Media science was the last exam, and I find it enormously interesting (I shall not make any prophesies or guesses there, I refuse to think about those frantically scribbled pages during four hours of coffee-and-red-bull-induced hyperactivity). The good thing about media science, is that I can disagree. There are methods, a tad of research, some statistics, a smattering of history, a smidgen of social science, a piece of psychology, a pile of popular culture and a pail of common sense. A delightful breakfast kedgeree, endless discussions and sink-teeth-into material.

In media science, they talk about TV and media as a means of flight.
The theory says that the industrial revolution gave us spare time, mind numbing routines and a fragmented life separated from seasons and rhythm. So a need for diversion. TV as a place to disappear into; another world, to vegetate and receive, with no means or need to respond or act. To either rest the mind from real life, or empty ones head: meditation, in a way, a forgetting of self. A flight into fiction, adventure, the mundane, the fantastic, the trivial: as long as it is not your own life. So here we are, the cream of evolution; with hundred channels and nothing on.
Fair enough.

But here is my thougths: I think the fragmented meaninglessness of the news and media in general (read: gossip) generates this need to “go somewhere else”, somewhere simpler, where rules are followed, good guys good, bad guys detectable. It seems to me to be self-generating. The shorter, more dramatic and contextless the news become, the stronger the need for a simple world somewhere. We cannot truly process the information.

As a virtual friend quoted: Be careful who you listen to, because their voices will influence your own.

I knew people who lived through, spoke like, and was more engaged in Coronation street than what was around them (what was around them was admittedly dismal, but so is Coronation street..). And I know a guy, and he is as smart as they come, who says that he stopped reading books because he’d rather live life than read about it. But his TVconsuption is up there among the best.

We choose the flightpattern. Mine at the moment is going south.

I admit I don’t really keep up with Northern Irish news much these days. It’s either desperately provincial – or just plain desperate. Yes, someone planted a bomb the other day, and yes, somebody got hurt. And I’m sure the obscure rural radio show is still going on without me. So. Some things never change.
But the other day, I got tangled in a BBC-infused NI-news-net. And some old skeletons dropped out of the closet. Good old names like Michael Stone and Mad Dog Adair.
Gerry Adams and Martin McGunniess nearly had their parlamentary meeting disturbed by Michael Stone, the old rascal, who wanted to slit the throats of the Shinners. Seriously. No kidding.

Michael Stone – exceptionally bad haircut and not-a-winning personality – stuck his nose out again, and this is a good wan!

Michael Stone is one of those who got an early release under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement following his life sentence for a triple murder. In 1988, he launched a gun and grenade attack on the republican funeral of three IRA members shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar. This is his claim to fame. That, plus that some of the loyalist paramillitaries didn’t want him, as they saw him as unstable

….. hello…? This is from the mentally healthy and balanced boys in UVF, UFF. Gosh, maybe there is something wrong with the guy, do you think?!

Anyway. Said fruitcake heads for Stormont, pockets filled with home made goodies, and after he is stopped, claims his actions were ‘performance art’……uuhhhh, yes. Delightful! Brilliant move of the lawyer there. The bad-haircut-guy, who killed a couple of funeral-goers, and popped up regularly with insane – no, I mean reeeally insane – points of view… well. It doesn’t bear thinking of.

The other version is what he told the police: “My intention was to walk into the debating chamber and look for where Adams, McGuinness and Sinn Fein were sitting. I would have lobbed several nail bombs to cause confusion. I planned to stab Adams and McGuinness and cut their throats.”

During interview Stone said the prominent republicans were “war criminals” and that he just “can’t handle” republicans being in government.

Brilliant – maybe lock the guy up in the Maze again, and give him some of his favourite dope. But here’s the goodies:

The lawyer said Stone – who suffers severe arthritis and walks with a stick – spent two hours working his way through the Stormont grounds to the entrance of Parliament Buildings. After being trapped by a security guard in the doors of Stormont he lit a fuse on a bag he had and threw it into the hall, shouting that it was a bomb. The device never went off and is believed to have malfunctioned after having got damp during the torrential rain that fell that day.

If that isn’t hilarious! Bless the irish weather! And see a middle age freelance loyalist nutcase hobbling through the garden and the rain, pockets bursting with hardware. Too good.

Stone said he had been acting alone telling police: “I am a dissident loyalist freelance.”

Right!

As well as the attempted murder charges, Stone is charged with possessing home-made explosives and an imitation gun with intent.

WHAT? ‘An imitation gun with intent’!? Intent to what? wave threateningly? Use the imitation gun as an imitation gun? I do not miss northern ireland-speak. “acceptable level of violence”.

He is also charged with carrying a garrotte, three knives and an axe and assaulting staff members who trapped him in the revolving doors at Stormont.

Well, well. You cannot say he came empty handed.. well equipped, but lacking one crucial thing: a plan. You know. Sneaking past the guards-kind of plan. Handeling hardware, lighting fuses, guards, ax, garrotte, knives while finding somewhere to put the cane- kind of plan.

And maybe one major blunder: maybe the guards these days are not so lenient and blind towards loyalist paras.

The security forces are not what they used to be.

___________________________________________________________________________________

the RUC are called PSNI these days.

It was all in the Patten Commission … a feeling of change, perhaps. They have a nice little website with a picture of Belfast city hall with a speeding police car going towards it, with the charming caption:

«Making Northern Ireland Safer
FOR EVERYONE
Through Professional, Progressive Policing»

yes. … well. Where do people get the idea from, that putting Capital Initials In Every Word Is A Good Idea? It Makes Everything Look Like It Should Be Abbrevated, And Especially In Northern Ireland, Where Everything Has Some Sort Of Short Form, Three-Letter Combination or Acronym. Or that putting FOR EVERYONE in capital letters does anything else but attracting unwanted attention to that phrasing?

And what exactly is “progressive” policing, if it’s not supposed to mean “fair”…?
……and Ronnie Flanagan nowhere to be seen. Strange days.

I don’t read papers much anymore, I don’t have a telly.

In fact, I have been sans telly for …oh.. the main part of the last sixteen years. I had a telly the first four years, I used it as a pedestal for potted plants and asian souvenirs, considered making a fish-tank out of it, and watched, hungover, all in all four hours of the good Sir David Attenborough. I had it for months before I turned it on to figure out if it was colour or black and white. The thing is: some things on telly are good. Some first class stuff. But it is surrounded by trash. So either you turn it on – default – and accidentally bump into something good,… or… I simply forgot when to turn it on for the good stuff.

It’s hard to find the news and good stories in this overwhelming pile of gossip. If you read something, and it’s not interesting or have no value a week later – it’s gossip. Trash in, trash out. Simple equation.

Yes, I see the point that if a five year old is hit by a train considering security issues would be relevant a week later. There is no argument without counter, there is no incident you cannot take far enough to mean something. Technically, philosophically.

But the thing is: it doesn’t. Actually. Means. Anything. It is Not Important.

Social pornography- we roll around in other peoples unfortunate lives, we thank the Universal Force(s) that it’s not us.I read a thing about a family whose house burned (down?) four times in a year, or something absurd like that. I think it’s supposed to make me feel enormously sorry for them. But as Oscar Wilde said: «losing one parent was understandable, but losing two just seemed careless».

Bad karma, maybe. But seriously.
The unfortunate idiots getting their picture in the paper, with baby, desperate faces, and a pile of ashes in the background, might get support and money from people overwhelmed with pity. For them, there is an incentive. For the rest of us, it’s wallowing in others’ unfortunate lives. For me, it’s a confirmation that people are idiots.

The fourth estate indeed.

These «news» take up memory on my limited hard-drive. Begone, useless stories!

We were all supposed to die of ebola/sars/bird flu and that epidemic that went on in India a few years ago… and some thing in Africa before that, whatsitsname. Most people have forgotten all about it already.
We have leaky minds.

I try to be a little selective.

The true irony? I study media production.