Michael Jackson & The Cult of Celebrity

I wrote an article yesterday on ooffoo, the leading green swapping and blogging community I work for, looking at Michael Jackson & The Cult of Celebrity. Crucially, I reveal the identity of the next 'messiah'. Would love your thoughts and feedback.

A Modest Proposal: Death to Fatties

Amanda Platell (Who's with me to get her on the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square?) once wrote a Daily Mail piece calling for no NHS treatment for 'fatties' but I don't think it goes far enough.

I know this might be unpopular but please bear with me.

I think fatties should be culled on sight and their blubber used to power homes. Think of the money saved on energy bills? Think of the money saved treating fatties and their related ailments (gastric intervention, cardio, knee replacements, increased cancer incidence etc) on the NHS?

And what a great situation for fatties really if you think about it. What greater motivation could there be to get exercise than an angry mob chasing you? Fatties will be thanking us for helping them.

Going out to get supplies would be so dangerous fatties would either:

• Run out of food and lose weight at home until they were slim enough to go out
• Go out for food and lose weight getting chased by an angry mob (Fattie Parkour?)
  
• Get culled by the mob and become a power source

And lets face it, the fatties are not happy in themselves so we are just putting them out of their misery. Win-win-win all round then. We need to find a humane way to cull them though. Any suggestions?

No point wasting any time looking for causes of obesity like:

• the impact of low nutritional-value products
• poor nutritional information on products
  
• massive child-targeted advertising campaigns
• a lack of a prevention-centric NHS
• the fact that slow metabolisms and diabetes are often founded in childhood
• the complexity of child psychology and so on.

The food industry will have no Big Tobacco-esque case to answer in the future. Obesity is ONLY caused by a lack of willpower to resist eating and to exercise more. If the earth looks flat then frankly it probably is.

A world of rap

Am curious about rap for many reasons and whilst I love some of the more 'classical' mainstream rap like Run DMC, TheStreets, Eminem etc I always like to broaden my experiences. I have been looking for tips for non US/UK rappers so today I asked twitter and facebook and this is the combined response. Not a damn clue what they are saying though. Some gems here...

Brazil:
Cidinho & Doca - Rap das armas

Cuba:
Orishas

Danish:
Jahi featuring Nobody Beats The Beats (they're Danish not Jahi) - Radio Raheem

French:
MC Solaar - Gangster Moderne
IAM - Petit Frere
Sian Supa Crew
Booba Pitbull, Game Over, Boulbi, Gun in Hand Feat. Akon

German:
Fler - Deutscha Bad Boy, Ich bin deutscha, Neue Deutsche Welle & Mein Sound
Sido - Warum Bist Do So?, Carmen, Herz, Alpa Gun (featuring Fler)

Hebrew:
Avi Mesika - Lemi Korim Ani
Shotei Hanevua
Hadag Nachash - Hene Ani Ba (Here I come)
Hatikva 6 - Gaidamak
Axum (ethopian israeli rap)
Teapacks - Push the Button (Eurovision 2007 Israeli entry)
Subliminal featuring Wycleaf Jean, featuring Lior Farahi - Tizaher Mimena, Subliminal and the Shadow - Divide and Conquer [Eng Subs]

Japan:
Teriaki boyz - Tokyo Drift
Afra and the incredible beat box

Latin American:
Kumbia Kings (from Texas US) featuring Ozomatli - Mi Gente

Poland:
Molesta "Powrót", WWO - Moge wszystko & Tede - Glokk

Russian:
Leningrad- Menedjer Ska

Senegal:
Daara J

Somalia:
K'naan Warsame

Sudan:
Emmanuel Jal

Tanzania:
Xplastah

Anything to add?

This ain't Kansas...

...but it'll do for now. I need a single spot to point everyone at and this blog will serve well for that.

This will be the home of my virtual cortex pulling together my twitter stream, podcasts, blog posts (from here and elsewhere) and so on from this point in time. Previous writings can be found here and here.

What can you expect? Humour, analysis, thought-leadership hopefully. Expect a virtual me. If you know me, you will already be holding on for dear life. If you don't know me I suggest you get a notepad, some redbull and hold on! ;)

Enjoy.