Joan Rivers

As is customary these dys, the death of American comedienne Joan Rivers at the age of 81 was announced on Twitter like the mad, new town cryer that social meia has become. Chances are, if there's a story to be told, good and bad, then you'll rread it on Tweetville before BBC or CNN. Its the pulse of a new generation. Joan used it herself, she was one of the only few celebrities I follow on that site (gossip and bickering between two famous clowns isn't my idea of fun).
I will actually miss her Tweets partly because, much like myself, she spoke her mind, offend or please and I greatly admire that. Don't stab folk in the back, give them both barrels in the chest but im in danger of losing my thread of thought here so back to Joan. If you visit her Twitter page now, it lies eerily quiet, like that of late director Michael Winner (another famous Twitter user).
Words at end, reminding us about our oh so fragile mortality. Enjoy every passing minute, life is for the living.
I sent Ms Rivers a mesage via Twitter once. It was on her last birthday, and being a fan of older ladies, I remarked to her of how great she still looked despite being in her eigheieth year. Of course being a global star, having to deal with hundreds of people every day, I wasn't sad I didn't get a reply. Indeed looking back, if she did read it (and these people have egos the size of war ships), she probably thought I was 'trolling' and having a dig at her age.
Well Joanie, if you are able to read blogs from wherever it is you have departed to, know this: I wasn't kidding around, I genuinely thought you beautiful and a rare instance of plastic surgery actually working for a change. It turns most into melted gargoyles more fitting to sit on a cathedral tower than appear on a red carpet but Joan Rivers was different. God knows this planet needs more people unafraid to speak their mind.

Rest in peace Joan, I shall miss ya gorgeous x

A Knight Of Our Times

Suits you Sir!

Today we learn that David Beckham could be Knighted. Arise SirDai Beckham! (Briefly dreams of LordDai Jakes). One might say its less LordHaw Haw but more Sir Ha Ha? Okay, rubbish jokes aside, why the surprise? Did we not all see it coming? The venerable *coughs* Mr Jakes certainly did. This is my friends is very much a Knighthood of our times. Its perfect for our new age culture of celebrity, a natural progression. Most people these days worship television and the fame it bestows on its vacuous 'victims', and Beckham, even though I happen to like the man, is king of this. They might as well make it official. I can certainly think of worse people to give a gong. Dame Katie Price anyone?
David has done a ton of good work for charity, and love him or loathe him, he is a good role model for our youngsters. There have been some real disaster stories coming from the world of sport, football especially, but the boy Dave done good. I don't understand folk saying he shouldn't be Knighted because he spends most of his time in America either. Are we not all free to live wherever we like? I didn't realise that if I was made SirDai Jakes (dreaming again) I would have to be permanently based in Britain. Does Sir Paul McCartney live in the UK? (And not being a Beatle fan, I actually had to Google to see if he was a Sir or not). It would be a petty reason not to award someone a gong in my humble opinion. But then David Beckham has had to put up with this kind of garbage for a while now, envy mostly from people who are quite content sitting in an anonymous den typing spiteful bilge online.
Listen, I will happily admit there are more deserving 'unknowns' who will never be recognised for their good deeds toward good causes and their fellow man, and if it were up to me they would all be Knighted but such is life. Its not perfect, and like I have said, is Sir Beckham so bad? At least he's not falling out of a nightclub at 4am, drugged out of his eyeballs, or chasing women old enough to be his grandmother (not that that is necessarily a bad thing *laughs*).
Want to know something else? As a guy who has tattoos himself, I think its kinda cool to be getting a Knight with arms covered in ink. Feels like the outlaws have invaded the Palace! Or at least become accepted as not only prisoners and sailors get tattooed. Better not show them to Her Maj though eh.
I bet Victoria B is over the moon at the prospect of hubby becoming a Knight of the Realm (although it is not a done deal yet). I can see it now:, Lady Beckham handbags and gladrags with emphasis on the 'Lady' part. She'll make the title hip or sick, or whatever words the trendy kids are using these days. Oh and look on the bright side, at least it removes, or should, the last vestiges of any possibility that the Spice Girls will ever get back together. Cin Cin!

Facebook: Murder, Death, Kill

Facebook has backed down after the controversy surrounding a video showing masked man beheading woman in Mexico and canned the video. But that it was there in the beginning, while breast feeding images were banned, speaks volumes about the site, and if we are honest, society in general. And yes, I use it but it doesn't mean I approve of everything it gets up to. These are real people in these snuff movies, not actors. Its one thing watching a Hollywood slasher movie, quite another clicking on a link that shows real murder. Worrying that some think its perfectly okay to watch.
Facebook themselves seem to be fine with it though: "the public should be free to view beheading videos then condemn the content" Dear me, what is that cotton-mouthed pish supposed to mean?
"Hey chums, look at this video of some geezer being beheaded! Terrible isn't it? It should be banned...wait, I've got another one showing people being tortured, disgusting eh? I don't know why they show these things ... hang on, wait until you see this video
of a woman being set on fire, its well wicked!"
Where are we heading? Don't we realise that by clicking these awful links, we are in fact encouraging more sickos to make them? In the same way that watching child pornography makes the viewer as guilty of child abuse as those who did the actual abusing. Look I know we used to gather at public executions in the 1700s and make a spectacle out of it but are we not meant to advance? And I suspect if the film showed animal cruelty, the outrage would have come a lot sooner.
It all comes down to this: how would you feel if it was your son, daughter, wife, husband, friend that was murdered and the video posted on the net for all to see? Context! Videos of murders, rape, torture and cruelty that are clicked on on a social media site are not concerned with reporting the news. Atrocities have to be exposed but to show a human being's last moments on earth in a video loop denies the victim of dignity, desensitises us to violence and makes us more callous.
I'm sorry, but videos of beheadings are videos of murder, and there cannot be any justification for showing them. It's nothing to do with freedom of speech or terrorism, it's murder, and posting and watching such imagery makes you complicit in that crime.

Bak Ta Scwl

Excuse me?

If social media has taught me anything, its that most people cant spell for toffee. Or toucans. Or is that parrots? At least they try. Now being a fair man I didn't jump immediately to this assumption. 'Perhaps they were being plain lazy' I thought, but alas after reading some of the things being typed, I have no choice but admit that it is in fact stupidity at work. Bless their 99p Poundland cotton socks. The combination of ignorance and text messaging was too potent.
"Hey lwk, I did na go ta scwl!" They might as well post on Facebook to their just as silly friends, babbling away like a tree house full of baboons at a jumble sale. (Nothing against jumble sales, simpy using it to paint a picture.)
And you want to know something? It kills me man, like watching a leprous toad mate with a swan, or a bungling art curator spill Tipp Ex on Van Gogh's Starry Nights.
Part blame must go to odious tabloid newsrags. For instance in recent gossip an actors name was spelled thus:

The Telegraph ~ Robert Pattinson. The Sun ~ R Patz

Is it any wonder spelling and grammar have turned to sh!t when the most popular scandal rags are slapping this abomination of english all over the headlines? So what does this make Dai Jakes? Dazza Ja? D Jakz? God's teeth, its the perfect bastard made flesh. Nothing short of the murder of language and I for one am all for swinging the illiterate swines from the nearest gallows. Its not thunder you can hear dear reader, its Milton and Coleridge turning in their graves.
People are daft aplenty without the red tops gleefully encouraging gibberish. The actors name is Robert Pattinson, not 'R Patz'! Desist this foul caper! Stop telling folk its okay to be a lazy ass! Or suffer to be the smoking gun at the scene of a bloody crime. Do we really wish to be speaking a tongue that giants of literature like George Orwell would think alien? As a lover of languages (and speaker of three) it kills me to see such wilful sabotage.
Those Ecard things have become quite popular so Mr Jakes has created one of his own.

Reversal of Civilization

Dai Jakes has written about this before but its important to revisit the subect before all hope is lost forever under the burning carcass that used to be a language. We live in an age of super quick messaging where Facebook, Twitter et al rule supreme. It would seem that proper use of grammar and spelling has proven to be too time consuming for modern communication. The beautiful language of Milton and Shakespeare long forgotten, replaced with the ever foul 'text speak', or as I prefer to call it, gibberish.
Welcome to the Reversal of Civilization! The decline in written and spoken language will be one of the most influential factors into our decline and I shall in time be proven correct. And if this blog survives 100 years or so I would like to point out to future readers that the rot of language didn't go entirely unnoticed. Mr Jakes saw it coming years ago.
Should more have been done to preserve it? Maybe but you see the majority were too busy learning new 'words' like scwl (school), prolly (probably), LOL (laughs out loud) and lwk (look). Dear God they even look vulgar! But alas what the majority want, is what they will eventually get so we are stuck with it. Stuck with the 'accomplishment' of having murdered a language so beautifully used by Keats and Byron.
Those who have had their minds rotted by celebrity and television will not care but there are few of us who think it terribly sad and a disgrace.

Wires In The Ether

I just found this online:

Should You Hire a Social Media Manager?
"Did you know you can also outsource your social media? There are people out there whose job is to handle other peoples’ social media marketing, saving them oodles of time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Constant Contact, you name it".

So this is it then. Evolve 2.0 The Modern Soul. The humble chat room has arisen into something that nobody can escape or ignore. (And please excuse me being overly dramatic here, its just my way). Some internet users a few years ago claimed they would never sign up to socila media sites but now it would seem they will have to. Or miss out.
And those note yet 'webbed up' are unaware of the monster that lurks in the wings. It will come for them too, as surely as the microwave nudged the oven onto the subs bench.
If we are so 'internet minded' that people are suggesting we hire 'social media managers' then the wires have truly gotten under our human skin.