Month: May 2010

Resurrecting Michael Jackson

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Ok, so of course I wrote my Michael Jackson blog ‘Is Michael Jackson Really Dead? If So, Could Kanye West be Behind it?’  in the hope that it would be read by a wider and different audience than my usual work. Of course I was deliberately contentious, with a view to provoking some responses (although precisely what sort of responses I would receive, I didn’t really consider). Of course it was an absurd suggestion, to pin Jackson’s death on lamecore rapper Kanye West. I didn’t feel the need to explain that I was mocking targets left, right and centre: the media, the conspiracy theorists, West and, yes, Jackson and his ‘fans’. Of course it was rushed. I knew that there would be an insane media frenzy – it was already in full spate while the news was still breaking. And yes, I’ve long maintained that a good title counts for a lot.

At the time, however, I didn’t truly appreciate just how good my title was, although had I thought about it, it would have been quite apparent. As is the case with every dead celebrity, people are incredulous. Ok, fans and the gullible are incredulous, the conspiracy theorists simply refuse to accept what the media present as ‘fact.’ If Elvis isn’t dead, Diana isn’t dead, Richie Edwards isn’t dead and Jesus Christ isn’t dead, why would Michael Jackson have popped it for real? The circumstances surrounding his death, not to mention the way in which it happened, were truly ideal for the formation of conspiracy theories. So half the world took to the ‘net in search of theories, and facts that they could use to piece together half-baked theories of their own.  Within a matter of days, it was abundantly clear that the phrase ‘is Michael Jackson really dead?’ had serious currency, and my article, being one of the first published under this title, shot toward the top of any Google search using that phrase. Bingo!

Right now, if you simply type ‘is Mic’ into Google, it will offer ‘is Michael Jackson really dead’ (without quotation marks or question mark) as a popular search above, amongst others, ‘is Michael Schumacher the Stig,’ ‘is Michael Ball married,’ ‘is Michael Buble married’ and ‘is Michael Jackson a Muslim.’ Taking the first option yields some 409,000,000 hits. My article is at number two.

Almost a year on, and that phrase remains incredibly popular. The hits were tailing off, though, and the comments were only being posted very occasionally. Still, I’d had my fun, made my point, wound up a fair few idiots who had completely missed the point, and… what’s that, a new conspiracy theory? Jackson is alive and on national television as a burns victim who was friends with the late star? Jacko even paid for some of this guy’s reconstructive surgery? Brilliant! David Rothenberg had even changed his name to Dave Dave to ‘erase’ his past, a man intent on breaking free from his past by adopting a new identity…

Suddenly, my little article, banged out in a couple of hours as a wind-up, which had settled down to receiving a steady 20-30 hits per day, is back up to the region of 150 hits a day… and rising. Jackson may well be dead, but this article is definitely alive and kicking!

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On Yer Bike! Rights (and Wrongs) of Way

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In my previous blog, I considered the current seeming obsession with ‘rights’ – the right to free speech, and so on. Well here’s another: right of way. To clarify, the ever-contentious debate over vehicle / cyclist / pedestrian rights of way.

I should perhaps point out two things before I continue: first, I’m all too aware that everyone seems to believe that they have right of way wherever they may be on the highways and byways, and while I’m no fan of motorists (to put it mildly), but get rather annoyed when cyclists claim that they are legally entitled to go wherever they so wish, and equally by pedestrians who insist that the right of way is theirs, and that if they choose to walk down the middle of the road, then they should expect all traffic to stop. Second, I’m not in the habit of blogging anecdotes-cum-rants, or rantecdotes, and generally find other people’s tales of what annoyed them today quite tedious. However, this one I just couldn’t leave.

Ok, so I’m rarely in the best of humour on my way to work in the morning. Juggling multiple jobs in addition to my writing, I’m usually short on sleep, and so rather crotchety. However, I’m also fairly awake and cogent: I’m something of a morning person. I just happen to hate my job, and also get annoyed by groups of schoolchildren walking five abreast at a quarter of a mile an hour.

Cyclists, pedestrians, motorists… it makes no difference to me. Returning to the point I made in my previous blog, it’s not about ‘rights’ or even ‘responsibilities.’ My rule for living: ‘don’t be a twat.’ So when people are walking three or four abreast and I’m on my own, it’s difficult for me to reduce the space I occupy in order to make way for them. I have permanent bruises on my shoulders from almost daily pedestrian collisions, but what can I do? I can’t go less than single file.

So yesterday I was walking toward town with my wife. Our journey takes us through an underpass beneath a railway line, and the route is shared by both pedestrians and cyclists, with no marked divisions for either. Seeing an oncoming cyclist, my wife went ahead of me and we proceeded in single file and pulled in to the right. A third pedestrian remained to the right, but there was still what looked like a navigable gap in the middle.

The cyclist – a middle-aged woman – clearly thought otherwise, and without really slowing down, veered straight toward me as Mrs Nosnibor, ahead of me, rounded the corner out of the underpass. I maintained my trajectory: I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, and besides, I figured she would surely apply the breaks before she landed her front wheel between my knees. Inches away from me, I pulled away a little, but with a wall inches to  my right, didn’t have much scope for evasive action. She, meanwhile, weaved to her right by a few inches and ploughed straight into my left arm. It hurt.

‘This is a cycle path, you know!’ she shouted irately.

‘It’s also a pavement!’ I retorted, similarly irate and not just a little bit shocked. Yes, I had meant footpath, but my full vocabulary often escapes me at 7.45am when I’ve just been hit by a lump of pedal-powered metal.

‘I know!’ the idiot shouted over her shoulder as she regained momentum, leaving me no opportunity for a further response. Not that I’m sure how I would have made a comeback to such an evidently nonsensical rejoinder.

Rubbing my bruised arm, jarred to the shoulder, shocked, and above all enraged, I continued on my way, ranting inchoately about the fucking bag who clearly thought she had the divine right to mow through pedestrians just because. The question is, would she have continued her collision course and berated me for failing to evaporate into the air in order to make way for her if I had been a small child or an elderly person? Of course, I don’t know, but I’d be curious to see the scenario play out again in different circumstances. One has to question the logic and mental capacity of someone who goes straight toward the largest target – the two pedestrians close together instead of the one walking alone – or, better still, the space between the two objects. Was she trying to make a point, or just a complete fuckwit? Again, I don’t know.

Believe it or not, I’m actually all in favour of cycling. It’s an economical and environmentally way of getting about, not to mention a good way of incorporating some light exercise into a person’s daily routine. So yes, I’m very much in favour of cycling. Responsible cycling that it. Wearing a helmet, high visibility clothing, lights when appropriate, riding on the road or in the cycle lane or on cycle paths rather than the pavement, and following the flow of traffic (the number of cyclists I see riding the wrong way up one way streets is just insane)… that’s responsible cycling. Oh, and not being a twat. Is that really so much to ask?

 

 

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Know Your Rights (A Party Election Broadcast by the PLAGIARIST Party)

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It’s been rather difficult to avoid the looming election in recent days. Well, if you’re in the UK, that is. British politics doesn’t have the international But then, the way the media have been going overboard on the coverage, you might have been forgiven for thinking that the campaigns started months ago and that this was a global revolution rather than something that occurs with comparative regularity and frequency in our small island nation. Nothing like blasting all sense of perspective in a quest for ratings. It certainly feels like it’s been a very long and protracted run-up, and there are still several weeks to go. The quality of the coverage in he mass media is hugely varied, although on the whole, lacks depth and isn’t all that informative. For the most part, we’re told endlessly about where the party leaders are visiting and what issues they’re going to be addressing, but apart from a brief 3-4 bullet-point summary of the manifestos, very little information is being given about what the parties actually stand for. Small wonder many people are confused or don’t care. Nothing like overkill to turn people off.

Similarly, there’s nothing like a lot of tedious hot air spouted by people who don’t appear to live in the same world as the rest of us to perpetuate disengagement, and there’s no shortage of evidence that much of our society is disenfranchised and has no interest in politics or the political process – Facebook groups like ‘I Bet I Can Find A Million People With No Interest In The UK Election’ are just one of almost countless examples of people who are more interested in telling the world how much of a turn-off politics is than they are in changing the political landscape.

Personally, I’m not nearly as apolitical as I sometimes claim to be. I am deeply frustrated with politics, but always cast my vote, if only because I feel more readily entitled to complain about how crap the government is, and that the wrong party got voted in. It’s alright, it makes me feel better, at least in the moments when I’m not mired in despondency over the futility of participating in a democracy where ‘the majority’ who wield the collective power are the very people I  spend my entire life battling against in my writing and in my daily life. People are ignorant, stupid and selfish: of course those who vote are going to vote out of ignorance, stupidity and selfishness, whatever their personal agendas may be. Moreover, I believe a spoiled paper makes for a far more effective statement about those standing than a non-vote. The latter says ‘I can’t be arsed.’ The former says ‘I turned out to vote, but none of you represent me in any way. Change the system, change the parties!  So however disaffected and disillusioned I feel about our rigged and flawed democratic political system, I have the right to vote, and I’m going to use it.

But about my ‘rights’… I recently completed a survey that required me to select from a menu which election issues were of greatest importance to me. One choice was ‘human rights.’ We seem to be obsessed with rights at present – even more than usual. Charity appeals are begging for my money, showing pictures of emaciated children in Uganda, while telling me that every child has a right to an education, and that clean water is ‘a basic human right.’

Now, far be it for me to suggest that education or water are luxuries, but, well, I think we need to get a handle on differentiating rights from needs and wants – right?

The trouble is, so many of those who vocally and vociferously defend these rights – not only their own, but, more often than not, those of others, to the extent that they become rights campaigners and crusaders, are also those who demand protection, restriction and prohibition… in the name of rights. People have a right to walk down the street without fear of being assaulted, or harangued by druggies or drunkards or homeless people… and so shout for tighter restrictions on alcohol, drugs, begging without considering that one individual exercising their rights to personal freedoms will invariably impinge on another individual doing precisely the same. The ‘right’ to demand security, or the freedom to do this, that or the other, can be countered by the ‘right’ to drug oneself up to the eyeballs, the right to kill oneself through gross stupidity. Blocking a person’s right to get horrendously wasted by demanding the right to ‘safety’ may have the best intentions at heart, but is it ‘right’ that one set of rights should take priority over another? This seems to me like a case of two rights making a wrong. Moreover, who should determine which rights are more right?

The mainstream media – and not just the tabloids, I might add – thrive on a good bit of moral outrage, and there’s rarely a week that passes without there being a revelation concerning something un-PC that someone has said or written. From Ross and Brand’s public mauling (which ultimately didn’t ruin their careers, and besides, they’ve got more than enough cash to see them through retirement if it had) over ‘lewd’ and ‘offensive’ answerphone messages to leaked internal emails passed amongst civil servants (rather unimaginatively) poking fun at the Pope (you can’t speak ill of a nazi sympathiser who covers up child abuse when he’s a man of God: he’s got divine rights, I assume), there’s never a shortage of energy to expend on such comparative trivia when there are real issues to be ignored. So those who complain about, say, offensive comedians are on difficult terrain: the ‘right’ to free speech means that individuals have the right to express views that others may not want to hear. Not wanting to hear those views is their right, too. But to expect to be able to defend someone’s right to be offensive – as long as they don’t offend you by touching on topics that are personally sensitive is a blatant double standard. Take for example the couple who went to see a Frankie Boyle stand-up show. With tickets at £20 a pop or whatever, it’s probably a fair assumption that they enjoy his brand of ‘humour,’ and as such they must’ve known what they were in for. Alas, they decided it was all too much when he referred to Down Syndrome children as mongers – because their child has Down’s. Ok, but they’d’ve been laughing themselves silly if he’d focused on spackers or spinos instead, right?

Reported – so surprisingly – in the Daily Mail, the couple in question were portrayed as being able to take a joke, but that Botyle had gone too far: ‘Former marketing executive Mrs Smith said: ‘Throughout his show he made fun of disabled people. But when given an opening he launched into a puerile, childish and ignorant attack on Down’s syndrome sufferers. ‘It wasn’t funny.’

Mr Smith, managing director of an online book company, said: ‘We’re fans of comedy. We’ve been to lots of live stand-up shows. We knew what to expect, or we thought we did. This was out of the dark ages. Not the material of a highly regarded comic. I’m still fuming. We both believe in freedom of speech but Boyle’s jokes were borne from ignorance and based on stereotypes.’

I’d call that hypocrisy myself. Moreover, this is simply one of countless examples of the way people become indignant about ‘rights’ – not only their own, but the rights of others. Far be it for me to suggest that campaigners of any form of rights act in self-interest, but I can’t help but feel that for many, there is a strong element of self-righteousness intermingled with the purer motives. Perhaps I should qualify this by stating that I do believe in equal rights for all. That, however, is my ideal world, and I find it necessary to accept that the reality is rather different. That’s life. Similarly, I would hope to live in a world where everyone lives harmoniously, respects one another and can agree to differ without killing one another, where everyone respects the rights of others and takes advantage of the rights they have and are able to apply in their daily lives with due care and common sense. I won’t even mention ‘responsibilities,’ at least in the clichéd context of rights. Very well, perhaps I will.

The point is, we all have rights, we all have responsibilities, we all have needs and we all have wants. Not only is it important to understand the difference, but it is also important to understand cultural and social differences. Not all rights, responsibilities, needs or wants are applicable to all individuals across the globe, and to project our own understandings and standards on others is not always appropriate. The ‘right’ to access university education in Britain is not, for example, likely to be of great interest to someone who aspires to be a waiter or a bricklayer, or who is destined to receive an apprenticeship to continue the family trade of, say, brewing. Similarly, the right to clean running water won’t hold too much appeal for mudskippers or marshland wading birds (animals have rights too, of course, as we’re often reminded).

In light of this, my own personal philosophy is simple, but covers pretty much all aspects of life quite effectively: ‘don’t be a twat.’ Perhaps I should stand as an independent candidate in the next election and use this as my campaign slogan. Whether anyone would be willing to vote for me would be an interesting experiment, and no mistake. You should all vote for me, of course, because you know I’m, right (although politically to the left)… right?



And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk.