Cult de Celebrité

Once again an individual has been selected to be shoved down the throats of the British public. It is amazing how the media tend to treat the general public like babies, depicting these "celebrity" snacks as lovely, yummy and wholesome treats, all the while making aeroplane noises as they prepare the "goop" and head for the jugular..... ur I mean oesophagus.

It is bad enough that we had to sit through a crap girl band (Spice Girls/Girls Aloud), followed by a dire "Footballer's Wives" romance and marriage (David Beckham/Ashley Cole) now we have to sit through the dreaded Solo Album..... Yes, Cheryl Cole has been basted and battered (in the deep fried way - not the spousal abuse way) in the manner of Victoria Beckham, and is just about ready to be served to the public on a platter with a basket of chips.... It is only a matter of time before her inevitable shift to the US menu and she is repackaged as a nutritious Burger and Fries.....

But at least we can be happy in the knowledge that when large media organisations, such as the BBC, choose to interview the new "Darling of the British Public" (or as I like to think of her, the next course in a long unappetising meal), they do so with only the purest of intentions. It is not because she has been chosen as the latest and greatest pre-packaged widget that will bring home the bacon because she is pretty, and people will buy her shit. And of course people will buy her shit, because if the only thing that that they can hear is her shit, and the only thing that they can see is her shit, then shit it is. The gentlemen tending to the garden have selected this "British Rose" for flowering, and the rest of us are up to mouths in shit, and boy are we lapping it up....

Open wide America, your shit burger is on it's way....

The Path of Rebellion

When was the last time that you saw a good old fashioned rally/riot/display of public outcry (by old fashioned I mean not populated by a bunch of anarchistic skinheads hell bent on throwing something through a window.)? Was it the eighties? Maybe there is nothing left to fight for....

As far as social movements go, well, they've gone! They've gone digital.... or so I imagine, for people have been protesting since time began (all the way back to when Ugg was pissed that Blurg didn't respect his cave enough to not take a dump in it) and I don't see us all of a sudden burying our heads in the sand like some crazy ostrich family reunion. So there has to be a social movement taking place somewhere (but like a bowel movement I am not quite sure where the smell is emanating from)...

So how does one find out... it is not as if Google will list the top ten social movement web pages just like that... because invariably if they were to do so that would probably invalidate the movement itself.... or something like that...

Like all good paths, this one is poorly lit, bumpy, steep and winding, with no sign posts and not a map in sight. And who says that the internet is just for porn....

The Shiny Side

Has anyone seen the dark side of the moon? Of course not, because we only have one view point with which to admire it from. Even if scientists were to provide me with pictures of the dark side I would remain unconvinced, as I suffer from that oh-so-typical "seeing is believing" mentality.

Of late I started to realise that we will never know the truth, merely believe points of view. For instance when I was growing up I listened to a lot of Heavy Metal, without knowing much about its roots, but was convinced that it was the most hardcore hetero-male thing that anyone could be involved in. Having grown up in a country in which it was (and still is) illegal to be gay definitely makes me cringe to my core about the way that things were (and are). There was this perceived mental connection between leather and hardcore, bloodlust inducing, hair growing manliness! I knew some people that didn't wash.... ever.... not even dishes.... And I recently discovered that the connection between leather and heavy metal was down to one man, Rob Halford - the lead singer of Judas Priest.

Now the really interesting thing to note is that his penchant for leather relates to his ties to the gay scene in the 60s, as he is gay. This little revelation shocked me to the core, as these two scenes are extremely far apart in my mind, my how I chuckle to think how in a homophobic little country like mine there are groups of hairy, leather-clad sweat-barons, walking around in the belief that they are affirming their "straight guy" personas when they are in fact flying the rainbow flag for gay rights!

So I guess that it doesn't really matter whether or not I see the dark side of the moon... because the moon is a sphere without any sides. Except for that shiny one that keeps me awake a night...

Just keep ducking...

Wake up. Travel. Work. Travel. Sleep.

I just love how life works in a cycle... always just going round and round and round. Some cycles start, some end, whilst others just keep on going. This is just another one of those "unspoken life lessons" that you are sure you slept through... or maybe you were looking out the window wondering where all of the time ACTUALLY goes to... space?

There are times when I wish that someone had sat me down and listed out "Life Lessons" in a sequential format. Lessons about love, learning (yes, that's right - learning about learning, bloody cyclical shit!). I realised for the first time the other day that all we ever spend our lives doing is learning, be it watching TV (social behavioural patterns), gardening (well... gardening...), making tea (perfecting the art of the dipped bag...) or reading (depends on the subject matter). Now obviously some of the activities that we undertake and lessons that we learn depend on how old we are, for as we progress in the journey the lessons that we learn from going to the toilet can become quite important... Trivial, cyclical, yet important...

So, choose your activities well, for the cycle will end sometime, and when it does do you really want to look back and be able to say that you have learned everything that there is to know about the social interactions of the inhabitants of a square in the EastEnd.... or a house where the inhabitants can't leave until enough strangers have requested for them to do so telephonically, or textually (SMSly if you will)....

Let's just say that the University of Life might ask for it's diploma back...