Media maniacs in charge.

How screwed is the planet when the Prez of the biggest 'superpower' spends all day tweeting insults about womens looks, and blatant lies about his 'success'? Presidential? The guy is a psychopathic nut job, liar, bully and narcissistic maniac. Really America? is this really the best you have to give us and yourselves? From superpower to international laughing stock. Imagine if it were Putin, Kim Yung Un, or some warlord in 'Gofuckitstan' we would all be saying the guy was ready for a 'cuckoos nest' and very tight straps.
Is this the end result of media-politics? Is Trump learning to play the fiddle as the planet sizzles? This could be the beginning of the homo sapien 'end game', as the 'civilized world' have overcome most immediate 'wants' we elect people because of their TV appearances and 'straight talk' ,we no longer care about 'truth' , 'fair play' or progress for all , we just see the world as one big reality show , and so we stumble toward more and more irrational decisions that will one day come back like a boomerang to knock us back to the horrific reality we would have created. 

Just saying.

Thoughts, or thinking about them.

I seem to have forgotten how to think,  am I alone in this? I wonder. What I mean is that it feels as if I never sit and think things through anymore. Situations and occurencies seem to just take me and toss me about on the waves of their whims, I just float and don’t struggle against it, I just wait to see where it lands me.

If you were to ask me how I feel I couldn’t realy answer, I don’t feel good and I don’t feel bad, I just feel ‘ok’ . There doesn’t seem to be any highs and lows anymore, just a feeling of acceptance of where I am in my life and the place I have been given. How would I describe it? No idea. I still get annoyed now and again, especially at injustice and the way politics ruins so many lives and always seems to get away with it. It’s just that I never seem able or willing to form a really in depth analasys of the situation, it’s like a sort of mental fatique. 

My opening sentence of ‘not being able to think anymore’ is of course exageration- one of my specialities - what I mean is I can’t seem to concentrate long enough on one subject so as to form an opinion which isn’t just based on ‘gut feeling’. Thoughts fly through my mind, pushing each other to the rear, so I never get the time to dwell on one particular thought for any measure of time. It’s also like that when I am reading or listening to things I really want to know. 

I think ,or try to think , a lot about authenticity - it’s what we comedians all want to be -authentic- but we rarely take time to investigate who we actually are, and what our authenticity is. Yet to be a good comedian, and I mean a cut above the rest,it is essential to find just that, ‘what makes me me’? Who am I and what is authentic about me, and how can I be true to that? Only this can bring a comedian to the root of his or her being. Most of us comedians can get away with doing material on what we think people might want to hear and then give it a personal touch, but that is just doing a sort of comedy ‘product placement’, it’s not authenticity. It’s this search to find the ‘me inside me’, that made me take the decision to get out of the theatres and back on to the small stages, hoping that this confrontation with the rougher side of my chosen genre will reveal to me part of what I need to know. 

Stand-up Comedy is the only ‘real interest’ I have outside of family life and messing around in the garden. Stand-up Comedy, and how it works, and how I can get it to work for me. It’s been my profession for 18 years and it’s given me a good income, loads of satisfaction and a ‘place in life’ , but I still don’t really ‘get’ what’s happening when I’m on stage, it’s sometimes like an out of body experience, sometimes when on stage it’s like I can see myself and what I’m doing.  Lately I don’t even think of preparing a set list before I go on stage, I’m enjoying the excitement of just going on and seeing what my brain tosses up for me to talk about. It seems like I’ve started a new journey, a journey to find my ‘inner voice’ (being a comedian I feel silly just writing that). 

I didn’t think it through, it just seems like something that I needed to do, I’ll keep you up to date with how it works out. As long as my ‘inner voice’ has a sense of humor we’ll be ok, I think.

Brexpat?

In the film 'Good Fellas' , one of the gangsters imitates a scene from the Godfather and says 'and when I try to get out, they pull me back in'. That's the feeling I have toward politics. You can try to ignore those who govern us, ignore their corruption, the obvious hypocrisy, their blatant misuse of public funds to enrich their friends in the private sector, but ignore as you may there will always be a moment when you are forced to face up to and take a stand on one or other moral question this system throws up. The only problem there is that once you start thinking about one problem it leads to another and another until you realize there is no 'one problem' but a system that is so intricately connected and interwoven the head spins when thinking about solutions. Shifting one of the building blocks of the 'system' we live in can lead to consequences far beyond the original idea of 'change' we had.
So it is with Brexit. Do I need to re-cap? David Cameron was (electorally) forced into the referendum to counter the threat of UKIP to his party, the (arrogant?) thought behind it being 'people will never endorse such idiocy'. This arrogance led to a poorly organized campaign on behalf of the 'remain' camp and underestimated the 'gut feeling' among voters who were and are tired of the political establishment. It's the same arrogance that Theresa May has put on display, calling a 'snap' election to increase her 'mandate' - she failed. Now there is a situation of political disarray in the UK with the Tories having to rely on the DUP, the political wing of Jurassic Park, and this could lead to a shift back to the politics and violence of yesteryear in Northern Ireland.
So the UK has in a year gone from being a sometimes quirky but stable member of the EU to a disorientated, stumbling bumbling idiot of a next door neighbour, and why? politics, and I mean the game of politics as in 'power', as opposed to politics as in 'the organisation of society for the good of the many'.
I'm not a supporter of the EU as it is organized now, it's too distant from the people of europe, there is corruption ,misuse of public funds (sound familiar) and a lack of transparency and democracy. But in an ever smaller world I enjoy being european, the ability to travel and settle where I like on this old continent, the thought of bad as it might be, it's kept europe at peace with each other for years and years. The EU needs to change, but wouldn't it be better to change from within ?
So now I ,as many Brits who have made Europe their home, have an uncertain future, all of a sudden our lives have been drawn into question, into a political argument that is not of our making, we are a 'problem' that has to be solved, whereas we thought we were just getting on with our lives.
Again the randomness of 'nationality' the 'luck of the draw' of where a person fell to earth and within which lines and boundaries he or she was born becomes the main divider. I didn't want to get involved in the 'Brexit' debate, every time a discussion was started 'I tried to get out, but they pulled me back in'.

Dream Job.

Another week another WTF? since the Brexit vote (just one year ago) it seems that world politics has been affected by a self destruct virus.
Theresa May is the new  victim of 'politics of the meltdown' meme spreading across the world. It's a good job the UK has such strict gun laws or last week conservatives wouldn't have just been metaphorically shooting themselves in the feet, there would have been a few head shots too.

 You would have thought that the Brexit negotiations would have been enough for any prime minister to handle, that those negotiations would need all the concentration and focus any one person can possess , but not Theresa, she thought a general election might be a good 'warm up' for the Brexit negotiations, she probably envisaged herself getting on the eurostar to Brussels with a group of Tory fans chanting 'easy easy' all the way there like misguided Arsenal fans usually start their european adventures.
So now she has no majority in Parliament and relies on 'The Flintstones' of the DUP to get her through to the next elections, she snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

So now we are all waiting for the circling Tory sharks to attack, but will they? Sharks like 'live' bait and Theresa is dead in the water. Her task has just become more difficult by about 1000% , and all because somebody whispered in her ear that she was 'unstoppable' 'strong' and 'stable'.... oh dear.

She now faces negotiations over an agreement on Brexit - which she didn't support- an agreement that will shape the face of economics in the UK for decennia to come, not backed by the whole of her own party, and seeing Labours Grizzly Adams- Corbyn in the ascendency. The peace agreement in Northern Ireland is put on a shaky -not stable- hold for the benefit of herself and her shaky-not stable government.
What are the odds of her getting a 'decent' agreement for the UK on Brexit? I'd say about 27/1 against.