“A man’s ambition must indeed be small
To write his name upon a shithole wall
But before I die I’ll add my regal scrawl
To show the world I’m left with sweet fuck all!”
– Shane MacGowan.
Greetings from Scotland,
casual net surfer, and welcome to my wee thunderground corner of the
world weird web. You may be wondering who I am; I know I often do. Maybe you
wonder the same thing about yourself. Suffice to say, Friendly Fire Fighter is
not my given name, it just makes me sound more mysterious and dramatic and exciting than I
really am. I am a man who has lived a strange and unique and interesting life, in three
countries on two continents, and started Who Rattled Your Cage, in part, to write about it.
The Burns Night kickoff of this blog is totally deliberate. It's my half-sarcastic salute to Scottish writing. This blog is, first and foremost, an exercise in free speech. I do not like the direction Scotland has been heading towards in this fundamentally important arena over the last few years. Putting aside his increasingly bizarre and ludicrous political antics since his (mis)trial, I was disgusted by the court case against Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan last April. The way it was instigated was disgraceful. The fact that Police Scotland, and the too-PC Scottish government, went out and found somebody from the Jewish community to be offended by what was carefully explained to be a joke, so they could charge the wannabe-comedian with a ‘hate crime’…is frightening and disgusting and disturbing in the extreme. Clearly they were looking to make an example of Meechan, as a warning to others about offending po-faced minority (and political) sensibilities. The trial itself was a hate crime, to me, against freedom of expression, and just plain common fucking sense. As a lifelong free speech advocate, it was more than I could handle, or stand, or sit still for. I genuinely could not care less about somebody's sex, or sexuality, or colour, or religion. Just don't try to shut down free speech through intimidation and persecution and prosecution, is all, and we'll get along just fine.
In this blog I am going to say things I am not meant to, according to certain censorious, repressive points of view. I really just don’t give a fuck. This blog will not be for everybody, so please don't bother complaining to me if you feel (sigh) 'offended' like every sniffy agenda-fluid bogeynoser does these limpbrain days. I absolutely couldn't care less. I will have some serious-cum-satiric things to say about both sides of the frantic Atlantic, having a totally different (hopefully perceptive) perspective on our dealings with our cousins over the pond from the average Scot, having lived in Chicago and its suburbs from 2005 to 2016.
Nobody will ever tell me what to think or write in an increasingly insane world. This blog is a testament to that. As thought and culture in this country look more and more like falling into rigid censorious lockstep, ridiculously adopting insane American hyper-PC societal and psychological and linguistics extremes, the need for free, independent voices becomes all the more urgent in Scotland. This is a time of total upheaval in the Disunited Kingdom. Nobody knows who or what or where we are anymore, or when we got here, or why, or how. That’s fine, it makes for a more interesting life. I will put down some thoughts about this stuff here and there, for the pure blind fuck of it.
I have zero interest in literary and poetic canons. That's all just smoke and mirrors and stuff and nonsense. It's academic-career-pimping shite, to keep a network of no-hopers and wannabes and artistic 'gatekeepers' in a tenured job. I write because I have to for some reason; it's as simple and complex and boring as that. And because I really enjoy writing, obviously. Writing, for some people, is an actual physiological process, like breathing and eating and sleeping, some sort of summation of sorts. I am one of those people. I don't even know why I have to do it. Life would be far easier without it. It's certainly taken me to some interesting places, I must admit. I'm not complaining, I'm just making an observation in passing.
I produce outsider art: always have done, always will do. I am not part of any scene. never have been, and never will be. The only things I truly hate are cruelty, stupidity, frigidity, and being dictated to. I don't know how often I am going to update this blog; maybe every three or four days initially, to see how it goes. Some people will like what I write, some will not, and most people won’t give a honking tailwetter fart from a manky donkey’s bahookie. I will just say what I want, publish and be damned. It’s the only way forward. As JG ‘Foetus’ Thirlwell put it:
“I can do any goddamn thing I want.”
The Burns Night kickoff of this blog is totally deliberate. It's my half-sarcastic salute to Scottish writing. This blog is, first and foremost, an exercise in free speech. I do not like the direction Scotland has been heading towards in this fundamentally important arena over the last few years. Putting aside his increasingly bizarre and ludicrous political antics since his (mis)trial, I was disgusted by the court case against Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan last April. The way it was instigated was disgraceful. The fact that Police Scotland, and the too-PC Scottish government, went out and found somebody from the Jewish community to be offended by what was carefully explained to be a joke, so they could charge the wannabe-comedian with a ‘hate crime’…is frightening and disgusting and disturbing in the extreme. Clearly they were looking to make an example of Meechan, as a warning to others about offending po-faced minority (and political) sensibilities. The trial itself was a hate crime, to me, against freedom of expression, and just plain common fucking sense. As a lifelong free speech advocate, it was more than I could handle, or stand, or sit still for. I genuinely could not care less about somebody's sex, or sexuality, or colour, or religion. Just don't try to shut down free speech through intimidation and persecution and prosecution, is all, and we'll get along just fine.
In this blog I am going to say things I am not meant to, according to certain censorious, repressive points of view. I really just don’t give a fuck. This blog will not be for everybody, so please don't bother complaining to me if you feel (sigh) 'offended' like every sniffy agenda-fluid bogeynoser does these limpbrain days. I absolutely couldn't care less. I will have some serious-cum-satiric things to say about both sides of the frantic Atlantic, having a totally different (hopefully perceptive) perspective on our dealings with our cousins over the pond from the average Scot, having lived in Chicago and its suburbs from 2005 to 2016.
Nobody will ever tell me what to think or write in an increasingly insane world. This blog is a testament to that. As thought and culture in this country look more and more like falling into rigid censorious lockstep, ridiculously adopting insane American hyper-PC societal and psychological and linguistics extremes, the need for free, independent voices becomes all the more urgent in Scotland. This is a time of total upheaval in the Disunited Kingdom. Nobody knows who or what or where we are anymore, or when we got here, or why, or how. That’s fine, it makes for a more interesting life. I will put down some thoughts about this stuff here and there, for the pure blind fuck of it.
I have zero interest in literary and poetic canons. That's all just smoke and mirrors and stuff and nonsense. It's academic-career-pimping shite, to keep a network of no-hopers and wannabes and artistic 'gatekeepers' in a tenured job. I write because I have to for some reason; it's as simple and complex and boring as that. And because I really enjoy writing, obviously. Writing, for some people, is an actual physiological process, like breathing and eating and sleeping, some sort of summation of sorts. I am one of those people. I don't even know why I have to do it. Life would be far easier without it. It's certainly taken me to some interesting places, I must admit. I'm not complaining, I'm just making an observation in passing.
I produce outsider art: always have done, always will do. I am not part of any scene. never have been, and never will be. The only things I truly hate are cruelty, stupidity, frigidity, and being dictated to. I don't know how often I am going to update this blog; maybe every three or four days initially, to see how it goes. Some people will like what I write, some will not, and most people won’t give a honking tailwetter fart from a manky donkey’s bahookie. I will just say what I want, publish and be damned. It’s the only way forward. As JG ‘Foetus’ Thirlwell put it:
“I can do any goddamn thing I want.”
I hope you like what I have written. And here...we...go...
VIVA !
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