Speaking of Which...

As All of America/The Entire Republican Party/Fox News Viewers/A Handful of Political Junkies eagerly await the pretend Republican debate(s) on Fox News next week, meanwhile, the actual debate of Republican candidates not named Trump, with an actual chance at the nomination, will take place in southern California this weekend as charisma-less son and brother of former presidents, JEB!, personal puppet-doll of the Kochs, Scott Walker, lunatic clown, Ted Cruz, pretty boy, Marco Rubio, and for some altogether inexplicable reason, failed businesswoman Carly Fiorina compete for the chance at being the billionaire Koch Brothers' chosen bitch in the coming Republican primaries.

Although the remaining eleven 'serious' candidates & Carly, may have a chance of being chosen for the historically most-often powerless VP spot (Darth Cheney, and to a lesser degree, Uncle Joe aside), really, most of the others have no chance of winning, and know that full well, but are running anyway, because...they have nothing the fuck to lose in so doing, and can hoover up oodles of cash in the name of an utterly futile campaign.  They could also have counted on oodles of attention from the media, were it not for one attention-crazed multiple-bankrupt property-developer entering the race...

Fiorina's presence puzzles me a little.  I can only assume, that either, a) the Kochs have her in mind for the VP slot, thinking that her possession of lady-parts somehow lessens Hillary's chances in the General Election, or that b) they think it's needful to string her utterly hopeless campaign along a little longer at least to counter the idea that the GOP is solely a party of rich white men.  Which to be true, it isn't.  It also includes a lot of people, who desperately would rather they were rich white men, and are more than happy to paper over any differences in order to gain even a junior seat at the big boy's table.

Regardless, keeping the Donald's joker-card in mind, almost certainly the nominee will be one of these four assholes: JEB!, fascist fuck Scott Walker, the always entertaining idiot Ted Cruz, or, less likely by the day, 'I'm so Young and Pretty; Isn't Hillary an old Hag' Marco Rubio.  The rest of the crowd is just so much entertainment-value, funded not just by the Brothers Koch, but by the rest of the billionaire-establishment that made Citizens United possible (H/T Chief Justice John Roberts, H/T as always Harriet Miers).

Of course, the Koch-sucking show will all take place behind closed doors (please let someone have sneaked in a camera, please !) as the top candidates get down on their knees and promise various ways in which they, if president, will personally advance the Kochs' agenda of maximally increasing their own personal wealth and power, at the expense of any other single consideration of humanity.

But don't worry, proles, though you are, and long have been, completely shut out of decision-making in your own so-called democracy, at least you'll get to laugh at the pretend candidates in the 'debates' on Fox.

What you won't get, which our more wise historical overlords knew the value of of, was the chance at public dunkings, and throwing rotten fruit.

Always...Priorities

Around the world, children are starving, children are dying of preventable diseases.  Children are being forced into child-labour, into slavery, even being forced to fight as soldiers.

Meanwhile, in the west, a certain toddler from an ever-so privileged family goes on an outing with his parents...and it's front-page fucking news (in mainstream publications no less).

Look at the little boy rolling down a hill.  Marvel in wonder as he kicks a ball !  See him running with his little toy-car in his chubby little fists...  But it's newsworthy, because one day, if our species hasn't completely destroyed itself before then, the adult this child may one day become could get to wear fancy-dress and pretend-rule over the people of a portion of a couple of small islands in the North Sea.

I will give the Telegraph & Times credit for one thing though: Not being the Daily Mail.  Because they apparently felt this particular combination to be appropriate:

There's a certain .gif out there on the 'ole Internetz that I could post here, that to put it mildly, starts with someone banging their head against a desk.  I'm going to refrain...this time.

And This Is What We've Come To

The BBC will make the unemployed and low-paid workers compete against each other for a cash prize in a controversial Hunger Games-type show to find “Britain’s Hardest Grafter”.

Only the UK’s lowest-paid workers will be invited to compete to “show their worth” in the reality show, capitalising on the trend for “poverty porn” established by the Channel 4 series, Benefits Street.

Applications for Britain’s Hardest Grafter, which will be screened on BBC2, are limited to those currently earning less than £15,500 per year.

The BBC is seeking 25 British workers, a mix of the unemployed, the under-employed and those earning the minimum wage, who will be given the opportunity to “prove themselves” through a series of challenges. A cash prize is on offer for the winner.

A representative of the production company Twenty Twenty told the website Graduate Fog: “In each episode, people will be put to the test in a series of challenges and tasks.

“At the end of each episode, those who have produced the least will be eliminated and by the end of the process, just one worker will remain. The winner will receive in the region of £15,000 which is a year’s living wage (outside of London).”

Satire just can't keep up with real life anymore.  I mean, surely this is a hoax ?  The BBC ?  Not Sky, not Channel 4, not some trashy cable-outfit, but the B. B. C. ?  They put out some shit certainly, but new low doesn't begin to describe it.

I suppose The Hunger Games is the obvious go-to reference for the Indy -- More current, more hip.  But The Running Man is what comes to mind for me, and dated as it is, it's arguably a closer match.  Here's direct extracts from Wikipedia, describing that film.

The film, set in a dystopian America between 2017 and 2019, is about a television show called The Running Man, where convicted criminal "runners" must escape death at the hands of professional killers.

2017, huh.  Two year away now.

Plot [edit]

In 2017, after a worldwide economic collapse, American society has become a totalitarian police state, censoring all cultural activity. The government pacifies the populace by broadcasting game shows where convicted criminals fight for their lives, including the gladiator-style The Running Man, hosted by the ruthless Damon Killian, where "runners" attempt to evade "stalkers" and near-certain death for a chance to be pardoned.

Pacifying the population with reality-teevee after economic collapse.  That doesn't sound at all familiar.  What was once dystopian fantasy is now our actual day-to-day reality.  And we just shrug, get on with our lives, trying not to get noticed, not to speak out, and accept it.

Eurovision

It is appropriate in a way I suppose that the Eurovision 2015 Finals should have featured performances, over eighty percent of which were sung entirely in English, with many of those performers, including the UK entry, affecting American accents in the process.  What a perfect symbol for the increasingly corporatised monoculture sweeping our planet in what may well be man's last days.

Now, this is more like it.  Montenegro wuz robbed.

Super Bowl XLIX

This coming Sunday, half of North America will celebrate the cultural phenomenon known as the Super Bowl.  In which, several hours will be expended in observing the playing of a game officially sixty minutes long.  A glorious modern-day bloodsport going by the name of 'football', involving as it does, the movement of a non-ball-shaped object more closely resembling a pointy egg up and down the field by hand.  A game in which massive steroidal armoured men will intersperse periods of incredible tedium standing about doing nothing with slamming into one another at great velocity, and competing to see who can give the other the greatest muscular and spinal injury, and quite possibly brain damage.

There will be a lengthy halftime show involving various overpaid A-list MOR artists, and there will be lots and lots and lots of commercial advertising.  People will watch the advertising...voluntarily.  They have been waiting for it in eager anticipation and speculation.  For many, it is more exciting than the game itself (cough).  There will be much consumption of beer and nachos.  A few audience-members will no doubt accidentally shoot one another, this being America.  And at the end of the day, after all the cheerleading and fireworks, someone will win the actual game, such as it is.  Will it be the New England Patriots, most recently infamous for the terrible sordid horrible no-good affair of 'Deflategate' (gasp), or will it be the Seattle Seahawks, with their oh-so-cleverly named '12th Man' supporters and their penchant for attempting to destroy one another's eardrums and inflict permanent loss of hearing ?

Anyway...