Cleaning The Meme Off Your Shoe

Prior to subscribing to Facebook, I had never heard the word “meme”. After I leave it, I’m rather hoping that I never hear it again.

I am not resistant to ideas – nor to clever expressions. I look to the history of literature for wit and witticisms. However, I am afraid when I am dealing with this giant of the social media world, that I am getting only a portion of what I might. Half-witticisms, if you will, from the keyboards of half-wits. Vast concepts trimmed to the tastes of the half-vast.

Most items are reasonably harmless in themselves – cats, dogs, and otters and the occasional horse doing funny things. I like the Liz Climo cartoons -as well as a number of other small, harmless drawings. I can stand sunrises and pictures of the sea. I always like airplane pictures.

But some memes are not witty, nor are they pleasant, useful, or fair. If they are attached to politics or religion they are frequently picked up by the least thoughtful of the community and plastered about with abandon. Would that they could be abandoned long before they actually hit the screen.

In today’s political climate, I also wonder if the clever meme has been invented and inserted onto the platform by the disinformation teams from each party – thence to be repeated by the parrots of the net. I don’t value being preached to or railed at by friends on the behalf of strangers.

The answer? Well, that may be mild, or drastic. I’ll experiment with July’s crop of scolding and see which option seems most appealing. I would regret losing the connectivity of some parts of the social media scene, but I would regret losing my happiness and temper even more.

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Atttention To Details

It’s attention to details that makes the difference between success and disaster.

a. Did you remember to put the pin back in the hand grenade before you put it in your handbag? We’ll see in four seconds.

b. Spelling. ” Public  Exposure ” is good advertising. Leave out one letter and you’re in the Magistrate’s Court in the morning.

c. Punctuation. Benny Hill used to get a laugh out of a sign that put a space between the “e” and the “r” in “therapist”. That was a long time and a lot of Benny ago. If a successor tried it now they would be crucified on social media and the networks.

d. You cannot leave film out of your camera anymore because you don’t use it. You can, however, leave a memory card out…and if you have been incautious enough to disable the warning klaxon and freeze mechanism, your digital camera will take an entire vacation on one internal frame.

The makers know what you’re like and have made the safety mechanism to prevent you from self-harm. If you are clever you circumvent it and harm yourself.

e. Tom Cruise once spoke a line in a movie that told us to ” Show me the money “. He might be an idiot, but thankfully just a small one…and the advice is still good. When the cryptocurrency crap hits your screen, have them show you the money – in government cash – in your hand, and then close your fist tight.

This will never happen, because it is crypto and if you try to see it, it is Schroedingers Cash…

f. Popular Culture is a good phrase – it can be made to cover everything, like tomato sauce. Unpopular Culture is harder to sell., involving work and thinking. Popular Un-culture is similar to the first category and may, indeed, be indistinguishable from it. Unpopular Un-culture is basically free-to-air reality television in monochrome.

Think of a closed-circuit monitor in the hallway of a Russian tower-block apartment and you’ll get the idea. You could watch it but no-one ever does.

Yamahaaaa! – The Bidet You’ll Never Forget

A friend recently praised bidets. Gave them the thumbs up. I’ve stopped laughing at this now, as I am weak and my sides ache.

I must say at this juncture that the posting was in support of cleaner and more eco-friendly sewage and all the people who commented were in favour of it. So we should be, because when it all goes to shit, none of us want to be the one standing there with the rubber gloves.

And the bidet is apparently a good answer to the problem – or so I am told by people who are prepared to stand for that sort of thing. Or perhaps that should be sit…In any case they take their corporate responsibilities seriously and are trying to cut down the paperwork at the orifice.

Oh Dear God, stop me before I keel over…

I have little experience with them – bidets I mean. I have avoided French toilets by not going to France very often, and the only occasion that saw me sitting at a fundament fountain ( Agg, Agg, Erk…) was in Japan. I am led to believe the control panel by the side of the hoo hoo was to make soothing sounds but I just reckon they were all frustrated Zero pilots there and liked the idea of a cockpit when they put their co….Oh, this is just going to be disaster if I keep typing….

And before you ask, the answer is ” No “. No, I did not press any of the buttons. Not while I was going to be sitting in the ejection seat, anyway. I had a Sears and Roebuck catalogue and I figured it was better to go with what I knew than venture into uncharted waters. I’m prepared to risk my neck, but I don’t keep my neck down there…

I Apologise To All Whom the Guild Has Failed To Offend

It has been a busy season and some stations on the social railway have remained necessarily unattended. People have had to embarrass or insult themselves in the absence of trained staff members. The mental porters have not be available to help with the psychological baggage and passengers have had to lump it themselves.

With such a busy world – and so many people wanting to be angry and offended – the job of the Backstabbers Guild of Australia might be thought to be idyllic. A victim at every turn – treachery by the carton – coups to be struck all day. This is the case, of course, but we in the BGA  have to plead the limits of inhumanity. We can do only so much to worsen your lives. You really must learn to make yourselves miserable when we are not available.

Let us take simple case of a person – say an ordinary man or woman who is a pillar of the community – and ask whether we really need to exercise the full fury of the Guild on them – with attendant expenses and time needed. Would it not be better in 58.3% of cases to enable them to make fools of themselves, and save our efforts for the exceptional? I think it would be.

To this end we will be sending out BGA Paks to a wide range of households in Australia this coming winter. Each Pak will contain banana peels, metal caltrops spikes, mercaptan oil in breakable containers, and a handy guide to public embarrassment that will enable the recipients to produce their own regrettable incidents. As an added incentive to use the kits the Guild will include three free Golden Tickets per 1000 kits that entitle the lucky winners to nominate someone to be publicly humiliated, with the full compendium of Guild fiendishness.

It looks like a good winter.

Nearly July, And I Am Going To Go Dry

Oh, I’m not going to stop drinking. Good Lord, don’t jump to ridiculous conclusions…No need for crazy talk.

I’m going to conduct the experiment on Facebook during July of not removing anything. No hiding ads or shares that people put up. No taking down rants and political propaganda.  No snoozing or unfollowing people. No unfriending. No untoward reactions to anything.*

It will be a strain. I will be forced to see, but pass by, the worst of the drivel that appears on screen. I will not post corrections of typos or humorous suggestions. I will not try to push people over the edge of madness.  The people I know teeter there much without any help from me.

I shall practice Will Roger’s advice about not passing up a chance to shut up – and I will see if I feel better or worse at the end of the month. I will either have been destroyed by the flood of folly or find myself completely unaffected by it. I can’t say right now which prospect is most appealing.

*  I may have filed one person away for 30 days, but that is to prevent homicide.

The Horrid Joy Of Kindness

Have you ever been horribly kind? It is one of the most delicious pleasures that a treacherous person can enjoy.

We don’t mean kindness in the ordinary sense – holding a door open for a person struggling with parcels or speaking to the neglected at a party. These are all very well, but you can rarely twist them to your own ends -they are kindness wasted, as it were.

No, really treacherous kindness can be practiced only after studying your victim and the general circumstances closely. You need to know when to help to do the maximum damage.

The prime example of this was in Huysmann’s novel ” Au Rebours ” where his protagonist pays for a poor gutter-boy in Paris to be given good food and clothes and to be treated to the affections of expensive ladies for three months – and then to be turned out of doors penniless thereafter. His benefactor then contemplates the ruin of the boy’s life – spoiled for any pleasures save those that cannot be had, and doomed to a life of crime to try to obtain them again.

I do not suggest that you ruin anyone, least of all with ladies, but do give some thought to encouraging the weak to overexert themselves and the shy to obtrude where they are bound to receive contempt. Do it with a polite smile.

If you are compelled to be kind and it cannot be avoided, be kind to those more fortunate than yourself. Do it with a modest ostentation that cannot fail to be observed and resented. Offer charity to those who take pains to show that they never need it, and offer it when others can see.

Note: If you do hold the door for  the person with the parcels, check and see whether the return spring on it will be fast enough to catch their heel before they get over the threshold. Remember to say ” Whoops A Daisy “.

Putting WordPressure On The Guilty

None of us is a social justice warror because none of us actually do anything to acheive it. No wonder – we have no idea what the phrase means. I’ve looked for a definition that doesn’t press someone’s ambit claim for money or emotional hand wringing, or money, or …well…money.

It ain’t there. A lot of the socially bellicose are either driving or being driven by the desire for someone else’s money. They don’t have it, they want it, and they are going to find any means they can to get it – save work.

It’s difficult for them, no doubt, as the people who have the money want to hold onto it. Oh, they’ll spend it, but they want value for money – mobs surging and schoolchildren chanting is hardly value under any reckoning. Mobs digging ditches or schoolchildren actually learning might do it, but this is not what the social justicians generally offer. But there is hope – WordPress is available to press their point.

What they need to do is find someone who they wish to disturb. The victim need not be bad, mad, sad, or anything else – all they have to do is be still long enough to fix some sort of guilt to them. Then a flood of outrage on WordPress and the other social media platforms to cause them to either give up and send money or to explode in rage so that they can be sued. Lawsuits are expensive – especially the ones tailored by bespoke lawyers – and the average victim can be frightened into giving up before the prospect of court arises.

Remember – whatever anyone says, demand Ju$tice – preferably in small, unmarked bills.