GENUINE QUESTION

GENUINE QUESTION

I have got a genuine question -

When it comes to posting my poems here

I say “poems” but whatever doggerel

You may choose to think that they are

I wonder if you are more likely

To read hard printouts (I’ve posted a few)

When they pop up in your social timeline

Or would you click a link somewhere new?

Is it easier, I wonder, for followers

To read these pages when they are right there?

Instead of awkwardly adding more barriers

Of excuses for you to choose not to share

The thing that has been worrying me

Is I wouldn’t want to keep on cluttering

All the good things you do choose to see

With words bizarre, inept, or distracting

I’m asking so as not to bother you

If you are now becoming quite sick

Of reading this deluge of nonsense

That maybe proves I’m a lunatic

I suppose I must consider the prospect

That you’d rather not see them any more

If so I’ll crawl on back under my little rock

Maybe trying harder not to be such a bore

Martin A W Holmes, October 2016

CONTROVERSY (OR NOT)

You know, I fretted buckets that a weekend blog posting that I wrote last weekend might prove to be ever so slightly "controversial" amongst my chums. I worried for days beforehand about whether or not it was appropriate or not, only to find that no bugger actually read the bloody thing...

Generally speaking, I don’t often go out of my way to be deliberately controversial as such. Sometimes it just sort of “happens” when I’m trying to be whimsical in that way that only I seem to understand.

And sometimes it simply doesn’t work anyway, given that I generally flitter through life being much ignored, overlooked, and unloved.

Sometimes I make a quite innocent remark, only for it to be massively misinterpreted and get me into a whole heap of trouble, and, on occasions, I just suffer from an almost impossible to predict crassness and tactlessness that I maintain was more about unfortunate timing and unlucky coincidences than anything deliberate.

After all, I ought to know better.

For example, I know that the England (and Wales) Cricket Team have been making a spectacularly poor show of playing the recent one-day series against India, but the commentary on Test Match Special that I have enjoyed for years has been significantly tainted by the occasional presence on the team of a recently added summarizer who is, quite frankly, spoiling it for me with his jibes and comments and generally irritating manner.

Being a creature of the modern era, at least in some ways, I have been onto several social media platforms to express my irritation at his continued presence, albeit in a slightly abstract and whimsical manner, only to have all of my opinions ignored by just about everyone.

And then an innocent enough exchange – or at least I thought it was – about fund-raising opportunities got me into a whole heap of trouble when the easily offended brigade chose to point out a particular unfortunate coincidence (about which I had been previously unaware) over something I wrote in a failed effort to amuse someone…* 

Maybe you could sell one of your players...?

Well… you wouldn’t have to sell off ALL of him or her, obviously… I mean, presumably most of them have viable organs…? Obviously the livers probably aren’t much of an option, but there must be a spare kidney or two knocking about…? ;-)

Ironically, when a friend of mine had a similar sounding experience recently, I sent him a personal message which included the following…

Here’s one of those timely reminders that you can write what you like (whatever it was), but you can never predict how it’s going to be interpreted… and the possibilities of people taking offence about something that comes completely out of left-field are extraordinary…

Perhaps sometimes I should listen to myself a bit more.

Of course, we are living in times where people will keep on “reckon-ing” in public, and so we all probably need to be a little more careful about the things we say and write, but, equally, we can’t all predict what everyone’s personal circumstances might be at any given moment, or how anyone might react to something that everyone else might see as being utterly harmless.

We do, from time-to-time, need to be careful about the things we say, of course we do, but should that mean that we all have to walk on eggshells all of the time, just in case we upset someone, however unexpectedly or unintentionally…?

In the end, it seems, it might be better if we all just shut up about everything I suppose, but I suspect that’s precisely what the “joy vampires” would prefer…

* This never actually happened, of course (because almost nobody actually gives a damn

* about anything I might have to say), but I'm using it as an example of the kind of thing

* that does happen from time-to-time...

THE RED FLAG OF FRIENDSHIP

The constant delays over completion on mum's flat means that the sad little posting that I've composed to mark that less-than-monumental event keeps getting postponed, and instead I have to keep dredging up nonsense like this from the dark depths of the "Drafts" File to fill the void, in the misguided belief that it's "better than nothing" although, to be fair, and despite what is alluded to in the text, this sort of thing happens fairly regularly, so it's never really going to be utterly irrelevant...

I’m fairly sure that nobody else struggles with this kind of dilemma. After all, if you’re sensible enough to be reading this, then you’re obviously the sort of very sane, very rational kind of human being who would never be filled with such doubts or concerns, but, whilst you get on with your sensible existence, it seems that, perhaps rather sadly, the author is not that kind of human being at all.

The dilemma is a little part of the world of social networking which probably doesn't trouble anybody else at all, but one which causes me no end of angst and paroxysms of doubt and anguish as I have lengthy internal debates as whether to click or not to click.

You see, it all comes down to those little red flags which indicate that someone wishes to “friend” you on a social networking site. I’m sure that the obvious, rational thing to do is just to click “accept’ or “decline” and get on with your life.

But that simple choice, for me, is where it starts to get complicated.

After all, in the first instance, is it a name that I recognise? This is not always the case. After all, I’m quite capable of forgetting someone’s name within nanoseconds of being told it, so the chances are that, if I did know you twenty years ago, I would still struggle to dredge your monicker from the slurry and sludge of my mind.

If it is a name that seems vaguely familiar, it is then possible that they know other people that I also vaguely recognise but have drifted away from for various reasons and might not want to re-establish links with.

Also, are they likely to be the sort of person who is likely to fill my life with all sorts of banal nonsense that I’d rather not know about?

Or do I recall them having extreme and radical points of view which I’d rather not be exposed to…? This particular issue always, always, means immediate banishment to the realms of “not following” in order not to upset them by the extreme guillotine of the “unfriend” option, but has the added advantage of keeping me relatively sane and away from all of their nonsense and the endless stuff about which I really do not care.

Also, these flags exist in a kind of quantum state.

The mere observing of the contents within and underneath them means that the flag itself vanishes as if it has never been and, if you are like me, and get distracted into other thoughts and activities, out of sight can inevitably mean out of mind, and that request can lurk there unnoticed for months until the next friendship request pops up and I then see the other one still lurking there accusingly and forgotten.

How long, then, is too long in such situations…?

Yes, in my case, such requests are usually several months apart, because I really am that unpopular and forgotten about. You might not believe it, with your own massively successful and sociable existence, but you’re just going to have to learn to deal with it like I did, and just accept that you’re reading the words of a social outcast, a pariah, and a misanthrope of the first order.

HAHAHAHAHAHA-HAHHHHH!!!

Recently I made the mistake of trying to do some “social networking” via the Kindle whilst I was in bed not trying to sleep and shredding my body clock, and this is never a good idea. My main problem involves the fact that the touch-screen seems to be getting ever less sensitive to my chunky old fingertips, perhaps because of the thin film of finger-deposited grease is playing havoc with the connections.

So, there I was, busily trying to find a way to rotate a photograph which had orientated itself in the wrong direction when all hell broke loose and screens started jumping about all over the place, and, amidst the chaos of trying to wrest control back from HAL again, I must have inadvertently hit an “accept” button which had been lurking there for a while, because, when stillness and calm returned again, I suddenly appeared to have one more “friend” than I’d had previously…

Well, this simply would not do, especially given the length of time involved, so I then had to get up and get myself to a keyboard which was attached to an operating system which connected a format of that website that I at least vaguely understood and, after sorting out precisely who it might be, tinker with my timelines and settings and get things back onto an even keel before the ghosts got into the machine and the gremlins awoke.

So, here I find myself, dragging my way through life with another "friend" to deal with, and more electronic conversations to be negotiated. It's not that I really mind, of course - after all, it's nice to be remembered, no matter how obliquely - but now there's a whole new minefield - of who knows who, and what who might say to whom about what - to be negotiated and that's, quite frankly, bloody terrifying.

Still… Welcome, I suppose.

You know who you are…

BRIOCHE WITH YOU

I was hoping to persuade you that this was an aerial view of a path taken during an exciting helicopter ride to make my life seem far more exciting than it actually is… but it's only a chocolate chip brioche from Morrisons...

Despite my excitement at having found them, they turned out to be a rather disappointing breakfast, to be quite honest, even though they appeared to be quite an interesting alternative option once I’d failed to find any hot cross buns to slip into the basket which marked me out to all the other trolley-pushing, child-rearing customers as being the sort of person lucky enough to still have a freewheeling, carefree lifestyle.

“Hmm…” I reasoned “The Beloved likes brioche… and she likes chocolate… so what could possibly be a better option…?”

Well, as it turned out, at breakfast time the following morning, they were deemed to be “Too spicy” and, as they were subsequently making their way to the bin having also failed to appeal at lunchtime and since dried out to an even more ghastly degree, I found myself looking at one of them and noticing that the drizzled “X” contouring over the top surface looked not unlike one of the paths meandering up and down some of the hills hereabouts and, having had that thought, I whipped out my little camera and tried to immortalise the thought.

Later on, I imagined that it would be amusing to tinker with the photograph and zoom in on it, just to see how convincing the idea might be, and then I decided that it might prove “hilarious” to “share” this thought through the platform of “social media” and so I posted it, alongside the first paragraph above, to hopefully slightly brighten their collective days

Well, it was a slow news day.

Now, obviously I was not expecting anyone to actually think that I had taken an aerial photograph of a nearby peak, because that “freewheeling, carefree lifestyle” doesn’t really involve constant helicopter flights and champagne cocktails on the verandas of the casinos in Monte Carlo (Mostly it’s basically boredom without distraction, to be perfectly frank with you) but I thought that the notion might sell the otherwise peculiar angle of the point of view.

Anyway, some people seemed to “like” my funny little photo – or perhaps they just liked the idea of a chocolate chip brioche - and that, as they say, was that. The world moved on, other news came in, and that notion slipped down the timeline and into the swill-bucket of (personal) history.

And yet…

I suppose that I’ve been unofficially - and possibly unconsciously - testing out a few parameters lately when it comes to the small matter of which kind of thing works best in whatever particular form of social media I happen to be hooked up to at the time. My own choices being TwitWorld and FizzBok and, well, here I suppose. I do also sometimes “recommend” things on “Google+” of course, but that’s rather like bellowing into a mirror, to be honest.

Big “newsy” stuff seems to work in all of the forms which I use, but daft little photographs like this one seem to get the “best” reaction in FizzBok. They might get “looked at” in TwitWorld by a couple of dozen random strangers whilst they are in the visible part of the timeline for a nanosecond, but they swiftly pass into the general gravy of the internet in the blink of a pixel.

TwitWorld itself doesn’t seem to “like” blog links either and, to be fair, despite the fact that FizzBok links seem to be the only reason some people remain aware that the blog still exists at all - as opposed to just bookmarking the link and habitually visiting - it’s never brought in a huge amount of traffic either. Also, on occasion, I don’t believe that the content is particularly “FizzBok-worthy” and prefer to let it sink or swim on its own accord without the “benefit” of broadcasting it to my tiny circle of acquaintances.

TwitWorld does seem to like my wordplay, though, if I “join in” with some of the hashtag games I play (To the tune of rarely more than six “favourites” and a “retweet”), but less so if I’m merely rambling on with some random thought which has struck me, because I don’t generally have the sort of interplay and banter with people that other people seem to have in that particular part of the interweb.

Occasionally I will barge in on a conversation which can be fun, but it still makes me feel like the bloke I always used to be when I went to parties – standing all alone in a corner and feeling that during whatever conversations I might get to have, I’m almost bound to make a complete tit of myself.

A bit like I’m doing with the blog, really, only the blog doesn’t give me the instant disapproving feedback and toe-curling embarrassment that actually talking to a real person used to do, which is, I suppose, why I persist with it.

Ah well, I guess that the quest for some kind of meaning for it all will continue until I finally bail out and lose interest again, but until then, dear reader, it’s good to have you along for the ride.

Now, is it time for breakfast yet…?

DON’T, JUST… DON’T

I’m going to make a radical and, perhaps, even slightly dangerous suggestion today.

Has that got you intrigued, yet? Because really, it shouldn’t.

Okay, when I say “dangerous” I might be slightly exaggerating, but no more than saying that appearing in public whilst not wearing make-up is in any way “brave”. Running towards a machine-gun emplacement full of people who really want to kill you is brave; Juggling live sticks of dynamite after you’ve lit the fuses is dangerous. Just asking you not to read something that I’ve written is perhaps foolhardy when it comes to wasting my own time, but little more than this.

I’m simply going to ask you not to read this blog.

That’s right, you read that correctly: Step away from the blog… Walk away and don’t look back.

There, that was easy wasn’t it? You’ve suddenly got five more minutes to fill and I don’t have to worry about anyone getting upset or annoyed by anything else that I might have to say as I spew these, my daily madnesses, out into the big, wide and ultimately uncaring universe.

Still here? Okay, fair enough, but don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

Obviously, I am running the risk that you’ve decided to hang around in any case and persisted with it, and so you might find out the awful things I'm about to discuss, but that’s now down to you and, to be honest, the point that I was about to make is probably going to be completely lost on you anyway if you can’t take the hint.

Still, when it comes to something so wrapped up in the written word, perhaps suggesting that you don’t read it might not seem to be the wisest course of action to be taking, but there is a point to all this and, as you’ve all drifted away by now, there’s no point in me hurrying to get there when I can ramble on a little more whilst I’m getting my so-called “thoughts” together.

So, why have I decided to resurrect my usual self-destructive tendency and suggest such a thing? After all, something that is written is presumably meant to be read, and when it’s put out there for all the world to see, then I obviously want it to be seen, don’t I?

Well, yes and no.

After all, we all have our reasons for doing things and sometimes they aren’t necessarily the ones that other people decide that they are. Personally, other than helping me to remember a few things that I might otherwise forget or bury in an illegible diary somewhere, I enjoy the actual process of just rattling out a few words for no real purpose and, sometimes, I think that one or two specific people might enjoy reading those words, but the rest could just be considered as collateral damage or civilian casualties when people walk away from their devices with a touch of brain burn from reacting to something I’ve written.

Not their fault, of course, although sometimes it damn well is.

Because, at the risk of creating a winning entry for a “State the bleeding obvious competition” this has got more to do with pointing out that you really, really don’t have to read this nonsense just because it happens to be here, even if I do go around posting links to it by putting my grubby little fingerprints all over various social networking sites and suggesting that you might like to.

Just because something is there to be read, looked at, or heard, doesn’t mean that you have to waste quite so much of your time reading it, looking at it, or listening to it, especially as 99.99% of all of it is most likely to be utter rubbish anyway and is really not worth your attention and much of it just stops you from thinking for a few moments and coming to your own conclusions about the madnesses of this strangely interactive world we’re cooking up for ourselves.

But we do live in a culture where people feel that they simply cannot let it lie, or believe that they can choose to just ignore something if they want to, and really don’t have to add their own version of what they currently “reckon” right at this very moment to the thousands of other “reckons” that they might have taken offence to.

So that’s what they think. Big deal. Just let it go and leave them to stew in their own juices and rage away to themselves because you’ve not taken the bait. We all need to learn to just say no to the constant babblings, ravings and streams of abuse because, despite what we’d prefer to believe, nobody really gives a rat’s kidney what we think, they’re far too busy spewing out what they think themselves to actually care.

Step away from the madness. Just because the comment is there does not mean that you have to add your own to it, especially if you feel that you ought to say something, no matter how banal it might be, rather than just feel as if you are somehow ceasing to exist by not responding. Because, guess what, you are still here after all (although your endless pointless prattling might have got you evicted from a timeline or two) and it doesn’t matter that you didn’t actually say whatever it was you thought of, the important thing is that you thought it at all, and that ought to be enough really, and you may very well have also found wisdom and enlightenment from rising above such temptations.

And you really mustn’t worry about little old me, either. Like so many of the other natural unpleasantnesses of life, this blog pours out whether or not you choose to read it, and it’ll still be here on any other day for you to read, should you be mad enough to choose to return to it.

And it really is a choice, you know… Although I wouldn’t if I were you, I really wouldn’t.

THE FEELING'S MUTUAL I'M SURE...

I do appear to have a very "bipolar" relationship with the old interweb, you know. I'm sure that you've probably noticed that already (and if not… WHY THE HELL NOT??!!). Anyway, the point is that it both obsesses me and annoys me in almost equal measure, and I'm going to use today's pointless posting to try to get to the bottom (Oo-er! That'll set the search engines tingling…) of why.

Mostly, of course, it's just the way I'm made. I've always struggled to enjoy the successes and happinesses of others because they usually only serve to bring my own failures and unhappinesses into sharper focus.

"Why" my mind screams like an over-hormonal teenager, "Are they able to find some joy in this veil of tears when I so obviously can't??? S'NOT FAIR!!!"

As a philosophy of life, this does not a popular person make.

And, because that unpopularity seems to increase exponentially in direct relation to the amount it is needed, so the problem multiplies. Disinterest begets disinterest and your disinterest in my disinterest makes my self-loathing and self-doubt escalate and so on and so on.

Yep. Getting mathematical on their asses is always the popular choice…

Does irony work on the written page…? Discuss…

Does italicised emphasis help to stress the point…?

Or is it always better to be bold…?

Oh yes, give 'em typographical pointers that everyone already knows… That'll reel 'em in good and proper...

Nevertheless, because of all the blathering on about parties, and family life, and what people "reckon",  and the anger, and the hostility, and the gushing, and the squee-ing, and all of the other nonsense that they (whoever "they" are…) have been up to in their obviously far more fascinating and interactive lives than mine, most of the few who do take a moment to intertwine their lives with mine in FizzBokWorld do not actually appear in my TimeLine any more due to my rather brutal "zero tolerance" approach to such things.

I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.

Most of the time I just found that the majority of the idle chatter, or the more unguarded, or sick-makingly sycophantic comments were making me feel far, far too annoyed for far too much of the time, and I would brood upon them at length, and then get so angry that it really wasn't doing me any good. Far better, I felt, to keep a "Top Ten" of people who seldom write anything trite and let life tick along like that with the occasional comment popping up to annoy me, or the occasional random click to check whether someone's still alive.

Because, despite everything, I do still care about that, at least...

For Pete's sake,  you are, after all, dealing (or - more probably - not dealing) with somebody loosely resembling a person here who can get annoyed because real professionals are getting adulation for doing more of the same thing that they're already well-known for doing. Let's face it, I can pretty much get annoyed about anything at all, but the success and happiness and achievements of others really are right up there at the top of the list.

I know, and I'm sorry. They shouldn't be, but that's the way I'm made. I don't actually like it much either if it's any consolation, but I'm quite sure it isn't. I know that it all makes me terribly shallow and unlikeable, but I feel like this because I can't help but feel a certain amount of rage because life sometimes seems so wretchedly unfair.

Sometimes I do try to change, to become a better person, but then life comes along and takes a long hard kick at my teeth and I scurry away back under my isolated little rock and sit and fester Gollum-like until the next time I decide to try...

That said, the great and the good couldn't give a tinker's cuss what I think about them anyway, so sod 'em…

My baleful brooding harms no-one but myself, and makes little difference in the great scheme of things and, whilst I must accept that that might actually be part of the problem, the exponential nature of it means that a solution might prove unlikely, if not impossible.

One glimmer of hope…?

One moment of happiness…?

Nope… It's obviously far too much to ask for…

Anyway, when you don't really do "fun", such things are never likely to happen in a "fun-packed" world where fun, God help us, remains the only currency worth having. Anyway, when you become so very good at doing "Bitter and Twisted" that you decide that it might be worth a bullet point on your C.V., sometimes you're better off just knowing what it is you're good at and sticking with it.

After all, if you're never going to understand other people's idea of fun, it's unlikely that they're going to understand yours, either. Best to just shut up and let them get on with it in an environment where they can't annoy you too much.

You see, some of the dazzling and sparkling wit that I churn out so regularly is obviously far too good for the majority of my not-readers, although you'll have already cottoned on to the heavily disguised satire (??? - does anybody get my sense of so-called "humour" anyway…?) that you're reading here because, if you've got this far, you're quite evidently a cut above the rest of the general riff-raff who cruise t'interweb looking for sources of pseudo-intellectual stimuli...

Sometimes I find it very difficult too feign interest in the lives of others. Oh, I do try, of course, but, the problem is, for the majority of the time, I really just don't care about it all that much. Not about those lot, anyway, if you want to insert whatever definition of "those lot" you wish to use here. But then I don't really understand anyone's constant need for affirmation, or this strange desire to share your opinion with people just because they happen to have one which they think you ought to know about…

After all, in the majority of cases, few people go away and mull over what you've shared with them and return with a contrite "You know, I think you were right and I was wrong…" Far easier to take offence and rage away from behind the anonymous safety of your keyboard and rail against harmless folk who you'll probably never meet, or use distance to rail against those you just might...

Of course I am an utter hypocrite.

I do get stupidly upset when my online life grinds to a halt or when one of my own pithy pointlessnesses gets ignored by the world in general and my little piece of it in particular...

And, of course, when it all comes down to it,  I do (sort of) care about a great deal of it, it just has to be on my terms, that's all… To be honest, I believe that's pretty true for everybody, I just happen to be honest enough (or stupid enough) to admit it, that's all.

But then... But then…

Well, we really do have to address the small matter of BlogWorld, don't we, boys and girls…? After all, the mere fact that I'm here opinionising away is rather in opposition to just about everything I've already written today…

Why the chuffing heck should you lot give a rat's kidney what I happen to reckon about anything either? Well, setting aside the fact that a lot of you blatantly don't, I could argue that it's because it's all sheer genius, even though it obviously isn't…

I'll perhaps try and persuade myself that it's unrecognised genius instead which still doesn't make me feel any better because of the basic untruth at the very heart of it.

Because basically, you see (and I know that you all got here way ahead of me on this point…), I'm just someone who wants everyone to love me but doesn't really know how to be loved, and the dichotomy of that state of being manifests itself as the kind of mutual disinterest which means that rational, sane, normal and intelligent people are unlikely to even attempt to get to the end of a convoluted sentence or argument like this one has turned out to be.

And I can hardly blame you for that.

Although I'm sure that I will…

SUMMING YOURSELF UP

I've been having (you may have noticed) a few problems with making my mind up lately....

Nothing seems to sum "me" up enough to feel quite "appropriate" enough to convey whatever it might be about myself that I would really like to convey.

Choices can be so difficult to make. There are just far too many options to pick from.

Take music, for example. I'm still old enough and ugly enough to quite like having hard copies of my music on CD (or whatever other medium comes to hand), but sometimes just picking one out to listen to can take longer than the length of the moment which has become available to play it in. Some days I'm in the mood for something classical. On other days I might want to completely rock out. At other times a bit of jazz might be the order of the day, or something a little bit kitch, or just a simple pop song, or a soundtrack album...

But these are merely my little problems, and pale into insignificance against picking out which film to watch, or which book to read next, or where to go on holiday, but they are, as one book title so eloquently puts it, "Mostly Harmless" and, because they are my problems and mine alone, they cause nobody else anything like the amount of mental anxiety they can be causing me.

But recently it has become necessary to make some more public choices, ones which might be judged by both the great and the good, friends and strangers alike, and, perhaps, sum myself up in one image which will, in many ways, define the way the world looks at me, or at least, become the thing that makes people decide whether or not to look beyond the cover of the book that is me, the self same cover that they may very well choose to judge it by.

FizzBok watchers may have noticed the amount of dithering which has been going on as I have tried to update my profile for a brand new year and, perhaps, get away from the darker, more sombre, hues with which I have manifested myself so far, and allow a little bit of fresh air into all of our lives. After dabbling with a few festive choices, and one or two images from obscure but favourite films, I seem to have settled upon some bright new images to replace the dull and bleaker ones and, so far at least, they're kind of working for me.

Profile pictures aren't too bad to select once you get used to your own awful countenance… Unless you wish to remain relatively anonymous and unrecognisable to the follower in the street, you most probably either want the picture to actually look like you (or at least a recognisable piece of you), so that the long-lost acquaintances can tell that you are actually the person they thought you were, or you want to sum yourself up in the way in which you are best known to those who already know you. If, for example, you're one of those people who was popular enough to have a nickname which you yourself  used to enjoy, you might want to use an image which reflects that. However, to just grab an image of something you're interested in and say "Look out world! This is MEEEE!!!!" with a corporate logo or a footballing team's badge seems to me to be giving far too much information about far to little a slice of what makes the complicated person that you are, you.

Well, that's what I think at least. To be summed up by something which is so blatantly not you, but just one of the things which you happen to enjoy just seems to be very ordinary and lacking in a broad enough spectrum of appeal. After all, if you are just seen as a football fan, or a baker, won't that alienate those who might not know about your vast and philanthropic other life…?

"I am not just this, but I am also this… and this… and, you might be surprised to know, even this…"

To me it seems just as odd to be defining yourself by using a picture of your child, or, indeed, of someone else entirely who is famous for many things but the fact that they are not you is quite probably amongst the least of them. Perhaps this says a lot about our images of selfhood in this celebrity-obsessed culture, or that there are far too many people who believe that revealing themselves to the world as [INSERT NAME OF CELEBRITY OF CHOICE HERE] will somehow make that person be drawn towards them and wuvv them forevvah…

Then, of course, there is, god help us, the "selfie" which seems to say so much less about where we've got to as a species as we splutter headlong into the 21st century than we'd like it to. I'd like to say that we ought to acknowledge here that language has to develop as it, of course, must, but, given some of the latest offerings accepted into the O.E.D., it's hard not to believe that it is, most probably, actually regressing...

(Still, if you understood any or all of that, perhaps there is hope for us all after all…)

Choosing the cover picture was far tricker, given that it might be the space in which you tell the world a little more about what interests you. I've been through a few of those recently, but none of them have felt quite "right" as they all point to one far-too specific area of my interests without any of them being wide-ranging enough. I might like a character, or a film, or a band, but do I really want the uncaring world so see that and go "Ah! So THAT'S what he's about"…?

In the end something that is natural and shows something of the great big wide world beyond the screen seemed most apt and appropriate, which is why, on some of my social networking outlets, I now appear to he floating in heavenly clouds extracted from a photograph taken from the car as I looked out across the fog-filled valley one morning.

Personally, my constant dithering about choice is one of the many (oh so many) reasons why I could never get a tattoo; There's very little room for manouevre once you've made your mind up and, well, what if you change your mind...? After all, the things that fascinated me at eighteen years old  are nothing like the things which fascinate me now.

This can even cause problems when it comes to picking out something as banal as a ringtone. That can be a far harder choice to make than you think given, as I pointed out earlier, how my musical moods can change so abruptly. It's all very well thinking that it doesn't matter, that it's only a ringtone, but when the damned thing goes off in a crowded railway carriage, you really don't want the world thinking "Who's that idiot?" if the first word out of it is "Jitterbug!" as sung by Wham! in "Wake me up before y…" (No, I can't bring myself to say it…)

(It isn't, by the way. That's just a sad example of what it could have been...)

You could argue "So what?" I ought to be proud to display my naffness so boldly but somehow repetition can make even the greatest of masterpieces seem banal after a while, and so the choice made has to be a very careful one....

For example, I tend to like TV theme tunes, but I'm not quite so keen on what those theme tunes might say about me. Saddo? Geek? Or steeped in ironic post-modernism?

Some of my current ringtone options are themes from series like "Battlestar Galactica", "The Saint" and "Mission Impossible" but there are others that might make me want to hide under the seats if I were to be publicly humiliated associated with them if they went off unexpectedly.

In the end, something interesting but not overly familiar (a.k.a. "naff") seems to be the order of the day, and my general purpose ringtone of choice is obscure enough to be largely unrecognisable to the public at large, but, perhaps, just recognisable enough for some like-minded soul to think "Ah…!" in the highly unlikely event that they they should happen to hear it go off.

Others have been "allocated" to specific people depending upon what it is about them which most immediately sprang to mind (from an admittedly small palette), but that doesn't really help me much given that my phone is about as likely to ring as I am to become Prime Minister.

That said, perhaps the people to whom I've allocated such specific tunes might not appreciate the fact that I can sum them up with just one choice of tune, when there's so very much more about each of them going on than I could possible imagine…

TWITNEWS

Just the teeniest, tiniest of rants of the day, today...

Whenever there's a news story nowadays, the "online" version (and sometimes even the main bulletin) always seems to be full of celebrity Twitter quotes about what the "great" and the "good" "reckon" about whatever the situation is, the finding of which seems to be what passes for journalism in the modern era.

Nowadays it seems as if the "profession" of Journalism involves spending your day on the various social networking sites looking for the various impressive tid-bits that other people have written. I've lost track of the number of times I've read a few interesting comments in TwitWorld only to find that some hack has bundled them together into some kind of "non-story" on tomorrow's news feeds.

Perhaps this is the price we pay for having this almost voracious need for "24 Hour Rolling News"...? After all, with so much time and space to fill, the exceedingly trivial, and things that are 'trending" become ever more desperate reasons to seek out anything that resembles a "story" no matter how banal and pointless, or how much of a press release for a new, miraculous "Wonder Product" (usually Snake Oil) that it might actually be...

And in a society (I nearly said "culture" there but had to stop myself) where what everyone "reckons" about pretty much is now deemed to be so very important, this means that translating the banal and pointless into "News" has become something of an art form...

If you consider copying and pacing a few random comments to be "art" of course...

Also, so-called "Journalists" always seem to be trawling for their "non-stories" on fan sites and concocting fake scandals speaking about "outrage" about some trivial matter or other (usually involving football, celebrities or telly programes or, on occasions, the special madness reserved for the users of "Mum's net") when in reality there's just one lonely voice who's feeling "outraged" about some trifling issue and who's got into a trolling slanging match with another poor wretch, or, more alarmingly, found another similar spirit who agrees with them and has decided to assist them in their plans to reshape the world in their image.

But it's the celebrity quotes that seem worst. Especially when another celebrity has passed over into that exclusive VIP Lounge in the sky. The once noble art of the obituary writer has now been transformed into a ghastly "cut and paste" parade of what a list of celebrities posted on Twitter as they sat watching the news that morning...

"So sad to hear about..." etc.

Someone needs reminding that a whole list of other people's "OMGs" does not add up to an actual story, a reasoned debate, or a proper "tribute" to anyone, and the truly great and memorable pieces of journalism that have been written over the years have been down to sheer hard graft and knowledge of the craft that the profession, I'll grudgingly admit, once used to have...

TWITSTOP

@Twitter You’ve really been taking up far, far too much of my time lately, so I ought to just stop.

@Twitter It’s the #TwitterGames and the #Wordplay.

@Twitter Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been enjoying playing them, but… (cont’d)

@Twitter (cont’d) they suck up so much of my time and I don’t even realise it.

@Twitter I can sit there for TWO HOURS or more on a Sunday morning…

@Twitter …just trying to come up with a bit of witty wordplay to add to everyone else’s…

@Twitter A convoluted play on a film title…

@Twitter An “amusing” spin on a popular music title…

@Twitter To join in with the “fun” topic of the day… or the hour… or the minute…

@Twitter And don’t get me wrong…

@Twitter I was getting a kind of real gratification from being able to “amuse” a few people…

@Twitter It was nice to get their friendly feedback in the form of RTs and Favs…

@Twitter And all so direct and immediate, too…

@Twitter To instantly know whether you’ve tickled a strangers “funny-bone” or not…

@Twitter Very satisfying… (Very addictive…!)

@Twitter The #Altwic and #Artwiculate folk are all very friendly (and forgiving!)

@Twitter And adding my thoughts to #punsr has been a joy these past few weeks…

@Twitter As well as contributing to @Foyles weekly #bookgame…

@Twitter And it WAS really good to “jump start” my brain each morning…

@Twitter But it was taking up far too much time and I wasn’t getting ANYTHING else written!

@Twitter So it really, REALLY has got to stop…

@Twitter I need to go #ColdTurkey (or whatever the Twitter equivalent might be…)

@Twitter Or at least take a “TwitStop” for a while…

@Twitter Otherwise it can turn into an addiction (atTwitction?)

@Twitter And I’ll get so OBSESSED with today’s #WOTD or with writing the wittiest offering ever…

@Twitter That my life will fall apart…

So farewell, then @Twitter, at least for a little while…

@Twitter (I’m sure nobody will even notice I’ve gone)

@Twitter Because, that’s the sad nature of it, really…

@Twitter Trying to entertain strangers for no real reason…

@Twitter Other than a moment of recognition that there are like minds out there somewhere.

@Twitter And a vague sense that you aren’t as strange as you sometimes think you are.

@Twitter #Offline.

CORNFLAKE

Before we start I should make it quite clear that I have absolutely nothing against the idea of “freedom of speech”, thinking (like many before me have) that “I might disagree with everything you say, but would defend to the death your right to say it” and all that sort of thing. Nevertheless, the way that TwitWorld and other “social networking” websites allow what is essentially unsubstantiated gossip and wild speculation to be disseminated is becoming a real cause for concern for me, especially in an era when the words can very quickly become global, and that what is mere idle speculation can become regarded as absolute fact by certain parties who leap to certain conclusions and sometimes then go off in search of a mob to join with a desire which essentially boils down to “Kill the beast!”

I never really believed that it might be something as simple as “better communication” which might be the thing that brought about the end of civilisation as we know it…

Don’t get me wrong. If someone has done something wrong, then they deserve our derision and should be prosecuted as far as the law will allow, but we ought not to let the law of the jungle take over in these circumstances, but let the actual law do its work. Once we let the “I reckon” brigade take over how things are allowed to unfold, madness and anarchy will ensue.

Those defending such places always maintain that the system “checks and balances” itself, but when it comes to certain subjects, people’s blood can run very hot, and the basic rules of sanity and self-control can sometimes no longer apply. The difficulty is never the fact that people can tell other people the actual truth behind the hysteria, but the fact that someone might have already leapt to their own conclusions and gone off and done something rash before those controls have had a chance put things back into proportion.

And so, Operation Yewtree has spread its branches and claimed another well-known celebrity scalp. Now, I’m not overly familiar with the “Hairy Cornflake” in question, but, like many people my age, I was aware of his existence and so, as yet another one of those characters who was “always around” in our media-culture obsessed world gets sucked into that growing cesspool, I was, once more, rather alarmed to finally find out about it.

Those “Radio 1 Christmas Parties” really must have been precisely the sorts of things that our parents warned us about after all…

I was bothered by the way the arrest was revealed, however. Whilst in it unhidden frenzy of gleeful schadenfreude, and its eye on its own agenda, Sky News let the name slip with the kind of wild recklessness almost guaranteed to whip up the mob into a frenzy, the “dear old” BBC was, perhaps not unexpectedly given its recent record with such matters, rather cautiously referring to “a man in his sixties” having been arrested.

However, whilst most of the “official” news outlets seemed reticent to use an actual name, within moments it was all over Twitter and, even though the type of alleged abuse might not be the same thing at all, (because at that stage it had never even been suggested), enough of the “I reckon” brigade were putting two and two together and making twenty-seven, and making dubious links between the story and the actions of his colleague which have recently been so widely reported.

We ought to understand this quite clearly, at this time there is no suggestion that what one of them is supposed to have done was the same thing as what the other may have done across several decades. A revelation of an alleged situation, which may or may not have been of a completely different nature, arose during certain enquiries and an arrest was made, and yet we see the PR people in the company he was broadcasting for already jumping through hoops in order to distance themselves from this “freelancer” whose alleged crimes pre-date their employment of him (in case you hadn’t realised it...)

This didn’t stop one website from publishing a photograph of all the Radio One DJ’s standing around a wheelbarrow full of crap (actually, the So-vile was sitting in it) on the steps of Broadcasting House back in the day, but merely labelling it with the Cornflake’s name and the damning implication of the two words “…with Savile”.

But in this current mob mentality, that could be enough of a trigger for some serious new crimes to unfold, and, as we all know, once the mob take it upon themselves to take matters into their own hands, pretty much anything can happen, and we really, really ought to try and remember that old adage that “two wrongs do not make a right”, another of those “words of wisdom” our square old parents tried to impart to us when all we wanted to do was go out and have a bit of fun…

Obviously, if these allegations do turn out to be true, then the full weight of law should be brought to bear upon the perpetrators, and all of our sympathy ought to be with the victims, but there really are ways and means, and, no matter how you dress it up, indulging in the actions of the mob, taking part in vandalism or other forms of brutality, is still just as wrong, no matter how “affronted” you may feel, when it comes to high crimes and misdemeanours, even in the name of “squeaky-clean, whiter-than-white, holier-than-thou, guilty-until-proven innocent” retribution, the ends can and should NEVER justify those means.

BEING BORING

I do think (with surprising regularity) about completely shutting down my online life and just disappearing from the CyberWorld which would, I suppose, be just as noticeable as when a sparrow falls dead from a tree in the middle of a forest, if the impact I seem to make on people’s lives during the average month is anything to go by. Despite the fact that I do seem to have the kind of “media disease” which finds me checking the computer far more often than seems healthy, it’s probably made even more absurd by the fact that I really do seem to exist here in such a way that I actually make no impression whatsoever upon the lives I’m allegedly touching.

Each and every morning, I get up, boot up the computer, and I do the rounds of the same half dozen or so websites. The routine is fairly predictable with few variations. First I’ll kick up the email account because otherwise it crashes the Safari software when it launches. Sometimes there’s a notification of a new comment on Twitter, or a dispatch notice from an online order, but more usually than not, the cupboard is bare. Then I will glance at Blogger to see whether the numbers or the list of comments have increased overnight, perhaps nip over to StatCounter to see how many of them were actual, genuine “real” people (usually none of them are), click onto Facebook to see whether there are any red flags (usually none), launch Twitter to see whether the “connect” column has any more entries in it (also usually none), and then head off towards Amazon to see if there’s anything new worth buying, and then across to Play just to make some pricing comparisons…

I might also take a quick peek at the BBC News website to see whether the world has been shattered overnight, or to make sure that whatever I thought that I might write about next isn’t too inappropriate under the new circumstances, but, other than a few regional variations, that’s about it for my online life, although that routine can also then be repeated at far too many intervals throughout the average day, which is why it gets dubbed a “media disease” although I am tempted to add the word “pointless” to the front of it and claim to be afflicted with full-blown PMD.

My Facebook life has been stagnant for almost as long as I can remember. There was a brief flurry of activity about six months ago when I discovered a few names that I’d once been at college with had turned up, but, on the whole, if I checked in once a month it would be just as effective. The red flags are as rare as hen’s teeth and I should mention that I will never EVER respond to a birthday enquiry, no matter who you are.

But then, that’s not the problem, is it...?

The problem is always that there might just be a red flag there desperately waiting for some kind of a response, and the fact that there rarely is, isn’t quite enough to dissuade me of that remote possibility actually needing my attention.

Sometimes I will just slink away to lick my wounds, but on other occasions, instead I will be tempted to leave not very witty smartarse comments in conversations that are nothing to do with me, and then hate myself afterwards for having done so. Either that or I will leave links to news stories that I’ve found interesting on the grounds that people who are interested in me might just also be interested in the things that I am too, forgetting, of course, the flawed logic that assumes that they might be interested in me in the first place.

Mostly though, I find myself getting more and more irritated by the inane banter and chit-chat, and the fact that everyone is living lives so fascinating that every aspect of them needs to be recorded and remarked upon in such detail, and that everything, it seems, is “liked” without question and is uniformly “brilliant” even when I know that it is not.

Better instead, I feel, to stop going there, but then a red flag from an old friend who is really happy to have finally found me again might just appear, and it would be such a shame to let that opportunity pass, even if its about as likely as space aliens landing in Washington and asking to chat to the President.

I should just walk away. I should just be more resolute and refuse to go to these places, but I find myself sometimes clicking away only minutes after the last time simply because someone might have said something new in the last five minutes, even though they usually and historically rarely have.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to be friendly, or tried to share the more mundane aspects of my life, but my life really isn’t all that interesting really, and the masses have indicated so by voting with their feet. Sometimes I look at the vast long lists of “people I might know” and realise that I don’t know any of them, or those that I do vaguely recall are hardly likely to be people who might be bowled over by a renewed acquaintance with me. Most seem to be people that other people know and it is assumed by the computers that, because I know them, I know all of their friends, too, which is patently absurd when, in the great melting pot of life, as we all stroll hand-in-hand towards the grave, there are few times when we’re all in the same room together at the same time.

But such things are a two-way street. My humble efforts to communicate are seldom replied to. Those whose email addresses I have requested over the years seldom find the time to reply to my efforts, and so my personal email account is also a pretty dry well, and although the spam folder can be quite entertaining, it’s very rarely that a genuine message from an actual person shows up. Now, as far as I can remember, like telephones, the internet has access for both parties, which can only lead me to the inevitable conclusion that I always was far too dull to be bothered with and never had much to say that anyone found all that interesting.

In the end, I can only come to the inevitable conclusion that I really am very, very boring…

There’s a great description of Scrooge seeming to be totally unapproachable as he passes through the streets of London in an early section of “A Christmas Carol” and every time I read it I think “That’s me!” and I oftentimes find that I am more drawn to his pre-transformation persona just because it seems more familiar to me...

Sometimes my Twitter life seems even more pointless, although I will chat with anyone who talks to me, my main purpose in doing that seems to be to play word games, and make more witless comments to people who really don’t care all that much.

Which brings us to Blogger, this mighty organ where I do my level best to bring some kind of order to the chaos of my life whilst having quite a lot to say about nothing much of any interest whatsoever. It is perhaps hypocritical to be bewildered about people’s needs to prattle on about the minutiae of their lives only to then do precisely the same thing and at greater length (the irony has not escaped me), but only in a place where anyone can choose not to read it, and find out more about someone whose life they’re already almost completely disinterested in - unless there’s an element of schadenfreude to be found. The other problem is that I’m becoming more and more irritated by finding myself doing that too, and, whilst I’ve not quite yet got to the point where what other people write in their own Blogs annoys the hell out of me, more often than not, the inane comments that are appended to the average page just make me really wish that I’d not gone and visited those pages in the first place…

How nauseatingly sentimental, twee and embarrassing some of them can be.

My own writing, in the end, is about dull things that very few people actually seem all that interested in, and, even when one or two of my “regulars” have made an effort to draw more people here, it usually makes no real difference whatsoever.

The plain truth seems to be that I’m not interesting enough, and the things that I write about are either far too dreary, or far too inane, or just far too pointless for that many people I know to be bothered with reading them. Perhaps I use far too many words, or just write about things that nobody else very much is all that interested in, it’s so hard to tell when they stay away in their… dozens…

So, in the end, why haven’t I pulled the plug yet…?

With Blogger, the answer is easy. I like the process of creating the writing almost as much as the world seems to dislike reading it, but it doesn’t really matter whether they do read it or they don’t, in the end I get the words out of my head and into a document and that ought to be an end to it. Occasionally, I do consider pulling the plug on both the “open to everyone to read” and the “anyone can comment” options but I don’t. After all, perhaps I still believe that there might still be someone out there who might just find something interesting amongst the vast swathes of chaff which I burble out.

Facebook remains, ironically, my own small beacon of hope, burning dimly away at the edge of the world. I genuinely like to think that there might just still be people out there who might genuinely want to re-establish contact with me and who might not have completely forgotten that I once touched their lives, however obliquely…

Twitter has also introduced me to some rather lovely folk whom I’ve never met but who indulge my little whimsies, so I have to keep that line of communication open, even if I usually leave there in much the same mood as I used to leave any social events I used to attend, i.e. Wishing I’d kept my big mouth shut and my opinions to myself… (Who is it that said Facebook is full of people I know but don’t like and Twitter is full of people I like but don’t know…?)

Those sites do also serve the function (along with the bizarreness pointlessness which is GooglePlus), in promoting these little morsels of dreariness which I continue to churn out, and, even though those links are all but ignored, it’s still a useful way of letting the few loyal and long-suffering people who do still read this stuff know that I’m still here, pouring it out for them to read…

I do also go through phases where everything I do in life seems utterly pointless and when things are getting that bleak, whilst it really doesn’t help to get confirmation of it by a simple lack of interest, and I know that sometimes things change and will feel an awful lot brighter  on another day, and I won’t feel quite so inclined to just jack it all in…

THE FANNISH CULT

I seldom feel the desire to want to “join” things. I don’t know whether that’s antisocial or inhuman or what, but I do seem to be deeply suspicious of anything that might even loosely described as a “movement” of some kind.

You see, this modern cyberworld can be a very marvellous thing if you happen to be the sort of person who rarely ventures out of your room to engage with the “real” world but it does allow for the enabling of what can only really be described as “the nutter…”

“What do I mean by this…?”, you might very well be asking, whilst simultaneously wondering no doubt whether you have stumbled upon the very lair of one of those very “nutters” of which I speak. Meanwhile, Godwin’s Law probably makes the next couple of paragraphs irrelevant, but I’m going to persevere with them anyway, because it kind of makes my point.

I have this idea that in this modern world, if a certain, let’s call him “Mr Hitler” was living in, let’s pick a remotish place like Cornwall, his extremist views might be rightly derided and ridiculed by anyone and everyone he meets when he’s out and about in public, and, after any kind of public dressing down, he might just scuttle away back to his lair, unchanged in his opinion but unlikely to vocalise it any more in public.

However, if he goes online and happens to find a “Mr Hess” who lives in the Shetland Islands, or a “Mr Goering” who lives on the Scilly Isles, and both of these remote and isolated individuals happen to agree with his ridiculous ideas of world domination, then quite suddenly, his extremist opinions now don’t seem quite so extreme to him as they once did. Now he has some kind of confirmation that his nonsense is somehow valid. Now be believes that he has affirmation that he can go ahead with his plans and people will believe in him, and, before you know it, he’s got some kind of a “movement” going on.

That’s why the idea of “joining things” rather terrifies me.

“People”, despite being amazing creatures, can be quite dreadful ones too, when they want to be, and sometimes even when they don’t…

I understand why people want to join things, of course I do. At the very least it gives people with an interest that they might otherwise only believe that they alone enjoy a sense of affirmation and belonging when they discover that there are like-minded individuals out there who are just as mad about whatever it is as they are.

The difficulty for me is that for every one person in the world who genuinely and innocently enjoys their “thing” there are a load of others who take the simple pleasures and enjoyment of that thing to levels so extreme that they can end up spoiling it for the rest of the group as their own levels of enjoyment border upon the “cultish…”

As with any other thing that risks becoming “trendy” or just a bit of a fad, even if only on the “underground” or “less-than-mainstream” circuits, there will be people who join in with these things just because they are trendy or fashionable, just as there are people who will “grow up” and find that those very same former passions seem “childish” to them now, in some way. Equally, there are those who are “hardcore” fans who have always been there and probably always will, and who will be “fans forever!”, but who bubble along quite happily through life without ever taking it all “far too seriously”. Then there are also those to whom being part of a group will give them a sense of feeling “important” or give them a “sense of belonging” which they might never have in their “real” lives...

But then there are the “nutters…” Those who believe that only “their” way though the world of organised fandom is the “right” way. Those who denigrate and berate anyone who claims to have another point of view on one element or other of the “whatever it is” that they’re all claiming to love unconditionally.

Sometimes these beliefs come from over-intellectualising something they secretly think to be a bit childish, and is a way of hiding their embarrassment at loving it so much that they get over- defensive to the point where the best form of defence is attack: “I only really like it because it unconsciously says a lot about the neo-communist movements of the late 1920s… I’m not like you childish people who just like dressing up and all that…”

And sometimes it’s just because they enjoy being bullies…

I think what most annoys me is when people like to imply that they somehow “own” the “whatever it is” and that this somehow invalidates other people’s enjoyment of it. It’s as if they genuinely believe that their own enjoyment is the “one pure and true way” to enjoy the thing, and that everyone else’s enjoyment is somehow phoney in some way and therefore totally invalid.

Of course, very movement has its extremists, and sometimes they only become extremists because the rest of us let them. After all, as “people”, we’re very good at giving other people responsibilities because we don’t want to have to do things ourselves, just as we’re very good at then complaining about them when they turn into dictators because of all the responsibilities we’ve given them... but then, that’s just people and organisations for you, and is why I believe that you simply can’t trust ’em and that you should never really “join” anything…

Not if you want to keep your sanity intact anyway…

(In the interests of both honesty and slight hypocrisy - which I’m sure the cleverest amongst you will have already noticed - of a blinkered rant about other people’s blinkered rantings and ravings, and, perhaps, just for the record: Non-attending DWAS member since 1977, non-functioning member of a political party since 1997, lapsed trade union member, lapsed theatre group member, signed up to far more online networking sites than I’d really like to be, and a general disappointment to any other members of pretty much anything I’ve ever joined ever…)