Every year I scribble a few random thoughts on the events of the previous twelve months. I always try and dig deep into the pit of human absurdity in an effort to be amusing. Every year the dig becomes little easier. This year I feel like there’s no need to dig at all. Years from now if people want a good laugh they will simply point at the number 2018 on a calendar and descend into a fit of hysterics. Assuming of course, that years from now there still are human beings.
The year kicked off with controversy when YouTuber Logan Paul, a man with a hairstyle that combines Farrah Fawcett’s perm with a Bobby Charlton comb-over, had a bloody good laugh over a suicide victim. Logan is the type of person that is so ridiculously entitled they believe that all of humanity, no matter how great their suffering, merely exists to provide them with likes on social media. Logan offered a heartfelt apology which seemed about as sincere as Jeremy Clarkson saying sorry for doing 40 in a 30 zone. Logan’s career continues, the guy in the forest continues to be dead.
I finally learnt which one was Ant & which one was Dec after TV presenter Ant McPartlin was charged with drink driving. This set into motion the obligatory series of events which now follows a celebrity fall from grace. The headlines, the stint in rehab, the endless tabloid scrum, the descent into Shakespearean tragedy. He must’ve wished it was the seventies – the police would have just asked him for an autograph and told him to be a bit more careful driving home.
There was a summit held between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump which come across as the equivalent of two dogs meeting in a park and sniffing each other’s anuses. Nothing seems to have come of this other than both men believing themselves to be the world’s greatest diplomats after managing to sit across a dining table from each other for ten minutes whilst they had some pictures taken. Donald Trump left North Korea believing it had gone well, much like the time Gary Glitter left PC World feeling relieved that his computer was going to be fixed.
Brexit was downgraded from ‘great opportunity’ to ‘chance to relive the Blitz spirit’. The new argument from Brexiteers was that the impending food, water, medicines and fuel shortages would bring about a sense of national unity as we all gathered round the piano to enjoy an old-fashioned cockney knees up in the face of adversity. They may do well to reflect that things have changed a bit since World War II and we now live in country in which the second biggest airport is brought to a standstill by a toy plane and people regularly fight over wide screen TVs in Asda.
Speaking of Brexit, that continued to be the gift that keeps on giving. Imagine if we could go back and have never had a referendum. Imagine a world in which you never have to hear the word Brexit over and over and over again. After two years of chaos the only conclusion that’s been arrived at is the ‘Brexit means Brexit!’. Unfortunately because no one knows what Brexit actually means the phrase has become a sort of political Möbius strip – endlessly folding back on itself for infinity. We could decide it’s a bad mistake and simply not bother, a bit like on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire when the contestant asks the audience but then decides to go with their own answer after realising that that audience might be ‘a bit thick.’
Still, blue passports eh.
Over the pond America gave Britain a run for its money in the stupidity stakes. As the year ends the ‘World’s Greatest Businessman’ ™ demonstrated his business skills by shutting down his own government after it refused to pay for a wall (or ’steel slats’) that Mexico was supposed to pay for. If he was on The Apprentice surely he would fire himself.
The world became increasingly complex as we all divide ourselves into ever decreasing circles separated by a labyrinth of confusing terminology. I discovered I was ‘Cisgendered’, though I had to look it up and I’m still not entirely sure what it means. It’s a bloomin’ nightmare trying to keep up with just the language – TERFs, gender neutral, woke, alt right, cultural appropriation, Incels, mansplaining, agency, virtue signalling, etc – the lexicon of modern life is bewildering. I thought Bill & Ted had it all sorted in the nineties. All you had to do was ‘be excellent to each other’ – if we just all did that the world would be fine. Now I feel like I need an app to help me navigate the choppy waters of a culture that feels like it’s become an A Level sociology exam.
Perhaps it’s because we’ve lost any flexibility in our arguments. For or against, black or white, ying or yang, in or out, Blur or Oasis – everyone has their own intractable position from which there can be no deviation. In 1994 I was a participant in the ‘Rest of the World’ team in the All Japan Dodgeball Tournament (despite never having played dodgeball before). The mayor of Yanagawa threw a party for our team and was clearly having a lovely time. Towards the end of the night his wife asked if we could help him home as he’d overdone the Ashahi a little. We found the mayor asleep in a dining chair and gave him a nudge to wake him up. His eyes opened, he looked contemplatively off into the distance, whispered the word ‘nuance’ then wet himself and passed out again. Looking back I now realise this was a premonition of the death of nuance some 20 years later.
Meanwhile whilst everyone was having a good old ding dong online the world continued to simultaneously sink and burn. Scientist (those foolhardy people who rely on facts and data rather than opinion) said that if we don’t do something drastic about climate change then there may not even be a habitable planet for the next generation. And for those so concerned about immigration now, forget your walls and Brexit – just wait until half of the continents are under water! 30 years from now, as we drown in a flood of our own making, we’ll still be too busy arguing about whether or not Axl Rose’s kilt was cultural appropriation to notice.
The year ended into typical pantomime fashion with Jeremy Corbyn providing an entertaining diversion from Brexit with the year’s equivalent of the ‘Gold Dress/Blue Dress’ debate. Did his lips move to form the words ‘stupid person’ or ‘stupid woman’. No one seemed very concerned about the ‘stupid’ bit as clearly that was something of a given. Whether or not Theresa May is a ‘woman’ or a ‘person’, or indeed any form of human being, I’m not so sure. The whole thing prompted the predictable media frenzy for a few days with an army of lip readers employed to decipher words which were never actually spoken. This begs a question similar to the age old ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to listen, does it make a sound?’.
If lips move with no sound was anything actually said?
Answers on a postcard please to:
PO Box
Does Anybody Actually Care
And so endeth my thoughts on 2018.
Be excellent to each other…
And party on ‘people’.
The Jase.x