Brevity

Very Now.

ZG

Muslimanity

There are five eternal “uber-zeits” or perpetual motion zeitguysts. These are zeitguysts that are always, in some way, shape, contour, form, figure or outline, zeitguyst. The five uber-zeits are: The Guardian, Channel 4, Drugs, not giving a fuck, and Religion. WOW! Just typing those five things made a shot of undiluted nowness shoot through my veins. Fuck! I love stuff that’s cool.

Now, the first four zeiguysts are like totally obvious. When God invented the planet in 1982, one of the first things he made (after all the dull shit like water, fire and earth) was Channel 4, so richer people could discuss the lives of poorer people in an informed and patronising way. The Guardian is simply Channel 4 on the page; it’s for people who are so middle class they don’t even OWN a TV. Drugs are zeitguyst because they make you look cool. And not giving a fuck … whatever.

So Religion, eh? That’s not very zeitguyst I hear you chant to the tune of a Lily Allen album track. All those pews. Fuck off! Ahh, but you’re simply looking at the wrong kind of religion. Kristianity is totally not zeitguyst, and hasn’t been properly since the 60s (apart from for about 2 minutes in the 90s when Woopsy Goldberg acted like a sister) when EVERYONE dressed like Jesus and sung songs like “Koom Hey Ya My Lord.”

After Kristianity everyone got into Hindis in the 90s when Streetfighter 2 came out and everyone totally dug Dhalsim. Then Crispy Mill from The Kula Shakers sung some amazing songs about curry and everyone was like “woaaaahh, Hindis rock – that elephant is dope!” Then Crispy Mill dressed like Hitler or something and Hindi was out.

Next came Buddvarism at the end of 90s. Buddvarism was about shopping at Ikea, chilling out and drinking good quality lager-beer. It went well with Coldplay and the natural lifestyle promoted by their singer Tony Martin. But then Tony Martin shot some fans who were trying to break into mansion and get an autograph and everyone was like, “Fuck! This Buddvar jihad is freaking me out, why bother when reality TV has just been properly invented.”

But right on the heels of Buddvarism came Muslimanity, or Aslan, so called because it was strong like a Lion. Aslan was invented on September 11 2001 by an uptight guy called Oliver Bin Laden. Oliver’s followers flew two planes into the World Centre in New York and all the networks bought the coverage. At first everyone didn’t know what to make of it, a bit like Lost, and they were pissed off and angry and stuff, then it came out on DVD box set starring Nicolas Cage and everyone was like, “Fuck, that was like the best TV ever!”

The other great thing about nine elevens, or 99, as it became known was that it gave the Kristians the perfect chance to fight the Muslims to regain the zeitguyst. Leader of the Kristians George Double Your Bush said, “We’re going to get those folk what done this,” and Kristians everywhere were like, “Fuck, that was inspiring! Lock n load!”

So now we’re in the middle of wholly war, so called because it’s wholly pointless. But it’s the pointlessness that makes it so amazingly zeitguyst. And if you’re thinking, “But hey, the war keeps changing!” – that’s just its zeitguyst management, it’s the same war. Have you ever been to “Afghanistan” or “Iraq?” have you ever been in a TV studio? How can you be so sure?

It’s a vicious fight. Recently a Blackburn based agricultural firm called Jack’s Straw declared that all Muslim employees couldn’t wear their ninja outfits to work any more. This caused outrage amongst the Muslimanity community, but then other places like schools and aeroplanes followed suit. Now Muslims are saying, justifiably I think, that Kristians shouldn’t be allowed to where their own religious accessories – like crosses, dog collars and cruel, bigoted eyes.

Currently Aslan is winning the war because it’s getting way more press. And this week it just dealt another blow to the Kristians as former blue eye boy Katz Stevens has just released his first album as Yusuf Aslan – his Muslim name. Katz was quoted as saying, “It’s now time to make a change. I’m tired of being a Katz, I want to be Lion!”

But don’t expect this one to end any time soon. There are people from Aslan and Kristianity that believe a full scale fuck off war with guns and total cultural ignorance is the only thing that will bring about the end of the world and the rising of fictional characters from their respective novels that will like save them of something. In the meantime I suggest ignoring this particular zeitguyst and immersing yourself in more fickle passing fads such as the Nintendo’s Wee, complaining about Madonna with child, and curing AIDs.

The Moss

You know the Zeitguy. Time to meet the Zeitgal.

The Moss was created in the late eighties when the Huey Lewis and The News tour bus crashed into a truck carrying twenty thousand cans of Pepsi Cola. The resultant explosion was visible from Wales. At the centre of the inferno, pure liquid zeitguyst fused with chunks of Huey Lewis's parboiled flesh then kind of all slurped together like an ice sculpture in reverse. Out of the flames walked the infant The Moss, a child so zeitguyst that time actually warps as it nears her body, keeping her in a perpetual now.

The Moss has the frame of a famine-ravaged Hungarian peasant and the tiny, expressionless eyes of a dolphin. She is, in fact, too weak to stand under her own volition and must move the Earth via telekinesis when she wishes to travel. Small suction-cups on her palms and soles allow her to cling to the sides of buildings. The Moss uses this ability to sneak into neonatal wards and suck the bone marrow from sleeping newborns, by means of a long, spiked proboscis which retreats behind the slack folds of her labia when not in use.

Eager to breed, The Moss sought out an appropriately zeitguyst host in the form of comic Irish simpleton Pat Doherty. Pat had been chosen from thousands of applicants to front the British government's new anti-drugs campaign. In exchange for a rapid descent into self-loathing and ultimately, a squalid early death, lovable Pat got to take all the illegal, zeitguyst substances he wanted. Pat snorted so much coke he was literally 80% zeitguyst, and that was good enough for The Moss.

Unfortunately, before she could lay her eggs in his eye sockets and drink his spinal fluid, she and Pat caught got on camera phone sniffing The Moss's crack. Her baby-sucking proboscis was clearly visible, dangling like a cheroot from the lips of a fat Hispanic prostitute, and for two whole days, everybody said The Moss was Bad. Then, everybody remembered that Bad was once an ultra-zeitguyst album by a guy called Michael The Jacksons, and so The Moss got a big heap of money.

Today, The Moss gets paid billions of pounds to get photographed looking ill. She plans to use the money to buy Pat Doherty, so she can harvest his organs and hibernate in the resultant gangrenous cavity.

ZG

Racism

Some things can take you by surprise, like a really funny email with a picture of some monkeys having a tea party except one of the monkeys doesn’t have a normal monkey face, it has George Bush’s face instead and then you realise that it isn’t just a hilarious joke sent to you by your good friend update345@yourbank.com, it’s actually an advert for digital cameras because at the end it says “Canon – Seeing Life Differently” and you think, ‘Ah, yes. George Bush is like a stupid tea-drinking monkey and I shall buy a camera.’

The reason I mention this is that I think what I have to say today will take you by surprise. You know, like the previous example. But without the camera advert. Or George Bush. Or any monkeys (except tangentially). Okay, are you ready? (Remember, sometimes the zeitguyst can seem strange, scary or wrong, but in these instances, it’s actually you who is wrong because you aren’t being zeitguyst enough.)

Here’s the bombshell:

Racism is totally zeitguyst right now. Whoa there, big guy; don’t choke on your frappuccino, you heard me right. Racism. Is. Zeitguyst. If I know you like I think I do (and I do), you’re probably thinking, ‘WTF?’ or at the very least, ‘OMG!’ Certainly, some kind of three-letter acronym indicating shock will be flying through your head, but just CTFD, okay? Let me explain.

Let me take a wild one, mmkay? You’re thinking: apartheid. You’re thinking: Rodney King. You’re thinking: holocaust. Of course you are. I’m not a psychic or anything freaky like that, I just know what you’re thinking because that’s what everyone thinks when you talk about racism. We’re all on the same page. Everyone pretty much agrees now that racism is a bad thing, yeah? Yeah. Well, everyone except Ghostface Killa, but he’s just doing his job. And because everyone agrees, it’s okay to make jokes about it. You can say anything you like and no one’s going to call you a racist because racists don’t exist anymore (except Ghostface Killa, but he’s a black and doesn’t know any better (ooh, see how much fun unjustified racism can be?)).

Okay, so everyone’s on board with racist jokes; they’re good clean fun and no one can get offended, not even those uptight ragheads in the Middle East (see how fine and okay this is?). So the obvious next step is to slowly reduce the levels of irony in what you’re saying. Remember, the less subtle you are, the funnier it gets. And if you’re really really unsubtle, even people without a basic education, like the stupid mud-eating Irish, will be able to understand you. It’s a very simple formula: less subtlety, more laughs. Just pretend you’re writing the third series of Little Britain.

So if you want to be right at the cutting edge of comedy, try to be as racist as you possibly can. It’s an inclusive, universal humour that has the potential to bring us all together in one huge global laugh-fest. That’s the amazing power of comedy, particularly racist comedy. Now we’re all equal, we can all laugh along together – the chinkies and the darkies and the muzzers and the caspers and the pakis and the honkies and the kikes, united at last in one big, happy family.

Peace.


ZG

Getting Your Stuff Out There

A few days ago I asked you to consider the Lily and open your puffy eyes to the raft loaded with Uber-Zeit, currently floating down the grand old River Teen, that the kids are calling MySpace, but the phenomena of 'getting your stuff out there' goes way beyond that. To understand this we gotta go back, way back to 'the good old days.'

In the 1960s some animals sung 'I gotta get out of this place' and a whole generation were like "wow gravy man" and “Costco, dude” and set out to far flung parts of the planet to “find themselves.”

These crazy young tomorrow people were called 'happies' and at the time they were totally zeitguyst - imagine a Video iPod with a beard. The happies mainly went to places on the right-hand side of the planet like India and the other ‘curry countries,’ and in so doing followed a path known as the ‘happy trail.’ Then they’d come home to places like New York and Burnley and be all like “you gotta get out there, man,” even if they were talking to girls.

The happies weren’t zeitguyst for very long because they lived in caves and smelt and soon people forgot all about them and all the original happies formed computer companies in Silly Cone Valley and made enough money to air condition their caves.

However, even though the rest of happy culture died, the idea of “getting out there” was still totally zeitguyst and people dug it more and more every year. Travel companies even started building small white prisons next to the sea so poor Eurpoeans could still “get out there” without having to meet an untamed local who would shatter their blissful ignorance.

Then in 1995 blur's lead signer, Dr Alban sang the lyric that would forever change ‘getting out there’s’ position as vice-ceo of the good ship zeitguyst.'

“and all the highstreets look the same” (Dr Alban, Blur, The Escape, 1995)

It was almost and aside but when the Doctor spoke the hoards of floppy haired youngsters (known as “indian kids”) who that at the time controlled zeitguyst listened, and they listened hard. Society was never the same again - people from Croyden to Culcutta took a good look around them and went "yeah Dr Alban's right" everything is samey and shit. Why bother getting out there."

So for about six years no body did anything. It was like Raymond Carver was God. And then someone came along and was like “hey, instead of ‘getting out there’, we should be ‘getting our stuff out there,’ that way with our own creativity we can like make the world really cool again.” Everyone simultaneously agreed it was a good idea and immediately everyone started making their own Christmas cards, clothes, bicycles, drugs, and houses; Channel 4 started a programme called Gland Designs where people told a man called Kevin The Cloud about their ideas for a new house and he’d laugh at them until they had finished it; people dressed less like townies and more like grungers; and everyone learnt to play the guitar.

Once everyone realized that everyone was creative and there was no distinction between people in terms of creativity and that everyone could be a popstar people put the great plan into action and started “getting their stuff out there.” And that’s about where we are now. Currently the UK’s fast growing type of business (after Muslim haberdashers) are “get your stuff out there” companies. Most people find they can get their stuff out there for no financial cost, and seeing as dignity knows no physical bounds this is a zeiguyst that could be here for a long time. Just look at this blog!

ZG

Brain

'In a word or two

it's you I want to do.

No - not your body -

your mind, you fool!'

Thus spake the artist formerly and latterly known as 'The Prince' in his paean to maternal incest, Sexy Motherfucker. And that's what today's blog is all about.

No - not pooning your mum - your mind, you fool!

The mind is one of the world's last great mysteries. If you think I'm yanking your chain, consider that we've landed more men on the surface of the Moon than we have on the human brain. It's because of this mystery that the mind is uber-zeitguyst.

Before the advent of conveyor-belt sushi, having a malfunctioning mind was very very zeitguyst. 'Mad' people saw God winking at them from marrows, ate their own poo and wrote lots of poetry, which was kind of like retro text messages sent only to the rich. Nowadays, when a person wants you to remember something they might start their sentence 'bear in mind'. But if you said that to an olden times mad person, they'd literally smash their skull open with a milking stool in attempt to kill the bear trapped inside their brain.

Then, just as war was becoming zeitguyst, a Vietnamese guy called Floyd appeared. Floyd dropped a zeitguyst flip-reverse dingaling, and said that now, not being mad was the most zeitguyst! Talk about changing the rules! It was like he'd approached the chessboard, knocked over all the pieces then turned the board upside down and on the back was written: 'You suck!' and when his opponent looked up from reading it Floyd was there boning the guy's wife to 'Hot in the City' by Billy Idol.

Floyd said everyone was hornier than a child molester with fifty dicks. He bought a couch so girls could come to his flat and talk dirty. If you were a guy, it turned out that to not be mad you had to have sex with your mother and smoke a cigar. If you didn't do it then you got the Octopus Complex and went blind. Because all the guys were screwing their own mums Floyd got laid like a rockstar. His couch saw so much action that they put it in a museum.

Today, even though Johnny-come-latelies like The Prince sing about it, boning your mum is not zeitguyst. If you want to honk on the crack pipe of tomorrow then instead of being mad, you need to be depressed.

Depression is laziness rebranded. You get to lie in bed all day. If you're a guy you might have to grow a neck beard, but that's it. Thom Yorke of zeitguyst megagroup 'The Radioheads' gets paid to cry - it’s said a 20ml phial of his tears can cure Legionnaire's Disease. There's even a whole new genre of music called Elmo, which is about crying all the time for no reason.

The only type of madness that's still zeitguyst is called 'Gay'. 'Gay' used to mean 'being very happy all the time'. Over the years, the definition has changed slightly, and now it means 'having sex with everything in the whole world, including things like telephones and biscuits'. The first person to catch 'Gay' was a piano player called Elton John, who realised that the best way to be very happy all the time was to have sex with everything in the whole world, including things like telephones and biscuits. The first 'Gay' sex was between Elton John and his grand piano, an experience which he commemorated in the song 'The Circle of Life'. The Queen loved the song so much that she knighted him and then had her daughter-in-law killed so he would have to write another one.

Of course, if you want to be way-out-there ultra zeitguyst, you need to have 'Gay' and be depressed at the same time. After years of research, scientists managed to combine the two in the DNA of a chimpanzee called Morrissey. When the monkey escaped during the lab's Christmas party it went straight to bed, crying, and had sex with its pillow, thus assuring its unassailable zeitguystitude for next two decades.

ZG

Travelling

There's an old saying: "It is better to travel hopefully than to
arrive." However, this is a rubbish saying. It is best of all to travel AND
arrive, no matter how you do it, because that's kind of the point of
travelling. If you travel all the time without ever arriving anywhere,
that's not zeitguyst. That's just being homeless. And if you keep arriving
in different places without ever travelling, that's not zeitguyst
either; that's probably schizophrenia.

It's easier to travel now than it's ever been. Because of global
warming, there's more hot air in the atmosfear (not to be confused with
atmosphere, the video board game from the 1990s). This makes it easier for
planes to fly, which means that tickets to Europe are cheaper than ever.
Tickets to places outside of Europe are still expensive. This is
because, without the EU, there is less hot air to float on.

Before cheap flights were invented, people mostly travelled by bicycle.
The first bicycle was invented by Lord Bicycle in 1952 and cost a penny
farthing, which is £4,600 in today's money. It could travel at 3mph,
which seemed so fast at the time that people used to throw up just
thinking about it. After a while, though, people learned not to think while
they were travelling, a tradition that survives to this day in the form
of drivetime radio.

There's another old saying: "Travelling without moving is no good to
anyone." This might seem obvious to us now, but remember that for a very
short and worrying period of time, Jamiroquai seemed like he might be
zeitguyst.

Lest we forget.


ZG

The Planet

Ever hear the old maxim “The Planet is totally zeitguyst right now?” Of course not, because that’s not an “old” maxim it’s a new one. About a zillion years ago when The Planet was first marketed people might have thought that but they would never had said it because language hadn’t been invented yet. If they liked something they’d just grunt and rub their bits on in – like kids do at a My Chemical Romance concert. After the planet’s launch party everyone just got over it and started making other stuff zeitguyst, like war, famine and Sophia Coppola.

 

In the 18th Century (which to my mind is the 4th best century) The Planet was at its the furthest away from the inner circle of Zeit. Having been a bit like “the planet is alright, but whatever, I’ve got to go to the privy” people started inventing new zeitguyst stuff like factories and capitalism, the sole purpose of which was to DESTROY the planet, and because it was zeitguyst no one could stop it and it just took over.

 

There were some people who tried to stop the anti-planet zeitguyst. William Blakes, a mad poet, called them “Santa’s dark mills” but it wasn’t enough to say stuff was bad in writing because books weren’t really zeitguyst enough at that time, people were too busy working 18 hours a day in factories because it was so TOTALLY zeitguyst.

 

And it didn’t stop there. In the 20th century (2nd best century!) the governments of the world hired the most amazingly, brilliant, intelligent people ever invented and asked them to put their intelligences together and make a bomb that would be able to destroy The Planet in ONE GO! The American government was the best at it and they tried out a small one of these bombs on Japan. It destroyed a whole city, and the Americans were like “fuck, that was totally awesome – do it again!” So they did it again and destroyed another city. And then some people were like “but if we destroy everyone and the whole planet, what will be left to be zeitguyst?” And everyone thought about it for thirty years or so and then they were like “Fuck, we shouldn’t do that again. Where’s that guy who doesn’t like Mondays, he’ll know what to do.”

 

Then in the 1980s the world split into two vast opposing camps. On the one side there was the good guys, lead by Neil’s Kinnock, and on the other side was the baddies lead by Ronald McDonald. The goodies were all like “let’s just be cool,” and the baddies were like “yeah, that means blowing shit up.” And amongst the racket everyone forgot about The Planet again. Apart from Duran Duran who sang “This is planet earth you’re looking at planet earth / Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop this is planet earth,” but it wasn’t, it was just the first single from a truly great band.

 

Then in 1990s everyone forgot about war and got into Britpop and Ikea. Now, this was significant because Ikea made loads of stuff out of wood and it reminded people of how cool The Planet was, and then this Britpop guy called Thom Yorke was all like “hey, since we all love Ikea so much shall we check out how The Planet’s doing?” and everyone was all like, “yeah, yeah in a minute I’m at a Northern Uproar concert, my favourite song by them is Town, it’s a really good song.” And then Northern Uproar broke up and were replaced by Coldplay, who were marketed in a way that made people sick so they were like “alright Thom, let’s have a look then.” And then they were all like:

 

“FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

 

The Planet was minging. It looked liked Lily Allen. People had been so caught up in other zeitguysts like global hyper colour, swatch watches, and Murray Lachlan Young that they’d forgotten about The Planet totally and meanwhile the same guys who made the bombs that killed all those poor Japanese people had carried on making things that did the same damage as bombs, only without all the song and dance. It was dark! People held each other, wept quietly and said “Oh! For God’s sake let’s sit upon our beech lacquered floors and talk about Neil Young.” It was bad, worse than Diana’s funeral.

 

BUT …

 

Thankfully now some people have started to say “like, let’s try and save it anyway.” At first people were like “no, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” But after a while they realised it was exactly like when it rained at Wimbledon and now they all had the chance to be Cliff Richard.

 

So that’s where we are right now, and The Planet is so zeitguyst it’s almost unbearable to think above the noise. But the noise is important, they’re trying to get the attention of people like Tony Blair who are still sitting on their beech lacquered floors, stamping the word ‘approved’ onto plans for new runways, softly singing Harvest Moon with a tear in their eyes.

 

Let’s just be cool,

 

The Zeitguy

Myspace

Consider the Lily. As you read this, Lily Allen is the hottest minger in UK pop. Okay, so she sings like her nose is bunged with wet bread and dresses like a horsed-up drag queen at the scrag-end of the seventies, but so what? She's zeitguyst with a capital Now.

Many cultural commentators wrongly believe she's got it easier than a dung beetle born in a cow's ass just because her dad is a famous comedian and film-maker. The truth of the matter is, Woody is too busy wrestling with the dual obsessions of jazz trumpet and neurotic monologues on his unorthodox sexual predilections to offer her advice and, moreover, his Semitic parsimony means she is unlikely to ever benefit from his heaps of immorally-accrued lucre.

The one resource Lily Allen possesses in spades, however, is friends.

Not real friends. Christ on a billy bike, man - real friends went out around the same time as cold sores and foods that start with the letter Q. Real friends take time and patience to source, both of which are zeitguyst kryptonite. Just imagine - you've put in eighteen months building an unbreakable bond between your good self and Tarka, a grinning Eskimo DJ, when the news comes in - Maoris are the new zeitguyst minority! How does it feel to be yesterday's news, loser? I'll tell you how it feels. Like being ass-raped by a clown. A boring clown.

Lily Allen has cyber-friends. In Roman times a person had to be made out of meat and make noises. Now, with the advent of the world wide web, you can group any three sentences together and call them a person. As I write this, I’m the Zeitguy, voguish gunslinger of the wild, wild wow. Later, when I post on the Bring Back Jayce And The Wheeled Warriors forum, I’ll be Palladins_Rawk_2000, a thirty-something-years-young web designer with a yen for insular electronic pursuits. One time, on MSN Messenger, I became Tickle_KiTTY, a twelve-year-old Ohio girl with a keen interest in viewing pictures of her peers. I am legion. (and prohibited from coming within a hundred metres of any school or playgroup)

Back in the bad old days, if you wanted to make a guy seem popular you had to round up half a dozen village-loads of peasants at gunpoint and force them to cheer and wave banners in a square. In 2006, the internet means you get to be the cheering peasants and the moustachioed dictator simultaneously. You just set up a Myspace page with your face on it, then set up fifty others with a bunch of fake names and claim all the other people are your 'friends'. Bingo! Instant clique! And cliques are the little bloodfarts that presage the late-stage colon cancer of full-blown zeitguystitude!

Myspace is a compound noun comprised of two parts: 'my', meaning 'belonging to me', and 'space', meaning 'nothing'. It sprang from the grotesquely shrunken loins of Rupert Murdoch, as a way of reminding ordinary people that he owns everything and they own nothing, not even their own faces.

Today, Lily Allen has so many Myspace cyber-friends she could probably form her own breakaway republic where everyone wears billowing canary-yellow frocks in a futile attempt to draw attention from their gurning bumpkin underbites. It would have to be a cyber-republic though, or else she'd need an army of androids - transhumanist pop-demographics are super-zeitguyst right now.

This is the Zeitguy signing off. (or is it?)

Verbing

There’s really only one thing you need to know about language, and it’s this (so listen with both your ears): nouns are cool. Yeah, you heard me (cause of that ear thing we talked about). Nouns. Are. Cool. Why do you think all the best bands are named after nouns? You think that’s a coincidence? Do you? Hmm? What? You do? Are you serious? You, my friend, are an idiot. There’s a noun for you right there: idiot. Learn it and use it to refer to yourself.

Nouns never go out of fashion. They’re part of the pantheon of eternal zeitguyst, along with drugs and not giving a fuck. Nouns are solid, reliable. They say, “here is a thing”. What’s more, they tell you what the thing is. It could be a dog, a toaster, or the Mayor of Sao Paulo, but you wouldn’t know without nouns. They’re the best kind of words by a long, long way. Adjectives are boring. Verbs stink. Adverbs sit there uselessly. Exclamations? Shit! There’s no two ways about it, people. Nouns are the bomb.

So wouldn’t it be good if we could get rid of all the other words and replace them with nouns? Duh… What are you, special? Of course it’d be good! Well, that’s what verbing’s all about. Take a look at this sentence:

“I’ll search for it on Google.”

Man, I yawned just typing that. Talk about your snooze-fest. “Search”? I mean, honestly, “search”? That is one boring verb. In fact, I’ve just checked on the tediometer, and according to the reading I’m getting, the word “search” isn’t just boring, it’s hella boring. We need to do something about it. Try this on for size:

“I’ll Google it.”

Now we’re talking. See how much better that is? We’ve halved the word count at a stroke. How? Verbing. The noun is always, but always, the best word in a sentence, so take that noun and turn it into a verb. Whoa, hang on. Don’t just “turn it into a verb”. VERB it. See? You can make pretty much any sentence cool. Or, to put it another way, you can cool any sentence. Yeah, now you’re getting it! Come on, let’s try a few more. If you can verb these sentences, you’ll be surfing the zeitguyst, so postcard me the answers.

1.) I’m going to clean it up with the hoover.

2.) Let’s process that image using Adobe Photoshop.

3.) I would like to write the word “fuck” on the side of a pig.


ZG

Uncertainty

Years ago you could look up into the night sky and say ‘that’s a shooting star, I know it is because it’s 1818 and the Wright Brothers won’t invent aeroplanes for ages yet.’ In short you could be certain. Certainity was head-and-shoulders-above-the-water-zeitguyst. And that’s the way people liked it. They’d say, “Margaret Thatcher might be a complete psychopath but at least she says what she thinks.” Certainity was a vote winner, everyone felt the same about it – and they were certain.

 

Yawn! That’s like so ancient history and not even zeitguyst history like with Ringo Starkey on Channel 4, it’s just dead, old history. Uncertainty is now the zeitguyst and that’s not even up for argument, I don’t think… or is it? Um… SEE! It’s totally Z to the E to the I to the T to the gusyt! I’m not even certain and I’m the Zeitguy!

 

Uncertainty is everywhere. Ever heard the phrase “we live in uncertain times?” You bet your pre-ordered blu-ray DVD recorder you have, so there’s your proof right there. And, that’s a good rule of thumb – if people say it, it’s zeitguyst.

 

And it’s not just everyday folk like newsreaders who think uncertainty is totally zeitguyst, check out this hot off the presses lyric by Brandon Flowers from glamorous indie rock n roll band The Killers:

 

“Can we climb the mountain? I don’t know.”

 

That’s uncertainty all right, but is it zeitguyst? We ran that lyric through a computer to see what it would have been in the 1980s:

 

“Can we climb this mountain? No we’re all unemployed and consequently too depressed to embark on a mountaineering expedition.”

 

Wow! Certainity alive and well and living in the 80s, but what about the 90s? We submitted the same line again and this we got:

 

“Can we climb this mountain? We’ve already done it and Tony Blair helped us. Woo.”

 

So we see another case of certainty, what we in the trade call ‘vintage zeitguyst.’ So uncertainty is happening now and it wasn’t before, so even with all this uncertainty we can be ceratin that uncertainty is zeitguyst. Eek, that was a tough call.

 

Now, one of the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of a Zeitguyst analyst is the ability to look at stuff that isn’t zeitguyst, it can tell so much about what is zeitguyst. In this case we have an obvious example – certainity. By looking at what’s happening to certainity we are able to see just how powerful this particular zeitguyst of uncertainty is. Take for example Jim Davidson. Jim Davidson knows he is racist and homophobic. He’s so certain about it he makes jokes about it that can in NO WAY be passed off as being ironic. As a result Jim Davidson is about as un-zeitguyst as you can get. However, on the other hand, and to look at it inversely from the other side of the fence so to speak Jimmy Carr is uncertain whether he is a bigot, so he makes bigoted jokes in a way that can be perceived as ‘ironic.’ Consequently he’s really popular with institution likes The Guardian and Channel 4, which by default make him totally zeitguyst. It’s all down to uncertainty.

 

The same thing is happening in politics. Tony Blair keeps telling us that he’s convinced he’s made the right choices with Iraq, and that he adamant that the British army’s presence in Iraq is working. ‘Convinced?’ ‘Adamant?’  Uh-oh, that’s the language of certainity – which as we all know is totally out right now. All of a sudden his unpopularity with British voters is starting to make sense. This is surprising because Tony used to be quite a Zeitguy (see 90’s lyric above) but the zeitguyst is like a beautiful woman – she likes to be made love to, but don’t cry when you do it.

 

However, the head seat at the head of the table that is zeitguyst is never empty and as Tony finds himself on the Beast’s Wing of popular culture along comes Dave Cameroon to take his place. Dave is so totally zeitguyst he’s named after an African country. Unlike Tony, Dave is really uncertain. He has NO policies, because he knows that by having some he’d have to be certain about stuff and he’s not going to do that; he’s all like “hey I’m on a hot date with Lady Zeitguyst and she’s gone to the loo, but I’m not going to steal a fiver from her purse, get me.” Yeah, Dave’s the ZEITGUY right now, he’s almost as totally Zeitguyst as me, but not quite. People keep thinking he’ll slip up, but he’s way ahead of their game. Like the other day everyone was all like ‘ahh, he’s lost it. He said he was going to cut taxes. He sounded pretty certain.” But then Dave was like, “yeah but I still think Post Offices should stay open even thought it’ll cost more money. Ha!” And everyone was like, “huh? But those two things are like polar opposites or something, what the fuck Tory Boy!” And then they were all like, “Fuck, that’s just him being uncertain. Yo Dave, big your bad self up!” And everyone remembered they still hated Tony more, although they were uncertain. Boom! Full circle.

 

Until tomorrow Zeitfans! (I think)

 

The Zeitguy

 

 

Today Is Tomorrow's Yesterday - Today!

It works like this: If life hands you a lemon, start making lemonade. If the cracks begin to show in your marriage, start smoking crack.

Alchemy was invented in the time of the Ancient Sumarians as a simple way of turning useless objects like poo and lizards into precious gold. The Conquistadors brought this technology back across the Sargasso Sea to Finland, where their finest scholars developed it into the modern science of PR, or 'Perception ReImaginement'. Modern PR doesn't turn actual poo into actual gold - rather, it uses millennia-old wisdom mated with splitting-edge future tech to turn the metaphysical poo of people's wrongful ideas into fat ingots of billion-carat head-bullion. Think about it - thanks to PR, each and everyone of us is quite actually in possession of a skull-sized 'gold mind'!

Since the science of PR is available to all, any group or individual not exploiting its magical transmogrifying strategies is bound to feel the full force of karmic comeuppance just as sure as if they'd put on a really long tie and dangled the fat end in a paper shredder. Just take a look at the papers. No, really look. Harder. No, harder. Well? See there, between the lines? What do you see?

That's right - culture war. On one side, it's the Muslims. Muslimism was a club opened in the sixties for newcomers to Great Britain at a time when the country was overrun by swinging acid beetles. The club was so zeitguyst it hurt. To get in, chicks had to dress up as ghosts... but not just any ghosts! They dressed up as black ghosts - after all, black's invisible at night, and what's spookier than a ghost you can't see?

But you know what happened? As the years went by, these chicks got too spooky, and soon they couldn't go anywhere without giving ordinary folks the heebie-jeebies! Now ghostbusting is zeitguyst - all a politician has to do is say 'busting makes me feel good' or mention the time a Muslimist crashed into the World Trade Centre dressed as a marshmallow giant and on election day their ballot papers have got more ticks than a coked-up autistic kid who's swallowed a pocketwatch.

The answer? You’re damn straight it's PR. Ever since Pac-Man, ghosts have been the traditional bearers of bad tidings. Ghosts moan. They’re transparent and they move through walls. Hands up who wants to be a ghost.

Are your hands in the air? Exact-a-freaking-mundo.

PR takes the bland grain of the Muslimists' full-body black attire and enigmatic questing eyes, force-feeds it into the duck of tomorrow's open beak, and - Mustafa be praised! - creates a sumptuous rebranded zeitguyst foie gras. Muslimism isn't a club full of black ghosts - it’s a club full of ninjas! Lithe, mysterious ninjas all pulling flips off pagoda roofs and throwing little metal stars. Ninjas are sexy, popular with children, and they have a proud cultural history that stretches back all the way to 1987, and the release of Sega's popular sideways scrolling arcade game Shinobi.

Perception ReImaginement. It's so now, it's already over and coming back.

Greetings

Hey. Or do I mean hi? Or hello? Or howdy? We’ve all been there – you
meet someone, you walk up to them, look them in the eye and suddenly,
you have to make a decision. It’s just one word, but it could be the
most important word of the whole conversation. First impressions count;
sometimes, they count to a million. That’s just how important the
greeting can be, so you need to get it right. There’s literally a
thousand ways to say it, so how do you know which one to go with? Yeah,
I know. It’s a universal dilemma. A real brain-fucker. But don’t worry –
I can help you.

A good rule of thumb is to keep it short. The whole reason that hi was
the new hello in the 90s was that it cut the syllable count in half. If
you really have time in your life that you’re prepared to waste on a
redundant syllable, you shouldn’t advertise the fact. Keep it fast and
keep it lazy. That’s efficiency talking. Hi is a classic. Hey is even
better. If you can manage it, try not to pronounce too much of the word,
either. Your hey should be more of a h– if you’re really serious about
it. Nothing says ‘pleased to make your acquaintance’ like a breathy grunt.

Okay, that’s good for most situations, but sometimes, you’re going to
want to put together a custom greeting. Maybe it’s an old friend you
haven’t seen in time, or an ex-partner you want to impress, but everyone
has moments when they want to make an impact with their greeting, so
think bespoke. A good custom greeting is like a good mixtape – solid,
back-to-back quality combined with just enough quirky obscurity to make
it clear who’s in control. Bottom line: I can’t tell you how to put
together your custom greeting. Only you can do that. If you really want
to know, though, I tend to go for a combo of urban slang, Dixon of Dock
Green and Jimmy Saville. Usually something like: ‘Now then now then,
shizzle my nizzle, what’s all this then, blood?’

Now. In the words of one of the greatest thinkers of our time: let’s get
physical. There’s more to a greeting than just what comes out of your
mouth. Whenever you talk to someone, your body is telling them something
about you, so don’t let that something be ‘I’m an asshole’. I don’t want
to lay too much science on you, but studies have shown that literally
400% of human communication takes place with the eyes. In layman’s
terms: if you want to make an impact, don’t talk to the person, talk to
their eyes. If you’re going with the standard h– greeting, you always
want to throw in an upwards jut of the chin. If you don’t know what I
mean, think backwards nod. It says familiarity, friendliness and vague
contempt, all in one spasmodic package. If you’re going with a custom
greeting, though, the chin jut won’t be enough. Instead, you need to
think about getting together a custom handshake to go with it. Time out
while you digest that. New para.

The watchword for the custom handshake is spontaneity. Don’t plan ahead.
What are you; a shake geek? Just get into it – feel the flow of the
handshake. If the time is right for a darkside flip, the time is right
for a darkside flip. If you need a half-fingerpop, throw in a
half-fingerpop. Hell, throw in two if you’re in the groove. Try and
steer clear of moves like the mirrored snap – what is it, 1994? – but
generally speaking, just freestyle it. The key is to be in control. If
you end up being the receiver instead of the dictator, you won’t know
where you are. There’s nothing worse than misreading the situation,
reaching out and shaking a fist. Nothing says amateur like pumping
someone’s clenched hand up and down and grinning desperately like a
maths teacher at an MC battle.

One last thing: the friendly punch. This is pretty much a staple of
man-on-man greetings. A jokey swipe across the chin is a classic, but go
for the shoulder if you can. If not, a slap on the back will do. Too
many slaps on backs, though, and you start coming off as the jovial
middle-manager, so reign it in. A friendly punch says, ‘I respect you,
but if it comes down to it, I have the power to take you apart and feed
you to the birds.’ We’re talking pure AMOG here, people. For you
glossary nerds, that’s Alpha Male Of Group – note this down in your
slangtionary. So, whether it’s the backslap or the friendly punch or
even the playful shoulder push, physical greetings give you the chance
to bond in a way that words alone can’t manage. One word of advice,
though – keep the friendly punch for man-on-man. Feminism’s made great
strides for equality over the last forty years, but there still aren’t
many women who like to say hello by being hit square in the face.

ZG

Books

Wow! I just can't get enough of books right now. Some people are like, 'nah books just ain't all that,' but they're totally wrong. Books are totally zeitguyst right now, I'm on it!

Books were first zeitguyst about a million years ago when they were a cool precursor to DVDs and iPods and then DVDs and iPods came along and everyone was like 'books suck! they're like really old fashioned blogs, eurrgh!' So books makers were all like 'aw man, we totally dug being the zeitguyst, this is rubbish,' but it wasn't like they did anything about it or nothing it was like they were happy living in guyst zeit or no zeit. Huh?

To be honest the attitude of the book people around this time was so bad that I'm not even sure that they deserve to be zeitguyst ever again (but you can't choose zeitguyst - it just happens!), they did all these totally wack things like setting up awards. They set up this one award which they called "The Booker," and then they were all like "yo dude, we've got this totally zeitguyst award you gotta dig us now," and everyone else was like "can you play it over the internet with players from up to 64 different countries? Oh, no, what a surprise you lame ass book losers! Quit bothering us we're out here surfing huge big zeitguyst waves and getting dicks sucked by zeiguyst chicks like Gillian Anderson. You suck big time." And the book guys were all like, "damn, we suck" and they went home to commit like mass suicide or something.

But then this amazing Zeit Gal called JK turned up on the scene with a new kind of book Harry Potter and Joss Stone (or something like that) and everything changed. It was like JK had mowed down a primary school full of zeitguyst haters with a big zeitguyst gun. Books were totally zeitguyst again. Everyone was just like, "wow I feel exactly the same as you about books." If being the zeitguyst was the World Cup, books had just won the zeitguyst!

But it didn't stop there. Next came an even bigger zeitgun in the semi-automatic form of Dan Brown's Da Vinci's Code. Da Vinci's Code was so totally zeitguyst that every person on the planet bought it and agreed it was the best book ever. But even though there will never be a better book millions of book people are out there still trying to make one that's nearly as good, and that's why books are so totally zeitguyst right now that it hurts. It hurts like gallstones.

Whoop, I'm on it!

The ZeitGuy