Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid, But Then Again He's Dead.

It is the winter of 2012. It is a grim time. Already a chill is coming over the land, a numb, biting cold which will provide a harsh challenge for survival among the poor, old and unfortunate. Turning to the television will provide no comfort, as you will continue to be greeted by a parade of newscasters with grim predictions for our financial future, individuals like Vincent Browne, his face a crude Play Doh sculpture of hopelessness and despair, wagging his finger and telling you that the drudgery of your life shows no signs of lightening up. Also, apparently the world is ending and we’re all going to die? Something to do with Mayans? To be honest it doesn’t seem so bad when the alternative is Vincent Browne.

Gaze into the face of fear.

Yes, you may have heard it mentioned one or two times over the past year, but the old Planet Earth is on its very last legs and unlike the numerous other occasions Armageddon has been predicted to occur throughout history which turned out to be complete gibbering nonsense, this time it is very definitely certainly possibly true.  Seeing as how there is only a month and a bit left in the year, time is running out, so you had better start racing through those bucket lists as fast as you can. A surprising number of the students I’ve taught this year have mentioned this and they don’t seem very reassured by my typical response of “no, of course the world isn’t going to end, get back to work.” It’s like they’ve all collectively decided that the 2012 End of World predictions are the truth and since the decisions of teenagers always turn out to be correct, I am now just the tiniest bit worried.

I tried to look into my impending doom some more but it has been a difficult process. I perused the television for some time but the only thing I could find related to the subject was this advert from the cheery sexists/shit deodorant peddlers at Lynx, in which beautiful women attempt to escape the apocalypse by marching resignedly into the sinister sex trade aboard a Love Boat built by a lone man with no obvious carpentry credentials:

 

Getting information off of the Internet was as much of a struggle as you might expect, with a wide variety of badly-made Youtube videos, forum arguments, attention-seeking blog posts (...) and “expert” journals. The effort of wading through this e-sludge had a similar effect as listening to the noise of a washing machine that’s been switched on with a cage full of budgies inside. I then attempted to find some books on the subject in the library but then I remembered that I don’t have a library card anymore and books are for old, useless people.

Eventually however I was able to cobble together the indisputable facts. It seems that it was originally predicted that back in 2003, a rogue planet called Nibiru would crash into our own planet and destroy it. When that didn't happen (as far as I can remember) it was decided that this was mere margin of error and the real end was coming in 2012. Planet Nibiru, also known by the easier to spell and cooler sounding Planet X, is supposed to be coming on the 21st December 2012, just in time to ruin Christmas for everybody. The whole thing sounds very terrifying and plausible. Oh wait, no it doesn't.

It sounds like bollocks and if you believe it you should be placed on a special list and prevented from ever voting, reproducing or speaking too loudly ever again. The Mayan aspect comes in because the Mayans had a very specific hard-on for calendars and one of the many calendars they made happened to end this year. Of course, every calendar ever made ends at some point but this seems to qualify as conclusive evidence. Furthermore, Planet X does not exist and even if it did, it would have been visible to the naked eye for quite some time now...which it isn't.

To sum up, the world is not going to end, so shut up and go away.

Follow this link a good video explaining why the world isn’t going to end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hzF3vkmY28&feature=plcp

Follow this link for a picture of an elephant wearing a hat: http://store.circusworldmuseum.com/images/CWi-657-1.jpg

 

 

Stupid Women Love Marilyn Monroe

This goes out to all the stupid women out there.

Now I want to stress right from the off that this isn’t some sort of woman-hating thing. Really it’s wrong to think of stupidity in gendered terms, you usually see the same traits in both waterhead men and braindead women; self-centredness, pride in ignorance, liking the Black Eyed Peas, etc. There is however, one thing that generally speaking, is seen in stupid women much more than in their male counterparts. The half-baked love of Marilyn Monroe.

Without watching or even being able to name any of her films, many young women like to associate themselves with Marilyn Monroe, because, you know, she’s famous and has a purrdy face and stuff. Monroe is right up there with Che Guevara  in terms of being an icon that people latch themselves onto in spite of knowing little to nothing about. Many seem to know little more about them than what their faces look like, which they see plastered all over shitty merchandise and love so much they decide to plaster all over their bodies in the form of shitty tattoos, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of ignorance. And shit. And plaster.

Now look. I don’t have a problem with Monroe herself. Marilyn Monroe was reasonably talented, not one of the all-time-greats but not terrible either. She had a definite screen-presence, something that many modern actors are sorely lacking, she could do comedy and roles like Cherie, an untalented but ambitious singer in Bus Stop show that she was more adept at ‘serious’ roles than one might think at first. As is fairly common knowledge these days, she was a pretty tragic individual marred by mental illness, physical and sexual violence throughout her life. This is not the Marilyn Monroe that is worshipped in Twitter and Facebook posts across the webland. That Monroe is a much more one-dimensional figure, personified by that one fucking quote. You know the one.

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”                               

 -Marilyn Monroe and Dickwits everywhere

This is horseshit for several reasons. First of all, it is an excuse to never try to improve, to become emotionally mature and at least try to work past faults (and they are faults) like selfishness and impatience, which we all share. Secondly, it suggests that in a relationship between Person A and Person B, Person A can behave as poorly as they like, all the time and the inevitable conflict that will ensue is all Person B’s fault. Shut it Person A, you are like Batista subplots in Dexter, you are terrible and boring and nobody cares about you. Thirdly...let’s be frank here. The best of Marilyn Monroe and the best of you, in all likelihood, do not compare. Ain’t no JFK gonna be doing the horizontal tango with you, because you are the worst. Also, he’s dead.

Marilyn Monroe

You

 

 

Ultimately Marilyn Monroe was just a fairly good actress with a lot of personal troubles. She did not, as far as my extensive research* showed, cure TB, sign any peace treaties or stop a burning bus full of chinchillas from driving off a cliff. If you want an old-timey glamorous Hollywood actress to worship, how about Hedy Lamarr, who helped to invent a form of radio frequency used to this day in wi-fi and cordless phones? Even being interested in Monroe wouldn’t be that bad, as long as you go deeper than asinine quotes and that one picture of her standing over a windy grate. Or maybe you could stop idolising famous people altogether, you fecking twit.

* not very extensive.