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Adam

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  • ‡§| Persia |§‡

    So Adam, how is your trip going with Mr. Justin Randomtask? Have you stepped on him yet?

    2 years ago
  • Spacey

    Although I could not have put such in verse as you have done. I hear that Andrew Motion has stood down. Do you think the post of Poet Laureate as sanctioned by the Queen would understand the resonance and richness of the word 'cunter'? I hope so. I'm putting you forward.

    In similar news: I still haven't got over that fucking photograph of Hinton. It's fucking hideous. But in a way, very good to see. Yes, you can almost see into his soul. What a pool of cess it must undoubtedly be.

    Keep your chin up son.

    2 years ago
  • Dima.™

    I have not heard the good word of Adam in far too long.
    I fear that I may have lost my faith.

    I hope things are going well.
    miss you :(

    2 years ago
  • Molly Cool

    Oh Adam.

    2 years ago
  • Deina

    Happy birthday, darling.

    2 years ago
  • john

    Beer me babe.

    2 years ago
  • Spacey

    Nah, I am off to watch my local team in europe - an epic journey involving trains and two ferries.

    I just hope that East Cowes Victoria Athletic v AFC Aldermaston lives up to its high profile billing.

    In true TTC fashion, I hope to get the West Cowes - East Cowes chain ferry turned back due to an outbreak of 'The English Disease'.

    3 years ago
  • Clever little wench

    Wow, Dima and I are sharing the same memory of too much shit on your page.

    Wait...

    3 years ago
  • Dave

    Perhaps if they'd spent a bit more time putting in a days work and making cars properly instead of sitting around reading the Daily Mirror and smoking woodbines all day, then you wouldn't have had to move down here.

    3 years ago
  • Dima.™

    Remember when you had too much SHITE on your page?

    loveya.

    3 years ago
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  • General

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    I'm Adam, I like limes and killing ants. Compare a lime to any other fruit and said fruit will wither away and die, awe-struck by the towering nowness of the lime. Gone are kumquats, kiwi, the clown-like joke fruit of the 1990s. The lime speaks to the zeitgeist: it's minimal, sour, but a bit far east. Flash a lime at your friends or neighbours and they'll immediately reassess your entire being in the light of the information that YOU USE LIMES.

    The lime says: I'm modern, I'm sophisticated, I'm so over lemons. It's a kind of green pod encapsulation of taking six months off work and trekking across Vietnam, without having to leave the kitchen. And it only costs 24p.

    I ran out of limes on a recent Wednesday night. If I don't get more limes, I'll die. I can't consider it. I march down to Costcutter, the thing is, I don't have high hopes of their citrus facilities (Jesus, they don't even have real lemons, just a kind of Neal Stephenson-inspired simulacrum: a plastic re-imagining in the shape of a real lemon which squirts, against all the odds, genuine piss).

    I know this Costcutter well. Last Christmas, I ran out of mince pies on Christmas Day and was weepingly thankful for the sight of our friendly neighbourhood grocery shop, with its welcoming glow of openness, a little inner-city Bethlehem. "Have you got any mince pies?" I panted.

    The guy behind the till looked blank. He'd never heard of them. He chewed the words, masticating each one unpleasantly. Mince pies. They were outside his ambit of understanding. Psychopaths, shoplifters, Jesus-freaks wanting to put up shaky hand-drawn placards in the shop, yes. All known about and easily dealt with. But mince pies - no. Never heard of them.

    He wanted to help me, he really did. He gestured hopefully at the frozen meat section. I explained that no, the mince pie was sweet. He winced. He was Turkish. No such abomination in Turkey. Many abominations, but not this one.

    I persevered. The mince pie has pastry on top. Sometimes lattice work, like the ceiling of a country church. The conversation had already gone on 35 seconds longer than your average Costcutter conversation, and my friend was getting uneasy. He began to reach for the iron bar behind the counter. You can never be too sure, can you? A lone man in a suit, coming in on Christmas Day asking for a pie that looks like a country church. It's bollocks, isn't it? A front, for sure.

    Nothing happened. No assault, and no pastry either. But I was indignant about the mince pies for weeks after. I felt like ringing Nick Ferrari on LBC. Coming to our country! Taking our mince pies and they don't even know what they are!! It's enough to make you buy a union flag bedspread off the BNP website. The fact the poor guy had spent half an hour trying to help me, and was open on Christmas Day in the first place because he didn't know what a mince pie was, I conveniently chose to ignore.

    Once again, I'm at my friendly neighbourhood store, looking for limes. Again the complete willingness to help combined with the no-can-do smile. We're all out, he explains. Sorry. Jesus, what am I going to do?! I'm beginning to panic now. I rush out of Costcutter and size up the neighbours' houses for signs of lime: tell-tale clues in their rubbish and/or interior design decisions. I look in recycling boxes stuffed with pinot grigio bottles, peer through blinds into the kitchens of fellow travellers in limeland.

    I'm unimaginably excited when I get a glimpse of a fruit bowl with five (FIVE!) of the little buggers nestling next to a Philippe Starck squeezer like shrivelled alien eggs about to be juiced into oblivion. This lime thing, I realise, is the modern equivalent of the pop-round-next-door-for-a-cup-of sugar lark. In the atomised modern world , it's probably the only way you'll get to meet your neighbours.

    The lime clearly knows its job, and is weighed down with the responsibility of bringing a socially fragmented society together. After knocking on these peoples' door and being given a lime, I was so deliriously happy, I skipped along the pavement throwing the precious gift in the air, and inadvertently chucked it into the garden of a Christian family.

    For over an hour, these kind people helped me rummage through the undergrowth looking for my lime. They didn't once question the veracity of what I was saying (that I have an extreme food intolerance of pretty much everything that isn't lime-based, and that if I don't find my lime before midnight, I'll die).

    I still believe in the power of the lime to bring people together. If not round one table, then by bringing strangers together, foraging in a hedge at night in pursuit of a lime, with a higher force at work. They asked me if I'd like to go to their church, and once I retrieved my lime, I said I was busy on Sunday morning - sleeping.

    Afterall, I may be suffering citrus based insanty, but I'm not THAT crazy.



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    Ants however to me will forever be the embodyment of evil. There are a number of small domestic pleasures to be derived from being a male home-owner devoid of family responsibilities, and top of the list is most definitely insect patrol. While the government continue to have ants in their pants about terrorist attack, the real thing is burrowing away in its billions under our homes and threatening the very foundations of western civilisation.

    I went into the garden last Saturday with a boiling kettle, ready to do battle with the mortal enemy of mankind. Since I'd been out (half an hour before, with another boiling kettle) they'd multiplied. There were now five or six ant mega-cities under the patio, each with their own Starbucks, Tesco Metro and Vue cinema.

    The unlikeliest of men can become obsessed with insects. I have a friend - a hard-nosed cult novelist, often pictured looking very moody and brooding - who is even more obsessed with killing ants than I am. He sends me emails detailing the tortures he has inflicted upon them, describing the Vietnam-style devastation he reeks with his Russell Hobbs killing machine. A psychologist would probably say that we are both taking out a lot of pent-up anger on the ants. But truth is I think we just enjoy mass destruction within the confines of a domestic garden. It isn't harming anyone, is it? (Except, y'know, ants and ant karma.)

    The problem we have is that the media are feeding, not dampening, my paranoia about insect attack. In addition to the current ant epidemic, there's apparently a wasp epidemic too, and a mosquito one to boot, carrying swamp fever all the way from Africa to the tropical plains of Amsterdam. Ants and wasps aren't happy merely to be themselves any longer. No, now they're SUPER-ANTS! And SUPER-WASPS!

    Super-ants have, according to Reuters, built a 60-mile long ant-chain underneath Sydney, Australia ... just for fun. Wasps are, as you read this, planning to stage Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, each wasp across the globe harmonising its buzz to produce a deafening super-buzz that will wipe out humankind forever. It transpires that each super-insect has developed not only its own deadly payload of diseases and death-avoidance tactics, but is now a discerning consumer just like everyone else, replete with playful sense of irony.

    Take super-rats and mice. Apparently, they can't stand cheese any more. Why? Because, I was recently told, they don't like lactic acid. Lactic acid plays hell with the complexion. Rodents aren't stupid. They're not going to fall for a mouldy piece of cheese on a trap any more. Rodents are way beyond this: they're looking out for their skin now, and are not going to risk combination dryness from a cheap lump of Tesco cheddar. Put some Aveda products out and you may be in business. But cheese? Don't insult their intelligence.

    Deadlier even than metro-sexual mice, and I believe one of the great remaining taboos of western civilisation, is the moth infestation. Be clear about this: the moth is one devilish little piece of work. Don't be fooled by its cutesy Tales Of the Unexpected "I love to dance around a naked flame" shtick. This is one discerning bastard of fabric destruction, striking at the heart of any wardrobe with deadly smart bomb accuracy, and taking out that Helmut Lang cashmere jumper with an almost sadistic pleasure.

    A moth is not merely a pest. It is a creature with a cruel and ravenous appetite for what you'd least like to have destroyed and an uncanny ability to do its worst by first getting inside your clothes-buying head. Think about moths for more than three seconds and you'll realise that they are not God's (nor indeed, the devil's) work at all, but a conspiracy theorist's dream come true.

    Here's what I'm thinking. Either they're the work of anti-capitalist pranksters, bent on destroying expensive designer objects by constructing a state-of-the-art bug which eats said designer objects or else - and this is a truly frightening hypothesis - moths are a Machiavellian micro-techno twist on built-in obsolescence. Look it up on the internet. Burberry or Hennes invented moths in order to speed up the normally sluggish process of buying and wearing jumpers, by introducing tiny winged chomping devices into every wardrobe in the land (voilà, you've just bought five, and they've all got holes in them the following weekend).

    Moths are interesting for what they reveal to us about ourselves. I know people who'd rather own up to having syphilis than a moth infestation. Why? Because moths strike at the very heart of the home, and nowadays, we're far less predisposed to talk about embarrassing shortcomings in our homes than even the most embarrassing aspects of our sex lives. This is because the home is the most painfully-exposed extremity of our purchasing identity. It should look like something on Grand Designs, and that doesn't include super-moths crawling all over it.

    The insect world makes a mockery of our finest consumer aspirations, and that's why we loathe them so much. Apart from me. I just like boiling them alive with my kettle.



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    It had to happen, and it has. Age has crept up on me yet again. I'm now apparently "too old" for MySpace, or so I was just told anyway. Part of me was indignant, furious at these whippersnappers' presumption to tell me anything; what do they know about the sodding world? But then it dawned on me that, perhaps, that reaction was somewhat making their point for them. The bastards.

    I'm left feeling conflicted you see, conflicted on so many levels. About technology for one, I'm becoming even more resistant to technological change. It used to be so different. I've always been a geek to some extent, and proud of it. For a time I lived in a chaotic mangle of keyboards and wires. I was the person people would phone up when they had a problem with their computer, quipping about polygon counts and cel-shading. Oh yes, I was a laugh-a-sodding-minute let me tell you. But fast-forward to now and I'm looking at MySpace and I realise I'm now the fumbling old colonel struggling to comprehend his nephew's digital watch.

    Perhaps it started back with the fusty grumbliness that made me boycott CDs in favour of vinyl, and now MP3s. But last week I saw an advert for a handheld gizmo using the slogan "It's not a cellphone: it's MySpace on the go." It was terrifying, not just that somebody would actually want such a thing, but something I will never understand and I'll never want to posses, even when Satan is ice-skating to work. I've never felt so lost. I found myself suddenly and starkly feeling like a blind man patting the walls for an exit he can't find.But I decided that I had to face my technological demons, head out of the safety and security of my 'friends list' of fellow misanthropes, and see just what this young and dazzling generation were doing with this technological revolution. And you know what the answer is? Of course you do, you've had a look yourself haven't you, come on, you can admit it, you're amongst friends here.

    The answer is of course, they're doing fuck all with it. No, that's not entirely true, they're certainly doing fuck all with it, badly. But they are also doing fuck all with something they clearly don't understand. It was a lovely moment, albeit a lovely moment for a fusty old technophobe; a moment of epiphany even. And the moment said this, these cheeky fuckers know far less about it than I do, so rest easy in your slippers and smoking jacket. Oh yes, all this fancy use of HTML scripts and codes etc, but not one of the presumptuous little bastards has written it themselves. The google generation strikes again; why learn something yourself when you can simply google some ill-spelled half-truth and paste away. Why understand what it is you're using when you can simply "Pimp your web-page", (yes, I shuddered like the colonel starring bemusedly at the digital watch as I typed that). I would no less use a script or code that I didn't understand the intricate workings of than I would use a word I didn't know the meaning of. v The caveat to that sentence is, of course, with the exception of the word paradigm, which does not have a meaning, other than to alert other people to what a pretentious arsehole I am, but I digress. But I'm not the only one using words to alert people, this cutting-edge technological generation are using their own too. They're using words to alert the rest of us to the fact that they're illiterate, lazy morons.

    Have a look for yourself, go on, once you get over the initial burning homicidal rage, it'll give you a few seconds amusement before the dark clouds of bitterness return, before you return to your lonely prayer vigil beseeching whatever deity it is you believe in to destroy this planet and all that inhabit it before this goes any further. As believe me, you will. By the time you've seen "your" used in the place of "you're" for, say, the third time, you'll see death as a blessed release, not just for them but for you also. And if you're anything like me, the first moment you see "ur gr8. Hit me up l8r", your knuckles will be turning white as you try to quell the urge to raise an angry fist heavenward and demand loudly that one day a real rain will come and wash this planet clean. But as I say, it left me feeling conflicted, as all of that somewhat makes their point for them. As clearly I'm missing the bigger picture, I'm missing the message, I don't understand that it's "just the internet", so consequently spelling and communicating like a backward, inbred, sub-literate, moronic four year old is acceptable.

    Yes, yes and thrice YES. I get the point, I get the irony, I even to some extent get the notion that I'm a fusty old pedant. But what I really don't get is the idea that I'm too old, and consequently have better things to be doing.

    Wrong. Desperately, shockingly, awfully wrong. Wrong, wrong, WRONG! No, not that I shouldn't have better things to be doing (which I of course palpably should), but that they haven't. That this, supposedly, young and happy and excited and flip and approachable generation are the ones who should be inhabiting the internet, spreading their illiteracy like some doomsday virus, while we fuddy old misanthropes get on with paying our taxes and mortgages. Surely better to be here when you have come to accept that your finest carefree years are behind you, that life has become a piteous lurch from one crisis to another, that the days will be rank with frustration and sweaty with self-deception, the nights a blur of recriminations, the sleeps short and fitful and the jolted awakenings heavy with bottled regret. That your early promise shall go tragically unfulfilled, and that you are eking out a grim compromise of an existence at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey with a thin-lipped angry woman, that all hope is gone and all light is extinguished, come, sweet death.

    Surely better then, rather than wasting your best years for carefree reckless abandon on here. Christ on a bike, why aren't teenagers out doing what teenagers are meant to do: drinking cheap repellent cider, having piss-poor regrettable sex, joining laughable sub-cultures, and...oh, I don't know, reading books, broadening their minds and their horizons, doing anything to avoid becoming a musty old misanthrope who will in a short-decade be tarring everyone with the same snotty, patronising, snobbish brush.



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  • Music

    ..My taste is somewhat eclectic; from Mozart to Madness, from Bocelli to Blondie, from Rachmaninoff to Rage Against the Machine, from List to the Lightning Seeds, from Chopin to Jimmy Cliff. That being said though, if I had to live a life without everything but The Jam, The Who and The Clash, I could probably manage it. Oh, and I just don't 'get' rap/hip-hop; possibly because I'm English.

  • Movies

    ..I suppose I should quote here some pretentious black&white subtitled French existentialist film you're never going to have heard of to make myself sound a little more cultured; but cinema reached it's zenith with Monty Python's Life of Brian, and will never surpass it.

  • Television

    ..Is mostly just a conduit of capitalist propoganda.

    But I will always have time for: Brasseye, I'm Alan Partridge, Family Guy, The Mary Whitehouse Experience, The Office, Pheonix Nights, Ashes to Ashes, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers and BBC news 24.

  • Books

    ..There is not a wall in my home that is not covered in (wonkily erected) bookshleves and there is not a hallway where I can fail to fall over a box of books that I couldn't squeeze onto said wonky shelves. To say I read a lot would be a massive understatement on a par with "George W. Bush is slightly inarticulate". I'll read pretty much anything, fiction or non-fiction, on pretty much any subject.

  • Heroes

    ..My great-great-grandfather, a born poltroon, womaniser, wastrel and coward. Pitchforked against his will into expeditions, battles and adventures. Surviving by pretence, betrayal and hiding behind better men. Emerging at the end of the day with a string of undeserved decorations and a name and fame for daring-do that was the talk of the Empire.

    Awarded a Victoria Cross at Jansi during the Mutiny for a feat of outstanding 'bravery'. When fleeing in headlong retreat as fast as his feet would carry him, it occurred to him that he had dropped his wallet, and rather than abandon ten shilling, he dashed back twenty yards to collect it, fortunately for him, the whole regiment saw him and turned around and followed him, charging toward the enemy. Thus a rout became a victory, thanks in no small-part to my great-great grandfather's miserly, cowardly, penny-pinching ways, gawd bless him.

    But he will also always remain my hero for renouncing the family title in a fit of socialist fervour and blowing the family fortune (such as it was) on strong drink and weak women.

Blurbs

About me:

.. As you may have noticed, I've been somewhat sporadic (for sporadic read too lazy; as I am spending too much of my incredibly sparse free time these days deluging wikipedia with mountains of misinformation for my own amusement) in blog updates on here of late, this is because my blog is now updated and archived at geordiejihad.blogspot.com.


This Revolution Is For Display Purposes Only


..Due to Rupert Murdoch's take-over of MySpace, this profile is now manufactured in a Thai sweatshop from 4000 acres of virgin rainforest and tested on cuddly animals in a sinister laboratory...

I have 169,811 friends, including several celebrities from the worlds of music, film and television. I can say this with a degree of authority simply from looking at my old profile on MySpace. Obviously this does not tally with the reality of my life; hours hunched over a laptop interspersed with solitary drinking binges and trapping animals on the roof of the pub for company, but I take a crumb of comfort that it’s there in black and white.

Where as in reality my social life is populated by a circle of passive-aggressive bigots, career alcoholics, dysfunctional sociopaths, semi-retired criminals and accountants called Timothy from Milton Keynes. In the virtual world I’m well connected to Liam Gallagher, Har Mar Superstar and the legendary Ron Jeremy. Browsing through the rest of my network I notice that I am also, even more dubiously, connected to Phil Collins (“Location: Geneva – Occupation: Miser”) and Axl from California who is into “heavy metal, chicks and being a hermit”.

MySpace is very much an American phenomenon, all the English profiles are clearly marked by stupid photos and sarcastic postings from friends. No surprise though to find some idiots predictably obsessed network one-up-manship. There have been cases of people actually selling their networks on E-Bay. “Meet hipster musicians” offered one seller. “Join the very coolest and most exclusive group of peeps inline anywhere” promised one particularly ungrammatical tosser.

People who list their interest as “Vin Diesel XXX and The Crow (GRAPHIC NOVEL)” seem to be at the peak of MySpace e-popularity. Where as the chap who used to be on my network who lists his favourite TV show as “documentaries about murdered prostitutes” probably won’t have to check his inbox for a very long time, which is a shame indeed.

The only similar British phenomenon was Friends Re-United, which is an alumni site. You can find out how all your old friends are doing these days, hoo-fucking-ray. There is no need to bother actually looking though, everyone is currently working in IT, everyone who you thought would be, is currently in prison, and everyone you found remotely attractive is married with 19 kids. Also it will remind you that you are already in touch with all the friends from school you have any desire to be.

The thing is, Friends Re-United was about a morbid curiosity about losers from your past, where as MySpace is about the losers of your future. MySpace Tracker

Who I'd like to meet:


The losers of my future.

Specifically anyone who will make me read things and think things, I'd never have read or have thought in my own stuck little Victorian world, angry loners, pedants, people who think horoscope writers should be burned at the stake for witchcraft, aficionados of Newcastle Brown Ale and of course, fellow retosexuals. What is a retrosexual? Retrosexuals smell, are unfit, couldn't even tell you where Selfridges is (imagine!), and haven't a clue how to use an iPod.

There's only one thing we retrosexuals love more than stinking out a train carriage with our manly fug, and that's our not-inconsiderable fear of modern technology.

You may love your thumb-sized life planner or your eyelid phone, but we stinking retrosexuals greet anything new with a sneer/ befuddlement. Retrosexuals love anything matt black with big buttons that hums and breaks down.

We build shrines to early 1980s technology, covering it in matt black candles and praying for the resurrection of laserdiscs and Xerox. We call our god Old School, while younger, saner people reach for a bin bag and take this crap down to Oxfam.

Retrosexuals have so many fine attributes, but we truly come into our own in the kitchen. After a decade of lies that all men secretly want to be Jamie Oliver, juggling a bottle of extra virgin as we spin an okra on the end of our foot, the truth can now be told. We only did it to impress women. In actual fact, we're happy sitting in the bath, with a cold can of spaghetti hoops.

In spite of our manifold life skills, the retrosexual's lifestyle is under constant threat, and our terminal failure to get with the noughties means that we are perpetually humiliated by people 10 times younger.

I was in the car a few weeks ago with a friend, her daughter and three of her high-pitched screaming, six-year-old friends. From the glove compartment, I pulled out my secret weapon: a fluff-encrusted Madness cassette, designed to calm and subdue the most hyperactive monster in Christendom with a heroin shot of sing-a-long ska fun.

"What's THAT???!?" Delirious screams of excitement greet my cassette. "It's an audio cassette," I respond defensively. "A WHAT???!" An audio cassette, I repeat calmly. They are struck dumb, in awe of the hallowed prehistoric artefact before them.

In their six years on earth, none of them had ever come across a cassette before. It's existence defies all logic. "It's retro" I explain pompously (the first defence of the technophobe).

"It's RUBBISH." "It's got string inside! Brown string!" "Give it to us!!" (They proceed to unravel 38,000 yards of warped tape, wrapping it around seats and headrests like an award-winning artwork at the ICA.) I get home, deeply disturbed by the fact that young people do not know what a cassette is. I ring my friend John, a fellow retrosexual and champion of old school technology.

By way of trying to placate me, he tells me that over half a million cassette decks were sold across the globe last year (most, inexplicably, in Ghana). "And how many iPods did Apple sell in comparison?" he asks. "Huh? Huh?" "I don't know." "Hardly any!"

Maybe we people who were brought up in the 1980s are a strange biological anomaly, unable to embrace anything new because, deep down, we secretly think that our technology was better. No matter what they invent, even teleporters, nothing will come close to a banana-yellow Sports Walkman that can be attached to the belt.

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.

Warning: Please do not listen to, or watch, the following video if you are offended by foul languge, you work for London Underground Plc, you were part of 2012 Olympic Selection Committee, you're Ken Livingstone or you have no sense of humour. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
   A Chap - and proud
Chap...

What is a chap? A chap is the champion of the rights of that increasingly marginalised and discredited species of Englishman - the gentleman. A chap believes that a society without courteous behaviour and proper headwear is a society on the brink of moral and sartorial collapse, and he seeks to reinstate such outmoded but indispensable gestures as hat doffing, giving up one's seat to a lady and regularly using a trouser press.

Society has become sick with some nameless malady of the soul. We have become the playthings of corporations intent on converting our world into a gargantuan shopping precinct. Pleasantness and civility are being discarded as the worthless ephemera of a bygone age - an age when men doffed their hats to the ladies, and small children could be counted upon to mind one's Jack Russell while one took a mild and bitter in the local hostelry.

Instead, we live in a world where children are huge hooded creatures lurking in the shadows; the local hostelry has been taken over by a large chain that specialises in chilled lager, whose principal function is to aggravate the nervous system. Needless to say, the Jack Russell is no longer there upon one's return.

A Chap proposes to take a stand against this culture of vulgarity. We must show our children that the things worth fighting for are not the latest plastic plimsolls but a shiny pair of brogues. We must wean them off their alcopops and teach them how to mix martinis. Let the young not be ashamed of their flabby paunches, which they try to hide in their nylon tracksuits - we shall show them how a well-tailored suit can disguise the most ruined of bodies. Finally, let us capitalise on youth's love of peculiar argot; only replace their pidgin ghetto-speak with fruity bon mots and dry witticisms.

It is time for Chaps and Chapettes from all walks of life to stand up and be counted. But fear not, ye languid and ye plain idle: ours is a revolution based not on getting up early and exerting oneself - but a revolution that can be achieved by a single raised eyebrow over a monocle; the ordering of a glass of port in All Bar One; a moistureless quip; the wearing of a particularly fetching cardigan upon a visit to one's bookmaker. In other words: a revolution of panache.

We shall bewilder the masses with seams in our trousers that could cut paper, trilbies angled so rakishly that traffic comes to a standstill; and by refusing the bland, watery substances that are foisted upon us by faceless corporations, we shall bring the establishment to its knees, begging for sartorial advice and a nip from our hip flasks.

The revolution begins with Dressing Gown Friday.

..
   An Ethical Dilema:


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It should be an ethical dilemma, now that NewsCorp and therefor Fox and Rupert Murdoch, own MySpace. It should mean, if I were to stick to my principles, my mouse pointer heading to the delete account link quicker than Donald Rumsfeld would reach for "The Button". Where as in reality, I've moved no closer to it than an asthmatic ant with some very heavy shopping.

Why? Firstly because I loathe, detest and despise Rupert Murdoch. I hate everything he represents. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, as far as I’m concerned, has been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. Fox News is the epitome of the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know. Having spent years relentlessly pursuing the lowest common denominator, it's become a specialist conduit for the enormously, fantastically, tremendously and unredeemablely thick. Murdoch, in my view, is the most dangerous propagandist since Joseph Goebbels.

The playwright Dennis Potter, who was terminally ill with cancer at the time, yet had lost none of his waspish wit, said of Murdoch "I call my cancer Rupert, because that man Murdoch is the one who, if I had the time left, I’d shoot the bugger. There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press." I agree with Dennis on many things, but perhaps these sentiments most of all.

Chunky, golden CGI lettering farts its way across your screen, accompanied by ominous music: "One man - One calling -One world" What is this, a trailer for the next Vin Diesel beat-em-up? Nope. The slogans vanish and are instantly replaced by a cutout photo of the late Pope, accompanied by his name, spelled out in a medieval font presumably selected for its religious overtones, and a quote along the bottom: "BE NOT AFRAID."

It looks like a computer-generated version of a knowingly tacky Terry Gilliam animation, but it's not supposed to be funny. It's supposed to be solemn. It's a break bumper on Fox News, which is bringing you up-to-the-minute coverage of the death of the Pope. Of course, Fox could confidently claim to run more coverage of this sad event than anyone else. After all, they got a head start by announcing his death a day early, on April Fool's day.

Again, this wasn't supposed to be funny. It was a mistake. The only joke is Fox itself, and running the "BE NOT AFRAID" bumper while simultaneously doing its utmost to keep viewers in a state of perpetual ill-informed terror is presumably the punchline. I may not know much about the Pope, but I'd put money on him feeling thoroughly sickened by everything Fox stands for - particularly their star turn Bill O'Reilly, notorious host of The O'Reilly Factor, who spent much of his time lambasting the dead Pontiff for a) criticising the Iraq war, and b) not doing enough to halt the rise of "anti-Christian" activity in the US.

Bill himself, of course, does his best to promote Christian values. Why, he regularly preaches tolerance and forgiveness - virtues he drew on last year when he settled out of court with a woman who'd accused him of sexually harassing her over the phone. He accused her in return of extortion. In the Christian spirit of tolerance and forgiveness, they've agreed to end the battle - although if you fancy a laugh, you can still find the statements lurking on the internet.

Sky News, Murdoch's other news network, in the absence of dedicated camera coverage of the Jackson trial, decided to ditch the traditional charcoal court sketches of old (which have a tendency to turn judicial proceedings into a stark graphic novel), in favour of a full-colour day-by-day reconstruction of events using actors.

The reconstructions were not stand-alone "specials", but interweaved with their actual news coverage of the trial, we were treated to the baffling spectacle of the real-life participants walking toward the courtroom (shot by the news crew), interspersed with the hammy lookalikes delivering lines inside the building. It was a bit like watching Plan 9 From Outer Space, the Ed Wood movie in which Bela Lugosi died halfway through filming and was hastily replaced by a stand-in for half his scenes.

Still, having taken an exciting leap into the unknown, it’s only a matter of time before Fox or Sky go the whole hog. Illustrating some of the grittier incidents in the news with animated manga-style flashbacks, like in Kill Bill. How about cutting away at random intervals to show Beavis and Butthead watching at home, calling the President of the IMF a "dork" and sniggering? Perhaps next time Sky are doing a report on something Tony Blair's said, the screen could go all wobbly and slowly fade into a claymation Numskulls-style sequence set inside his head, in which polarised elements of his conscience (played by boggle-eyed plasticine sheep) debate the consequences of his actions?

They’ll probably even liven up their Iraq coverage by dubbing Eye Of The Tiger over the top and dropping in random sequences from Saving Private Ryan. Or use complex CGI technology to have shown the Pope having an out-of-body chinwag with God while laid up in hospital, with the words "IMPROBABLE RECONSTRUCTION" flashing across the bottom in bright red letters.

Believe me, it will happen. These, to me at least, are all cogent reasons to despise Mr Murdoch. The idea of, even in a tertiary manner, adding even a fraction of a cent to his pockets, turns my stomach. So why haven’t I reached for that delete link quite yet?

It's a matter of integrity. As a self proclaimed Marxist, it should be my duty to delete my MySpace account without a moments hesitation. However, life has changed the idealism of my youth. The irony being, such a strident anti-capitalist as myself, should live the life of a venture capitalist. Originally, I told myself this was because I was working to bring down the system from within. But that was just conscience appeasing bullshit, the hard reality is, I rather like tailor-made suits and foreign travel.

When Murdoch bought-up the rights to broadcast Premier league football for the next 43 Millennia, I should have been on the front-line with the rest, protesting the selling-off of our national game. Of selling off the soul of our country, as many people saw it. But I didn’t. Why? Because I knew the pub would be filled with people watching the games on Sky, and thereby filling my pockets with their hard-earned money. Hypocrisy should be my middle name.

Maybe I’m with Voltaire on this one; "I have no morals, yet I’m a very moral person". But alas, that's just fanciful bullshit too. I learned the hard lessons of business a long time ago. After one memorably hellish encounter with a man who'd made his cash from the gonzo-porn industry and now affected the foppish demeanour of Oscar Wilde's Lord Henry, I began to feel as though business might also necessitate mortgaging my soul. It took several more meetings with men as creepily dysfunctional and gruesomely rich as him to disabuse me of such bourgeois notions. The way I figured it, we're all dancing with the devil. In my case it just happened to be five to midnight and I was hoping satan might take me home and fuck me until my teeth fell out; knowing that might not feel good, but it does feel better than guilt.

The reason I can't reach for that delete link is simple, Murdoch and I have something in common: we both pissed our integrity up the wall long ago.

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   Your myspace friend vow:


Please place your hand on the Bible below.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com..
Now repeat the following aloud:

I (your name) being of sound mind and judgement do hearby swear by almighty God (Allah, Odin, Buddah, Xenu, Alan Keyes or any other deity, both real or imagined) that I will never, on pain of gruesome death and agonising tourture akin to having a conversation about the merits of Gramsci with Paris Hilton, never to send Adam a message, email or bulletin typed in SMS english, or using random capitalisation; nor while there is breath in my body shall I ever try to persuade him of the merits of religion, capitalism, sobriety, France, 'celebrities ' or Sunderland football club. This is my solemn vow.

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   Situations Vacant:


George&Dragon Industries Ltd. are currently seeking to recruit a seasoned and experienced vagrant to join the busy bench outside our London offices.

At least two years experience of shouting aggressively at passersby while swigging from a plastic bottle of white cider is essential; shoes without laces would also be an advantage. Duties will also include shouting at traffic in a woolly hat and sitting in your own piss.

With a starting salary of 10p for a cup of tea and benefits including four Tesco carrier bags filled with detritus, this is an ideal opportunity for a purple-faced inarticulate individual aged 25-75 looking to expand their vagrancy career horizons.

If having read the above your first thought was "fuck off, ya fuckin' bassa", then we want to hear from you. Please send your CV along with three references from people who are your best fucking mates stood around watching an armchair burning on wasteground while drinking methelated spirits to: George&Dragon Industries Ltd. Po. Box 1871. Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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   Legal Notice:


This profile is printed on the finest magic interweb paper, the content of which remains the copyright of George&Dragon Industries Ltd. No part of this profile may be copied, printed, hyperlinked, transmitted or otherwise fucked about with, by any means known, or yet to be invented (including potato print, hieroglyphics or a Star Trek style Holodeck), by any cunt, living or yet to be born, without the prior written consent of the board of directors of George&Dragon Industries Ltd. or any sinister underworld figures I may employ to represent me in this matter. Especially no part of this profile may be copied lock, stock and barrel into the pages of the Daily Star newspaper you thieving, plagiaristic Wapping wankers. All rights reserved.

George&Dragon Industries Ltd. may sometimes (that is to say, always and without exception) sell your personal detail to every dodgy, dubious and sinister company under the sun, who will bombard you will an endless tsunami of shit between now and the day you die.

We may also permit disreputable tarmac gangs, cowboy builders and roofers to visit your home from time to time with offers to carry out totally unnecessary work in return for quite fantastical sums of money. If you would prefer not to hear from them, click: here.

*Please note that anything factually inaccurate, libellous, blasphemous, treasonous, defamatory or legally actionable in anyway, contained within this profile, was a typing error.

Details

  • Status: In a Relationship
  • Hometown: Newcastle Upon-Tyne, England.
  • Height: 6' 4"
  • Religion: Buddhist
  • Zodiac Sign: Pisces
  • Children: Someday
  • Smoke / Drink: No / Yes
  • Education: Post grad
  • Occupation: Author / Tool of capitalism.

Schools

  • Oxford University

    • Oxford, United Kingdom
    • Graduated: 1998
    • Student status: Alumni
    • Degree: Master's Degree
    • Major: History
    1994 to 1998

Companies

  • ???

    • UK
    199?-200?.

  • George&Dragon Industries Ltd.

    • Amsterdam/London/Cape Town, UK
    • Managing Director
    1998-present.

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