Brainwashing

I never thought of Milton & Bradley as being an evil cog in the capitalist machine but now I'd like to establish  a wild conspiracy theory. Everyone knows about Monopoly and how it encourages us to be money-hungry landlords determined to wipe out competition. It's kind of obvious but there are some far more subtle ways they skew childhood development.

Hungry Hungry Hippos - encourages rabid consumerism and greed.
Snakes & Ladders - encourages a desire to climb the corporate ladder.
Operation - encourages a desire to get a fancy job whilst making them fearful of making mistakes.

The original hipster

Somewhere in New York there is a guy who is responsible for every stupid hipster trend. He grows a stupid  beard and other NY hipsters follow. Then some guy takes a photo on their iPhone with the ironic old school handset attached and before you know it half of Surry Hills looks like Ned Kelly. He is responsible for sleeve tattoos. He brought wide rimmed glasses to wankers with perfect vision. He made hipsters everyone roll up their tight pants and wear leather shoes without socks. When I see that I don't think it looks hip - I just think these people are going to have terrible foot odour.

The obvious answer is to capture the original hipster and lock him up so he can't start any more stupid trends. Ideally we would all then just wear shiny jumpsuits like in most futuristic movies. That way we could forget about fashion and get on with our lives. Alternatively we could just be like cartoon characters and wear the same thing everyday. You could have a blue Betty Rubble dress or the blue pants, white shirt ensemble favoured by the likes of Homer Simpson and George Jetson. I don't know about Yogi Bear's outfit - the tie is a classy touch but it's probably good to have pants.

Reviews

One of the best bits about buying stuff on the Internet is reading the reviews and seeing whether other people thought the product was crap. Today I was looking at a bike light and I saw the most awesome review ever. It simply said "so bright possums fell out of trees". I bought it.

Third World Dogs

I saw someone carrying their little white fluff ball of a dog today. Perhaps it was too fat and lazy to make it around the block or perhaps carrying a dog around in an oversized handbag was just a fashion statement for its owner. I felt sorry for the thing. I don't think it gets to chase bikes, postmen or other dogs. It certainly doesn't get to roam around with a pack of other dogs. It probably just yelps all day waiting for the lady with the handbag to return and refill the bowl with gourmet dog food.


Third world dogs may often be scrawny and diseased but at least they get to do dog things. They get to hang  out with their mates. They get to sniff around for scraps of food, sniff other dogs' bums or come together for a spot of copulation with their intact downstairs doggy bits. 


They don't have weird masters who follow them around picking up their faeces. They don't get to ride around in handbags or get dressed up in cute outfits. I really don't think they are in to that though. 

Outsourced

I've been thinking of putting together an art exhibition for ages. Initially I was going to do one called 'any idiot could have done that' because I believe that is the most common response to modern art. It was going to be intentionally wanky and self-indulgent. It was actually going to take some effort though...

Now however I think I have come come up with a concept that would be more interesting, far easier and wouldn't just be about me taking the piss out of modern art. The idea is to have an exhibition called 'Outsourced'. It would involve me coming up with some stupid ideas, getting random people from around the world to execute them very cheaply and asking a ridiculous amount for the finished product.

Taking the piss out of modern capitalism is way more interesting.

Choose your own adventure

Choose your own adventure books used to be way cool. Just imagine though if you could be the central character in a real life choose your own adventure. I think that's how I should do my next holiday.

The first step would be to get someone rich who has a love of choose your own adventure books to finance the whole thing. I would write the opening few pages and then they would get the choice of sending me to  Spain or Dubbo.

Should I go in to the dodgy looking bar down the dark alley? It wouldn't be up to me. It would be up to the person choosing my adventure. Should I ride a camel or should I go attempt to fire twirl with the hippie people on the beach? I wouldn't have to make any of those decisions. My choose your own adventure reader would do it for me.

I imagine a choose your own adventure holiday would force you to do interesting things because no one wants to read about you sitting around the hotel pool and drinking lots of cocktails.

look at me

I think I know where newspapers are going wrong. They are still trying to sell their readers news.

Twitter and Facebook are so successful simply for the "look at me" factor. Everyone wants to be heard, praised, befriended and followed. I never liked Twitter though because it posed the wrong question - what are you doing right now? The answer is always going to be typing crap on a phone and trying to big note yourself. I never really liked the idea of Facebook for a similar reason. Someone I barely know cooked an omelette. Woopty doo.


I can see myself getting addicted to a site where the question is "what do you think?". That's what news sites should really offer - a soap box, a boxing ring, an audience for the silent majority who have only ever been silent because no one would really listen. The news is just a way to start the fight. The fight is where the money is at.