The Model (Dub Version - Prince Fatty)

In case you were wondering which model I was referring to. 

It's this one specifically.

Reasons To Be Cheerful (1, 2, 3)

I know we're in the cross hairs of a medieval-pandemic with bodies piled so high the putrefaction is awkward to avoid, but there are plenny-of-things that are rewarding and make me and many others happy.

The first, is that my long-held dream since Beijing, of municipal services, transport-electrification of inner cities is happening in my home city of Southampton. You have no idea how happy it makes of me to see an ever expanding cross-section of demographics, adopt the two wheel electric scooter instead of the rotten and decaying stench of 5+ passenger vehicles occupying valuable road real-estate while belching fossils *winky*

Some days when I'm zipping about town on my ridiculously small electric bike, weaving in and out of the scooters, or just just plain hanging on to their slip-stream, I feel like those memories of life in Beijing with electric-bike stories have enabled some kind of manifestation of dream-wishes-come-true, into real life.

I feel blessed, lucky and happy. It really is a dream come true.

Part II tbc.

Social Media, Memes, Censorship & Interference

I'm not a very talented meme maker, but it's a fact that the best military intelligence recognises the power of memes, and I made the mistake of referring to that authority, and so the Memetic Warfare post above was denuded of the images I posted.

Out of all the memes I've written over the last 9 years, only a handful have been passed around enough times, that I've been inadvertently sent my own work.

Usually this is by a well-meaning connection of mine, hoping to red-pill me, which is always a good chuckle.

From time to time, I've also seen my memes passed around social media and that's rewarding when it happens. Usually they've been copied, butchered, nicked, repurposed and sometimes revitalised in exactly the way Richard Dawkins intended, when he mutated the word 'gene' to explain that instead of mutation by random change, and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, they are altered deliberately by human creativity as memes.

Social media is no longer so effective, so I  don't mind getting blocked on Facebook. the latest 3 month ban has given me a chance to really look into different platforms, but it's still a great address book. 

Losing my twitter account in 2014 was a quite a loss, but it's still the best research tool despite the censorship, and I get to do a lot more of that lately, which is why I'm reasonably upbeat and confident about the future, although there's a lot of work to go and we can't drop our guard.

As I've mentioned, it does surprise me when individual posts on this blog are censored or tampered with. I posted a bunch of my hottest memes in a post from October 2018, and they were removed with a kind of image placeholder left behind as shown above, in case this link is not inviting enough to verify for yourself.

The most annoying interference is when an important post is tampered with, so that there are spelling, grammar or punctuation mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I do make regular mistakes, but they're always the same, such as repetitive use of a word in a paragraph and a few other idiosyncrasies of mine.

Around once a month or so, I'll reread a notable post of mine, and find the kind of errors that are not typical for me at all. They always undermine an important posts' credibility. It's been going on for years and it never happens if I'm just sharing something for shits and giggles.

Which is sometimes the case.

UPDATE - As if the universe is trying to help me, I just came across one of my TV memes being shared on Twitter, just now.

Regrettably the machine is censoring emails to my father, with links to my blog.

Update: Another of my memes spotted on June 1st 2022

Lost Track of Time

Christchurch Freemantle

As time goes by?

Toxic Prurience

Freer & Blue in Cambodia

It's been a few years now so I don't mind publishing these private emails as the lesson still applies today for those with ears to hear, and eyes to see.

My good friend Peter Doran in Bangkok was a self-made multi-millionaire. He was striking to look at, tough as hell and stricken with the most aggressive bouts of violent depression.

He was a dangerous man to be around, but he was also one of the most generous, funny and clever people I ever met. I considered him to be an older brother, but from time to time it came at great expense.

I recall once he was pissed off with his brother Johnnie who had left for New York and decided to stitch him up by finding out some hotel details of a client/friend who was staying at The Conrad in Bangkok. Earlier that day he had tried to overdose and I was starting my new job as Planning Director at Dentsu Bangkok. It was literally my first day and so I could only help by calling another friend (Frank Duvi) to go check up on Pete or Blue as we called him. 

As there was no answer from his bedroom, I instructed Frank to break down the door, a job he was capable of as a former French foreign legionnaire and Muay Thai boxer.

Anyway, after work, I headed over to Blue's and that's when he decided to take me for a drink down The Conrad in the Diplomat bar, a place I frequented regularly, he pulled out a scrap of paper with the room number of his brother's friend, and proceeded to order a 1500 pounds sterling bottle of champagne on that rooms tab.

I was frozen with fear, as it was clear Blue was in a mess from his earlier suicide attempt, and he didn't look particularly credible with a scrap of paper reading the room number out to the barwoman. Anyway, she took the order and delivered the champagne in an ice bucket wrapped in immaculate white napkins. We drank it and then we left to head over to Patpong GoGo bars. I only breathed a sigh of relief when we got in the cab. My next visit to that bar was very uncomfortable, as the kindly barwoman recognised me, but didn't say anything. It was not my order but I was complicit.

In any case the reason I am bringing up Blue is that he had access to a mutual friend's email account and he had made a habit of reading all his private emails on a regular basis for a couple of years. That is until, as you can see above, he forwarded me an email one day, thinking I'd understand it was not him but being forwarded, but instead I blew his cover by responding to our mutual friend as if the email was meant for me.

Blue was very angry with me, our friend Tim Ramos the owner of the email account who was a multi-millionaire sex-addict retiree from Hawaii was mad at me, thinking I'd colluded with Blue although I had done nothing but respond to that forwarded email which was quite insulting and so my reply was caustic, to say the least.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to share that when the dust had settled, Blue admitted that having access to Tim's email had been corrosive and had fed an obsession that had become toxic to him in the end, as any addicted snooper and peeping tom will reveal when asking how and why their prurience had affected them.

I live a fairly open life and try not to have any secrets, because I know that it's your secrets that kill you in the end. 

I eat, shit, fuck, smoke, fart and wank like the old bachelor I am who prefers not to copulate with ladies just for the sex, as I feel it's damaging to be in a fake relationship, (although I'm always on the lookout for someone special). Lady luck is always a possibility.

I have found that those who obsess over me, are always the same, and have recurring observable traits. 

Insanely jealous, insecure and inveterate liars who have no grasp that some of us don't lie for convenience. 

Snoopers are the meconium of the universe, and that applies to Pete's email 'hacking' and to anyone else who lives vicariously.

Get a life. 

Mine is already taken.

Two Subjects Umm That Wake People Up

Just something I learned about what topics the machine fears most and how to communicate. I guess I'm going to need better lighting and a microphone if I do another one.

RABBLE ROUSING WITH CHARLES FRITH

Here's an interview I did for Truth frequency radio.

Robert Stanley Interviews Me

My Life in Advertising

I donʼt think that this should be a guide towards getting into advertising - if anything it should serve as a how-not-to-do-it with a few nuggets picked up along the way.

As a friend of mine put it some years back when I declared my occupation, ʻoh thatʼs so 80ʼs” and she was right. We were among a handful of people dancing on a catwalk after a fashion show was over (the music still was kicking off) and so I guess the glamour remains in pockets if you keep your eyes peeled. 

Burmese royalty links or so she claimed.

Nevertheless, Iʼve always loved advertising and when a vacancy arose in a small below-the-line agency called Counter Attack in London on the Albert Embankment, South London at the end of the eighties. I not only applied for the administrative role in advertising but was elated to be given a position that exceeded my experience based, I was told, on how I conducted myself at interview stage.

I loved all the people there and it was my first full on taste of people who work within the creative industries. Iʼve been hooked ever since. When the ad business produces superstars they shine greater than any other business Iʼve ever know.

Truly inspirational and clever people to work with.

I was however young enough to subsequently chop around and try a few different opportunities including a spell with a direct-marketing printing outfit in Nottingham where I was a useless sales person in their London office.

However, no incentive could have been greater than to strike out abroad on account of falling in love with a young East German au pair from Leisnig in Germany not that long after the Berlin wall had come down.

I had a fascination with politics and particularly Communism, that in part explains why Iʼm currently inhaling deep lungfuls of power and bureaucracy here in Beijing with a view to getting a grip on global politics for the next twenty or so years. They will be important decades.

My German experience proved to be a pure blend of Victor Hugoʼs Les Miserables (something positive only occurs about 200 pages-in and nothing happy happens until the end) and Franz Kafkaʼs The Transformation.

Itʼs a book in itself, that part of my life and I shall enjoy sharing it as I kept a detailed and extensive journal of that period which never happened again till I took up blogging.

On my return to the UK I had no intention of working, given the weight of events I had experienced during this period which even took me out to the Far East for six months where I learnt Thai and worked for a Direct Marketing company. So, back in England I felt pretty numb about life with no inclination to work for some time, and so I enrolled for a marketing degree at the age of 23. They let me in on account of my advertising and marketing experience (and secondary school qualifications) and I had three wonderful years of doing what came naturally to me.

Studying marketing and design.

My only regret was I probably could have scored a first class degree if I put my mind to it. I was however diligent with the lectures and tutorials which compensated for my refusal to do exam revision, except for one memorable all nighter where an accountancy student took me through profit and loss, cash flow, and financial statements. Amazingly 3 months of lecturing on a subject that bores me to tears was condensed into a night of rough scribbles on paper and I passed with flying colours. Or at least just flying.

As ever with these things some serendipity is needed. Just before I graduated I went to a party and spent a whole night talking to a young woman who later revealed that she was a copywriter from the ad superstars of the day called HHCL and partners - I think she found me interesting as she ignored her partner for the night. I was in awe of a living breathing creative from the agency I most wanted to work at. Yes folks I slept my way to the middle.

Thatʼs categorically not true, but meeting people and being interested in them is a sure fire way of being seen as interesting. So is encouraging gossip like the anecdote above, and so when the opportunity arose to interview with HHCL. I grabbed it and was fortunate enough to have been mentored by one of the intellectually toughest planners I have ever encountered to this day.

It was Mark Piper who memorably gave me his copy of the Koran before it really mattered because he was that kind of guy. A voracious reader and a heavyweight intellect. If you donʼt know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims youʼre probably best off working in a bank or something. Planners are information whores. They suck it in any way they can get it and the best of them know how to process that information into something that matters. Youʼre either into it or not. The rest is down to accumulating experience.

A year later almost to the day I joined Howell Henry, I resigned. I remember it well because I could have stayed on a couple more weeks and secured my annual bonus but I wanted to get as far away from someone as possible. So I jumped on a plane did some interviews, secured a position, and moved back to Thailand, with its welcome tropical heat, the most awesome food, amazing culture not to mention Thailandʼs unique place in the DNA strands of the planet and undeniably the hottest women in the world outside of The Emirates and maybe Estonia.

I decided to accept DDB in Thailandʼs offer, and due to my London experience became one of the few Planning Directors in that part of the world. I had an incredible time sharing what I knew with people who had never even heard of planning. We won business, banged out some ads and life was good. I was 29 years old, earned a comparative fortune and lived like a king. There are few finer buttoned down yet buttoned up feelings in life than waking up knowing that your maid has crisply ironed to perfection every shirt in your wardrobe.

Moving on, about a year and a half after joining, our agency was mandated by New York to merge with a HUGE local agency that I knew I could never join on account of the Managing Director wearing a polyester tie. He wasnʼt trying to be ironic either so I took my severance and had the brilliant good grace to have a couple of clients that wanted to continue working with me. AXA insurance and my best ever client and later close friend VW.

This launched what Iʼve retrospectively called my ʻexecutive freelance careerʼ (thanks Rob) which took me round the world from Europe to Asia. The freedom of working for oneself is great as it allowed me to take some self indulgent yet also enormously rewarding lifestyle decisions like pile the rum and books in equal measure either side of me; shoulder high, and plough through the stuff that I believe has contributed to my intellectual calibre with more validity than any degree ever could. I cherish that more than any 73% increase in year on year sales ad that I was ever involved with. I probably thought I was Hemingway or something.

Iʼm thinking the likelihood of anyone having read this far is very low and highly likely that those same people if they exist are asking, ʻyeah but whatʼs this got to do with me?ʼ is high.

Bear with me.

Towards the end of 1996 I decided to relocate to London and get to know all these amazing people who were sharing their ideas and thinking through blogging. Those people were single handedly responsible for me falling back in love with communication theory, business and creativity all over again. I had been getting more and more stale with the more interesting work projects coming from things like market entry reports for multinationals into India, than cracking out another ad with superlative families, beaming superlative white shiny teeth and all the other things that I have talked about which are directly related to media literacy and is the most important subject to learn about if considering a career outside of the M25. Or rather how to challenge it.

I learnt something else while I was in London and that is the interaction of online and offline which is I believe not only the most critical relationship to be managed outside of the monologue to dialogue shift. Its the reason Iʼve set forth once again to take the next stage of my life here in China. Iʼm not sure if I can handle another winter here but whatever happens Iʼve learnt something important and met the people who matter because despite thinking this would be home for a while I now know I need to tick off a few more boxes before the energy begins to ebb.

Many young people have asked me how I could have led such a wild and exciting life. The truth is that I had the energy to do it when I was younger and was frightened of it all at the time. Now that Iʼm older there is little that fazes me but the energy to relocate once more diminishes with each passing year.

So what are the most important lessons I can share? Well read the 48 laws of power and there you have a comprehensive list of 48 immutable laws I have broken. Donʼt do that please. There is one maxim that is important and will help you in a planning/advertising career more than any abundance of intellect, more than any charisma or creative surplus or rock and roll lifestyle:

Itʼs nice to be important, but itʼs important to be nice.

Lastly if youʼre considering a move into the marketing communications business and you have no regard for the great challenges we face as a planet you will always be restricted by the limitations you have set yourself. Selling stuff is easy. Selling the right stuff the right way takes courage, vision and patience.

I know because Iʼm still waiting.....

Rense is an Italian Surname: It's Pronounced Ren Zee

Nobody likes Red Pills.

The Truth is Unprofitable. 

Otherwise everyone would be doing it.

Tavistock and The Grateful Dead are mentioned as context.

That Video I Had To Delete Is Now Available Here

Facebook Jail Video from Charles Frith on Vimeo.

I'm experimenting with cross platform content right now as censorship is at an all time high. Unless you're blogging trivial opinions. Then you can say anything you like. 

I'm A Closet Globalist

I'm a globalist but not that kind of Globalist.

Update: The original video was deleted/censored. Has you-ai heard of dlive.tv ? 

The Power of Intermittent Fasting

Lately I've put on more weight than ever in my life. It's my fantastic cooking naturally. I have been able to tuck away ginormous saucepans of amazing home cooked food and load the plates up with rice too, and then just keep grazing all day frankly. 

I can't leave my own cooking alone.

Like everyone, I didn't want to stop eating as it's a reward mechanism. However, a friend has been raving about intermittent fasting. It's so simple that it doesn't make sense to begin with, but once you understand how simple it is, it's quite an extraordinary concept. It also costs fuck all, saves money and works quicker than anything.

I've gone the full Monty and just stopped eating so I'm going to see how long I can last without food (third day so far) and then I'll switch to the intermittent fasting, but I've seen the fastest results already. I find watching the videos keeps me focused.

I've also given up smoking again so I'm constantly looking for distractions, but it's an interesting combination giving up food and smoking at the same time.

In Quick Succession

There was a time when I lost about 10 cell phones in quick succession. Mainly in the back of Thai taxis. I had many negotiations with drivers to return my property at a price that was reasonable to both of us.

This was expensive back in the noughties, even for a Planning Director of DDB Bangkok (Later Far East DDB) where I worked in the advertising business, but later on, as a self employed strategic planning consultant the price of having to pay for it myself was painfully frustrating.

Everybody knows I'm forgetful. There are people who loathe me with a vengeance that I've long forgotten, and conversely from time to time somebody tells me something nice or funny I did and I am happy to be reminded.

Anyway, those days seem so long ago as I've not lost a phone for as long as I can remember. What happened? Did my Thomas Covenant override switch finally kick-in, or did I just grow up? I don't know.

In any case, last week I mislaid my phone in Brecht's Bar. It's the kind of place I've known the staff for 13 years and have no problem leaving my wallet or phone on the bar while I smoke a cigarette outside. Apparently I did this last week, and it was spotted, so my Samsung S4, secured from the more obscure prefectures of Japan was dropped into a plastic bag by my partner for the night, while we continued our way to Amazonia, the best live cover band in the South China Sea.

I completely forgot about my phone and had such a good time, absolved myself of any responsibility. By the time my evidently unwell bezzie mate had decided to catch a taxi I was in too a stubborn mood to repeat my earlier question, I had declared "you're not well and need to go home?".

In any case with the Taxi on it's way, I returned to the floor and finished off some air guitar solo moves before deciding the fun was over and left myself.

On the way home I realised I'd lost my phone.

Naturally, when I awoke the next day I rushed like brass and leather over to my companion's hotel only to be informed "No I fucking don't have it", whereby the room door closed locking her out and which I've outlined on in all its naked glory on Tripadvisor for all the world to see (unlike Germar Rudolph's Chemistry Master Degree from the Prestigious Max Planck Institute proving the gas chamber malarkey is psyop bullshit).

I've learned over time to trust other people's gut instincts so even though I went back to the Amazonia Jungle Byzantine Cover Up Bar to ask if anyone handed it in, I trusted my counsel when they repeatedly reminded me, it's still ringing, someone hasn't stolen it.

Well, "blow me" I exclaimed when on Sunday night in a Taxi we dropped into Amazonia and were greeted with swiftly-recollecting staff faces that a phone had been retrieved and all I had to do was describe it and sign my name with my alternative Mickey Mouse signature that I use for collateral debt splicing sales that I used at Goldman Sachs.

Amazing right?

Well my jubilant demeanour was quickly trashed on a 7-Eleven mission for some sodas and sandwiches. On the way back to the hotel I noticed my wallet, laden with coins was dragging my shorts down in the side pocket it was perched in. As I crossed the road I pulled my shorts up and noticed that the driver of the Benz vehicle was a typically-young but upwardly mobile, and casually dressed driver of the car.

This got me thinking about the wealth distribution in Hong Kong and how that compares to Singapore and if the proximity to China was the the key driver?

Then I noticed my wallet was missing. I patted my pockets, patted again, and then patted intermittently for the next five minutes as I legged it to the 7-Eleven just in case I'd left it at the counter where I had greedily eaten a Chicken and Celery Sandwich.

No such luck, and so by this time I'd started to doubt my sanity. Resigned to yet another loss on top of that Hong Kong CID story of yesteryear I dejectedly returned to the hotel with all avenues explored and bearing a preposterous story that I doubted would be believed by anyone including me if I hadn't been the protagonist in the story...

Back at the hotel my 'shot dog' eyes and slumped shoulders told the story before I had the chance to repeat it in full. 

Just as I was on the second circuit, 'you do believe me don't you?', the hotel room-bell rang, and as I was standing next to it I opened the door.

There in front of me was a middle young aged man with what looked like his Indonesian partner (or the maid from a shopping venture, who knows?) thrusting my wallet back into my hand.

"Welcome to Hong Kong" he said.

I had dropped it in the road.

Can you believe me?

Did I just make this up.

Welcome to Hong Kong.

Double Indemnity and no mistake.

Thank you Hong Kong. It's not the money or the phone but the knowledge that not everyone pockets that which they stumble over.

Life is good.

US Military Expertise

Quite a long time ago I worked for the US Military in Giessen, an hour's north of Frankfurt selling Harleys and US made Cars to military personnel on their PX Camps. I dealt with all types from full bird Colonels to Private First Class (PFC) soldiers. The little fella above was from Puerto Rico, and I recall he taught me a lesson in paperwork which I was too naive to disbelieve but it was kind of genius.

There's more on this subject from 2009, including how I learned the military are as Kissinger said to General Alexander Hague.

The Open Palm is the Tightest Grip

It was a long time ago and now I'm scanning the photos I want to keep and tearing up the rest. I don't ever want to have more than one suitcase and one bag as possessions. In the end they own you not the other way round.

Photographs Germany 1993

That Racist Charles Frith

Bitcoins For Activism

I've got a Bitcoin Account, that allows people who respect my activist work to contribute towards keeping me going, in a manner that reflects my rejection of central banking, fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking.

If you can chip in my code is: 1D7e2QQx1crBsNDTi7627EY3xwvM98d4MK or the QR Code above.

All donations are hugely appreciated. Even a gesture donation makes me smile.

I'm A Child of the Seventies

I've been saying this for a long time but to have been born Generation X is one of the greatest privileges in human conciousness. Old enough to have known survivors of the First World War while they were still lucid about the experience, lived without a telephone (or even a TV on occasions), born abroad (in my case) and lived in several countries, but most importantly to have lived without electronic mediation of everything. 

It's not so much that I don't love the internet (I love how it scours down tyranny and greed and holds a mirror up to ourselves) it's just I have a reference point to a golden external period, which admittedly was a bubble; but what a bubble to live inside, however briefly. 

Naturally we had all the usual issues that families have including an unhappy marriage between my parents.

But there was a soundtrack to it all and it sounds just as good today as it did over the radio back then. I can barely believe that I existed to hear this emerge fresh from whatever bubble of electronics and humanity that got together in the right way.