This is where I blog. Technically, I have a degree in professional writing. Think about that next time you get a 'qualified' gas engineer to come fix your boiler.
Banksy on Advertising
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are “The Advertisers” and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
~ Banksy
What would Jesus do? He would be manning the rocket launcher … of course.
I’m still alive.
This amused me.
Http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/the-ultimate-insult-for-clarkson-his-views-been-ruined-by-a-recycling-tip-2329674.html
I enjoy the idea of anyone who has paid a ridiculously large amount of money for a country residence having the reality of modern life intruding on their tranquillity.
The only thing better would have been if the Council had set up a Travellers Site instead. Of course, no sensible traveller would want to live near Clarkson as his predilection for exploding caravans has been well documented on television.
Maybe he could get the Stig to live there, then he’d be Stig of the dump.
I was listening to some music last night whilst bathing my children, and our eldest daughter Isobel started complaining about every single song that came on. Like most parents, I want my children to be able to think for themselves but at the same time, I don’t want them to end up liking whatever the latest heavily marketed pop sensation is when they reach that age. The idea of my daughters listening to the latest Bieber product in their bedroom and absorbing the ‘I can be anything as long as I consume’ message fills me with dread.
Ever since she read a Timmy Time book where the only music Timmy likes is Hip-Hop, she has kept saying that the only music she likes is Hip-Hop. As a man in his thirties who once purchased a Menswe@r album, I don’t own any Hip-Hop, so clearly the musical education of my daughter is going to be a battle of wills unless I do something before she has the chance to be influenced by anyone else.
Eventually the solution came to me. Isobel has only learnt the word Hip-Hop from a book and has no idea what it actually is. And that is why she will be mocked by her friends in later life for thinking ‘Chasing Rainbows’ by Shed Seven is Hip-Hop, along with Tom McRae and the Inspiral Carpets.
Over the last couple of days I have been going through my old tweets and deleting the ones with swear words in. With the uncertainty at work due to the budget cuts, I’ve been thinking about what any potential employer could read on the internet. I’m not actually looking for a new job, and don’t want to leave, but we don’t know what is going to happen with the ridiculous funding cuts the Government are pursuing, no-ones job is secure. It is also a much less productive way to spend a couple of hours than writing new material, updating my CV or doing my coursework, therefore it inevitably went to the top of my ‘to-do’ list on Tuesday.
A cursory glance at my Twitter feed would have suggested that I am a foul-mouthed, angry git. Not criteria that appear on most job-specs, though I could probably fill one of the new vacancies at Sky Sports. Whilst I would hope that any employer could appreciate the context of each tweet, the nature of the medium, and the umpteen layers of irony that are usually involved in things I write, I don’t want to take the risk of not getting a job because I know the anglo-saxon word for vagina.
The easiest solution would have been to protect my tweets but I feel that would be missing the whole point of Twitter. I like being able to read random tweets and like the idea of mine being read by a stranger on the other side of the world. The other option would be to use an on-line pseudonym but Douglas Rushkoff has a persuasive argument in his latest book that not using your real name on the internet tends to make you act in ways you would never in real life (I’m paraphrasing a bit). If you use your own name, you have to take responsibility for the words you type, especially when you have foolishly placed your mobile number on your about.me promo website.
So anyway I’ve deleted the swear tweets. Obviously, these will remain in Goggle’s cache forever, and there will be plenty of tweets without swear words in that could be taken out of context but I have done what I can to improve my web footprint. I now feel slightly more employable than two days ago.
But I know what you’re thinking, deleting all those tweets was pointless because you’ve just blogged about doing it. Well done, you are correct, I hope it makes you feel happy.
And anyway there is noting I can do to get rid of this. The early twenties me really was a muppet and Google will never let me forget it.
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If you are a potential employer reading this though, to borrow a phrase from Eric Cartman, I would never swear in the work place, not unless someone really pissed me off.
I did my first gig of the year at Long Live Comedy in Newcastle on Tuesday. When I booked the gig, it was intended to be the grand unveiling of the new set that I was going to spend November and December writing. In the end, I only did one new line.
This was the first time I had revisited a previous venue, so I was pretty apprehensive about doing basically the same set. I had booked slots for myself and another comedian from Harrogate, Richard Fortune, and when we got there, we were told that half the acts weren’t coming. Richard jumped at the chance to do a longer set and I regretted more than ever not having any new material to add to my set.
I went on first after the interval. The audience was a large as to be expected for a small comedy night in January, probably twenty people. On the plus side, they all clearly wanted to be there so it went down pretty well. The highlight for me was putting down my first heckler. He won’t be making visiting Harrogate to drink my wife’s breast milk again.
Richard’s set went down well too. He has a great rambling style, much more story-based than my act. He is also much better than me at interacting with the audience.
All in all a good night. Now if I can just find the time to write five minutes about Cameron’s destruction on social democracy. I’ll just do my Scrabble moves first…
So the (predominantly privately-educated) media people have decided that the most important issue to arise from yesterday’s protests against the (predominantly privately educated) government’s assault on social mobility is the fact that the (privately-educated) future head of state was momentarily caught up in it. FFS.
There is no hope of the media ever holding this government to account, not when they all wear the same school ties.
What do you get if you cross Jim Davidson with a Digestive?
A racist biscuit.
What do you get if you cross Jim Davidson with a Chocolate Digestive?
A self-loathing biscuit.
What do you get if you cross Jim Davidson and Adolf Hitler?
A vegetarian Jim Davidson.
Sorry.
So I did my fourth gig last week up in Newcastle. It was quite a long drive, as usual but I tried to refrain from going over my routine too many times as my throat didn’t feel great. For various reasons involving builders, children (my own, not random ones) and a lack of free time, I felt underprepared for this one. On the plus side, it had prevented me from making the radical changes that usually occur whenever I’m working on anything with an imminent deadline.
My routine was basically the same as last time, with a few tweaks. When I got to the venue, I had a few words with the people that were running the night but networking is not my strong point, so I soon ended up sat at a table going through everything in my head and waiting for the show to start.
I went on third, no one had actually told me the running order so I had presumed by this point I would be on in the second half. Not sure if the surprise was a good thing or a bad thing, as soon as I got up there, I immediately forgot my admittedly weak Newcastle gag and jumped straight into the main part of my act. That would have been fine if my internal monologue hadn’t then pulled me up on this unexpected deviation from the plan, leading to a few seconds of rambling as I tried to gain some direction, then silence.
My memory is pretty terrible but I think the work is beginning to pay off as this time one of my lines popped into my head and then exited via my mouth. A bit of laughter and we were away.
It wasn’t perfect, I missed out some of my favourite lines as my memory lurched from one bit to the next but I think each section went down well. The stuff about Harrogate went better than it has before, with a particularly enjoyable off the cuff line added in.
I still feel like a rambling idiot up there but I’m happy with how things are progressing. Two more gigs this month, then the plan is to take some time to develop some less generic material for next year.