Daytime TV Depression

Daytime TV has to be amongst the most depressing things any human being can experience.  No wonder the long-term unemployed are so miserable if they spend their mornings watching this dreck.  I was reminded of this when I was off work over Easter.  As if the abominable Jeremy Kyle (should we be surprised that this egotistical cock-end is a supporter of David Cameron) on ITV isn't bad enough, the 'alternatives' the BBC serve up are no better.  Take Homes Under the Hammer, for instance, whilst it doesn't include any baiting of hill billies from East Anglia like Kyle, its celebration of greed and profiteering is pretty repugnant.  It's parade of would-be property developers buying properties cheap at auction and then, after the minimum of remedial work, renting them out at extortionate prices to students and poor people are a pretty depressing bunch.  Get a real job, I always want to scream at them - they're the same sort of people who think it is possible to make a passive income from those internet get rich quick schemes.  Those buying properties to actually live in themselves are treated as if they are mentally deficient.  OK, I'm exaggerating somewhat and making some sweeping generalisations here, but you get the idea. An equally depressing aspect of the programme is the idea that you ave to decorate everything in dull colours as that makes properties easier to sell.  Individualism?  You don't want that - apparently avocado bathrooms are a deal-breaker when it comes to selling your house!

However, surely the most depressing of all the BBC's morning TV offerings has to be Heir Hunters.  This is the one where these rival companies vie to find the heirs of people who have died intestate and with no immediate family.  Obviously, they aren't doing this out of a sense of civic duty, I'm assuming that they get some kind of commission from the estates of the deceased for doing this.  Which seems pretty distasteful in itself - profiting from the lonely deaths of recluses.  Right from the off this programme is deeply depressing, introducing us to some poor dead person in the most downbeat manner possible:  "Arthur Cobblers died alone.  In fact, nobody even knew that he had died for seven months, until police broke into his squalid flat, after complaints from the neighbours about the smell.  'At first I thought the smell was down to the hundred pints or so of milk that had accumulated outside his front door and were going off,' Jim Arse, who had lived next door to Arthur for several years, told us. 'I just assumed he was one of those idle old gits who was too lazy to bring his milk in.'  His funeral was attended only by a lollipop man who happened to be passing the crematorium and had come in to shelter from the rain.  Arthur had lost touch with his friends and fallen out with his family following his arrest for possession of child pornography, ten years earlier.  Although he was later exonerated - the offending magazine having been delivered to his house as a result of a mix-up at his newsagents - he was never reconciled with his family, after they refused to post bail for him and had spray-painted the word 'Nonce' on his car.  The team's challenge now is to track down his remaining close family before his estate of £32.76 in a national savings account and his vast collection of pornographic magazines is claimed by the state."

Jumping Through Hoops

The French, Greek and Germany's North Rhine Westphalia election results are threatening seismic upheavals in Europe's political landscape, JP Morgan bank is reeling from huge financial losses, the Eurozone is teetering on the verge of collapse, the phone hacking scandal is edging ever closer to forcing ministerial resignations, but are we worried?  Hell no - we've got the distraction of a performing dog!  Yes indeed, Britain's Got Talent was apparently won by a canine which performed some kind of act, so I'm told, (I'm proud to say that I've never actually watched the programme, or any of Simon Cowell's other programmes, for that matter).  If ever there was a classic case of distraction, surely this is it - the world's going to Hell, and we're all fixated on a sodding dog that performs tricks, (magic tricks, for all I know - it could be the canine Paul Daniels).  You can't escape it - even the bloody Guardian has wasted precious column inches on it.  Bearing in mind Cowell's Tory sympathies, one can't help but extrapolate one of those 'convenient conspiracies', where all of his various 'talent' shows are actually designed to distract the public from what's really going on and instead get us to focus on the meaningless 'narratives' of the contestants and the 'heart-warming' story of their 'successes' as his shows pull them from obscurity to instant fame.

Not that I'm saying that Cowell is manipulative when it comes to the media and public opinion, but his most recent attempts to garner public sympathy have been both obvious and preposterous.  You remember - all that stuff about learning some humility after the US X-Factor got lower than anticipated ratings. Utter bollocks!  In fact, almost as big a load of bollocks as the supposed embarrassment that 'unauthorised' biography caused Cowell.  Yeah, like he's ever embarrassed by anything that gives him publicity.  I don't know whether it's because Cowell has grown tired of being a 'heel' (to use wrestling terminology) and fancies some time as a 'face', or whether he just thinks that there's more appeal and therefore more potential viewers to be had as a sympathetic character, I don't know, but it's clear that Cowell is trying to make like a WWE wrestler and switch from 'heel' to 'face'.  He clearly thinks that the key to garnering sympathy lies in allowing the public to see a more #vulnerable' side to him, which, in practice, means showing some 'weakness': admitting to disappointment over ratings, conceding he might have made a mistake in thinking it would be easy to break the US and, most of all, that biography.  The biography is key, by allowing himself to be portrayed as vain and insecure, he believes he is allowing the public to see him as 'human' and imperfect and therefore more sympathetic.  By then claiming the biography's 'revelations' had caused him embarrassment, he's trying to have his cake and eat it: I'm not just flawed but, I'm even more human because I know to be embarrassed by these flaws. Pathetic!  He just wants us to jump through emotional hoops like bloody performing dogs.

Five Year Plan

Going back to my failure to go on strike last week due to financial considerations, I have to admit that a lot of my attitudes toward work these days - including workplace disputes - is shaped by the fact that I'm within five years of paying off my mortgage.  The knowledge that I only have to keep working at this lousy job for another five years has, without doubt, made me very risk averse.  The fact is that all I want to do now is keep my head down, keep my job and pay off that mortgage.  When it comes to industrial disputes and political campaigns that affect me work-wise, I'm caught between my desire to uphold my principles and the need to just get through these next few years with as little hassle as possible.  Whilst there's no guarantee that my current job will continue to exist for the next five years, there's a pretty good chance it will, and even if it doesn't, they'll have to offer me some kind of redundancy package or redeploy me to similar work on the same pay scale.  Ideally, of course, I'd like to see out these five years, pay off my mortgage, then get offered a redundancy pay off!

Obviously, things are unlikely to work out so neatly, so I'll be happy to pay off the mortgage.  With my biggest monthly expense gone, I'll suddenly have options again.  Now, if I was sensible, I'd just keep working and save the money I would otherwise be paying out for my mortgage for my old age.  However, I'm sick of working.  I don't enjoy it, it doesn't stimulate me intellectually and, to be frank, it's pointless.  Whilst it is unlikely that, even without the mortgage to pay, I'd be able to afford to give up work completely and live on benefits, I love winding people up by telling them that this is my plan), I will have the option of working fewer hours, or trying to find a more satisfying job, even if it pays less.  Then there's the possibility of reactivating my plan to use my teaching qualification try doing some supply lecturing.  But what will I do with the time I hope to have on my hands in five years time?  Well, I could always go for that old stand-by of travelling, but as I've mentioned many times before, my wanderlust wore out many years ago.  No, I intend staying put and doing more of the things work stops me from doing: reading, tracking down and watching obscure films, writing, maybe doing a bit more film-making and podcasting.  And lots more.  Like I said, all I have to do is get through these next five years, and the promised land will be in sight!

Hare Today

Did you see that bloody coalition 'relaunch' attempt the other day?  You know, that fiasco with Cameron and Clegg in the tractor factory.  Quite frankly, I don't know why Cameron didn't just bend Clegg over the back wheel of one of the tractors, pull his trousers down and give one up the arse, it surely would have been a more accurate summation of the coalition is really about.  OK, this isn't going anywhere, is it?  I mean, I've already done the political rant for the week, haven't I?  What else can I talk about?  Let me think.  Oh yes, earlier this week I saw a hare.  I know that doesn't sound exciting, but believe me, you don't often see a hare out in the open these days.  They're usually quite shy and retiring.  Anyway, even by hare standards, he was a pretty big bugger, (I'm assuming it was a he, I'm no expert when it comes to sexing hares).  The point, if there is one, is that the hare is an ancient symbol of the moon goddess (Diana or Selene, depending upon whether you were Roman or Ancient Greek).  Now, bearing in mind that a few days before I saw the hare, we experienced the so-called 'Super Moon', (or as I like to call it, 'the moon'), I'm left wondering, was it some kind of portent?

Popular opinion amongst people I've mentioned this to (aside from thinking I'm deranged) is that it is a sign that someone I know is going to reveal themselves to me as a moon goddess.  Assuming, not unreasonably I think, that this person would be of the female persuasion, this narrows down the number of possibilities as to the identity of this possible goddess.  However, so far, I'm still waiting, despite keeping a close eye on various female acquaintances.  Which raises the possibility that it could be someone who isn't close at hand.  Which narrows the number of suspects quite considerably.  I'm going to text my friend Little Miss Strange (assuming she can get a signal in her cave) and ask her if she is a secret moon goddess and if so, is she likely to reveal herself to me any time soon.  Actually, I know bloody well that she reads this blog, so if you are a moon goddess and about to reveal yourself, let me know in the comments.  Of course, the hare could have been a portent of something else altogether.  Indeed, bearing in mind that my sighting of the beast preceded my shitty forty eight hours, perhaps it wasn't such a good omen.  In which case, I'll be avoiding hares in future.   

Not On the Picket Lines

I daresay that you are expecting me to give more blow-by-blow accounts of life on the picket line during today's public sector strike.  Unfortunately, I can't, as I wasn't on strike myself.  The reason for this quite simple: I couldn't afford to lose another day's pay.  As, for various reasons, I couldn't take the day off, I had little choice but to become a strike breaker for a day.  Luckily, there was no picket line to cross today but, nonetheless, I felt lousy about it.  One of the worst aspects of today was that people who saw me at work, (non-union members, those opposed to industrial action and, for all I know, Tory voters), assumed that I was on their 'side'.  Believe me, that hurts.  But the sad fact is that, despite talking a good revolution on these pages, I'm as subject to financial realities as everyone else, and when push comes to shove, paying the bills wins out over principles.  To be fair to myself, I also have serious issues with the union's strategy and, to be honest, I really don't see the point of today's action.  We've effectively lost the battle over pensions - if industrial action was going to alter the government's plans, then it would have happened last November when we went out.  All that continued one-day strikes achieve now is to cost members money in docked wages - money we can ill afford with a pay freeze and increased pension contributions.  It seems clear to me that we need to be smarter, this kind of brute force approach just won't work and risks alienating public opinion.  New strategies need to be deployed, we need to win the argument - in the eyes of the electorate - through using the media to our advantage.  We also need to be prepared to play dirty, take a few leaves out of Malcolm Tucker's, sorry, Alistair Campbell's book when it comes to PR.

But then again, all these reservations on my part could just be my subconscious trying to justify my failure to support the strike.  Like I said, it has left me feeling lousy, the perfect end to a dismal couple of days, in fact.  Yesterday, in particular, was a nightmare from beginning to end.  I woke up to find that my watch had stopped.  I then wasted time searching the house for a non-existent replacement battery for it which I thought I had.  Of course, I didn't have such a thing and had to get through the morning without a watch, then waste part of my lunch break finding someone who could sell me - at well over the odds - a new battery.  To make things worse, I also found, at lunchtime, that I'd lost my hat, (not the straw one you can see me waring during the summer in a lot of my films, but a cap I wear to keep the rain off).  Despite retracing my steps, I could find no trace of it, so had to buy a replacement.  There was no respite when I got home in the evening as I found that Microsoft Office had stopped working on my laptop.  No reason, I just kept getting a message saying it couldn't load any of the applications in the suite.  Which was a bit of a problem, as I was trying to complete a new story for The Sleaze and needed to use Word.  In the end, I was forced to download Office again and make a new installation.  Which took forever.  Which, in turn, meant that I couldn't complete and post the story until much later than I had anticipated, resulting in getting to bed later than planned, waking up tired and being in a foul mood this morning.  Truly, a shitty forty eight hours.

The Scent of New Mown Grass

I was suddenly hit by the scent of newly mown grass this afternoon, as I walked past a garden.  All sorts of childhood memories came flooding back, triggered by the smell.  For me, this scent is forever associated with summers in the 1970s, when I was a child and suffered badly from hay fever.  For me, it always heralded the onset of a season I dreaded as I knew it would trigger my allergy, leaving me congested, wheezing and gasping for breath.  Because of the debilitating effect of the hay fever, I never really enjoyed my childhood summers, dreading them, in fact.  But eventually I outgrew the hay fever, which barely troubles me these days, and have learned to love summer, looking forward to its arrival every year.  Nonetheless, today's unexpected encounter with the scent of new mown grass brought all the bad memories back.  It's fascinating how we associate particular sensations with, not just past events, but also past emotional states.  The smell of wet tarmac, for instance, always takes me back to happier childhood feelings, reminding me of rainy break times at infant school, waiting for the rain to ease enough to go out into the playground (which were inevitably covered in tarmac back then).  I can still feel the excitement and expectation when that smell hits my nostrils.

Of course, the question arises as to just how accurate the memories these stimuli evoke actually are - did damp break times always make me happy, was every summer an ordeal for me, or am I latching on to particular powerful fragments of memory and magnifying their significance?  There's no doubt that we view our memories through all manner of filters, often influenced by the way in which popular culture portrays the era we are recalling.  In The Guardian recently, Charlie Brooker highlighted how some cinema goers had received a trailer for Peter Jackson's Hobbit movie negatively, complaining that the 48 frames per second process used to shoot it, (it's twice the normal speed for feature films), made the footage look too 'real', like 1980s videotape.  As he noted, the problem is that audiences are so used to seeing the glossy 24 framers per second  footage of contemporary movies, they assume that it represents cinematic 'reality'.  The videotape images familiar to those of us who watched TV in the 1980s is, arguably, a better representation of 'reality', with its over lit look and its apparent lack of depth (both foreground and background seem to stay in focus simultaneously).  Indeed, its the way I remember the 1980s looking.  But do I only 'remember' them looking this way because every moving image of them presented on TV looks that way due to the video systems used back then? 

Despite living through them, and knowing that the world looked no different than it does now, I still have trouble remembering that the 1970s didn't look as if it had been shot on grainy film footage or the flat (and slightly out of focus) videotape used then.  It's even worse when it comes to imagining eras you didn't experience personally: I have to constantly remind myself that the 1930s and 1940s weren't in black and white. It was just cinema photography, not real life, that lacked colour back then.  What's really interesting is that we're able to make the distinction between the two with regard to life as we experience it in the present.  Nowadays everything is shot digitally on tape and filters are applied to it in post-production to replicate the frame rate of film and give it that 'glossy' look we associate with modern cinema.  Yet we 'know' that the cinematic looking news reports and contemporary TV dramas we see aren't 'real' - we don't expect to step outside of our front doors and find everything looking like it was shot on film.  Or do we?  Maybe that's why so many people these days seem so dissatisfied with the reality of their lives, and are always striving after wealth and/or fame.  Perhaps they think that if they are rich enough, or famous enough, their perceptions of life will suddenly be shot on 70mm film?  Who knows?  

Gay Marriage Blues

So what have we learned from last week's local election results?  Apart from the fact that the Tories and their lickspittles are deeply unpopular, that is.  Well, according to all the usual Tory backbench rent-a-quotes, who apparently had nothing better to do over a bank holiday weekend than sit in radio and TV studios pontificating, their electoral setbacks were all down to gay marriage.  This was the theme they kept returning to - not an interview went by without reference to the the 'fact' that people hadn't voted Tory because their Lib Dem coalition partners had forced them to support gay marriage.  Which left me confused.  Were they really suggesting that when going to the polling booth to cast their votes, undecided voters said to themselves, 'Well, I'm not supporting legalised bumming - I blame those Tory bastards for the increase in buggery in the UK, you can't walk down the street without running the risk of being the victim of a drive-by sodomy - so I'm going to vote Labour'.  But apparently they were.  Sort of.  Their argument seemed to be that the Lib Dems have had too much influence, resulting in government policies being too liberal, which alienated many voters, who wanted them to be more right-wing.

Quite how a supposed unfulfilled yearning for right-wing policies amongst the electorate translates into an increased Labour vote still isn't clear.  Moreover, the only evidence for the pernicious influence of the Lib Dems is the afore-mentioned gay marriages and the proposed reform of the House of Lords.  Both of which, confusingly, were described by one of the rent-a-quotes as policies which the electorate didn't care about.  In which case, why would their voting intentions be affected by them?  It's troubling that the response of Tory backbenchers to rejection at the polls should be to retreat into some reactionary fantasy-land where there's some silent majority craving extremist policies.  After all, they are part of one of the most reactionary governments we've ever seen, using financial recession as an excuse for the effective destruction of the welfare state and curtailment of civil liberties.  Clearly, the idea that the electorate might be beginning to see through them, and recognise that they are simply the agents of corporate capitalism, hell-bent on squeezing every ounce of profit from us before moving on to suck some other state dry, is so troubling to them that they've gone into total denial.  Still, come the revolution we'll stick them all up against the wall and shoot them.  Either that, or force them into gay marriages.      

Too Hot to Handle?

I can confidentally predict that we'll soon be seeing several top Hollywood stars arrested for their involvement in bizarre Satanic rituals, involving wild sex and human sacrifice.  I mean, why else would the LA County Sheriff's Department have been looking at The Sleaze the other day, most specifically the story Hollywood Satanists?  Clearly, they were trying to do some in-depth research as they built their case against these celebrity miscreants.  That said, as everyone I mentioned in the story is now dead, they might have some trouble making arrests on the basis of the information they gleaned from it.  Unless they dig up Sammy Davis Jr, that is.  Of course, it was undoubtedly just a bored office worker at the Sheriff's Department killing a few minutes of a dull work day visiting the page, but I do love it when I get a visit like that - it makes such a change from all the regular ISPs I see in the search results: Virgin Media, BT and the like.  Actually, I've had a few out of the ordinary visitor origins of late.  Around the same time as the LASD's visit I also had a visit originating with the BBC in London.  This isn't the first time I've had such a visit - some variation on the search term 'UK political satir' always brings them to The Sleaze.  I've not yet discerned for sure whether they represent bored office workers or actual researchers.  That said, the fact that I've never been invited to either write satire for the BBC or had the site featured on a BBC programme makes me think they are probably from the former.

Of course, that doesn't rule out the possibility of the BBC visits being 'official' - it would be no surprise to me if they recoiled from the site, appalled.  I'm afraid the The Sleaze is just too hot for mainstream media like the BBC to handle!  The BBC's idea of radical satire, in particular, is very different to mine. Actually, their entire concept of humour, these days, seems to be very different to mine.  Particularly on Radio 4 these days.  I had the misfortune to hear the first ten minutes or so of a long-running Radio 4 comedy the other day.  Just the voices of the actors it featured made my heart sink - there's a particular 'sound' they seem to favour for radio performers in both comedies and dramas which renders the characters they play bland and two-dimensional.  Just like the writing.  Even a few minutes of this particular episode clearly telegraphed to me the script's lack of ambition - it was quite obvious that it was going to be content to follow all the tired sitcom conventions, reinforcing the audience's preconceived prejudices and eschewing radicalism in favour of safety and whimsy.  It's hard to believe this was the best that the same station that once broadcast The Goon Show (when it was the BBC Home Service, that is), could come up with.  The problem is that Radio 4 seems to rely upon the same limited group of writers (often stand up comedians) to write their comedies, which are all aimed firmly at the station's staid, middle England, middle aged, middle brow audience.  Innovation is not required, let alone encouraged.

Easily Amused

I'm easily amused.  The other day in the supermarket I looked down an aisle to see a sign saying 'Frozen Breasts' - I felt like shouting "Well don't stand so close to the freezer cabinets!" at the female shoppers standing near it.  (Obviously, it was referring to frozen chicken breasts).  It's not often that I get given a feed line like that - especially by a supermarket.  Many years ago, not one, but twice, colleagues in the office I was working in at the time responded to something I'd said by saying "You jest", to which I was able to respond (twice) with the old Spike Milligan line "I jest what?"  I was laughing so much I had to hold my sides.  Like I said, I'm easily amused.  Then there was that time, when working in the same office, that I saw a security door emblazoned with the words 'This door is alarmed'.  Of course, I couldn't resist appending it with my own notice: 'Yes, I was pretty surprised myself!'  Ah, happy days!

 But it isn't just unexpectedly receiving classic feed lines that delights and amuses me - it's also those surreal moments that come from left-field, with absolutely no warning.  Like yesterday, when a colleague poked a fox with a stick.  Actually, to be fair to her, it was a long-handled feather duster rather than a stick.  She claimed that it was a man from the RSPCA who told her to poke the fox with a long stick, but she couldn't find one, so used the feather duster instead.  I'm still not entirely clear what it was all about, but apparently it had something to do with the fact that the fox (which was loitering around the back of the office) had been seen limping by the security guard, who was worried it might be injured.  So my colleague called the RSPCA who advised that she should poke the animal with a long stick - if it was sick or injured it wouldn't move far, but if it was healthy it would run.  Anyway, as it was last seen sitting on the wall behind the building, facing off against a local cat, it was assumed it was OK.  All very strange, but it amused me greatly.  It remains to be seen whether my colleague is going to make a habit of harassing local wildlife.  Perhaps she'll bait a badger next...

Unfit Persons

I know what you've all been thinking: that Sleaze Diary has been a bit light in terms of full-blown political rants of late.  Well, don't worry, I'm still simmering away, building up to another eruption.  In the meantime, I was both cheered and dismayed by today's Commons Select Committee report which condemned Rupert Murdoch as being unfit to run a major firm.  Cheered, because this verdict is long overdue - it's high time that the UK's political classes found some backbone and started standing up to the likes of Murdoch.  Dismayed, because of the pathetic attempts of the Tory members of the Committee to undermine the report, by claiming the final verdict is politically motivated and refusing to endorse it.  This in the same week that Cameron had to be forced to attend the Commons to explain his refusal to to launch an immediate inquiry into any breaches of the ministerial code by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt during Murdoch's SKY TV takeover bid.  He was very angry about that.  God forbid that members of the government should be held to account by our country's supreme sovereign body.

But getting back to the Select Committee report, all the usual suspects are there, trying to undermine it - most notably the awful Louise Mensch, perhaps the most intellectually challenged person I've ever seen serve as an MP, (and that's saying something), basking in the publicity it brings her.  It really is so depressing, after everything that has come out about the conduct of News International during the course of the phone hacking inquiry and the Levenson inquiry, that there are still so many apologists for Murdoch out there.  Not just on the government benches in the Commons, either.  I made the mistake of reading some of the comments on this story as reported on the BBC News website. Bad mistake.  Lots of ranting loons denouncing a communist plot against Murdoch.  Still, I suppose all those former News of The World hacks have to do something to fill up their days now they're on the dole. But really, what is it that Murdoch and his minions have to do before these morons stop worshipping at his feet and, even worse, buying The Sun?  Clearly, attempting to subvert the government, corrupting the police and invading people's privacy isn't enough for them.  Perhaps if he had dropped his trousers and taken a huge dump on the desk during his testimony to the Leveson inquiry these clowns might have stopped defending him.  But somehow I doubt it - they'd probably have filled Twitter with comments about how his shit didn't stink.