About me
Who the fuck are you
I'm Bloonface, brief and largely accurate description up at the top there. I call myself that because I'm an idiot and I don't want to use my real name on the Internet. I once wrote a middlingly successful Medium post and I talk shit on Twitter Mastodon like some sort of diarrhoea engine.
Why did you pick that dumb name for yourself
It seemed like a clever idea at the time. The actual reasons why are very boring and involve me trying to come up with a new Twitter account name and somehow, typically, coming up with a really bad one based on whatever was in front of me at some point or other. It’s not even the worst username I’ve had, honestly.
Why is your blog called "Cafe Lob-on"
Because I put “Bloonface” into an anagram generator and “cafe lob on” came out, and it made me think of someone with an unwanted erection in Starbucks, and because I have a mental age of about six this seemed funny. I will no doubt regret this, as I do most things I do online at one time or another.
Why do you use a picture of Catweazle everywhere
It's a visual pun on how I actually look, a joke which never lands and will never land because nobody knows what I actually look like. This is one of many aspects of my squalid Internet presence I didn't think through properly.
Legal disclaimer: the Catweazle character is not actually mine and is owned by ITV plc née LWT. I'll stop using it if they promise to broadcast a full apology for the numerous crimes of Carlton Television in prime time.
Why do you swear so much
Because swear words make nice accentuates for sentences. A good "fucking" adds to the rhythm of a sentence and emphasises what comes after.
Why do you complain so much
Because I read too much Charlie Brooker in my formative years and it imprinted on me that it's easier to be funny when you hate something than it is to be funny while you love something.
I know I literally own a T-shirt that reads "everything is terrible all the time", but I don't actually mean that. I just find it less fun to write about things I like than things I think are shite; and things are pretty shite. I don't see the point in not saying that something shit is shit.
What are you actually interested in (or not actively hateful towards)
In short: politics; travelling to various places; writing shit on the Internet; old ephemera from TV etc; 80s synth music; stupid little world building games like Minecraft and Animal Crossing; Bloodborne; the Yakuza series; learning Japanese.
Why are you such a tosspot
Absolutely no clue.
How can I get in touch with you
Any of the socials listed on the main page, including email.
About what I think
If you have any kind of core political belief, what is it
There's no way I can really write this without being massively self-indulgent, but fuck it.
In short; there needs to be a rebalancing of the state towards the socialist concept of a safeguard and assistant to the people it governs that an economy then provides for and is supported by in return, and away from the recent concept of the state being a safeguard for a market for which people are merely an input resource. If the state isn't actually helping people in their lives, or indeed is actively hindering them, then it's failing in its main purpose. At the same time I think small-state or no-state ideologies, including both libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism on the right and communism and anarchism on the left, are unworkable utopian nonsense, with the former having an added idiocy of being utterly and deliberately oblivious to actual problems people face.
I also think the equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome dichotomy is false; one generation's outcomes are the root of the next's opportunities. Abundant opportunities are worth jack shit if you can't use them because your parents were in the mire, and hard work can only take you so far.
Broadly speaking, I'm somewhere between a democratic socialist and a social democrat. I honestly don't fucking know.
How do you vote
Generally on the losing side of everything. I was a member of the Labour Party until December 2019, voted for Corbyn in 2015 (the one time I actually voted for the winning side), wasn't eligible to vote in the 2016 or 2020 Labour leadership elections and voted remain.
Essentially, none of this was my fault.
What do you think of Corbyn
It was quite funny re-reading what I had on this page, written in 2018, before I re-uploaded it. It said I was "cautiously pro-Corbyn".
Basically, I still agree with pretty much all of his espoused domestic political beliefs and a good deal of his foreign policy, but he had his chance and it didn't work out, for a variety of reasons, many of which were nothing to do with him but a lot of which were. Move on.