fight the future

heya

there are a number of questions which are recognisable both, look you see, by the nature of them and the frequency with which they are posed to me. one of the most intriguing and complex such questions is that concerning what exactly was happening on Saturday August 11 1985 at around 7pm. 

it's not really my place to question why someone would have such a question, for to respond to a question with a question is surely, if not certainly, rude. one really does wonder, however, as to why so many are fascinated by this matter. 

anyway, whereas i cannot answer the question (or resolve the query) complete, i can at the least account for certain aspects of it. 

yes, indeed. if for some reason you elected to stay home on the evening of Saturday August 11 1985 and were not particularly interested in either the left wing propaganda on BBC1 (or the aloof "arts" on BBC2), then chances are you were watching ITV, and watching Winner Takes All. although that is, of course, an abridged version of the title. back in the 80s it was more commonly, and affectionately known as Jimmy Tarbuck Presents Jimmy Tarbuck's Winner Takes All, Hosted By Jimmy Tarbuck.

was i one of the many watching this? i don't think so. to be honest, it sounds like the time of year when we might have been off on a family holiday somewhere. also, i never really took to Tarby as a Gameshow host. please, don't get me wrong - i am a strong advocate of the man and his vast talents. it was just i was always more interested in his pioneering, cutting edge stand up comedy work than his gameshow stuff.

speaking of gameshows, here, have a look at just how transient and progressive things turned out to be across the final 50% of the decade that was, or is, the 1980s.

yes, that's right, a Casio Pocket TV. that you could actually buy, as in go to a store and purchase (there was no real such thing as "online shopping" then) (except for catalogues and places what took phone orders). this advert was from 1989. quite remarkable, really. from what i recall the Casio Pocket TV was first introduced to the UK around 1985, but "not for sale". the only way you could obtain, or if you will attain, one was through the grace and generosity of His Greatness, the revered and treasured Jim Bowen, via the conduit of trial by darts and trial by temptation of greed on Bullseye.

delays in things existing and things being available to the general public are of course not the exclusive preserve of the final 50% of the 1980s. such things happened in the initial, or first, 50% too. as part of the total state control of all thought and all deeds of the people by the Thatcher government, as many things as possible which might let us, the commoners, the proletariat and other such discarded types, dream of or aspire to a sense of freedom, or a better life, were curtailed, banned and suppressed.

here was one of the more worrying examples of this in action.

indeed, that is Mr T's Christmas Dream, a documentary featuring revered raconteur and celebrated philanthropist Mr T spreading his joy and his dream across the people. this was first broadcast on 21 December 1985. it is important to remember this aspect.

Thatcher and her conspirators took one look at Mr T, as he was known, and his ideals of equality and all working together for a better life for all and did not like it. at all. this was why, up until late 1985, when the Conservatives sensed they needed some votes from the proletariat in order to maintain power, Mr T was kept well away from the British public, except for The A Team.

one of the most bizarre incidents on preventing the British people from knowing of the philosophy of Mr T came in the heavily edited original presentation of the documentary Rocky III. mostly the Conservative government of the 80s were most enthusiastic about commoners watching the Rocky documentaries, for they believed that they would encourage poor people to punch each other in the head, quite hard, in the hope of a better life, thus preventing them expecting the ruling authorities to do anything. but, this came to an end with Rocky III.

as many of you will be aware - we all are now, thanks to the uncensored version being freely available - Mr T featured in the documentary under his real name, Clubber Lang. Thatcher, or one of her conspirators, ordered the BBFC (who in fairness needed little encouragement to censor) to remove as much footage of him as possible. the result was that the first version of Rocky III to be screened in the UK ran for about 52 minutes. with Clubber Lang (Mr T) all but gone, audiences were confused by watching Rocky Balboa come out of retirement for no apparent reason, fall over in a ring and lose his belt for no apparent reason, homoerotically embrace and dance in the waves by the beach with Apollo Creed for fairly obvious reasons, then dance around in a ring and win his belt back for no apparent reason.

our friends in America were, of course, having no such nonsense. here, above, as you can see, they celebrated him. from what we understood off of television shows not censored by the Thatcher government in the 80s (both of them), absolutely everyone in America read this People magazine. quite impressive that it features the word "intriguing", as we were always assured that Americans had no time for such complex words, hence the James Bond film Licence Revoked having its name changed to Licence To Kill, with the justification being that American audiences "did not like complex words". a similar thing happened with one of them Harry Potter documentaries.

do we live in better or worse times? this really depends on what you want from life. sure, certainly and decidedly, our society is now one where Mr T is common knowledge, and one may speak freely of him in public without fear of persecution or arrest by the constabulary. there is a price for this, but i am not exactly sure what it is.

for some reason people believe that "the internet" only came about in the 90s. not so, we had it back in the 80s, and you did not require a computer to access it. also, as you can see below, it came with a quite useful and well organised directory, meaning no need or requirement for a "google" or other such rubbish.

sure, it was a fairly basic variant of internet. no, there were no downloads, "streaming" or, to be blunt, filth or disgusting things on it. but it was just as dynamic. also, if you wrote a letter to whoever was in charge of the internet, back when it had the much better, posher name of Oracle, they sometimes put it on one of the pages so many could read it. when they did do that, no newspapers or governments went off changing editorial policy or laws, making it somewhat more common sense than, say, Twitter.

would i like to return to the simplicity of the Oracle rather than the "internet" we have today? not really. i, honestly, really do appreciate the filth and disgusting things what the new one offers. but, i tell you what, the TV guide section what Oracle offered was way better than this "electronic tv guide" now on the go. faster, too. perhaps, or possibly, because there were less (fewer?) channels.

anyway, yes, by 1989, the barbaric, totalitarian Thatcher government had become aware of the fact that you can only beat people over the head for so long in order to maintain control. like the Politburo of the Soviet Union before it, they tried to save themselves by giving people "freedom". this ultimately meant that the Thatcher government sanctioned in 1989 what would have been unthinkable as recently as 1988 - members of the public were allowed to purchase and retain ownership of documentaries on video cassettes, in their own homes.

yes, one did not even have to leave their home to do this, except to go and post off the order form. of course, the documentaries one was able to purchase and own were heavily butchered and censored by the thought police of the BBFC, but every now and then some nudies were allowed to remain in place.

what three would i have ordered from the above, since it was get two free when you bought one? certainly Return Of The Living Dead, because then, as now, it is f****** excellent and one of my favourites, and Queen Greatest Flix for similar reasons. third, not sure. Terminator, perhaps.

but that was 1989. let us now return to 1985, so we may look forward to 1986. well, not we, as in the sense of you and i directly do so. rather more we look at what one of the more (in)famous soothsayers of the day predicted, via conjuring and the dark arts, would happen to each and every one and all of us.

the ceremonial show trials and subsequent burning of witches, charlatans, warlocks and so forth was pretty much eradicated by the mid 80s. i mean, yes, sure, it still happened (and does to this day happen) in certain villages and some communities, but for the most part the practice ceased. no, no altruistic or righteous reasons for the end of it; it was just that the Thatcher government determined that the cost of ritualistic burnings was higher than the benefit they got from their impact on suppressing the masses. 

how accurate was the predictions of the soothsayer Grant, one of the warlocks to take the most advantage of the policy of appeasement towards his type with his grasping of fame and celebrity status, in regards of me? i cannot say much for it might reveal personal information, so my answer is yes, no, maybe. also, i do not recall much of it.

did we feel like we could fight the future? i mean, when they stopped burning warlocks and mystics for their arts, were we compelled to take their readings, their findings and their charting of what was to come as the thing we had to follow? this is a most complicated question and, to be honest, i would rather you asked me another, easier one, like, for instance, the one about Tarby at the start.

one such fight that failed was the Christmas Hamper. this was a treat. in the above, Christmas 1985 is being used as the platform for we, the people, to start contributing and saving so that we may secure our hamper for twelve months forth. 

Christmas hampers were magical. they were filled with all sorts of stuff that you only got in them, and it really did make Christmas seem all the more a special time to be in. no, of course, the magic has gone. in our disposable society, there are no "seasons", or "times"; the relentless drive for instant gratification means that one can access anything at any time. which is useful, convenient even, but spoils the celebratory was associated with many such items. 

anyway, i really do not have any other thoughts or comments that i would care to share on any of these matters, for now at the least. 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!