FIFA

Surely FIFA is corrupt. I have written to them and told them that. I told them until they got rid of corruption I didn’t want England to participate in any future competitions organised by FIFA. There comes a time when you have to take a stand for what is right. That time came a while ago when Qatar was building its stadiums with what amounted to slave labour – do you hear that, Blatter, do you even know what it means? Of course Fifa did not reply. They might have done if I had passed them a sealed envelope containing free pizza vouchers, or a gift certificate with a percent reduction on quality handbags. The English FA is not much better. They chased Jack Warner (former Vice president of FIFA and President of CONCACAF – can you believe that?) around like he was the classroom hero and if they won his favour they could hang out with the cool guys and meet with the cool chicks. In doing that they lost my respect. It’s all so well documented here: http://www.playthegame.org/uploads/media/Andrew_Jennings_-_2018_England_in_the_iron_grip.pdf.

And so it goes on. Garcia resigns, FIFA discredits his report then says it will release it (edited?). Blatter holds a press conference saying that’s an end to the matter. UEFA president Michel Platini endorses that view and tucks into his foie gras, refusing to return a £16,000 watch given to him by the Brazilian Football Confederation despite the fact that the football’s governing body claimed the gift broke its code of ethics. Rotten, rotten, rotten; from its head to its golden-laced boots football is as rotten as a rich, fat belly clogged up with Swiss chocolate. I do so wish honest officials and politicians, of any calibre, would stand up to it, sacrifice their careers for the greater good. I would do it. Employ me for six months on 100K a year and I would blow the gaffe wide open – For the good of the game…

I recently heard a football journalist say on the radio that nothing can be done about the corruption, and as FIFA does good things for the development of the game in poor countries around the world we should all turn a blind eye. That’s like saying Basin City should carry on with murder, theft, prostitution, under-age sex, torture, illegal gambling, and any other vice you could mention because nothing can be done about it and it is self-policing under the benign brutality of Marv. Maybe Marv should take over the leadership of the FA. ‘I check the list. Rubber tubing, gas, saw, gloves, cuffs, razor wire, hatchet, Gladys, and my mitts.’ Go get ’em, Marv.

Ironclad 2, Sainsbury’s and Straight to DVD

Alright, I’m fed up. It started a few years ago, major stores stocking up with straight to DVD films, in other words – rubbish. I bought quite a few from Tesco before I learned my lesson; Battle Los Angeles, I think there were two of these, I bought the ultra rubbish one first (bad Karma), so bad my fingers lock up with rage, and then the expensive rubbish one, just rubbish. I bought Outpost which was rubbish, then this film about WWII in Italy that was rubbish and sucked so bad it damaged my mind. On and on, so I stopped trusting Tesco.

A few years later and I shop in Sainsbury’s sometimes and I’ve been stung again; Ironclad 2, rotten reviews, a rubbish film, £9.99 or something, and I need that money! So now I have to suck it up and tell myself again that I will not buy new DVDs from supermarkets. They look good but without an online review you just can’t tell and you don’t want to go home to check it first you just say, hey, ten quid, it’s gotta be good. Well, no it has not, it is more often than not – utter and complete crap. I’m telling you, do not buy rubbish DVDs from supermarkets.

Jesus when I think back. I bought Outpost 3 – WHY? I bought Snow Beast – so shit it doesn’t even make 2 stars. Never, never, never again. I will only buy online and that is why supermarkets will die and I will jump up and down on their rubble.

The Girl and the Vulture: The Value of the Internet

There is so much negative press about the internet; freely available porn, phishing, information theft, scams, surveillance. But just step back a moment and see the value, see what would be lost if we allowed governments to deny us access.

Only today, thinking about a possible business venture, I googled iconic images and came across this one. The Girl and the Vulture, taken by Kevin Carter in Sudan in 1994. A starving girl crawls to find aid whilst in the background a hooded vulture waits for her to die. You probably know the story; Carter committed suicide three months after taking the photograph wishing that he’d helped the girl.

If you don’t know the story then that’s the beauty of the internet, you can research it straight away and verify whether I have reported it correctly. More than that, in researching Carter you can re-acquaint yourself with the horrors of necklacing. At the click of a few buttons you can forget the fact that someone scratched your car today and simply thank God or luck that you are safe.

The tragedy of this girl is not forgotten, you can find it in google images in any second of any day, along with many other thousands of images of this brutal world: The Taliban hacking priests, lynching in the southern states, the napalm girl, the Holocaust, Mexican drug gang violence – on and on. In the days of the library and the bus and the pen and paper all of this would remain invisible, except to a few scholars. Now we have no excuse, the truth is there, in our faces, where it should be, making us feel complacent when horrors are being played out all the time.

Do not let vested interests take this resource away.

Spring-Clean by Proxy: Perfection, Nostalgia and Vanessa Palmer

I was thinking who I would like to get to play the role of Vanessa Palmer. And as usually happens my focused thoughts scrambled away to thinly related topics, in this case: film-making, marketing, and nostalgia, to name but a few. I thought of film-making and immediately Scandinavian  production values cropped up; I thought how fine those Swedish TV thrillers were, in particular the Wallender series and The Bridge. I think having subtitles meant I could switch off the plot and just enjoy the fine images.

So, then I thought if a Swedish film company was to make the film or the TV series then Vanessa Palmer would have to be played by a Swedish actress (I would still love Maruschka Detmers to do it, but that’s just a dream). So which one? I googled Swedish actresses and came up with three straight away (amazingly they were all Librans and one actually shares my birthday – weird). I selected one – Rebecca Ferguson – a star in The White Queen (damn, now I will have to watch that). She’s just about right I think. I could see her having a relationship with a postman and hot wiring a land cruiser.

On the same page I spotted a candidate for Heather (not a Libran this time) the exotically named – Tuva Moa Matilda Karolina Novotny Hedström – ideal art teacher junky type. I could see her in the fields spraying glue on corpses and smoking fungus joints.

So where did the nostalgia come in? Well, I was thinking about marketing and of how nostalgia is used as a tool to enhance a product’s appeal and of how I wished Spring-Clean by Proxy had some element of nostalgia already that would make my life easier when I thought that in a way Spring-Clean is kind of premised on nostalgia. The community survives as long as it does because it tries to cling on to a memory of the past just recently erased by the fungus. In fact to improve your nostalgia you should cram your nostalgia banks with fine images and moments – that it is why you should buy Spring-Clean by Proxy. If you’ve read the book every time you sit down for a coffee in the street on a sunny day at the back of your mind you will be preparing for the end of the world. What kind of awesome nostalgia is that?

The Kardashians …

Who needs them? They earn up to $65 a year. Meanwhile nearly a half of the world’s population (more than 3 billion people) live in extreme poverty – less than $1.25 a day – and 2.1 billion of those are children.

The emperor wears no clothes. Open your eyes. Rise up from your couch. Lay down your TV dinner. Don’t go to that tax-dodging charity function. Don’t manufacture that useless product. Don’t price health care beyond the reach of the majority. Don’t listen to your church leaders. Don’t go to the quack doctor who says you need antibiotics when you don’t … .

Ooh, I went off on one.

Who watches the Kardashians? I watched 5 minutes and almost threw up. It was almost as bad as watching Made in Chelsea, or Peter bloody Andre. I first heard of Keeping Up with the Kardashians from an American colleague. He said, ‘Have you watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians?’ And I said, ‘Weren’t they in Star Trek?’ which drew a laugh. And he told me about the programme. So I immediately asked him what the point of it was. He just kept chewing his Thai Green curry and stared at me through his lost and faded eyes. If he had been a mathematician a paradox would have strained his gears just as much.

What is the point of the Kardashians?