ultimate fraud

The Collapse of Socialism*

(*=No, not quite a thorough article about the demise of the particular political theory, but instead a blogpost about something else entirely but with the same kind of the importance and magnitude.)

During some research for my previous list-based post (thanks McSweeney’s! You filled up one very boring morning at work. And through inspiration, you helped fill up the internet with even more crap!), I found that there was a member of CBS’ KCAL 9 newsteam in California called non other then “Johnny Mountain”. I mean Johnny Mountain. It’s just so perfect, it’s almost…beautiful? A beautiful Mountain. I mean, I didn’t think Anchorman was a documentary…. but after learning this I could well be wrong.

BUT it gets better, for Johnny Mountain’s role in the KCAL Newsteam is to present the weather(!) It really doesn’t get more perfect. If that doesn’t further quantify my theory thyat America is just one big entire film, then I don’t know what does. He’s a premo newshound, and his bio on the KCAL website is some great reading: Most memorable interview? “I talk to myself”. First job “Interviewing Adam & Eve”. So, with his comedy and journalistic craft. there was only one person I wanted to give an interview to regarding the nitty gritty of deletion of my Facebook account (gasp!).

Johnny: So, why the big quitski?

Me: Well, I feel like I had just had enough of it, really. I had been trying to cutdown and that had sort of worked to a point, but I found myself going on there today with no real purpose, and I just decided on the spot that it’s time for it to go.

One big final cry for attention, huh?

Ha! It’s funny you say that! I can’t honestly really deny that it isn’t. I mean, who doesn’t not want to be missed? The whole Facebook thing is so sad, so there doesn’t exist a way for you to quit using it that isn’t sad. Maybe? I don’t know.

Yeah, maybe. I’m not really quite sure really what Facebook actually is, me being somewhat of an older gentleman and everything…

Older and wiser, John! Older and wiser!

Ha, definitely older, probably not so much wiser. What’s this new thing I hear about now? Twitter? I don’t know… I thought the information age would bring people together more so they could say end up saying more to each other, not less! Not just one line! A hundred letters is it? I mean, jeez! You wanna bring back CB radio-that’ll get people talking properly to each other!

I agree. I miss the days of Pen Pals.

Yeah, I know what you mean there, Rob. But let’s get back to the questions. The Facebook quit thing does really sound to me like a big cop out on your behalf.

Oh, 100% a cop out, I agree. It’s not even as though I would have to start all over again if I were to go back on there. Literally, I can go back to it anytime and be using it again as if the whole termination never happened. It’s still there, just hanging in suspended animation.

Will you go back to it?

Again, 100% cop out, Johnny! Of course I will! Maybe when I’ve got a load more friends, I’ll go back to it. When I’ve got some photos of me doing things that I know will make people green with envy, then I’ll go more or less straight back on there, post the photos and then feel pretty pleased with myself.

So if you’re going back on there, this whole exercise here is pointless, isn’t it? It sounds to me you just got sad one day because no one was talking to you?

Whoa! Getting pretty deep there, Johnny! But I concede you could be right to a degree. But there’s this whole other side I hated to it as well! Don’t make me out to be some sort of social retard!

Sorry- you’re friends with me now: that’s gotta count for something!

It does. Quitting Facebook and being interviewed by Johnny Mountain on the same day? I haven’t been this happy since I queued up at midnight to get that Harry Potter book.

There ya go! Go on with what you were saying before.

Oh, yeah: the whole other side. I had friends on there, really good friends, but then I had these people on there whose profiles I looked at quite regularly to a worrying extent. They weren’t really friends per se, but were just people I knew spuriously, casually or whatever and who now only exist to me via this bad connotation I have with them. Like, the friend who I just simply lost contact with, or the girl I maybe sort of liked briefly at one time. I would look at their profiles and wallow in regurgitated horrible emotions.

You took it way too seriously.

You’re telling me! But no more. I’m a better man now! With the time to write really long blogposts! And I can write that letter to Vice magazine about them getting to do a page about sports.

List-o-mania: FIVE TOWNS IN ENGLAND THAT COULD QUITE EASILY PASS AS NAMES OF NEWS ANCHORS IN AMERICA

1: Ottery St. Mary

2: Buckland Filleigh

3: Symmonds Yat

4: Chudley St. Knighton

5: Western Lullingfields

My Memories of MJ

The King of Pop has relinquished his crown, at least on this mortal plain anyway, I think to Lady GaGa now- who or whatever she is. A tragic loss of course, but I am pleased to say I actually met Michael as this photo shows:

Ah, good times! Looking at this picture, I know what you’re thinking; the King of Pop is stood in front of you… and you’re more concerned with shaking some other guy’s (dismembered) hand?? Well, you’ll be interested to know that “that hand” belonged to none other then the guy off of YouTube who could play the flute with his nose! I was genuinely starstruck- both by the Nose-Flute guy, and by MJ. Michael & I did talk later- I asked him if he knew of any good nose plastic surgeons, and I also made a crack about not having any spoons in his house because of Uri Geller. He didn’t get it.

It was a weird night that night- called “The Night of Kings Benefit Dinner 2008”. Let me tell you, the function room of Heathrow Terminal 3’s Holiday Inn was full to the brim with selected “Kings” from different walks of life. In this photo alone you can see the “King” of Looking Intelligent In Photos standing behind me, the “King” of Wearing Inappropriately Coloured Suits to a Formal Dinner over there to the right of the photo and of course captured here is probably biggest “King” of all- “King” of Snazzy Bowties on the left! Oh and Michael Jackson.

(…a sad loss to the world, genuinely yes. I can remember getting the Bad album on cassette for Christmas probably when I was around 4 or 5, and then dancing to it how I thought Michael Jackson did on Christmas morning)

Just saw the trailer for Cold Souls, and boy let me tell you!

…let me tell you how I would like these quirky, existential, modern, po-mo films that seem to be released every week now erased from my mind/investigated by existential detectives/sent on a trip to India to find their father/imprisoned inside of a self-reflexive world which is actually inside of Ralph Macchio.

Getting off the the ol' Horse

Second day, free of Facebook! God, I totally know how Keith Richards and Jimmy Page felt in the late 70s/early 80s. I’m trying to cut back on using “the old brown” because it wasn’t doing me any favours emotionally… And I dare say I barely miss it. I’m not dying to go on there, but it’s weird not having it part of my “browsing habit”, you know? If I have a spare 5 minutes before, it would mean a quick dip into the murky paddling pool of sociability. But now… Whoa! It feels so. much. better. And also that the internet is a bit smaller.

I guess it’s comparable to when smokers give up, where they don’t miss the nicotine as such, just more then feeling of smoking and having a fag in your hand. It’s a lot like giving up smoking.

In South Africa, I found this newspaper called…

The Mail AND Guardian. W-e-i-r-d? Imagine if there were some sort of merger between the two most diametrically opposed forces probably ever. What a weird hybrid that would be…It would be serious “crossing-the-steams-in-Ghostbusters” black magic if happened. Would it probably would create the greatest newspaper of all time? Yes, it would; but only because it would mean Daily Hate Mail would no longer exist.

What makes it all the more better is that this “Mail and Guardian” is in South Africa, a country that is/was only known for keeping things apart! And yet there they are with the Mail and Guardian together.  The end of apartheid happened, both racially and media-ally(?)

Stuck in Gear

The TV channel Dave is having a bad day- I just watched one repeat of an of Top Gear and then now straight afterwards they’re showing the exact same episode. Again.

Today is up there in the top twenty countdown of The Worst Days of My Life

Power & Style

I’m far from condoning the man, but whenever I hear his name I always laugh because to me it sounds like it could almost be “Ahma-dinner-jacket”