The Internet Void versus The Infinity of Fools

With apologies to passive-aggressive Facebook posters (you know who you are).

The Internet Void versus The Infinity of Fools

“He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.”

                                                Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

There was a time when I believed that the internet would set us free as a species. That so much virtual space would open up the borders to infinity and we would never have to deal with anyone we didn’t like ever again. Yet you only have to take a cursory glance at the comments section under any YouTube clip or newspaper article to realise that people seek out conflict on the virtual plain more now than ever before.

I think that ‘internet troll’ is far too polite a term for people who attack others online. Troglodyte is more apt. Trolls merely live under the bridges of the information superhighway, but troglodytes live in darkened caves beneath its surface, blind to all but their own non-thoughts and nonsense, only poking their heads out into the daylight to vomit up some piece of bile onto Twitter or an article on climate change.

Most of the kind of nonsense that happens on the internet these days is borne out of personal cowardice and fear. The internet offers anonymity, as well as an uncensored, unfiltered funnel down which to pour our own self-hatred. Hatred is really just another name for fear, redirected and amplified away from self.

In my experience, people judge others by their own standards and most manifestations and excuses for prejudice can ultimately be traced back to negative self-image. Men who are homophobic are either afraid of confronting doubts about their own sexuality or else they are scared that gay men will treat them in the kind of inappropriate ways in which they act towards women. People who hate a particular religion or race because they think they are sneaky or dishonest are themselves not to be trusted. People who accuse other people of smelling bad are usually the ones with the questionable personal hygiene habits. We each reflect in others what we find lacking in ourselves, in the same way that we seek out friends and partners who have the strengths and skills that we wish that we possessed.

I began this article by quoting my favourite aphorism in the whole of philosophy. The internet has become the void, the abyss. It is so big and so unwieldy, with so much that is horrific and vile just a few short keystrokes away, that it fills us with a kind of primal terror. Like staring into the night sky or snorkelling above the falling away of a continental shelf, the fear of the unknown terrifies us and sends us paddling back to shallower waters. Rather than stretch our horizons, we stick to familiar territory. The internet is an infinite expanse, yet most people obsessively circle around the same dozen websites time and time again.

Most of our fears about content in cyber space are really just reflections of the fears inside our own heads. Yet rather than immerse and marvel in the intensity of our own imaginations, we cower away from them and blame anyone but ourselves for the images, thoughts and ideas that run through our heads. We can, for instance, worry that our children are exposed to pornography online like never before. Yet children, certainly boys, have always been able to get hold of porn. It may be extreme, but by virtue of the fact of it being freely available, it becomes ultimately worthless. It’s very rare that I watch pornography, given how mind numbingly boring it is, mainly designed as far as I can see for men dishonest about their own sexual preferences to watch other men get sucked off while still kidding on that they’re 100% straight (just be honest and free yourself). Yet the most graphic pornography I’ve ever been exposed to was German and seen when I was eleven at scout camp, from the personal collection of the dad of the kid passing it around the tent. His dad was Akela, the head of the Scout Group. It’s easy to fall into the trap that the internet is making the world a worse place for children to grow up in, but the truth of the matter is that things are at worst just as bad as they always were. Yet by blaming new media it becomes so much easier to abnegate ourselves of the responsibility of honestly educating our children. Pornography isn’t the problem. The problem is the attitude of society towards women that makes their mistreatment a viable voyeuristic activity.

What the internet is doing is making us more claustrophobic. In captive chimp colonies when numbers become too high or not enough personal space is allowed, individual members will eventually turn on one other. We are becoming an infinite number of monkeys shoehorned into a finite cage. There was a time when any person could hold a particular view about the origins of the universe, even if that view was enforced by church and state, and they could remain blissfully unaware that anyone could hold a contrary view. These days, you can express an opinion online on anything from evolution to England’s starting eleven and be told you’re not only wrong but also a cunt by ten thousand random idiots in a micro second. Is it any wonder if we become claustrophobic? Is it any wonder if personal responsibility starts to dissolve when an inner monologue and self-checking is lost to the hive mind?

Look at any newspaper website comments section and you can see that the majority of comments are posted by people who don’t even read that paper or subscribe to its values. Guardianistas attack Mailites, Sun ‘readers’ (<even I’m doing it) post on The Daily Mirror. Rather than exploring the untouched plains of the internet, we seek out people we hate, like we’d rather be with someone we hate, just so we don’t have to face life alone. We have to have someone to push against, be in dynamic opposition against. Not much point being a racist if you don’t seek out Muslims to shout ‘Paki’ at. Not much point hating women and blaming them for your own inadequacies if you don’t make cowardly rape threats from behind the safety of a plastic screen. How brave of you. Well done you (sarcasm emoticon).

The internet makes idiots of us all and somehow reduces us to the belief that anything that we have to say is of equal value and deserves to be shared with the whole of humanity. Again, check the comments on YouTube or any article touting the 10 Greatest Albums/Films/Garden Hoes of All Time to witness an abject lesson in banality. “I don’t agree with your choice. I think The Godfather should be no 1 and The Godfather 2 no.” or “Typical left wing, bleeding heart liberal press.” quickly descending into comments about 9/11 being an inside job or Americans ranting at British people about how we’d all be speaking German if not for them, like they were personally at fucking Normandy on D-Day. We need to be saved from ourselves. Who cares what you think? If you’ve got something to say, start a blog to ring fence your opinions and save us from your non-thoughts. Or take a course in journalism so at least you’ll have an editor to reign in your exuberant hatefulness.

Mind you, the internet renders even traditional forms of journalism meaningless. Most newspapers these days are more full of editorials and personal opinion pieces than anything like actual news and much of it is as badly thought out and written as your average Facebook post (‘I am a beautiful flower and if you don’t appreciate that then the problem is with you not me, even though I’m the one posting this passively aggressively, clearly demonstrating in the process that I’m the one that needs to work on my self-image. How many likes for my maudlin post? I’m so alone.’).

Yet here’s the nub of the matter, folks. I still believe that the internet will eventually set us free. Or a version of it. We are only at the beginning of our journey into cyber space and this is a period of adjustment that we need to go through. After all, Dunbar’s Number is the number of relationships that the average person can comfortably maintain at any one time. Dunbar’s number has a value of 150. Just 150 friendships that we can maintain, which shows that despite living in towns and cities and supporting national sports teams, we are still essentially villagers who haven’t yet evolved to live like city dwellers. Like Dunbar’s Number, we haven’t evolved beyond basic expressions of intolerance and hatred. We can talk about national pride, but our brains aren’t sophisticated enough to think like members of multi-racial, multi-opinionated societies, comprising millions of individuals. We want everyone to think in the same way that we do in order to validate our belief systems.

I blame monotheism. The idea of one god was originally imposed upon western society in order to set in the public’s mind the idea of their being one ruling family, chosen by god to rule in perpetuity. Monotheism has infected us with a kind of monomania, where everyone must worship one god and be of one sexuality, one nationality and one personality.

What the internet has done is to confront us with how erroneous this mind-set is. In my personal fantasies, I believe that what we are going through at the moment is the first step towards the annihilation of nation states and the establishment of new countries dedicated to more useful criteria for patriotism, like knitting or Game of Thrones or Star Trek or Justin Bieber or Joyce or Dylan or Nina Simone or Creole cooking or football or golf or cricket or redheads etc. etc. Which must terrify the ruling elite, if they ever envisage such a situation. Western capitalism and hierarchical systems in general have always ruled by the principle of divide and conquer. Get us to hate the least powerful, immigrant workers, the unemployed, the disabled, etc., in order to focus our rage away from the real enemies of society (i.e., them). Yet if we were to once again form mini-societies based upon common ground then capitalism would eventually give way to collectivism. No mega-rich is the wealth is passed around between is us.

Eventually we will probably all retreat into a virtual environment anyway, where everyone’s tastes can be catered for, whether that’s enrolling in your very own version of Hogwarts or abusing virtual children. Unhealthy behaviour on both counts, but it will be our children who will have to discuss what’s acceptable behaviour when they get there. Eventually cyber space will cure even death and then, essentially, we will all remain children forever anyway. As we start to take our first steps into the tide pool, it seems that we are already learning how to remain childish.

(this article is open for comments, but I won't read them. It might be more productive to cut out the middle man and just smear shit on the wall).

Get it done.

Obsessions

Today, the history of obsessions.

Obsessions

Ever since I was a child I’ve always been obsessed with one thing or another. Always some person, some show or activity that I become consumed with and can’t shut up talking about. I’ve never been obsessively tidy or orderly, never wrote lists or spent hours pouring sweat over the best films of all time, best albums, etc. No, my obsession has always been with the things that my overactive imagination could feast upon. Physicality or simple intellectual pursuit simply aren’t good enough.

I probably started like most children of my generation, fascinated by toys, action men and the like, and the adventures upon which they took me in my fevered imagination. I collected Star Wars toys, with my parents assistance, but only the bad guys, the Empire and Jabba the Hut’s palace and the like and became obsessed with finding figures of even the most obscure characters.

The first thing I seem to remember being seriously obsessed with was the TV series, Fame. I must have been 9. As a 41 year old, I’m consumed with shame by my childhood self. It’s like being into Glee in the 21^st century. I was probably more into the music, I remember having a couple of tapes and rarely being able or allowed to watch the show. These days I hate musicals and the idea of watching people spontaneously break into song or perform complicated dance routines leaves me feeling embarrassed for everyone concerned. A good friend used to think that this kind of thing happened in real life, that people spontaneously broke into song on the streets. My only excuse is that being at a school of performing arts seemed grown up and something I would like to have done. That and I was 9 and like all 9 year olds I didn’t have any taste.

Mind you, two or three years later and things weren’t any better. When all my friends were into punk and post punk and listening to The Jam and The Specials and dressing up as Mods with the two-tone gangster spats, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson and Motown. Mainly Michael Jackson . I was becoming a precocious obsessive, able to turn any conversation around to my chosen specialist subject in a heartbeat. I had the albums, the videos, the books and magazines.

Looking back, my interests were probably more contemporary than most of my school friends. It was the early 80s and yet most of them were obsessed with breaking the music listening population down into Mods and Rockers, like it was 1964 or something. My obsessions may have been mainstream and shit, but at least they were current. Unlike today, where I’m obsessed with aged rock stars and long dead writers.

I guess I’m lucky to have been born when I was. We were the first generation to have home computers and the first to have mass produced home entertainment. The introduction of VHS recording meant I could get a lot of training in towards becoming a poly-obsessive or ubernerd. As soon as Star Wars was broadcast on network television, it was recorded and played and replayed over and over again. I must have seen Star Wars over a hundred times before I reached my teenage years. I was that annoying kid who knew every word and would correct any one who quoted it wrong, never mind how minor the mistake. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time on VHS and then Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at the cinema and became obsessed with Harrison Ford, covering my walls with movies posters and pages ripped out of magazines, consumed by the need to see everything he had been in, no matter how brief his appearance. I first saw Apocalypse Now because Harrison Ford had a minor part, though came to love the film for entirely different reasons. Blade Runner remains my favourite movies of all time, but again for reasons that transcend the original obsession with Harrison Ford. It’s the sci-fi/film noir/detective mix that most appeals to me now.

Eventually Michael Jackson and Harrison Ford gave way to two far more expansive obsessions: American Football and Fighting Fantasy novels. American Football first started to be shown on Channel Four in the early 80s. For a year or two at our primary school the gravel football pitch was used less for proper football and more and more for kids forming offensive and defensive lines across a line of scrimmage. I started watching in 1984, I know this because I randomly picked the Chicago Bears to support and the following season they won the Superbowl (and have done very little since). After that I was obsessed with American Football for years. I read countless books on the rules, the history of the Bears, even Jim McMahon’s autobiography, the Bears quarter back at the time. There was a time when I was rarely to be found without a Bears football shirt or polo shirt or even baseball shirt.

Today I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a sports shirt of any kind, I’m too fiercely individual to submit to anything so tribal. When Blackburn Rovers won the Premier League a few years after I moved to the town and half the population started wearing Rovers shorts, I jokingly referred to them as the Borg, slowly assimilating the population and destroying individuality. To be honest, I probably thought the same back then and wearing the uniform of a team from a city 3,000 miles from where I lived made me feel unique in a sea of football strips and rugby jerseys. I still watch the occasional game if I’m up late enough, but the obsession has long since faded away.

Fighting Fantasy novels tweaked the same part of my brain as American Football. I wanted to be an American Footballer, I wanted to run away to America and live out the dream, but I had no athletic talent to speak of and so I lived out the fantasy in my head. Likewise the land of goblins and elves.

Fighting Fantasy was a series of chose-your-own-adventure books where you fought monsters and ghouls using dice. Sort of like Dungeons and Dragons, but for kids even too nerdy to have friends to play Dungeons and Dragons with. Fighting Fantasy are still around today, but in a post-ironic world where everyone is allowed to remain a child forever, you can find several of the old titles as phone apps, where you shake your device to roll the die.

I was obsessed with collecting every last Fighting Fantasy title, a much harder job in those pre-internet days. There were also guide books and a short lived magazine and titles like The Riddling Reaver, which pushed more into multi-player roleplaying territory. Fighting Fantasy books were usually traditional fantasy scenarios, with the occasional sci-fi or modern setting. I was obsessed with role playing and chose your own adventure books for years, adding the Lone Wolf series to my collection, which followed a narrative arc, unlike the standard alone titles of Fighting Fantasy.

There was also a three book sequence in which you were Theseus of Ancient Greece, sent to fight the Minotaur. I had all the books in a special bookcase with glass doors so I could just there in my room and admire my collection, longing for the days when the gaps in the collection would be filled, but I never quote got there. It was an escape. I’d go to school and hate being there. I’d come home and imagine a portal through my bedroom wall into another reality. To step through, all I had to do was reach for a book and start reading.

The boy I was then would be gobsmacked by World of Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed and the dozens of other modern games. I was never much of a gamer, my obsessions have always been about transporting me away from reality, whether to a performing arts academy or an American Football stadium or Deathtrap Dungeon. Video games are like films, they’re entertaining but like wheelchairs for the imagination. No match for books, where a symbiotic relationship is formed between author and reader to create an entirely unique experience. Reading is democratic. Video entertainment is more authoritarian.

That said, the Legend of Zelda series on the various Nintendo systems managed to convince to buy their latest consoles throughout my 20s. Ocarina of Time on the N64 was the best thing I ever played, it encapsulated everything I loved about the Fighting Fantasy novels. I’ve never had the hand to eye coordination for games though and I never did get through the final level. Like Fighting Fantasy. There’s still my copy of Fighting Fantasy  No. 10: House of Hell sitting on a bookshelf, waiting for the day when I actually finish the bloody thing. These days it’s an Android app.

In my mid-teens I started to listen to heavy metal, which I’ve written about on a number of occasions. Again I was obsessive. I read Kerrang magazine religiously every week, Metal Hammer and Raw less frequently, to the point where I knew what was happening to most heavy metal groups, whether I liked them or not. My fellow nebs called me Ceefax, after BBC’s teletext news service (the ITV version was called Oracle, but they chose to call me Ceefax ‘cause they were clever cunts). As well as obsessively collecting information, I went after the back catalogues of each of my favourite bands, Metallica, AC/DC, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Slayer, Alice in Chains, Queensryche, Trouble, Wolfsbane etc. Again, in the days of vinyl and CDs, that was a lot harder, especially in our tiny backwater of the north west of England.

My mate would record Headbanger’s Ball on MTV every Sunday night and I would take the tape home and record my own copy by linking two VCRs together. I even re-re-recorded everything in alphabetical order, ‘cause that’s how much of a nerd I am. The quality was abysmal by the time I’d finished. Today, when we are used to HD quality, it would be unwatchable. Even amongst my fellow metallers, my tastes were as broad as they were eclectic.

Of all my early obsessions, heavy metal is the one that has stayed with me. I listen to many more genres these days and the t-shirts I wear are of clever film or literary references rather than AC/DC or The Almighty, but I still listen to a healthy dose of hard rock and metal (I have written this article to the tune of Tool’s Lateralus and Mastodon’s Crack the Skye). I’m sure that for most people the things they obsessed over when they were 15 or 16 are the ones that are most likely to stay with them. That’s the time in our lives when we are still young enough to feel immortal, but old enough to be first stepping out into the world on our own. Anything which illuminates that period remains sacred for all time.

I’ve always been a nerd, always into science fiction, always bright but lazy and, being dragged around from one part of the country to another for most of my formative years, I hated going to new schools and having to start over with a new set of friends and enemies all the time. I didn’t apply myself until many years after school, but in my early 20s I went to night school, did a foundation year in Physics and Maths and wangled my way on to an Astrophysics degree. I became so obsessed with studying during that foundation year that I’d wake up at 6am needing to differentiate something. I’d roll over, pick up a pad and pen, write down a algebraic equation and perform the calculation before rolling back over and sleeping through till 9.

I’m obsessive, but my obsessions don’t always last. Getting to university was as far ahead as I thought things through and once there I didn’t really have an idea what I wanted to do next. I did very little work in a degree that requires a lot of study and assessment, managed to scrape through, usually on a single night’s revision, but by the time I got to 2^nd year, I was even less interested in studying physics and instead smoking pot, playing Ocarina of Time and reading Ulysses.

Ulysses blew my mind. I doubt I understood more than 20%, especially through the cannabinoid haze, but reading Joyce for the first time was, for me at least, a mind altering experience that no mere narcotic could ever match. I dropped out and read more than I’d ever read before, knowing that writing was what I wanted to do with my life. Well I’ve got that far at least, so now I’m trying to make it my profession too. I’ve learnt one lesson at least. Always be thinking a couple of obsessions ahead.

I’m still obsessive. I have shelves full of books on James Joyce and Shakespeare and Bob Dylan. I own seven different versions of Moby Dick (a book about obsession told by an obsessed author via an obsessively descriptive narrator). I collect and hoard books the way some people hoard shoes. The completest who once longed for a complete set of Fighting Fantasy novels, the complete set of Slayer’s back-catalogue, now scours second-hand bookshops seeking out additions to Emile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, which runs to 20 volumes (and one short story). I’m still about 12 short (plus one short story).

Obsession is a lot easier than it used to be. A couple of years ago I became obsessed with completing my father’s Time-Life Seafarers series. Ten volumes had been lying around my mum’s house for fifteen years since he died. The series ran to 22 volumes. Without much effort, I completed and read the entire set in less than a year, picking up second hand copies from Abe Books and eBay, usually for a few pence. There’ no challenge if it’s too easy, so the Zola and Moby Dick versions I buy only if I find them under my own steam. It’s a sad life, but it’s one I enjoy.

My main obsessions are writing and trying to make sense of that impossible James Joyce novel, Finnegans Wake. Actually, the Wake isn’t a novel, it’s 20 year intensive Masters Degree in language, semiotics and mythology. It’s a challenge and I like a challenge. Finally I’ve found something worthy of my obsessive tendencies.

As for writing, I’m slowly getting to the point where I want to be. Like differentiation, I often find myself waking up in the early hours needing to write something down, an idea, a snatch of poetry or clever phrase. Trying to post something new to my blog every day for a year is certainly obsessive behaviour, but I’ve treated writing with less respect than it deserves over the years, going weeks or months without writing a word. I’m getting to the point of writing from start to finish two or three pieces a day and working on drafts of more complicated writing. It might sometimes be rushed, not to the highest standard, but that’s part of the learning process. Part of the obsession. Obsession is how you become an expert at something. Otherwise you would have no hope.

I’d rather be all consuming than all consumed. Obsession is life. I would feel lifeless without it.

Get it done.

See also (click links)

Bloomsday 2011

Bruce Dickinson: The Chemical Wedding

Time-Life Seafarers Series

(as well as everything else on this blog, for which I do an obsessive amount of research)

Three Views Upon the Miraculous

Today I try my hand at journalism. Except, it's me, so I couldn't report on anything so ordinary as an actual news item. 

The following is how I imagine three news organisations might report on events that form the background to several other stories.

Three Views Upon the Miraculous

BBC News

Brian Clough 'Comes Back From the Dead'

The late football manager Brian Clough has made an appearance during a game at Nottingham Forrest.

The incident occurred on Saturday during Forrest’s 5-3 win against AFC Bournemouth at the City Ground.

Clough died in September 2004.

Reactions to the episode were mixed, with fans astounded and exuberant in equal measure – many more appeared simply baffled.

Cameras filming for the BBC’s ‘The Football League Show’ showed Clough sitting in the Brian Clough Stand with Peter Taylor, his assistant until Taylor’s retirement in 1982.

Taylor died in 1990.

Footage from the ground did not capture how or when Clough and Taylor appeared, but review of television footage appeared to first show the pair early in the second half.

Nottingham Forrest were losing 0-3 at the time, thanks to goals from Lewis Grabban, Brett Pitman and Wes Fogden for AFC Bournemouth.

Clough and Taylor received a standing ovation at the conclusion of the game, which saw Forrest score five late goals, including a hat trick from midfielder Andy Reid.

Stewards and the police were required to escort the men out at the referees final whistle, as fans mobbed around them.

There are reports that the men vanished in the tunnel leading from the stand.

‘Like he stepped out of the 70s.’

Commentators and fans reacted with amazement to the event.

BBC sports correspondent Garth Crooks said, “After what we’ve seen happening in the world recently, it’s hard to put today in context.”

“What does it say for the world of football or the world in general?”

“My hope is that this signifies an end to people disappearing. That in Britain people don’t disappear, they come back.”

AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe simply exclaimed: “Well what can you say about that?”

Nottingham Forrest manager Billy Davies however gave praise to the club’s former manager and his assistant for their presence: “I think it’s pretty clear that Cloughy and Peter were the 12^th and 13^th men out there today.”

Menawhile, ForrestFanatic82 tweeted: “OMG, I was sat right behind Cloughy today. Looked like he stepped out of the 70s. Looked like when we beat Malmo in ’79 final.”

In another tweet ForrestFanatic82 said: “He was just there. Not sure when he was there. Maybe from kickoff, but deffo only in 2^nd half we noticed him.”

Disappearances

Clough’s reappearance follows months of disappearances across the world, with people vanishing as far afield as Namibia and France.

The first incidents were reported in Israel’s Occupied Territories, but soon spread to encompass much of the Middle East and North Africa.

Initially only occurring at night, the first major daytime disappearance occurred in the Iranian city of Isfahan in August and was caught on film.

The cameraman himself disappeared, his camera seen to come crashing to the floor during the extraordinary footage.

Reports of disappearance events have been slowly spreading north through Europe over the summer.

The first disappearances were reported in Britain on Friday.

Who Was Brian Clough?

• Born Brian Howard Clough, 21 March 1935.

• He played professionally for Sunderland and Middlesbrough, scoring 251 league goals on 274 appearances. At Middlesbrough he first met future assistant Peter Taylor, where Taylor was goalkeeper. Cruciate ligament damage forced Clough to retire in 1964 at the age of 29.

• His first managerial position was with Hartlepools United. He went on to manage Derby County and Brighton & Hove Albion, before a stormy spell in charge of Leeds United saw Clough being sacked after just 44 days in the job. A book about that period, The Dammed Und by David Pearce, was made into the 2009 film, The Dammed United, staring Michael Sheen as Clough. 

• He went on to manage Nottingham Forrest from 1975 until 1993. His side won the European Cup for two seasons in a row in 1979 & 1980. He also won the old First Division for the season 1977-1978, as well as four League Cups. His team were undefeated for 42 league games between November 1977 and December 1978, a record which stood until Arsenal beat it by going 49 games without defeat in August 2004.

• His final season in charge saw Nottingham Forrest relegated from the Premier League.

• Brian Clough died in Derby City Hospital on 20 September 2004. More than 14,000 people attended his memorial service at Derby County’s Pride Park Stadium.

Profile: Brian Clough

Where you at the City Ground? Did you witness the appearance of Brian Clough or Peter Taylor? Contact the BBC Newsdesk or leave your comments in the comments section below.

More on This Story

Related Stories

Global disappearance epidemic reaches Britain

Match Report: Nottingham Forrest 5-3 AFC Bournemouth

Cameraman Vanishes Capturing Disappearances on Film

Can Crazy Golf's Interstellar Duo Become Outlandish?

From other news sites

The Guardian

Clough Returns From Dead To Inspire Forrest to Victory Then Disappears

The Sun

Britain Beats World, Brings Back Brian

Daily Express

Will Brain Clough’s Reappearance Affect Interest Rates?

Daily Mirror

Clough of Smoke

Daily Mail

Boon Time For Paedophiles as Disappearances Reach British Shores

The Guardian

Clough Returns From Dead To Inspire Forrest to Victory Then Disappears

Incredible events happened during home game against AFC Bournemouth.

Brian Clough has made an appearance during a match at Nottingham Forrest’s City Ground, despite having died in 2004.

The Ex-Forrest manager was witnessed in the stand which bears his name early in the second half, along with former assistant, Peter Taylor. Taylor died in 1990.

Nottingham Forrest were 0-3 down at the time, but rallied late on to score five goals in the final thirty minutes. The victory lifts them to sixth place in the Championship.

A cordon of police and stewards was erected around the men as they left the stand, but they promptly vanished in the melee. Sources inside the club told the Guardian that the men had not been seen to disappear.

Cameras for both the BBC and Sky Sports failed to find the exact moment when Clough and Taylor made their appearance, but most people seem to agree that the men were not present as Nottingham Forrest  kicked off the second half.

As well as footage from the BBC and Sky, a number of camera phone videos were uploaded to YouTube and Instagram. They show Clough wearing a green jumper with red collar sticking out and quiffed back hair.

Those who had known and worked with Brian Clough estimated his appearance to be as he looked in his mid-40s. This would equate to the year circa 1980, leading some to speculate that Clough and Taylor briefly travelled forwards in time.

Others have speculated that Clough’s appearance was an elaborate hoax staged by Forrest to lift the morale of players and fans alike, with a number of high profile names including Derren Brown and David Blaine implicated in the conspiracy. However, coming as it does hard upon recent world events, most seemed ready to accept the incident at face value.

Exact figures for the number of people that have disappeared in the world in the last six months remain elusive, but conservative estimates put the number at around 150 million. The disappearance epidemic finally reached British shores on Friday. 153 people were reported missing in and around Norwich, with a further 81 vanishing from Kirkwall in Orkney. The mood in both towns was reported as calm, but troops have been deployed as a cautionary measure, following the rioting seen in other European countries.

The strange appearance of Brain Clough and Peter Taylor at the City Ground Saturday seems to have no precedent. There have been no other reports of people reappearing or returning from the dead elsewhere in the world and some commentators are speculating that events at Nottingham Forrest mark the beginning of the end of the disappearances. Others state that this position is optimistically  premature. The Clough incident could also herald a dark new chapter in the story.

More from the Guardian

Media Scrum Surrounds John Lennon, As America Claims Ignorance of His Assassination

More UK Disappearances in Kent, Essex and York

What Do Global Events Mean for the Futrue?

In Pictures: First UK Disappearances

Daily Mirror

Clough of Smoke

DEAD MANAGER MAKES MIRACULOUS RETURN…

…AND VANISHES

Football Chiefs admitted to astonishment yesterday as Brian Clough materialised during a Nottingham Forrest match, then vanished on his way out of the ground.

FA Chairman Greg Dyke announced he was launching an investigation into the events at the City Ground after claims of an elaborate hoax.

Controversial ex-Forrest manager Clough, 69 at the time of his death in 2004, appeared to appear during his former team’s Championship game with AFC Bournemouth.

Forrest trailed 0-3 at the time, but scored 5 times following Clough’s guest appearance, leading to accusations of cheating by Bournemouth.

Dyke, 66, said: “I think we need to get to the bottom of this. Either something quite miraculous happened in Nottingham today or there has been an attempt to deceive fans.”

“We need to conduct a quick investigation so that the football going public can have confidence they are not being cheated.”

The Mirror can exclusively reveal that the man bearing a likeness to Clough disappeared as he was being escorted out of the Brian Clough Stadium.

A police escort was required as fans crowed around the man at the final whistle. He vanished in the tunnel from the stand, despite being encircled by police and stewards.

A spokesman for Forrest Chairman, the Kuwaiti born Fawaz Mubarak Al-Hasawi, said last night: “Nottingham Forrest will obviously cooperate fully with any investigation. The club is as perplexed by today’s events as everyone else and we want to a draw line under the incident as soon as possible.”

Clough, who made his appearance during the second half of the Championship clash against Bournemouth, wore his trademark green jumper over a red polo shirt. He appeared to be in his mid-40s. He was obviously delighted with the attention his appearance generated and responded enthusiastically to the standing ovation he was given at the end of the game.

Clough was accompanied by former assistant Peter Taylor. Taylor was Clough’s right hand man throughout the 60s and 70s, but a rift developed when Clough accepted a pay rise from Forrest without including his assistant. Taylor died in 1990.

It is not the first time that the deceased manager has caused controversy. In 1989, Clough punched two fans as they invaded the pitch after Forrest’s 5-2 victory over Queens Park Rangers. Clough was given a three month touchline ban and fined £5,000. He later made a public apology to the pair and made them kiss him.

Yesterday’s events come after the disappearance of over a quarter of a billion people across the globe. The UK became the latest victim of the epidemic when nearly 400 people disappeared Friday. Clough and Taylor are the latest names to be added to the list of missing people.

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Seriously Crazy

Can Crazy Golf's Interstellar Duo Become Outlandish?

The worlds' longest continuous game of crazy golf is set to resume this weekend with the contestants teeing off from a clay animation ice-shelf.

Cornish born Henry Carter and self proclaimed King of LA Punks, Dr*lict, started the game in Newquay fifteen years ago to decide which of the pair could ask a girl out to a beach party.

The obstacles back then were little more than sections of drainage piping covered over with squares of lawn turf.

"There weren't nothin' crazy about that course." explains Carter. "Mildly eccentric at best, I'd say."

Yet there was always a next course to play and they grew in sophistication. "We didn't see a windmill when we started going around, but blow me if there weren't one there later. Dawned on me when we played though that first castle we weren't in Newquay anymore."

Since then the two men have played over courses of ever increasing craziness. They have hit shots through tiger infested jungles and across lava flows, crossed the length of the Kalahari desert as a single course and had to hit a hole-in-one onto a tiny pacific atoll in shark infested waters and balancing on top of a kayak.

The name of the girl is long forgotten. As is any thought of keeping score.

"Scores just get in the way of the game." Dr*lict drawls. "We keep it going for the adventure. Everyone's gotta see the world somehow. Why not a crazy ass game of golf?"

The courses grow crazier. Last season Carter and Dr*lict teed off into the forests of Endor from the back of an AT-AT walker and from the roof of the Simpson's family home on Evergreen Terrace. They have also played courses in zombie infested towns and once ended up in the middle of an online battlefield.

"Snipers kept tapping us in the head." Dr*lict recalls. "The one wasn't putting, he picked up a weapon and he got on point. We dealt with it and got outta there asap." Did being killed that many times hurt? "Yes." he says curtly and you know it's an end to the matter.

Carter and Dr*lict's exploits are not always applauded. Last season holes were contested in the no-man's land of the First World War and over the rubble of Nagasaki left by the atomic explosion. Liberal commentators rejected these events as tasteless.

"We don't have a lot of control I'm afraid." Carters says, apologetically. "We goes where the game takes us." Nevertheless, this season's opener is low key compared to last year's barnstorming opening weekend down the spine of the Andes mountains. "Last season was frantic. Nice to have a slow start this time. We did this me and Dr*lict for near eight years without a break. Got families now. So we has a nice break in the summer and the rest of the year we plays golf."

Carter and Dr*lict's will tee off Sunday lunchtime. The Royal Association of Crazy Golf (RACG) have confirmed that the game will be promoted to the level of Outlandish, if the pair can complete a further three holes. Both players are currently ranked at Interstellar.

The RACG has now added five new classifications to its ranking system to account for the Carter v Dr*lict game. They look set to continue to break records for a long time yet to come.

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