I am Pagliacci

I remember waking from an intense twitching and whimpering doggy like dream the other morning with a proper broad smile on my face.  An I'm happy and about to break out laughing kinda feeling. 

Moments before I was dreaming that I was back at work.  Perhaps BT but could have been any place really.  Of an urgent challenge at a works team event.  To do something.  Of such extreme importance which had me in a great hurry to make it happen as I once upon a time did.  I recall running into the canteen, racing around folk shouting and waving my arms in the air just before snatching a handful of burgers from the bright countertop and of sprinting back into the meeting room.  The place and atmosphere has changed.  There I was, now with a dog, on a darkened stage with both of us in a bright white spot light.  The act began.  

The dog is sat attentively at my side.  Stiff backed and with its head slightly uplifted looking straight ahead.  I tear a small piece from and place a morsel of one of the burgers on the end of its nose.  The dog stiffens, awaiting my command.  Not a peep from the audience.  Everyone and everything was focussed on the end of the dog's nose.  I ever so slowly bend to my left to place the small stack of burgers onto the floor.  My minds camera pans and focusses on a close up of the dog's head.  Its eyes flick to the right and gently wander, following my left hand towards the floor.   The dog's head and nose starts to follow its eyes, ever so slowly and perfectly synchronised with my descending mitt full of meat.  And the morsel drops off the end of its nose.  

The crowd erupts!  Laughter reverberates off the walls.  Proper eye wateringly fall off your seat laughter everywhere.  I grin and slowly reach down and pick up the morsel, gently lift the dogs nose back up to it's starting position and place the bit of beef again on the end of it.  Momentarily the dog focusses on the meat but as I slowly take my hand away its eyes roll ever so slowly to the right again.  Then it's head follows my mitt full of burgers again as I lower the stack carefully towards the floor.  And the morsel drops off its nose again.  Oh how the crowd erupts.  HaHaHaHaHa!  I start to smile.  A big beamy grin.  And so it continues until somewhere in that repetitive mix I opened my eyes into a dark cool bedroom with the biggest of grins on my face. 

What the hell goes on in my subconsciousness?  I tell folk that I dream so much that it's almost like a second life; an immensely bright and varied place full of conundrums that I go to whenever I sleep.  

Anyway, I'm now fully awake so I put the radio on.  Immediately my face is slapped hard by the unreal world around us and the TESCO Customer Service interrogative voice of one of them there radio 4 presenters.  Aw feck.  Crapola.  I don't want to get up.  Go back to sleep, Wayne.  It's a much happier place to be.  

I wander downstairs in my jim-jams looking for something like what I used to be - and couldn't find myself.  I am now a 58 year old ex amateur American Football player blathered in blubber finding it harder to run up and down the stairs and who nowadays gets angry rather quickly especially when struggling to pull my socks on.  

I put the BBC non news TV Breakfast show on.  It's crap.  Loaded with clown presenters laughing at their own unfunny in jokes.  It's Covid all the way.  I press 3 for ITV.  Piers Morgan is doing his bestest angry clown impression of a Donald Trump cum Hitler type as he rips into his next guest, speaking over Suzanna Reid who just sits there with a petulant lip and a frown on her face unable to get a word in.  And you can't even see her legs anymore.  So whats the point of staying on that channel?

So I go to channel 233.  Sky News.  Repetitive Covid codswallop in an Aussie accent so I feck them off too.  Back up the channels to RT.  Aaaaargh!  Anti-Western propaganda opinionated gobshites everywhere.  Back down to Al-Jazeera only to be smothered with the plights of those struggling to live in rubble strewn buildings, or if they are lucky, corrugated tin and canvas tents in the middle of nowhere being decimated by the proper unfunny political clown infighting and their associated wars.  And Covid too.  Gruesome.  

So I put on Apple TV via the internet.  I watch the insurrection actions and listen to the seditious words of a warped Mr President unfurl on CBSN as the crowds storm the US Capitol buildings.  The American Parliament.  Wow!  I wonder.  Have the Russians / Iranians / Chinese been in collaboration here; perhaps with one or two agents planted in the American Far Right society?  Social media commies / fascist zombies are climbing ropes on the hallowed walls of Western Democracy and power.  They push past the feeble police presence who to all intents look as though they are also infected with the same Zombie germ.  It's that easy is it to get into the United States government buildings ?   Really???  Wow!  I turn the TV off.  

I guess, nay I hope that the American political fraternity and the world is now fully awake to the severity of what just happened.  Impeach the President again?  Take away his ability to launch nuclear missiles too?  The 25th Amendment being considered?  Is that all?

Hey, how about the possibility that a small Thermo Nuclear or Chemical or bigger brother to the Coronavirus type Biological weapon might have been surreptitiously planted somewhere in the US Capitol building's bogs by a foreign agent?  Who's gonna do the fantastical deep clean exercise before it can ever be used again?  Wow!  Would you go back in to it?  What about the Houses of Parliament?  We learnt that lesson some 400 years ago didn't we?  Remember Remember???  

Now I understand.  Trump is not going to go to the inauguration on the 20th simply cos he's a Russian sponsored Blofelt and is going to push the button whilst on a golf course at his SPECTRE complex in Florida to wipe them all out.  And so he will take over the free world.  Ian Fleming eat your heart out!  You think I make lite of this?  No.  I jest not.  Insurrection.  It's so worrying in the modern West.  You've seen nothing yet folks! 

And so to the cause of all of this woe in the world.  

Global actions today are driven across the planet by a million influencers and their followers especially those within social media communities hosted by the Internet.  

The Internet came into play around the mid 90's.  A place thought by its short sighted well wishing founder Tim Berners-Lee to be a place for good for all human kind.  At the heart of the problem is the launch of social media in 2004 when Facebook appeared followed by the steroid injections of WIFI, 3G and smartphones which made it so much easier for everyone globally to consume the Facebook bug.  It's a place where everyone was quickly infected by the new variant social media platforms as they came on line.   Where fact and fiction / truth and lies / all opinions are fully mixed cos everyone can prove their point by pointing at a supportive internet page.  Ever tried finding a cake recipe on the internet that works?  Recipes that say a heaped teaspoon of salt is needed.  And guess what?  Yep, millions of cakes are baked, pictures look great then given crap ratings and read out aloud funny comments that say whilst the recipe was easy to follow and the sponge came out all spongy and light, the cake was too salty!  Laugh!?  NO. 

People are now unconstrained.  Instead of having one to one relationships and discussions over a beer at the pub it's now millions to millions by a billion people all over the world a trillion times per day.  All driven by the same behaviour, that is the craving to get a good review.  Whether fact or fiction all that matters now to everyone is a 👍 and to grow a following you can be proud of, for which there is no cure but which drives all the wrong behaviours.  Trumpy baby is just one example of a major influencer in today's society staring out across his red conk mouthing 'I love you' and showing everyone else how best to exploit it all. 

The whole of the world is now a circus.  Zombie clowns everywhere.  Influencers influencing.  Followers following.  Followers then influencing.  The spread of the social media virus is done at the speed of light.  It has been with us for 15 years!  So you think Covid is bad?  Feck NO!  

Howard rings me.  His crying wolf pack wails of 'I'm dying' continue to grate so I've cut him off.

My bike wheel is forever locked in Germany and I have no idea when it is coming back.

My brother rings me to tell me that Covid is all a hoax so they say on social media and tries to convince me it is so.   

My anger builds.  

Humans are savage in nature no matter how much you try to dress it up and disguise it.  The proliferation of scamming driven across the world and across all societies by monsters looking to take advantage of this dystopian socialistic media driven internet connected world exposes it.   There is nothing to compare to it.  It's society's new face.  Social media, NOT Covid, is the great plague of the 21st Century and will be the downfall of us all.  

I've seen this coming for way too long.  It's as plain as the red nose on my infected face.  

For a long time now I've been off most social media.  I only have a presence on Blogger (here) and on Poo Tube so I can share my boring videos with y'all but also a place where I store my most important memories and thoughts.  I hate all other types of social media.  Facebook.  Yuck!  Twitter.  Crap!  Snapchat.  Snap!  Instagram.  Urgh!  I refuse to be influenced.  I refuse to follow the crowd.  I truly understand now why countries like China have taken control of it all before they lose control as has happened in the West.  I watch folk being re-programmed on the bus, on the train, whilst out walking, with their red noses pressed up against a greasy screen.  ALL with their eyes ears and brains plugged into the biggest 'on line' real time global circus of unfunny clowns.  Which by the way is also being used by the parasitic advertising community to additionally project their products into our heads; and, is also copied in their programming by TV executives who want to 'be involved' .   

I'm totally fed up.  I'm seriously thinking of closing this account and this blog.  Of taking all of my videos off YouTube and of ceasing my internet.  I'm sure I was a happier man back in the day without all of this.  

I've been to see the doctor.  I was sat in his darkened room sobbing and wailing my eyes out.  He listened carefully to my tales of woe.  Of my depression.  Life seems harsh and cruel.  Of Covid, of social media, of the madness that is politics, of lockdowns and of illnesses in my family.  Of the calls and emails and texts from scammers intent to do me great harm.  I feel all alone in this threatening world.    

He says, 'Hmmm... the treatment is simple.  The GREAT CLOWN Pagliacci (1) is in town.  Why don't you go see him?  That should pick you up'.

The room darkens further.  My back is lit by a spotlight that rips into the room from the corner of the slightly ajar door which casts a grotesque shadow on the far wall.  I burst into tears and say: 

"But Doctor...., I am Pagliacci".

Ciao.

(1) Pagliacci is an Italian opera.  It tells the story of an acting troupe led by a jealous clown who is ultimately driven to murder his actress wife and her lover. The great tenors of the past considered the role a challenge, because the character exhibits a wide range of moods, from manic humour to murderous rage. It is a challenging Opera for the lead actor, playing a comedic role whilst his heart is breaking.  My use of this metaphor is a direct rip off of a scene from the film Watchmen spoken by Rorschach.  Great character, great film!