“I’m just a white boy called the Deputy CC / They said I’d never make it as a bitchin’ MC / You got it all wrong, cos now here I am / Giving it for real in the North Wales BPA jam” - North Wales deputy chief constable Clive Wolfendale

Christ and his mates on a bicycle eating polenta.

Mullets, where would we be without you eh? Honestly, apart from people falling on their arse I really don’t find many things funnier. Yes I am easily pleased.

‘It has been widely accepted that the rival interpretations of quantum mechanics, e.g., the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Many-Worlds Interpretation, and my father John Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation, cannot be distinguished or falsified by experiment, because the experimental predictions come from the formalism that all such interpretations describe. However, the Afshar Experiment demonstrates in an interaction-free way that there is a loophole in this logic: if the interpretation is inconsistent with the formalism, then it can be falsified. In particular, the Afshar Experiment falsifies the Copenhagen Interpretation, which requires the absence of interference in a particle-type measurement. It also falsifies the Many-Worlds Interpretation which tells us to expect no interference between “worlds” that are physically distinguishable, e.g., that correspond to the photon’s passage through one pinhole or the other.’ Kathryn Cramer

Those pesky sceintists have done it again. Disproved a fiarly un-provable theory. Next week, why the past doesn’t exist.

“It’s as if we no longer NEED heroes to tear down to feel better about ourselves, we just create people to be torn down as soon as they appear, not waiting for the time when they stumble.” (The only card Solitaire Rose needs is the Ace of Spades! - Barbelith Underground 2004)

The concept of ‘pseudo people’ or simply famous for being famous is an apparent new construct. Think Liz Hurley, Paris Hilton (Is Paris Hilton a Simulacrum?), Jordan, ‘reality tv’ celebrities.

With all of these people there seems a real (sorry) difference between the media side to them and the real ‘them’ (whoever that is)? Further it seems somewhat difficult to get to that reality past the seemingly ubiquitous media facade. So maybe fame is the simulacrum, one which is constructed by the media and the person themselves sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. This simulacrum almost appears as a barrier against the real, allowing no reality through, further questioning what that reality is in the first place.

So in a sense what is real (in the celebrity sense)? I think the line blurs (take Jordan, and the frankly disturbing announcement that Jordan is dead and Katie Price now only exists).

Of course fame is no new concept, nor the idea of fame to the talent less, one dimensional or simply opportunist. But one slight shift seems to be the time-scale - where fame may have been handed (undeservedly) to historic figures via legend, folk-lore and story-telling, fame is now handed out in the now and the here, legends are constructed, cemented and destroyed - sometimes in the space of a week.

Maybe History is dead, maybe our past only exists in the present, constructed at will to whatever purpose we choose. Then again, hasn’t this always been the case, E.H.Carr believed that ‘History is an un-ending conversation between the past and the present’ not something that can be pinned down to an exact ‘reality’.

Sometimes though it does feel as if the fast forward button is stuck.