What I Did Next Will SHOCK You!!!!

I am being bombarded with information and it’s totally my own fault.

I wouldn’t mind if this information was useful; most of it isn’t. Most of it is utter rubbish.

The main source of this nonsense is my computer but there is an awful lots being beamed at me via my television screen. It’s almost like a drug that I can’t quite shake off. And believe me, there are people who are far more addicted than I am.

It’s starting to annoy me and, what’s more, my own stupid temptation to indulge in this crap annoys me even more.

You may be wondering what I am talking about. Let me explain.

One of the biggest culprits is Facebook, something I try to avoid, but often just open up to see what’s going on. I don’t know why I do this because the truth is I am not interested at all. Nevertheless, there  is a little demon inside me, urging me to have a quick look, in case I am missing out on something.

This concept is known as Fear of Missing Out and it afflicts most people under the age of 40 who have Facebook accounts. Anybody older than that, like me, should probably not ever have an account and should know better. Most of my close friends who are my age think I’m a fool for using Facebook. However, Mrs PM uses this cursed social networking site regularly and often remarks that so-and-so has done such-and-such and that I should take a look.

And then I’m trapped.

I read some banal nonsense about what people are doing and then I see it: the phenomenon known as clickbait, which are basically articles that are like tabloid headlines, sensationalised in such a way that it is difficult to resist clicking the link and reading the story.

The articles usually have been liked by friends or by other things I’ve stupidly liked. The headlines are similar to:

This man saw a woman being attacked. What he did next will ASTOUND you.

So you click the link and end up watching a shaky video with a man taking off his shoes and hurling them at a kid attacking a young woman. A lucky shot caught the kid in his nether regions and he eventually hobbled away.

Another example is:

Ten simple tricks that can save you thousands of dollars.

or

Eight things you didn’t know about heavy metal music

Twenty facts about cats that will SHOCK you.

A lot of these links are full of advertising and if you are dumb enough to click on them using a smartphone, you end up having to watch a thirty second advert for a product that you have no interest in whatsoever, only to eventually see the main article and curse yourself for wasting the minute it took you to read it.

The truth is that there is no fear of missing out. My only fear is being drawn into hours of reading stupid articles peppered with irritating adverts.

I am absolutely sick of it, but, like an incompetent moth drawn to a flame, I find myself clicking the link subconsciously and wasting yet more time, reading yet more drivel or watching yet another totally pointless video.

I'm a buffoon.

It’s not just Facebook. When I decide to research something for this blog – or anything else I am writing – I find myself drawn to links and, like Alice wandering down an endless rabbit hole, I descend into the bowels of banality, reading pointless information that will have no bearing on my life, will not contribute to my research in any way whatsoever and ultimately will end up in a box in my brain labelled:

Lost Battles in the War Against Procrastination

Another source of this crap are emails. People who actually enjoy dumbing down with clickbait send links to them in emails entitled:

 You simply MUST read this.

And being an idiot, I click the link, read it and curse myself once more.

It’s not all bad though. I use the internet constructively sometimes to research information, discover new music and add positivity to my life. I have learned so much by researching facts for my blog and to use in arguments with arses on the message boards I sometimes visit.

I just need to resist the clickbait.

Finally, I blamed my television earlier and I stand by that statement. I am trying my best not to turn into a couch potato but with so many channels available on my telly box, I find myself channel surfing and watching all sorts of rubbish.

I could be outside doing something interesting but instead I’ve spent fifteen minutes watching a show about an old couple who want to buy a house in the south of France, or a documentary about the development of Morris Dancing in Victorian England:



Thankfully, the sensible part of me screams:

"What on EARTH are you DOING?”

and then Bruce Springsteen pops into my head with this song:



It never used to be like this; useless articles that chip away at your very soul, pointless adverts that erase brain cells with their banality or meaningless television programmes that actually lower your IQ as you watch them.

Hopefully, you haven’t stumbled on this blog post as a result of clickbait – and I hope that there wasn’t an advert with the Bruce Springsteen video above.  If there was then I apologise for the wasted thirty seconds of your life.

There is just too much information out there, dear reader, and our challenge is to filter out the shit and find the nuggets, just like those old gold prospectors in Wild West. There are gems out there if you know where to look and can resist the temptation to read nonsense.

Anyway, time to wrap up now. I’m off now to do something amazing that will shock you all.

Click here to find out what it is.

Cat Wars and a Dead Router

My online presence has been rather subdued for the past ten days because my router decided to expire. Trying to convince my ISP that the router was at fault has proved to be difficult, despite the fact that both Mrs PM and I both work in IT and suspected the problem from day one.

Finally, last Monday, having performed many tests and "escalated” the problem, my ISP finally admitted that the router was the problem and sent me a new one. Of course, the Royal Mail then played its part and I only received my new router this morning.

But now I’m back, dear reader.

I can read blogs that I have missed. To be fair, I could have read them on my Smartphone but my mobile internet is so painfully slow that I have to seriously resist the temptation to hurl it against the wall. Also, my fading eyesight means that I struggle to read it on the small screen.

Of course I could have accessed the internet at work – and to be fair I did. The problem is that my company has decided that we can’t view personal emails at work and has banned access to Yahoo and Googlemail as well as other stuff like Facebook.

To add to the frustration I was recently offered a cut price online beginner’s course in Spanish and, having recently been to Spain, I decided to take advantage of it. Sadly, because of the lack of internet I have been unable to use it. I have, however, managed to use a couple of mobile applications to keep me going.

Thankfully all that frustration is over and I am back, dear reader.

To be honest, losing broadband has been like losing a limb and I have been asking myself dumb questions like “How on earth did I survive without the internet?”

The one good thing about not having internet is that I have been unable to be on call with work. Support relies on my being able to access systems in other countries from the comfort of my own home and I have not missed being able to relax without the fear of a phone call in the middle of the night.

Sadly, now that I have internet access again, I am back on call.

Oh well, you can’t win them all.

I have had other things to occupy my mind without the internet to keep me busy. The main thing is acting as a diplomatic mediator in a major – and I mean MAJOR – conflict in our very own house.

As you may know, we now have a new cat called Liquorice and she has upset the balance of power in the feline territory within our home.

The good news is that she has taken rather a shine to me, rather than Mrs PM, and she comes to me whenever I call her, as long as the other two cats aren’t in the vicinity. She purrs and rubs up against my leg and only scratches and bites when I deserve it (i.e. when I touch her unexpectedly or breathe the wrong way). I think I have sussed out when she will attack. She has a look in her eyes that basically says “Touch me and it will be the last thing you ever do with your hand!”

Also, if she is spooked she will attack anything within six inches of her.

Jasper is the alpha cat and treats Liquorice as if she is plankton. He watches her when she hisses at him but totally ignores her. She runs away rather than standing up to him.

Our other cat, Poppy – you know, the timid female who is scared of her own shadow – has revealed a facet of her personality that I didn’t know existed. Poppy and Liquorice are in the midst of a major power struggle and there have been a few clashes, dear reader. Poppy has launched attacks at Liquorice who has retaliated. Mostly, thankfully, they have just been hissy fits.

Most of these skirmishes have occurred in the middle of the night in or around our bedroom, waking me up in the process.

During the day, the cats retire to their favourite places and sleep; it is at night that they prowl the house and howl and spit at each other.

Thankfully, the feline fights are reducing in number and now that Liquorice has been outside, she now has another refuge. So the cat wars might be abating, finally.

I have to tell you about one skirmish though.

I came home from work on Thursday and walked into the kitchen. The floor just in front of the cat flap was covered in clumps of cat fur. To make matters worse, there were traces of blood on the cat flap itself.

“Oh shit,” I said before searching the house for the casualties of what must have been a vicious fight.

The first cat to appear was Poppy. I knew that the major battles had involved our scared little cat so I put some food out for her so that I could inspect her for signs of damage. There was none. There were no clumps of fur missing and no sign of scratches or bites.

“Oh no,” I thought. “Liqourice!”

I ran upstairs calling her and, sure enough, I heard her leap down from the wardrobe. She trotted out to see me. I kneeled down, wary that she might be in a savage mood and prepared to rip off one of my fingers.

She meowed and rubbed herself against my knee and allowed me to stroke her. And again there was no sign of injury and all of her fur was intact.

I found Jasper in the lounge and it soon became clear who had been involved in the fight. He looked fine but I noticed a clump of fur missing. What’s more, he had a lump of white fur attached to his neck.

I returned to the kitchen and took a closer look – the fur was black and white. It was then that I remembered the big black and white cat I had seen prowling around our garden. The cat lives three doors away and I have seen both Jasper and Poppy growling at him. He must have tried to infiltrate Jasper’s territory and been attacked by Jasper.

I told Mrs PM and she examined “her big boy” (not me you understand). There were a couple of minor cuts but it appears that the black and white invader came off worst.

And because Mrs PM loves cats, she is now worried that the invader might be really injured.

I reckon he’s alright and I think he will probably not venture into our house again. Besides, he’s had one rather nasty haircut at the hands of Jasper – I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want another.

I’m just hope that our three cats get along – and I think they are getting there. Liquorice is certainly allowing the other two to get closer before mutating into a hissing ball of fury.

And me? I have all of my limbs intact – despite losing my beloved internet for ten days.

Feel The Force

The census is upon us here in the UK. That means we get to fill in a questionnaire that ultimately will inform the government just how peculiar the population of our islands really are.

We have to do this every ten years and, for those of you who are no good at maths (for any American readers -  that’s MATHS as opposed to MATH) we did the last one in 2001.

Of course, we made a mockery of the last census in a small way thanks to a campaign to persuade us to record our religion as “Jedi” – and it worked – well sort of. Apparently around 400,000 people in England and Wales stated that their religion was born out of Star Wars (that’s 0.8% of the population).

How crazy is that?

I wonder whether we will do the same this year; perhaps more of us will commit to following the path of Yoda.

Strong with this country the force is.

For 2011, filling in the census is mandatory with the threat of a fine or imprisonment for those who choose to rebel.

This threat awakens the anarchist within me.

On the whole I kind of agree with the census because it provides useful information for future generations as well as interesting statistics for the current generation (not necessarily including those who follow the path of the light sabre that is). Nevertheless when your government resorts to threats and scare tactics to force people to do something, the ranting, raving revolutionary within me grabs his sword and urges me to leap on my horse and storm the Houses of Parliament demanding the head of David Cameron on a spike.

Of course, I can subdue this warrior – but it still annoys me.

Furthermore, it makes me think to myself – what would I do if the men in black came for me?

Would I stand up and fight them?

Would I scream defiantly as they dragged me into a van to cart me off to the magistrate?

No – of course not. I would almost certainly run away, filling in the census as I fled, screaming “I didn’t mean it!!”

Mrs PM informed me that this will probably be the last census in the UK, for various reasons. The most likely reason is that it will save the government money (chasing down census-avoiding criminals no doubt), but it is possible that in ten years’ time, the government will be able to extract as much information about people as they want from the internet or their very own databases.

And this prompts me to ask another rhetorical question: how easy would it be to get myself off the grid?

Could I disappear easily, leaving no trace?

To answer, that I need to consider how much information there is about me in cyberspace or on national and international databases. And I imagine it is quite a lot.

First of all, I have voluntarily inserted data about myself onto the internet, not least this very blog. I don’t think it would be very difficult for you, dear reader, if you had an insane moment, to try to track me down from The Plastic Mancunian, The Plastic Mancunian’s Eye or The China Chronicles. And of course, I have a Facebook account, a Twitter account and bits and pieces are scattered over other social network sites, no doubt.

Moreover, I have been to quite a few countries, having had to show my passport on every single occasion. I have had visas for Russia, China and Thailand as well as entering countries like Canada, Australia, most of Europe, Thailand, Hong Kong , South Africa etc. Each time, my whereabouts have been recorded.

America is possibly the worst of all. On my two recent trips across the pond, my fingerprints have been taken, so I am probably in the FBI and CIA databases.

I’ve have stayed in hotels that have a record of how long I was a resident for, what I ate when I was there and how much I spent in the bar.

Lots of institutions, councils and government departments have my details on record in the UK.

That means that my life could be tracked probably from a very early age, including most of my movements, my finances, my trips abroad, my jobs, my education etc., enabling any determined researcher to possibly produce a fairly accurate plan of my life so far.

Scary isn’t it?

So is it really possible to become invisible to the authorities? After all, Lord Lucan managed it didn’t he?

I think it’s too late and probably impossible to remove any information about me that currently exists. But I do speculate about how difficult it would be to vanish from this point onwards.

First of all, I would change my Twitter and Facebook statuses to “Buggering off!” and, of course, I would have to ditch the blogs (stop cheering!!!).

Next I would have to sell the house and withdraw all of my cash from the bank and carry it around in a suitcase – a dangerous thing to do. And then I would simply pay cash to escape my wonderful island and disappear into the vast world, as a ghost – a kind of stunted, ugly Jason Bourne!

It wouldn’t be easy, would it? And it also wouldn’t be pleasant.

I don’t think I’ll bother, which unfortunately, dear reader, means that you are stuck with me and the drivel that pours forth from my weird mind.

I can’t possibly imagine anybody wanting to use the vast quantities of useless information out there about me, to stalk me or hunt me down. I’m not likely to ever do anything that would bring the authorities crashing through my door – unless they read this blog and want to imprison me for crimes against blogging.

If that does happen, they had better watch out. I am considering becoming a Jedi and I may have Yoda here to protect me with his light sabre when the governmental forces come to get me.

Sense you know it makes