27.08.2010 - 4:18 p.m.

Many years ago Scott Adams released a Dilbert cartoon wherein Dogbert invents the generic paper, this paper covers all the stuff you'd see outside of the "and finally" section, the advantage is that you'll only ever need to buy one copy, the disadvantage (for us) is that it costs a grand per copy.

In a similar blue vein here's some tired old wrinkly cocks' of stories that the 'news' media felt they should tell us about over the last week :

The taliban are brutal
Chinese premier presents caring image to adoring peasants while secretly being a hard-arsed bastard intent on remaining in power at all costs
US governor lies to federal agents
Billionaire libertarians reject government and environmental regulations of any kind which may hinder their ruthless acquisition of money
Right wing 'defenders of the family' who shout loudest about the gay epidemic are most likely gay themselves
People in third world countries are being screwed by global corporations

I mean come on, every day now is a slow news day, i know journalists are in general a bunch of lazy hacks content with copy/pasting directly from wikipedia, but there comes a point where standards are so low that a snail with a piece of chalk tied to his shell by a short length of string can write more interesting pieces that infest the media today.

The US press has obviously realised that there is no more news and has abandoned journalism completely, preferring instead to keep the fear levels ramped up every day, if the gay muslim socialists aren't gonna get ya, then the terrifying spectre of fascist theocracy will take your children into the mines, beware the thought police, beware, beware.

If it wasn't for the scuba dog or man riding around the world on a ladder made of wheels at the end of the news they could just replace the talky news with a static graphic shouting :

Grab your guns and head for the storm cellar, something you fear is going to get you

On the subject of being insulted by the TV, how many people turn the sound off during the adverts ? we're so sick of being shouted at every 12 minutes by the same two dimensional over-contrasted sanctimonious fuckwits over and over and over that the sound goes off the minute what we're watching breaks. If you're lucky on the discovery channels, some are running a few minutes adrift from each other so you can get three minutes of Howard Carter's excavations in between The History of the Lancaster, it doesn't matter what you watch as long as you don't see any adverts, you never know, something interesting might catch your eye.

If lucifer is the bringer of light, or bearer of light depending on your interpretation why is he so reviled by the mainstream abrahamic religions, surely it's better to live in the light than the darkness, just ask a plant. And does this mean that god is the keeper of darkness, therefore those who live in the shadow of god are less than plants ?

If you've ever met hard right evangelical biblicists you already know the answer to the last question

Maybe keeper of darkness is a misnomer, how about bastion of ignorance, surely it is written, to question gods creation is to insult god himself, better to sit in the dark with a bible and not question anything. After all, everything you could need in life is written in the bible so don't you dare stray beyond the confines of the dogma, 'cos if you wander into the light by accident you're surely a minion of lucifer.

this shit writes itself y'know

And before long you'll be sleeping in on sunday mornings, eating bacon wrapped prawns and questioning authority, and if there's one thing that authority doesn't like, it's being questioned, or even looked at funny, so stop it.

Stop it now.

or you've only yourself to blame

Happily enough there are plenty of happy things out there if you look for them rather than relying on someone else to beam it directly to your eyes, and here's one i found today, his name is james hance and he's an artist. More than that, an artist who speaks to the the young person inside all gen x'ers, because lets face it, if ever there was a generation who never grew up it's us. I think his catalogue of artwork is genius and subtle and ticks all the right boxes in my world, maybe i just like art, possibly i'm filling the void into which my own artistic skillz cannot generate, i know i need a big fucking house so i can satiate my soul by obtaining lots of nice shiny pictures to fill it with.

And not the boring old crusty bollox you see in the Louvre or some billionaires house, oh, some sunflowers, how shit, they're not even good sunflowers, how does this talk to me ? what does this crappy still life bring to my world of bright colours and high definition, fuck you van gogh. Bring me canvas images that relate to my life and my time spent walking over the surface of this rock, show me things that make me happy.

I love a starry night and flowers as much as the next person, but the starry night has to be cold on my face and twinkling and stretch out to infinity so i can stare into the milky blackness and contemplate my own existence and the endless possibilities afforded by the universe, and the flowers have to be vibrant and alive and representative of the all entwining lifeforce that clings to the surface of this rock, i can't sniff a two hundred year old painting and get a nose full of chemical scents that trigger memories of summertimes past.

At least with Dali you have to think a bit, to see the secrets he's communicating with his mischievous eyes, but ultimately even a long legged elephant just doesn't resonate with my experiences, i'm sure i could get round the whole national gallery on roller skates and still receive a decent dosage of kultcher, all finished in time for tiffin.

mmm, tiffin.