Feeling Grand In The Age Of Publicity April 5, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Human Nature, Life.Tags: Blog, Communication, Conversation, Facebook, Jade Goody, MSN, News, Publicity, Skype, The Dark Ages, The Enlightenment, The Renaissance, Twitter
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I passed a little personal landmark on Thursday with my blog passing 1000 views. It’s quite an overwhelming thought, realising that my ramblings and rants, photos and philosophising have attracted 1000 glances. It’s an unusual concept, quantifying those who you have spoken to, those who have taken the time to listen to you. If we did it in our everyday lives, it would be an interesting exercise. From the man who sells you the paper in the newsagents saying ”Here’s your change” to your closest friend pouring their heart out to you during a 2-hour coffee break, we engage in the widest miriad of conversations and confidances over a single day. Now, the capability for this communication is greater than ever thanks to email, MSN, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, comment posts on nearly every website you visit. The news agencies are crying out for our comments, our videos or photos of the latest breaking disasters. Everyone is talking. And more and more people want to listen.
In hundreds of years, who knows what the world will be like, but when the historians of that time look back on our current generation and scramble about for a moniker, like The Dark Ages, The Renaissance, The Enlightenment, they will look at the character of our era. They will see a fascination with celebrity. They will see the new class system whereby ones status is measured not in land ownership but in how recognisable your face is, how many magazine covers you grace, how many chatshows you appear on. They will see the love of sport and the valorisation of acts of sporting heroism over military strength. They will see the shrinking planet as travel has brought us ever closer to the centres of culture, the spots of beauty, to each other.
But perhaps most importantly, they will see the proliferation of forms of communication, of news outlets, of text messaging, of email, of social networking, of blogs. They will see the extraordinary wealth of knowledge which we find at our fingertips and the even more extraordinary desire to share it – not just general knowledge, but personal trivia, musings, secrets and wisdom. They will see the progression from the extraordinary privacy of diaries and a focus on homelife to where we are now: a race which loves to share our stories, to open up, to let people into our inner sancta. It’s a progression which perhaps reached its pinnacle – or perhaps nadir is the word – in the blinding coverage of Jade Goody’s declining health, her wedding, and her ultimate passing. This is a topic which will be analysed, revisited, reviled and revered. Suffice to say that the world was made most painfully aware that the doors into our lives have been blown off the hinges. And so, in the future, I suspect that our time will be judged by that fact. We live in the age of the people. We are the story. From great to small, our lives are public property. This will be called The Age Of Publicity.
April Fools And All That April 1, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Human Nature, Latest News.add a comment
I have to admit, the April Fool Skeptic in me had to do some serious Googling to confirm a few stories: This Conficker worm – never heard of it, and the BBC report had a picture of an actual can of worms, further raising my suspicions, but seems like it’s the real thing, burrowing away inside my machine right now for all I know. Meanwhile, up in that hub of all-year-round fools, St. James’ Park, the appointment of Alan Shearer as manager for the rest of the season just fell on the wrong day for it to be taken at face value. Is it all one big joke? Should they really have appointed Alan Sugar to fire some of their underperforming players? And hats off to the Irish Times for yet again managing to find an anagram for the words APRIL FOOL - FailProof is the name of the American company which the Irish government is supposedly in talks with to manufacture monitoring tags for ”high net worth” tax exiles. Actually, that one isn’t such a bad idea…
Anyway, all this April Fooling becomes a bit tedious, especially when EVERYONE is at it now. A plethora of football teams have claimed to be rebranding, notably Port Vale, who have a new logo remarkably similar to rivals Stoke. The Guardian announced it is to become a Twitter-only service in its ongoing arse-clenchingly pompous and overbearingly smug campaign against a modern form of interaction and networking which it has decided is the greatest social ill the world is currently facing – could they not just pick on migrants like the Express? Miss Universe spent a relaxing 5 days in Guantanamo Bay according to the Independent, BBC Radio 4 had some story about a doughnut-eating gorilla and the Telegraph announced that a new power source for Britain could come from the electricity generated by fish swimming in rivers – according to research from experts in the ”Université de Poisson d’Avril in Paris”. Well done whoever you are in the Telegraph who speaks French and knows their phrase for April Fool.
The thing about today is, of course, that you get suspicious of EVERY story. The Shearer one is a prime example. Apparently Djibril Cisse was arrested outside a lap-dancing bar yesterday – he’s a fool if ever there was one. I genuinely had my reservations about Botox being cited as a treatment for depression (still do, to be honest) until I saw it in two separate sources. Everywhere you look, you see the potential follow-up to the “Dual Carriageway Through Phoenix Park” hoax which RTE’s Mooney programme carried off so brilliantly last year.
April Fools can be funny, can raise a smile, but it wears a bit thin when, as I mentioned, everyone is doing it. And just for the sake of it. If there’s going to be an April Fool’s story, could you at least put some effort in? The Guardian offering is as pathetic as they come. The best practical jokes are those which the victim can look back on and admit to a certain degree of admiration at the planning, committment and execution – I once hid for over an hour in a wardrobe in order to scare a family member. Not exactly Ocean’s 11-esque planning, but the total focus on the goal made it worthwhile.
As for me, well, I’m not feeling all that well. I’ve retired to bed for the day. I will shortly be tested for rabies before being sent to a leper colony on Uranus where I will be the 1 millionth arrival to the planet and thus heralded as the Messiah by all the other sick and deformed inhabitants.
Gotcha. Now, if only Ireland could trick Italy into thinking we’re better than them at football…
Daylight Savings And Earth Hour March 28, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Human Nature, Ireland, Latest News.Tags: Ciaran Clarke, Clocks Go Forward, Daylight Savings, Earth Hour, Electricity, Environment, Esat, Grand Canal Dock, Green Living, Light Pollution, Spin 103
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For those of you who aren’t sure, yes, we lose an hour at 1am on Sunday. Sorry folks. Yes, I know, it’s a pain. I have an essay to complete and one less hour in which to complete it. At least you have a heads-up. I got a mildly panicky text from a friend of mine, Ciaran, three full weeks ago in which he expressed his shock over the fact that the clocks were to go forward that night. I toyed with the notion of letting him live his life an hour ahead of the rest of us for a few days before sense prevailed and I reassured him that it was not until the end of March. So, tonight’s the night, let us all moan about our sleep-deprived existences for the next week.
Another, more welcome, heads-up: Today sees the second annual Earth Hour taking place. Homes and businesses all across the world are turning their lights down or off, switching off the tv and computer and generally saving huge amounts on their electricity bills, in an effort to demonstrate the massive waste caused by negligient electricity use and the increasing effects of light pollution. It is a cause of constant disgust for me when, walking home at night, I pass shops and offices which are clearly empty for the night yet which leave lights on. There is an Esat office block down by Grand Canal Dock, near Spin 103, which ALWAYS has its entire lighting rig lit – they are one of many. It’s simply not good enough.
People may mock the whole green approach to daily living but there is a serious point here. I go around turning lights off in my house after my brother because they don’t need to be on, pure and simple. Not only is it bad for the environment but it’s a total waste of money. If this second reason is the one which people will react to, so be it, whatever it takes to get this message across. Some lazy and selfish individuals will yawn, stretch, flick on another light switch, leave the fridge open and say “Well, I’m not going to be around when the world falls apart anyway”. Well, you know what? At the rate we’re disposing of our natural resources, that planetary collapse is coming sooner than you think.
dum-Dum-DUM!
Scare-mongering over. One hour. That’s all. Just turn the fecking light off.
Click.
Looking Inside Oneself March 9, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Arts, College, Human Nature, Ireland, Latest News, Life.Tags: Aarhus, Audrey II, Black Market, BODIES...The Exhibition, Body Snatching, Burke and Hare, China, Danny Forde, DU Players, Dublin, Falun Dafa, Falun Gong, Grave Robbing, Human Rights, Jayne Stynes, Little Shop Of Horrors, Polymer, Premier Exhibitions, Seamus Heaney, Skid Row, Stone Age, The Ambassador, The Tollund Man
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Audrey II looming over Mum, Dad and me on the set of "Little Shop Of Horrors".
I’ve been quite conspicuous by my absence from this blog for a wee while. One of the main reasons was that I was directing “Little Shop Of Horrors” in DU Players which ran from February 17th to 21st. I had an absolute blast and it was a joy watching everything coming together and to life before my – very heavy and sleep-deprived – eyes. I had a wonderful co-director in the immensely talented Jayne Stynes and it was great to have someone to bounce ideas off and turn to for much-needed hugs and confectionary when things got a bit much! The crew were tireless, especially over the weekend before the show, in their efforts to create a bleak Skid Row and the little shop itself. The band, perched precariously on a scaffold 7 feet above the stage, were so talented and led by my good friend and fellow juice-drinker Danny Forde. The cast members themselves made me – and everyone else – laugh uncontrollably with their comic timing but they also were, to a man, brilliant in their singing and dancing too, deserving the full houses and standing ovations which came their way. Shout out to Aaron, Seán and Ruairí too for making that Mean Green Mother, Audrey II, rock out and chow down. So, if I’ve been away, it was for a good reason!
“Bodies, The Exhibition” – or “BODIES…The Exhibition”, as I believe the garbled syntax of the display runs - has been in Dublin’s Ambassador Theatre lately. A strange venue for a science exhibition, was my initial thought. Then I discovered the exact nature of the show. What on the posters about Dublin looked like very good clay likenesses of the stripped human form turned out to be actual preserved human remains. I was more than a little disturbed by this discovery, and the fact that they were being displayed in poses such as performing a bicycle kick or conducting an orchestra made it all-the-more macabre. The controversy surrounding this exhibition must surely be in some way behind the choice of venue – a smaller Dublin theatre and music venue rather than one of the museums.
I decided to do some more exploration and visited the BODIES website. I found a rather disturbing note in their FAQs. The FAQ reads: “Q: Where do the full body specimens come from? A: The full body specimens are persons who lived in China and died of natural causes. After the bodies were unclaimed at death, pursuant to Chinese law, they were ultimately delivered to a medical school for education and research. Where known, information about the identities, medical histories and causes of death is kept strictly confidential”. (http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html)
One has to ask about the morality in all this. These are unidentified bodies of people who may not have granted permission for their use in such an extraordinary way after death, let alone donated their bodies to science. Their relatives also have no idea that their loved ones are travelling the world in an sensationalised educational freak-show. How can one feel comfortable about the presentation of a corpse in a sporting pose when in fact they may never have played sport (Chinese residents are unlikely to have played American football), or as conducting an orchestra when they may have been fans of rap rather than classical? You may think that’s a flippant point, but it is really creating a fiction, a different life for strangers. It invades their previous existence and plonks them into a fishbowl with new props and surroundings, destroying their life-stories to tell a new, gaudy one. The claim that the bodies are “tastefully displayed” is sickening and hollow.
Furthermore, and more chillingly, there is a black market in the trade of corpses of executed, tortured or starved prisoners based in that country, with bodies fetching about $300 apiece. China’s human rights abuses are a matter of concern for the whole of humanity, yet we are blissfully unaware and uninformed about the provenance of these human statues. The practice of organ harvesting from the Falun Gong is another well-publicised, but much overlooked, offence and there are plenty of organs to be gazed at in this gruesome display. (For info and reports about this, visit http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/BodiesExhibits/ or Google: black market body trade China)
Whatever happened to these people before they died, there is something of Burke and Hare feel to all of this, harking back to the days of body-snatching and grave-robbing. Where is the respect in this? People who donate their bodies to science indicate this wish before they die, but I’m sure many of them would be horrified to think their stripped forms might be paraded about the capital cities of the world like this. What is more, the bodies in the Ambassador never even had the chance to indicate such a wish. They may not rest in a peaceful grave, being hauled about the planet as money-making exhibits.
It so happened that in college one of my courses was studying Séamus Heaney at the time, and his poems about the Stone Age bodies at Aarhus (such as “The Tollund Man”), which seemed more than appropriate. Heaney’s poems have a primitive feel to them, unashamed in their pagan and gruesome effect. But it made me think. There is a difference between the display of those Bodies in the Bog in a museum and the BODIES exhibition. The Aarhus displays are laid peacefully. Their histories are told, as much as is known of them. And there was scant chance of a family relative being about to consult about the wishes of the deceased regarding their destination after death.
There is a respect which is sorely missing in the BODIES display. To recreate the inside of the human body has been done in polymer before. This venture simply wishes to cash in on the sensationalism of using REAL human bodies, nothing more. If it claims to be merely educational, it should dispense with this immoral and disgusting selling point. The opening blurb on the website talks of the “amazing and complex machine” which is the human body. Machine eh? Something mechanical? To be taken apart, piece by piece, and ogled in doe-eyed wonder like the inside of a clock? The “machine” behind the display, Premier Exhibitions, calls on the consumer to “Peer Inside Yourself”. Perhaps they should peer inside themselves, think about exactly what they are doing, about where there money is coming from and about what a massive responsibility it is to take possession of a human body.
Friends Indeed February 12, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Human Nature, Life.Tags: BT, Friendship, Talk, Worry
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Last night, naming no names, a good friend proved their goodness once again. They say a friend in need is a friend indeed. I say that the friend indeed is the friend who’s there for you when you’re the one in need. And real friendship is being able to listen to you. Not tell you to shut up, to stop being ridiculous, to stop running yourself down, but be the ear into which you pour all those innermost terrors and anxieties and reacts to those specific issues rather than spouting platitudes and generalities. When the world gets overpowering, when the problems get too numerous, when the air you breathe becomes stifling with worry, it helps to let it all out. It helps even more if you have such a great friend as the one I could turn to last night. Don’t shut up. Don’t shut out the world. As a BT advert said, it’s good to talk.
Milestones January 29, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in College, Human Nature, Life, Personal Favourites.Tags: College, God, Life, Memories, Mum, Poem, Poetry, Smile
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Snow outside my house in Milltown.
I’ll be finishing college very shortly – this June, to be exact. I will have turned 24 by then too. Some people say “God, how great to be young and entering the “real” adult world beyond college”. And I say “Hmm, not so much great as a little bit frightening and sobering”. There is that balance between the freedom to do anything you want and the rudderless sense of drifting without a focus. Sometimes you feel life could do with less structure, and then you find yourself totally responsible. You think you’ll always be in college and suddenly you’re finished, your friends have moved away or are working and you can’t see them everyday. The things you took for granted are no longer a given. The ingrained sense of regularity is replaced by an overpowering realisation that you need to start leading your life, not following it.
Furthermore, as the end of college looms, you find yourself reminiscing and resolving: Reminiscing about times you had almost forgotten, resolving to make a bigger effort to see friends and family or to do something new and exciting. Memories are keepsakes to be stored away for this sort of moment in your life, when they are needed to remind you of where you came from and what may lie ahead.
As you accumulate more and more memories, you also realise that perhaps you should treasure those you are creating right now. Last night I got a text from my mum saying she was in my house dropping some furniture up. I called her asking her to stay, telling her I’d be home in thirty minutes. We spent an hour, walking about the house as she outlined the plans she had for it – as I noticed she had made my bed and washed the dishcloths. We sat by the fire, cups of tea in hand, and I felt very happy to be spending this thin slice of my life with my mum, who did much of the talking, filling me in on the last few weeks in her world, leaving me to wonder at the power of family.
If you think I’m being soppy, well, who cares? We all get old. We all die. Sometimes it is important to be reminded of that – not to make us worry about the future, but to make sure we drink plentifully from the overflowing cup of the present, not to make us cry, but to make sure that we smile.
What I’ve just said in the last four paragraphs, allow me to sum up in a five line poem. Have a happy life, wherever you are.
Mortal
Simple ice-cream cone
Warm dappled breezes
Sunlight milked from heaven
I am reminded that I am dying
But so pleasantly
Sunrise, Surfers Paradise, New South Wales, Australia. One of the perfect moments in my life.
An Irish-American Dream January 27, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Human Nature, Ireland, Personal Favourites, Rugby.Tags: America, British and Irish Lions, Broadway, Dublin, Edinburgh, Fast Food, Girvan Dempsey, Leinster, New York, Obesity, RDS, Rob Kearney, Robert Burck, Rugby, Shylock, The Congress, The Merchant Of Venice, The Naked Cowboy, The Statue Of Liberty, The White House, Time Square, USA
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I was at the Leinster match against Edinburgh on Sunday – a dour affair, 12-3 victory, blah blah blah but the fact is that the team are through to a quarter final against an opponent who won’t scare them – Harlequins – which is still two and a bit months away. There were some bright sparks, notably of course my schoolmate Rob Kearney who looks better and better with every game. His catching under the high ball has been exemplary, his kicking has improved immeasurably and his eye for an offensive running line is unmatched among his teammates right now. This Leinster Lion is soon to be a British and Irish Lion. Girvan Dempsey has been a great servant to Leinster and Ireland but it’s time to face facts: The future’s bright, the future’s Kearney.
The weather was pretty rotten in the RDS so I was well wrapped up and doing my best to contain body-heat when I was presented with the unwelcome prospect of someone donating an portion of their own body-heat to me. Yes, it’s that “2 Seats On The Aeroplane” question: An extaordinarily fat – not overweight, genuinely fat – man sat down next to me. And by next to me I mean he very nearly succeeded in sitting next to me on both my left and right sides.
Now, I’m able to tolerate many things, but being unable to sit properly in a chair which you have paid good money for on an unready-uncomfortable day is pretty tough to bear. There is very little one can do, however, short of emergency liposuction or a “Merchant Of Venice” job. Shylock could have drawn his entire pension from this guy. And this isn’t a case of me being size-ist – it’s the same as someone standing on your toes, or sneezing on you, in that they have caused you to feel discomfort. The only difference here is that a stumble of ones feet or a sudden sneeze are slightly less controllable than a bulging waistline. Common sense and genuine health concerns are being increasingly overlooked in Ireland, as witnessed by the increasing number of Irish teens who are, well, increasing. We only live once – don’t try living for two people.
A neat segue links the question of obesity to America, the so-called Home of Fast Food. And we had a very American visitor to the RDS for our half-time entertainment on Sunday: Robert Burck, the world-famous “Naked Cowboy”, is a busker in Time Square, whose act consists of him playing his guitar wearing only boots, tight shorts and a cowboy hat. A wet and windy January in Dublin isn’t the best place to ply that particular trade and his song was both brief and forgettable. And weren’t the cowboys to be found slightly further west than New York City? And surely they wore more clothes than Mr. Burck – cacti can sting, after all!
But nevertheless, the image of the Naked Cowboy is iconic. He was heartily cheered on and off the pitch and there was an awe-filled gusto to the way the man on the tannoy introduced our special guest “ALL THE WAY FROM NEW! YORK! CITY!!!” There is life in the New World yet. There remains a worldwide, and especially Irish, fascination with America and the holy grail of New York, the epicentre of that culture of hope and possibility. The White House, Congress etc. may all be in Washington but it is the New York skyline, the Statue Of Liberty, Time Square, the Subway, Broadway, these legendary landmarks to freedom, adventure and human flamboyance, which ignite the imagination.
America is dictating world culture to an unbelievable extent at the moment. The world’s political tides are pulled to and fro by the orbiting American satellite. And on the evidence of Sunday in the RDS, America is the still the hottest ticket in town, still the band we dream of seeing play live, still the celebrity we all want to shake hands with, still the true land of hope and glory. Heck, I’ve written plenty of posts about America myself over the last few months. Maybe it’s our Irish inferiority complex, our historical link to the states, the fact that we’re a little nation and they are our big brotherly neighbours across the ocean, who knows? But clearly, in hard times, we still look to America, to its icons such as the Naked Cowboy, to reaffirm our belief in human endurance and the impossibility of nothing.
