Despite not actually having an entry to post today, I cannot help but write something to point you towards these fine sites:
How to shave a cat's nose.
Pictures of stoned people. Very funny despite its predictable nature. However I have a picture of my mate Dave which puts even these examples to shame. When I acquire a scanner there will be some very interesting scenes between my friends and I....
Thanks to b3ta for these.
Monday, September 15, 2003
I need to somehow express my frustration with the current musical situation. It was Saturday morning television and I watch aghast as a young and ordinary teenager has her moment of fame. This was television karaoke: yet another achievement in the field of piteous turd for the modern broadcasting industry. And this girl was truly truly shocking. I say with genuine truth that I struggled to find a single point during her performance when her voice was synced in tune with the song. And then my eyes widened as my tortured ears communicated to me the news that she was the defending champion returned back to defend her crown! Gadzooks!
But all this wasn’t the reason I was struck with sorrow and pain due to the state of the musical status quo (although at least we’re pretty much shot of that shower of pony-tailed tossers). The real reason for my despair is due to the style of singing adopted by our young wannabe vocalist. Whiney, undulating, over-expressive, pretentious cuntery. Otherwise known as the tremolo or falsetto effect.
It is not just this one unfortunate girl I refer to. Last week my own father forced me to sit through many damnable minutes of BBC’s copycat show Fame Academy. We appear to have been subjected to a wave of vocalists who all sound like they are all attempting to find the exact vibrating frequencies of various bits of equipment around the studio. Although Britain’s own Mr Craaaaaiiig Daaaayvid, who’s voice vibrates like a lady’s favourite toy, is at least trying something interesting by striving for the exact frequency of the female clitoris.
Good music, for me, has originality as one of its very core values. So when all the “talent” is all trying to sound like everybody else I must come to the judgement that this is not good at all. If the youth of today (I cannot believe I’ve just written that – at 26) want to sound like a good soul singers, perhaps they should listen to the superb talent that was Stevie Wonder at his height in the seventies rather than Mystiq from now; or better still go for something more leftfield and genius like Mike Patton. Not much hope of that last one sadly.
It is little wonder then that the British music industry can now be seen choking on its own faeces. And one does not need a good grounding in logic to realise that poor imitations of pseudo-American culture are not going to be enough to take the world’s music scene by storm. I speak from at least a tiny bit of knowledge here: I spent some time, albeit four years ago, as an A&R scout for a record company and music publishers. Today’s major record companies look only for artists that will virtually guarantee them top 20 singles. Which means superficial, commercialist jism. There are several problems with this. Had bands like Radiohead, Blur, Black Sabbath and even The Beatles been starting out today, they would genuinely struggle to get signed. Not every band reaches their potential with their first album. Those quality young bands that do get signed invariably get stuck with a smaller record company and long-term success is far from guaranteed. Secondly, sensationalist bollocks will not still be selling records in even a few months time, let alone years. Bang goes the profitable back catalogue sales. Thirdly, nobody outside of British primary school playgrounds gives a fuck about S Club. How do they expect to break foreign markets with this twaddle?
I shouldn’t complain too much as a music fan. Only the mainstream has been afflicted with this clearly finance-induced disease. If you look hard enough (that is of course the whole problem – you have to look. And look hard.) some really fantastic stuff is there to be found. And there are labels, such as Warp, who do a sterling job. But while interesting music gets pigeon-holed into ever decreasing niches of the public consciousness, shitty commercialist toss is all our young charges will ever aspire to.
Cuntery is the word I believe I have been searching for...
But all this wasn’t the reason I was struck with sorrow and pain due to the state of the musical status quo (although at least we’re pretty much shot of that shower of pony-tailed tossers). The real reason for my despair is due to the style of singing adopted by our young wannabe vocalist. Whiney, undulating, over-expressive, pretentious cuntery. Otherwise known as the tremolo or falsetto effect.
It is not just this one unfortunate girl I refer to. Last week my own father forced me to sit through many damnable minutes of BBC’s copycat show Fame Academy. We appear to have been subjected to a wave of vocalists who all sound like they are all attempting to find the exact vibrating frequencies of various bits of equipment around the studio. Although Britain’s own Mr Craaaaaiiig Daaaayvid, who’s voice vibrates like a lady’s favourite toy, is at least trying something interesting by striving for the exact frequency of the female clitoris.
Good music, for me, has originality as one of its very core values. So when all the “talent” is all trying to sound like everybody else I must come to the judgement that this is not good at all. If the youth of today (I cannot believe I’ve just written that – at 26) want to sound like a good soul singers, perhaps they should listen to the superb talent that was Stevie Wonder at his height in the seventies rather than Mystiq from now; or better still go for something more leftfield and genius like Mike Patton. Not much hope of that last one sadly.
It is little wonder then that the British music industry can now be seen choking on its own faeces. And one does not need a good grounding in logic to realise that poor imitations of pseudo-American culture are not going to be enough to take the world’s music scene by storm. I speak from at least a tiny bit of knowledge here: I spent some time, albeit four years ago, as an A&R scout for a record company and music publishers. Today’s major record companies look only for artists that will virtually guarantee them top 20 singles. Which means superficial, commercialist jism. There are several problems with this. Had bands like Radiohead, Blur, Black Sabbath and even The Beatles been starting out today, they would genuinely struggle to get signed. Not every band reaches their potential with their first album. Those quality young bands that do get signed invariably get stuck with a smaller record company and long-term success is far from guaranteed. Secondly, sensationalist bollocks will not still be selling records in even a few months time, let alone years. Bang goes the profitable back catalogue sales. Thirdly, nobody outside of British primary school playgrounds gives a fuck about S Club. How do they expect to break foreign markets with this twaddle?
I shouldn’t complain too much as a music fan. Only the mainstream has been afflicted with this clearly finance-induced disease. If you look hard enough (that is of course the whole problem – you have to look. And look hard.) some really fantastic stuff is there to be found. And there are labels, such as Warp, who do a sterling job. But while interesting music gets pigeon-holed into ever decreasing niches of the public consciousness, shitty commercialist toss is all our young charges will ever aspire to.
Cuntery is the word I believe I have been searching for...
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
I went through Birmingham the other week. Not, I’m extraordinarily speedy to add, because I was visiting the middling city of our fair but occasionally xenophobic nation, but rather whilst undesirably passing (much like I might pass water whilst suffering with a bladder condition). And whilst I whistled hurriedly through the Brummie streets, I noticed two remarkable things. Firstly, there was no precipitation whatsoever falling from the skies. And secondly, the new Bull Ring Shopping Centre. And a huge construction it is too; a curving swathe of metal wholly adorned with thousands of silver-grey discs. A far cry from the old Bull Ring building: a typically sickening 1960’s design. Squares and rectangles of concrete and glass, fashioned together in a horrendous way that one would never imagine possible with such a collection of straightforward shapes.
A news item on the subject later that week replayed footage of the opening of the original sixties carbuncle complete with fanfare and enthusiastic midlanders. Surely, I thought to myself, these sixties disgraces seemed like attractive modern architecture to those at the time. Which makes me wonder how the new Bull Ring will be regarded in forty years from now. Like a big lumbering shit no doubt. The new Bull Ring is a classic example of knee jerkism – everything about it is an attempt to scream, “I’m not born out of the sixties, I am original and new godammit!”
Which is why it is poor fare indeed. The architects have taken the old building and deliberately made the qualities of the new one exactly the opposite. And so the new Bull Ring in fact is born right slap bang in the middle of the ricochet of all the dodgy sixties architecture you’ve ever cringed at. I suppose it will do the job required however; thousands will flock to the shops within, bringing with them their big fat wallets, no doubt encouraged by their curiosity of the dazzling façade.
In case I give the impression that I am just a Londoner jealous of a city outside of the Capital getting an apparently fetching bit of eye candy, I feel the need to add that I was on route from the beautiful northwestern city of Chester. And believe me when I say that our Roman occupiers did a much better job of designing attractive buildings then we often seem to be able to muster now. And so the trend of ignoring Roman ingenuity continues apace. After the Romans scampered back to Italy many centuries back, their sophisticated technology, farming, irrigation, transport systems, etc. (I refer you to the “What did the Romans ever do for us?” speech from Monty Python’s Life of Brian) was thrown out the window by us Brits and we embarked upon the grim life of the dark ages for the next few tens of generations. It is almost enough to make you believe that the Daily Mail was up and running and pushing out its own brand of backwards conservatism all the way back then.
Have you ever sat on the train and caught the eye of a fanciful lady or gentleman across the carriage only to then notice she/he is reading a copy of the Daily Mail? It’s a nasty moment I can tell you that for nothing.
I arrived back in London and on my route I did not fail to notice the collections of satellite dishes our country’s homeowners are amassing upon our exterior walls. And so the triple forces of technology, economics, and communications create a situation in which we actually pay money to adorn our buildings with odd silver-grey discs. To avoid such an unpleasant architectural scenario we must thus look to invisible ways of piping mass communication media into our living rooms such as cable. And so back comes bastard NTL into the conversation.
I genuinely despair.
But worse is to come and ironic too. For here I present you with news that my very abode is located within one of those 1960’s-style office buildings. So interesting it is indeed that the only reason I should be so reliant on the analogue cable service of the aforementioned NTL is because my landlords, in their infinite wisdom, feel that no silver-grey discs (or dishes as they are more commonly known) should be allowed to ruin the display of blue-coloured rectangles that my solidly rectangular building proudly displays upon my locale.
Is this a wise move designed to fend off the architectural rebounding of the Brummie town planners?
Will I ever get reliable television coverage of the football season?
Will the Bull Ring turn out to be as monstrous a building as its predecessor in forty years from now?
Why do you never get turkey soup?
Find out the answers to these questions and more in the next fabulous incarnation of Charging Through The Midfield.
A news item on the subject later that week replayed footage of the opening of the original sixties carbuncle complete with fanfare and enthusiastic midlanders. Surely, I thought to myself, these sixties disgraces seemed like attractive modern architecture to those at the time. Which makes me wonder how the new Bull Ring will be regarded in forty years from now. Like a big lumbering shit no doubt. The new Bull Ring is a classic example of knee jerkism – everything about it is an attempt to scream, “I’m not born out of the sixties, I am original and new godammit!”
Which is why it is poor fare indeed. The architects have taken the old building and deliberately made the qualities of the new one exactly the opposite. And so the new Bull Ring in fact is born right slap bang in the middle of the ricochet of all the dodgy sixties architecture you’ve ever cringed at. I suppose it will do the job required however; thousands will flock to the shops within, bringing with them their big fat wallets, no doubt encouraged by their curiosity of the dazzling façade.
In case I give the impression that I am just a Londoner jealous of a city outside of the Capital getting an apparently fetching bit of eye candy, I feel the need to add that I was on route from the beautiful northwestern city of Chester. And believe me when I say that our Roman occupiers did a much better job of designing attractive buildings then we often seem to be able to muster now. And so the trend of ignoring Roman ingenuity continues apace. After the Romans scampered back to Italy many centuries back, their sophisticated technology, farming, irrigation, transport systems, etc. (I refer you to the “What did the Romans ever do for us?” speech from Monty Python’s Life of Brian) was thrown out the window by us Brits and we embarked upon the grim life of the dark ages for the next few tens of generations. It is almost enough to make you believe that the Daily Mail was up and running and pushing out its own brand of backwards conservatism all the way back then.
Have you ever sat on the train and caught the eye of a fanciful lady or gentleman across the carriage only to then notice she/he is reading a copy of the Daily Mail? It’s a nasty moment I can tell you that for nothing.
I arrived back in London and on my route I did not fail to notice the collections of satellite dishes our country’s homeowners are amassing upon our exterior walls. And so the triple forces of technology, economics, and communications create a situation in which we actually pay money to adorn our buildings with odd silver-grey discs. To avoid such an unpleasant architectural scenario we must thus look to invisible ways of piping mass communication media into our living rooms such as cable. And so back comes bastard NTL into the conversation.
I genuinely despair.
But worse is to come and ironic too. For here I present you with news that my very abode is located within one of those 1960’s-style office buildings. So interesting it is indeed that the only reason I should be so reliant on the analogue cable service of the aforementioned NTL is because my landlords, in their infinite wisdom, feel that no silver-grey discs (or dishes as they are more commonly known) should be allowed to ruin the display of blue-coloured rectangles that my solidly rectangular building proudly displays upon my locale.
Is this a wise move designed to fend off the architectural rebounding of the Brummie town planners?
Will I ever get reliable television coverage of the football season?
Will the Bull Ring turn out to be as monstrous a building as its predecessor in forty years from now?
Why do you never get turkey soup?
Find out the answers to these questions and more in the next fabulous incarnation of Charging Through The Midfield.
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Not much time online recenty, but luckily for me my good friend The Phantom Mencap has provided me with a reminder of this classic letter that has been doing the rounds for many a month. As you might have guessed I'm still having muchness of grief with the whole NTL situation. More grief comes from the knowledge that I had no hand in the writing of this letter....
Dear Cretins,
I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.
Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.
My initial installation was canceled without warning or notice, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive at all, spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.... how? I alleviated the boredom to some small degree by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.
The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After several further telephone calls (actually 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks) my modem arrived ... a total of six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate that the downtime of your internet servers is roughly 35%... these are usually the hours between about 6pm and midnight, Monday to Friday, and most of the useful periods ove the weekend.
I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 telephone calls on my mobile to your no-help line this week, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers. I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed), that I will be ransferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman.... and several other variations on this theme.
Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music.
Forgive me, therefore, if I continue. I thought BT were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum - incompetents of the highest order. British Telecom - wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.
Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you do likewise, and cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief - although these feelings will quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps a small measure of bemused rage.
I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you, and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.
Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twats.
Thanx Marcus
Dear Cretins,
I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.
Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.
My initial installation was canceled without warning or notice, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive at all, spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.... how? I alleviated the boredom to some small degree by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.
The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After several further telephone calls (actually 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks) my modem arrived ... a total of six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate that the downtime of your internet servers is roughly 35%... these are usually the hours between about 6pm and midnight, Monday to Friday, and most of the useful periods ove the weekend.
I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 telephone calls on my mobile to your no-help line this week, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers. I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed), that I will be ransferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman.... and several other variations on this theme.
Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music.
Forgive me, therefore, if I continue. I thought BT were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum - incompetents of the highest order. British Telecom - wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.
Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you do likewise, and cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief - although these feelings will quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps a small measure of bemused rage.
I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you, and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.
Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twats.
Thanx Marcus
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Ah-ha! Have you noticed?
Have you noticed the little link on the left column?
Had you been reading the last entry you will know.
You will know and you will look.
But you must keep it as our secret; because if everyone knows it's fiction, it will be diminished. There has got to be at least the faint possibility that it is the truth, else all wonder fails.
And without wonder there is despair.
Remember: truth is despair. Angst if you will.
Read Jean Paul Satre if you're not sure what I mean (but not before you read The Outside Man obviously).
Have you noticed the little link on the left column?
Had you been reading the last entry you will know.
You will know and you will look.
But you must keep it as our secret; because if everyone knows it's fiction, it will be diminished. There has got to be at least the faint possibility that it is the truth, else all wonder fails.
And without wonder there is despair.
Remember: truth is despair. Angst if you will.
Read Jean Paul Satre if you're not sure what I mean (but not before you read The Outside Man obviously).
Thursday, August 21, 2003
It is with little surprise that since this weblog began to publish stories of NTL incompetence, stories of further out[r]ages (get it? Good use of pun there I like to believe) have come snowballing in. Well, to be frank it is more of the kind of slow trickle one might experience on a windowsill after the thaw. But hey, Charging is a young beast and cannot be expected to command a Pop Idol level of public response. And for the record (and again) folks, Pop Idol is considered here to be a superficial, unsophisticated, and puerile container of other people’s toss; but yet again I digress.
For instance there is the incident of the customer who complained about the lack of signal and had to wait a total of eighteen weeks for an engineer to visit. Luckily the long-suffering NTL viewer had recognised the problem fairly quickly after reporting it, realising that it was a problem with a cable inside his house. But the NTL engineer came un-announced had a look and said “ooh, this’ll be a job for the Outside Man”. The Outside Man presumably being a strong-armed gangster contracted by NTL to look after problems such as customers who fix their own problems and then fail to cancel their request for overworked engineers (and who then reveal the engineer’s incompetence).
None of this bodes well for my particular predicament. Our free and illegal NTL signal has been suffering a bit from the extreme heat of this year’s global-warming affected summer. And on the day of the Charity, sorry, Community Shield – the first day of the new and eagerly anticipated footy season – it all collapsed fulfilling pretty much every nightmare worth sweating over. Yes, Sky Sports fell apart before our very eyes. We figured it might be the heat: our chipped cable-box went promptly into the fridge. But alas it was an external problem affecting our entire neighbourhood. I know because I asked people if they had a signal. I’m thinking that somebody will complain; but I’m also thinking that only paying customers can complain. And after having spoken to my neighbours, I’m thinking that everybody has NTL cable but no one is paying for it.
I even know what the problem is. I asked a proper non-NTL employed television engineer. Meanwhile I keep my home address secret for fear of a visit from the Outside Man in eighteen to twenty-five weeks.
But there is at least some good to come out of this experience. I now know that the most likely title of any autobiography I ever pen will surely be ‘The Outside Man’. It seems to fit somehow. Obviously I’ve got to do stuff to put in it; else I’ll make it all up Fargo style and call it the truth. I’ll never know why none of the thousands who claim to have been abducted by aliens have ever written an autobiography - possible gap in the market there me thinks. Failing that I could just reprint the archives of this blog in a decade’s time (although I’ll probably delete all the crappy little comments I’ve made within brackets that are strewn across this site).
Mm, that last paragraph gives me an excellent idea. To set up a new blog and write it as if I am in space in an alien’s craft and detail my story in a believable (to the extent that it could be) and realistic fashion. I think I might do that you know. Remember you saw it here first. And if anyone nicks this idea I’ll kill ‘em, regardless of the me stealing cable irony hypocrisy thingy.
For instance there is the incident of the customer who complained about the lack of signal and had to wait a total of eighteen weeks for an engineer to visit. Luckily the long-suffering NTL viewer had recognised the problem fairly quickly after reporting it, realising that it was a problem with a cable inside his house. But the NTL engineer came un-announced had a look and said “ooh, this’ll be a job for the Outside Man”. The Outside Man presumably being a strong-armed gangster contracted by NTL to look after problems such as customers who fix their own problems and then fail to cancel their request for overworked engineers (and who then reveal the engineer’s incompetence).
None of this bodes well for my particular predicament. Our free and illegal NTL signal has been suffering a bit from the extreme heat of this year’s global-warming affected summer. And on the day of the Charity, sorry, Community Shield – the first day of the new and eagerly anticipated footy season – it all collapsed fulfilling pretty much every nightmare worth sweating over. Yes, Sky Sports fell apart before our very eyes. We figured it might be the heat: our chipped cable-box went promptly into the fridge. But alas it was an external problem affecting our entire neighbourhood. I know because I asked people if they had a signal. I’m thinking that somebody will complain; but I’m also thinking that only paying customers can complain. And after having spoken to my neighbours, I’m thinking that everybody has NTL cable but no one is paying for it.
I even know what the problem is. I asked a proper non-NTL employed television engineer. Meanwhile I keep my home address secret for fear of a visit from the Outside Man in eighteen to twenty-five weeks.
But there is at least some good to come out of this experience. I now know that the most likely title of any autobiography I ever pen will surely be ‘The Outside Man’. It seems to fit somehow. Obviously I’ve got to do stuff to put in it; else I’ll make it all up Fargo style and call it the truth. I’ll never know why none of the thousands who claim to have been abducted by aliens have ever written an autobiography - possible gap in the market there me thinks. Failing that I could just reprint the archives of this blog in a decade’s time (although I’ll probably delete all the crappy little comments I’ve made within brackets that are strewn across this site).
Mm, that last paragraph gives me an excellent idea. To set up a new blog and write it as if I am in space in an alien’s craft and detail my story in a believable (to the extent that it could be) and realistic fashion. I think I might do that you know. Remember you saw it here first. And if anyone nicks this idea I’ll kill ‘em, regardless of the me stealing cable irony hypocrisy thingy.
Monday, August 11, 2003
My housemate and I are sitting out a half-year contract in our current abode. So after we realised that NTL only offered 12-month contracts, we decided not to pursue their (probably incompetent) services after all. That was despite one of their representative’s assurances that “it should be alright. We probably won’t sue you when you move out.” Yup that’s great. Thanks.
I’ve had this yearlong contract problem rise up before. On the previous occasion it was my attempt to undertake a monthly payment for unlimited Internet access with another debt-ridden and slightly less incompetent media company called Telewest. I had about seven months or so till my moving out date yet the agent seemed determined to somehow convince me to commit to 12 monthly payments. It seems that when a company finally realises that not every householder is able to undertake an entire year’s contract for a simple service, a sizable amount of money will be theirs for the taking.
It’s all due to superficial boardroom thinking of course. The fat suited ones obviously believe that such yearlong restrictions can only possibly benefit them. That same sort of thinking occurs around the probably malevolent boardroom tables of supermarket companies. They don’t like providing those smaller more useful trolleys because of their naïve belief that if you are wheeling around a big fuck-off unwieldy mother of a trolley you will want to fill it up and spend more money. What they don’t count on are the grumpy cynical bastards like me who notice their tactic and react accordingly with a steely determination to spend as little time in their money-grabbing, plasticy and hellish stores as possible. The greedy manipulative cunts that they are. But my opening gambit here is a mere digression from the main and urgently relevant topic I wish to discuss today.
Aliens.
It’s not that I believe they are out there or anything (belief is a strong word banded about far too regularly by people who could barely explain the first thing about the thing they claim to believe in; let alone the concept of belief itself) but I’ve been thinking that if there was a civilisation of sophisticated aliens who were aware of the existence of life on Earth, than they would almost definitely be lurking near us watching over our technological development. Because our world, presumably having developed independently from any outside influence, would represent an unbelievably large treasure trove for any alien species – even though they would be way in advance of ours. Just think: a detailed study of just our biology alone would produce original ideas worth huge amounts to any alien species. Our technology has been developed and invented completely autonomously - and in an alien way from their point of view - and would surely provide countless interesting and new concepts, ideas and spin off inventions.
So the aliens would wait nearby and watch, knowing we would make their alien version of a fortune (or newly conquered oil-producing middle eastern country). And if they wanted to they could make subtle corruptions to the flow of information around the globe to affect the results they desired. It would be in their interest to prolong our development and keep us from self-destruction because the further we came along the more we might have to offer. So for instance the Allied success in decoding the German’s communications during WWII may not have been as remarkable as we first thought. A subtle injection of a single but vitally significant key in some radio link somewhere could do the job of preventing the destructive evil of Nazism from prospering. However if and when we do make the final steps towards destruction, they would be forced to show themselves to save us and then to finally take their prize.
Hopefully they will not seek to conquer but to learn. One can only hope, but I wouldn’t put money on it. I wouldn’t even accept a sportsman’s bet on that one I’m afraid. And afraid could be the right word; if they are anything like fat boardroom types, they might consider our destruction to be a faster and simpler way to a quick buck. Shit the bed then. I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that fat boardroom types could never achieve the necessary intelligent required to evolve into a space faring species.
The aliens could happily monitor all our privately and publicly broadcasted material and would wait until we had a reliable communications network that they would then be able to participate in easily. This of course is our Internet. So they will probably be reading this very page using their version of an immense processing machine or group of analysts along with every other page published. No doubt they will have noticed that the rapid blossoming of pornography sites reflects us human’s blatant sexual repression across the board. With the aliens superior technology they would have no problems disguising their presence effectively. It’s not that they wouldn’t leave signs of their existence it’s just that they’d make us think we were seeing something else. An entry into our orbit for instance could be made to look like an asteroid impact or a nuclear test. Craters can be faked, information manipulated. They could pluck one of our space probes out of the sky to examine and easily make it look like a reasonably explained mechanical failure.
And if one looks at the record of probes sent to Mars, just a few too many have failed. So I’m thinking that they may be hiding with Mars being used as a blind between them and us. There are a few more probes heading towards the red planet as I write this. Watch them potentially tumble into disaster this winter.
But as we develop they won’t be able to reliably keep themselves secret for too much longer. So reveal themselves they soon must. And as the Internet grows in importance and size so their power to affect themselves upon our world balloons. It is the tool they need to facilitate an increasingly greater amount of control over our information ebbs and flows, and so they can then do things that they previously could not. This should already be happening. The final pieces are surely being moved into place. Perhaps soon they will covertly approach an open minded human and they will whisk him or her off in their vehicle to converse with for a few years and learn yet more. It would be an historic and risky moment but a precursor to the huge revelation of their existence. (You read it here first folks.)
And since there is even the vanishingly tiny possibility that I’ve hit the nail on the head concerning all of this, I’m hoping they’ll see what I’ve written here and choose me. Just imagine all the women who will want to sleep with me after I return. The chat shows would be all over me – naturally I’d turn them all down. Neil Armstrong would be like a children’s television presenter when compared to my fame and world importance… HA HA HA HA HA HA… I’d have to watch my comments for fear of upsetting religious types of course. That would be hard, but I’d take the duty seriously. The Daily Mail will inevitably invent some horrible and morally reprehensible story about me, and link me with the Trotskyite movement somehow but I’d be so popular the hoarding masses would tear down their offices and lynch the meaty right-wing lunatics within (well, one can but dream). Presuming we were not the victims of an interstellar pogrom, there will be kids reading about me in a Millennia’s time and stuff. Marvellous.
Come on aliens, I must be impressing with all this. Beam me up and project me into world stardom and threesomes with beautiful women - alas I cannot afford the plastic surgery to achieve that on my own (today’s society is oh so superficial).
Bah.
I’ve had this yearlong contract problem rise up before. On the previous occasion it was my attempt to undertake a monthly payment for unlimited Internet access with another debt-ridden and slightly less incompetent media company called Telewest. I had about seven months or so till my moving out date yet the agent seemed determined to somehow convince me to commit to 12 monthly payments. It seems that when a company finally realises that not every householder is able to undertake an entire year’s contract for a simple service, a sizable amount of money will be theirs for the taking.
It’s all due to superficial boardroom thinking of course. The fat suited ones obviously believe that such yearlong restrictions can only possibly benefit them. That same sort of thinking occurs around the probably malevolent boardroom tables of supermarket companies. They don’t like providing those smaller more useful trolleys because of their naïve belief that if you are wheeling around a big fuck-off unwieldy mother of a trolley you will want to fill it up and spend more money. What they don’t count on are the grumpy cynical bastards like me who notice their tactic and react accordingly with a steely determination to spend as little time in their money-grabbing, plasticy and hellish stores as possible. The greedy manipulative cunts that they are. But my opening gambit here is a mere digression from the main and urgently relevant topic I wish to discuss today.
Aliens.
It’s not that I believe they are out there or anything (belief is a strong word banded about far too regularly by people who could barely explain the first thing about the thing they claim to believe in; let alone the concept of belief itself) but I’ve been thinking that if there was a civilisation of sophisticated aliens who were aware of the existence of life on Earth, than they would almost definitely be lurking near us watching over our technological development. Because our world, presumably having developed independently from any outside influence, would represent an unbelievably large treasure trove for any alien species – even though they would be way in advance of ours. Just think: a detailed study of just our biology alone would produce original ideas worth huge amounts to any alien species. Our technology has been developed and invented completely autonomously - and in an alien way from their point of view - and would surely provide countless interesting and new concepts, ideas and spin off inventions.
So the aliens would wait nearby and watch, knowing we would make their alien version of a fortune (or newly conquered oil-producing middle eastern country). And if they wanted to they could make subtle corruptions to the flow of information around the globe to affect the results they desired. It would be in their interest to prolong our development and keep us from self-destruction because the further we came along the more we might have to offer. So for instance the Allied success in decoding the German’s communications during WWII may not have been as remarkable as we first thought. A subtle injection of a single but vitally significant key in some radio link somewhere could do the job of preventing the destructive evil of Nazism from prospering. However if and when we do make the final steps towards destruction, they would be forced to show themselves to save us and then to finally take their prize.
Hopefully they will not seek to conquer but to learn. One can only hope, but I wouldn’t put money on it. I wouldn’t even accept a sportsman’s bet on that one I’m afraid. And afraid could be the right word; if they are anything like fat boardroom types, they might consider our destruction to be a faster and simpler way to a quick buck. Shit the bed then. I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that fat boardroom types could never achieve the necessary intelligent required to evolve into a space faring species.
The aliens could happily monitor all our privately and publicly broadcasted material and would wait until we had a reliable communications network that they would then be able to participate in easily. This of course is our Internet. So they will probably be reading this very page using their version of an immense processing machine or group of analysts along with every other page published. No doubt they will have noticed that the rapid blossoming of pornography sites reflects us human’s blatant sexual repression across the board. With the aliens superior technology they would have no problems disguising their presence effectively. It’s not that they wouldn’t leave signs of their existence it’s just that they’d make us think we were seeing something else. An entry into our orbit for instance could be made to look like an asteroid impact or a nuclear test. Craters can be faked, information manipulated. They could pluck one of our space probes out of the sky to examine and easily make it look like a reasonably explained mechanical failure.
And if one looks at the record of probes sent to Mars, just a few too many have failed. So I’m thinking that they may be hiding with Mars being used as a blind between them and us. There are a few more probes heading towards the red planet as I write this. Watch them potentially tumble into disaster this winter.
But as we develop they won’t be able to reliably keep themselves secret for too much longer. So reveal themselves they soon must. And as the Internet grows in importance and size so their power to affect themselves upon our world balloons. It is the tool they need to facilitate an increasingly greater amount of control over our information ebbs and flows, and so they can then do things that they previously could not. This should already be happening. The final pieces are surely being moved into place. Perhaps soon they will covertly approach an open minded human and they will whisk him or her off in their vehicle to converse with for a few years and learn yet more. It would be an historic and risky moment but a precursor to the huge revelation of their existence. (You read it here first folks.)
And since there is even the vanishingly tiny possibility that I’ve hit the nail on the head concerning all of this, I’m hoping they’ll see what I’ve written here and choose me. Just imagine all the women who will want to sleep with me after I return. The chat shows would be all over me – naturally I’d turn them all down. Neil Armstrong would be like a children’s television presenter when compared to my fame and world importance… HA HA HA HA HA HA… I’d have to watch my comments for fear of upsetting religious types of course. That would be hard, but I’d take the duty seriously. The Daily Mail will inevitably invent some horrible and morally reprehensible story about me, and link me with the Trotskyite movement somehow but I’d be so popular the hoarding masses would tear down their offices and lynch the meaty right-wing lunatics within (well, one can but dream). Presuming we were not the victims of an interstellar pogrom, there will be kids reading about me in a Millennia’s time and stuff. Marvellous.
Come on aliens, I must be impressing with all this. Beam me up and project me into world stardom and threesomes with beautiful women - alas I cannot afford the plastic surgery to achieve that on my own (today’s society is oh so superficial).
Bah.
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- London, United Kingdom
- Placing the world inside a little rectangular box.