It is, of course, a rough old world out there. Seriously. Rough as hairy bear's arse.
Sometimes the sheer futility of it all can be maddening, at other times it can be a comforting notion.
I can't pretend to have any kind of answers or advice, I can only speak from the perspective of a damaged individual whose mates are amused by his negligable ability to combine swear words on the internet.
So since it's the internet and everyone else does it (I just want to be accepted! *sob*) lets rip off Orwell!
You want to imagine life? Imagine smashing your head against a brick wall. Forever.
(I always liked the word "Forever" and the concept, something so unimaginably big & incomprehensible we had to dilute it's meaning down to homeopathic levels of weakness with pissy shallow love songs.)
So why bother? Really.
Well, why not? There are other options, but they're no option at all really. However comforting the thought of them may occasionally be. (Or No Matter how much I am haunted by the fact that despite all the light speed progress in the realms of science I am never going to be able to piss Skittles. The sweets. Not the little wooden pins you used to hurl at girls you liked back in those hazy First School days. What's wrong with you people??)
No. What keeps me (keeps us?) hanging in there is a saucy cocktail of pig faced stubborness and bitter delight at the thought that I am a walking, talking (or more accurately shuffling, swearing) middle finger salute at whatever organising principle there may or may not be behind everything, a spiteful gesture combined with a comedic bumwave at forever (there's that idea again!) alongside a simple, ultimately childish believe that if I (if we) keep at it for long enough I can break a brick wall with my skull.
sjs x
Monday 1 March 2010
Monday 19 October 2009
By now of course anyone who has even heard of the Internet will have also heard tell of Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir & her legendary article about the death of Stephen Gately. If not a brief summary follows:
Pudge faced middle class curtain twitcher implies (in the way bank robbers imply they would like money from the bank by jamming a firearm in someones face and saying "Give me the fucking money") that Gately died because he smoked Marry-jee-wah-nurrr and was a gayer.
The internet didn't like this one bit. Oh no. Then again headlining the article "There Was Nothing Natural About Stephen Gately's Death" was a blunder akin to opening the article with the phrase "Now I'm not homophobic but...."
But that was friday and this is monday (presuming you're reading this on a monday, if you aren't please address all questions about the timeline & continuity to Stan Lee & His Venom Dripping Barbed Penis c/o Marvel Comics). So what have we learned?
1) The Daily Mail is written by closeted, bigotted gossips for other closeted, bigotted gossips. *File Under: Duhhhhh*
2) We who like to consider ourselves tolerant, open minded individuals enjoy like a good old hysterical ruckus just as much as the close minded, prurient gossips we so dislike.
But point 2 is where it gets interesting, the most fascinating question posed by this uproar is why THIS particular article caused such a ruckus when the Daily Mail prints things that are just as unpleasant if not more so on a heartbreakingly regular basis?
Probably cos Gately was young and famous? Sorry but that always help in terms of Celeb Death Profile (or CDP as it is probably known. And if isn't then that sexy abbreviation is copyrighted by me. I get a penny everytime someone uses it, and it definitely gets used loads in the media.)
However rather than suggesting we should be disgusted (and we SHOULD be disgusted) but maybe calm down a bit I would say the only sane response is to go right the other way and kick off a bellowing online shitstorm each and every time the Mail prints some of it's (by now probably) trademarked offensive bullshit. Of course within a week right thinking (Yeah. Right thinking. You heard me. I am controversially laying it out there that if you express racist, sexist or homophobic views you are wrong. We live in a society where it was your right to hold those views and even to express them. Hooray! But they are still wrong. And you're a cunt.) would be exhausted at the level of outrage we'd be obliged to maintain so we'd need to think about organising shifts or something so we don't all simply keel over en masse and puke ourselves to death from sheer righteous fury. Mainly because if we did there'd be an article on the Mail website within twenty minutes gutlessly implying we deserved for being drug addled, communist sodomites.
But why not? Why does it seem it's only people who hold views similar to the Mail's that get to have all the "widely orchestrated smear campaign" fun? Sod that. I am considering setting up a Paypal address where people can send me a pound so I can quit my job, buy a megaphone and simply stand outside the Mail's head office quoting myself from earlier in this post (I'm sure you can guess the phrase I will be repeating again and again and again). At least until I get enough donations to build a twelve foot tall, neon covered robot version of me to do the same thing. Oh yeah. And furthermore the robot is going to piss lasers at random intervals, engaraving phrases like "Have the stones to fully express your despicable views so all humanity can rightfully deride you as the vile skidmarks on the undercrackers of society that you are and then hound you to the ends of the earth" on to the face of the building in massive scorched lettering.
I genuinely see no reason why this shouldn't happen. Do it before Cameron gets in and bet I could get a Govt. grant on the sly as an attempt to curry favour with floating voters.
Oh and if you thought Jan Moir's article was the worst thing I saw on the interweb this weekend:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11
aaaannnnnndddd
http://www.usofearth.com/2011-obamas-coup-fails.php
If you'd like to know how clicking on these links made me feel then punch yourself repeatedly in the chest then lock yourself in a dark cupboard weeping and gnashing your teeth whilst flailing madly at your arms with a stanley knife safe in the knowledge you've made the correct response to this hateful shart (I don't need to explain Shart? Do I?) of a world.
sjs x
Oh
Pudge faced middle class curtain twitcher implies (in the way bank robbers imply they would like money from the bank by jamming a firearm in someones face and saying "Give me the fucking money") that Gately died because he smoked Marry-jee-wah-nurrr and was a gayer.
The internet didn't like this one bit. Oh no. Then again headlining the article "There Was Nothing Natural About Stephen Gately's Death" was a blunder akin to opening the article with the phrase "Now I'm not homophobic but...."
But that was friday and this is monday (presuming you're reading this on a monday, if you aren't please address all questions about the timeline & continuity to Stan Lee & His Venom Dripping Barbed Penis c/o Marvel Comics). So what have we learned?
1) The Daily Mail is written by closeted, bigotted gossips for other closeted, bigotted gossips. *File Under: Duhhhhh*
2) We who like to consider ourselves tolerant, open minded individuals enjoy like a good old hysterical ruckus just as much as the close minded, prurient gossips we so dislike.
But point 2 is where it gets interesting, the most fascinating question posed by this uproar is why THIS particular article caused such a ruckus when the Daily Mail prints things that are just as unpleasant if not more so on a heartbreakingly regular basis?
Probably cos Gately was young and famous? Sorry but that always help in terms of Celeb Death Profile (or CDP as it is probably known. And if isn't then that sexy abbreviation is copyrighted by me. I get a penny everytime someone uses it, and it definitely gets used loads in the media.)
However rather than suggesting we should be disgusted (and we SHOULD be disgusted) but maybe calm down a bit I would say the only sane response is to go right the other way and kick off a bellowing online shitstorm each and every time the Mail prints some of it's (by now probably) trademarked offensive bullshit. Of course within a week right thinking (Yeah. Right thinking. You heard me. I am controversially laying it out there that if you express racist, sexist or homophobic views you are wrong. We live in a society where it was your right to hold those views and even to express them. Hooray! But they are still wrong. And you're a cunt.) would be exhausted at the level of outrage we'd be obliged to maintain so we'd need to think about organising shifts or something so we don't all simply keel over en masse and puke ourselves to death from sheer righteous fury. Mainly because if we did there'd be an article on the Mail website within twenty minutes gutlessly implying we deserved for being drug addled, communist sodomites.
But why not? Why does it seem it's only people who hold views similar to the Mail's that get to have all the "widely orchestrated smear campaign" fun? Sod that. I am considering setting up a Paypal address where people can send me a pound so I can quit my job, buy a megaphone and simply stand outside the Mail's head office quoting myself from earlier in this post (I'm sure you can guess the phrase I will be repeating again and again and again). At least until I get enough donations to build a twelve foot tall, neon covered robot version of me to do the same thing. Oh yeah. And furthermore the robot is going to piss lasers at random intervals, engaraving phrases like "Have the stones to fully express your despicable views so all humanity can rightfully deride you as the vile skidmarks on the undercrackers of society that you are and then hound you to the ends of the earth" on to the face of the building in massive scorched lettering.
I genuinely see no reason why this shouldn't happen. Do it before Cameron gets in and bet I could get a Govt. grant on the sly as an attempt to curry favour with floating voters.
Oh and if you thought Jan Moir's article was the worst thing I saw on the interweb this weekend:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11
aaaannnnnndddd
http://www.usofearth.com/2011-obamas-coup-fails.php
If you'd like to know how clicking on these links made me feel then punch yourself repeatedly in the chest then lock yourself in a dark cupboard weeping and gnashing your teeth whilst flailing madly at your arms with a stanley knife safe in the knowledge you've made the correct response to this hateful shart (I don't need to explain Shart? Do I?) of a world.
sjs x
Oh
Saturday 18 July 2009
A Decade Under The Influence
Being a cack handed attempt to do something other than swear & moan online.
Don't worry, I'll still do swearing.
Those individuals unfortunate enough to know me in "Real Life" will know that occasionally (for occasionally read: Quite A Lot) my foul mouthed energy is directed towards things I like rather than things I don't like. It's just that like any sane individual the internet makes me quite cross so blogging is done about being cross and things that make me cross. Makes sense. So consider this an experiment.
A Song of Ice & Fire
George R R Martin
By any sensible individuals reckoning A Song of Ice & Fire (by chubbsy bearded peacenik George R R Martin) should be utterly & irredeemably shite. At the time of "writing" (cos let's be honest this isn't "writing" it's "ranting", actually that't way better anyways), sorry, at time of ranting it consists of four weighty (600 odd pages, series highlight A Storm of Swords is over 900 pages) books of what might be best termed High Fantasy. That is to say castles, kings, dragons and shameless Tolkien plaigarism. Borrrrringgggg.
Except... except it's not. Not at all. ASOI&F only bears a superficial comparison to LOTR , coming across like a mash up of Tolkeins Medieval Europe Rip Off, Lost (each chapter is viewed from the perspective of a core cast of about a dozen characters to ground the grand sweep of the plot to a more human level) and one of those daytime soaps if the violence and shagging was up front rather than just hinted at to titilate elderly ladies. More than anything it's the characters that make this story, Martin has a real knack for writing complicated human beings whilst remembering to keep things readable (there's no needless pages of info dump, Martin understands filling in the blanks yourself as you go along is far more engaging than a chapter long lecture on a made up world). No one is nessecarily Good or Bad, they're human, as flawed, relatable and complicated as that entails. Foul mouthed, whore loving, wall eyed midget Tyrion Lannister is the series undoubted star (my mum hearts him). And if you've read the preceding sentence & aren't at least tempted to give the series a go then you're simply not the person I fell in love with anymore. Sorry.
To delve too deeply into what makes the books worth reading will only wind up spoiling much of the fun, it's a testament to the series that it frequently blindsides you. Perhaps the best recommendation I can give is that my old mobile contained a series of texts from one of my best mates on his first read through of the series charting his reactions to specific events (musn't... spoil... plot....*choke*..). The only other writers who illicited this response were China Mieville & Mike Mignola, high praise indeed for anyone who knows my pop-eyed enthusiasm for those two.
Fair warning though: Song of Ice & Fire is STILL an ongoing series (& I'm not shitting you with that decade under the influence bit), essentially GRRM has lost momentum & it's increasingly unlikely he'll regain it. This does nothing to dissolve my love of the four books (I've re-visited them about six or seven times now) that have been published but several years ago I shrugged my shoulders & wandered away from any expectation of ever reading a final volume. My mother has asked that if this unlikely event occurs after she has passed away my sister & I burn any further books so she can read them in The Next Life. Really.
Then again Neil Gaiman release a solid gold book every other year, not everyone can.
I can really only reiterate my opening remark as a final recommendation: This sort of thing is almost always shit. This time it really isn't. Hell if that's not enough I'll give you the four quid you need to buy Game of Thrones on amazon myself (no I won't).
sjs
Don't worry, I'll still do swearing.
Those individuals unfortunate enough to know me in "Real Life" will know that occasionally (for occasionally read: Quite A Lot) my foul mouthed energy is directed towards things I like rather than things I don't like. It's just that like any sane individual the internet makes me quite cross so blogging is done about being cross and things that make me cross. Makes sense. So consider this an experiment.
A Song of Ice & Fire
George R R Martin
By any sensible individuals reckoning A Song of Ice & Fire (by chubbsy bearded peacenik George R R Martin) should be utterly & irredeemably shite. At the time of "writing" (cos let's be honest this isn't "writing" it's "ranting", actually that't way better anyways), sorry, at time of ranting it consists of four weighty (600 odd pages, series highlight A Storm of Swords is over 900 pages) books of what might be best termed High Fantasy. That is to say castles, kings, dragons and shameless Tolkien plaigarism. Borrrrringgggg.
Except... except it's not. Not at all. ASOI&F only bears a superficial comparison to LOTR , coming across like a mash up of Tolkeins Medieval Europe Rip Off, Lost (each chapter is viewed from the perspective of a core cast of about a dozen characters to ground the grand sweep of the plot to a more human level) and one of those daytime soaps if the violence and shagging was up front rather than just hinted at to titilate elderly ladies. More than anything it's the characters that make this story, Martin has a real knack for writing complicated human beings whilst remembering to keep things readable (there's no needless pages of info dump, Martin understands filling in the blanks yourself as you go along is far more engaging than a chapter long lecture on a made up world). No one is nessecarily Good or Bad, they're human, as flawed, relatable and complicated as that entails. Foul mouthed, whore loving, wall eyed midget Tyrion Lannister is the series undoubted star (my mum hearts him). And if you've read the preceding sentence & aren't at least tempted to give the series a go then you're simply not the person I fell in love with anymore. Sorry.
To delve too deeply into what makes the books worth reading will only wind up spoiling much of the fun, it's a testament to the series that it frequently blindsides you. Perhaps the best recommendation I can give is that my old mobile contained a series of texts from one of my best mates on his first read through of the series charting his reactions to specific events (musn't... spoil... plot....*choke*..). The only other writers who illicited this response were China Mieville & Mike Mignola, high praise indeed for anyone who knows my pop-eyed enthusiasm for those two.
Fair warning though: Song of Ice & Fire is STILL an ongoing series (& I'm not shitting you with that decade under the influence bit), essentially GRRM has lost momentum & it's increasingly unlikely he'll regain it. This does nothing to dissolve my love of the four books (I've re-visited them about six or seven times now) that have been published but several years ago I shrugged my shoulders & wandered away from any expectation of ever reading a final volume. My mother has asked that if this unlikely event occurs after she has passed away my sister & I burn any further books so she can read them in The Next Life. Really.
Then again Neil Gaiman release a solid gold book every other year, not everyone can.
I can really only reiterate my opening remark as a final recommendation: This sort of thing is almost always shit. This time it really isn't. Hell if that's not enough I'll give you the four quid you need to buy Game of Thrones on amazon myself (no I won't).
sjs
Saturday 11 July 2009
Make Your Own: This week Make Your Own Torchwood Script
You will need:
One cat posessed of a nervous disposition (ideally should have been enthusiastically violated by a bull terrier made entirely of fireworks as a kitten).
One bucket PVA glue
One bucket full of cliches & lazy, hackneyed dialogue.
One box lined with sheets of A4 paper
A quantity of cheap speed (ideally cut with Warfarin or similar)
Step One: Dose cat with your speed.
Step two: Just to be sure clap hands loudly at cat several times.
Step three: Immerse cat in bucket PVA glue
Step four: Remove cat & immerse in bucket cliches.
Step five: Remove cat from bucket and place in box. Shake box vigorously.
Step six: Remove cat from box. Discard (or if feeling merciful administer single bullet to skull. Cat has suffered enough by this point)
Step seven: Remove paper lining box & put in any old order (I watched Torchwood on tuesday, trust me it won't matter). Submit to BBC. Wait for vast numbers of viewers to turn in. Whilst weeping softly.
This is the actual process used for writing the episodes of Torchwood you have seen (& if you have any decency been baffled by) on your telly. The single difference is that instead of making noise at the cat Russell T. Davies wanks in it's ears.
Why not try it at home. Remember to get a grown up to help you administer the drugs to the cat.
One cat posessed of a nervous disposition (ideally should have been enthusiastically violated by a bull terrier made entirely of fireworks as a kitten).
One bucket PVA glue
One bucket full of cliches & lazy, hackneyed dialogue.
One box lined with sheets of A4 paper
A quantity of cheap speed (ideally cut with Warfarin or similar)
Step One: Dose cat with your speed.
Step two: Just to be sure clap hands loudly at cat several times.
Step three: Immerse cat in bucket PVA glue
Step four: Remove cat & immerse in bucket cliches.
Step five: Remove cat from bucket and place in box. Shake box vigorously.
Step six: Remove cat from box. Discard (or if feeling merciful administer single bullet to skull. Cat has suffered enough by this point)
Step seven: Remove paper lining box & put in any old order (I watched Torchwood on tuesday, trust me it won't matter). Submit to BBC. Wait for vast numbers of viewers to turn in. Whilst weeping softly.
This is the actual process used for writing the episodes of Torchwood you have seen (& if you have any decency been baffled by) on your telly. The single difference is that instead of making noise at the cat Russell T. Davies wanks in it's ears.
Why not try it at home. Remember to get a grown up to help you administer the drugs to the cat.
Wednesday 1 July 2009
Michael Jackson vs. Transformers
I'll do a "young black man transforms into elderly white woman" joke in a bit, ok? And in my defense it'll be a hell of a lot more tasteful than a lot of the stuff surrounding Jackson's death. Don't believe me? Go read OK magazine. Full photo spread of grieving children. Classy.
What a long, strange ride it's been. How can we even begin to take stock of a life like Jacko's. An individual who has been one of the most famous human being's on the planet for the entirity of my twenty seven years? Well one way would be this: *robbed from comments on Charlie Brooker's piece about Jackson's death*
What a long, strange ride it's been. How can we even begin to take stock of a life like Jacko's. An individual who has been one of the most famous human being's on the planet for the entirity of my twenty seven years? Well one way would be this: *robbed from comments on Charlie Brooker's piece about Jackson's death*
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Hopefully to wake up sane the next morning, 'musical genius' Charlie?
Stravinsky was a musical genius without whom we'd never have had (besides his own wonderful work) John Williams ripping him off giving us the themes for Stars wars, Raiders of the lost Arc...etc.
Michael Jackson was a freak obsessed with grasping his own groin and squealing without whom we'd never have had Five Star.
Some perspective here please, especially from you Mr Brooker.
And don't give me the record sales bullshit or I'll fire the Spice girls at you, one by one from a Trebuchet, a zigazig ha'ing as they arc sort of towards your general vicinity (Yeah have you ever calibrated a giant medieval catapult for the added effect of girl power?).
Yeah fair enough Jackson got Black music onto MTV but the best thing he ever accomplished besides that was to entice a certain Mr Cocker to pretend to waft his farts.
Right. I'll hold my hands up. I'm a massive shit for picking on one particular poster (who of course I have never met) & using their words & opinion (which of course they are entirely entitled to hold & put on the interweb) to illustrate whatever point I was attempting to make when I started typing two minutes ago but really? Really?
Boil this down to bare bones and it reads: "Look I am referring to Stravinsky! I am a class act. Even though I am kicking the corpse of a seriously disturbed man online. Whoo!" I don't pretend to know an awful lot about music but:
1) Think comparing Michael Jackson to Stravinsky might be missing the point a bit
2) Stravinsky would definitely have moon walked to Smooth Criminal after he'd had a few.
Still, we all love the giddy vicarious thrill of a celebrity death (the Actual Problem that rears it's multitudinous, poison belching heads again & again), so I'll stop being a spoilsport & sign off with two points:
1) In roughly a fortnight it will get Very Bad, for now it is possible to dodge a lot of the unpleasant voyeurism & gleeful speculation that inevitably follows the death of any public figure & simply wander around in the sunshine accompanied by a backing track of storming pop songs from your childhood blasting from Every Radio. It's quite nice. I walked down Oxford Street on sunday & was too busy enjoying MJ's greatest hits to notice no bastard on that street seems to remember how to walk. A minor miracle.
2) Jackson Definitely touched those kids. Once he's in the ground various hair raising scare stories will shoot from the woodwork like a plague of Lovecraftian maggots bulleting from the walls of a decaying New England pile. No one will bother to consider that (and don't get me wrong, I am in No Way condoning what happened in these instances) he was not a man in his right mind (in many ways a child himself) and much of the blame for what happened lies with people around Jackson and perhaps some of the families involved. Right mind or not, if I ever have children the suspicion that something untoward might happen to them would probably be enough to prevent me letting them go & sleep over at a reclusive millionaires fairground/fortified compound. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
For now much of this seems to be overlooked because now he is gone Jackson can be filed away mentally (rightly or wrongly) as a fond memory of growing up. In the same way I will doubtless go and see Transformers 2 despite the fact I know it will be shite but am willing to overlook that because when I was six years old those robots meant so much to me, even though it was all just a heartless corporate way to flog toys & the cartoon frequently looked like it had been drawn using hammers. Perhaps when you are as famous as Jackson that is the best you can hope for anymore?
Oh & Lest We Forget if it weren't for MJ Joe Pesci would have gotten every kid in the world hooked on drugs and then blanketed the earth in tarantulas. Think about that coffin kickers. Not the tarantulas. That would have been fucking ace.