What is "real time?"

Spent most of the evening sitting in front of the fire, with the hound curled up by my side.

I am grateful that I can have a fire to sit in front of, and I love my dog, but instead of taking the time to appreciate these blessings, I've got one eye on Al Jazeera on the flat screen and the other on Redd Foxx on the laptop.

After considerable ponderation, I have concluded that your time isn't really real unless you get your face out of the screens.

Stepped out for a breath of fresh air just a few minutes ago. Lo and behold, the night sky is clear, and there are more stars than you could ever count. Standing dumbfounded staring at the sky isn't widely considered a productive use of one's time, but it does help you put things in perspective.

How many of those distant stars have planets whirling around them?

In an infinite sky, there are infinite possibilities.

But rather than considering those possibilities, we would rather retreat to our screens.  

Disengaging from the teat of pop culture

Been working up to it for a long time. And it takes a long time. After all, what's not to like about that teat?

The Oscars are on tonight, as in on the TV.

I don't care. I haven't seen a single movie that's up for an award.

The big news out of Hollywood of course is all this stuff around #metoo and #timesup. Can you even imagine? Rich guys would force themselves on aspiring starlets, and they got away with it for decades?

Who knew?

Who didn't?

Who didn't indeed! That's one reason the current faux outrage strikes me as more than a little... well, faux.

So I won't be watching the Oscars. I've missed every awards show so far this season. Also missed the Daytona 500 and the Superbowl.

It ain't easy, but I'm gradually giving up that teat...

IGGY: the downward spiral never ends...

Everybody who ever loved Iggy in the old days loved him for a reason.

He was like fucking out there man.

Fucked up and fucking up in front of your fucking eyes!


Now flash forward fifty years and see Iggy the Icon at a press conference in Cannes.

It's a fucked up world, but Osterberg is on top of it, baby.

T-shirts in the headlines

Nevermind peace in the Middle East and global warming... here's some REAL news!

If Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones loves Dixie, as we are informed, how does he feel about the Confederate flag?

In my estimation you can't love Dixie without considering the Confederate flag to be just a part of the air you breathe.

But Keith is not the only T-shirt provocateur in the news today.

Nosiree!!

Justin Bieber went all the way to Australia to crash a Christian revival shin-dig to piss everybody off with his satanic T.

Yup, that's a major media platform using up bandwidth to do PR for Justin Bieber and Brian Warner and pass it off as news!

I guess we shouldn't really be blaming the media... they're just giving us what we want.

Does the Kardashian's Christmas card hide a secret message from the Illuminati?

This is for those of you who don't usually make it to The Guardian.

Does the Kardashians' Christmas card hide a secret Illuminati message?

I'd say probably not. But then again, if I were part of a shadowy media cover-up, that's exactly what I would say

• 
• • Lanre Bakare
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 5 December 2013 11.58 GMT

 

The Kardashian Christmas card: 'gaudy clickbait replete with thinly veiled digs at celebrity culture'. Photograph: David Lachapelle

Self-styled celebrity super family the Kardashians love their annual Christmas card. Over the years they've built up a smorgasboard of festive snaps, which have become more overblown as the family has slowly risen up the celebrity food chain. Last year'swas an all-white number with ticker tape and bubbly, which made it look as if they were trapped in a 2013 version of The Crystal Maze, but this year their yuletide snap went further and almost broke the internet.

Looking like a mix between a scene from Boogie Nights and the interior of a jazzed up Blackpool Pleasure Beach arcade, it's gaudy clickbait replete with thinly veiled digs at celebrity culture. Their subtle subliminal missives are communicated via piles of trashy magazine covers, Bruce Jenner trapped in a tube and graffiti that says stuff like "fame". Most media outlets took the card at face value and instinctively laughed heartily at it, before mocking the Kardashians and moving on, but others looked a bit deeper and started to see the HIDDEN ILLUMINATI MESSAGES.

Conspiracy theorist and shouty bloke du jour Alex Jones summed it up, calling the card "a rather grim and depressing summation of the entertainment world", which most people would happily agree with. But then he went on to add the whole thing was a homage to the "shadowy elite that is turning popular culture into a toxic wasteland". At that point most people switched off, but then even mainstream news sources started to ask; what is the secret Illuminati message? It's a question that has increasingly been asked of celebs linked to hip-hop over the last decade, with artists such as Jay-Zregularly having to bat away accusations that he's part of an occult conspiracy. And Hova is far from the only rapper accused of having Illuminati ties.

An internet search for Canadian cry-baby rap star Drake, for example, will throw up a treasure trove of Illuminati hip-hop conspiracy material. It ranges from Drake being in cahoots with crack-smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford, to the fact that his clothing linefeatures an owl (which is a sure sign of Illuminatiness) and theories that his tracklists contain hidden messages about the end of the world. The rabbit hole goes even deeper with a whole host of outlandish theories about the death of Tupac, which mostly revolve around him being murdered by the Illuminati with Kanye West and Jay-Z (of course) masterminding the whole shady operation.

Rappers are just the latest fall guys and they've taken the place of rock stars, who were regularly accused of occult connections in the 70s. David Bowie's interest in the work of Aleister Crowley around the time of his Berlin triptych which manifested itself via lyrical hat tips, and the Beatles' decision to include Crowley on the cover of Sgt Pepper's was enough to have them accused of dark connections.

So are the Kardashians simply the latest celebrity Illuminati messengers? Probably not – it's more likely they are just the latest celebrities to understand the publicity-spinning potential of Easter egg-laden promo shots that can be interpreted as having a darker meaning. But then again I would say that, wouldn't I? I could be part of the shadowy media cover-up squad.