Andrew Reid: Curb Your Enthusiasm

There is one aspect I agree with despite the bovine idiocy of religion. The vicar.

A few pennies drop onto his collection plate. He lives in a small house and serves a small (and diminishing) church. Yet he is happy trimming the roses and praying for forgiveness over (amongst other things) Internet porn.

But despite appearances, the vicar and the banker both share something in common. An overwhelming belief in a fantasy which through the sheer number of believers has become reality.

As I saw the news of Barclays £5 billion profit in the depths of an economic crisis, I ran the palm of my hands over my skull in sheer frustration. But it should come as no surprise, because my skull - like the skull of all human kind, is dwarfed even by the size of my toilet seat. The problem is not the system, or the evils of capitalism, or the greed of any one person acting on his own. The problem is the combined achievement of all that’s bad about human nature.

The impulses and dreams which trigger our sense of reward are out of control like a faulty scientific experiment involving monkeys and peanuts.

The lure of money has been enough to send the banking industry insane, like a dribbling mental asylum freak crawling across the floor leaving a smearing trail of raw shit behind it. Everybody responsible for carrying out their day jobs in the financial sector have directly contributed to the perverse rise of the biggest downfall the world has ever seen. It’s time for a wake up call. The banks should all be split up at once, the world over. There should be no loop holes, no haven for ex-investment bankers. If they want to continue their career in banking they do so as a service to the world’s people. As a force for good. Every dime of profit is sent to those in need of a leg up. Governments, community organisers, African villages, infrastructure projects and people who live under 4ft high gaps in railway bridges with cardboard for wallpaper in India. These people have as much right on the money made by the hard work of the financial sector staff, as they do. Because their hard work is over-rewarded by a ratio of 100:1. The financial sector should be happy they have jobs at all, such has been the mass rip off of those who so unwittingly feed their salaries.

A smoky cloak and mirror obscured magic trick - this is what the financial sector has become. It doesn’t serve the people. It serve’s itself on a magic carpet of mathematical nonsense, which makes sense only to those who have engineered the world’s fantasy sector to accept this as the truth of the system. When it comes to the reality of the people, you see it on their credit card bills, on their bank statements, in the lure of the shopping centre, on their loans and in the bank’s marketing strategies.

It’s time to close the book on fantasy, and open a new one about reality.

The reality bible. No God, but happily no investment bankers either.

For the latest on the fire see my Twitter at
http://twitter.com/commanderspike

My girlfriend Joey and I have a joke, where we speak to each other in cat language: “Meow, meow, meow?” making sure to include some body language and a change in tone of voice every now and again, carrying meaning in the otherwise repetitive use of ‘meow’. It’s based on a YouTube cartoon called featuring a cat called Detective Mittens, who is - yes you’ve guessed it - a detective cat with a detective style hat.

Well tonight I am a rubbish detective too.

A few hours ago my friend and I were trying to install Leopard on my Mac Mini, and as we did so he discussed his latest projects, the setting up of a free clinic for children in India, and the fact he was going to blog about it, photo document it and publise it through the internet in general. A good idea I thought, seen as those his blog is pretty popular and new tools like Twitter are becoming better known. Twitter was recently discussed on the Jonathan Ross show by Stephen Fry of all people. Both celebrities can be followed on Twitter, and as I watched their feed of messages this evening, Russell Brand also began using it for the first time.

It’s like Facebook status updates and photos without all the other rubbish.

Well, irony upon irony: within an hour of the huge fire breaking out in Manchester city centre that evening at least two other people were talking about it on Twitter, locally. One, a radio producer for Key 103, the other an IT professional living nearby. Both locals. I meanwhile was posting my first ever Tweets with my photos from the fire.

Prior to that, Andy and I were lucky enough to catch things quite early on. (See Andy’s blog here)

Bidding goodbye after getting the Mac up and running, we smelled burning out in my apartment’s courtyard and smoke in the air. Thinking my building was on fire, I craned my neck upwards but with not seeing any flames, I went back inside again. It was 1am. Andy called me a few minutes later to say that he’d found huge billows of smoke hanging over the city centre. I came out, camera in hand, and we walked to the site of the fire on Great Ancoats street, which was lined with hoses, fire engines and policemen.

When I got back to Twitter about it, my flat mate James, a professional broadcast journalist for the BBC on North West Tonight, had returned from his night shift and asked if he could borrow the photos for tomorrow’s news bulletin. He’d seen the update on my Facebook status, which linked to my Twitter feed.

All this new technology, whilst often quite mundane, has interesting implications for the news agencies, who may find themselves outnumbered (if not out skilled) by a load of roaming amateurs twittering into their iPhones. I am not sure I like this brave new world of news, for not everybody is a journalist or a detective. Most of us are Detective Mittens, just typing stuff into Google or snapping away with our pocket cameras without a thought toward quality or authenticity.

So, after my rediculously amateurish journalism exploits had ceased for the night, I began to turn my attention to amateur detective work.

From the numbers of the buildings on the opposite side of the road, Andy had deduced that the site on fire opposite was number 57 Great Ancoats Street.

A little Googling by Detective Mittens revealed that the site was home to a huge construction project, from a construction group named BSC.

BSC have been leaving a spectacular mess of unfinished sites around the city centre. Once destined to be huge residential towers, these ambitious projects have been cursed from start to incompletion.

At first we thought the tower on fire was BSC’s Sarah Tower, and although I am now not really sure whether the site on fire is that of the Sarah Tower or the more generically named Ancoats Street Tower (pretty sure that’s the one as the Sarah Tower is near the canal), you could reasonably suggest that BSC is one hell of a cow boy builder.

According to a further article offered up by Google, all of BSC’s Manchester projects are on hold due to the credit crunch. Previously they have constantly flouted health and safety laws, to the extent that a Polish workman actually DIED on site at the Sarah Tower. Other sites had live unfused electrical lines coming straight out of the ground supply into onsite tools and equipment.

Hmmm - the plot thickens. In fact the city council is very worried about one site in particular, because it’s in danger of falling down.

The fire at 57 Great Ancoats Street tonight may help that to happen sooner than the council think.

As for the cause? You decide…

In 2003 the Challenger shuttle broke up on entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, because damage caused to the protective heat shield on launch caused a systematic break up of the entire shuttle.

Now NASA has made a noble attempt to share the critical moments for the crew with the space community, with the valuable aim of making safety better when space flight becomes common place, like it will do with Virgin Galactic.

So what’s it like for an astronaut to die?

In the lead up to the disaster only a few of the astronauts had their ACES helmet on, and those that did had the visor open. This had to be shut manually, but before they had a chance to do this it was too late as the cabin de-pressurised.

For 40 seconds the crew knew the spacecraft was out of control, and 40 seconds is enough for fear to turn to sheer terror, which comes from the certain knowledge that you’re about to die in the worst possible manner.

The 2nd killer event occurred when the break up of the outer shuttle caused the ballistic characteristics of the shuttle, now a mere projectile, to change. In plain-speak this basically means the shuttle became so mangled it suddenly hurtled through the air like a rock zig zagging and spiralling it’s way to the ground.

At this point, the crew were to become almost certainly deceased as their necks and heads were not restrained whilst their lower body was. The result was that their head’s snapped off.

If this wasn’t enough, god had an Act III whereby the cabin began to break apart, exposing the already dead or dying crew to a rapid thermal heat death and “dynamic material interactions”, such as the material of the cabin interacting with the crew at very high speeds.

The report of course does not put the facts across as trivially as I do, for the men who wrote this valuable report are not court jesters, but scientists of the highest order.

But the report doesn’t stop there. The fourth section detailing an event with lethal potential concerns exposure to near vaccume conditions, aerodynamic accelerations and cold temperatures.

Section 5 is the final event, ground impact.

Mercifully, there is a god, because before the really nasty bits happened, most of the crew were unconscious due to cabin de-pressurisation.

These astronauts represent the best of human life, the pinnacle of achievement.

For the priceless sacrifices of the few comes the saving of the very many.

Maybe there is a God.

Has the UK’s sense of humour been sold to the French? It all started when 3 people complained about Russell Brand’s radio show on the 19th October.

Next, a reporter does some shit stirring, telling Andrew Sach’s agent of the content of a Radio 2 programme. “Well, Jonathan Ross said Brand fucked your daughter but its okay he used a condom, and now everyone knows as it went out on the radio. Are you offended? Yeah?”

So obviously Sach’s gets pissed off when he hears the answer machine message, the joke falls a bit flat, even though its funny and the gag with the follow up messages ‘making things worse!’ is actually quite clever and self-depreciating.

Suddenly a tidal wave of news spreads of a ‘horrific assault’ on Andrew Sach’s and all those who rightfully remember him from a great classic sitcom start getting all irate without even having heard the programme or understood the humour, or that this was a comedy show on the radio, and that no kittens were murdered.

Georgina Baillie’s image has been smeared, say the outraged old ladies. Erm… she slept with Russell Brand and tours Europe in a gothic erotic strip group called the Satanic Sluts, poll dancing her way from Paris to Berlin. Do you think she’s so thin skinned as to get upset by a prank on the radio recorded on her dad’s answer machine message? Her mock disgust is laughable.

She’s milking it for every last newspaper exclusive she can garner!

(I’ve even seen her Bebo page and viewed her half-naked MySpace photos as ‘research’ for this blog).  

Her highly respected dad meanwhile, judging from interviews where he’s pressed against a wall outside his house and forced to spout opinions is mystified by the whole circus. It’s as if he’s playing Manuel in an episode of Fawlty Towers where Basil Fawlty hits him over the head with a frying pan. Suddenly the police break in through the window and arrest Basil, whilst the BBC suddenly end the show and put the scrolling credits across the screen whilst everyone stands around looking at the cameras stunned.

It should be better understood against the backdrop that Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross are nice people, not a pair of evil child murders. Yes they can be lewd, but it’s comedy. If they can’t understand that then they’re not going to come close to getting the context in which this whole thing occurred.

This hysterical idiocy not only inflicts comedy performers but for normal people as well. People get too upset about words. The creeping tide of confused morals and politically correct gesturing is making it harder and harder to have an opinion on something at work, to joke about something in a bar, to say anything, let alone to have a debate or argument without being castrated by do-gooders, humourlessly bland ‘polite’ people or moral lecturers.

The needless drivel spouted in the aftermath is an affront to common sense and I am ashamed to be a member of the British public.

If you look at how much has been written and said since about Brand, Ross & the BBC, the sheer amount of British people opening their mouths to blabber (myself included) and the food burnt to power the yapping mouths of the nation, you could have fed a starving African village for 85 years. Why are people so ignorant and hysterical?

Meanwhile Russell Brand and the controller of Radio 2, unfortunately, has resigned while Jonathan Ross has been suspended, which in painful ‘real’ terms means no Friday Night with Jonathan Ross with The Killers, no BBC Radio 2 show on Saturday morning, and no Film 2008 the following week. Millions of viewers were not asked about their opinion. We’ve all been censored and made to feel naughty. But we shut up about it. There are more important problems like world poverty.

Brand and Ross are too talented comic performers doing their jobs, it may not be to everyone’s taste but show me a comedian who is. Its about time we decided what public broadcasting, both TV and radio should be. If it’s to be a role model with high standards then dress everyone in a black suit and return it to the 1960’s.

I don’t think it’d suit comedy much if they couldn’t say or do anything controversial, just chuckle about chickens crossing the road whilst wearing a funeral wake suit.

How does all this happen? 

Well the irony is the TV News could actually benefit with having that treatment, it’s all gone too ethnic and smiley when it should be serious and identifiable from an English viewpoint not a pick & mix of nationalities and compromises.

OUTRAGE. Racist Andrew says news is too ‘ethnic’ and not English enough!

Do you see why things like this occur? People misread, people mishear, people don’t communicate clearly enough what their intentions are when they say something.

I will now hold a press conference to explain my remarks about the TV News:

“The news should be like a member of the ship’s crew perched atop the sale, looking out for danger and announcing it to the deck when it crops up, whilst seagulls follow the boat. I don’t want the news to show how wonderfully diverse we are and have it employ people because of the colour of their skin or on the basis of how incredibly bland and politically correct they are.”

The headline the next day would be: “Reid says seagulls follow the trawler, ethnic people should be thrown overboard” 

I want the news to be ‘the news’. But instead this week the news has been the shit stirrer.

It shit stirs not only about matters which would have been best dealt with in private below deck, but also matters that should stay within prison walls. I hear one of the teen murders of Sophie Lancaster (who was beaten to death purely for being a Goth in a park by savage chav animals) has had his sentence cut by 9 months. That he has an 18 year sentence in the first place raises the fact that those 9 months don’t make a great deal of difference, nor should they have been cut because of the message it gives out to the victim’s family and the upset it causes. But there, it’s happened and it’s all over the news, and it pisses people off, and it adds insult to injury.

Yet the Brand & Ross controversy is above that in the agenda! Not only should neither story be newsworthy, they’re in the wrong order of importance. The mind boggles.

With the news being as inept and depressing as this we need cutting edge comedy all the more. Comedy which is liberal and free and says what it fucking well likes, whilst dressed in tshirts and skinny jeans, not black suits and ties.

So I drastically propose that the BBC be split in two. The public responsibility half, and the creative half. The public responsibility half would lecture us on morals, show Children in Need every Friday and set an example to our young people, whilst the young people would watch the creative half where anything goes.

Kids have seen everything on YouTube anyway. Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross larking about on Radio 2 is nothing compared to teenagers pissing on a tramp and setting fire to his corpse. This isn’t right. This is a cause for concern, not Brand offending someone and then apologising.

He just tries to make people laugh, he succeeds, and then the joyless idiots who run the newspapers and the government shut him down. 

Jackass on MTV features grown men wanking into socks under water and then electrocuting themselves or running naked down the street running into passing cars. Not exactly quality output.

While the Prime Minister has a moan about Radio 2 he doesn’t even know what exists elsewhere in the commercial mainstream. The only vague hint occurs when some MTV trailer park trash leaks onto a morning chat show which old people watch and find Kerry Katona pilled up to her eyelashes and slurring her words like she’s just had a stroke. Sometimes a rock star leaks out of MTV and swears on Channel 4. Whilst people aren’t allowed to swear before 9pm, by 7pm your son is probably upstairs wanking to hardcore porn.

But you couldn’t get any more mainstream than the BBC, because the public pay for it’s funding. As soon as it does something that 5 people find a bit offensive, it gets fined a million pounds and bulldozed into next week, discussed by the government, censored and lynched of all it’s talent.

They have the wrong target. The moralisers and complainers should all shut up and leave it for people to watch what they like and then use their basic human instincts to see whether what they witness it’s right or wrong.

If you’re a teenager who enjoys kicking tramps to death, in real life, or look up to Kerry Katona as your role model then your human instincts are fucked and no matter what Russell Brand does on his radio show you’re probably always going to be an idiot.

I feel ambivalence toward whether any kind of extreme TV / porn / computer game or violence can turn a nice person into one of these idiots. But it’s the idiots themselves who should be the FIRST target of Mr & Mrs Outraged of Essex, not the material or a comedian who doesn’t do any harm to the nation whatsoever.

If only Mr & Mrs Outraged had the energy and foresight to get worked up about something that matters, then maybe they’d actually do something useful with their retirement.

Louie Walsh, one of the X-Factor judges, has also spouted off about how awful Russell Brand is. Yet the hypocracy is stunning. Here is a guy on a fake talent show, proclaiming that the vain and selfish bland bimbos they parade and celebrate every weekend are what every impressionable young person should aspire to be like.

Give me a Russell Brand for every idiot, and the UK would be a better place, with a better sense of humour.

Ahh. 

Fishy Findings 

Tagging technology has helped scientists reveal the journey of salmon in the Rockies.

In the Autumn season salmon are known for travelling huge distances, from the north of the United States through Canada and eventually to Alaska. The salmon travel by river.

The tag comprised of a steel enclosed GPS radio, gyroscope and gold plated compass. Also enclosed was a lead capsule containing paintings and drawings from school children at The Seattle School of Art. Those children were also to be invited to accompany scientists in Alaska when the fish reached their destination. However, the results of the electronic tagging has surprised the team.

When scientists returned to base shortly after releasing the tagged fish they found that their GPS reading was displaying the fish at roughly the same spot as the left them. The gyroscope readings were also odd.

Dr Barker has told News Hound his team are disappointed with the results. “We are not sure yet what happened but we suspect it must be an instrument failure of some kind”, he said.

Alien Addition

Excitement mounted today across planet Zooroper. The planet’s largest country have announced a mission to return to the ‘Earth’. Their last visit 4 billion years ago ended in controversy when Agent Adam accidentally dropped a test tube of Zooroper micro-organisms in a swamp.

The agent blamed the blunder on Agent Eve who had tripped coming down the stairs from the space capsule and knocked Agent Adam in the back of his legs. “It was a silly blunder. But I forgave her after 70 million years.”

Speaking outside the space agency’s headquarters, Chief Commander Jesus Basket met gathering reporters to explain the reasons for a return to Earth. ”Our investigations during our last mission [there] detected large quantities of gold and oil.”

When asked why the decision to return to Earth took 4 billion years, Mr Basket blamed spending cuts.

“We are eager to get this mission back on track”

There then followed a Q&A session, where Mr Basket was asked if the dropped micro organisms 4 billion years ago would have any unforeseen consequences for Earth.

“No” Mr Jones laughed. “That’s a ridiculous suggestion” 

Crisis 

There is a crisis in the pyschological studies industry today, with several leading psychologists blaming each other for the collapse of giant Environ Mind Control (EMC). Environ mentalist, James Harper, has asked the government to bail out his bankrupt company, as he “made a complete balls up and it went under”. The government in response has put together a $700 billion ‘rescue’ package, to bail out crap businesses when they make mistakes.

The first business to be bailed out is law firm Criminal Futures, which yesterday announced huge losses due to exposure to the property burglary market. James Canny, CEO of the firm, said thus: “We made a mistake and we put our hands up. A bit like the criminals really, when they get caught. Then we put our hands out and the government gives us the dosh”. The Prime Minister George Idiot, today spoke for the first time about the failing companies, saying that “we simply cannot afford to lose them - what about my stock portfolio?”

Hurricane

In New Orleans today the once great jazz city has been evacuated, leaving thousands of musicians homeless. The approaching Factor 5 storm, dubbed Hurricane Ivan has been likened to an evil Russian dictator, as for many Americans a giant storm was simply not frightening enough to spark a full scale evacuation so “we had to sex it up a bit”, James Cann told the associated press. Jazz festivals around the city have been put on hold, and residents told to sing the blues. Weather forcaster James Balloon said that the storm was behaving unpredictably. “Ivan is improvising as it goes along, speeding up and then slowing down. Blowing this way and that. We have no idea where it’ll end up.”

Local News: new comedy act The Great Africans land in small town

There was cause for celebration in Buxworth today as all 10 residents bought tickets for The Great African’s live show. The show is now sold out. Afterwards comedians Noel Farmer and Julian Barrarr were seen mixing with the locals at The Hall Inn. “We were star-struck” said local girl Zeze. “Julian hit me over the head with a whisky bottle before starting on my friend. It was brilliant.” In a review with local paper the Buxworth Bullshitter, it described their live show as “a complete shambles devoid of any charm”. Internet reviews however have been glowing, with some hardcore fans even saying that “they liked The Great Africans.”

Celebrations took place all over the world today to celebrate the great milestone of all words having been used in every combination.

America

The incumbent president, Mr Bush announced a national holiday for library workers. “For too long have library workers worked on the shelves and aisles of this great country, without satisfactory recognition of their positions. Their contamination to the good cause of the great book remain. God bless their souls.”

Brazil

Mayor of San Paulo, Mr Huggy Chavitios organised a street parade and music festival, announcing that “[this great milestone] is a historic milestone [for mankind] which would benefit all mankind [for the rest of time] and as I stand here today [I am very glad] for the rest of time I am fucking glad”

Russia

Mr Gremlinsky Putititit in Moscow pulled a party popper.

England

At the Edgebastard cricket match, Freddy A. Feckwit paused play for 12 minutes to read out alowed the lyrics of Word Song by The Bastards. “Moment-oss…fan…tastic…I am lost for words” said Sir Cricketpissed Bird. Later however there were drunken scenes on the campus of Cockfosters University as debating students shouted random phrases at each other in an attempt to become part of the momentous milestone - it backfired badly however, as police were called by angry neighbours, complaining that the shouting of random phrases prevented them from getting past chapter one of The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time.

Germany

There were street marches in Berlin, whilst in Munich the munchkins celebrated with lager. “I - what? Soz mate me mum from Oz is on the phone….(trails off)…yeah fucking A mate….”. Meanwhile in Frankfurt the German Chancellor, Gerhard Scrotoomb chose the occasion to raise taxes on words. This triggered the whole nation to complain loudly, before striding off to the sauna in a huff.

France

In Paris there were no celebrations, as “le day when all French words come together like a bird flowing by the shadow of a lunar eclipse [was not yet upon us]“. The residents of Lyon celebrated their King. Meanwhile in Marseilles there was a riot.

Our reporter Nick Williams in Brussels reports from Europe:

“It is indeed a momentous occasion in every sense of the word. The long history of the printed letter has today hit heady new heights and like a momentous mountain bike ride to the top of a mountainous region, it’s all down hill from here-on-in. [reporter weeps] I personally, have played witness to some of the most incredible passages of time. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism in China, the fall of the American stock market, the resignation of Gordon Twat and my 14th birthday. But not even the ‘metaphorical’ monkeys on various typewriters could have imagined such a date…such a number…such a rocket….such a momentously dramatic milestone as we have witnessed here today, and indeed, across the whole world. In fact with rise of the teenager it will be a long long time before we next see every combination of word come together in such a force of nature as we have seen this Friday afternoon.”

[End of report]