Andrew Reid: Curb Your Enthusiasm

A couple of years ago, Sam was looking for atmospheric music to acompany a film called Rope.

Fast forward to last week and I was looking for famous short stories on Wikipedia and came across one named An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

It’s about a man being hung in the wild west, and while the noose is put around his neck he hears a loud clanging noise, louder and louder. Then he realises it’s just the ticking of his watch. Next we get a flash back of how he got on the blocks in the first place - he talks to a man about wanting to blow up a bridge and winning his battle against an opposition force. However it’s later revealed that the soilder he spoke to regarding the bridge plot was actually a member of the opposition force, who had duped him into a trap, resulting in his capture and subsequent hanging.

And so as the soldiers drop him down, the rope breaks and he falls into the river! Further and further away he swims, untying the noose around his neck. His senses are super-human, he sees every tree leaf and every blade of grass even though he’s whirling around in the river. He reaches the edge and runs through a never ending forest, he feels dizzy and sick, and after 20 miles he eventually reaches his home town, he sees his house where his beautiful wife and children are waiting at the door to greet him. However just as he approaches he feels a seering pain and sees a flash of light. Everything goes quiet.

It’s revealed he imagined the whole escape - in-between the soilder dropping him down and the rope breaking his neck.

The first coincidence is the role of the rope in this film. In the film we wrote, a rope connected to the ankles of our characters represented a path through life - the more twists and turns the path takes, so the less rope the character will have left at the end, coming up short against a doorway in a field which leads to the afterlife.

The second coincidence is that An Occurrence At Owl bridge is being read in one of our Rope film audio clips from two years ago, as an audio-book narrated by Vincent Price.

So tonight I finally happened to link them together - my recent discovery of this great story on Wikipedia, completely unrelated to our previous discovery of the audio clips.

The story seems to have a big impact on many people, not least the director of Donnie Darko who says he based his story on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. That would explain it’s muddled time-line.

When the jet plane engine falls through Donnie’s roof at the start of the film Donnie has been mysteriously summoned by Frank The Rabbit, who he meets on a golf course after sleepwalking his way there in the middle of the night. When the jet engine falls through his roof at the end of the film, the dream is broken and Donnie is killed by the falling jet engine, a stake of wood from the roof piercing his torso.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was written in 1890, it has more than just the ‘dream sequence’ timeline, copied countless times since. It’s a classic.

At the weekend (which was actually quite productive) a friend of mine stumbled on some interesting photos while looking for a gym on Google. Well, a gym on the street. On Google. Do you follow dumb dumb?

The photos were taken last summer, just short of a year ago. They were of the inside of an abandoned college campus. It’s probably the most atmospheric and down-right spooky place I’ve ever broken into. If the upper class theatrical mind of Raef from the Apprentice got hold of this, he’d be making toilet paper commercials instead of ones for handkerchiefs.

We spent about 3 hours in the building, my friend enjoying the nostalgia of setting foot into his old college again, while I scared myself shitless by exploring dark corridors and spiral staircases. I took photos with the objective of using the location for a film set.

The film idea is about the (apparently) last man to survive after an apocolpyse (of which absolutely nothing is revealed, the film opening with a simple statement on screen). We see how this man behaves in his solitary enviornment (in what is probably closest in theme to I Am Legend) and then the mind games start - not least for you, the poor viewer.

A few weekends ago I went to see Vertigo with my good friend Alex and it really is inspiring. Alfred Hitchcock is an expert on pressing the right buttons - such is the link between his vision and your mindset, your mind gets manipulated so expertly you leave the film feeling dizzy.

Secondly, the atmosphere, sound and the Dali drawn animated sections are so mind bendingly immersive you lose any sense of reality, the only thing which breaks the illusion is your peripheral vision - which in the case of a few weekends ago was pretty nigh on perfect. The old theatre in Stockport, complete with huge red curtains, ice cream sellers and a floor to ceiling height so huge, that sitting in the circle above the stalls literally gave me vertigo.

What else has been good about this weekend? It was good to see Lewis Hamilton more genuine in victory than his choice of girlfriend would imply, judging from her ‘rock star’ grid interview. In celebrating his win at Monaco he slapped hands with and hugged the people who matter - his brother, dad and the McLaren team. Interestingly he didn’t even glance at his celebrity entourage, despite desperate attempts by P Diddy or whatever the fuck his name is now to get involved with the hand slapping. Needless to say he didn’t even get an acknoeldgement from Lewis Hamilton who preferred instead to slap hands with his mechanics. A few rows back his revolting (on the surface) girlfriend in purple frock tried to get as close as she could but couldn’t get closer than 2 people behind the Huff Diddy-do.

It was wonderful to see.

The only dark tinge to the fairy tale was the unfortunate accident afflicting 4th place Adrian Sutil in the dying minutes of the race - shunted up the arse by an out of control Kimi Raikkonen. The mightiest team in F1, Ferrari, bringing the battling Force India drivers dream race to a terrible end was hard to take. A very bitter pill, a cruel end to the race for the driver of the day, Adrian Sutil.

On Saturday The Eurovision song contest was used to get some creative juices flowing. The beer also helped but it was the mixture of the mute Eurovision and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon which really made a difference to my mood. It was a lot more enjoyable than the prospect of a night out in a noisy bar full of annoying people with an entourage.

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the Internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.

Talking and communicating is one of the last intimate thing humans have left and now they’re planning to record it all on a central database, its an idea more sickening, demoralising and soul destroying than the actual reality of such a system.

I have to wonder where we’ll end up, unless we have an epiphany of light and a collective urge to stop and get off the mad spiral into insanity that is the modern world. I don’t think any of us have totally grasped just how serious a threat we’ve created. Terrorists? Pah.

Once laws like this are passed, it becomes very difficult for subsequent governments to justify dropping them. It’s as if we’ve become ruled by robots built to protect us, but like in I, Robot they end up harming us. For example the actions of the police are increasingly nonsensical and inhumane.

Sam recently got approached by a policeman suspicious that he was eating a burger and about to sit down near the entrance to Piccadilly train station. I kid you not. Understandably irritated at being targeted like a security threat and questioned as to his intent (I’m not making this up) he replied to the question of where he was going to eat his burger with the well used phrase “Any port in a storm”. The policeman didn’t understand the phrase, and took offence. (I’m still not making this up). An argument between Sam and the police then escalated until his friend had to step in to diffuse things.

On Saturday I was in Subway after a night out with a mate, I bought a sandwich and they had all the chairs stacked up. I put my sandwich on the window ledge eating area by the door while waiting for my mate to order his and was astonished to be told off by a security guard who said I was “not allowed” to put my sandwich on the ledge as the store was in “take away only” mode. He then babbled a beeping noise and his lights flashed. I jest of course but he certainly wasn’t joking when he glared at me saying “I won’t tell you again”. I then leaned over, pressing my drunken face up against his personal-space-zone and I vaguely remember uttering in a deadly monotone that “People who place their sandwiches on the ledge should be lined up and shot. It’s the worst of crimes, I think you doin a brilliant and worthy job, keep it up”. I was then asked to leave. 

The council meanwhile are happy to let 200,000 football hooligans into Manchester to watch television, but when it comes to the actual citizens of Manchester’s ability to celebrate (not that I would) Manchester United’s winning of the Premiership they huff and puff and say “oh we had an awful lot of problems with the Rangers fans last Wednesday so I’m afraid its going to have to be called off”.

Meanwhile the sour Southern media use the pictures of rioting on Piccadilly gardens and gleefully portray Manchester as some kind of football hooligan backwater unworthy of a place in modern Britain. Funny they haven’t mentioned the fact that Manchester United beat Chelsea to the Premiership title.

With both the Big Brother Orwellian society we’re trapping ourselves in and the severe lack of logic applied to the well-being of communities and the ethical treatment of those citizens who make up said community, I’m afraid the world is not going to be a very nice place to live in for the future. More care and attention is lavished on businesses - basically systematic money making robots - than actual human beings. I often find myself woken in the morning by an industrial size leaf blower cleaning cigarette butts from the pavement outside the offices adjacent to my flat, so today I wrote an email to The Firm and received a reply back saying the “noise was well within council guideline times of 7.30am to 6pm”.

Maybe I should complain to the council then, though I expect with the new Internet Spying Database they’d already have a blind copy of my email anyway so I needn’t bother with the endeavour. 

When I send an email or speak to a friend I expect the recipient of that communication to be the intended people and not a shady government database. If you don’t have the privacy to communicate then you have no privacy in your life full stop. They may as well go and put cameras in my bedroom, wired up to a central government ‘processing centre’.

Why don’t they just pluck out of brains with a big stick and wire us up to the national grid? It’d be cheaper and more achievable.

Actually I will save them the effort and a few billion pounds of OUR money. From now on I’ll simply copy my emails and texts to tw@homeoffice.gov.uk for his bedtime reading pleasure. While I’m at it why not start ringing the council with my plans for the weekend. Party at my house…bring council tax inspectors!

I was going to send a letter to Janie in Australia but maybe the police would like to read it first, to check that I’m not sending any bad vibes out about the UK and it’s Orwellian society.

I could start a big hoax with my friends. We’d pretend to be terrorists and mention the words ‘bomb’, ‘terror’, ‘aeroplane’ and ‘benefits’ over and over again in emails to each other. Then when the police called round with their big guns I’d put up balloons and shout ’surprise! - we’re white!’, and we’d all socialise together. The whole thing would be filmed and put on YouTube and the photos uploaded to Facebook, and we could watch Big Brother on the tele. That would be the height of irony.

I am wondering if the emails recorded include those of the security services and government? I hope they’re careful about sending access passwords via text messages you never know where it might end up. 

Far from having an internet infrastructure the envy of the world, the red tape required by the ISPs to implement such an audacious spying system would cripple the very concept of what the internet is about. It’d also quadruple prices and halve speeds. 

The more I think about it the sicker I get. Can you imagine knowing that your entire life would be recorded on a government computer?

Big brother is watching you and big brother is an absolute twat face.

Compared to this lot the terrorist are freedom fighters here to set us free. You know, if the plan for the database doesn’t go through it would be because of concern about upsetting the privacy of big businesses and leaving private business communications open to computer hackers, threatening our economy. And you think the Home Office cares about actual people?

We seemed to have survived quite well for the past 200,000 years without the treat of ‘terrorism’. Don’t the governments of the western world understand that they have taken a tiny match and poured gasoline on it and added a few straw bales for good measure?

Well Gordon Brown and friends - you can store this sentence on your fucking Windows 95 laptop:

I AM BEGINNING TO APPRICIATE THE TERRORIST’S POINT OF VIEW

The west is the biggest hypocrite, a huge bully and is sending the world into a state of tyranny. Our creature comforts are all very well, our creativity and technical advancements should all be valued - but if we think we’re free we have another thing coming. 

Have you noticed the break down of discipline lately? It’s as if everyone rich or poor has the rebellious spirit of Che Guevara but a shameless lack of grace to go with it (they also lack a cause).

For instance, while making the Doritos advert we chose to shoot a scene outside the Spar supermarket in the Northern Quarter of Manchester, a group of well-to-do 20 somethings walked in front of our camera and stood there, waiting till their friend had done in the Spar.

They could stand anywhere outside the supermarket why did they have to stand right in out shot, making us wait for them to move?We waited a bit and Laura then politely told them what we were trying to do and asked them to stand out of the way of the camera for a moment.

They brushed the request off like a flick of dirt from their trendy clothing or dandruff from their hip haircuts. Why? Did they want to be in a film? Did they want to claim the street as their own, was it a territorial thing? Did they not respect us because they thought they were more important than us? Or did the just not like being told what to do, even if the request made no difference to their day?

Either way they just ended up looking like pricks.

Che Guevara never looked like a fool. He was an intelligent rebel, who used his freedom to unlock the freedom of others. Most young people in Britain abuse their freedom as some kind of fashion item.

Examples are aplenty. A girl named Emma wanted to come and see the spare room of my flat last week so we arranged a time. I gave her my address and phone number and without further a-do she suddenly assumed the flat had giant metal gates outside it, was located near Trof bar and would go there to wait for me without letting me know her amazing plan. She never even gave me her number in case I needed to get in touch, so I had no option but to pace up and down my living room 7 blocks away wondering why she was wasting my time by not turning up. She hadn’t bothered to take my number with her - and who knows why she thought the flat was the one she was stood outside of. Maybe she couldn’t read the address, but that was unlikely because she works as an English Literature teacher.

So we rearranged it for a day later but just 2 hours before she was due to meet me at my flat she said she couldn’t make it as she had a meeting at school.

So she wanted to rearrange the viewing yet again and this time I said I’d meet her opposite Trof bar. On the morning of the day we were due to meet she messaged me her mobile number on Facebook and said “see you later”. The time came and I combined my Bob Dylan t-shirt printing trip with standing outside Trof bar at the designated point in space and time. She was nowhere to be seen so after 10 minutes I rang her but there was no answer. I simply gave up and walked back to the flat and rang her again (no answer). She hasn’t even apologised or bothered to explain why she let me down for a 3rd time.

She’s in her early 20’s with a trendy haircut and a bit too much make-up - and the future of your kids are in her hands. If she can’t even discipline herself to keep an appointment to view a flat how is she going to discipline a classroom full of disadvantaged inner city school kids? 

People like this hate to have any negative attributes tagged to them alongside their trendy haircuts, but let me oblige. Emma is selfish, unprofessional, uncaring, unintelligent and ungraceful. She will never get far beyond our crippled and cynical education system if she treats people in the same way as she treated me over that flat viewing, and unlike most of the spineless scene-kids who exist in this burnt out shell we call ’society’ today, I am not afraid to speak out and tell her what I think. Her inbox on Facebook has a turd sitting in it right this moment. 

What kind of stakes are high enough to start the dark ruminations deep in the heart of the criminal underworld where those who are untouchable carry out the dark operations orchestrated by powerful unknowns, for unknown reasons?

Like a klaxon going off in the middle of the night, the situation has alerted me to it’s presence in the darkness and its impossible not to notice it, although the figure is shadowy and threatening. Who is so powerful that they can use the MI5 like puppets on strings, and why do they want to meddle with Formula One? Which one group is linked to governments and huge corporations around Europe as well as MI5?

Is it the car manufacturers? How much money is at stake? What don’t we know about?

Usually when you have a power struggle you don’t go to the extent of involving the MI5 and agents with call girl wives operating undercover with a bra-cam. (Must be an almighty power struggle).

It seems the F1 sex scandal has more layers to be peeled off it than a Siberian prostitute.

Yes the wife of an MI5 officer was one of the ‘nazi’ prostitutes. When it was revealed to the MI5 the agent was promptly sacked as such a choice of career by his wife would have exposed him to blackmail attempts, and compromised the security of the organisation. Having a wife who routinely shags high ranking members of the criminal fraternity is not a good idea for an MI5 agent.

Where Mosley is concerned it was the MI5 itself - the “high level sources” (sauces?) which tipped him off about the fact that the scandal was ’set up’ by “persons or groups unknown”. The wife was in on it. Now it turns out just 3 weeks before the meeting of the FIA senate which will decide Mosley’s future as the boss of world motorsport, Max himself has written to the members of the senate in a desperate attempt to save his job. In doing so he’s (unwittingly or not) revealed something else very interesting.

He says that negotiations are underway to decide the next Concorde Agreement which will govern the sport for the next 100 years, the document by which F1 is governed. Bernie Ecclestone along with the new business investment partners involved in F1 wanted to reduce their liability to tax. Is that all? Not very ambitious for Bernie is it?

Oh… along with a few other “things”. The commercial rights holders (comprising Bernie and a 3rd party investment group which also own MotoGP) told the FIA that “by the way” they also want control of the sporting and technical regulations and the ability to sell the sport to anyone we like.

Effectively they want full control and ownership of F1.

This is surprising because Bernie Ecclestone is still the main front man of the Formula One Commercial Rights holding body. A close friend and business partner of Max Mosley for over 25 years it’s hard to see why Bernie would be negotiating a ploy to oust his closest friend Max and the FIA from the sport altogether especially considering the good work on safety and the recent raft of technical regulations due to improve the sport in 2009. They’ve worked together ruling F1 hand in glove for the best part of 2 decades.

All this leaves open some tantalising possible truths. 

1) Is Bernie going mad or is he plotting? At a recent team principals meeting he urged the bosses of each F1 team to ask Mosley to step down. When they couldn’t reach an unanimous opinion Bernie stormed out and the incident was widely reported in the newspapers. Why would he do this? In short, it all seems a bit funny to me. And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg as far as I’m concerned.

Could this be the greatest Bernie plot of all? Fresh from manipulating the car manufacturers into ceding all control of F1 to the Ecclestone empire, his next act - the end game (for Bernie is in his 70’s) - is spectacular. This one is about 100 years of F1 control and ownership. Could the whole sex scandal have been staged by Bernie to get exactly what he wanted out of the ‘100 years’ negotiations currently going on? Max might even be in on it - maybe there is more than meets the eye to what kind of outcome to the negotiations Max and Bernie want. Maybe they are fighting on the same side for the same things.

2) Max maintains that the orgy was a set up - a trap. So who did the setting up part, and why? I don’t know. If Bernie had nothing to do with the set up, he could still be doing another kind of ploy. I think what is happening now is that Bernie is actually trying to help his friend - playing along with Max’s game, bluffing and double bluffing their way through negotiations at a time when Max faces a crucial vote on his job. He’s in on Max’s revelations about the “huge destabalizing effects on the FIA during sensitive negotiations” - he allows them to hold water against the backdrop of staged negotiations. He’s allowed Max to set the (false) stakes so high “that the whole future of the FIA’s involvement in F1 would be threatened”. It all echos of another delicious Max and Bernie ploy to get what they want - to have Max keep his job and to have Bernie rattle a few cages.

Bernie has come to the rescue after all.

3) The MI5’s role in this, I just don’t understand. It speaks of a darker plot. Surely the wife of a top MI5 official does not have the official job title of high class prostitute? It surely cannot be a coincidence that the prostitute just happened to be the wife of a MI5 agent, and that is how the MI5 found out about the reasons for the plot and that it were a big set up? The prostitute-cum-wife told them? Give me a break.

The MI5 are involved with fighting ‘terrorism’ and some of the most powerful criminals in the world. Why get involved in shaming the boss of motorsport unless a situation arose involving powerful corporations, powerful world figures or even the British government, billions of pounds or a cover-up of major proportions - maybe something which cannot be revealed such is the drama, figures and extent of what has happened below ground. It’s all the more strange - because Max was informed himself about the possibility that he was set up, by the MI5 themselves.

4) Another scenario: maybe the car manufacturers are secretly aligned with the 3rd party investment group who bought Bernie Ecclestone’s shares in the commercial rights holding body - and they have cocked up their plot. They wanted to destabilise the enemy - the FIA - at a crucial time in order to dramatically wrestle out of Bernie and Max’s hands full control over the sport’s commercial rights, even eventually ousting Bernie himself from the sport. But the plan is slowly unravelling like a the thread of a prostitute’s clothing, and like her naked nipples the truth is starting to peek through rudely.

Our Doritos Advert - “Spectacular”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmppVrK3H4A 

I’m not as good at plotting as Bernie Ecclestone. Sally came up with the idea of doing an American Beauty parody, and came up with the idea of doing the rose petal scene with doritos instead of petals. I wanted a skinny naked blonde girl to stretch seductivly on a bed while I dropped doritos on her. Alas in the end it turned out to be me naked on a bed having sharp edges tasty snacks lobbed at my eyes by two girls. Judging from the competition we could have entered a decaying toad and still won (why do people think they’re talented when they’re blatantly not?) but it will be a real ball ache if we do because the prize money is twenty grand thus a spectacular 3 way fight will ensure that we violently scratch each other’s eyes out until we get our hands on it. In fact, doing the video was so much fun I’d happily let Sally and Laura have the prize money they deserve. As long as I don’t need to have doritos thrown at my head again.

The UEFA cup final was played in Manchester last night attracting a record crowd of 200,000 fans to the city centre.

I don’t dislike football I just think it has a major flaw in that it attracts idiots. It’s seen in schools as being very masculine so from an early age this is the sport which is aggressive and testosterone driven - much more so than, say, Tennis. The professional player’s don’t help with their bling and tacky wives. But fatally, because it’s a team sport with nucleuses based on towns and cities football gives thugs an allegiance to a ’side’ and the strength in numbers give them the mandate to do whatever they like. Its unfortunate that such a great sport has been chosen by a minority of hardcore idiots, and abused. But that’s the way it is.

So what about exhibit A) the UEFA cup final in Manchester on Wednesday? Well first of all it wasn’t exactly “international”. Some tribal Scottish fans arrived and a few from Russia. Secondly it wasn’t sporting - it was a big piss up in a city centre where a minority caused riots and the majority left the city looking like it had been invaded by zombies. Thirdly it wasn’t an event. I repeat - it was just a big piss up involving two of the heaviest drinking nations in the world, Scotland & Russia staged in the 3rd heaviest drinking nation in the world England. Combined with tribal chants, trouble makers and testosterone is the perfect recipe for disaster.

My patience with football is on the wane. I enjoy the game, and I enjoy the atmosphere and I enjoy the camaraderie between fans. But time and again my theory of football as an idiot magnet has been proved correct. The idiots latch onto it in their tiny minorities but stir things up to such an extent it provokes even the more level headed fans.

Disappointing it may be I am not particularly disheartened that England are not in the European Championships this year. I won’t go and take it out on a parked car by smashing its windows in. If you are the kind of person who travels all the way from Glasgow to watch a football match on a TV outside in the sun and then proceed to destroy and urinate on the host city when the TV breaks down 15 minutes into the game, you clearly didn’t come for the football. There were buses taking people to an alternative big screen fan zone near the stadium which was showing the game on a large TV. There were 2 other fan zones in the city centre and countless sports bars.

I also don’t understand the significance of climbing on statues and wrapping a tacky blue Rangers scarf around it’s head. The significance of that behaviour in the context of football as a sport is lost on me. It’s just primitive territorial pissings which shows a lack of respect for Manchester and a will to intimidate everyone who isn’t a violent Glaswegian Scottish football fan with a desire to urinate on everything around them.

Here is a tip for football hooligans everywhere - to better enjoy the game don’t drink from your arrival at 7AM in the morning when the match kicks of at 7.45PM - you’ll miss it. I don’t understand the link between enjoying the football and pummeling your brain and body into primitive submission for 12 hours. They must surely be here to get drunk rather than follow their football club, a football club which is ashamed to have fans like them. Personally I’m ashamed to even be a member of this nation when the mention of our drinking is brought up - it’s high to an embarrassing degree and I don’t see why enjoyment has suddenly become synonymous with binge drinking. I enjoy a beer every single day with my dinner. I enjoy a night out and enjoy getting drunk at weekends but why take it to extremes and do it from 7AM in the morning?

The great majority of Rangers fans of course were here for the football, even if the sheer number of them left the city looking like a dump.

But Manchester does not welcome the people who have other agendas.

After surveying the scenes in the city centre today Manchester has returned to the civilised, thriving and buzzing melting pot as usual and that’s very nice to see. I feel part of a team, part of an allegiance to Manchester city - who needs football? 

I am gutted at the Earthquake in China. Its probably the greatest loss of life I’ve ever witnessed. One mother arrived at the scene of a flattened school with two pillows. These, she said, were in case her child was brought out of the rubble alive.

What makes it even worse is that due to the one child per family policy in China people have unfortunately lost their only child. The news coverage of the tragedy has concentrated on the collapsed colleges and schools, but the scale of the disaster is unimaginable. Street after street has crumbled into the dust.

Meanwhile in England a shit storm has occurred over a £120 tax rebate and a computer game. It’s not quite the same is it?

The tax situation is politics at it’s finest - the chancellor cocked up the budget and stole 200 quid from poor people. Then they admitted their mistake and everybody accused them of doing a u-turn. Then they came up with the goods and gave £120 to everyone who earns under £40,000. So that people on, say, £30,000 now have the £120 stolen from the poor people and the poor people have got only half their money back. But does it really matter and does anyone care?

The computer game causing a stir is Grand Theft Auto 4 - its as violent as a movie, almost as realistic photographically and not just that - when a murder occurs in a film it’s not your hands doing the imaginary killing while in Grand Theft Auto 4 - it’s your freedom of choice and your hands doing the fantasy killing.

I don’t know about you but I don’t feel as sorry for the aliens I killed in Space Invaders as I do for the people killed in China by the earthquake or the people drowned in Burma thanks to the cyclone. It seems to me there are areas in the world with real problems, not imaginary like the ones we have.

The biggest real problem the world has is the culture of the west.

Of course, Grand Theft Auto 4 is a technical masterpiece and the best & most accomplished game ever created. But bit by bit we’re sleep walking into a fantasy lead gently by the hand by idiots.

Like Alice in Wonderland we’re disappearing down a rabbit hole of wealth, imaginary dramas and fame. Its not just one thing which contributes, its pretty much everything new.

For example the press has put so much coverage and negativity toward the tax fuck up that the government has had to go round on the back of a lorry throwing £5 notes at people. This while in the middle of one of the worse economic crisis the western world has ever encountered.

We live in a world of fantasy money - a credit card here, a mortgage there, which enables us to temporarily aspire to be richer than we actually are. When the 0% interest deals run out the shit hits the fan.

Rather than tackling the real problems of the world, like how to build on earthquake prone earth while avoiding huge disasters when a quake hits, or creating a more stable world economy, or solving global warming and poverty, or curing the disease of money and consumerism in the young, or curing cancer or fixing the aids epidemic in Africa, we seem very happy to put all our efforts into fantasies.

Even the government is so eager to engineer the fantasy which the press portrays them with, they end up making stupid decisions just to appease people and to avoid losing votes. Fantasy breeds yet more fantasy and we take out eye so far off the ball of what’s important, we cease to be human any more.

We’re so idiotic in the west that maybe we ARE influenced by modern technology like Grand Theft Auto 4. Maybe if you were brought up in this fantasy land from a young age, you’d feel that nicking a car and running it’s owner over would seem pretty trivial.

Brought up in a culture of credit cards, shopping, TV, sophisticated video games, mobile phones and all this new technology maybe we should keep a close eye on our kids to make sure they see what happens in the rest of the world and to make sure they retain a grain of reality in their increasingly trivialised and pampered existence.

Tonight I went to the Cornerhouse with Kristina to watch the new documentary about Joy Division.

The film opens with a desolate Manchester after the industrial revolution had left the city an exhausted hollowed out shell of it’s former powerful self. The war, where most of the city was destroyed completely also played it’s part. But something frightening had happened during the industrial revolution, where people had somehow not become human any more. In the 1970’s people were living in a strange science fiction like world, holed up in awful working conditions and shackled as slaves surrounded by cold steel, the rise of the corporations and industries, stale bricks and mortar.

The quote at the start of the film says it all. It says that the things that bring us the thrill of glory, heightened ambition, and the white heat of technology are the same things which will eventually destroy us. This is apt for Ian Curtis, but also for humanity.

We’re a victim of our own success - we’ve built this incredible modern society, where everything is shiny, high tech and gloriously soaring into the sky. But we’ve forgotten quite how mere humans are going live in this amazing environment. There is something cruel and unforgiving about what we’re creating. Its like insanity has taken hold of the world, much in the same way epilepsy brought Ian Curtis closer to the end. On stage he looked like he was possessed by 10 thousand volts of electricity, flailing out of control into oblivion, just like the modern world.

The irony of the final Joy Division album named Closer, featuring a grave on it’s cover, was not lost on the band members - who were all featured in the film telling their part of the Joy Division story. They seemed unusually free of emotion or sadness when speaking about the aftermath of Ian Curtis committing suicide. But they don’t lack respect or love. They’re just tough and shamelessly ambitious. Tough, because they’ve from Manchester - a city which was the genesis of a scary new world, where humanity disappears down a rabbit hole to hell.

Sometimes I walk around this wonderful city, and I feel the howl of the industrial revolution in the dead of night, in the cold breeze along concrete and bitterly cold walls. It’s not a human spirit, it’s something new. Something alive.

Joy Division somehow contain the seeds of this horrifying new spirit in their music. Ian Curtis sang about human suffering - he was obsessed by the dark and serious things in life - because let’s face it they are thrilling.

Only those who have experienced hardship or loss can experience this music at it’s full force. It’s a warning, a siren, a beautiful accomplice to guide you through the spirit world. Its Joy Division.

The Apprentice - the one with the birthday cards, featured some awful ideas. What better way to help the environment than encouraging people to chop down yet more trees to create greeting cards urging people to be green? That was a bad idea, even if the paper was recycled I don’t see how a post office van is environmentally friendly. But if that wasn’t bad enough, the actually business acumen of the idea was an even greater laughing stock! Who would actually buy such a card, with a horrible lecturing tone delivering some kind of sermon to the unfortunate recipient, asking them to turn their lights off? Though Sir Alan’s idea in the boardroom wasn’t much better. 

“Why not have bereavement cards for people who’s 11 year old kid had been shot in the head by a hoodie? Why not have a card for your gran who’d been hospitalised by being battered in the street by a criminal? These are the things we’re interested in right now!”, he berated.

Kevin was a disaster. A small man who let’s everyone know he had his first house by 20, his first Porsche by 23 and who’s ambition is to drive a Ferrari. It goes without saying that his dick is somewhat smaller than his ego. This was the first time we saw the true test of Kevin - previously he hadn’t registered as being an idiot. But oh dear my radar didn’t half bleep loudly this time. First mistake was doing a sales pitch to Clintons cards, basically suggesting to them that if they didn’t stump up the cash they were ‘enemy’s of the environment’. He proceeded that outrageous comment with a lot of finger pointing. Hardly charming!

The man from Tesco was so clever he could probably take over the Earth while nobody knew about his destruction of several solar systems in Andromeda Nebula. While quite rightly dismissing the first team on the basis that their Singles’ (or is it Singles, or perhaps Single’s?) celebration card’s were at once crap, at best competing with one of the biggest most established card selling scams in western civilisation, the dreaded Valentines Day, and in conclusion single people didn’t really need to celebrate being single any more than a normal human celebrates being able to move his head from side to side.

But when it came to the environmentally ’friendly’ (in the loosest possible sense of both words) he ordered a grand total of 6000 to save the face of the mighty beast Tesco, figuring that it would be a bit much to risk a damaged reputation on national TV for the sake of 6000 bits of tree pulp. But for poor Kevin it wasn’t quite enough to beat the 19,000 Singles’s’s’s cards bought by Celebrations.

So celebrate being green at Tesco - and buy their wood pulp as they continue their take over of the world in general. And if a small man pulls up outside in a Vauxhall Nova to start his nightshift, he’s probably Kevin from The Apprentice.

Blondes. They certainly have more fun. But more on Boris Johnson in a minute. Though the potential flat mates I’ve seen so far have mostly all been very nice, a potential flat mate came to view my flat recently and she brought with her a friend, who was blonde. They had just got off the train at Victoria, and wished to know the location of the flat.

Firstly - it’s annoying when people don’t use a map. It’s quite simple, just put my address into Google and off you go. Or even use a good old A to Z. So I picked up the phone and began speaking, and it soon became apparent that she hadn’t even bothered to know my address, and she didn’t know Manchester but she had a friend with her who did. So she passed me onto her blonde friend and I relished the task of guiding them from nearby Victoria station, as it would be easy.

Not so.

The first instruction took some hammering home I must admit. But it really was quite simple. There is a road with a tram line on it which goes straight of Victoria toward it’s first stop Shudehill. “Walk up the road with the tram lines on it until you see Shudehill station then turn left after that”.

“OH!” she exclaimed. “I know where were that is…Church Street.”

No. Church Street was about 5 blocks away in a totally different direction to my flat. Why was she making this stuff up? Why in the whole of the city centre would she assume my flat was on Church Street? Why wasn’t she listening? I didn’t even mention Church Street or the Church Street area, or anything to do with getting anywhere near Church Street. So in order for them to be in the right place I repeated my instruction again. “Just walk up past the tram lines to the next stop, then turn left”. I heard some bumbling, but it was clear that if she was listening, it wasn’t going in.

So over and over again we went over the same instructions, and as they plodded up the road with the tram lines on it I got a running commentary accompanied by gusts of wind. They still hadn’t grasped however that they would turn left after the tram stop - which is on the corner of two roads. Two big roads. Because they called me back in a few minutes. “Turn left” I said. There was also a huge bus stop on the left. I said “walk past it and keep going”.

Yet more questions were fired back which had nothing to do with where they actually were. “Oh we head round past the Printworks and Arndale?”

I felt like just saying LOOK JUST FUCKING LISTEN TO ME, STOP REELING OFF UNRELATED PLACES THAT YOU KNOW AND TURN LEFT AT SHUDEHILL TRAM STOP!!”

They asked me to meet them outside instead, but I had to be tidying up the kitchen. I told them it was easy to find if they followed my directions. “Straight on over at Great Ancoats street, then first left” I said. “OK” she said. I also pointed out that there was a huge hotel on the right, a huge CIS tower on the left and a huge orange wooden tower block with a gleaming swimming pool on the roof opposite my flat - all in viewing distance from where they were actually stood at the tram stop. Yet still it all seemed a lot of effort because they phoned me back to say they were lost. They didn’t know whether to “turn right or left” at Great Ancoats street. “Straight on” I said.

And then I’m afraid I lost the will to live, and went silent.

They were muttering into the phone but I was no longer listening. I was off in a distance place, a ghostly spectre of my former self. I could hear the wind gusting through the phone as my brain began bouncing the baseball up against my skull wall.

At that moment I nearly put the phone down… but I then awoke, and just muttered. “So you know where you’re going then”.

The reply was non-committal but by this point they’d managed by some fluke of science to walk in the right direction and so I told them to turn left. After a lot of babbling they finally understood this instruction. “Left”. With that I put the phone down.

They arrived some moments later at the door. But rang to ask me the flat number. Then they rang the intercom and in the midst of tidying up the kitchen I let them in. “Click” went the door. I felt a feeling of dread.

Sure enough, she was very pretty. And her friend was blonde, tanned, size 0 skinny and wore a high cut top which revealed some tits. I really was dealing with some tits here. Upper class, polite, blonde tits. Privileged, pretty and guaranteed to get instant attention from anyone stupid enough to indulge them - and therefore it seemed they were not used to effort. To them life was just a big waterslide, fueled by people seeing two very fit blondes and doing all they could to suck up. But not me I’m afraid.

I showed them round the flat and at the end she said it was very nice but would I accept couples?

That was news to me. “No” I said, “I don’t want to live with a couple” (if I had wanted to rent my room out to a couple I would have checked the ‘couples’ box on my ad. Living with you would be just next to complete eviction on my list of preferences).

It seems we have a society, ladies and gents, which produces these spoilt pretty girls, who are so used to getting their own way with the minimum of effort that they have lost the ability to think.

Now to Boris Johnson. I actually quite like him. It’s the reason people have voted for him which really gets my goat. “Boris…what a cool guy!”. “Oh Boris…ahhahaha wicked”. “Boris…LEGERND”. You can read what Charlie Brooker thinks of it all here. “I wouldn’t trust Boris to operate a mop, let alone a £10 bn Crossrail project”

But you can see from his hair in the wind something very important. When it gusts his fine blonde hair waves up above his head in a fine upper class waft. He has fine hair, and that is a sign of intelligence. He may have the outward public persona of a complete buffoon, but if you listen to what he says, look into his upbringing and schooling and see what he’s achieved, you realise that London has actually got a bit of an asset rather than an ass.

He says what he thinks, he is a refreshing breeze of humour and wit - but also has the ability to get the job of Mayor down to a tee. Hooray for Boris Johnson. However I look forward to who Londoners vote in as the next mayor. David Hasselhoff?

HAHA LOL LOL WHAT A LEGARD. 

The last movie was a bit of a let down. The lead actor John Major was a bit grey and boring so we got rid of him.

The Tony Blair movie was much better and more successful at the box office with young people (although it did have a drawn out ending).

Unfortunately Gordon Brown: Labour The Movie has been panned by the public and critics alike, in particular the acting of the unfashionably grey Alistair Darling as being dangerously close to resembling a bumbling idiot.

But a new movie coming out in 2009 features a very strong cast: Blondie Boris and Crusader Cameron. People are flocking to the box offices for advance previews of this disaster film, which has many exciting twists and turns. Witness Blondie Boris at the controls of a London Crossrail train as it hurtles out of control. Swoon at Crusader Cameron as he fights chavs across the country with a good talking down to.

Yes the tories are back in power, and brighter than ever.

They may ruin the country but at least we’ll all be entertained by the personalities.

Horray for England (subtext: the country is drowning in celebrity politics and might as well be flushed down the toilet)