I don’t know about you, but I think the internet is outrageously useful for pursuing and perusing the objects of nostalgia. I love finding emulators of video games I used to play, searching for tv programmes, cartoons, and films I used to watch, generally mincing down the memory-superhighway. [what the fuck is a superhighway anyway? have you ever seen one? I haven't even heard of one, except as a metaphor].
Finding this stuff brings back memories really sharply, like catching a whiff of a distinctive smell of an old home or haunt or else.
Anyhow, whilst browsing Youtube the other night I was disgusted to find this abasement of a treasured institution of many of our childhoods, which actually made me weep like an orphaned lamb.
Although on second thoughts, a lot of eighties stuff for kids was pretty disturbing without any modern day fiddling:
It might be a somewhat nerdsome thing to notice but my eye was drawn to this particular photo of the Lehman Brothers collapse:
There were millions of these, I know, as all sorts accounts from the sacked workers emerged. I particularly liked the description of workers clearing out their desks while drinking and smoking, the natural response to apocalypse.
Anyway, look at the chap on the right. Look at his t-shirt. If you ever watched any of the ‘Alien’ films you might recognise the logo on his t-shirt as that of the murderously capitalistic not-too-distant-future corporation of Weyland-Yutani. In the Alien films this quasi-governmental company is responsible for using people as fodder and human petri-dishes in its machinations to weaponise the nasty Aliens. It always struck me as a really effective ‘bad-guy’. The positive advertisements of capitalism are always so sinister, don’t you think? We know they are only in it for the gold.
Was the Lehman Brothers worker making a deliberate statement? As he was getting dressed that morning in casual clothes on his way to clear his desk, did he grab his WY t-shirt to make a point to his bosses/colleagues/the world?
No matter, it was a nice little poetic moment.
And what a moment this is. Now that professional bankers have been shown to have been either conned by or acted like boiler-rooms, does this current crisis in the banking sector signify the end of unbridled capitalism? The US banking sector now resembles a communist state-run economy. In this chaotic time with the world shifting under our feet is there anything or anyone who can lead us out of the nightmare?
Maybe this man:
And I don’t mean the fat bloke training for the Olympics
I know we live in a shock-numbed, media-jaundiced society. I know that even Guardian readers make jokes about sex-slaves and city bankers drink their own urine. I know that it is unfashionable nowadays to read the content of books and that the cover art and witty sub-titles are everything. But surely oh Islington, oh wearers of Philippe Starck glasses, oh modern world, surely this is going too far?
