Tuesday 31 August 2010

Watched

Hello once more and welcome to a post bank holiday Tuesday flavoured Aldershot Woe, god I’ve lost count of where we are but I think this is the 39th Woe and so far I am very proud to have kept a consistent level of ignorance, bias, spite, poor grammar and semi aborted thoughts to each previous Woe, I hope this one doesn’t disappoint… Aldershot Woe episode 39: Watched.


The other day I was walking back from town, it was a hot day, I was coming down a steep incline on a long boring road pushing a heavy double pushchair when I was struck by a feeling, one that could cause great embarrassment if I were in a busy street or a crowded shop, a feeling I am sure we have all experienced at some time or another and have all had to suffer as a result, I speak about that feeling whose mere mention has you shuffling impatiently and franticly in your seats, I had… an itchy arse. Its never going to be your most dignified moment, but it happens to us all, doesn’t it? And usually in somewhere completely inappropriate, which leaves us awkwardly shifting about in our own skin trying to alleviate the problem via some sort of telekinetic bum-scratch, or worse has us backing up against a wall so we can take a stealth claw to the problem… it’s embarrassing and its horrible and it is unfortunately part of life’s rich tapestry of humbling moment s of idiocy and grossness. But when you’re in the middle of nowhere, walking down a long boring road on hot day, and no ones about, go on, whose going to know, get in and sort the problem, give it a good scratch… which is exactly what I did, the relief was ecstatic, and for a few steps I marched forward with a renewed vigour. Then a car drove past from behind me and I noticed the people were sniggering… at me. For a second I thought, oh who cares, I’ll never see them again anyway. But then I was struck with a sense of absolute fear as I was hit with the realisation that, that is not true anymore, what if they had an iphone, what if they were techno savvy youngsters, it would take them about 4 seconds to publish my embarrassing bum-scratch on you tube and about 8 seconds for it to be emailed across the world as I become the latest “viral” sensation and feature in a series of witty cleverly edited bum-scratch parodies and there’s bum-scratch.com and bum-scratch t-shirts and mouse matt’s and all other spin off merchandise featuring me scratching my chad like a complete berk…

Then slowly the paranoia drifted away, but my little panic attack had opened my eyes. In the UK we are the most watched people in the world, CCTV is everywhere, and if “the man” aint watching our every movement some bell-end with a camera phone is. Last week the nation was in furore over middle aged spinster and cat basher Mary Bale, as her little prank was caught on CCTV and a subsequent witch hunt began on line for her. And with the advent of YouTube and the ever increasing number of cameras watching us, filming our every moment, the chances of YOU ending up being caught on camera acting like a knob and it being put on line for pimply chuckle monkeys to comment on and send to there mates is increasing all the time. We always had “you’ve been framed” and such shows reeling off films of us acting like chumps getting footballs kicked our faces or falling into swimming pools or being savaged by rabid squirrels, or what ever, but they were always reserved for people actually twatty enough to let themselves be filmed, now though we don’t have a choice, now our private moments of embarrassment are pinged around office inboxes and shared with the world. Gone are the days where you could fall over land face first in dog sh!t and simply hate your own guts for a minute, giggle it off, and move on with life… now you run the risk of being “Dog-Sh!t Face” for the rest of your life.

Now I suppose in the case of old Mary “puss-in-bins” Bale it’s a good thing, and let me just say as a cat owner, I thought it was hilarious, but what about all the innocent bozos who gets caught on camera having a bird plop on their heads or scratching their itchy arse on a hot day or any of the other moments of unavoidable embarrassment we’d all be better off forgetting about, what about those poor bastards?
Now as we go about our lives with a thousand tiny robotic eyes fixed on our every movement recording every thing we do, we carry the burden that when we let down our usually cool veneers and act like the ridiculous mugs we really are, even for a second, it could be recorded and we could each live in infamy of our own bone-headedness forever… or at least till an even bigger buffoon is found and filmed. (Mary Bale must be praising the stars about that girl throwing puppies in a river!)



Woe.

14 comments:

  1. CCTV is an invasion of our civil liberties.Nothing is safe from the evil eye of a camera.

    RBA,your tie isn't straight.

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  2. was it just your arse you were scratching?

    is it on yuotube yet

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  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtsEsy_nVJc&NR=1

    Arse scratching on youtube.Not the best,but the quickest one I could find before going home.

    Magic darts RBA.As always you hit the target.

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  4. Cheers people....

    I am not in the office the next two days, so dont think i'm just being like robbo and i think i'm too good to reply to comments i just wont be here...

    jacks expert youtubing sir...

    All the best people...

    Up the shots, the Vale and the millers in tonights Johnstons Paint (drying to steal Tones joke) trophy... Whoop whoop indeed!

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  5. i call your arse scratch and raise you a gang-rape.

    a mate of mine used to teach english in bangkok. he smoked a spliff went home with a beautiful "woman".

    he woke up to find himself in the middle of an orgy with himself as the drugged object.

    afterwards he lay on the bed with the original tranny. a couple of dockers in miniskirts, 5 oclcok shadow and biceps were playing cards.

    " i feel dirty give me my clocthes back" says my mate.

    the tranny turns to him and says "you say you wan sex. you say you pay for sex. you owe me one hundred dollar".

    so the tranny gangsters frogmarch him to a cashpoint.

    as my hapless witless dishevelled buddy stands at the cashpoint tapping in his number surrounded by transvestite prostitute rapists, 60 kids he teaches filed past him on the way to school

    hello sir

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  6. there are good things about cameras. it has been reported that sam alllerdyce has "found himself" by means of a colonoscopy

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  7. im still freaked out from when i got someone elses pictures from a malfunctioning photo-me booths. he looked a bit like me (handsome and rugged like) but it wasnt me and was wearing a jumper. unheimlich i call it.

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  8. i wouldnt mind CCTV if i could put a £2 coin into the side and get a printout for my "breaking and entering" scrap-book

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  9. that exhausts my "cameras and being watched" anecdotes

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  10. candid commentary there RBA. Your brilliant woe moves us from the basic arse scratch through to the intentions of the magna carta, the promises (droit de l'homme) of the French Revolution and even on to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Clearly we need to ponder this deeply because there's a serious corruption of basic liberties and freedoms when you can't quietly and freely give yourself the finger on the occasion that emergency strikes.

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  11. I long for the days (and I guess Madonna does as well) where if someone filmed you without your permission it was perfectly acceptable to have your mates rough them up and steal/ break their camera and film

    Alas no more although I don't think people should be able to film you scratching your bum (especiially as it could be very disturbing)

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  12. Not to worry my friends.

    The problem is also the soloution, with everybody filming everybody, all will be on youtube burping, farting, nose picking, ars scratchng etc.

    Everyone will soon get bored of it because everyone will have done it and everyone will have been a victim.

    In the end everyone will be burping, farting, nose picking, ars scratchng etc in public and we'll have gone back to how life was in the middle ages. (or oop narf)
    --------

    Good stuff maaaaannnng, I'll be watching this space for the next one.

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  13. Great woe dude. You're amazing you know. I've actually forced my brother in law to start following you so he can check for me when a Woe is due.

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  14. Thanks again for the words and stuff yous lot...

    Blogs, one of the funniest stories ever...

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