I had this conversation with a fellow stalker in my dream last night:
Him “Who are you stalking?”
Me “My ex. Who are you stalking?”
Him “My mum”
"my level of humour"
My mum has just posted me Trev and Simon’s Stupid Book. Someone on BBC2’s poncey Late Review show might say they are the dada to vic and bob’s surrealism. One day they’ll reply to my letters.
The scariest thing is what someone has scrawled on the inside back cover…set 4 years in the future, it claims that Eric Cantona is a serial killer, and is written in the scrawly blue biro of a psychopath:
Hello, this is Crimewatch UK on the 25th January 1999. Now, do you remember a footballer called Eric Cantona? Yes, that’s right. He’s the one who murdered 11 people after being sent off in a match. Today is the 4th anniversary of that incident which took place when Crystal Palace played Manchester United at Selhurst park. We have made a reconstruction of what happened from the radio commentators Trevor Brooking and Mark Bright , who were two of Cantona’s victims. Listen to this and judge for yourself.
If you wrote it, get in touch.
Trev and Simon offer some timely tips too:
How to solve the problem of deforestation:
Write to an MP
Become an MP
Become a tree
You know what, I’m fed up of feeling bad about the world’s problems.
Global Warming= my fault. If only I wasn’t vain enough to need hairspray, and if only I wasn’t too lazy to turn everything off at night.
Insects trapped on the bus= my fault. But recently I have become so apathetic that all I can do is watch the fly or bee hammer itself numbly against the glass, while feeling a dull sense of responsibility. It’s my fault coz I have noticed them and the only way they will get out alive is if I do something. I almost want to squash them to put them out of the hell of being trapped forever on a Stagecoach bus. But then I would have blood on my hands and would feel like a dirty killer.
Poverty= my fault. What else explains the guilt I feel when I see a Big Issue seller? It still doesn’t make me buy a magazine though. If they put more fashion in it and made it glossier, then I might consider it.
"I did actually buy this one. I was in my Gaga phase"
There are so many Big Issue sellers in Manchester that my grandad always gives me a copy he bought as a “a free pass” through the city- without it you will be asked over and over again to buy one. Once I get on the train, it goes straight in the bin.
I’ve written a song about this weird sense of middle-class guilt I feel all the time (having some upward mobility and the ability to read and write means I ought to really help out the ‘less fortunate’):
I bought me a big issue
Coz I feel so guilty
I smiled at the security guard
Coz I know his life is hard
Middle class guilt
It drives me wild
Middle class guilt
Coz im so mild
Third world poverty
Makes me come over all wobberly
Corruption and controversy
Oh lord I feel so bad
For all the Hot Wings ive had
Buddhist or eco warrior
That’s how to stop it botherin’ ya
The guilt is the gift that keeps on giving
It’s the delicious pain of western living
Middle class guilt
It drives me wild
Middle class guilt
Coz im so mild
I got bored halfway through and couldn’t be arsed to carry the lame joke any further. Still, I’ll settle for Top 20 in a faraway galaxy (where bad jokes are good ones). Just need Jedward’s home number to make it happen.
Lisa “it’s really annoying how you go for a partner because you want your kids to look nice. Dom’s got much better lips than me. But what use is that to me?”
Me “Esther, you didn’t choose me for that reason did you?”
Esther “yes I did actually. You were nice enough looking and you had good clothes”
I am mortified for some reason. So, I play devils advocate: “So I spose you go along looking at what’s available, thinking “I want THAT face bearing down on me in bed, and looking up at me from the a cot””
“That’s disgusting” says Esther. “But true”.
But we have decided we are not going to have children until we are mentally healthy enough to hack it (like that’s going to happen). For now, picking up Goldie’s poo and sick is enough. At least she won’t grow up and swear at us, or bring stray dogs back for orgies.
“What if the next earthquake knocks us completely off our axis and we go spinning out into space?” she quivers.
“Well then, I guess we’re all fucked” I reply. No, I don’t actually because she’s the boss and such a quip would be considered insolent. Instead I comfort her with logic.
“That will never happen, I’m sure they would tell us etc”. At this point you conspiracy theorists will be sniggering at my naivety. As I have already told you, I think the man is misunderstood, and I enjoy the feeling of his/her big overprotective/oppressive arm round me. Oh how I wish I’d had a big brother to wrestle some sense into me. And to compare penis size with/ experiment with mutual masturbation. You know, the usual time-honoured family escapades.
“How many micro seconds are there in a second?” she asks
Google tells me there are 1 million.
“Oh, that’s rubbish” she mutters. “I don’t give a shit anymore”.
Real life always disappoints. Nobody discovers their junk is worth millions on Antique Roadshow. You don’t get model scouted on your way to Tesco. Getting high only leads to plummeting lower. Weird stuff that does happen is never the amazing things, always the mundane or sinister or depressing.
Thus, Lisa has become too scared to walk Devo in the cemetary in case the Polish man proposes. She has been forced to take affirmative action to point out to the overfriendly Pole that she is a taken woman.
He found her on facebook, and last week she agonised over a message that would put him straight. “I have a boyfriend” was all she could think of saying.
Unfortunately it only made him defensive. “I have a girlfriend too, of course” he wrote back. “Why should that stop us from meeting and talking?”
Lisa and Esther decided instead to avoid the park around the time he usually bumps into them.
"Goddammit, why isn't he looking at your beaver?"
I got really jealous the other week that he fancied Lisa and not Esther. “Why doesn’t he want you too?” I asked. “Maybe you’re not attractive enough” I thought. Fucked up as it sounds, I keep needing to know my girl is pretty to other people in order to have proof of my own attractiveness.
“You’re weird” says Lisa when she overhears me.
“Fuck off and get counselling” is Esther’s understandable reply.
A few days passed, and the girls managed to miss the Polack, thinking that maybe he had got the message and has backed off. Nipped his European openness in the bud so to speak, slapped a restraining order on his free spirit.
Today though, he finally caught up with them. He went aggro, singing raucous Polish songs to himself and throwing sticks at their heads, yelling “You should have safety helmets, hahaha”. He had replaced the behaviour of a lech with that of a sociopath.
“At least he had to stand further away to ‘accidentally’ throw sticks at us” Esther reasoned.
Is it better to be murdered than raped? Better to offend strangers than to have to pretend to be their friend? Better to throw sticks than to invite ridicule?
Adam Ant once went to his local for a quick pint, only to be bullied by chants of “ridicule is nothing to be scared of.”
Poor Adam. He’s just like me, but famous. He likes to rant and get naked, and he can’t take any flak.
He’s welcome round mine any time. I really want to ask him how to apply eye shadow convincingly.
Today I dared myself to walk round Topman with a pair of purple glasses with flip-up shades, flipped up proudly. I managed a quick circuit of the men’s bit, then fled down the stairs, pretending to multitask on my fone so I didn’t meet anyone in the eye.
This is phase one of operation ‘pompous, public and proud’. More to follow. Ridicule is nothing to be scared of. No pain no gain. Or, as Rihanna sang, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me”.
"Look mummy, she's having tarantula cunnilingus! Doesn't she know that spiders don't have tongues?"
I was just in Spar. A family came in, and huddled round the newspaper stand.
“She’s been in Playboy” says the precocious 14 year old daughter.
Ok, I’m dealing with Liberal parents. I leaf through Heat and try to ignore them.
The girl takes her tweeny sister over to the lad’s mags.
“Oh my god look at Nuts!” she lisps, “I can’t believe she’s on the cover!”
I start to feel a bit sick in my feminist/prudish parts, and I have to walk down to the freezer section to cool off.
"Oh God! I haven't tried this flavour. Who am I??"
While I zone out with the Viennettas, I think ‘Should they know this stuff?‘ They know more than an (admittedly late flowering) 30 year old man about the Glamour Industry. Maybe their parents are porn stars, or refuse to have a lock on their bedroom door.
I often dismiss things as ‘just wrong’ because I wouldn’t want to do it. But who the fuck am I? Some kind of taste-maker?
"Another box ticked"
Is it right to cut yourself off from certain experiences?
Is it right to say ‘I will never try this’ and have done with it?
Fair enough, you may say, if we’re talking something BIG like heroin, or murder?
But where do you draw the line? If it’s legal? If it’s moral? If it’s mentioned in the Guardian?
“OMG, if you haven’t eaten Basking Shark buttocks, you’ve never tasted food”
Part of the middle class world-view is that everything is there for the taking: foreign countries provide interesting food promotions in Waitrose, and other cultures provide amusing anecdotes at dinner parties (“We were captured and raped by the janjaweed. It’s simply divine!”). Keeping up with the Smyth-Headingley’s requires single minded dedication to seeking out new experiences. A pathological need for MORE.
“1001 movies you must see before you die” “The Bucket List” “Must Haves”:
We’re constantly being told that we’re missing out.
Fuck off and leave me alone. If I go to my deathbed without having watched Citizen Kane, have I wasted my life? If I die before I try the Backwards Cowboy position, am I losing out?
Am I fuck. I refuse to believe your hype. I refuse to bully myself into trying stuff for the sake of ticking a box. If I’m not careful, I could lose faith in my own judgement- “I like this because NME gave it 10/10”.
I would quite like to be happy more than 50% of the time, and find a way to go bald gracefully, but that’s where my ambition for the future ends.
Getting older is a shift of perspective- you go from instant gratification (now!), to a 5/10/50 Year Plan (then!) where life becomes about Big Stuff: how to get to where you’re going, and whether it’ll be worth it when you get there.
"I'm a clean living motherfucker"
Also as you get old, your face becomes weathered. Your life is written in crow’s feet and saggy jowls. Your face betrays you, the fucker.
Apparently, Esther can instantly tell when I try to suppress my emotions. Apparently I have whenever I am mad, I get an “anger chin” and whenever I’ve done something naughty I get “guilty lips”. I wonder if each of my features is associated with a feeling: a horny nose? a peevish eyebrow? a cringing cheek?
Damnit, this means that she can read me like a (picture) book.
George Michael had the same problem. Poor bloke, his transparency made him the object of ridicule at discotheques.
Kung Fu (father of Esther, Lisa, Carmen and Bella) popped by to take the girls to visit their granny. She lives in Rotherham, a most dreadful affliction.
"'Waldo's New World Order' the radical feminist-lesbian alternative to Jim'll Fix It, never passed the pilot"
With each daughter he conceived, Kung Fu hoped the next would be a son- by the fourth girl, his ambition shifted to having a lesbian daughter. Unfortunately, he is still waiting for some closet-exiting. Had any or all of then been a boy, they would have been called Waldo.
Spare a thought for the schooldays of the phantom sons: the hope of his generation was never enough to change the basic meanness of human nature. Waldo is not a name that would ever be tolerated by school children.
Waldo is also frighteningly close to the surname of the tallest man in the world EVER: Robert Wadlow. When I started to grow past everyone else age 10, I used to obsess over his growth chart “this is something I can excel at!”. Unfortunately I stopped at his 8 year old height of 6’2.
"That's how to get girls: gravitational pull"
Kung Fu lived through the last great twin cultural traumas of free love and imminent Third World War. It was enough to drive anyone crazy (along with the dragons that he hallucinated in the fields nearby), and duly he began stock piling tinned food in the cellar of their Hebden Bridge home, along with his weapon of choice for protecting the stash; a mail order crossbow. After all he had to protect a pack of erstwhile Waldos from nuclear holocaust.
"Hippies only work as a Second Life avatar" Discuss.
His anti-Russian defence was only rumbled when Weasel broke the ‘only’ tin opener, and Kung Fu gleefully nipped to the cellar to fetch a brand spanking new one. Weasel took a look at what else he had down there, and found everything. Out went the crossbow and ‘slap’ went his cheek. At least they ate like UHT kings for a while.
Kung Fu is the biggest Captain Beefheart fan I have ever met; although in the wake of his death, everyone seems to have been into him, like, forever. Apparently Esther thought he was a genius poet, coming up with ridiculous and fantastic word combinations at mealtimes. It was only later that she realised these were all Beefheart lyrics.
I think it takes a genius to remember his songs, and also to oversee the viper-pit of free thinking daughters for so long.
As for Captain Beefheart, even Sly Stallone has come out as a fan. Such is the bonding power of peer pressure:
"Dear Tracy, try harder next time. The sheets are still white for God's sake"
“I can smell dog poo” said Esther this morning as we sat in bed. She sniffs the air. “Oh no, I think it’s my breath”.
Me and Esther are rubbish at personal hygiene. Our bedclothes haven’t been changed in weeks. They’re full of biscuit and cake crumbs from months of elevensies and afternoon teas. We have had 2 duvets since it started to turn cold last September. The top duvet is covered in mud stains and hair from goldie.
We have been cultivating a comforting aroma of bums and feet. When I get a waft, it feels like home.
Every morning, Esther wakes up drenched in sweat. It must be the side-effect of her anti-depressants. She wakes up in a pool of cooling body fluid and has to reach out to the drawers next to the bed to grab one of my t shirts to replace hers with.
She always chooses my clothes, but I secretly love it. It’s kind of like a teenage fantasy: not only to have a girlfriend, but to have one who validates your existence by wearing your clothes. This fact separates her from the purely imaginary partners I desperately conjured into existence. Wearing my t shirt proves that she’s real.
Normally we sleep with at least one body part touching. Usually it’s a foot or hand or side of belly. However at some point Goldie climbs aboard and drives a big wedge between us, pushing our legs sideways off the bed.
Around the bed radiates a crumpled pile of clothes from nights out and workdays mixed with fresh washing that hasn’t been put away. The stink and stains gradually travels across to the clean stuff as we trample on it to and from the bed.
I‘ve always been astounded that people can be bothered to have a shower or bath EVERY day. I just wait until my smell stops being comforting and starts to smell like death.
"Esther, I can feel a poo coming out"
I have a problem at the moment: my bumhole stinks of rancid cheese. Every time I go to the toilet (and I ALWAYS sit down), I leave a cloud of off-milk aroma which I sadistically can’t wait for Esther to walk into unawares. I went to the doctors but I had showered the night before, and she couldn’t smell anything. She even inserted her gloved finger up my bumhole and sniffed it. After the initial shock, I quite enjoyed the feeling.
It is there, I’m sure. I think it is either Thrush or the fact that I was veggi for 15 years and now I’m a rampant carnivore. I might have to bottle the stench and make my doctor sniff it.
But what really stinks is the idea of COMMUNITY.
"Love and mutual understanding bring us together"
We were watching DIY SOS yesterday. We turned on halfway through, and it was about a boy who had been badly injured and his parents wanted to do up the house for him. It was meant to be a heartwarming tale of how a community pulls together in a time of crisis.
It made me seethe with rage and tremble with nausea.
The boy’s school friends had organised some faux-American school prom which raised 8 grand. Everyone had rallied together and done the Christian thing, thereby dispelling the pessimism of Thatcher: “there is no such thing as society”. What a rosy picture this is, like some Socialist Realism poster set in suburban Rotherham.
Reasons why I can’t stand this BS:
1. If it had been me in hospital during my school days, the only motivation to help me would have been when the bullies got bored of having no-one to harass and wanted their victim back. Freaks, geeks abd assorted weirdos do not become instantly popular in these situations. My parents used to say that come the revolution, our neighbours would trudge to our house first and hound us with pitchforks. On a similar note- “He was an angel” parents always blub when some shitty bully-boy dies prematurely. Like hell he was, he was a nasty little oik, and although he didn’t deserve to die, you make me sick with your retrospective beatification of a local cunt.
2. This vision of community did not include any non-white non-working class non-chavs. It seemed to say “Britain is still Great if you’re white in a blue collar”. This is the future dreamed up by Nick Griffin. (It’s also the inverse of that imagined by Islamic fundamentalists). This steaming pile of semen is the so-called “Big Society” Cameron/Clegg want us to join.
3. What was more is that if you missed the start of the programme, they refused to explain what had happened to the boy for the rest of the show. I refuse to invest my emotions until I can get vicarious pleasure from knowing all the gory details. I’ve heard so many sob stories (reality TV is obsessed with rags to riches stories) that it takes some “cruel and unusual” affliction to make me feel anything. My heartstrings have snapped and can no longer be yanked. Like an adrenaline junkie, we seem to need more and more horror to feel the upset we should. Why else would Saw be onto it’s 45th film?
Govinda calls me and Esther naughty rabbits. I think it’s because our usual facial expression is ‘hunted and manhandled’ and I have a fluffy white tail.
Apparently there’s a new trend for dyeing your rabbits different colours. I have often wanted to do this to Linda and Goldie but haven’t dared. It’s always better to wait and watch someone with less morals doing it first. This is what I did with sex and black pudding.
We spend a lot of time watching other people doing stuff we wish we could but don’t want to get caught. It’s called living vicariously. Or living bicuriously. Apparently, God created us so he could get his thrills from afar and feel and see what we did. He liked the whole procreating bit, but he was allergic to apples and nearly died when Adam and Eve gobbled them all, which really pissed him off. The rest is his-story (as told on Jacko’s album of the same name).
If I was going to tell my story, it would probably be a montage of clips from Me Myself and Irene, MTV and Misfits.
The climax would be the Misfits Manifesto, which sums up my ethical principles:
Best speech ever?
It’s the Howl of our generation. If I still count, being 30 n all…
Just got back from Meadowhall. I wanted to buy some self esteem at any price. But all I got was half price narcissism and 33% extra free self loathing. And some socks n that.
I saw lots of people who I can only describe as consistent. Chavs, Emos, wannabe WAGs, Goth-Lite, Emo-Chav. They all knew who they were (on the outside at least): they had the uniform sorted out, no mistakes.
In comparison I feel like a style Frankenstein, with odd bits from different eras stuck together, with no conception of a whole. I want a fucking uniform.
"I'm a vewy angwy young man"
I have tried being militant but it always goes awry. I’m really jealous of Christians and Young Socialists and Goths who can turn off their brains and follow a code regardless of how ridiculous and/or anachronistic it is.
First I had a rule that everything I bought that wasn’t food had to come from a charity shop. This meant that I became obsessed with Help the Aged’s special book and record shop. I used to go nearly every day and finger through the vinyl in the hope of spotting a record from the infinite ‘must have’ list in my head. This was compiled from overhearing middle-aged men talking in the pub, and from middle aged men writing in The Guardian.
I would buy a record, let’s say ‘The Clash’ and take it home, my hands shaking in trepidation. Here was a cultural relic; a touchstone, and I could feel the angst of a generation fizzing under my fingertips. I’d put it on and brace myself- I’m enjoying this, I’d tell myself. This is a GOOD album. Other people say so. There are more of them than me. I can picture them all, rocking in agreement.
So here’s my shock confession. I hate the Clash. I don’t like reggae so why would I want a shitty white boy version of it. Plus they have no style. The Sex Pistols win hands down, for their ugliness, ambition and also their pop. Write a proper song Strummer! Oh wait, you’re dead.
"I is a WASTA"
Sheffield seems to be populated by Men Who Like The Clash. Everywhere you go there’s someone who’s personality was hard wired by White Riot or London Calling. It’s like some fucking Masonic society- get over it! Like Scroobius Pip eloquently said “ The Clash? just a band”
You wouldn’t have caught Paul Simenon, Strummer or the other one advertising I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (it would have to be the bitter rival of Anchor, for old time’s sake). Some people say Johnny Rotten is a sell out- but that only means something if you’re still clinging onto the idea that punk can change the world- but after ‘I Wish I was A Punk Rocker with Flowers in my Hair’ how can you think the message is still getting through?
That’s like singing I Wish I Wore My Klan Outfit to the Notting Hill Carnival. How can someone get it so wrong?
“In ’77 and ’69 revolution was in the air
I was born to late to a world that doesn’t care
I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair”
What we lack as a generation is context. You know, that crucial bit of extra knowledge that makes everything make sense. The past has been reduced to a pick ‘n’ mix, a jumble of possible styles and causes you can choose to dress in. So it makes sense that old Sandi could lump hippies and punks together because Topshop does too. Who cares if one advocated nothingness and destruction (no future), while the other wanted a universal conscientiousness (a utopian future)? History has become a Sale Rail of symbols. Why believe in anything any more?
I’m basically a trash whore, a music pansy, a soft lad.
I made myself buy the so-called classic albums because I have no taste of my own you see. I am a vessel, filled by other people’s likes and dislikes. If I am asked about something I should know about, let’s say The Godfather I-III, I have to apologise profusely and take my red cheeks elsewhere. Or else pretend. But that gets me into trouble. To escape the tedium of shaking my head at the many things I don’t know about, I have taken to throwing a few “yeah’s” and nods in. But then comes the more detailed interrogation, sorry, conversation, where you have to say what bits you enjoyed the most and give an opinion about its worth. This is where I am left stuttering.
Ugh. So ill today, like I’ve been drinking STRYCHNINE. My stomach is bruised. One nostril whistles like an icy cave on a mountaintop.
Esther goes to do family things, and I stay in bed. “Have you got money on your phone so I can text you and say ‘Baby, what are you doing now?’” I ask.
“Hmm” she replies. As well as being rubbish at Public Displays of Affection (PDAs), she is incapable of Text Affection (TAs).
I think ‘right, now I am going to find some real porn. This will cheer me up’. Halfway through a shower scene I feel really sick and have to go to sleep. The sound of sticky balls slapping against bumcheeks haunts my dreams, like some feverish jungle drumbeat that goes faster and faster as I am burned alive.
"Please can we at least hold hands?"
Esther goes to her parents for a family meal. After a couple of hours, she texts saying, “This is horrible. I want to come home”. This is as near to a TA as I’m likely to get, but I must not get excited. I text her back some alibi “I feel poorly and I need you to come back”.
An hour later, she’s back. “Jesus” she says, letting out air, “That was like being with the Royle family, only it’s not as fun if you’re actually there.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“Mum went crazy because she couldn’t find the special spoon she’d got to serve the trifle. She screamed ‘I can’t have any lovely trifle if I don’t have that knife’ and couldn’t be consoled”. Time to leave.
"I don't know what you're smiling at, you've just ruined pudding!"
I’ve just finished All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland. I don’t think I want to read anything by him ever again because he depresses the shit out of me. If you can’t be American, rich and happy, there’s no hope for any of us.
A sample: Wade thought about his father. What would the world have to offer Ted Drummond, and the men like him, a man whose usefulness to the culture had vanished somewhere around the time of Windows 95?
Slit my wrists now please.
And: I believed the script I was handed. And then one day in the early 1980s I hit a red light in North Vancouver and ding! I understood that I was now forever in life’s minus columns and the plus column was over.
The only thing that makes me carry on reading is because it sounds exotic to a lower middle class British suburbanite like me.
Hmm let’s see what would happen if we transported it to, let’s say, Rotherham or Stoke on Trent. Here’s how the novel starts:
Janet opened her eyes. – Florida’s prehistoric glare dazzled outside the motel window. A dog barked; a car honked; a man was singing a snatch of Spanish song. She absentmindedly touched the scar from the bullet wound beneath her left rib cage.
Here’s the grime remix:
Tracey opened her eyes- South Yorkshire’s grey smog hung thickly outside the dirty double-glazed window of the Sally Army hostel. A dog yelped as its Big Issue vendor owner kicked it; a car revved and ‘music’ that made her bowels move penetrated the room; a crazy man was shouting the names of God’s favourite meals. She absentmindedly touched the half-eaten scab from the Tenants Super can slash beneath her third belly fold.
I have been floored by this LIVE AID ’85 documentary
I am actually crying now because I miss the optimism of Bob Geldof, who really believed that he could change something about the world with some bands.
Why can it never be recreated? Because we no longer have the optimism. We have gone from a ‘WE’ decade to a ‘WHO AM I’ epoch, a ‘WHY?’ era.
The Darkness, Jamelia, Dido, Travis and Ms Dynamite. They sure knew how to pick ’em for posterity!
Note to self: It’s one of the Mysteries of the World, Rowan Atkinson’s transformation from sexy bastard as Black Adder to sexless geek Mr Bean. Perhaps I too can go from the latter to the former?
We take poverty, disease and misery for granted. We have become ‘compassion fatigued’, brought up by the generation that had the last sense of purpose: a viable future. Our inheritance is apathy. There’s bad shit out there, but we can’t do owt about it. May as well get fucked.
I feel cheated. Did I ever believe in anything?
I used to love animals- but only to collect books about them like a colonial hoarder.
I used to believe in vegetarianism, and I was brought up to feel deep empathy for animals, our house was full of them. But I don’t feel that anymore. I can stuff my face with meat with only a tinge of guilt, not enough to put me off.
I feel love for every single band that sang at live aid. Such decadent faith and belief would be instantly cut down by the bitter chavs of cynicism now.
Fundraising has been hijacked- the ‘Live Aid effect’ is one of many styles available to ad companies to flog iPads or car insurance or Nokia phones.
People cared about the Falklands War, about the first Iraq War, about the future, about other people. Now we don’t give a flying fuck. We’ve still got some people who act all earnest- socialists and feminists and Tories. But underneath, everyone is status-driven but blank, vacant, inert like some suavely-jacketed potato. Bollocks.
The only answer is to refuse to answer, to say ‘no comment’.
80s pop is life affirming. Noughties pop is bitter, angry and botoxed.
Compare:
With:
One’s fun to look at and fun to hear, the other is kind of traumatic to watch, (though) fun on the ear. The cartoon shizzle injects some black humour into a prison-rape-murder movie. Don’t girls just wanna have good clean fun no more?
Right.
I’ve just taken 2 ibuprofen and 2 paracetamol now, so the wet cheeked inelegant gushing part of my illness should soon subside, and I will be able to feel no sadness or joy. I will become how I am at my natural state. Merely existing.
As I try to sleep, I can hear the pets snoring (Linda a high pitched nasal snort, Goldie an almost human ‘pufff’). I can hear Esther letting out long breaths of pent up worry.
I am left with the memory of 2 things from today in this darkened room. The sight of a skinny teenage boy with an unusually large and girthy cock, fucking a teenage girl in a shower where the water isn’t running. She looks like she’s sat on an uncomfortable fence waiting for the bus. I think I lost a bit of my soul watching it. The balls go ‘slap, slap, slap-slap, slap-slap, slap, slap’ against her arse and the camera zooms round from a balls-eye-view to a front view of this girl who is kind of unsure where to look. ‘Right’ she seems to think, ‘I’d better make out that I’m really enjoying this’ and she does the whole eyes closed, gasp routine. I get bored and fast forward the video-suddenly they are out of the shower, sat on the toilet and his huge cock seems no nearer to coming. Jesus. Why choose this location? It’s like fucking in a bus shelter or a bank queue- and all I can think is ‘why isn’t the shower on?’ and ‘Does straddling the toilet make either of them need a poo?’ These are non-places (Auge)- they look the same everywhere you go, they are purely functional, where we spend most of our time, but where we spend the least time personalising.
The sound of slapping testicles mixes in my head with the slow-mo footage of starving Ethiopian babies, their stomachs swollen in the ridiculous illusion of obesity, and their tear stained faces covered in dirt and flies. “Give me your money,” shouts a dishevelled Bob Geldof, slamming his hand down on the table.
Slap slap slap. Should I groan now? Ok, ‘aaah’ ‘oooh’. “Fuck this, pick up the phone now and give me your money” Bob growls.
I want to cry for the loss of innocence in both films- the faces in front of the cameras look strangely confused, as if asked to perform something embarrassing in front of a stranger.
What would Bob Geldof be like in bed? An angry young man, pummelling away until he’s satisfied, cursing you as a capitalist whore? Paula Yates could have told us.
"Wouldn't you like to know"
Not a Cure for insomnia: turned the TV on to watch Medium- about a woman who every time her heads hits the pillow is transported to some psycho’s head and has to save someone from certain death. A walking advert for staying up all night. We may all want to be good Samaritans, but if we were forced into the role permanently, we’d go apeshit in a short while.
The 80s had Miami Vice- the Noughties had Misfits. Is one more honest or truthful than the other? Was Miami Vice escapist fluff, and Misfits (and Inbetweeners) is the gritty, shitty truth of our times? Are they merely signs that we’ve plummeted from a time of sexy optimism to one of bitchy pessimism and sarcasm? Or that feminism and identity politics have deflated the masculine ego in culture, and it’s no longer believable to be so happy and full of yourself? Life is shit and you’re a chauvinist pig if you don’t think so?
The pain is lifting like steam from piss…
Answers on a stolen postcard please, I’m currently indisposed.
Today’s Agenda: Sweet FA watching The Time Machine and TOTP. And a banquet.
What actually happened: lots of pain.
Today feels like my first adult Christmas. I feel like shit, and I can’t eat anything (especially not chocolate), and I am not excited about presents in the slightest. Instead, I’m bored and uncomfortable and goddamn tetchy.
All I can do is lay like a limp roast parsnip and watch TV while everyone (Lisa, Dom, Devo, Goldie, Esther and their parents) bustles around me in stress/hysteria. Even my old favourite movie won’t cheer me up:
The Time Machine.
A Victorian explorer travels into the way distant future (the cozy year 800,000) and finds a load of blonde haired blue eyed babes living like big kids. Turns out that humanity was all for nothing though, because they are merely jail-bait for the ugly mofos who live underground and do all the grafting.
If the future is for a race of beautiful young people who have no worries and no conscience, it sounds like a fair pay-off to me. Surely the whole purpose of knowledge is to somehow find a way to return to our innocent childlike state of imagination and freedom? What finer gift could there be for culture than to produce the opposite of culture (no, not ‘popular culture’)- pure unmediated being: Giggling and frolicking like sexy lambs.
But oh no, Mr Victorian Neo-Liberal doesn’t want that. He wants us to suffer with knowledge, to aspire to greater and greater things. But this is what has made us grow weary by the late 2oth century. H.G.Wells failed to predict that progress would go out of fashion that we would become bored with the future and jaded by the pressure to constantly better ourselves.
Ah. Top of the Pops. I watch it religiously every year, knowing full well that out of the 20 songs played, I can stomach only 5 and out of those I will like only 2. What were they this year?
(1) Tinie Tempah- Pass out
And…Hmm do I really want to admit this one…yes fuck it, they’ve basically all seen my cock, and this is no more embarrassing:
(2) Take That-the Flood
Like everyone, I crave a bit of homoerotic sportsmanship of a cold winter’s day. Warms you up in all the right places. Like this, my all-time favourite movie scene:
Talking of gayness, I was going to watch The Queen’s Speech for it’s archaic, kitsch value (not coz I’m like a royalist, that would ruin my street cred. litrally). But I didn’t. It’s too hard to live your life ironically.
Apparently it emphasised the unifying powers of sport. Fucking crock of shit. The royals use croquet and polo to separate the chaff from the wheat, not bring us together. Take That’s vid is proof that ONLY people who get their hands dirty in life can achieve a life worth living. Sweaty=Happy. At least, that’s how I justify my pungent BO.
Instead, I caught N-Dubz Dappy’s alt. message on E4.
His best line: “Forgive me if I have painted a somewhat gloomy picture, but I am just real innit”
This may have to be adopted as the tagline for my blog…
Brilliant. I never thought a boy who looks like an upside-down acorn could dispense sense, but there we have it. And who knew he was a royalist?
Next year, I shall have to film my own message to the nation.
Esther spies the letter to Marina over my shoulder. “That’s shit” she scowls. She’s just jealous. At least my letter isn’t to Bob Mortimer like hers would be. She used to think she’d bump into him on the street when she lived in London, and they would fall instantly in love.
"Ooh look, there's a big issue in there"
We get to Lisa’a and find a Big Issue on the table. “You two can’t afford to buy the Big Issue can you?” I say incredulously. However, the latest issue of Look or ID often finds its way here. Priorities you see.
“It’s not ours, we don’t know where it came from”. Says Lisa with confusion. “It’s like god thinks we need it or something”.
Esther and Lisa were shopping in Rotherham Tesco for their grandma.
Esther has to go to the loo, and as she sits down in the cubicle, she hears two women talking rapidly in Urdu (or something).
Suddenly an angry Rotherham woman’s voice came from the other cubicle “Speak English for God’s sake!”
The women outside fall silent.
“I’m just talking to my sister, I can speak in any language I want, thank you!” The braver sister replies.
“Come on, let’s go…” says her sister diplomatically.
“No. I want to see who said that” she snaps, settling down for a wait.
Esther started to panic. They’re gonna think it was me! Shit, I’m going to get it when I step out, shit shit!. Her cheeks got redder and redder as she braces herself to face their wrath. She opens the door, and peeked out.
“It wasn’t me…” she quivers at the two equally red (with anger) faces.
“I know love, just go” says the angry sister.
Outside, Lisa was waiting. “Let’s just get the hell out of here” Esther said and they scurry away.
"Can I come out yet?"
Dec 20th
“Isn’t it nice to be sat in from the cold, with a cup of tea and a biscuit” says Lisa wistfully.
“So, life’s alright then?” queries Esther.
“No, I wouldn’t got that far”.
“Life’s shitty shit” shouts Dom.
“At least no-one’s watching” says Lisa. “We can relax. For now at least.”
Apparently, last night Dom returned home from a gig at 5am. “I’ve got a present for you” he slurs at Lisa. “What?” she says excited. Lisa loves gifts.
“A prostitute’s lipstick” he says, brandishing a tarty pink tube. “I picked it up just before I got in the cab”.
“Isn’t that what every girl wants?” he adds “to look like a prozzy?”
Lisa acts disgusted, but the next day she comes downstairs: “Do you like my lips” she asks coyly “I’ve put that lipstick on”. I swallow some bile.
“Can you catch AIDS from lipstick?” she asks, realizing what might have come free with the present. Let’s see; Herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, crabs…a whole menagerie of alien bodies.
vienna famous 