Others Perception of You and How to Control it.

Kim Jong Il and his publicity machine worked in overdrive to manipulate other peoples perceptions of him, with publicists claiming he invented the hamburger, his birth was foretold by a swallow and that he never needed to defecate or urinate. (a claim later removed from the official North Korean website.

I imagine the North Korean press department agonising over whether the urination and defecation 'fact' is too much.

Jung Su Park: What do you think of that one?


Wang Si Ching: Wee bit far fetched don't you think? that a man never has to piss or shit, I mean...


Jung Su Park: Hmmm... I can kind of see where you're coming from, what about these ones: 'He invented the hamburger and he is the best golfer in the world.'


Wang Si Ching: yeah, use them ones instead, they're more impressive than someone who has never ever done a shit in their entire life.



Couple this with a romantic image of the glorious leader and a perception is created.

...and so it goes on.


Unfortunately, with Kim Jong Il, he had no influence at all over the west with all their decadence and failing democracy and all that jazz; for this reason people don't believe facts like "Kim Jong Il invented the semi-colon because before that there wasn't a way to end a sentence while allowing a clause so that the sentence can continue. He did this in 1980 and Roald Dahl had to go through all Victorian literature and retrospectively add it.



Other problems are that for every iconic looking image of him standing on a mountain, there is couple of guys prepared to make him a main character in a film made of puppets.



or the fact that people on photoshop can do things like this...



Another case in point is Elvis Presley, a man with 50 million fans. Well known for his on stage antics, his astounding ability to make any song sound like an Elvis song just by singing it.



He was also addicted to codeine, Valium, morphine, and Demorol and Amphetamines. His favourite snack was the fools gold loaf: The sandwich consists of a single warmed, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with one jar of creamy peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly, and a pound of bacon. He apparently ate 2 of these a day along with 5 meals and other snacks.



If Kim Jong Il, a man with total power over his nation, has no power over other peoples perception of him after he died, and neither does Elvis Presley then what chance do plebs like us have?

I recently had a death in the family, this person wasn't religious but his immediate family insisted on a christian ceremony. As if this wasn't enough the they began creating strange stories about him finding God not long before he died. My own personal belief is that what he found was not God but just the effects of clinical morphine, which I have been told is quite similar to finding God.



Amen.

The point is, this person will never be truly remembered as he was but instead his memory will be all tied up in candle lighting and prayer, so it starts to become apparent that if you want to be truly remembered the way that you want to be remembered you must kill absolutely everyone you know, so their memory of you will be frozen at the point that you kill them...



This raises its own set of problems, for when you do this you stop being the happy go lucky party animal the bookish intellectual or the warm hearted man/woman who had time for all his/her friends... you become the psychotic killer who walked into his work place with an AK47 killing all your colleagues before turning the gun on yourself... and would you really want to be remembered that way?



David Koresh, a man who set fire to a building full of his devoted followers, something that I think Lady Gaga plans to do to all her twitter followers.

Perhaps its best just to not worry about it.

A Change is Gonna Come.

Paul McCartney once said that: "if this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give in and cry... live & let die." And in a way, he is right, it is an ever changing world; for example for the longest time people looked for deep and hidden meanings in the lyrics of people like Paul McCartney, I'm not going to do that because that has been done to death, I am simply going to correct this because times they are a changing. "but-if-this-ever-changing-world" its okay so far. "in-which-we-live-in" [?] No, its gone weird, why do you need in which we live in there thats better, but its still not quite right. It works on microsoft word as a sentence but its probably been specifically made that way by by Bill Gates who was probably a massive Beatles fan.



Gates, with the complete recordings of the Beatles using the latest zip file technology.

There are rules in the english language which are often ignored stating that a sentence shouldn't finish on a pre-supposition. Although some people suggest that these rules have changed. I will change the lyrics "in this ever changing world in which we live in" to "The world changes and we live on said world." It seems to fit the song better as well, so I shall be expecting 15% of the songs royalties from now on.

Changing song lyrics of from members of the Beatles is a change for the better, but can all changes be deemed a good thing? It's probably the next place to go from here.



Barrack Obama's tagline for his presidential campaign was Change, this is a bold move because historically people fear change, for example whenever Facebook changes its interface, adds 'like' buttons or 'timelines' people get decidedly shitty, so for Obama to promise change if he got into power was inclredibly risky... However Obama was aware of this and that is why, when he finally got into power as President of the United States of Amarakah, he didn't make any changes. Genius.



"We still here then?"

So sticking to the point lets have a look at what changes are good and what changes are bad.

GOOD CHANGE



The Berlin Wall coming down was good, because of unity and all that kind of stuff, hugging and stuff.



Breakthroughs in medicinal science.



Change is pretty good, you find it down the side of sofas and occaisionally in back pockets of the jeans you were wearing to the pub last week and you can go on to exchange it for products in shops.



Like Rice.

BAD CHANGE

Unscheduled Changes to Bus timetables "...bloody rubbish, late for work and stuff, got to the bus stop and the bloody timetables all changed."- Thats the kind of conversation that you might have with someone who doesn't like the changes



"...bloody rubbish, late for work and stuff, yeah, got to the bus stop and the station was submerged in 10 feet of a combination of rain and river water."- The sort of things you might hear from someone who doesn't like climate change.



"George Bush doesn't care about black people"
Influx of foreigners... "...bloody rubbish, late for work and stuff, yeah, got to the bus stop and the racial makeup of the entire nation, all changed."- The sort of thing you hear from someone who doesn't like the influx of foreigners.



or the Sugababes.

So essentially, people who are resistant to change are more likely to be racists or environmentalists, and are likely to blame either on them being late for work, you never seem to get prompt people who are resistant to change although I am pretty sure some environmentalists are also racist, there are some people who believe that enviromentalism is a form of racism

So with only 3 examples of good change and 3 examples of bad change, or 1 example of bad change reworded to make it sound like its 3, we're at a point where we still don't know whether change is good or not.

Channel 4's minority quota

Every now and again, broadcasters feel the need to illuminate the plight of a minority group. Perhaps it is something to do with a quota that needs to be reached, maybe it is simply because of a bright spark coked up media producer on a swing chair in an office near St James Park.

Either way, there are some people who might think that all these minorities on the TV is what is ruining British TV, and as an extention ruining Britain...


like this woman for example...



...or this one...



...or even this one.

Personally, I agree with these ladies probable views about disabled, black, asian and fat people having a TV platform... but I don't agree for the same reasons they do. While they would happily see all minorities "Fark owf back to Niggaraguarrgh!" I am more offended by the shameless box ticking from TV execs.



thus making a programme like Shameless quite shameless in its exploitative portrayal of the discusting underclasses of Britain, much like the 3 racist women on the train, but I am not here to talk about them, at least not yet, I have other things on my mind.

With that in mind I would like to look back fondly over some of my favourite minorities portrayed on Channel 4 over the years.



Desmonds -like Shameless- is fictional, although it actually comes closer to a programme like the Cosby Show or the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I would like to say that the reason I have banded these three shows together was because they were among the first shows to offer entertainment to a black demographic, but the reason I am banding these shows together is because simply because they have black people in them and don't appeal to me.



Queer as Folk

Yup, gays are everywhere int' they? No TV show so accurately showed this as Queer as folk, where Aiden Gillen went around shagging underaged boys in a manner that essentially glorified paedophillia/addressed sensitive social issues like the age of consent. Canned after series 2 after sponsorship was withdrawn by beer company 'Beck' and interferance from channel 4. Queer as folk remains as discusting to look at during the sex scenes for hetrosexual males to this day.



Somewhere along the lines Channel 4 stopped using fiction to highlight minority groups, after executives discovered that just filming a group of disabled people in a room together is cheaper than paying actors, film crews, writers and editors to produce a piece of artwork which would then be subjected to attacks from critics. With a cheap documentary, if its shit just move on to the next one, With an efficient team you can make as many as 4 a month. The Progeria babies was a notable early one.



More recently, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding transformed the Traveller community from objects of distain discust and hatred to objects of intrigue. Pretty much televising an attempted rape in the process, but hey, thats alright, its part of their culture.



The latest group to come under the microscope of Channel 4 is the Amish community, a group of simple bible folk who have ways very different from our own, much like the Traveller community, or the gays, or even the blacks. The first series which focused on the Amish filmed a group of Amish children coming to live with several british families and seeing modern life... The show proved popular enough to warrant sending a group of british people over to Ohio to live like the Amish for the second series. taking a concept, and turning it on its head. because they did it one way in the first series and now they are doing it the other way. so thats that then.


This brings me back to my point about box ticking, reducing comunities and groups of people to simple demographics to be shown before being tossed away for another group which is more in vogue...

My idea for the next demographic is pretty topical.



Following in the trials and tribulations of racist women on trains. It could also explore just what it is about train journeys that make white women so racist.

greek myth and cock jokes.

Cronus, like manmachine201 is a mythical beast that existed before the age of reason and rationality, penned by Hesiod, a man so old that he also may or may not have existed, he is the first written record of the Greek gods, unless Homer came first, and I am not sure because I haven't looked it up on Wikipedia. I also want to add that Hesiod wrote the Cronus myth and not the Manmachine201 myth because the Manmachine201 myth is not really as good.



Any myths involving vulcan tend to be shit. Use that as a rule of thumb if you like.

A few years ago I had a bit of a disagreement with my father, I felt that he was stifling me and possibly being a little bit abusive to my mother, so I read up on the classics looking for a way to deal with this situation, I eventually found, through Hesiod the perfect way to deal with the situation, one evening, my father came home so I ran upstairs to my mothers room with a sickle made from bits and bobs I eventually climbed inside my mothers vagina, and then when my dad decided to do the business with my mother I cut his bits off mid coitus... needless to say he was not impressed.






So there I was, inside my mothers vaginee, dads penis in my hand and I thought to myself, where am I going with this blog? I have thrown myself in at the deep end with this one. I mean, is there anyone who reads this that is actually interested in greek mythology, would they be prepared to read this? So I did that thing where I took the narrative outside itself and examined it in the hope that people would at least find the self examination amusing.

They didn't so I carried on, and I took control of the kingdom of everything, and then my next door neighbours moved in, and they had a young child which cried a lot. Those of you who know the Cronus myth will know that Cronus loved eating babies, and I thought to myself why not?



Cronus has, for better or worse become a symbol of a time where I was doing really well in my study because I put in an ace 6000 word essay on him and his development as a mythological character, yet now here I am again posting shit grades in a course which I find easier to understand, not least because I have eaten my next door neighbours child and I have my fathers severed penis in my hand.

Now Shake Hands.

Recently the store 'Topman' came under criticism for the design and sale of several offensive t shirts.



The first one is a list of excuses as to why a man might have hit his wife or girlfriend, and the other implies that another mans wife or girlfriend is in fact an animal... both are available in sizes small to extra large and in several different colours. check www.topshop.com for more details.

Of course they are not available anymore, that thing I did just then was a little mock advertisment. Wasn't even that funny. Don't know why I did it. Actually I do know why I did it, I wanted to give the impression that I thought these T-shirts were acceptable when in fact I find them in bad taste.

Perhaps what I should have done was slowly uncover my true feelings about these T-shirts, slowly and deliberately over the course of the blog, but as I don't have the skill or confidence in myself as a writer to do that I'll do this awkward things where I point out the joke and over analyse to the point of exhaustion, and even then carry on writing about it until most people have switched off, some people might have switched off at the initial point having been offended, so what is the answer for them? the people I've bored have short attention spans and can be snapped back into place with a simple picture...



An explosion will suffice, but nudity, corpses or the mugshot of Mel Gibson all work for the attention span people, but for the people I have offended, I would have to make a gesture to win them back, and here it is... here it comes... wait for it... and...



Simple and effective.

Recently FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, came under heavy criticism for advocating the handshake as a method for negating racism on the football pitch, he has faced calls to resign and taken a lot of flak, but is it all necessary, perhaps the people who he offended should just shake his hand and see if he's right.



Blatter and Chelsea Midfielder taking it in turns to hurl racist abuse at Brazilian Midfielder Ronaldinho. (handshake not pictured)

By this logic, if racism on the football field can be negated with a handshake, then so can racism off the field too. Slavery for example, wealthy white Europeans dragged black East African men across the atlantic to be worked to death in plantations in the America's might seem a little bit harsh, and in deed it was. Estimated figures vary from 6-15 million killed through disease, starvation and execution over 4 centuries.



When the slave trade was over was their any problems? did it lead to things like the Ku Klux Klan, widespread segregation in America, lynchings and assassinations of prominant black leaders?

NO! They all shook hands and everything was sorted.



The same thing happened with South African Apartheid, there was a few years of segregation, people feeling like second class citizens in their own land and then white people realized they were wrong and took down all the 'whites only' sign and gave the black people a massive handshake, Apartheid? Sorted!



Blatter with Mandela (again, handshake not pictureed)

A high profile case about racism giong on at the moment is the recently reopened Stephen Lawrence murder trial. Lawrence's death was apparently the result of a racially motivated attack for which no one was brought to justice, the murder uncovered institutional racism in the police force and led to a change in the double jeopardy law, a law which was very good in terms of using for the premise of mediocre films, but in reality was a very strange quirk in the justice system.



Stephen Lawrence would be 35 now.

The ultimate test to the Blatter theory will be at the end of this trial, if Gary Dobson and David Norris are found guilty and they are forced to shake the hands of the parents of the child they murdered, if Stephen Lawrence's is miraculously raised from the dead like Lazarus in that book, which name I have conveniantly forgotten just as I am about to make my final point... what was it again?



No not that one. you always do that when you mention the bible. stupid.

Anyways, pretty sure that a handshake is a nice gesture to put an end to conflict, but we are not quite at the point where we can all shake hands just yet Mr Blatter.

'Journalism'

The Sun newspaper is an easy target at the moment, what with newscorps phone hacking scandal it has become a sitting duck for the left wing Guardianista's (Richard Littlejohn (c) 1998) but for all the amunition the left have on Newscorp and its newspaper empire, they fail to see the good points of their journalism.

I might be accused from time to time of only being as good as the news which is occuring, and although I let Gaddaffi's death, Amanda Knox's conviction overturning, Michael Jackson's doctor being found guilty of his manslaughter all go without comment, todays news is too important to let go. You are (if you are one of those people who accuse manmachine201 of only being as good as the news occuring at the time) right.



All those events fade (Gaddaffi, Jacko, Knox) in significance in comparison to the news events today, reported on the front page of the Sun newspaper.

AXED X FACTOR KITTYS 8 HOUR SEXFEST



An enduring image which is somewhat still less important than todays news.

We all remember where we were on September 11th, some of the older folk remember where they were when the Berlin Wall came down, but we will all remember where we were when AXED X FACTOR KITTYS 8 HOUR SEXFEST occured.



That's Kitty Brucknell, former X-factor contestant.

The older people might remember Ronald Regans 'Evil Empire' Speech, or even Mandela being released and the end of apartheid, but none of these events are culturally or historically as significant as AXED X FACTOR KITTYS 8 HOUR SEXFEST

The Sun of course, could have gone with other news stories on the front page, it could have gone with the reopened Stephen Laurence murder trial, which began today, or the continuing turmoil of the European economy, but how would they have been able to sleep at night when a story as important as AXED X FACTOR KITTYS 8 HOUR SEXFEST



That's Kitty Brucknell, former X factor contestant.

The Sun could have gone with the continuing arab spring and in particular the political turmoil in Jordan, but how could they have lived up to their claims of integrity, honesty and courage if they didn't report first and foremost on their front page AXED X FACTOR KITTYS 8 HOUR SEXFEST

They could have reported the biggest story in the news today, the news that those at the very top of the corporate pyramid were aware of the illegal practices surrounding phone hacking were aware, and that it was not only the News of the World but the integrity, honesty and courageous Sun newspaper, who were the only people brave enough to bring AXED X FACTOR KITTYS 8 HOUR SEXFEST to its front pages.



Sun Newspaper, Ignoring the Truth, Everyday.

What is a Berlusconi?

As everyone knows, I know nothing about current events, I get all my news from Newscorp, and specifically, the Sun newspaper, and even then, I only read the tits page and the sports pages, because I like to pretend to be a man and this is the sort of thing I see other men do on trains, building sites, prison cells and other places frequented by men.



Hanging around public toilets for a long time made other men think one of two things, that either I was a drug addict, or that I was trying to initiate some kind of same sex act of abuse with them, neither were the case. (well, maybe they were both the case a little bit...) Truth was, all I wanted to be was a man, a real man. I started reading further and further into these newspapers for clues, I mean the answer has to be in the Sun Newspaper somewhere doesn't it? otherwise why would so many men read it?

I eventually read about the man Berlusconi. Leader of the Italian people as Julius and Augustus Caesar once were, a man seemingly irresistable to women, a man wielding power and wealth and a full head of hair even though he was quite old. A man who was smashed in the face with a statue and managed to laugh after it. I had found the template to which I would build my own image as a man, and I found it thanks to Rupert Murdoch.



I read further on until I knew more about him. I found out that he didn't think that the German leader's behind was worth penetrating, which is a very alpha male thing to say. I found out about him paying young women to go to parties for his and his friends amusement, better known as 'bunga bunga'. I felt the need to throw my own bunga bunga party, it was amazing except I no one wanted to come, so I pretended people did.



Well I had fun anyway.

I gave these dolls cocaine, chich they didn't take because they were dolls. I asked them took their clothes off as they stared back at me with their dead marble eyes, it all got a bit weird if I'm being honest, so I just called it a night and went to bed crying... I still had a long way to go before I could call myself a man.

I found out lots of other things about Berlusconi, I found out that his favourite footballer of all time was Roberto Baggio, that he had absolutely NO mafia connections whatsoever, I found out that he often suffers from toothache.



and migranes



And that his great grandmother on his fathers side was actually a crab.



Well now he has gone, or at least is going to be gone soon, and having got to this point I have realized that I don't have all that many interesting things to say about him, just that he now he has gone or will be going soon. My hero is gone, and with him, the role model which I had looked up to since what felt like forever, but in actual fact was about the time that I started writing this blog about an hour ago, and even that was just for comic effect.

That aside, I need a new world leader role model to fill a gaping void left by the irrepressable Silvio...

Here are some men and Woman that might take his title.



Armedjadjidjad Armadjidjidjidjijad.

I think thats how its spelt. I mean look at the man, he is a real man. Built like a brick shit house and able to sqeeze off rounds of an artillery gun one handed with a wry smile, and the best thing about this is that it is not photoshopped. Yes he is leader of a terrorist state, and yes he looks like a blind man with eyes that work, which is possibly the most parodoxical feature a world leader can have, but I still like him.

Odds of becoming my new hero... 5/1



Evo Morales.

Possibly the most sharply dressed world leader in the shortlist, socialist with a very masculine jawline. keeps company with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, who are also real men and world leaders. Reformist policies and the fact that he is dressed like a Pizza push him ahead of the Iranian President.

Odds of becoming my new hero... 3/1

Angela Merkal.

Only adding her because I like her surname, because it sounds like the name given to a pubic wig. Although she is probably the most politically astute politician europe has to offer at the moment, she is a woman and I am unashamedly sexist.

Odds of becoming my new hero 250/1




There is one man who can take fill the void that Berlusconi will leave if he resigns on monday, a world leader who is strong.



A man who eats what he kills.



A man who tames wild beasts.



Even if my need to hero worship world leaders comes across as a bit, erm... well...
But all this goes to prove how important the cult of personality is amongst the politician, I couldn't truthfully tell you any of these peoples political views, apart from the Bolivian guy who I said was a socialist... or Merkal who is a democrat and possibly the best leader in on the world stage at the moment... and Putin who is staunchly authoritarian, but it is much better to look at pictures of these people and judge them plainly throught their non political activities.

One of my favourite things about Putin is the fact that people seem to be very uncomfortable in his presence, as this blog testifies.

http://uncomfortablemomentswithputin.tumblr.com/

Odds of becoming my next political hero... even.

The problem is, by choosing someone as ruthless, authoritarian and downright hard as Putin, I will never be able to live up to him, and thus will always be a dissapointment to myself and everyone around me, particularly if I start dressing like him, wrestling bears and going fishing topless. I don't have the muscular structure he does, I'm shit at bear wrestling. I'm starting to think that choosing political figures as objects of hero worship might be the wrong tact to take for my self asteem.