Monthly Archives: November 2020

2020’s Plenty: It’s Been a Lung Year

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How we laughed at the turn of the year.

“Some mad wee Chinese guy has eaten a bat, and now the Chinese are cutting about looking like tribute acts to Michael Jackson and the Chemical Brothers. That’ll teach them for eating weird shit.” It could never happen to us, right?

How smug we were. How we gorged on schadenfreude. All the while comically blind to the fact that our diet consists mainly of terrified chickens bathed in the shits of their caged friends; cows fed on sheep’s brains; horses that have been secretly mulched into beef mince; turkeys tenderised by the baseball bats of bored Bernard Matthews’ workers, and – I wouldn’t be surprised to learn – the genetically modified arse cheeks of some vile abomination like the croco-penguin. Even still we heaved the wrecked, diabetes-ridden husks of our bodies from pub to pub, takeaway to takeaway, chewing chocolate bars through one side of our mouths while smoking three fags out the other, just managing to say, ‘I dunno, the shit those people put in their bodies’ before pouring a carafe of vodka down our throats.

And, while we were lost in our completely unwarranted sense of western superiority, we forgot about something else: planes. The Great Wall of China doesn’t encircle the entire population, hemming them all in. Millions of people from all over the world fly to thousands of places each and every day, doubtless many hundreds of thousands of them Chinese. [Side fact: if you got all of the Chinese people who travelled by air each day and got them to link hands along the Welsh coast, it would be completely and utterly pointless] Maybe we didn’t forget. Maybe we just sort of figured that if there was a highly infectious disease with the potential to bloom into a pandemic rampaging around the continent of Asia that the UK government would do something to block or control entry from those countries that had been affected. That was a bit silly of us, wasn’t it? Even though we didn’t really trust our beloved Boris all that much to begin with, I dare say we trust him now about as much as I trust a fart after a surprise horse vindaloo.

For the first few months of the outbreak we decided to play a nationwide game of Supermarket Sweep, with the ghost of Dale Winton shouting encouragement at us from the clouds: “Fasta fasta, grab all the pasta!”

And, of course, booming out the show’s famous slogan: “Next time you’re at the checkout and you hear the beep, think of the old woman who now can’t wipe her arse, you inconsiderate freak.” Why toilet paper? In case we needed to wipe our lungs? What would we have stockpiled if the WHO had warned us of an impending diarrhoea outbreak? Halls Soothers?

The first lockdown confined most of us to our homes with the option of one hour’s outdoor exercise per day. We were essentially prisoners, but with worse diets and even greater substance-abuse problems. Subsequent lockdowns kept some shops and amenities open but essentially stopped people from socialising, prevented them from going to pubs and for nights out, and pretty much compelled them to stay at home feeling miserable and grumpy, thereby turning large sections of the population into, well… me before the coronavirus.

Refuses to wear a mask, but for some reason he’s down with safety specs.

The arrival of the Track and Trace system made rebels and doomsayers of a large swathe of the country’s intellectually challenged. ‘Slip siding into a fascist state, are we?’ they cried, though perhaps not as articulately as that. ‘We’ll see about that! If those hired goons at McDonalds think they’re going to write down MY name and address at the door, like the fucking Stazi, they’ve got another thing coming… oh, McDonalds is doing an on-line promotion where you can win free Big Macs for a year?! Hold on, I’ll just type in my name and address…’

I understand being wary of governments and corporations in our digital age. It’s perfectly possible that the ostensibly innocent gathering of information in our – thus far – only mildly corrupt society (see Analytica, Cambridge et al) could one day be turned against us should the right (or possibly wrong) person or organisation take the reins. That’s why I admire that rare breed of zealot who dedicates himself to a life off the grid, living in a shack, or up a tree, in the wilderness, roaming naked or in rags, eating wild potatoes (much more dangerous than the domesticated version), shitting in a hole in the ground, and teaching badgers how to do basic CPR should they one day go down from a heart attack. But as for the rank and file? Those who participate in modern life while at the same time decrying it? If you’re going to holler ‘Invasion of privacy! Infringement of civil liberties! What’s next: a microchip??’ it’s best not to walk around all day with a hand-held device that contains an actual micro-chip. Your phone knows where you are and what you’re doing at all times of the day and night, and any gaps in its knowledge can be helpfully filled in by you voluntarily narrating every movement of your excruciatingly pointless existence – even your bowel movements. If this technology had been around in the 30s and 40s we’d all be reading ‘Anne Frank’s Instagram Feed’ instead of her diary, and it would feature just one picture: a selfie of her in the loft with a caption reading, ‘I’m in this loft, but, shhhhh, don’t tell the Germans #secretloft #loftnights #letmebeFrank’.’

Masks, too, were another source of upset, with angry people – whose only source of news was the digestion of headlines on anonymous blogs posted in a Facebook group called WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, SHEEPLE – spluttering that masks had no proven track record of preventing harmful microbes or virus-laden effluent from passing through them, much to the shock of surgeons and SARS-blighted Asians everywhere, who’d happily worn the efficacious face-panties for years.

On a side note, the Tories have appointed a ‘Minister for Loneliness’. The Tories. The party of ‘every man for himself, pip pip, if you slack or fall it’s your fault, bally ho, no such thing as society’. This is like finding out that Ted Bundy was once appointed the minister for ‘Making Sure People Don’t Get Brutally Murdered by a Stranger’.

It’s got to the point now where millions of people would rather get their advice on the virus from David Icke, an ex-goalkeeper with big fish lips who believes that the Queen is quite literally a shape-shifting lizard from outer space, than from thousands of epidemiologists and scientists who’ve spent their lives studying and combating viruses.

It is, however, understandable that people have grown weary of restrictions and lockdowns, given that the guidelines sometimes seem like they’ve been made up by a bunch of heavy drug-users with type-writers.

“You can’t go into a textile shop wearing blue, unless it’s only on one leg, and you can’t go to the butchers’ unless your aunty Beryl is there with you, but only if she’s wearing her glasses down on the tip of her nose, and even then she’s only permitted to speak if she’s doing a David Attenborough impression. You can go swimming, but only in puddles, you can go to the cinema, but only if you’re blindfolded, you can go to the gym, but only if it’s on the roof of a council estate tower block, but, remember, Tuesday is opposites day, and every second Wednesday gives priority to Chihuahuas. In summary, then, don’t cross the streams, don’t feed them after midnight, don’t you forget about me, don’t blame it on the good times blame it on the boogie, don’t cry for me Argentina, and don’t you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me. Don’t you.”

At core, though, if you read behind and between the lines of official communications, you’ll find this simple message: don’t be a dick. This is something that doesn’t appear to come naturally to us, in the same way as it does to people in South East Asian countries like Taiwan, who’ve pretty much got the virus licked. It’s a tragedy that we can’t bring ourselves to care more, because people are dying. Celebrities are dying, for Christ sake, this is serious! At the rate comedy double-acts were halved this year you’d have thought Thanos had snapped his fingers. Bobby Ball, Eddie Large, Barry Chuckle. All sadly gone. Perhaps the surviving members could form a triple act and call themselves ‘Little Chuckle Cannon’. I’ll just have to find a new nickname for my penis.

Regrettably, both Krankies have thus far survived.

And now, of course, we’ll be hoping that it’s all over by Christmas. Just like the Great War… You know, the one that lasted four years and was followed by the two-year-long Spanish Flu outbreak?

Happy Pandemukkah.

 

All Our Lives. Watching America.

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What has the US Presidential Election got to do with us here in the UK? Why should we care as much as we undoubtedly do? We seem better informed and more animated about the minutiae of our transatlantic cousins’ glitzy political battles than we do our own. Perhaps that glitziness has a lot to do with it. Our elections are quite drab in comparison. As Scottish comedian Joe Heenan so memorably put it: ‘You wouldn’t get this shite if the Americans did it the British way. Right now the President would be on a stage in a sports centre with a guy dressed as a squirrel standing behind him.’

In the US, politicians stroll out into vast arenas in the manner of WWE stars, with their own walk-on music booming unironically in their wake. One only needs to watch a highlight video of former PM Theresa May’s bizarre attempts to connect with the people of Great Britain through ‘dance’ to understand why we should never, ever, under any circumstances, abandon our reserved political discourse for the ratings-chasing, reality-TV-show grandstanding of the states. Whenever Theresa May – woman of the people – danced on camera she looked either like a drunk stork pretending to be a bear, or a shy Al Jolson trying his best to perform his act during an earthquake. Let’s stick to the drab, and let the Americans worry about the fab.

Donald Trump, of course, has turned the pomp and circumstance up to eleven. Even if the world had any choice in the matter, which it doesn’t thanks to Trump’s depressing ubiquity, it wouldn’t dare turn away from that fat car-crash in a suit for even a second: he’s got more plots than Stephen King, less shame than a back-street flasher in a face-mask, less scruples than Ted Bundy after Happy Hour, and more bullshit than a farmer’s field in spring-time. Some people out there have been watching too much television, and think they want a fictional character in charge of their country. But the qualities it’s easy to admire in an unpolished, rebellious, blue collar, tells-it-like-it-is character like Happy Gilmore, or an alpha-strongman like TV’s Tony Soprano, don’t necessarily make for a good president. Trump is a cartoon; a buffoon; a shark with legs; a great big bag of narcissistic contradictions; a circus ringmaster in Hell, who uses Twitter in place of a whip.

All of that, then, goes some way towards explaining why America has always been so grimly fascinating and strangely compelling to us, especially now, with yet another ‘celebrity’ in the hot-seat. But it doesn’t explain why we do – and why on earth we should – care so much. After all, Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden weren’t, aren’t and won’t be our presidents.

Perhaps it’s down to the Butterfly Effect. America is the heir to the British Empire’s dead hegemony. Its existence and actions have always affected us, and the world. But it’s definitely the case that how the US comports itself, and who it chooses as its figurehead, affects us now in a much more impactful, instant and targeted way than ever before, thanks to the unsleeping, unfiltered portal of the worldwide web. And what a wicked web we weave.

I remember from my youth a well-used refrain about America. It used to be said that whenever a societal trend, change or calamity took root across the pond, we should expect it to sweep our shores within six months or less. Fashions, pop-culture crazes, political skulduggery, crime-waves. We all watched the news with a sense of foreboding, wondering what would be expected of us in the seasons to come. We were powerless to prevent this tidal wave of transformation, even though we could see it coming. America was us, and we were America, bound by our shared history and language.

“Everyone in California is wearing assless chaps!” my grandmother shouted from her TV-chair one balmy summer evening*. My grandfather sighed and wandered into the kitchen to find a pair of scissors. “I’ll go get started on all my trousers,” he shouted back, before muttering to himself, “It’s going to be one cold ass winter.” But what could he do? America had spoken. *[that may or may not have actually happened]

I wonder how much of that misguided belief of ours was connected with how we felt about movies. There used to be a significant lag between a movie premiering in the states and it finally debuting here in the UK. About six months. While we waited we’d pine, speculate, get swept up in the hype and longing, before eventually – finally – getting a taste of the action.

Over the course of my lifetime the western world has become more dream-like, more cinematic, and more cravenly consumerist than it ever was; it therefore makes sense that back in the 80s and 90s we would readily conflate a six-month wait for a movie with the idea that six months after watching news reports from the US we’d be ushering in those same societal changes. American movies contained reflections of American life and thought and ideology, in which we, in turn, saw reflections of ourselves. And since all life was a movie, and we its stars, ipso facto movies and reality were interchangeable. The US electing an actor as its president went some way towards reinforcing that feeling.

Ultimately, though, we never imported all that much from America, besides the cosmetic. With the exception of the horror of Dunblane we never became a nation of school shooters. Our cities didn’t ring out with gun fire. We never abandoned our welfare state to private equity and insurance – at least not completely. In time we realised that as much as we admired and venerated and sought to emulate America, we would never be America – and that was okay. We didn’t want to be America. We didn’t need to be.

And then along came the internet, ushering in a new era of hyper-connectivity, and a new and immediate sense of round-the-clock globalism. The internet brings us together at the same time as it splinters us apart. We’re united in our disunity as never before. While the internet was initially a liberating and unifying force, it was soon weaponised by social media. Whatever power was displaced by the common man or woman having access to the world at their fingertips was soon clawed back by authoritarian governments like those of China and North Korea, or subtly redirected by shadowy organisations like Cambridge Analytica. Governments could interfere in the elections of other countries not by mobilising for war or sending spies on long-term undercover missions, but by employing a group of sun-shy tech experts to sit in a darkened room all day posing as zealots, or patriotic movers and shakers on Twitter and Facebook. Political rivals could sink an opponent not by setting a honey-trap, or paying a PI to rake through their bins looking for compromising letters and receipts, but by flooding the internet with memes of wildly fluctuating veracity, ranging from the sort-of-true-but-skewed to the risibly fantastical. The truth didn’t matter. Memes became missiles. And when you’re hit by one, the truth is a moot point.

The shadow Donald Trump casts across America falls over our land, too. His rallies and rantings and ravings don’t happen in a Stars-and-Stripes emblazoned vacuum. His opinions on race, his opposition to truth and reality, his economically-motivated scepticism on climate change and epidemiology, his aversion to culpability and compassion, have all seeped into and permeated our national discourse, and infected our cultural consciousness.

A great many of the memes we see spreading on-line – on Black Lives Matters, on the poor, on coronavirus, on the environment – carry Republican and pro-Trump stamps, and millions of Brits share them without knowing or caring that they’ve been infected by the political and ideological tussles of another country. A disturbing minority of Brits long for Trump, or someone more like him, to be our Prime Minister. Our politicians, too, have adopted the Teflon Don’s tactics of holding firm and denying objective reality just long enough for the news cycle to sweep past them onto something and someone else. Thanks to Trump’s leadership style of cult-leader cum CEO cum mad king, it’s harder than ever to hold people in power to account. We can see the effects of that even here in Scotland with the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier, a Westminster MP, who by all rights should’ve resigned after flouting coronavirus restrictions, the virtues of which she’d been busy extolling on behalf of her constituents. Ten, or even five, years ago she probably would have stood down immediately, but the lesson from America is clear: don’t listen to the media, don’t listen to the people. Tell them to go fuck themselves. Do what you like.

We care about the US Election, then, because it has consequences for us, even if we’re entirely powerless to control their direction. Like a meteor about to strike the earth. Hopefully when Joe Biden takes office a more measured ethos will radiate from the US, and spread some much needed calm across cyberspace and the world. We just have to hope that the fat, orange genie isn’t already too far out of the bottle.