Albert, the king of swing

Social Forums Non-Philosophical Chat
1

All right, one must not do this too often, that is to say only if it is useful, but I will show you concretely how metaphysics can be practical. More precisely, I will show you how metaphysics upon returning to reality can slay.

I will firstly give you the terms of the problem.

I was living in France at the time, where I spent many of my formative years. The year is 1996, thus ten years ago, and my sister phones me one night to tell me she just realized my little nephew, her son, instead of sleeping at night, listens to the radio under his pillow until two in the morning. Since he was a budding teenager at the time, catastrophe!, he stopped doing his homework, etc. So I asked my sister what frequency he listened to, and she said: “Beats me, but the radio is SkyRock, with a guy called Maurice”.

So I hang up and I tune into that station at home: SkyRock. I hear in effect one Maurice, whose bread and butter was to take live calls and to play the answers with the following overtones: « Maurice owns you… » etc. I quickly understand that the bloke, cynical and absurdly megalomaniac, albeit having a real talent, had been lasting for eight years on the airwaves, and had become a real star, with an audience of God knows how many million people every evening, not nothing.

Impeccable, I called the sister back and told her: “don’t worry, I will have him canned and your kid will get a full night’s sleep”. So she laughed of course, whilst thinking, “you never know”. I thus pondered over it for a couple of nights, and then I called the show a few times, so as to titillate my prey. So much so did I titillate, that Maurice set a rendezvous up on air, with the following overtones “I like your style, I want to see you, show up at the Tex-Mex tonight at Montparnasse, I’ll be there ».

So I went to the meeting place, with a friend who was a tad panicked, being convinced that I would get my cheeks torn off, given how I had started to fry him up on his air wave.

I hence played it prudently, approaching the cafe in several stages. I took a peek, placed my friend on the opposite sidewalk, and finally moseyed on down. I entered the door and came face to face with Maurice who had shut off half the café, surrounded by his coaches. He was a guy from the French Caribbean islands, who stood 6 feet 6 inches tall, with a pony tail, clean, no alcohol, no cigarettes, not at all the Serge Gainsbourg clone that he portrayed himself to be on air. He told me to have a seat, then we started chatting. I don’t quite recall what I told him during half an hour, but at the end the girl who was his PR person told me “Ok, enough now, leave him be”.

Maurice was sniggering. His bodyguards lurked about nervously. So I told him “You see son, I’m going to have you sacked from SkyRock, and it’s only going to take me 15 days, not one more”. He almost got mad, but he preferred to laugh at full volume. I then hurried off, without the beginning of a shadow of an idea of how I was going to go about it. But I got him canned, before the 15 days expired, not one more, and without it costing me a dime. So, how do you think I went about it? Well that’s where a metaphysical touch is deadly for an idiot. Maurice isn’t really an idiot, but he’s not far from being one. So stay tuned for the master plan (hihi).

To be continued

2

As an introduction to the civilities, I treated him to 5 or 6 faxes like the following one, with “personal and confidential” stamped on the top. I would send them at around 6:00pm, on the fax of a secretary of Sky Rock chosen fortuitously. So the fax would travel all around the station (at the time the fax wasn’t used so much by private individuals). Later, on air in the evening, Maurice would comment the fax of the day, quoting in texto some of my sentences. At the time, he had been dubbed “the new Descartes”.

Maurice,

Exceptionally I’m giving you a second chance to make me a first impression. As you have up to now specialised yourself in the go lay an egg question, but otherwise you seem to be a good student, here are a few additional questions specifically tailored to you, with answers included. Apply yourself because I have a cathedral to finish, and there will definitively not be a third chance.

  1. We will start with a question on religion: can you eructate in the tubes that you are a rinky-dink?

Not for the time being. You will only be able to say it when you have finished your growth cycle, if all has gone well, and only at the confessional, because the priest is held by professional secrecy. Furthermore, the apparent humility which could seduce you in this declaration is the equivalent of its opposite, that is to say bumptiousness, since in both cases you speak of yourself. So you have nothing to regret.

  1. Natural sciences question: can you calmly place yourself as a clued in observer of the living dead?

Since you like to play, that mass will always be stronger than you. The principle which animates it articulates itself in two segments: firstly a pathological jealousy because you are living above your means; secondly a scientific cretinism which kills, in a playful, interactive and convivial manner, but which kills. Learn that by heart, you’ll understand later on.

  1. Observation of nature question: do you have the right of error?

You have some talent, which is quite remarkable for someone who still can’t do anything of his ten fingers, but in reality you have no right of error. You are expected at the supreme court, where no one cares if the neighbour has a first prize in reed-pipe or an honourable mention in brush technique, because there no one blocks anyone else’s sunlight out. Ponder carefully over that one, no dope.

  1. A biology question: can the living be plugged in?

During your holidays you will have to seriously think over the fact that the niche in which you have jumped in is starting to seriously smell of stale, and that you risk finding yourself completely plugged in without having seen it coming. One must never accept to be plugged in, lest one also accept to be unplugged, one day, at a time when one has precisely lost the autonomy of the living of which I speak. I call your attention to the fact that one can very well be the plugged and the plugger, which is catastrophic contrary to what you have just thought. In effect, in that case, without a notable pay rise, you find yourself obliged to take on both roles at the same time, that of the idiot and that of he who thinks he is clever. Needless to describe the face your mother will make at that juncture.

  1. Geography question: can you hang out anywhere you want?

There is a grave risk to your health in hanging out regularly between a commercial for a network of people obsessed with the asshole and the last CD-Rom of Laëticia. It is as thoughtless as letting your neighbour habitually take a duke in your garage, even if it’s silly Pierre who is persuaded of shaking the sky from the top floor of his building. Never forget that if the sky caves in, he will be the first to feel it full force, and I say that that day you better not have any dudu stuck to the bottom of your tennis shoes.

  1. Dental hygiene question: can you count on yourself and on your dentition?

You should really start to realize the necessity to see a specialist who is intelligent and not plugged. That will change you, but one must finish what one has started or not start it in the first place. Listen up! I am speaking of an intelligent person, not plugged in and who brushes his teeth twice a day. Just ask him or her if she knows the sister of Don Quixote and then you will know straight off if you have a chance to negotiate the niche of Nicolas Hulot, so as so silly Pierre can hand over a set of keys after having refurbished the building at his expense.

  1. Geometry question: is a straight line infinite?

No, it is only unlimited, else you would be included inside it. Only the infinite limits the unlimited. In other words, only quality limits quantity. Quantity is what you call the immutable. Try to get your head around it please, it’s important.

:sunglasses: Philosophy question: is Descartes mentally handicapped?

Yes, because we exist before we know it and that the affirmation “I think therefore I am” claims else wise. It is because of Descartes that your eyesight deteriorates day after day. Because very young you thought that reality needed the idea you made of it to exist. It is thus criminal to be mentally handicapped to that degree, even if in the stretch you delude yourself by playing “touche-pipi” with reality.

It has suddenly dawned on me that it is very difficult to make myself understood by someone like you, especially when he boasts not asking for anything and when he thinks he is smart by imitating the call of the bottomless well. Fatuousness is sticking its belly out Maurice, if must be reined in.

Signed: Albert, the king of swing

3

So finally I got him like I will tell you now. I asked myself what sort of toxic question I could ask on air, and to which he could answer neither yes nor no to, nor hang up on me. The problem seemingly did not have a solution.

Now then, dozens of people would call him after midnight, stark raving mad, and sometimes nasty, to the tune of “Yeaaaaah Maurice, here I’m calling you to explain that I raped my neighbour the other night, etc.

It was at the time preceding the Internet wave, and thus those blockheads thought they were anonymous. One night, around one in the morning, I got through the filter at the switchboard by putting on the voice of a young girl loving the latest record of the Rolling Stones and who wanted to speak to Maurice about it, and the lady at the other end of the line put me on hold (because I was persona non grata, obviously, and so I called from a phone booth). Once the airwave opened up, I put on my normal voice and blurted out: “Goodnight Maurice, finally it’s not Ginette, it’s me, Albert. Hey! Do you know I’m quite worried about your future? I have a question for you. Do you think the nutcases who call you to speak of their last filthy trick are located by the police themselves or do you give them a helping hand by transmitting the phone numbers that pop up on your switchboard at the end of the show?"

So then there was a hullabaloo in the studio, and Maurice said, “Hey, you who are listening, you must know that this guy is completely off his rockers. That’s right, I bring the list directly every evening to the minister of the Interior. This was followed by a long musical sequence, without any phone calls. The next day Maurice blacklisted all numbers from Paris and the Paris region. The question nevertheless bore fruits, and almost every evening two people (whom I did not know) would ask the same question to the tune of “By the way, it’s true, that’s not stupid what the caller was asking you the other day”. Moreover, obviously, not one nutcase would call Maurice, which thoroughly dimmed the usual delirious ambiance. The only people calling in were old biddies and kids.

I then asked a dozen of friends from outside the capital city to finish him off by asking the same question under different guises. Finally, after eight uninterrupted years on the airwaves, Maurice was sacked two weeks later and the show terminated. I called my little nephew and told him: Uncle Harvey got rid of Maurice, now rush off to bed. :slight_smile:)

One year later, I was in Toulouse, and I came across a radio station and heard Maurice. He had set up the same show on a small station in the South West. I wondered if I should call him to say “Hey, Maurice, it’s me”. Finally, I’m not such a nasty guy. Be that as it may, from what I heard from him that evening, I was under the distinct impression that Maurice had become much less of an idiot and an ass.

4

I found this fax which I had sent a few days after this call, at a time when the paranoia was starting to transpire quite distinctly with the viewer… Jeez, we had a good laugh. I had put on a voice not unlike Audiard’s… cré Maurice!

Good evening Maurice,

I have a quite unordinary desire to carry out a few more neither yes nor no séances, like the other day on the subject of the ministry of the Interior. After last week’s trial run, some other ideas cropped up in my mind, whilst I was asleep, and finally I am almost certain that the way to really have fun is to continue to whip up a raging paranoia at the spectator, especially at the one who was seen by the social worker acting out the role of the two backed beast without an invitation, and who takes advantage of the fact that no one sees him in your studio to ask you if your behind would have smarted the same.

As on the one hand I don’t doubt that you have constraints pertaining to ratings and results, that you don’t really have the permission to scare the client, and on the other hand that I am no longer welcome in your tepee, I filled in some pals who have been successful in life without having taken exams, and I explained to them how to present themselves at peak hour so as your two sisters at the switchboard can stamp the quality label “What a moron! Maurice is going to make a muffler out of him in no time” Hang on Gerard, I’ll put you on to Maurice”. Like that my patent medicine will nevertheless find its way directly to your snout. Don’t worry, you’ll recognize it immediately by its odour, and after that all you will need to do is let nature do the work so as the brain of your spectators strikingly resembles the pear yogurts of your garden which you enjoy so much indulging in after a day at the factory.

Even if you feel overwhelmed by the surprise that you will indubitably feel, don’t forget to routinely punctuate that the current correspondent is roundly daft but that he doesn’t look harmful, exactly as you did with me the other day. You gave the impression you did not have enough oxygen, which completely validates the hypothesis of the work accident reimbursed by the artists guild.

Now I am quite conscious that one must not underestimate the hint of restlessness which could install itself at the top floor of the big arcopal building of Monsieur Pierre, especially if the projected numbers were to deteriorate to the point that the advertiser would migrate to other dairy shops.

I also weigh the consequences that this could have on the quality of the pickle first cold pression that you have customarily slipped into your privileged person’s sandwich. That is the most important to preserve.

Can you see the picture son? I wouldn’t get over it if this stupidly degenerated whilst we were enjoyably playing at “peek-a-boo, it’s me, Albert, the king of swing”. I honestly have to say that even if I begged myself forgiveness, I would have difficulty in admitting it definitively before turning the page and starting afresh on a brand new basis.

Best of salutations and greetings son, and make sure you don’t forget to keep me posted in priority if your backside starts to feel the slipper of a hierarchical superior.

Signed: Albert, the king of swing

5

LMAO, missed that one.

I’m actually a fan of Gainsburg, when he behaved. :sunglasses:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p73ICnVKHU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkquK8cuxuY