The Zeitguy

Debt

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Wright) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:11:00 +0000

Hey Zeitfans I'm back. Blogging is totally zeitguyst again and I’ve got a back pocket full of zeit-dollars to lay on the counter of internet’s culture store.

I was tucking into my totally zeitguyst bowl of Kellogg's Kredit Krunch this morning when it struck me like zeit-train on a mission to Mars: debt is totally zeitguyst right now.

Huh? What? Come again? I know what you’re thinking, but hold up uno-seconda that zeit-fact needs a little fiscal fondling. You see, back in the olden days, a time us Zeit Masters like to call “The Early-Nineties”™ debt suddenly took off in a big way. For years we’d had the same Prime Minister - Mr T, who didn’t suffer fools but was shit at everything else. During Mr T’s reign of terror the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Poor poor, it has horrid. But then, in 1990 Mr T introduced compulsory poll-dancing. This for the poor was a step too far. They revolted, which was revolting and eventually Mr T went mad and ran away.

The hint was on to find a new Prime Minister but everyone soon got tired of it and started listening to The Las. Just as Lee Majors reached the final chorus an all together different type of Major conducted a military co-op and took number 10 for his own. Major John (retired) a circus clown and cricket enthusiast took over running the country and no one noticed. Sadly Major John (retired) was shit at every thing. Very soon after taking the reigns at Number Ten he spent all the country’s money on a one day hip-hop festival called Black Monday. It was then that debt, for both poor and rich, became totally zeitguyst.

Everyone thought that in 1992 Major John (retired) would be voted out but an administerial error meant that only person that remembered to run against him was a ginger Welshman called Kneeling Kinnocks and Majors got in again.

But in 1997 a superhero called Tommy Blairs appeared bathed in the light of heaven and everyone felt so giddy at the sight of him they pretended to like D;Ream. Tommy Blairs was like a dream come true and dead spunky to boot. Since helping The Authority defeat Lucifer in the battle of Heaven, Blairs had been constantly working out and reading to make himself perfect enough to lead Britain to greatness.* He was disgusted with all the debt Major John (retired) had created and so fashioned out of haggis, The Communist Manifesto and his own rib a towering, ugly creature called Gord to get rid of it all.

Gord was immense, like Achilles but with a glass eye and no social skills. He crushed all debt and then started on The Carry On Films, declaring “The Age of Bum and Bust is over.”

Eventually, as even children in inner-city schools know, Tommy Blairs got a promotion and in 2007 started his new Job of leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt. He reluctantly left Gord in charge. I say reluctantly because Gord, don’t forget, wasn’t a real person, merely a mixture of sheep’s gut, outdated political idealism and Blairs’ own rib.

As soon as Gord took over strange things started happening all over the land. Promises were broken, the Police started rioting and Zimbabwe got invited to the Olympics. “This is shit!” everyone rightly said, “but at least there’s no more debt. We tolerate you Gord!” But then the worst thing ever happened. Debt came back and was all like “erm, sorry I was sitting here, fuck off.” The truth was out, Gord never got rid of debt at all, he just put it in a jar and said “Och, I hope no one finds out.”

The first thing to go wrong was at Tyneside Crack House Northern Rock. Debt broke in and shat on everything pink. Now it transpires that Debt has been in London this week eating people’s footsies. It could be your handies next!

So it looks like debt is here to stay for now, which makes it totally zeitguyst. If it continues much longer Britain will undoubtedly bring in a new Prime Minster called David Cameroon, who’s pretty zeitguyst on account of having a whole African nation named after him. Time, you crazy horde of salivating zeit-fans, will tell.

* war

Bitchiness

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 16:16:00 +0000

Bitchiness

This week the gloves have come off the other foot in the big pay TV battle. In the blue corner, there’s BuyTV owned by Austrian money lover Ronald Murdochs and in the red corner Virgins Melua owned by money-hating, peace-loving, prancing beard Richards Bramstead. And it’s getting nasty.

It all started about 20 years ago when Murdochs came to Britain and decided to buy everything. He bought toothpaste, cars, weed killer, newspapers, roads, polticians and pickle. After about a year he owned most stuff and he started trying to think about ways he could own stuff that couldn’t be bought. At the time British people, known popularly all over the world as ‘The Roast Beefs’ paid about sixty English pounds a year for a “TV licence” and for this they received 4 channels, three good ones and ITV. Some people opted for free TV by not buying a TV licence and then just never opening their front door. It worked for them.

Murdochs saw this and said “aye curumba” and “eat my shorts, if I owned TV people would cower in their houses from me, I want in.” So kind old uncle Ronald set up BuyTV and told the Roast Beefs that as well paying for their TV licence they could now also pay £30 a month for even more TV.

Quite understandably the good old Roast Beefs said “No, old boy, we’re quite happy watching Wimbledon at the moment. If it rains Cliff Richards is going to sing a song, that’s why we won the war.” Murdochs was well pissed off, there was not much point in owning something if nobody want to buy it. So Murdochs started building an army out of all the things he had spent his first year in Britain buying. The toothpaste and the pickles didn’t prove very effective weapons, and he didn’t want to poison everybody with weedkiller because then there would be no one left to buy his BuyTV. In the end he used the newspapers he bought to tell everybody what to vote for, and because everyone knows newspapers are a kind, benevolent force they did it.

Soon the politicians and pop singers realised that Murdochs could make anybody do anything and they started saying things like “I’ll do anything for you Ronald Murdochs, anything at all.” Ronald thought quietly for a while and then said, “all I want is to own everything and control everyone, is that too much to ask?” He looked really sad and all the politicians and popstars felt really sorry for him and they pledged to help. They devised a plan to help make everyone want to buy Murdoch’s crappy BuyTV. The problem they said was that instead of lots of programs all he had on his BuyTV were about 3 shows that he showed round the clock on repeat. They told him that if he could take all the good TV programs from the terrestrial channels then people would have buy BuyTV to watch them. This for the Pirhanna brothers was the turning point.

Soon everybody had BuyTV and Murdochs could control people not only with his newspapers but through his TV. He was well happy. But he didn’t bank of Bearded Bramstead.

Richards Bramstead was a gypsy that lived on wild berries, danced naked and listened to rock music. Everybody loved him. He spent his working days trying to save the environment and make people happy, and in his free time he presided over a multi-billion dollar industry that included space travel, aeroplanes and cosmetics. When Murdochs started buying everything people said to Bramstead “hey Bramstead turn your music down we’re trying to get brainwashed here.” But after a while a few left wing people who were too middle class to watch television came to Bramstead and said “look, can’t you beat Murdochs up or something, he’s frightful.” At first Bramstead was all like “yeah, but no, but, I’m mean how can I maaaaan, I’m just a simple dancing naked hippy, innit.” But then they pointed out that his hobby of running a multi-billion dollar industry might stand him in good stead, and he was all like “yeah, wow, gravy man!”

So Bramstead set up Virgins Melua (in part named after his favourite rock singer Katie Melua) and offered a service called fourplay, which meant you could get TV, mobile, broadbands, and home phone all from one place – kind of like centralised communism, except with all the bad bits of capitalism as well.

Murdochs was sad again. “why can’t I just own everything!!” he cried, but Bramstead wasn’t giving up that easy and done some crazy naked dancing and said “virgins are great at fourplay!!”. So Murdochs stated telling everyone that Bramstead was gay, and Bramstead started telling everyone that Murdochs hated gays. And the Roast Beefs were all like I don’t care I’m watching Lost. Then Murdochs stopped selling Lost to Virgin Melua so the people who had choosen to go with Bramstead couldn’t watch it any more. So Bramstead hit back by calling Murdoch’s news channel “Buy Snooze” instead of Buy News. It didn’t really make up for the fact that no one could watch Lost.

So now the Roast Beefs have a decision to make – they can go with Bramstead safe in knowledge that he will always advertise in the Guardian and his son is surfer, or they can go with Murdoch’s who is a version of the devil himself but does have Lost. It’s a tough one, but the Roast Beefs on the whole are an ignorant, selfish, cold-hearted nation of poorly educated zombies, so they’ll buy Murdochs.

Whatever the end result, one thing is for sure – Bitchiness is zeitguyst right now, and we’re only just getting started.

Capital Punishment

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:58:00 +0000

This news is fucking scorching!

Former Raggy Doll Sadsack Hussain is to be totally killed by the neck
any moment soon. “So what? Is it a Nintendo Wei?” I hear you cry, and
you’re in part right to be all like ‘I dunno, whatever!” about it.
We’ve heard so much about Sadsack recently that’s he’s become as dull
as fading candlelight. But, (and that’s a wireless controlled, motion-
sensor of a ‘but,’) it’s what’s happening to him that’s got my
zeitguyst ears a-pricked and my what’s hot thermometer perking up
like a paedo’s cock at a fun fair. Being totally killed by the neck
any moment soon might sound like a pre-meditated murder-crime, but
because a government is doing it it’s called ‘Capital Punishment’ and
that’s totally OK. In fact it’s more than totally OK – it’s
zeitguyst; it’s goddamn Zeit City, Arizona.

You see, in the olden days before Apple’s Mac and the Doobie Brothers
Capital Punishment was a subsidiary of Capital Records and a pretty
steady zeitguyst. People were hung and electrocuted for stuff like
stealing, coughing in public and committing bum sex. At the age of 8
and 3/4 children were issued with their own gallows and given license
to hang anyone they saw committing a crime. Crime levels soared. It
perplexed the authorities. A lot. It seemed that getting hung had
become a kind of status symbol, (that’s where the zeitguyst phrase
‘hanging out’ comes from). So in an attempt to beat the zeitguyst the
government went “Ok, enough’s enough. Let’s not have Capital
Punishment no more. Nuh-uh, not even a little bit.”

Many folks were angered by this decision, they said things like: “But
we haven’t invented prisons yet, what will we do with all the filthy
crims?” But then the government invented prisons and everyone kinda
calmed down a bit. Afterwards people started to find vote-winning
reasons for why we banned it, like: “but people are groovy, that’s
why we shouldn’t kill them,” so the whole zeitguyst thing got written
out of history, but that’s what we in the Zeit Industry have come to
expect. We bear no grudges.

Anyway, meanwhile in America the government still totally dug killing
people but only for really big crimes and offences like being struck
out at baseball three times. It wasn’t exactly zeitguyst (per se) but
it carried on, like Cliff Richard. But now with Sadsack’s imminent
neck thing coming up imminently people all over the world are
starting to ask imminently: “Is Capital Punishment cool again?”

In this country public surveys are being carried out at random. A
balanced cross section of society have been giving their opinions on
capital punishment with the news of Sadsack’s imminent hang time.

“I think we should start killing people. If Sadsack, who only killed
foreign people, is getting killed then why not paedophiles who look
at kiddy porn of English children.” Mrs C, mother of murdered child,
Birkenhead

“I want that man dead. And other’s like him.” Mr T, Husband of woman
murdered by street gang, Essex

“I think we should bring back Capital Punishment to help with the
grieving process.” Ms P, daughter of old lady murdered and raped by
thug, Surrey

Wow! It’s sobering news indeed. That RANDOM cross section of society
shows that people are totally behind Capital Punishment 100%. After
something is zeitguyst it becomes ‘news worthy,’ then when
something’s been news worthy for a while then it becomes “common
law,” and then eventually “law.” The process has started. I tried to
get opinions from the Yanks on this too, but apparently they haven’t
learned to talk yet, so we’ll just have to wait.

Hmm. It’s a moral minefield filled with ethical explosions and stuff
but what of poor old Sadsack? Life can’t be easy if your fingers are
all thumbs, and it’s all over yet, when he’s standing in front of the
gallows on his two left feet getting ready to be hung out to die look
out for the knobbly knees of his Raggy Doll chums – there could be
trouble in the factory tonight. But for the rest of us we have to sit
down and ask ourselves: can it be right to kill someone who is, by
his own admission, ‘happy just to be.”

Misogyny?

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:34:00 +0000

Misogyny?

OK, so it’s another unpopular one, but here the Zeitguy out.

A few days ago I was all like “what misogyny? Nah, get out of town that’s not zeiguyst and if it is you can dress me in a pair of bell bottoms and call me wizard.”

Well I wish it could be Christmas everyday, because this zeiguyst is a gift. It all kicked off when maverick film director (Weddings and Funerals, The Hairy Potter) and Luton Town FC manager Mike Newell had this to say after his rubbish football team lost some goals of football.

"She [assistant referee Amy Rayner] should not be here. I know that sounds sexist, but I am sexist, so I am not going to be anything other than that.

"We have a problem in this country with political correctness, and bringing women into the game is not the way to improve refereeing and officialdom. It is beyond belief. When do we reach a stage when all officials are women, because then we are in trouble. It is bad enough with the incapable referees and linesmen we have, but if you start bringing in women, you have big problems. This is Championship football. It is not park football, so what are women doing here?"

“Holy Shit that man’s a cunt!” I thought to myself. “I wish I could make him eat MY goal.” My goal to achieve equality among the sexes, that is. I was all ready to post on how misogyny is totally not ZG and how equality is. I had most of the most written I had just left gaps to put in quotes to how people had reacted badly. But none came. Well apart from Zoe Williams and the problem with Zoe Williams is that if she writes an article saying how angry she is about something you can’t help but feel it was worth it in some way.) So, I was left think that maybe more than one person felt that way about women. Could misogyny be zeiguyst? I fear it might be.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of women.

Pros*

They look good. Even the ones that don’t are still better looking than men

They’re better at a lot of stuff than men

They commit fewer crimes than men

They don’t poo.

Cons

They like Sex & The City

They threaten us

They can sometimes smell ‘down there,’ but then hey, so can we fellas

Interesting discovery. And did you spot the con that wasn’t a con. No, not the smell thing, that’s your own perversion. It was the fact that they threaten us. That’s not a con you fool, that’s your own insecurity. Yep, that’s right. Newell doesn’t hate women, he’s fucking petrified of them. Their common sense, good looks, ability to bare children (and also arms), the fact that they might laugh at his willy.

Now, I’m not a stickler for protocol, but I HAVE DISTINCTLY POINT OUT TIME AFTER TIME that zeitguyst means stuff that is really hot right now at this moment in time. Misogyny is actually an age old tradition invented when men made women change their name in marriage. “Oh but someone’s gotta Shal! Why not yaow?”) and leading right but to Mike Newell’s outburst. It’s not zeitguyst because zeitguyst is based on what people think, not what men think.

Sorry guys, you’re just gonna have to find a minority group you can all agree to hate. Maybe footballers?

*(he he, I don’t mean prostitutes, but if you thought I did you’re probably misogynist and should go and see a doctor, ideally an woman, doctor – conquer your fears)

Compassionate Conservatism

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 22:16:00 +0000

Like those recalcitrant pebbles of dried poo that cling to your bum hair, money has forever been in close, sometimes awkward relationship to that which is zeitguyst. (in this particular metaphor I’m using the human anus to represent the dark, mysterious, ever-shifting void of zeitguystitude)

Originally, money was made from a composite of trees and peasant babies. Money was a bit like Pogs or Pokemon - whoever collected the most was the most zeitguyst, and everybody else had to do what they said. Getting people to do what you said because you’re rich was called 'exploitation', and anybody who was anybody was doing it. When rich people came to America, they thought they could do better, so they started a super-zeitguyst spin-off movement called 'blaxploitation', where they hired lots of really cool rappers, jazz singers, basketball players and great dancers to work for them as slaves. For a while, in America it was zeitguyst to exploit and zeitguyst to be exploited - so everyone was happy, right?

Well, yes - until in the sixties the Demokatz kicked off something called Cyril's Rights Movement. The Demokatz said that rappers, jazz singers, basketball players and dancers would be better off rapping, jazz singing, basketball playing and dancing than cleaning Publicans' floors, and everybody was like 'hell yeah!' and suddenly Cyril's Rights became so zeitguyst it felt like there was an orgasm in your mouth and everybody was invited.

So what were all those once-zeitguyst rich dudes supposed to do? The answer came in the form of near-sighted Scottish billionaire Scrooge McDuck, who, after years of seclusion following a botched surgical procedure that left him looking like a duck, (a particularly ironic mishap given his surname) emerged to tell the world that, although he would continue to swim in a big vat of currency, he planned to wind in the whole exploitation side of his business and concentrate on solving mysteries and/or rewriting history. (his Nazi apologia Holocaust Schmolocaust received mixed reviews)

The world's reaction to Scrooge McDuck was 'huge mcfuck!' Soon to follow in his rehabilitated footsteps were similarly disfigured tycoon Cyril Sneer (whose counter-campaign 'Cyril's Right' had tanked spectacularly) and grotesque Italian-American treasure-hunter Wario.

Having blown the mid-terms, the Publicans are now realising that they need to get with the programme and turn into more compassionate conservatives. To show how moderate – and therefore zeitguyst – they are, every rich Publican has pledged to have an abortion then sell the foetus on ebay and give the money to followers of Aslan.

Demokatz

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 23:32:00 +0000

"It's coming home, It's coming home, It's coming... (my) Football's coming home." sung The Light Seeds in 1996 (and again in 1998) to celebrate the return of the lost football belonging to moribund comedians Franks Skinner and David Bad-Eel. By chance the release of the song coincided with the Euro 96, being held in that year in the glorified county of England, and football fans everywhere adopted it as the perfect thing to sing at foreigners when they felt threatened. In the end The England lost games of football to Germany in the semi-finals and the whole country did a moan, but secretly people were quite happy because everyone had shared a super-zeitguyst for a while, and zeitguysts are the one thing that bring people true happiness.

You could say the same thing to George 'Double Yer' Bush (george double yer bush / george double yer honey / george double yer executions / george double yer money Bernard Towers 2000) at the moment, that the results of the Yank midterms don't matter because for a few days everyone was thinking about the same thing and it was a cool zeitguyst. But I don't think that'll be too much of a consolation because George Bush's Publican party took a hammering in the polls. They lost seats at all levels: The House of Reprimandatives, the Sedate, and State Terminators too. He's now a what people are calling 'a dead duck' president, not being able to pass any laws without running them by the Demokatz first, and they hate all his ideas and will just say no out of spite. At least Steve Bell isn't still drawing him like a monkey in The Guardian - then he'd really be fucked. So last night it was time for drastic measures - Bush said Donald Bumsfeld couldn't be his best friend any more, hoping that maybe everyone would also pick on Bumsfeld and then Bush could slip away unnoticed from the pile of dead Iraqi and Americans at their feet. Of course people don't tend to forget genocide, and even if they do his God will burn him in Hell, so it was a diversionary tactic at best. With Bumsfeld gone Bush people will atleast be off his back for a while - it was his way of saying to the mothers of dead 17 year old soldiers everywhere - you lost your son, so to make up for it I won't hang out with this despotic war mongerer. We all make sacrifices, I guess.

So, enough about Bush, he's so NOT zeitguyst right now, as the brave, intelligent people of the Americas have told us. It's all about Demokatz. The Publicans are yesterday's (that word makes me sick) news. The demokatz are led by a lady called Hilary Hilton, who is the sister of pop demi-god Paris Hilton, and heir to the Hilton Hotel Chain. Hilary is also married to former president Bill Hilton (well, they are from the South). Hilary is hotly tipped to go for a run in 2008 and people are hoping she won't stop until she reaches the Oval Office - quite what the British Cricket Association will have to say about that I don't know but time will tell. If Hilary becomes president she will be the first woman to be president, which would be MEGA and totally zeitguyst, but then there are all sorts of other types of human lining up to become the first type of president: there's a black man, an hispanic, even a couple of people claiming to be 'honest.'

The Demokatz now feel with all this zeitguyst from the midterms they can ride a wave of public support into the presidential campaign, which according to them starts now. Across the world people are hoping that too, in fact there's only about three people still want the Publicans in power - Dick Trainee, Tony Blair and Christian Right. Even Bush looks like he couldn't give a fuck now. But whether they can or not is another matter. You see the Demokatz are a bit cruddy too. When Hilton was president he did nothing all day but get involved in minor fracas and fuck bitches - like a gansta raper. So people might start saying things like 'look america's just a bit shit - why don't we just board it up like at the end of the mega zeituyst film ' right at your door' (oh -woah, the twist you NEVER see coming - that's £8.50 and two hours I'll never see again).

the world waits with baited breath etc etc

ZG

Tom Cruds

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:13:00 +0000

The Lord works in mysterious ways, but science is totally right 100%
of the time, and this week it was announced that actor, scientist and
former Hollywood golden boy Tom Cruds is to be made the big cheese
down at United Artists. Cruds and his producing partner Paul Wagner
have been given free reign by studio bosses Sony to produce four
films a year, most of which will have Cruds in the lead role playing
short fictional characters that look like Cruds himself. This is
making Cruds totally zeitguyst again and for all the right reasons.

Now if you're sitting there in your Ikea Jules swivel chair going all
like "but Tom Cruds has always been zeitguyst, isn't he like drugs in
that respect," haul your stupid head (that's probably got hair in
curtains on top of it) out of your past it arse and tune into ZEIT FM
on DAB radio Tom Cruds totally stopped being zeitguyst in August when
he got dropped by his last studio for being a scientist.

Sounds unfair doesn't it? After all science has helped make great
things like iPods and Ferraris, and to stop all sorts of shit stuff
like The Black Death & famine. But in recent years people have become
wary of it because it still hasn't cured, AIDS, some cancers and
terror. Also, clearly stupid people like Keiths Richard and Pat
Doherty have 'defied' science by not dying from their drug trials.
But science is still pretty alright by people generally, it's just
Tom Cruds just started going on and on about it. Science this, and
science that. Then, he captured a girl called Katie from outside her
home and started doing scientific experiments on her. When he had
tried this before with girls called Nicole and Penelope people didn’t
mind so much because they were foreign, but now he was trying it with
an American it was not on. People were not impressed, they liked
Katie, a lot. They even gave her a man's nickname - Joey - to show
their affection.

After a while Katie started saying weird things like "Tom Cruds is an
amazing man." Now people had liked Tom Cruds because he was an
amazing actor (though he's never proved himself as a scientist yet)
but no one thought he was an amazing man, he was not like Jamie Foxx
or Warren Beatty in that respect, so people immediately knew
something was suspect. Everyone quickly realised that he had been
using his scientific voodoo on her. Then she got pregnant, and people
woke up to the fact that Tom Cruds was using Katie/Joey to breed a
new race of short, mutant scientist babies that would take over the
world. Cruds was dropped by his studio and people forgot all about him.

Until now. As the vanilla sky set last Wednesday Cruds issued a firm
statement “I’m back!” Cruds is on a mission to achieve the impossible
and make people like him again, but he’s not going to compromise, the
signal this week is that it’s either him, science and his breed of
mutant science babies or nothing. It was Cruds way or the highway.
What a maverick!

Divorce

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:49:00 +0000

Love and marriage,
Love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.
Ask the local gentry -
They will say it’s elementary.

When Frank Sumatra sang these words in 1955, they were so zeitguyst that his audience's faces literally peeled away from their skulls and splatted on the floor like flubbed pancakes. Nowadays, it’s a whole different kettle of ballgame. All the horses have moved from carriage-pulling to porno and the local gentry are too busy dominating the buy-to-let market and having sex with close relatives to offer an opinion on the matter.

Let's face it - marriage is dead as saying 'izzle' after everything, and the Zizzle Gizzle ain’t fizzling jizzling, you dizzle?

Paul McCarthy used to be the lead singer of 'Beetles', a band who bum-raped the sixties with a giant dildo made from Now and bits of scouser. He married a woman called Linda who loved the world so much that she refused to eat anything. Soon she died, and so Paul had to find someone else who would sit on his willy while he sang songs about his sheepdog and ceiling repairs.

One day, Paul met a woman called Feather Mills. Feather Mills was famous because she only had one leg, whereas normal people have two legs. They met while she was painted pink and working as a flamingo croquet mallet. Halfway through his round, Paul McCarthy realised he was playing with a live woman and it was love at first sex.

However, only a few months into the marriage, things turned sour when Paul realised she was broken. Real woman have two legs but Feather Mills only had one. Criticising disabilities is no longer very zeitguyst but luckily for Paul, everybody voted and said having one leg isn’t so much a handicap as a comic misfortune.

As you can imagine, Feather Mills was hopping mad. She said Paul McCarthy was out on a limb and he didn’t have a leg to stand on. Paul McCarthy retreated into a weekend-long conference with his lawyers, where they tried to come up with a brilliant pun about Feather Mills' absurd deformity in the hope of winning the impending divorce proceedings.

This week, the papers ran the headline: MCCARTHY: FEATHER IS A BITCH WITH ONE LEG

ZG

Sadness

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 11:10:00 +0000

In 2004 miserable gay chimp Morrissey sung “how can anyone possibly know how I feel.” He expected people to react by being all like “I just don’t get this music at all, but I’ll say I like because everyone else seems to,” which is how people had always reacted to his music, thus elevating him to the status of some wanky indie God. But this is time everyone else in the world turned around as one and said “yeah, we know how you feel Morrissey. We’re all sad.”

Sadness is totally zeitguyst these days. Boo hoo. Oh these days! Just look at the last few zeitguysts. Racism? Brevity? The Moss? These are sad times indeed. People are sad the world over, from Croyden to Calcutta folk are wiping dewy tears from their sad, weak eyes and saying “it’s like the world is an episode of Tarrant on TV and we had all this funny stuff and now he’s just gone ‘now before the break a serious message about AIDS.’”

Sadness has been around since the dawn of time, but it only started getting popular in the last forty of so years since the early work of The Beach Boys made happiness seem so tacky and shit that people desperately wanted to try something new. Before that we didn’t have sadness so much as we had seriousness. People just got on with it. Then this woman called Sylvia Platt came along and was like “fancying your dad like six million Jews being killed, and that’s sad.” Suddenly everyone could recall the horrors of the holocaust at the click of a finger. It was like: “my husband left me … like a train leaving for Auschwitz” or “I missed the bus… which I presume is like missing a family that’s been gassed.”

So the world got a whole lot sadder. Morrissey and other sad people started singing sad songs about not being able to go out because they didn’t have any clothes. Then, this century, a girl called Elizabeth Worzel made a book called Prozac is a Nation, which got made into a film staring Wednesday Adams. Prozac is a Nation was a science fiction that imagined a diss-topian future where a nation was founded for all the sad people to live in.

Sadness was already pretty zeitguyst but then a whole new music called Elmo was invented that was about crying all the time for no reason. It was called Elmo because the “Elmo kids” felt they were being followed by a furry red monster all the time and this was one of the reasons they were sad. Elmo music was the straw that broke the camel’s back and made it cry like a simpering little girl.

The world is sad right now: OFFICIAL. I’m sad right now. Your sad right now. If your not sad because you’re all like “I got bath salts and a desk that’s been painted red to make it look modern!” Remember, these are not happy things, they are products of capitalism which is one of the main reasons why we should be sad. Everything you own was created to the determent of a poor person. You are sitting on slavery, you eat murder, when you see Madonna saving black children the TV you watch it on was made by a child who will never be saved. Cry bitch! It’s getting worse.

XXXXXXXXX Z_E_I_T_G_U_Y XXXXXXXXXX L

Brevity

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:01:00 +0000

Very Now.

ZG

Muslimanity

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 10:51:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 03:25:00 +0000

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.

Racism

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 18:19:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:09:00 +0000

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!

Brain

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 23:43:00 +0000

'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.

Travelling

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:39:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:14:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 11:21:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 13:28:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:30:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:51:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:08:00 +0000

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.

Books

noreply@blogger.com (The Zeitguy) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:58:00 +0000

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