos appeared online featuring the grieving citizens of the hot country weeping and wailing over shrouds. This time no one was wearing O'Neills tops and this time there weren't bunched up coats and bags and cushions under the sheets, no, there were actual bodies under there. These videos didn't get anywhere near as many hits as our original one did. That's when I realised that people believe what they want to believe.

The hot country was continually bombed to such an extent that the entire place was turned to dust and then the searing heat of further bombings melted that dust into glass and then that glass cooled and the whole place was turned into a gigantic skating rink, the largest ever, and people from all over the world travelled there and paid top dollar to enjoy themselves and myself, Corbo, Duggie, Phlegmo, Aine Manning and her fat sister whose name escapes me right now bought shares in the skating rink going forward. Oh, and I got a job with a massive public relations firm.

Unbelievable eh?

Join me next time for more of this compulsive bullshit.

TALKING ABOUT A SKELETON ON THE INTERNET

They were talking about a skeleton on the internet all week. They said that someone found a skeleton. They all seemed very excited about the skeleton and got quite worked up about the skeleton. They had arguments about the skeleton. They competed to see who knew the most about the skeleton. They attempted to successfully guess whose skeleton it is (who the skeleton used to be). They said they felt sorry for the skeleton. They went to great lengths to prove that it was they who pitied the skeleton the most. They exhibited the depths their skeletal compassion and earned 'likes'. Then they turned against the skeleton. They said that it was probably an immigrant's skeleton. They said the skeleton should be fined. They said the skeleton should be privatised. Then they spread a rumour that the government was going to introduce a skeleton tax. Then they said that they wished the government were skeletons. Then they added that skeletons couldn't do a worse job than the current government. Then they got worried that the country is actually run by a secret cabal of skeletons. Finally they said they were sick of hearing about skeletons and they asked what kind of country it is anyway, what with all the skeletons everywhere. They seemed angry that there was even a skeleton in the first place. Or maybe they didn't really care about the skeleton and were just a bit bored and unhappy. It's hard to say. They might have been skeletons too.  

KILLED A LAD YESTERDAY

Killed a lad on the road yesterday. Middle of the afternoon. Decapitated him with a paper scissors. Not the ideal tool for the job. It took about an hour. Most people just walked on by. Some people asked me to knock it off but moved on when I told them I wouldn't and waved the scissors about a bit. By the time the cops arrived the fella was headless and my work was done. Not sure why I did it. A search for validation? A cry for attention? Madness? Boredom? Possession? Dispossession? Who knows? Not many people are wondering. They are happy enough to just put it down to terrorism. Terrorism's the thing these days.

I took footage of the butchery with the camera on my mobile phone. Then I sold the footage to News International for millions. Then I used the money I made to hire the world's top lawyer to defend me in court. He got me off on a technicality. I only had €14 left after I paid the lawyer so I spent that on newspapers and read about what I did. All the usual adjectives were there: 'monstrous', 'barbaric', 'inhuman'. I turned the page in one tabloid and saw some recent pap shots of Michael Barrymore. He could be seen pushing a wheelbarrow in a garden centre where he's working now. 'Michael Barrow-more' read the sub. Barrymore probably took those pictures himself. He probably got almost as much from News International as I did for my footage. He's probably at that all the time now. He's probably making more out of that than he was paid by ITV back in the days of Strike It Lucky. People love a spectacle you see. They like to see things happen to people. Other people. There's cash to be made from making things occur. Shocking things. Devastating things. Sad things. Whatever. People just want to be interested in things, ...for a bit. It brings them together. It gives them commonality. It unites them in condemnation, disgust, and schadenfreude. For a while at least. The masses tend not to dwell. Soon enough they'll be talking about something else so you have to seize your moment. I admire Michael Barrymore for the longevity of his disgrace. He was always keen to entertain and people are always keen to be entertained.

(He's doing 'awight')

YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM SO JOIN THEM

Hedge funds, directional funds, nondirectional return funds, credit default swaps, naked credit default swaps, distressed securities, risk arbitrage, crypto derivatives, topple domino commodity profiteering, speculative risk facilitation instruments, junk turkeys, monetary growth/loss manipulation dysfunction, systemic marginalised bond haemorrhoids, quantum fundament cluster fuck exchange spasms.

Hmm. All that complicated banking tomfoolery has made The Market seem a tad unappealing hasn’t it? But worry not. You can still play The Market and keep it simple and straightforward. I, Fugger, the people’s blogger, am here to show you how. You too can be a winner!

‘But Mister Fugger, The Market is callous and evil’, I hear you bleat. Well yeah, so what? Life is not about being nice and neither is The Market. Life is about getting as much as you possibly can and so is The Market. The Market is an inclusive game that anyone can play so quit occupying Wall Street and start making a living there. All other forms of revenue generation are obsolete. Buying is the new working. Selling is the new earning. You can’t beat The Market but you can play The Market.

What you want to do is invest in companies that produce things that are going to be in demand. Take a look at the world around you and speculate on its future, a bit like a science fiction writer would. What’s coming down the line? Right, well, for starters, the world is fast becoming an environmentally degraded shit house. What would people want in an environmentally degraded shit house? That’s right! Breathable air. Buy shares in fresh air. The more polluted the environment becomes the more demand there will be for fresh air. It’ll come in spray cans with names like Mountain Valley Gust and Odeur du Vie. Check and see what corporation is making moves re: fresh air, keep an eye on their shares and BUY BUY BUY!

Right, we’re off to a good start. What else happens in an environmentally degraded shit pile? What do people do? They choke yes, very good, but what else do they do? That’s right! They protest! They riot! (If they aren't doing so already over the bailouts, guffaw!) So, how can we profit there? I’ll tell you how. Invest in batons, water cannons, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, tasers, cattle prods and plastic zip tie handcuffs. Find out who makes these things, keep an eye on their shares and BUY BUY BUY!

If riots are coming wars are probably coming. Diminishing reserves of natural resources are going to make nations desperate. There’ll be land grabs all over the place. The towel heads and sand nig nogs (not being racist, just using the terminology of The Market) will be going crazy and they’ll need weapons and all the things associated with weapons. Missiles, guns, armoured trucks, tanks, electrodes, body bags, coffins. The French and the Russians profited greatly during the Iran v Iraq war of yesteryear. Over one million died. Many more millions were made. Remember that! Keep an eye on arms manufacturer shares and BUY BUY BUY!

Once you’ve made enough money on The Market you can start sponsoring election campaigns and that means what you say goes. You’re making policy! You’re king of the world! So, look at what’s around and see what money can be made. Keep those wars coming (there’s no money in diplomacy) and keep those fumes pumping (there’s no money in the oxygen this silly planet provides gratis). Take stuff from people and sell it back to them. Remember, you can only do this if you have bought a politician so find out who’s for sale and BUY BUY BUY!

Finally, buy the media. Seriously, just buy the lot of it. Tell everyone the story of the world and give it any ending you want. Don’t worry about the journalists. They’ll do whatever you say. You don’t even have to pay them that much. They are happy enough with just the attention. So, don’t just go down the shops and buy the paper, no, enter the market and BUY BUY BUY the paper.

Once you own the media you’ll own people’s minds. Just think, you’ll be the majority shareholder in human consciousness. You’ll own the world and the minds of the people who live upon that world. You’ll be a God! Maybe you can be THE God. Let’s face it, that other guy’s stock has fallen. God’s stock has fallen so it might be just the time to BUY BUY BUY!

Praise be to The Market! Hallowed be your name! See? I told you that you too could be a winner. Now get out there and BUY BUY BUY!

IDEAS

You might like some ideas and you might dislike some ideas but the great thing about ideas is that they inspire you to have ideas and then these ideas meet even more ideas and chat them up (in a kind of nightclub for ideas that exists in everyone’s minds) and then some of these ideas might get together with other ideas and have little baby ideas that grow into big ideas and then, maybe, after time, there might be a pretty good big idea. Of course, there might be a terrible idea but the more ideas get out there and meet other ideas the less chance there is of some weird idea festering and taking hold and thinking it’s the only idea in the world.

The alternative is the telly, the newspaper and the radio, which are kind of idea abattoirs where ideas get bolts shot through their heads and where ideas are chopped up and divided and sent back out to the world wrapped in plastic and with a price attached.

The video below is a very very basic introduction to an idea. Maybe it’s a good idea or maybe it’s a terrible idea. The idea will be discussed at the venues specified in the image above this post (click to enlarge). You might like to bring your own ideas along.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
Everyone will try to get on TV
and they will get on TV
in a show on TV
about them trying to get on TV.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
People who are overweight by 120 pounds
will repeatedly spend 120 pounds
in failed attempts to lose 120 pounds.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
People will avoid getting old
by acting like they are young
and end up seeming older.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
We will use shops for parks
and parks for car parks.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
A dog will bark at a postman
so the postman will sue the dog’s owner
and then the dog’s owner will sue the dog.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
A nation of child killers
will condemn another nation for child killing
and they will go to war
and kill more children.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
Everyone will worry that there will be no tomorrow
but there will be a tomorrow
and everyone will worry more than they did the day before.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
We’ll give kids lots of toys
and then resent them for having too many toys
and kids who never had any toys
will spend all day making the toys.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
Everyone will have their say
but no one will have anything to say
except for what they’ve been told.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
Everyone will drive cars
and spend most of their lives in cars
driving to and from work
to pay for their cars.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
Everyone will own a house
that belongs to someone else
who owns lots of houses
that belong to someone else.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
Everyone will have lots of money
because everyone will owe lots of money
but no one will have enough money to pay the money back.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
People will belong nowhere
and nowhere will belong to people.

IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW:
The great void will spill forth
and eat up all matter
and replace it with antimatter
and no one will even notice
that there’s anything the matter.

And that is how it will be. And that is how it is. Today and every day, IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW.

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.

I’VE INVENTED ANOTHER NEW LANGUAGE

It’s becoming a bit of a hobby after THE LAST TIME but I’ve invented another new language. Everyone will be able to understand this new language of mine but only a select few will be able to speak it (those with reassuringly authoritative demeanours, presentable attire, and convincing smiles).

The communications landscape will be streamlined by my new language. The vast majority will be unburdened of the tiresome effort of trying to make themselves heard and the select minority will get to discuss matters without fear of the obfuscation caused by widespread discourse, which can get pretty silly when any old How Do You Do butts in willy nilly.

Pretty neat, isn't it?

Now, I realise there’ll come a time when those who are not amongst the select few will pick up a few words of my new language and try speaking them but I’m not too worried about this as they’ll only be repeating what the select few said, a bit like parrots or those dolls that say things when you pull a cord out of their back. They’ll not really be in a position to manipulate the language to their own ends and express their own ideas so there’s no threat really. Let me put it this way, Winston Churchill’s pet macaw Charlie was quite right to squawk the words ‘fuck Hitler’ but that didn’t mean he was in a position to make policy.

Anyway, the ability to have ideas should have atrophied by the time the non-select speaker has learned the lingo and even if the ability to form ideas has not atrophied in certain non-select speakers, any ideas expressed by them will be drowned out by the squawks from all the Charlies. SQUAWK! SQUAWK! SQUAWK! So, all in all, it should be grand.

This new language of mine has a few dialects. One is called Telly, one is called Radio and another one is called Newspaper. The tongue overall is called Media.

Now, keep your mouth shut and listen!

THE PLANET OF THE SHOPS

Do you know that look on a three year old’s face just after she drops a brand new ice cream? It’s the facial expression that comes before the inevitable bawling. A stunned look. Open mouthed. Wide eyed. Shocked at cruel fate’s sudden hard slap. You know it? Well, in the future everyone in Ireland will have that look on their face. 24/7.

We’ll have that look on our face as our piebalds pull our Mercs past lay-by picnickers. We’ll have that look on our face as we travel potholed roads to the mall. The mall: a near derelict hulk. Creaking and wheezing. Cracked glass and corroded chrome. A junkyard Death Star coated in a film of dust. Once a temple to aspiration, now a salve to desperation. Shuddering escalators will carry us around inside. Crackling musak will attempt to sooth. But we’ll still have that look on our face.



We will go through the motions. Buying the remnants of better times in a gargantuan jumble sale of half-assed items that guarantee dissatisfaction. But we’ll soldier on. What else is there to do? A torn bath mat. One Ugg boot. Tattered chick-lit. A bent 9 iron. There’s a dead house spider in the powdered milk. Someone bursts into tears and their spouse tells them to keep it together. ‘You’ll set everyone off’. But they can’t contain themselves. Trembling lips. Rolling tears. Gushing snot. ‘Waaaaahhhhh!’ Oh Christ!

The spouse places a hand over their loved one’s mouth but it’s too late. A grating voice barks from the P.A. ‘Transgressor-floor three-aisle seven.’ Here comes security. The couple flee. A chase. Other customers watch, glad they are not the ones being pursued.

The couple run past displays of punctured soccer balls, dented bean cans, withered fruit and veg, wilting copies of Eddie Hobbs’ You and Your Money magazine. They are surrounded before they reach the fire exit. They are shot with tranquiliser darts. Their unconscious bodies are loaded into shopping trolleys and wheeled away. The P.A. growls again: ‘patrons are advised to stick with the programme or face the consequences’. Everyone does as they are told. What else is there to do? There’s bargains to be had. They saw it on the telly. They read it in the paper. Now is not the time to be cribbing and moaning. Things are looking up. Just don’t look up! Transgressors are dangling from the ceiling by their necks. Take that look off your face and welcome to the Planet of the Shops.

CLASS WAR!

It was time to start the revolution so I put on my Slipknot t-shirt, headed into town, and spray painted the words ‘Class War’ on a bus shelter.

Lo and behold, next thing I knew, the working classes were out on the streets waving baseball bats and shovels. They were chanting the mantra ‘Class War! Class War! We never thought of that before!’ and headed uptown to where the richies live and control the media and all that type of thing.

Speaking of the media, I suddenly found myself surrounded by journalists and camera crews. They were all roaring questions at me:
‘Do you really think Class War is the solution?’
‘Are you prepared to take responsibility if someone gets hurt?’
‘Do you know where we can get some decent coke?’
I didn’t answer any of their questions. Instead, I pulled my t-shirt up over my lower face, flipped the camera the bird and shouted ‘OLD LADIES, WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!’

The old ladies thing worked a treat. It was on the news that night and all over the papers the next day. ‘Rioters Threaten Nice Old Ladies!’ No one minded when the law put the boot into the revolutionaries after that. Feeling betrayed, demoralised and quite ashamed, the multitudes that rose up the day before returned to their homes that evening. I was back in my flat long before them, taking a call from the secret service.
‘Well done Mr. Fugger, you’ve released the pressure valve. Has to be done from time to time. Should stop Joe and Jenny Pleb getting any fancy notions for a while. The cheque is in the post.’
I put the phone down, put my feet up and listened to my Angela Lansbury Reads the Poetry of Matthew Arnold CD, relaxing in the knowledge that I was on the winning side.

‘And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.’

Ah, . . .sweetness and light.

IT’S A MAGIC VAN AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A LOT OF FUN!

Would a non-violent take over of this country bother you? Sure what’s a country anyway but a bit of ground we walk around on? It’d still be there no matter who owns it.

Would it matter if the invaders took everything - assets, services, profits? You wouldn’t have any say but would it really matter because when did you ever have a say?

You would still get to vote for leaders and, although they wouldn’t be making any actual decisions, the real decision makers would let them appear by their sides in photo opportunities and give the impression that they hold some kind of influence, which they wouldn’t but who cares?

Twice a decade we’d have little vote pageants where the candidates dress up and have arguments about things like litter and so on. We’d vote for them for vague reasons like ‘well, he seems the most assured’ and ‘I like the way he maintains eye contact’. We could enjoy similarly insightful media punditry and colourful poll graphics on children’s programmes like The Eleventh Hour. It’d be fun. We’d get to let off a bit of steam. It’d be like those festivals we observe. The ones that are based on ancient pagan rituals we’ve all forgotten the purpose of but still celebrate anyway.

Wouldn’t that be good enough for you? I mean, when you think about it, you’d be liberated of responsibility. Responsibility is an awful pain in the hole. Do you remember the happy days of your childhood when you had no responsibilities? Summer went on forever. Do you remember? Everything was left up to Mammy and Daddy and when anything grown up was happening they closed the door and spoke about it in hushed tones while you sat happily in front of the telly in the other room. It’d be like that.

‘Now, little Jimmy, your Daddy has made a wee mistake and we’re going to have to live in a van for a while but don’t worry because it’s a magic van and we’re going to have a lot of fun.’

Having the impression of something is as good as having the actual thing itself. It’s called pretending and it’s great. You knew that when you were little and you are about to discover it again. Sure, what does it matter if your country gets taken over/you end up living in a van? You can still be happy. It all depends on how you approach it. OK, got that? Good. Now shut up and go to bed. Your Mammy and Daddy have things to talk about.

HUNGRY HUNGRY RACOONS

‘A new decade is here and, boy, has it got a lot of cleaning up to do after the last one.’ At least, that’s what the C.I.A. told me over a few pints in town. ‘As if that ain’t bad enough, the whole house of credit default swap cards is going to come crashing down, we’re going to have water and oil shortages causing wars and there’s going to be refugees spilling out all over the place causing racial tension. We’re in the shit Mr. Fugger,’ they informed me.

‘So, what do you want me to do about it?’ I asked.

‘Well you like telling stories,’ replied the C.I.A., ‘and we need stories to keep people distracted while we maintain order. Maintaining order ain’t pretty. A lot of people are going to get hurt and we don’t want the bleeding hearts getting all moralistic about it. Order trumps morality Mr. Fugger. Morality is abstract subjective bull crap. Order is an objective and observable phenomenon.’

I didn’t like the sound of that. I downed my Guinness and nodded to the barman for another. The C.I.A. kept talking as they peered at me over their whiskeys. ‘We’re going to start shit in Bolivia Mr. Fugger. We need gas and they got it. We’re going to replace democratically elected President Morales with hardcore racist son of a Nazi Branko Marinkovic. It sucks but whachagonnado? We need your first rate story telling prowess to make people look the other way. We want you to come up with an event that will keep everyone talking while we do the old switcheroo.’

‘And what if I don’t?’ I said, playing hard-ball.

The C.I.A. fixed me with a chilling glare. ‘What’s the name of your cat Mr. Fugger?’ I was asked.

I was puzzled by the question but I answered it. ‘Rupert’, I said, inciting a round of sniggers and feeling my masculinity suddenly diminish.

‘You like Rupert don’t you Mr. Fugger?’

I saw where they were going with this so quickly changed the subject. ‘Right, a distraction is what you need. A news event to keep people talking. Let’s see. Let’s see now. How about . . .um . . .a racoon.’

The C.I.A. leaned forward in unison and stared expectantly as my mind darted from place to place, grabbing anything it could. ‘Yeah, a racoon, go on,’ they urged.

‘Right, a racoon,’ I continued, ‘and it gets on a TV show and what’s her name is on it too, you know, Katie Price, um, Jordan, and. . .’

‘Hold on,’ one of the C.I.A. interrupted. ‘What’s the racoon doing on a TV show?’

‘Well, maybe it’s a special racoon. Maybe it pulled a baby from a house fire or has been to space or something.’

‘We can’t arrange that Mr. Fugger. Not even we can send a racoon to space or train it rescue kids.’

‘Right well, could you teach it to cycle a little bike?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Right so, the racoon is cycling a little bike and Graham Norton is jumping around delighted when all of a sudden the racoon jumps up off the saddle and bites Jordan on the tits and. . . um . . .they explode.’

I wasn’t sure where the hell that came from and I was even less sure how it would be received. I found myself putting my hands up my face and looking at the C.I.A. through the gaps in my fingers. I need not have worried, they were grinning from ear to ear.

‘I like it,’ one said, ‘the broad’s bazoobahs go boom and at that very moment, in another continent, Morales takes a bullet to the brain as his cavalcade passes through Santa Cruz.’

‘Exactly,’ I confirmed.

The C.I.A. quickly scribbled a few notes, finished their whiskeys and stood to leave.

‘Nice doing business with you Mr. Fugger,’ one said, ‘oh, and give our best to, eh, what’s he called, yeah, give our best to Rupert.’

There was more laughter as they sauntered out the door. I downed my pint to calm my nerves.

Then someone cleared his throat behind me. I turned and saw Ajai Chopra of the I.M.F.

‘Any chance you could dream up a distraction for us? We need a product, a kind of craze for some gee-gaw everyone will want to get while we take everything else from them.’

The fact that I probably had no choice but to assist him did little to assuage the wave of self-loathing that overcame me.

‘What about a, um, let’s see, yeah, what about a board game for all the family. Like Hungry Hungry Hippos only with racoons instead of hippos and, um, instead of the marbles you could have tits?’ I offered.

Ajai smirked and made a note. He seemed happy enough.

Jesus, I’m scraping the barrel on this blog these days. O.K., enough of that. Click the link and find out how CRAP MAN HANDLED THE NEW YEAR!

Bears Part 2

Things haven’t been going well since I left the BEARS post. The mother bear was tracked down and footage of her being shot in front of her wailing cubs found its way onto the net. I found it funny but the general reaction seems to be pity and disgust. The guide’s family say he never would have approved and publicly stated that they doubt my account of what took place. Worst of all is the little shite bag of a fire investigator that has crawled out from the woodwork and started banging on about arson. He’s all over the news and everyone’s gone mad. You can tell he’s really enjoying the attention. He’s even got a publishing deal. He‘s calling his book ‘Truth Amongst the Ashes: The Yellowstone Park Tragedy’. Same publisher as me too. Yeah, I know, unbelievable isn’t it? And guess what else, Ben Affleck has optioned the thing and wants to play him in a screen adaptation. You couldn’t make it up. This jumped up ember jocky’s pathetic attempt to make something of his life at my expense might be my undoing. I asked one of my people if we could persuade the guy to take a stroll up Harrowdown Hill (if you know what I mean) but I was told it’d only make things seem more shady.

I’m constantly hounded by the rent a mob crowd now. They show up at my book launches and bang on the windows of the limo. It’s very distressing. They chant like loons and wave corny placards that say things like ‘BEAR faced Liar!’, ‘UnBEARable!’ and ‘ApPAWling Deciet’. A lot of the placards say ‘Socialist Worker’s Party’ too but I’m not sure what that’s all about. Some kind of product placement I suppose.

My team has decided to go into damage limitation mode. I’ve been advised that the best way to handle this is to embrace it. It’s what they did with Big Brother’s Nasty Nick before me. Like Nick, I’m going to try and reingratiate myself to the public via irony. I’ll become a loveable bad guy. I’m booked to play Captain Hook in a panto this Christmas and then I’m going to take part in a tug of war against Pudsey Bear over a pool of gunge to raise money at the next Children in Need. I even played an environmental awareness gig with Cheryl Crow where I dressed up as a grizzly. I met Sean Penn backstage but he wouldn’t talk to me. Bono did though. He sold me an I POD which I sold on to Al Gore for twice the price. I told Al it used to belong to Bono. He’s a big U2 fan.

It’s all a lot of effort though. Everything was going so well. I don’t know why the general public didn’t just stick with the version of events I constructed for them. I mean, it was a far more life affirming narrative than the one they believe now. My story made them happy and it made me money. Everyone was a winner but oh no, they have to have their precious reality. Even if it makes them miserable, they must know the truth. The tyranny of truth, such an archaic concept, as outmoded as morality. It’s all the fire investigator’s fault. He might think he’s the big man now but this isn’t over. Oh no, not by a long chalk. I’ll have the last laugh yet. Mark my words and watch this space.

Oh, and here’s a new CRAP MAN!