Author: Scott Andrews

I Will Always Love…… News

On Saturday evening, I sat down to eat dinner and turned on the news.  Habitually, I tend to flick through the various international news stations in an effort to avoid programs such as Business Today, Technology Yesterday and Wall Street Tomorrow.  Perhaps I am peculiar, as when I turn on a news station I like to watch something called news, which unfortunately for me tends to be much more difficult to find than it sounds.  On Saturday, Whitney Houston’s Funeral dominated the news channels with CNN, BBC, Euronews, NBC, HBC, TSB, and the vast majority of the stations programmed on my decoder between channel 200 and 250 all showing the glitzy, star-spangled send off.  It was therefore left to Al Jazeera to feed my appetite.  After watching a documentary about the revolution in Tunisia, they unbelievably had some news.  Strangely they didn’t start with Whitney, instead they led with a story about an Iranian Warship entering the Mediterranean for the first time in fifty-something years.  Quite stunned by the fact there was some real news going on somewhere, I quickly flicked back to BBC and CNN to check what they were showing.  I was delighted to see that they were still bringing us blow-by-blow coverage of Whitney Houston’s funeral, as I like the rest of humanity can see that there isn’t a greater threat to world peace than someone not singing someone else’s song, which was written by someone else, well enough to befit the memory of such a legendary voice.  It’s with that thought in mind I have decided to create  an exercise to try to figure out why the likes of the BBC and CNN chose to cover the funeral, as opposed to any actual significant news, like an act of aggression from a rogue state, or something.  And to demonstrate just how intelligent this exercise is, I shall use numbered points.

  1. Whitney Houston dead is more dangerous than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is alive.
  2. Iran recently ordered the assassinations of a number of Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia and Thailand.  Whitney Houston successfully assassinated millions of brain cells with the aid of a crack pipe.
  3. Iran is run by religious extremists, Houston was extremely religious.
  4. Iran is trying to develop nuclear bombs, Whitney Houston’s voice was ‘da bomb’
  5. Whitney Houston was on her journey to heaven, the Iranian battleship was only going to Syria.
  6. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is often paranoid, irrational  and delusional.  Whereas Whitney Houston was perfect.  It’s a good job drug addicts don’t have comedowns.

It seems somewhat amazing that in the 21st century our obsession with celebrities now trumps world peace in the public domain.  In death comes a massive loss of perspective.  In any communal grieving process a pattern often emerges.  It becomes something of a pissing competition as each person tries to bestow greater platitudes than the next.  It is absurd.

Something has gone wrong with the world.  We have taken our eyes off  the ball and are content to be a race of Homer Simpsons just doing the best we can until the day we die.  We have accepted our meaninglessness, so much so that we seldom use our brains.  Our reality is bigger than we are.  Our aptitude for denial is immeasurable.  I am only trying to point out that we are doing it wrong.  That somewhere in the shadows of the last century we left sanity behind and instead bought into cultural oblivion.  An oblivion which we not only chose, but invested in with both our hearts and our credit cards.  Obviously you don’t have to take my word for it, after all my funeral will never even be mentioned on CNN. But this guy’s might….

Popularis Immortalis

A true story for you.  There was once a carpenter who disappeared from the high pressure world of carpentry when he was thirty years old.   He devoted his time to his favorite hobbies which included hanging around with twelve men, wandering around preaching at people and claiming to be an astounding magician.  Many people were disturbed by both his peculiar words and his disheveled appearance.  There were rumours that he was crazy, that he was a terrorist and that he claimed he was the son of God.  When he died, tragically of course, many people thought it was his own fault.  People mourned him.  Not for him personally but for the quality of the furniture he produced.  Some claimed him as a genius, saying that there would never be a carpenter of his ilk again.  It was said that his dovetail joint was quite possibly the greatest the world has ever seen.  At Christmas people went out and bought job lots of his furniture, which they sat on once, and never ever sat on again.  Two thousand years later barely a soul remembers his name.

It’s a good job people aren’t so fickle nowadays….

I Love Warsaw

I woke up this morning to find that (for the second time in as many months) we have no water.  Being somewhat strategically minded I decided the best course of action was to wait as long as possible before getting ready to leave for work.  Unfortunately we still had no water.  In a panic I ran around the flat in search of mineral water.  I was horrified when I realised that I had less than a fifth of a litre at my disposal.  I had a choice, the likes of which I had never faced before.  Should I wash?  Should I shave?  Should I brush my teeth?  Or should I use it to flush the toilet?  Or should I try to do all four?  Sadly I was only successful in 75 percent of my pursuits.

Unfortunately that’s the price we pay for living in the 19th century, what do you mean it’s the 21st?  I guess you should expect such things in third world countries.What do you mean European Union?  It’s actually pretty typical when you live in a village.  What do you mean Warsaw is the capital of Poland?  Am I being antsy?  Am I merely just angry?  No way, there is plenty to love about Poland.  There just isn’t much to like.  Especially in regards to Warsaw.  In most countries the capital city is the proverbial Cinderella.  Not this city though.

This city where a bus has not run on time since 1637, where there is a shortage of small change in every single shop large or small, where you have to pay to piss in a public toilet, where beggars rarely hide their real intentions, where gay parades were banned as recently as 2005, where history is a matter of convenience rather than truth, where building flats is more important than building homes, where the underground is one straight line, where old ladies in mohair Berets are more intimidating than the youth, where there are more churches than football pitches, where customer service is yet to be invented, where drinking alcohol in public is prohibited.  This Warsaw.  This home.  This ugly sister.

S**A P**A A**A And Censorship

Whilst I have been idly traipsing around Europe the world appears to have woken up slightly in regards to the freedom which we don’t have.  It’s apparent that the vast majority of human beings are completely unaware of the censorship which surrounds us.  The catalyst(s) of this knee jerk reaction have been a number of bills which intend to redefine the golden age of technology in which we live, all with absurdist acronyms (my favourite being PIPA – which has more interesting connotations in a number of languages) designed to obscure the view of an ordinary man behind extremely broad legal bullshit.

Since the dawn of organised authority censorship has existed in one way or another.  You only have to look as far as the best-selling book of all time.  For around 1,000 years ordinary people were banned from reading the bible.  From 500  ad to 1500 ad, average Joe was not permitted to read the bible.  And it didn’t stop there.  In 1536 a man named William Tyndale was strangled to death while tied to a stake and then his body was burned for being a heretic.  His crime.  Printing 6,000 copies of the bible in English.  I am not intentionally trying to compare the internet to the bible.  The point I am trying to make is that censorship has always existed in one shape or form.  The problem is that we only notice it when we see it at close range.

In the UK you are not free to write what you want.  If you write erotic fiction which the courts deem as not possessing sufficient literary merit you are liable for prosecution.  Thankfully all judges have to take a mandatory phd in English Literature.  In the UK the censorship of the theatre was only abolished in 1968.  As late as 1977 blasphemy was a criminal offence.  The Terrorism act of 2000 makes it illegal to collect or possess information likely to be of use to a terrorist.  Does that mean Prince William’s Grandmother never tells him where she is going tomorrow?  Is the boy scout who knows that rubbing two sticks together makes a fire a terrorist?  The Terrorism act of 2006 makes it an offence to glorify terrorism.  Unless of course you are making a film about it or standing for government.

It was only ever going to be a matter of time before governments starting glancing nervously at the internet.  For me personally the evil in these bills has nothing to do with piracy or copyright infringement.  The Arab spring has proved why the internet must be protected.  Censorship in so many countries has kept people under control.  The internet has given them freedom.  The internet has been a tool which has enabled people to fight for their own freedom.

I cannot for the life of me understand why a Western democratic government would put their name to any of these bills. When our politicians sent our young men to die in Afghanistan they said it was to bring freedom to the people of Afghanistan.  They said the same when they went to Iraq.  They bombed Libya for the freedom of the people.  It’s apparent that in the world in which we live the way to give people freedom is to kill, bomb and maim.  Our governments talk of the great freedoms we enjoy yet suddenly they want to restrict our freedom of speech.  Only such a grand contradiction could exist freely in the 21st century.  Undoubtedly this blatant dishonesty only serves to make our leaders look like a bunch of (*this comment was deleted by SOPA,PIPA and ACTA.  Instead here is the word FUZZY WUZZY BUNNY RABBITS written in block capitals.)

Censorship is a reaction of the nervous, and I for one cannot think of any reason why our leaders might be…. aside from the three words which they have been blasting at us day and night in a veiled attempt to prepare us for the worst.  I will give you a clue.  It has absolutely nothing to do with a Global Economic Crisis.

And seeing as I have written a post which mentions copyright infringement I best leave you with a quote.  The words in question belong to a Dane who is starting to interest me more and more as time goes by.  His name is Soren Kierkegaard.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

I Fought The Danelaw And The Danes Won

Last week I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Denmark.  Copenhagen is starting to become as familiar to me as beer is to Hagar the Horrible.  Every time I visit I find yet more reasons to fall in love with the land of the peculiar guttural groans that masquerade as a language and this time was no different.

For me personally nothing summarises Copenhagen better than the phrase  ‘cultural melting pot’.  At all times of the day the city is filled with a diverse assortment of characters often clearly defined by both their dress and their language.  Not only that, the denizens of Denmark have an immense appetite for stimulation irrespective of form.  A great example was the fact that we were lucky enough to visit a Gregory Crewdson exhibition, a fascinating photographer who by his own admittance doesn’t take any of his own photographs.  Each time I visit I return with yet another cultural experience to add to the list.

As much as I love the cosmopolitan nature of Copenhagen I have often wondered where the evidence of contemporary Danish culture can be found.  In the age of globalisation an extraordinary number of people have been brainwashed into submission by the endless stream of American propaganda which is thrown at us in the forms of gadgets, gassy drinks and pre-gastric band operation sized jeans and fast food menus.  In ever-increasing numbers people are writing American style books, plays and songs and making American style television programs and films to the point that we are so over saturated with the American dream and American ideals that the vast majority of us have lost the sense of ourselves to the extent that we no longer have a reflection.  When my good friend Poul suggested watching a Danish film entitled ‘Rejsen Til Saturn’ I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath and prepared myself for what I presumed would be a European Toy Story.  How wrong was I?  From the moment a naked man appears waving the flag of Denmark from his arsehole to quite possibly the most unusual finale I have ever seen, the laughs keep coming.  The striking thing about Return To Saturn is the fact that the film offers a window into the contemporary Danish character.  It offers no apologies and it pulls no punches and most of all it’s a rip-roaring comic ride presented with a refreshing honesty which the vast majority of filmmakers are too gutless to ever present.  Aside from learning a great deal about the Danish psyche, and a perspective on a number of current day social issues, I have also learned the real use of a German sausage and how to protect the Earth from an alien invasion.  I am sure some of my newly gained knowledge will one day be useful.

My final thought, in my opinion says a great deal without saying very much at all.  When we arrived at Copenhagen airport to depart, we were informed politely that due to the fact that the vast majority of the passengers had already checked it, we were going to be flying early.  In thirty-one years on this earth I have never ever been politely informed that my chosen form of transport was going to leave early.  The very idea is like Danish engineering.  It’s rational and its genius is its simplicity.  Much the same as all which is good in life should be.

For anyone interested…..

A short video about Gregory Crewdson

A ‘Rejsen Til Saturn’ Trailer in English