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.