Graffiti in all its glorious forms.

OK - so I've now got way too much time on my hands without the half hourly subscription to facebook - what do I do to fill my spare time?

One of my many hates is graffiti - and more specifically tagging.

In fact - lets just stop and think about this for a moment.

I can actually see some kind of twisted pleasure in vandalism. I mean - who hasn't smashed a bottle and got a cheap thrill from the glass breaking (just don't think about the consequences of some poor animal discovering the results of your moments guilty pleasure with its unclad feet you unfeeling bastard.....) but scrawling undecipherable scribbles on 'something' be it a public or private place? - well that really escapes me.

I mean - firstly the approach seems a bit wrong. The word graffiti kind of instills a bit of cool to the activity.

Let us re appropriate this phrase to what it really is. Graffiti now becomes: Scribbling.

I urge you to (at least mentally) replace every instance of the word graffiti that you see with the word scribble, or scribbling.

This immediately takes away 'the cool'.

So what does that leave us with?

The poor suckers that 'cooly' paint their 'tag' on any fence, building or other (substitute your own item here)  are really searching for some kind of approval from mummy. Where else have you seen that indecipherable scribble? Yes - you remember - Kindy - playschool. Basically under five year olds do it.

What's the problem cool guy?

Mummy not give you enough attention, crayons, or paper when you were a toddler and now you feel you have to show someone else to get some kind of reaction?

It isn't art you know.

Art is something that provokes reaction, most commonly in an emotional response - good or bad. What people see when you scribble on a lamp post is not really the same thing so don't kid yourself.

So - I volunteered for the local council team of graffiti clearing up guys - we don't have a name. No one knows who we are - so I guess we must be supermen (unless your name is Lois). The guy that co-ordinates the volunteers calls us 'Dads Army' as  most of the volunteers are retired or elderly blokes with spare time on their hands looking to see what they can do to piss off the younger generation.  Haha! Revenge is ours!

The council have virtually unlimited funds - that is to say, that if they need more money they only need put up your mum and dads rates. If you live in rented housing and don't pay rates don't think you'll get away with it there either Buster. You mum or dad will have to meet the rising cost of rentals because someone has to recoup their costs somewhere along the line. In short - we've got more paint than you. We've got more time than you. We work in the daylight and not by torchlight.  Although you think it's really cool to scribble on that bus stop, lamp post or road sign, ultimately we all pay for it to be cleaned - so why do it? You aren't Banksy and never will be.

Think about that for the rest of your life when you're working at McDonald's and progressing your career on the way up to a job in a bank or wherever and become what you're currently rallying against, and probably depise most - a respectable human being; most likely with a mortgage!

Then you will also learn to hate the scribblers and wonder if their mummies didn't pay them enough attention when they were five too.

Either way - I have news for you - You will be assimilated! It happens to everyone sooner or later.

TTFN

Facebook Urgh.....

Hi fans.

It's been a while since I last posted and indeed I seem to have not only broken but smashed into smithereens my new year resolution 2012 to post at least one item every month.

In truth I guess that the idea behind opening an account and posting this stuff on line was for its cathartic and mentally beneficial effects on me and not so much for your enjoyment. Anyone that knows me (and this posting is largely anonymous) may even worry about some of the things written here - it's not like I'm going to go out on a killing spree or anything dramatic like that, but I reveal something of a darker and more gripey area of my personality that I normally hide.

Hence the idea to be able to post things here and get them off my chest and stop them clouding my brain ( Hey - clouds in my brain....there's a catchy title if ever I heard one......)

So here's the latest instalment.

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately, and when I look back on my previous posts on here, they certainly do seem to act as a barometer for my thought processes.

My latest activity which I am really proud of is deactivating my Facebook account.

Facebook is so useful. You don't have to send loads of piccies as attachments to those significant others in your life and clog up their mail boxes. You can just dump them into facebook and they can be viewed at your friend and families leisure - a brilliant invention. You can keep up to date on the minutiae of your mates, and they can keep up to date with you. Except I don't think that's what is really happening. Mostly people want to put their own status on facebook and invite comments - they don't necessarily want to read about you. In fact - I'm pretty irritating and I reckon that most of my 'so called' friends on facebook have hidden my posts so they don't have to read them. But woe betide you if you aren't sympathetic to their personal troubles, or if you make some kind of negative or otherwise contentious comment on their status........

There are many downsides.

But possibly the worst think about facebook is that it's addictive - I found myself checking its status maybe every half hour, or even more - whenever I got a free moment at work - possibly adding up to 20 or more times per day along with the time I would spend before and after work checking statuses - adding (probably unwanted) comments to others status' and doing all the other stuff one does on facebook. This could include access on the network at work or via my mobile phone (NOT an iPhone - see earlier posts......) but really - for what? In the hope that one of my FB buddies would put something in their status that would enrich my life or prompt some kind of emotional or otherwise response? Are we all so numb that we have to view others lives and share everything that others are going through good and bad? Heaven forbid that we should meet 'down the pub' or phone one another and talk about anything without giving a 'heads up' on facebook first to gauge public responses.

In the end I realised that along with media sensationalism (accentuate all the BAD things that are happening in the world), reality TV in all its spectacular forms, and all the other stuff we have to deal with on a day to day basis, facebook was causing me a great deal of pain and suffering and now I have been free of its bonds for over a week and apart from one or two times where I have had a spare moment and thought about checking it I haven't even missed it.

Facebook actually makes it really difficult to delete your account and even when you go to deactivate your account they put up pictures of your on line friends and tell you that XX is really going to miss you - are you sure you want to deactivate your account? I shit you not! Try it with your own account - you don't have to go through with it but you'll see what I'm talking about.

So what have I done constructively with my time off facebook? Well - a fair bit actually. I also decided to free myself of the bonds of TV at the same time as going 'off line' and only actually watch what I schedule myself - TV is brilliant - even though there's nothing on I can manage to pass away a lazy evening just flicking between channels (much to the chagrin of my poor and long suffering darling wife) but think about ONLY watching those programmes you really enjoy and then either turning off the TV or watching a movie or something educational or even something from your selection of long recorded but never viewed TV programmes that you just couldn't miss.........
I've listened to a LOT of classical music because that's something that doesn't demand your attention - in other words it's something that can be heard whilst you are engaged in other activities.

I even visited my local library and checked out and read a couple of books in the evenings beside the fire (albeit with a nice glass of red - we are in winter - Southern Hemisphere you know dahling.....) so there is life after facebook. Don't be afraid!

I read a lot of other blogs before I had the courage to deactivate my facebook account, detailing others thoughts on the whys and wherefores. Now I'm starting to wonder if it's something I should have done a lot earlier, but as with all addictions, there's always a good reason why you shouldn't give something up.

NB  -  Before I sign off I should add that I've been really itching to reactivate my FB account and checkout who RIP'd the Bee Gees. Not that I think that's a terribly bad thing (the RIPing) as it shows respect (though also an addiction to mourning sickness - which you should really google if you don't know what I'm talking about) but in the last week some really significant people died - Alan Oakley (the designer of 'The Chopper' - a part of many 70s childhoods) and Eugene Polley (little known inventor of the first wireless TV remote control) and I'll bet they don't even get a mention in the populist listings.

TTFN