2005-11-26 - 3:15 a.m.

I recently read Volpone by Ben Jonson. It's a Renaissance play about the dangers of avarice. *EDIT* That's probably the most pretentious opening of all time. It doesn't even make much sense. Well, it does if I could be arsed getting the book and typing out the whole quote. Trust me on this one: the following pathetic commentary on rolling news makes a little more sense if I include the full Volpone quote. I'm not going to, though. Ha. What an asshole. Well, the interesting thing about it is that at the end, Volpone himself comes forward and says, "...the seasoning of a play is the applause." What he's saying is, as you'd know if you'd read it/been taught it, You're not inmpressing anyone... It's a car crash. Original! You can't help watching even though you know you should be disgusted. Now there's a thought. That twat of a film critic Mark Kermode always used to preach about when one should switch off and turn away because the film in question (say, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) was so "disturbing" that any right thinking person couldn't possibly keep watching. For some reason this got me thinking about September the Eleventh. Or Nine Eleven, as it's been renamed.

You see, when those buildings collapsed everyone watched. And kept watching. It was live on the telly - magic! Terror porn! It was such a horrible event that CNN could only repeat it 300 times. It was beautiful, though, wasn't it? And it was live on TV! A real water cooler moment to match Ross and Rachel finally getting together. Robert De Niro made a statement about it, so you know it had to be a pretty big deal. Rolling news coverage is an almighty boon to trrrrsts - they only have to make a slight nuissance of themselves in, say, London, and it'll be on the telly until a celebrity is spotted buying lingerie or something. It doesn't matter that there's nothing new to report, here's some members of the general pubic to give their informed views: "It was horrible..." No shit? I'm glad they stuck a microphone in that charred face on my account. It really helps me to be sympathetic.

Here's my point: Nine One One was a work of art. Ooh, controversial! I'll explain: It was unpredictable (at least it was to those of us who aren't George Bush ahahahaha! Satire, there), it stirred the emotions, and (points always coming in threes) it changed the way in which we see the world. Should art be "unpredictable"? Fucked if I know. Just look at Lost with its nice Asian character, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the plane crash. Didn't see that one coming. When those buildings tumbled, Hollywood rejoiced - a new set of clichés born. If the loss of human life was really so unpalatable, then why were we glued to the televison watching dem dang ole planes hit the wall again and again and again... Did you see that, Billy Bob? Dem sand niggers done fucked us up! I'd like to think I'd have had the guts to jump if I was one of those hideous errections at the time. Fuck dying in your sleep. But, it's cowardly to fly your plane into a building and die, isn't it? Well, if I do it, I'm taking Michael Moore with me.

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