Twitter Watch: Vol.8
Musings on a day full of April fools from a dystopian world we’re programmed to laugh at.
Musings on a day full of April fools from a dystopian world we’re programmed to laugh at.
Hello and a hearty April Fools Day welcome from the UK and surely the only outpost on this rock spinning through the unknowable of infinity that has gone from Ice Station Zebra to sweltering Summer temperatures through to snow in just one of our earthbound weeks. So on a day of such tomfoolery and the rib tickling laughter at our expense that we’re allowed to have on a fully sanctioned day of organised fun and laughter known as “April Fools Day”, it’s reassuring that the UK weather remains as schizophrenic as both the inmates and the Prison Warders who seem to have a remarkable inability to complete such mundane tasks as to define what a “woman” is.
I love a bit of organised fun! Makes the heart sing with pure unadulterated joy, doesn’t it? I’m always reminded on such occasions as to when I was a far younger man and watching the news from faraway countries under the jackboot of totalitarian Governments always seemingly having days of organised fun, parades, carnivals, marching up and down with nuclear warheads, that sort of thing, and whilst I recognise today isn’t a day such as this, here in the UK we have umpteen Royal days of organised fun to look forward, Jubilees and triumphant occasions to wave one’s flag in honour of the family who’s exemplary familial record is one to aspire to and one of the very reasons for having such days of organised fun. I’d vote for more days such as these, perhaps even dust off our nuclear warheads and parade them up and down The Mall in London with Boris Johnson, hunched over in his ridiculous impression of Winston Churchill, flanked by tens of school children as they walk alongside the weapons of mass destruction through an umbrella of ginormous Union Jacks hung from every conceivable vantage point.
Organised fun gets my vote every single time!
So it’s lucky I don’t vote.
It’s been a strange week within The Matrix here in the UK. We still can’t seem to define what a woman is despite thousands of years of progress in this area and should you wish to spook a sitting Member of Parliament or any number of Z list celebrities, don’t April Fool them! Just ask them to define what a woman is. It scares them witless and is the perfect current summation of the upside down nature of our collective reality.
The war is still raging in Ukraine and nobody seems to know who the good guys are whilst those of us in on the April Fool joke have known all along that there are no “good guys” here. But keep waving those Blue and Yellow flags as it’s organised fun all the way, well, until either America decide they no longer wish to wage war in a faraway land for the umpteenth time in living memory or Russia nuke us all into another dimension. Talking of different dimensions we also had the spectacle of the (and please stop laughing at the back!) “slap heard around the world” as a comedian dropped a bollock, gave away a trade secret about an impending film release and complimented an actress in the process before her husband walked on a stage and in front of a television audience of millions assaulted him during a quasi religious possessive meltdown. And he was the wronged party!
What larks eh?
The bread and circus of life will be reassuringly more warm in the coming days as football returns to my telescreen. Since the once beautiful game knocked on my door I’ve been busy writing articles here and generally missing a grand old lady who’s opinion I’d love to hear on the current state of the world as well as her beloved Manchester United football team. Alas, whilst awaiting that telephone call that will never arrive I’ve completed an article on the fascinating and human centric documentaries of the German madman director Werner Herzog but am yet to translate my thoughts into a penned and coherent conclusion. I have another article in my maddening mind entitled “Another Day” but dare not put fingertip to keyboard on this one yet and I played around with some scribbles last night on an old sore that forever makes me giggle: “The Father” and my full moon meetings with him on an old bridge over looking an even older river.
The biggest April fool for a football fan such as myself is the circus distraction this will provide for the next 30 days. This month alone sees my team seemingly playing every day, twice on Sundays and four times on Wednesday mornings alone. So the Sports Desk is going to be busy and busily distracted for the time being. My advice would be to be a fool every day and not just reserve it for when it’s deemed acceptable and within organised fun. Be the fool on the hill, employ the “foolish grin” and take a rather more nuanced view of the “world spinning round”.
And certainly not just in the madhouse of Twitter!
Postscript
For readers outside of the UK, Private Eye is a satirical and somewhat scathing social commentary magazine that’s been running for over 6 decades and was a staple of my College days spent in the library trying to impress the cool kids with my high brow reading materials! I never read it today but still find their covers amusing, prescient, alarming, on the nose and well, a perfect representation and summation of our times, and the times that will never change despite the spotlight shone by magazines such as Private Eye.
Looking at their current cover says it all:
A screamingly out of touch multi billionaire equating the revelations of his multi billionaire wife’s dealing with a Russian company with the concerns of a multi millionaire and his multi millionaire wife and how life seems so damn unfair. We give these people nicknames to numb the pain of the damage they cause. “Dishy Rishi” reports to the “Big Dog” and both of whom are destroying (managing the decline) of the UK, on purpose, and with malice aforethought. But we can’t entertain such thoughts so we laugh at the absurdity of Hollywood and a violent assault on live television to hundreds of millions worldwide to a billionaire and how he has so much empathy for the plight of the plebs who console themselves with moaning about the purposeful crashing of every energy supplier’s websites on the last day, a ludicrously self titled “meter day” to supply readings to their suppliers before the price hike today, appropriately, April fools day. A price hike that mirrors those in every other country of the previous known “Free World” as we’re punished for having the temerity of wanting to die in a nuclear war after paying exorbitant sums of money for “energy” and guided by the very least amongst us, shells of their former human shadows, and whom collectively can’t seem to quite grasp the concept of the female form any longer.
What fools we all are, but not of the Beatles Fool on the Hill variety, but the blind Matrix masses who believe their own lying eyes.
Thanks for reading. Volumes 1 through 7 are available via my archives and here’s some handy links to a couple of volumes in the middle of the series:
Twitter Watch: Vol.4
The narcissistic edition and my blossoming love affair for Elon Muskmedium.com