Thursday, June 22, 2006
My Nightmare
One day, one of the cave dwellers slips free of their chains, haltingly makes their way, blinking, to the mouth of the cave, then stumbles back to report that the shadow on the wall is indeed that of Vernon Kay.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Giant Ass Police Sniper
New cartoon series, 'Assy McGee'. Completely brilliant... but, no, really, seriously, is this a spoof or not? Someone got money for THIRTEEN episodes of this? Really? A GIANT ASS ROGUE VIGILANTE COP SNIPER?!?!?! [voice getting higher and higher with incredulity...]
No, probably not. The internet is a tissue of lies and distractions. Look, a sleepy baby cat. Now get back to work, fuckheads. Money never sleeps.
No, probably not. The internet is a tissue of lies and distractions. Look, a sleepy baby cat. Now get back to work, fuckheads. Money never sleeps.
World Cup: A few preliminary points of irritation...
World Cup! Football excitement. A few preliminary points of irritation...
1. Soccercentric advertising. Beverage companies in particular really like the 'crowd holding up bits of card to form a picture' image - Bud[weiser made by Anheuser-Busch] and Coke in particular in particular. The idea of mass-participation is obviously going to give an corporate enterprise a stiffy, so couple that with actual mass participation imagery... and you have a recipe for CGI-drenched fakery, on every level. NO ONE WHO LIKES BEER LIKES BUD, IT'S PISS. And I like a soft drink, but I don't regard it as a communal rite. Supporters: there for the football, and a bit thirsty. There's nothing else to buy, and you're not allowed to take your own bottles into the stadium. So don't crow about this triumph of informed and enthusiastic consumerism, because it isn't one, it's a triumph of strategic sponsorship arrangement and the illusion of choice.
Further to this: adverts like the Honda 'Impossible Dream' one, which I watched with jaw hanging last night. Ok, I'm English-speaking, English-born British, living in London - I want to see England do well. There was, however, something particularly irritating about Honda's long-winded absurdist take on this - a moustachioed Anglo-type [possible elder brother of the 118 twins] races in various modes of conveyance, all in Eng-er-land team colours, while singing 'The Impossible Dream' - crashing over a waterfall to emerge in an England-coloured hot air balloon, rising through the mist.
Honda. That bastion of aspirant Anglitude. Well, if there's going to be a cynicism pissing contest, they started it. 'Hot air', 'impossibility'... the tropes of the advert represent absolute insincerity, ambiguously phrased mockery of everything, a waste of money. EVERYONE is doing it, I single Honda out for ire due to the elaborate and entirely misplaced triumphalism of their adverts. Hate something, change something, hate something change something FOOT THROUGH THE TELLYYYY!!! [Extended breaking glass FX followed by blissful silence] No, I can still hear the sounds of gridlock and a slowly asphyxiating planet... oh, this is the real world, isn't it? No flying cartoon engines here. Still, they support England! ENG-ER-LAND! That's better.
2. Commentators losing the plot.
Wayne Rooney as football's eternal youth, a young scruff in from the park perenially clamouring for a kick about. Last night it seemed like the pundits were queuing up to have a tug onto the acne-pitted digestive biscuit that is 'Wayne Rooney' - the talismanic figurehead, the carrier of a nation's dreams, the fotballer's footballer... the sulky-faced cunt.
HE'S NOT THE MESSIAH! AND he's not a tousle-haired, cap-askew, ruddy-cheeked schoolboy, you slavering perverts. He's 20 years old and a multi-millionaire.
If - IF - England are lucky, they have a potential ambassador for Viagra in thirty years' time. Thank fuck Theo Walcott's not played yet, or we wouldn't be able to see the pitch for all the tissues discarded from the commentary box.
I'm honestly not that annoyed. The multiple refractions and representations of Popworld [which Soccerland is one mighty nation of] seem so numerous, and yet they all fit into one shrinking white dot in the middle of my screen with such ease!
1. Soccercentric advertising. Beverage companies in particular really like the 'crowd holding up bits of card to form a picture' image - Bud[weiser made by Anheuser-Busch] and Coke in particular in particular. The idea of mass-participation is obviously going to give an corporate enterprise a stiffy, so couple that with actual mass participation imagery... and you have a recipe for CGI-drenched fakery, on every level. NO ONE WHO LIKES BEER LIKES BUD, IT'S PISS. And I like a soft drink, but I don't regard it as a communal rite. Supporters: there for the football, and a bit thirsty. There's nothing else to buy, and you're not allowed to take your own bottles into the stadium. So don't crow about this triumph of informed and enthusiastic consumerism, because it isn't one, it's a triumph of strategic sponsorship arrangement and the illusion of choice.
Further to this: adverts like the Honda 'Impossible Dream' one, which I watched with jaw hanging last night. Ok, I'm English-speaking, English-born British, living in London - I want to see England do well. There was, however, something particularly irritating about Honda's long-winded absurdist take on this - a moustachioed Anglo-type [possible elder brother of the 118 twins] races in various modes of conveyance, all in Eng-er-land team colours, while singing 'The Impossible Dream' - crashing over a waterfall to emerge in an England-coloured hot air balloon, rising through the mist.
Honda. That bastion of aspirant Anglitude. Well, if there's going to be a cynicism pissing contest, they started it. 'Hot air', 'impossibility'... the tropes of the advert represent absolute insincerity, ambiguously phrased mockery of everything, a waste of money. EVERYONE is doing it, I single Honda out for ire due to the elaborate and entirely misplaced triumphalism of their adverts. Hate something, change something, hate something change something FOOT THROUGH THE TELLYYYY!!! [Extended breaking glass FX followed by blissful silence] No, I can still hear the sounds of gridlock and a slowly asphyxiating planet... oh, this is the real world, isn't it? No flying cartoon engines here. Still, they support England! ENG-ER-LAND! That's better.
2. Commentators losing the plot.
Wayne Rooney as football's eternal youth, a young scruff in from the park perenially clamouring for a kick about. Last night it seemed like the pundits were queuing up to have a tug onto the acne-pitted digestive biscuit that is 'Wayne Rooney' - the talismanic figurehead, the carrier of a nation's dreams, the fotballer's footballer... the sulky-faced cunt.
HE'S NOT THE MESSIAH! AND he's not a tousle-haired, cap-askew, ruddy-cheeked schoolboy, you slavering perverts. He's 20 years old and a multi-millionaire.
If - IF - England are lucky, they have a potential ambassador for Viagra in thirty years' time. Thank fuck Theo Walcott's not played yet, or we wouldn't be able to see the pitch for all the tissues discarded from the commentary box.
I'm honestly not that annoyed. The multiple refractions and representations of Popworld [which Soccerland is one mighty nation of] seem so numerous, and yet they all fit into one shrinking white dot in the middle of my screen with such ease!
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Thanks Be To Bill
Thanks indeed be to Bill. It must be pretty obvious to anyone reading this [post, blog] that the late/early Bill Hicks has been an influence on the writer - well, not so much an influence as pretty much a constant feature in the life of for about the last 15 years... yes, in an influential way but also in an antithetical way... Articles and critques which centre on speculations about a Bill Hicks of the Now seem a bit pointless. His work can be criticised. However, he remains unable to update his philosophies to encompass theoretical trends and modes of thought of the years since his death for a pretty conclusive reason.
Anyway, he's not a leader, that was one of his points, isn't it? For me, extrapolation was always what it was about... and I suppose the last few posts have been proper Randy Pan the Goat Boy...
Heh! What can one say... look abashed... gah! There's no outrunning the goat sometimes. And essentially I'm able at this point in the morning to put it down to the whole of modern western culture being seen as the flight from astral and physical gnosis by religion... [exhales, passes] - what started that one off? Oh, the Tuesday of the Beast, that was it. So conjoin cosmological background, smut, universal awe and frustration at the posturing required... and that I have been currently reading the Bill Hicks - Agent of Evolution biograph by Kevin Booth, which is pretty good and makes nice "man for a'that and a' that" reading.
And outside the sun beams down, the skies are blue, a bird sings at my window, and it's the weekend. So why am I sat in typing this shit again?
[sound of computer closing down, door slamming, sandals shuffling samba-style to the park]
Anyway, he's not a leader, that was one of his points, isn't it? For me, extrapolation was always what it was about... and I suppose the last few posts have been proper Randy Pan the Goat Boy...
Heh! What can one say... look abashed... gah! There's no outrunning the goat sometimes. And essentially I'm able at this point in the morning to put it down to the whole of modern western culture being seen as the flight from astral and physical gnosis by religion... [exhales, passes] - what started that one off? Oh, the Tuesday of the Beast, that was it. So conjoin cosmological background, smut, universal awe and frustration at the posturing required... and that I have been currently reading the Bill Hicks - Agent of Evolution biograph by Kevin Booth, which is pretty good and makes nice "man for a'that and a' that" reading.
And outside the sun beams down, the skies are blue, a bird sings at my window, and it's the weekend. So why am I sat in typing this shit again?
[sound of computer closing down, door slamming, sandals shuffling samba-style to the park]
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Science vs Faith: The 'debate' continues
So in the Metro today there was report on the latest edict from the Pontifical Council in the Vatican, which said " 'Never before has human procreation, and therefore the family, which is its natural place, been so threatened as in today's culture.' " It blames feminism, same-sex unions, IVF, the use of contraception and abortion. [The edict, not the Metro report.]
Contrast this opinion with these figures from the Earthtrends website, United Nations Population Division, and the US Census bureau, via Infoplease.com [I heart the interweb]:
Population of Earth 1950: 2,556,000,053
Population of Earth 1930: 4, 32,602,000
Population of Earth 2005: 6,453,628,000
The bra-burning faggots running the abortion clinics have got to be stopped! We've only multiplied the population of the planet by 39.6% in just over fifty years! THIS THREAT TO PROCREATION IS EVIDENT TO ALL BUT THE HEATHENS BLINDED BY REASON!
FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
'We're a virus with shoes, ok? That's all we are.'
Contrast this opinion with these figures from the Earthtrends website, United Nations Population Division, and the US Census bureau, via Infoplease.com [I heart the interweb]:
Population of Earth 1950: 2,556,000,053
Population of Earth 1930: 4, 32,602,000
Population of Earth 2005: 6,453,628,000
The bra-burning faggots running the abortion clinics have got to be stopped! We've only multiplied the population of the planet by 39.6% in just over fifty years! THIS THREAT TO PROCREATION IS EVIDENT TO ALL BUT THE HEATHENS BLINDED BY REASON!
FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
'We're a virus with shoes, ok? That's all we are.'
I'm coming back... I will return... [Beastmania 2]
from the Revelation of St Mark the Peripatetically Enthused
4,xi: And o thankfully did the 6th of the 6th 2006 diminish, taking with it lots of quasi-religious beast-larks.
4,xii: Which was a small bird which did have colossal boots its tiny legs appended thereunto and though it would take off in flight these boots would cause the playful little thing to crash to the ground crushing the people flat thereby.
4,xiii: And with it did 06.06.06, 6th June 2006, June 6 2006 and other even less numeralogicalistically significant combinations thereof ['Tuesday'] take documentaries about the remake of The Omen, explanations of how 'www' is '666' - look you verily unto this contentious and to me thoroughly plausible alternate explanation of 'who the beast "really" is', which did remind me of the contextually contingent nature of words, words, my favourite thing [apart from food, sex, trees, cats, larks, etc].
4,xiv:And with it did depart all the Da Vinci Code Hysteria and tremulous fingering for understanding or distraction in an apparently indifferent cosmos, which gladfully did fade back to a mumbling as of devouts with their face an inch from a wall or floor or a copy of the Metro or the computer monitor as of lunch breaks, for they knew that time was short.
4,xi: And o thankfully did the 6th of the 6th 2006 diminish, taking with it lots of quasi-religious beast-larks.
4,xii: Which was a small bird which did have colossal boots its tiny legs appended thereunto and though it would take off in flight these boots would cause the playful little thing to crash to the ground crushing the people flat thereby.
4,xiii: And with it did 06.06.06, 6th June 2006, June 6 2006 and other even less numeralogicalistically significant combinations thereof ['Tuesday'] take documentaries about the remake of The Omen, explanations of how 'www' is '666' - look you verily unto this contentious and to me thoroughly plausible alternate explanation of 'who the beast "really" is', which did remind me of the contextually contingent nature of words, words, my favourite thing [apart from food, sex, trees, cats, larks, etc].
4,xiv:And with it did depart all the Da Vinci Code Hysteria and tremulous fingering for understanding or distraction in an apparently indifferent cosmos, which gladfully did fade back to a mumbling as of devouts with their face an inch from a wall or floor or a copy of the Metro or the computer monitor as of lunch breaks, for they knew that time was short.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
beastmania
Thanks to a confluence of the western calendar and the number six, everyone seems to be talking superstitious bollocks today.
A close reading of the biblical text reveals the number of the magic mushrooms taken by St John on Patmos to be approximately 6.66 dried grammes... Through a glass, very darkly, etc.
More on the beast when I've done at work... proof we're in the endtimes, it's the hottest day of the year and here I am in the basement slaving. Gah!
A close reading of the biblical text reveals the number of the magic mushrooms taken by St John on Patmos to be approximately 6.66 dried grammes... Through a glass, very darkly, etc.
More on the beast when I've done at work... proof we're in the endtimes, it's the hottest day of the year and here I am in the basement slaving. Gah!
Monday, May 29, 2006
Your emotions...
I was going to write an extended self-directed diatribe consisting of hair-shredding despair at my feeble and reactionary statements. Reacting against the worlds that intrude so rudely into mine day by day.
Then I remembered that Jello Biafra and the dead kennedys had already formulated this:
You're so boring boring boring
Always tape machine recording
You're so boring boring boring
I've heard all this before
I've heard all this before
I've heard all this before
Your emotions make you a monster
Your emotions make you a monster
Your emotions make you a monster
Your emotions make you a monster
and felt much better.
If 'popular culture' wants to dance round the pile of shiny coins, if we want to parse our lives out with distractive media and obfuscatory rhetoric of scientific progress that in fact deludes us further into believing we're the arbiters of a totalised reality that we're not, even,THAT'S ALL OK. But I'm bored, bored, bored shitless with it. My only saving grace is that I'm not a fiend or monster, to use the Sun argot. I understand a bit of cookery, I love my girlfriend...
...and words and concepts, tropes, memes, hopes & dreams seep about, mixing, melding, melismatically extrapolating from my brain like the fucking big sparking sensation sponge it is. Ready to drip back onto the drained canvas arcing all Dali foreshortened. And balls to you if you think this is indulgent shit - that is the point. Language is reductive but also expansive. Campfire stories, chants, sparks from aboriginal fires saving astronauts in The Right Stuff. fanciful human representations spanning more dimensions than we currently believe proven.
My uncanny x-man power could be beams of words, scratchety lines of script arcing from my fingertips to beat back the bad bastards of Babylon and keep the landing strip clear for the UFOs.
CAN YOU HURRY UP PLEASE ALL YOU E.B.E.s? I'm on my last set of knees here...
this post brought to you by bank holiday hangover, x-men 3, Aliens - why they are here by Bryan Appleyard and an enduring belief in the enduring possibility of enduring evolution in a chaotic universe. Proving we exist by saying stuff and writing it down so we can later reflect and say, look we were thinking about this shit. Passed the time, eh? [etc]
Then I remembered that Jello Biafra and the dead kennedys had already formulated this:
You're so boring boring boring
Always tape machine recording
You're so boring boring boring
I've heard all this before
I've heard all this before
I've heard all this before
Your emotions make you a monster
Your emotions make you a monster
Your emotions make you a monster
Your emotions make you a monster
and felt much better.
If 'popular culture' wants to dance round the pile of shiny coins, if we want to parse our lives out with distractive media and obfuscatory rhetoric of scientific progress that in fact deludes us further into believing we're the arbiters of a totalised reality that we're not, even,THAT'S ALL OK. But I'm bored, bored, bored shitless with it. My only saving grace is that I'm not a fiend or monster, to use the Sun argot. I understand a bit of cookery, I love my girlfriend...
...and words and concepts, tropes, memes, hopes & dreams seep about, mixing, melding, melismatically extrapolating from my brain like the fucking big sparking sensation sponge it is. Ready to drip back onto the drained canvas arcing all Dali foreshortened. And balls to you if you think this is indulgent shit - that is the point. Language is reductive but also expansive. Campfire stories, chants, sparks from aboriginal fires saving astronauts in The Right Stuff. fanciful human representations spanning more dimensions than we currently believe proven.
My uncanny x-man power could be beams of words, scratchety lines of script arcing from my fingertips to beat back the bad bastards of Babylon and keep the landing strip clear for the UFOs.
CAN YOU HURRY UP PLEASE ALL YOU E.B.E.s? I'm on my last set of knees here...
this post brought to you by bank holiday hangover, x-men 3, Aliens - why they are here by Bryan Appleyard and an enduring belief in the enduring possibility of enduring evolution in a chaotic universe. Proving we exist by saying stuff and writing it down so we can later reflect and say, look we were thinking about this shit. Passed the time, eh? [etc]
Monday, May 22, 2006
football and women
Like some hapless fuckwit character in 'Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please' [note for people who don't watch British shit-coms inexplicably enjoying series after series despite toe-curling lack of humour: TPOLAAPOCP is about young professionals, their lives and loves. It's arse. In fact, that TPOLAAPOCP initialism is an accurate onomatopoeic representation of a robust stool impacting with the water in the toilet beneath the straining defecator, the closest and most unpleasant correlative I can think of for the show] I trekked across the UK to witness Leeds Utd FC get inexplicably tonked 3-0 by Watford [actually quite explicable, they wanted it and we didn't turn up[and actually while i'm heaping disdain on BBC product by way of deflective ranting, Chris Moyles, 'cuddly' motormouth DJ and Leeds fan failed to turn up to work this morning, the workshy lardbucket. I made it in, porky, make a fucking effort, for Christ's sake.]] on sunday, a scant 24 hours after being dumped by my girlfriend.
As David Hume once noted in a letter to Rousseau: 'Fucking rat's cocks.'
Still eh? You've got to laugh. I came to work [I edit transcripts of things for people] and a government employee, in the context of an open meeting on London's impending drought crisis, actually said 'Water is the lifeblood of life.' Unlucky in love and football I may have been this weekend, but there always remain some consolations.
As David Hume once noted in a letter to Rousseau: 'Fucking rat's cocks.'
Still eh? You've got to laugh. I came to work [I edit transcripts of things for people] and a government employee, in the context of an open meeting on London's impending drought crisis, actually said 'Water is the lifeblood of life.' Unlucky in love and football I may have been this weekend, but there always remain some consolations.
Monday, May 15, 2006
The criiime isssss life.... the ssssentence isssss DEATH!
Judge Death
Tony Blair
spot the difference comp #2
Well, I don't know if anyone else feels an uneasy sense of impending DEAD PLANET POLICE STATE when articles like this, detailing a Leader's plans to deliver 'speedy, simple summary justice' appear... populist rhetoric always a sign of impending dead political career.
'He tells new Home Secretary John Reid he wants to see whether new laws are needed to tackle the issue of courts using human rights laws to over-rule the government. ' Yes, new boy, make some new ones up! I want to see a new one forbidding politicians. Not from doing anything, I just want shot of them completely. Bah!
Friday, May 12, 2006
So what is 'hard to beat', exactly?
Hard-Fi article in the Grauniad 'film and music' section, The Hard-copy version of which I just endured in the gentlemen's reading room on a quick five minute comfort break at work, on a friday where the arguments for a mandatory four day week seem more compelling than ever.
Working for a cash machine indeed. Alex Petridish talks about them being 'social realists', 'like' Kaiser Chiefs etc. Just as 'the communists' [sweeping collectivisation] then used 'socialist realism' as the only 'valid' mode of art, what we actually see now as a dominant and approved mode is 'capitalist realism', whereby the notion of questioning that we are engaged in a hamster wheel pursuit of a more comfortable wheel is removed in favour of grinning acquiescence to a grinding monotony, a celebration of our enslavement to The Money. And now their posters are everywhere I go, billboards calling them The Band of This Or Any Possible Future Lifetime, must-have DVD footage of a couple of the Gig of This Or Any Age... hmmm.
Spot the difference competition:
Ian Brown, Stone Roses, at Spike Island: 'The time is now, do it now.'
Richard Archer, Hard-Fi, in Manchester: 'It's a Sunday night! Back to work tomorrow!'
Well, cheers, you cunt. For making everything a little bit harder to beat. By adding to this school of corporate approved weekend release, egomaniacal fools like Hard-Fi crush while locked in a doomed pose of uplift. They are a statue of a dictator. Distractive twats who 'want a Mercedes'. And here I am further validating it. Well, if 'western culture' is a stand-up comic, I am an angry heckler and I want my fucking money back.
Working for a cash machine indeed. Alex Petridish talks about them being 'social realists', 'like' Kaiser Chiefs etc. Just as 'the communists' [sweeping collectivisation] then used 'socialist realism' as the only 'valid' mode of art, what we actually see now as a dominant and approved mode is 'capitalist realism', whereby the notion of questioning that we are engaged in a hamster wheel pursuit of a more comfortable wheel is removed in favour of grinning acquiescence to a grinding monotony, a celebration of our enslavement to The Money. And now their posters are everywhere I go, billboards calling them The Band of This Or Any Possible Future Lifetime, must-have DVD footage of a couple of the Gig of This Or Any Age... hmmm.
Spot the difference competition:
Ian Brown, Stone Roses, at Spike Island: 'The time is now, do it now.'
Richard Archer, Hard-Fi, in Manchester: 'It's a Sunday night! Back to work tomorrow!'
Well, cheers, you cunt. For making everything a little bit harder to beat. By adding to this school of corporate approved weekend release, egomaniacal fools like Hard-Fi crush while locked in a doomed pose of uplift. They are a statue of a dictator. Distractive twats who 'want a Mercedes'. And here I am further validating it. Well, if 'western culture' is a stand-up comic, I am an angry heckler and I want my fucking money back.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Digit Al
Little Britain comic Matt Lucas is starring in a £200m campaign to publicise the switch to digital TV.
Look, I'm just back off holiday and have yet to gather my thoughts properly. But if this is already the single most annoying concept in the world, can you possibly imagine what levels of discomfort it's likely to provide in seven years' - SEVEN YEARS' - time? I don't want to get all biblical here - my coat is rather shabby and unnecessary in the clammy heat of London town today - but I see seven years of wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And which ad company got the money for this ten seconds of cigarette break inspirational idea?
'Hmmm... I've got it! Digit Al. We'll have Matt Lucas do the voice.'
'You're a genius!'
'Twenty bubillion pounds please.'
Friday, April 14, 2006
Mank Wolfenstein's Weekend News Digest
Heh! This news item about a recalcitrant feline had the best headline...'Therapy and kittens fail to move trapped New York cat'. Someone at the BBC enjoying their job - dig that hip satire on those voguish modes, baby!
Tabloid & TeletextPopworld communique of the week had to be 'OH MY GOD! Preston and Chantelle to wed'. Oh my god! No, i'm actually on my knees imploring here. My god stands next to your god which is a building which is on fire, as Talking Heads once nearly suggested.
Stop telling me about these people for the sweet, sweet love of all that's pure and good and right. The new Posh & Becks, or perhaps our very own Pammy & Tommy Lee, Peter Andre & Katie Price renewing their vows in some sure to become nationally feted annual celebration, vernal equinoxe ... alongside suggestive spring is in the air heteropolitan achiever couple template, Just the two of us, Vernon Kaye & Tess Daly, their very names dripping with connotations of vigorous and enthusiastically frequent hormonal secretions. It's all just so... unseemly. :-/
couplings and recouplings subplot of megapixellated i-podtainment lingering century of the self amplified chav Austen doubtless masks sinister agenda to encourage breeding in docile prole population... ah, wrong forum.
Now this - robot football, yes!- is much more like it.
Tabloid & TeletextPopworld communique of the week had to be 'OH MY GOD! Preston and Chantelle to wed'. Oh my god! No, i'm actually on my knees imploring here. My god stands next to your god which is a building which is on fire, as Talking Heads once nearly suggested.
Stop telling me about these people for the sweet, sweet love of all that's pure and good and right. The new Posh & Becks, or perhaps our very own Pammy & Tommy Lee, Peter Andre & Katie Price renewing their vows in some sure to become nationally feted annual celebration, vernal equinoxe ... alongside suggestive spring is in the air heteropolitan achiever couple template, Just the two of us, Vernon Kaye & Tess Daly, their very names dripping with connotations of vigorous and enthusiastically frequent hormonal secretions. It's all just so... unseemly. :-/
couplings and recouplings subplot of megapixellated i-podtainment lingering century of the self amplified chav Austen doubtless masks sinister agenda to encourage breeding in docile prole population... ah, wrong forum.
Now this - robot football, yes!- is much more like it.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
SPAAAAZZY! Spazzy spazzy spaz spaz spaz
Tiger Woods has been forced into making an apology for using the word 'spaz' cazually.
Cerebral Palsy is an inconvenient condition to have. Spaz is a derisive and offensive term. One of those sentences is factually accurate.
SCOPE forbid anyone from using the term 'spaz'. SCOPE used to be called the Spastics Society. But not any more. Now they've rebranded. SO NO ONE CAN USE THE WORD, OR ITS DERIVATIVES, EVER. IN ANY CONTEXT. Let that be a lesson to everyone.
Next time you fuck up a putt, remember to say 'Goodness! I played that shot like a CP sufferer. Who's not very good at putting.'
And next time you say something you wish you hadn't, why not say 'Oops, what a Tiger!'?
That'll show the insensitive cunt.
" It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness."
Cerebral Palsy is an inconvenient condition to have. Spaz is a derisive and offensive term. One of those sentences is factually accurate.
SCOPE forbid anyone from using the term 'spaz'. SCOPE used to be called the Spastics Society. But not any more. Now they've rebranded. SO NO ONE CAN USE THE WORD, OR ITS DERIVATIVES, EVER. IN ANY CONTEXT. Let that be a lesson to everyone.
Next time you fuck up a putt, remember to say 'Goodness! I played that shot like a CP sufferer. Who's not very good at putting.'
And next time you say something you wish you hadn't, why not say 'Oops, what a Tiger!'?
That'll show the insensitive cunt.
" It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness."
Monday, April 03, 2006
Kong my whopper
I wish to commend Burger King for one of the most tightly knotted pieces of intertextual marketing it has ever been my privilege to witness. "Kong my Whopper". I know, without breaking stride as I sweep into the eaterie, that this means an outlandish amount of meat, in a bun. Whopper is already pretty big - whopping, even. And now they're offering to Kong - confer Giant Ape status upon - it. Well this super ape inna babylon couldn't be more pleased.
However, fake advertising awards aside - why does everything have to be spruced up slightly to make it seem more complex than it is? BECAUSE IT'S SHIT! This is why Burger King and the like have undone their decent Kong My Whopper work by having started engaging in pithy faux-conversation with the idle muncher of their products. Ambling chat that says nothing printed on the side of fries packs and the like. I want junk food, not an Interactive Meal Experience! What's wrong with you?
Furthermore, they say things like 'We may be the king but you, my friend, are the almighty ruler.' ??? The contemporary vogue for self-emphasis has reached its apogee, or perhaps nadir, here. Conferring deity status on the customers is not clever, it's asking for smite-related trouble. And they don't even mean it anyway! It's like they're saying, ' "The customer is always right", but we're going to buffer this anachronistic sentiment in some cagey language so you think we're being obsequious-but-not-overly-so, and so you know, further, that we're actually better than you because we're right clever with words and that.'
Shut up and Kong My Whopper, burger jockeys, and less of your lip!
And! Sorry to come back to the bread and apostrophe shunners Pret a manger, but they're doing it as well. Astoundingly, they print 'how to make a (sandwich x)' instructions on the side of their sandwich bags. Is this marketing fuckwittedness on an interplanetary scale, or is there, as per BK, a more sinister agenda of customer mockery going on, whereby they gleefully poke fun at the lunch slaveys coming out for their sustenance with NO TIME TO EVEN REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO MAKE A FUCKING SANDWICH ONCE?
Excuse me, I have some troughing to attend to before The Man once again makes onerous demands of my afternoon.
However, fake advertising awards aside - why does everything have to be spruced up slightly to make it seem more complex than it is? BECAUSE IT'S SHIT! This is why Burger King and the like have undone their decent Kong My Whopper work by having started engaging in pithy faux-conversation with the idle muncher of their products. Ambling chat that says nothing printed on the side of fries packs and the like. I want junk food, not an Interactive Meal Experience! What's wrong with you?
Furthermore, they say things like 'We may be the king but you, my friend, are the almighty ruler.' ??? The contemporary vogue for self-emphasis has reached its apogee, or perhaps nadir, here. Conferring deity status on the customers is not clever, it's asking for smite-related trouble. And they don't even mean it anyway! It's like they're saying, ' "The customer is always right", but we're going to buffer this anachronistic sentiment in some cagey language so you think we're being obsequious-but-not-overly-so, and so you know, further, that we're actually better than you because we're right clever with words and that.'
Shut up and Kong My Whopper, burger jockeys, and less of your lip!
And! Sorry to come back to the bread and apostrophe shunners Pret a manger, but they're doing it as well. Astoundingly, they print 'how to make a (sandwich x)' instructions on the side of their sandwich bags. Is this marketing fuckwittedness on an interplanetary scale, or is there, as per BK, a more sinister agenda of customer mockery going on, whereby they gleefully poke fun at the lunch slaveys coming out for their sustenance with NO TIME TO EVEN REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO MAKE A FUCKING SANDWICH ONCE?
Excuse me, I have some troughing to attend to before The Man once again makes onerous demands of my afternoon.
pret a mourir
I know I'm straying ever so close to writing about work things, but there's something about being re-immersed in the semi-fictive universe of employment, the city, etc [of which "'"'"'Popworld'"'"'" is one glamorous color-filled sattelite] every monday that invariably brings the hyenas of irritation guffawing round my door. get this. I was in well-known sandwich emporium 'pret a manger' - which is french for 'nearly food for cattle' - earlier, accompanying a butty-buying buddy. They vend a product called a 'no bread sandwich'.
I bet there's some marketing kid on a zillion pounds a minute being applauded throughout vast marbled boardrooms at Pret-a-deranger Towers for that particular bit of semantic sleight-of-hand. Here is what their own sorry Pret-a-pleurir web dungeon says:
No Bread Sandwich More than Mozzarella:
"Its not a sandwich and its not a salad. Its new and the answer to a good low carb, light lunch.Mozzarella, bistro mix, spinach, avocado, sliced tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, black olives and a drizzle of french dressing."
Hmmm - salad ingredients... plus a dressing... in a dish with a fork. That IS a fucking salad! Pret-a-vomir's "no bread or apostrophes" terminology be damned! And it's not 'an answer to a good low carb light lunch', it just IS a low carb light lunch! Whose life has degenerated to the point where low carb light lunches interrogate their every waking step? Apart from me writing this shit, I mean? And, apart from anything else, I'm seated as I type - and half-asleep.
'More than mozzarella', IAY.
I bet there's some marketing kid on a zillion pounds a minute being applauded throughout vast marbled boardrooms at Pret-a-deranger Towers for that particular bit of semantic sleight-of-hand. Here is what their own sorry Pret-a-pleurir web dungeon says:
No Bread Sandwich More than Mozzarella:
"Its not a sandwich and its not a salad. Its new and the answer to a good low carb, light lunch.Mozzarella, bistro mix, spinach, avocado, sliced tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, black olives and a drizzle of french dressing."
Hmmm - salad ingredients... plus a dressing... in a dish with a fork. That IS a fucking salad! Pret-a-vomir's "no bread or apostrophes" terminology be damned! And it's not 'an answer to a good low carb light lunch', it just IS a low carb light lunch! Whose life has degenerated to the point where low carb light lunches interrogate their every waking step? Apart from me writing this shit, I mean? And, apart from anything else, I'm seated as I type - and half-asleep.
'More than mozzarella', IAY.
daaanger-mOOUUUUUSSSE! etc
BBC news tells us that the only chart that counts has entered a new epoch...
so, first download only release to get to number one! living in interesting times (chinese cursed by last post, clearly) the tune itself is pretty neat - today is the first time i've heard it, given that radio 1 usually totally passes me by, and boy do i feel superannuated as E V E R Y O N E at work asks who's playing Gnarls Barkley... it has that instant mash timeless classic effect, a tune out of nowhere that appears to have existed since pop music became.
It's the words on the Gnarls Barkley website that really seal it for me.
'Gnarls Barkley St. Elsewhere
“You are the best. You are the worst. You are average. Your love is a part of you. You try to give it away because you cannot bear its radiance, but you cannot separate it from yourself. To understand your fellow humans, you must understand why you give them your love. You must realize that hate is but a crime-ridden subdivision of love. You must reclaim what you never lost. You must take leave of your sanity, and yet be fully responsible for your actions.” -Gnarls Barkley, in a letter to the legendary rock critic Lester Bangs '
... so stick that in your post-everything postbag and post it!
so, first download only release to get to number one! living in interesting times (chinese cursed by last post, clearly) the tune itself is pretty neat - today is the first time i've heard it, given that radio 1 usually totally passes me by, and boy do i feel superannuated as E V E R Y O N E at work asks who's playing Gnarls Barkley... it has that instant mash timeless classic effect, a tune out of nowhere that appears to have existed since pop music became.
It's the words on the Gnarls Barkley website that really seal it for me.
'Gnarls Barkley St. Elsewhere
“You are the best. You are the worst. You are average. Your love is a part of you. You try to give it away because you cannot bear its radiance, but you cannot separate it from yourself. To understand your fellow humans, you must understand why you give them your love. You must realize that hate is but a crime-ridden subdivision of love. You must reclaim what you never lost. You must take leave of your sanity, and yet be fully responsible for your actions.” -Gnarls Barkley, in a letter to the legendary rock critic Lester Bangs '
... so stick that in your post-everything postbag and post it!
Monday, March 27, 2006
truth is beauty, blah, blah, blah.
I felt a bit sheepish about sticking that last post up. It seemed rather fatuous to be railing about anything as inconsequential as a television programme. In fact, it seemed insubstantial to be invoking 'theories' x and y as if there is any actual consequence of them in real life - post-modernity, pop culture, "culture", thingummy blah - particularly when bloggers around the world use 'virtual' space to discuss actual life-shattering matters, strikes, armed insurgency, attack by foreign powers, etc.
Then I thought, no, fuck 'em. I'm right to find Popworld objectionable, and no amount of cavilling around notions of validity can alter the fact - FACT! - that it is - in its tiny pimple on the mooning ass of western civilisation, that perpetually good idea, way - completely and appallingly offensive.
I have a privileged set of gripes, sure, but legitimate. I'm dragged out of bed against my better judgment to work a 45 hour week to cover basic food and housing costs, and then get presented at every turn with the awful truth that I live in a society that loves, craves ' "Popworld" ', the strange meta-reality that Heat magazine also depicts, the press, the alternative press reacting to it, that even the Breakfast news shows attach some sort of degree of relevance to. A society that believes things like this, from the office of the Mayor of London's Senior Policy adviser in a speech at the National Portrait Gallery:
'Contemporary Chinese culture is very dynamic and Chinese art is at the cutting edge of the international art scene. To give people a flavour of that we invited the winner of the Chinese ‘Pop Idol’ competition to turn on our lighting display and perform at Tower Bridge.' Cutting edge. Pop Idol.
Jude Woodward goes on: 'We also worked with Selfridges to bring two contemporary Chinese artists here. One was in the press when they built a city out of biscuits and cakes in the store. It took four days to build, but the public demolished it in four hours.'
I. Ask. You. Well done to that Chinese artist for holding up a crumb-specked mirror to our locust nature. We now suffer cultural indigestion.
Salaam Pax can write about their thing, this is what exercises me.
Then I thought, no, fuck 'em. I'm right to find Popworld objectionable, and no amount of cavilling around notions of validity can alter the fact - FACT! - that it is - in its tiny pimple on the mooning ass of western civilisation, that perpetually good idea, way - completely and appallingly offensive.
I have a privileged set of gripes, sure, but legitimate. I'm dragged out of bed against my better judgment to work a 45 hour week to cover basic food and housing costs, and then get presented at every turn with the awful truth that I live in a society that loves, craves ' "Popworld" ', the strange meta-reality that Heat magazine also depicts, the press, the alternative press reacting to it, that even the Breakfast news shows attach some sort of degree of relevance to. A society that believes things like this, from the office of the Mayor of London's Senior Policy adviser in a speech at the National Portrait Gallery:
'Contemporary Chinese culture is very dynamic and Chinese art is at the cutting edge of the international art scene. To give people a flavour of that we invited the winner of the Chinese ‘Pop Idol’ competition to turn on our lighting display and perform at Tower Bridge.' Cutting edge. Pop Idol.
Jude Woodward goes on: 'We also worked with Selfridges to bring two contemporary Chinese artists here. One was in the press when they built a city out of biscuits and cakes in the store. It took four days to build, but the public demolished it in four hours.'
I. Ask. You. Well done to that Chinese artist for holding up a crumb-specked mirror to our locust nature. We now suffer cultural indigestion.
Salaam Pax can write about their thing, this is what exercises me.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Popworld
SEVERAL BREAKFAST COFFEES AFTER A WEEK WORKING INTEMPERATE RANT ALERT
In the context of watching saturday morning telly, and leaving aside for a moment the infinite capacity of humans to be horrible to each other with industrialised warfare, selfish consumption and all the other truly nasty things we get up to across the planet, leaving that aside, is there anything more objectionable in the universe than that pair of unfathomably supercilious fuckers who present UK Channel 4's 'Popworld'?
'The irony is, "Popworld", the cultural construct, is unfathomably, banally shit and objectionable - thefore what could be more apt than a programme called 'Popworld' which reflects this?' BE QUIET. Post-modernism is dead, its reactionary corpse twitches live on tv, referencing Top Ten Adverts programme-referencing adverts based on adverts which reference other adverts which reference a fleeting memory of an occasion when something once happened that had some sort of sense of actual real-time event without a product atached to it about it, and this sorry spectacular society - and they're not even good spectacles, they're a pair of stupid Elton John frames bought at a celebrity charity auction of faux-pseudo-80's memorabilia - is sustained by galvanic blasts of money and hapless slack-jawed with horror bored breakfasters like me.
Meanwhile, the curly haired one also presents 'Never mind the Buzzcocks' - a programme which long since pitched forward into the void which Popworld slumps sulkily at the peripheries of. Never mind the buzzcocks, let's play with ourselves endlessly instead. '"'Popworld'"' and its styled and stylised 'create more entertainers' ethic functions like a Civilisation PC god-game parody of a pastiche of a copy real life... Never mind the product, testing itself on how little it cares about the conveyor belt of distractions trundling past. Fucking wafer thin culture checking itself out all the time, twiddling its thumbs, sitting on its hands, looking bored at text messages and waiting for someone to kill it... Like that French Connection ad with the skinny bitch fight happening as as not at all rude boy pork pie hat wearing pouters rocking last season's gay football hooligan look gaze on indifferently. Let them eat coke.
'Po-mo' shit like ' ""'Popworld'"" ' does it for me. A verbatim extract from this morning's edition:
'Here's the new Coldplay Simon le Bono 80's freako video show, wasn't it all shit?'
'Yeah, the 80's were great'
'Do you mean they were shit?'
'Well isn't it great shit now?'
'Yeah, this great is so shit it's... shit'
For. the. sweet. love. of. god.
What do you actually like, you cunts?
Bah!
In the context of watching saturday morning telly, and leaving aside for a moment the infinite capacity of humans to be horrible to each other with industrialised warfare, selfish consumption and all the other truly nasty things we get up to across the planet, leaving that aside, is there anything more objectionable in the universe than that pair of unfathomably supercilious fuckers who present UK Channel 4's 'Popworld'?
'The irony is, "Popworld", the cultural construct, is unfathomably, banally shit and objectionable - thefore what could be more apt than a programme called 'Popworld' which reflects this?' BE QUIET. Post-modernism is dead, its reactionary corpse twitches live on tv, referencing Top Ten Adverts programme-referencing adverts based on adverts which reference other adverts which reference a fleeting memory of an occasion when something once happened that had some sort of sense of actual real-time event without a product atached to it about it, and this sorry spectacular society - and they're not even good spectacles, they're a pair of stupid Elton John frames bought at a celebrity charity auction of faux-pseudo-80's memorabilia - is sustained by galvanic blasts of money and hapless slack-jawed with horror bored breakfasters like me.
Meanwhile, the curly haired one also presents 'Never mind the Buzzcocks' - a programme which long since pitched forward into the void which Popworld slumps sulkily at the peripheries of. Never mind the buzzcocks, let's play with ourselves endlessly instead. '"'Popworld'"' and its styled and stylised 'create more entertainers' ethic functions like a Civilisation PC god-game parody of a pastiche of a copy real life... Never mind the product, testing itself on how little it cares about the conveyor belt of distractions trundling past. Fucking wafer thin culture checking itself out all the time, twiddling its thumbs, sitting on its hands, looking bored at text messages and waiting for someone to kill it... Like that French Connection ad with the skinny bitch fight happening as as not at all rude boy pork pie hat wearing pouters rocking last season's gay football hooligan look gaze on indifferently. Let them eat coke.
'Po-mo' shit like ' ""'Popworld'"" ' does it for me. A verbatim extract from this morning's edition:
'Here's the new Coldplay Simon le Bono 80's freako video show, wasn't it all shit?'
'Yeah, the 80's were great'
'Do you mean they were shit?'
'Well isn't it great shit now?'
'Yeah, this great is so shit it's... shit'
For. the. sweet. love. of. god.
What do you actually like, you cunts?
Bah!
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