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Albert Ross Is Free (for 1 week only)

As some of you may have realised I have quite an obsession with television.  As much as it annoys me, I cannot deny that it inspires me.  It’s for exactly that reason that for the next 7 days I am going to give ‘The Story of Albert Ross’ away for free.  And moreover it’s not without a sense of occasion that I have chosen today.

Today is an important anniversary in the history of television.  On October 2, 1925, John Logie Baird managed to transmit moving images with continuous tonal variation.  It was arguably the first ever transmission of moving images.  It took him until January the following year to perfect his invention.  Nevertheless, without it our lives would have looked considerably different.

To commemorate John Logie Baird’s breakthrough I am giving ‘The Story of Albert Ross’ away for free until midnight on the 9th of October.  All you have to do, is click here: www.smashwords.com and then choose which file type you wish to download.  After you click ‘buy’  you will be prompted to log in or sign up for an account.  As soon as you do either, you will be directed to the cart screen where you will find a coupon box underneath the price.  Enter the following coupon code – RX23u  and then you will have my story for free.  The only thing I ask of you is that if you enjoy the story, please review it wherever you find it, as it’s your reviews which encourage others to read my work.

A Televised Lobotomy

Television used to be something wonderful.  As a kid it was a mesmerizing force which was clearly more intelligent than every adult I encountered.  It was my babysitter, my teacher, my entertainer and my best friend.  And then something horrible happened.  I got old.

One of the most difficult things a middle-aged man ever has to come to terms with is that he will never ever be in the A-Team.  Or he will never be James Bond.  Or a professional football player.  Or any other of the lives which seem infinitely more interesting than ours which are blasted out from the googlebox week in week out.  Eventually a man can come to terms with it, until he experiences a moment of revelation.

In my lifetime television has inexplicably given birth to reality tv shows.  Gone are the days of sexy television shows in magnificent places.  Now they are replaced by a stream of fake tanned, fake haired genetically modified metro sexual ponces who are just as poor as we are, doing things which are less interesting than we do whilst desperately courting the attention of anyone who is interested.  People have become famous for going on television and being themselves.  And that Ladies and Gentleman is sick.

Now my middle-aged disappointment has been replaced with repulsion.  I am repulsed by the fact that somehow our society has enough money to pay people to be themselves.  As a consequence it is a factor in the death of escapism.  In the years long past people would read a book, or rent a dvd or go to the cinema.  Now they watch people on television in their living rooms, being people, watching television, in their living rooms.  Somewhere along the lines people have lost their imagination and never got around to looking for it once again.  My Grandfather used to say ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’  Maybe I should write a book about a guy who is writing a book about a guy who is writing a book?  Surely that would be a bestseller.  If that fails I could record myself performing a self-lobotomy and upload it to YouTube.  Now I am certain that would be a hit.

Pinteresting, Very Pinteresting

Yesterday I reluctantly signed up for yet another social network.  I have already long past the point of actively being able to remember my own passwords for social platforms, as there are so many that have crashed and burned, and appeared, and disappeared that I can hardly keep count.  So believe me when I say I am absolutely sick of the numerous forms of social media.  The trouble is with a book to promote, they are a necessary evil.

I am now a proud owner of a Pinterest account.  The reason I signed up for Pinterest was not due to any kind of curiosity.  The idea of a social media site where people just share pictures reminded me of someplace else.  Bizarrely, the someplace else in question drove me to it.  The ‘Existence Is Futile’ Facebook page provides me with user statistics showing various demographic data about visitors to the page.  Interestingly, the majority of ‘Likes’ come from women aged between 28-35.  Can you name a social media site where 80% of its users are female and the majority of those are between 23-34?  That’s right, it’s Pinterest.

The concept of Pinterest is straightforward.  As opposed to merely liking something you can pin it to a number of boards.  You can choose the theme of these boards.  You can upload your own pins, or pin things from almost anywhere on the net.  If people like it they will repin it to theirs.  And that’s it.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  Then if it’s so simple how can you use it to try to create something interesting in the name of book.  After all my book has words and not pictures.

After giving it some thought I realised that Pinterest offers me a unique opportunity.  I have used Pinterest to create a mini-tour of the locations which my main character visits.  I have also uploaded a few other bits and pieces which relate to the writing and publishing process, which would have seemed inappropriate via other mediums.  If you have read ‘Existence Is Futile’ already, make sure you take a look as it will provide you with a chance to see where the story took place.  And if if you haven’t read it yet, have a look anyway as it will give you some insights into the plot of the book.

To check out my Pinterest Virtual Tour of ‘Existence Is Futile’ click here
To read more about the demographics behind Pinterest click here

Ignorami

Recently a number of American embassies across the Middle East have come under attack.  News programmes have been filled with burning buildings and stories of the dead.  Each in their own way telling us what is happening, yet no one daring to tell us why.  Doesn’t that make you curious?

The problem with news programmes as such is their desensitizing nature.  We are so used to scenes of carnage in the Middle East that we tend to ignore the fact that most of what we watch is a consequence of some other action.  It is incredibly rare for the TV cameras to be rolling for the cause.  They only catch the effect.

This reality creates a disturbing mental trend.  It links the Middle East with violence in our minds and in effect Muslims.  The present troubles are a great example of such a thought process.  Ask someone if they have seen pictures of the riots on the news.  And then ask them if they know why they started.

The cause in this case was a film.  A film which depicts the Prophet Mohammed as a sexual deviant, criminal and lunatic.  A film which is extremely offensive, islamaphobic, disturbing and extremely bizarre.  If you cast your minds back to the reaction a certain Danish cartoonist received, it is unquestionable that the makers of this film knew exactly what they were doing.  It is without a doubt a provocation.

If we measure the reaction in the Middle East through Western eyes, it’s almost impossible to understand.  The fact that ordinary people are screaming blue murder over a film, is almost as ridiculous as when they did over a cartoon.  However this is exactly the problem.  We cannot judge another culture from our own moral standards, as their culture is ANOTHER.  Westerns standards are mostly inherited from Christian ideals, however flexible they may be.  Judge not, lest ye be judged.  Yet still we continue to tell ourselves that we would never behave that way, that we can laugh at ourselves, and that, that fact makes us less morally reprehensible.

The film entitled ‘Innocence of Muslims’ was initially reported as being made by an Israeli film maker named Sam Bacile.  In the same reports a number of newspapers also claimed that the film was funded by 100 jewish donors.  For many news sources it ticked all of the boxes.  As it turns out Mr Bacile, doesn’t exist.  Let’s not ask why someone would go to such lengths to hide his identity.  Let us turn our attention to the man who has been unmasked as the film maker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.  The first surprise is that he is American.  The second is that he is a convicted criminal.  And the third is that he is a Coptic Christian.

For those of you that don’t know Coptic Christians make up around 10% of the population of Egypt.  For the last forty years Coptic Christians have been the subjects of a number of sectarian attacks, leading Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh to describe the situation as ‘an Arab Apartheid’.

Let’s recap.  Presently, if the webpages of CNN and the New York Times are correct,  an anti-islamic film was made by an American Coptic Christian.  It was then translated into Arabic and uploaded to You Tube.  It eventually was shown on Egyptian television and spread to Yemen, Libya and Lebanon.  A number of cities erupted into violence.  The most notable casualties were the American Ambassador to Libya  and a number of his colleagues.  Yet all our news stations continue to show are video footage of burning buildings and rioting youths.

I haven’t written this post to argue the rights and wrongs of this terrible situation, as I find it deplorable.  I am not a Christian, Muslim or Jewish.  Nor is it my intention to take a side in this argument.  I have written this post for one reason only, and that is to point out the fact that our information sources are complicit in the spread of ignorance across our lives.  They are reinforcing negative ideals.  It is because of reporting like this, that more and more people are finding fuel to their bigoted opinions.  I am not calling for you to stop watching or reading the news.  I am only asking you to think about what you see.

Shoppers From Outer Space

It was whilst shopping in my local supermarket that I was struck by the most magnificent of thoughts.  It was so incredibly magnificent that it made my brain say ‘Huh’.  At first I couldn’t explain what it was.  I stopped walking and just searched the area with my eyes.  And then it clicked.  People are just strange.

The catalyst if you will, was studying the bizarre behaviours which people exhibit in a supermarket.  The strangest of all is the way people pick up anything with a label, in order to read it.  It’s not necessary.  Labels still work without physical contact.  Every aisle I walked down I saw more and more examples of label studying, and for the life of me I couldn’t work out why.   The only times I have found myself doing the exact same thing is when I see something new for the first time, much like an alien collecting samples to take back to his home planet.  For a moment I wondered if I wasn’t surrounded by shoppers from outer space.  That was until reality brought me crashing back down to earth.

I witnessed a woman walk to the meat fridges and pick up a pack of chicken breasts.  The woman was holding the pack in her hand when she did the strangest thing.  She put it to her nose and sniffed it.  What made her so much more curious was that there wasn’t any hesitantancy in her actions.  It was as if it was perfectly normal for her to be standing in a supermarket sniffing chicken breasts wrapped in plastic.

These peculiar shopping habits may or may not have always been on display.  It is of course possible that people do this sort of thing everywhere every single day, and I, for some reason just hadn’t noticed it.  However, I still felt a nagging doubt.   I couldn’t help but feel that the world wasn’t always this way.  I found myself wondering why I found it so bizarre.  If I am honest,  I know that due to some unconscious scarring, I find it wrong to pick things up unless I am certain that I am going to buy them.  I don’t know why.  It’s not a legacy of childhood as I was always sneaking things into the family shopping trolley.  That’s the worst thing about getting old.  You are never sure if these things really have changed or if it’s just your imagination.

These changes didn’t come about overnight.  They took time.  They needed people to embrace them.  The trailblazers.  Yes, they may have looked ridiculous with their brick-sized mobile phones, and their pointlessly slow computers, but it was these people who are responsible for bringing about change.  You have a choice in life.  You can spend your entire life being completely miserable or you can take risks and embrace a different tomorrow.

The chicken sniffer didn’t buy the chicken.  She dropped it back into the refrigerator.  I couldn’t help myself.  What if it changed my life?  What if it made the world a better place?  I  cautiously approached the fridge and picked up the same pack of chicken.  I looked up and down the aisle to make sure that no one was looking at me.  I put the pack of chicken to my nose and sniffed it.  And do you know what it smelt of?  Cold water and plastic.