KING SEPP –
or to owe one ou a king’s ransom
So now we’re not allowed to use the number Twenty Ten (or Two Thousand and Ten) as it has been bought and is owned by FIFA, by all recent accounts…
Maverick ran an article a couple of months back on the limitations that would be enforced against those wishing to derive benefit from the impending soccer world cup without the appropriate legal entitlement; noseweek has just followed on from that in their latest edition (94 August 2007).
I make no apologies for being grossly offended yet ironically amused by this ludicrous state of affairs – the assumed ownership of a number regardless of its obvious marketable implications. Does this mean I can no longer sell a product to someone for an amount of R2010 without getting permission (in case I benefit from the magical appearance of Sepp’s number over and above the profit already factored in)? And having to add another R at the end of the proposed price – i.e. R2010® paying my tithe to King Sepp and the FIFADOM (as noseweek so aptly named it) Give me a break!
Does this mean that the horned one, old Lucifer should have control over 666 and derive royalty benefits whenever this enigmatic figure is written or published anywhere?
If you’re wondering to whom you should address the royalty cheques – try Bill Gates c/o Microsoft – I’m sure they’ll get there.
There must be a whole stack of money owing to Beelzebub courtesy of Madiba himself as it could be persuasively argued that Lou’s moniker appears subtly in Mr Mandela’s old prison number 46664 and that particular brand has been merchandised to absolute death.
I mean let’s be honest – everyone (with the exception perhaps of a silence-vowed ascetic monk living in a minimalist cave in Outer Mongolia – and I’m not even sure about him) knows the interpretation associated with the number 666 as “the mark of the beast”, whether rightly or wrongly, and its supposed link to the Antichrist.
I guess the answer to the Lucifer riddle is: Only if you believe in him.
What if I don’t believe in Sepp Blatter or FIFA?
Come on, people - how can you own a number? Numbers belong to everyone.
It’s akin to asserting ownership of ozone as a component of the Earth’s atmosphere and broadcasting to the world that they have to pay you every time you breathe that component of air.
What happens when 2010 (the year – not the event) itself rolls around? Are we allowed to write dates on cheques without fear of the trade police pouncing upon us in banking malls and frogmarching us to be tried for heresy in the Court of the Football King just in case we are deemed to be taking the piss?
What does FIFA stand for? Financial Interests For Autocrat?
It is patently ridiculous but it certainly isn’t the first time humankind has messed with our governing numerical systems and counters.
For example, if you had been born in Huddersfield on September 3rd 1729 and had wished to throw a humungous birthday bash for your 21st, you would have been screwed. In 1752 when that auspicious birthday arrived, you would have had to throw the do on September 14th – no, not because the village hall was booked out by some chanting wiccan weirdos – simply because there was no September 3rd on that year at all! Nor was there a 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th or 13th – they too had been dispensed with for that year.
Why?
Simply because Britain had decided to adjust their calendrical lag that particular year and “lose” the 12 days that the New Style Gregorian Calendar had imposed upon them by decree of a Papal Bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII in March 1582 – i.e. March 1582 in the old Julian calendar that had supposedly rounded off the solar year to 365.25 days instead of 365.242199 as had been calculated by the mathematical geniuses of the time.
The Poms had 170 years to introduce the “new” system but hey – for a nation that baths generally once a month (whether they need to or not) – who’s counting?
Confused?
Of course we are – and its just such obfuscation that is designed to keep us from asking too many questions – it makes our heads hurt…now move along and let your rulers make the decisions for you – they do know best after all.
The good news? I would have been spared the inconvenience of buying my sister, Norma, a birthday present in 1752 as her birthday would have been shelved in the interests of cosmic mathematical accuracy.
What a dumb species we really are!
Not so much that we wing it and make it up as we go along (which we most certainly do) but more that we buy into the bullshit that we’re dispensed like mind-controlled lemmings in a suicidal race – a-la Sting’s Synchronicity II lyric from the brilliant Police album (circa 1983).
In hindsight, however; if we’d bought into the Mayan calendar of Tzolkins (19 month year) and Haabs (13 month year), these running in parallel with solar cyclical commonality every 52 years, I guess we’d really have been screwed. The Poms wouldn’t have been able to work out how long it would take them to just get to a point where they’d introduce the system let alone actually use the fucking thing. I mean them and the Yanks thought the decimal system was more complicated than Imperial measurements – that 12’s, 14’s and other weird, wonderful mathematical anomalies were better than adding things up in tens. We’ve got 10 fingers and 10 toes – it’s obvious that God wanted us to work in decimal numbers, isn’t it? It’s a divine edict. Can’t you see that?
In the good old days, I would have simply issued a Papal decree on that score and heretical non-decimalians would have been summarily decimated.
But to get back to the Great Scam of 2010 and the damp squib it will prove to be for those who dream of future benefits. Those who aspire to benefit financially from the event would be the merchandising entrepreneurs but they won’t. That’s all stitched up already by the FIFA feudal system. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not about to piss on anyone’s parade – least of all King Sepp’s – I wish South Africans, much more than FIFA, enormous success and benefit from the event. But we all know it is a FIFA moneyraker more than anything else.
I harbour a well-intentioned desire for Bafana Bafana to win the competition but that possibility is as likely as the Mayan calendar being reintroduced to popular society in the near future or Al Gore convincing George that he may have to rethink his carbon emission policies (regardless of the arguments of natural versus introduced global warming phenomena). It does make common sense to not be quite as dirty as we have been in the interests of future generations does it not?
So if Sepp and his minions have licence over the number 2010, can I still have TWENTY TEN - the words or TWENTY TEN - the musical, or TWENTY TEN - the pantomime. In fact, it's a circus.
With Twenty-Twenty hindsight we’ll look back on this all one day and laugh, wishing we had taken out trade restrictions or patents on the number 69.
I was asked once if I could spell cunnilingus and could only admit defeat, adding that maddeningly – it had been on the tip of my tongue only the night before…
I make no apologies for being grossly offended yet ironically amused by this ludicrous state of affairs – the assumed ownership of a number regardless of its obvious marketable implications. Does this mean I can no longer sell a product to someone for an amount of R2010 without getting permission (in case I benefit from the magical appearance of Sepp’s number over and above the profit already factored in)? And having to add another R at the end of the proposed price – i.e. R2010® paying my tithe to King Sepp and the FIFADOM (as noseweek so aptly named it) Give me a break!
Does this mean that the horned one, old Lucifer should have control over 666 and derive royalty benefits whenever this enigmatic figure is written or published anywhere?
If you’re wondering to whom you should address the royalty cheques – try Bill Gates c/o Microsoft – I’m sure they’ll get there.
There must be a whole stack of money owing to Beelzebub courtesy of Madiba himself as it could be persuasively argued that Lou’s moniker appears subtly in Mr Mandela’s old prison number 46664 and that particular brand has been merchandised to absolute death.
I mean let’s be honest – everyone (with the exception perhaps of a silence-vowed ascetic monk living in a minimalist cave in Outer Mongolia – and I’m not even sure about him) knows the interpretation associated with the number 666 as “the mark of the beast”, whether rightly or wrongly, and its supposed link to the Antichrist.
I guess the answer to the Lucifer riddle is: Only if you believe in him.
What if I don’t believe in Sepp Blatter or FIFA?
Come on, people - how can you own a number? Numbers belong to everyone.
It’s akin to asserting ownership of ozone as a component of the Earth’s atmosphere and broadcasting to the world that they have to pay you every time you breathe that component of air.
What happens when 2010 (the year – not the event) itself rolls around? Are we allowed to write dates on cheques without fear of the trade police pouncing upon us in banking malls and frogmarching us to be tried for heresy in the Court of the Football King just in case we are deemed to be taking the piss?
What does FIFA stand for? Financial Interests For Autocrat?
It is patently ridiculous but it certainly isn’t the first time humankind has messed with our governing numerical systems and counters.
For example, if you had been born in Huddersfield on September 3rd 1729 and had wished to throw a humungous birthday bash for your 21st, you would have been screwed. In 1752 when that auspicious birthday arrived, you would have had to throw the do on September 14th – no, not because the village hall was booked out by some chanting wiccan weirdos – simply because there was no September 3rd on that year at all! Nor was there a 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th or 13th – they too had been dispensed with for that year.
Why?
Simply because Britain had decided to adjust their calendrical lag that particular year and “lose” the 12 days that the New Style Gregorian Calendar had imposed upon them by decree of a Papal Bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII in March 1582 – i.e. March 1582 in the old Julian calendar that had supposedly rounded off the solar year to 365.25 days instead of 365.242199 as had been calculated by the mathematical geniuses of the time.
The Poms had 170 years to introduce the “new” system but hey – for a nation that baths generally once a month (whether they need to or not) – who’s counting?
Confused?
Of course we are – and its just such obfuscation that is designed to keep us from asking too many questions – it makes our heads hurt…now move along and let your rulers make the decisions for you – they do know best after all.
The good news? I would have been spared the inconvenience of buying my sister, Norma, a birthday present in 1752 as her birthday would have been shelved in the interests of cosmic mathematical accuracy.
What a dumb species we really are!
Not so much that we wing it and make it up as we go along (which we most certainly do) but more that we buy into the bullshit that we’re dispensed like mind-controlled lemmings in a suicidal race – a-la Sting’s Synchronicity II lyric from the brilliant Police album (circa 1983).
In hindsight, however; if we’d bought into the Mayan calendar of Tzolkins (19 month year) and Haabs (13 month year), these running in parallel with solar cyclical commonality every 52 years, I guess we’d really have been screwed. The Poms wouldn’t have been able to work out how long it would take them to just get to a point where they’d introduce the system let alone actually use the fucking thing. I mean them and the Yanks thought the decimal system was more complicated than Imperial measurements – that 12’s, 14’s and other weird, wonderful mathematical anomalies were better than adding things up in tens. We’ve got 10 fingers and 10 toes – it’s obvious that God wanted us to work in decimal numbers, isn’t it? It’s a divine edict. Can’t you see that?
In the good old days, I would have simply issued a Papal decree on that score and heretical non-decimalians would have been summarily decimated.
But to get back to the Great Scam of 2010 and the damp squib it will prove to be for those who dream of future benefits. Those who aspire to benefit financially from the event would be the merchandising entrepreneurs but they won’t. That’s all stitched up already by the FIFA feudal system. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not about to piss on anyone’s parade – least of all King Sepp’s – I wish South Africans, much more than FIFA, enormous success and benefit from the event. But we all know it is a FIFA moneyraker more than anything else.
I harbour a well-intentioned desire for Bafana Bafana to win the competition but that possibility is as likely as the Mayan calendar being reintroduced to popular society in the near future or Al Gore convincing George that he may have to rethink his carbon emission policies (regardless of the arguments of natural versus introduced global warming phenomena). It does make common sense to not be quite as dirty as we have been in the interests of future generations does it not?
So if Sepp and his minions have licence over the number 2010, can I still have TWENTY TEN - the words or TWENTY TEN - the musical, or TWENTY TEN - the pantomime. In fact, it's a circus.
With Twenty-Twenty hindsight we’ll look back on this all one day and laugh, wishing we had taken out trade restrictions or patents on the number 69.
I was asked once if I could spell cunnilingus and could only admit defeat, adding that maddeningly – it had been on the tip of my tongue only the night before…
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