If you keep MAKING it personal, you're bound to TAKE it personally.
Some people's lives are fascinating, but no one under the age of 70 should ever have the time to write an autobiography, as it would unduly impinge upon their ability to continue to lead a fascinating life.
It's a great rule, with loads of exceptions and, having met Howard Marks on a couple of occasions (namedrop, namedrop), even the exceptions tend to prove the rule. Cue the law of diminishing returns...and a degree of subtext regarding increased human longevity in an impatient age. (Mr. Nice is a fun read, and would make a splendid film - if Rob Brydon is ever available to play Howard. Hint, hint.) The legions of editors and ghost writers who are paid to soothe the fevered brows of divas and male prima donnas launching themselves upon unsuspecting bookshops truly deserve our pity. Although they're not being forced to work at gunpoint, it's no easy task to take the umpteenth wodge of handwritten notes and mumbled interview transcripts, grimace at the "My Story in My Own Words" subtitle, and not pray for the subject's imminent demise in order to at least lend biographical legitimacy to an ego wankery-fuelled, pseudo-autobiographical media darling's whim. Note: An extra circle of Hell has been fashioned and reserved to accomodate Oprah Winfrey, Richard and Judy, and an ever-growing number of publishers who should all, collectively, hang their tasteless and undiscriminating heads in eternal shame for promoting utter garbage throughout their careers.
I'll spin this around in a moment to make an obvious point about how blogging, in particular, has pandered to some people's worst egotistical instincts, and turned complete nobodies into self-obsessed crashing bores, but here's a quick plug for Norman Hull's dramatised documentary about last year's notorious convicted art fraudsters, the Greenhalghs: The Antiques Rogues Show (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gn6y7) is being broadcast next Sunday on BBC2 at 21:00. It's only an hour long and well worth a look, if you found the press and media coverage of their hoodwinking escapades interesting.
Okay. So it's not just the rapid corruption of lists of links into ersatz online diaries which has turned what passes for blogging "content" these days into heaving, over-emotionally-charged unreadable sludge, authored by lots of desperately needy people craving an audience. I'm not letting Wil Wheaton entirely off the hook, but thanks to re-runs of Star Trek the Next Social Working Generation he's still sensibly time-locked as that annoying swot of a kid who, along with Counsellor Troi, helped to make the Enterprise little more than a touchy-feely, intergalactic creche for a few seasons. ("Oi, baldy! There's a f*cking Klingon on your bridge! Has Star Fleet gone nuts?")
Actually, television is highly significant here, because when your casual blogger isn't informing the world what he or she had, or intends to have, for dinner, then they're banging on and on about what a great show X or Y is. In their opinion, of course, which may or may not be humble, depending upon how deeply entrenched within the hive-minded groupthink they've allowed themselves to become. The greater good...the greater good. TV is also significant because, over the past decade, it's helped to foster the notion that any twat in a hat, transgendered cabaret nightmare wannabe, or potential footballer's missus-in-waiting can become a "star", merely by applying to appear on the latest televised freakshow variation. Do not underestimate the geniuses behind this format, because getting viewers to not only watch, but voluntarily fund this stuff via telephone voting in the guise of "democracy" was a true master stroke. Oh sure, there's always a ripple of uproar when it goes wrong, as it did time after time in 2008, but is that going to stop people going back for more? And when you throw "celebrities" into the mix, every agent working for every has-been in the biz pisses their pants with glee at the prospect of cranking some extra mileage out of their Botox-enhanced or be-wigged properties/assets/human dust-gatherers.
As abused concepts go, "democracy" probably now deserves its very own charity helpline. "For a broken and highly selective model of imposed, Westernized democracy, please press 1." Afghanistan and Iraq are waiting in a queue, while Great Britain is fumbling about, trying to remember the last couple of digits of the number. If the European Parliament gets its way, and the Constitution comes up for an additional unconstitutional vote in those member states who previously rejected it, the lines will be jammed. America is now excused from picking up the handset until 2012, however much it may find itself itching to do so again in a couple of years. The Chinese only make the 'phones - they're not allowed to use 'em. Etc., etc.
The reality of finite time is that opportunities to question the status quo are scarce, and people make choices on the hoof because planning is far too often an unaffordable luxury. This is where the irony of technological availability truly kicks in, because yes, words are cheap now - cheaper than they've ever been before in our lifetimes - so should we be surprised or outraged that the same cheapness carries through to how they're used? To put it another (more personal) way, whilst I understand the appeal of "txt-spk" and Twitter, I'm also immune to their appeal. Is that democracy? If you don't like, or aren't interested in the programme, then change the channel, or switch it off. Similarly, if a blog entry is fantastically tedious, or fixated upon what the author thinks the reader should know about the minutia of his or her personal life (or TV viewing habits), scroll down the page, or use the arrow keys to get the Hell away from it. Is that democracy?
Or is democracy exercising the right to say, in whatever field...
You can do better than that, you know?
Thanks for listening.
It's a great rule, with loads of exceptions and, having met Howard Marks on a couple of occasions (namedrop, namedrop), even the exceptions tend to prove the rule. Cue the law of diminishing returns...and a degree of subtext regarding increased human longevity in an impatient age. (Mr. Nice is a fun read, and would make a splendid film - if Rob Brydon is ever available to play Howard. Hint, hint.) The legions of editors and ghost writers who are paid to soothe the fevered brows of divas and male prima donnas launching themselves upon unsuspecting bookshops truly deserve our pity. Although they're not being forced to work at gunpoint, it's no easy task to take the umpteenth wodge of handwritten notes and mumbled interview transcripts, grimace at the "My Story in My Own Words" subtitle, and not pray for the subject's imminent demise in order to at least lend biographical legitimacy to an ego wankery-fuelled, pseudo-autobiographical media darling's whim. Note: An extra circle of Hell has been fashioned and reserved to accomodate Oprah Winfrey, Richard and Judy, and an ever-growing number of publishers who should all, collectively, hang their tasteless and undiscriminating heads in eternal shame for promoting utter garbage throughout their careers.
I'll spin this around in a moment to make an obvious point about how blogging, in particular, has pandered to some people's worst egotistical instincts, and turned complete nobodies into self-obsessed crashing bores, but here's a quick plug for Norman Hull's dramatised documentary about last year's notorious convicted art fraudsters, the Greenhalghs: The Antiques Rogues Show (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gn6y7) is being broadcast next Sunday on BBC2 at 21:00. It's only an hour long and well worth a look, if you found the press and media coverage of their hoodwinking escapades interesting.
Okay. So it's not just the rapid corruption of lists of links into ersatz online diaries which has turned what passes for blogging "content" these days into heaving, over-emotionally-charged unreadable sludge, authored by lots of desperately needy people craving an audience. I'm not letting Wil Wheaton entirely off the hook, but thanks to re-runs of Star Trek the Next Social Working Generation he's still sensibly time-locked as that annoying swot of a kid who, along with Counsellor Troi, helped to make the Enterprise little more than a touchy-feely, intergalactic creche for a few seasons. ("Oi, baldy! There's a f*cking Klingon on your bridge! Has Star Fleet gone nuts?")
Actually, television is highly significant here, because when your casual blogger isn't informing the world what he or she had, or intends to have, for dinner, then they're banging on and on about what a great show X or Y is. In their opinion, of course, which may or may not be humble, depending upon how deeply entrenched within the hive-minded groupthink they've allowed themselves to become. The greater good...the greater good. TV is also significant because, over the past decade, it's helped to foster the notion that any twat in a hat, transgendered cabaret nightmare wannabe, or potential footballer's missus-in-waiting can become a "star", merely by applying to appear on the latest televised freakshow variation. Do not underestimate the geniuses behind this format, because getting viewers to not only watch, but voluntarily fund this stuff via telephone voting in the guise of "democracy" was a true master stroke. Oh sure, there's always a ripple of uproar when it goes wrong, as it did time after time in 2008, but is that going to stop people going back for more? And when you throw "celebrities" into the mix, every agent working for every has-been in the biz pisses their pants with glee at the prospect of cranking some extra mileage out of their Botox-enhanced or be-wigged properties/assets/human dust-gatherers.
As abused concepts go, "democracy" probably now deserves its very own charity helpline. "For a broken and highly selective model of imposed, Westernized democracy, please press 1." Afghanistan and Iraq are waiting in a queue, while Great Britain is fumbling about, trying to remember the last couple of digits of the number. If the European Parliament gets its way, and the Constitution comes up for an additional unconstitutional vote in those member states who previously rejected it, the lines will be jammed. America is now excused from picking up the handset until 2012, however much it may find itself itching to do so again in a couple of years. The Chinese only make the 'phones - they're not allowed to use 'em. Etc., etc.
The reality of finite time is that opportunities to question the status quo are scarce, and people make choices on the hoof because planning is far too often an unaffordable luxury. This is where the irony of technological availability truly kicks in, because yes, words are cheap now - cheaper than they've ever been before in our lifetimes - so should we be surprised or outraged that the same cheapness carries through to how they're used? To put it another (more personal) way, whilst I understand the appeal of "txt-spk" and Twitter, I'm also immune to their appeal. Is that democracy? If you don't like, or aren't interested in the programme, then change the channel, or switch it off. Similarly, if a blog entry is fantastically tedious, or fixated upon what the author thinks the reader should know about the minutia of his or her personal life (or TV viewing habits), scroll down the page, or use the arrow keys to get the Hell away from it. Is that democracy?
Or is democracy exercising the right to say, in whatever field...
You can do better than that, you know?
Thanks for listening.