Filed under: Angry Slurred Shouting, Diatribes and Debates, Gibberish, People, Writing | Tags: apocalypse, armageddon, Cameron, Clegg, dream, dreams, end of the world, horror, nightmare, politics, rage
I’d always assumed that when the world ended I’d be with my friends and family in a meadow on a hill, watching a city crumble in the distance. The sunset would paint the sky purple and red and orange, Sigur Ros would be playing from somewhere in the background and we’d talk about the good times.
As the end drew near we’d exchange our goodbyes, crack some jokes and then there would be quiet and peace; drawing comfort from the futility of worrying about anything. A bitter-sweet ending, an idealized finale.
That’s why last nights dream struck me to my soul.
The world was ending, but my friends and family weren’t there. They were away on some exotic beach, being massaged by supermodels and chuckling to themselves, this I knew. Nor was I in a meadow. Instead I was on a bus, surrounded by knobheads, the reek of urine ruining my journey.
Occasionally someone would flick the back of my head and when I turned to glare at them I missed the crumbling city behind me, turning around in time to see just settling dust, a horrible grey in the garish yellow midday sunlight. The bus was now parked, but nobody got off.
From the window I could see the panic, hear the running feet. Here and there was looting, I saw a group of children repeatedly stabbing an elderly shopkeeper for a mars bar.
Over the din I could hear Jedward being played from some invisible speakers.
Then, projected enormously against the wreckage, began an endlessly looping video of David Cameron violently robbing a poor, old woman. Perhaps because it was projected onto an uneven ruin, perhaps not, he had taken on the aspect of a six-limbed monster bedecked in hideous spines and scale-like plates. From between two of the plates grew the constantly, sickly grinning face of Nick Clegg, like a tumor.
I could see both Milibands and the rest of Labour springing to and fro, wearing signs which read “the end is nigh!” While I couldn’t question the validity of their warning, I also couldn’t shake the feeling that they were slightly late to this party.
Suddenly I was on my feet; I grabbed and shook madly the nearest person to me.
I continued to shake him as I heard myself screaming; “No! This can’t be the end! It can’t all end like this, can it!? We worked harder than this, didn’t we!? DIDN’T WE!?”
His face remained impassive, staring straight ahead rather than watching the world fall apart around him.
He squinted at me through the pudgy rolls of flab around his eyes, unblinking, and without a word he put another handful of fries into his idiot mouth.
I began to yell incoherently, a wordlessly protest that any sane person would echo. I yelled alone. The insistent sound of a siren began then.
I awoke with a start, drenched in cold sweat, slapping my alarm to stop its wailing. I looked about myself; everything was as it should be, from my window I could see a thin mist, rising quickly in the bright but gentle morning light.
I breathed a sigh of relief and after my morning ministrations I made a cup of tea. I lit my first cigarette of the day and, mug in hand, waited for my jangled nerves to calm.
Sufficiently relaxed and now assured that what I had seen was only a terrible dream, I turned on the television. Eventually, bored of sitcoms, I made a huge mistake; I switched to the news.
I haven’t stopped screaming since.
Filed under: Angry Slurred Shouting
I went to Youtube again. I need to stop, it’s going to give me a stomach ulcer or something.
I watched the clip from Network (look it up) where Howard Beale goes mental and tries to get some response from the viewers at home. “I dont have to tell you things are bad, everybody knows things are bad.”
It ends with him encouraging people to yell out of their windows “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” Charlie Brooker, as an homage, once suggested holding a nationwide minutes inarticulate noise. 1 minute a year where we stand in the streets and scream blindly at the sky in an effort to feel more real.
Of course then I saw the video responses.
Pretty people, sponsored video-bloggers, putting their expensive camera outside their window and leaning out to do their best Gen-X ‘angry’ tone, sounding like HAL when Dave’s half-way done with his circuits, and saying ‘I’m mad as hell, I’m not going to take this anymore.’
Take what? What aren’t you going to take? You don’t know cold war tensions, you dont know what it was like in the grips of a real economic depression.
Most of these videos ended with “Now make your own response!” white text on black backgrounds. “Oh please pay attention to me! Ignore the fact that the film I’m raping is fucking superb and that I got the quote wrong, respond to my video.”
No. You don’t get it, clearly you didn’t understand the scene and are simply using it as an excuse to latch onto a fad and shout at your camera. You are a parasite, you are a worm. You are what this scene is a railing against.
So amazingly self-obsessed, these folks, I was flicking through the other videos of one and it was entitled ‘babysitting nightmare’ or somesuch bullshit.
It was honest to god five minutes of this girl saying it was annoying to babysit because the kid was crying while she tried to watch TV or call her boyfriend. I could honestly have been fired off the Earth in a cannon at that point and I wouldn’t have cared. The furthest you can be from something on Earth is 12,450 miles, that isn’t far enough away from a place where people like that can exist.
I know I subject myself to these things, it’s my own fault, but I can’t help t. Misery loves company, and in this case misery loves a crippling hatred of most human beings and their every thought, breath or action.
Choke on a fish bone.
Boat-owners.
Today I made that biggest of Youtube mistakes; I clicked on something in the ‘Related Videos’ box.
This one was entitled ‘How to Become a Youtube Partner‘. I was interested, ok? I’d like to do something in the Youtube community that amounts to more than complaining about it. I’d like to customise my profile more than I already can, because basic stuff annoys me a little, that’s why I switched from Blogspot to WordPress among other things. Also, making a small amount of money is always fun because it’s nice to know my work is actually worth something.
Thing is, there are some stipulations to becoming a Youtube partner, which I’ve pulled, unedited, from their website:
To become a YouTube Partner, you must meet these minimum requirements:
- You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
- You own or have express permission to use and monetize all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.
- You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
Seems ok, right? Let’s break it down;
“You create original videos suitable for online streaming.“
Fair enough, no porn, no (real) gore. If not a “U” rating then at least cap it at an “18″. No “R” or “X”. We can all appreciate that some people choose to shelter themselves from reality and that’s fine. Next.
“You own or have express permission to use and monetize all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.“
Copyright became a huge issue on Youtube after the Google buyout (to the outrage of many Yu Gi Oh and Naruto and whatever else spam-posters who would upload someone else’s work to get themselves internet recognition, which is the only reason anything is done on the internet, but we’ll come to that).
Youtube stipulate that to be a partner you must own or have permission to use any and all video and audio content, that includes sound effects ripped from games. No copyright infringement, for the TL;DR crowd. Ok, Next.
“You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.“
Wait, what? I have to have THOUSANDS of views on a regular basis? My most popular video was a one-off shoot short film, rather than an endlessly repeated video blog and it has 2,398 views. Ok, bad example, that video is sweet. My second most popular is also a one-off, it has 1,344 views. Again, not great to illustrate my point, since my short films are great, but the rest of my videos, the video blogging kind all have viewcounts in the low hundreds. The most popular thing I’ve ever been involved with is Truancy, which many of you will remember and possibly still own on stolen poundshop rewritable DVD, it has a little under 4,500 views.
The only way to regularly post videos is to do video blogging or podcasting, and getting thousands of views on them is nigh impossible for someone like me. Because I can’t sit and spout inane bullshit at a camera in a way that is compelling unless I’m in a very particular mood. This is rare.
Which means I’ll never get to be a partner, because I have a little bit more of a nack for filmmaking than putting a camera on a tripod, hitting record and talking about the fucking minutiae of my day. Srsly. Don’t click that unless boredom is totally your deal.
That’s my main qualm; the fact that in order to become a partner and have my videos seen more and rewarded and appreciated I have to change the way I make them, the way I am in them, the way they ARE. If I want to make a video blog I’ll do one that I’ve tried to make interesting, or I’ll do another Ask Bov or I’ll keep uploading short films that require a little work to make.
I’m not going to sit down, turn on a camera and spout pop-culture bullshit to get viewcounts. I don’t want to give anyone my opinion on Miley Cyrus’ new dress (Miley Cyrus is disney’s Hannah Montana. There are nude pictures of this oh-so-innocent teen starlet on the internet and she’s a bitch according to sources, who also say she drinks and is dating an underwear model. Not exactly a perfect role model. Best of all; at some award ceremony she demanded the chance to meet Radiohead, as though she deserved it. They declined politely to meet her because they’re real musicians who are good. In an interview later she vented her outrage saying, and I quote; ‘Stupid Radioheads(sic), I’ll ruin them.’ Miley ‘who-the-hell-is-she?’ Cyrus is going to ruin Radiohead. Radiohead. RADIOHEAD. Let it sink in. I’m not even going to qualify it with ‘The band who…’. Watch out Mr. Yorke and pals, Hannah Montana is gunning for your jobs).
I don’t want to be a gibbering idiot like a lot of the ‘vloggers’ you see, who get eleven million hits because they blog in a bikini and the sweaty nerds who subscribed totally would, despite the fact the only woman who has or will ever touch them is their mother, and in a completely maternal way. I don’t want to spend 5 minutes chattering like I’m a monkey on prozac with a boner and an itch. The majority of times all these people are saying is ‘Today I met Tyler in the classroom and I said ‘I want you to dominate me sexually!’ and he said ‘Fuck off, you annoying ugly whore.’ and I was fucking ecstatic because he spoke to me which means I’m online buying the whips right now. And a ball-gag. That still wouldn’t shut me up though! Please shoot my face!” That took me fifteen seconds to re-read, just to prove a point.
Then the man on the video said if I wanted to be a partner I’d need to have hundreds of subscribers. I’ve got about seven. To get hundreds of subscribers I’d have to do the above too.
I’m just annoyed because I’ll never get to be a Youtube partner, since the videos I make aren’t seen by many people and don’t have sex appeal and don’t pander to people going ‘Duh Ashton Kutcher is dah orsum!!!11!1!!!!’ (He’s still current, right?)
Then I got a little bit of info; you have to REQUEST ads for your video as a partner. Yes, you have to ask nicely for Google to put an intrusive banner in and a huge square of shit beside your video. So you can make pittance a go for a short amount of time.
The only type of video those ads would work on are video blogs, because nothing is happening below the person’s head, because god forbid they might do something interesting with their hands or something in front of them, HOLY CRAP they might demonstrate something! NO!!!
I like to frame my shots well. If not well then at least interestingly. In my videos, more often than not, something will be happening lower down than the top third of the screen. I know for a FACT that right when something important/interesting/funny is happening down there, the ad will pop up and cover it. Yes, you can immediately get rid of it, but you shouldn’t have to. Stick an ad at the end, after it finishes, if it must be in the video. You’ve got the side bar, isn’t that enough? Nobody ever fucking reads them anyway. “Ooh! This video blog is about how this student couldn’t afford a sandwich so they ate some sorrel leaves they found in the woods instead. Wait, I must buy the new Landrover!”
They claim the ads match the content of the video because Google invented a system which can apparently analyse the video contents and match an advert to it entirely devoid of human intervention at any point. Overall then, Google claim to have invented TRUE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. You know, the holy grail of robotics engineering? The endpoint for all electronic intelligence research being done? That thing top scientists are multiple decades away from achieving? Google have that.
Except it’s rebelling. Because the ads very rarely match the content. Often I’ve seen ads pop up that seem like a cruel joke. The ‘sorrel-landrover’ thing is exaggerated anecdotal evidence of what I mean. So they’ve developed true AI which has the ability to rebel and as such is essentially the epitome of all science ever and renders most philosophers gibbering idiots or hilarious historical relics. Or they’ve invented a broken system that doesn’t work because it doesn’t have the ability to judge relevance beyond percentage of keywords matched. As much as I wish it were the former, it’s actually the latter.
The Youtube partner system is a big pile of elitist dogshit (how can these morons claim to be the elite when intelligent people are better than them in every way? Because they’re in a club with a ‘no clevurs aloud’ sign on the door).
I hate advertising anyway, so I’d be constantly pissed off if I did get in.
I’m not jealous.
J Bov.
Edit: P.S.
I just noticed WordPress has put links to ‘similar articles’ at the bottom of this which also completely miss THE FUCKING POINT!!! Damnit, where’s the option to turn that off? Bloody internet.
Filed under: Angry Slurred Shouting
Scrabbling around in the scum, mewling weakly for the end of the world, weeping for a sign, for a saviour.
This place is getting to me and it’s beginning to win. Why must I co-exist with the slime that clogs human endevour? The low-down idiot masses that rule our lives? The marketing directives of the human condition?
Am I bought, packaged and paid for? Are we all, in a way, nothing more than commodities to be checked, passed, numbered, stamped and stored?
I’m a human being. I have dreams. I have feelings. I can create great art if I choose.
Although then some faceless monolith of advertising would try to nudge it into the market under the ‘thinking, feeling, real-life human dollar’.
At what point after we stood up and stretched our legs a bit, maybe hunted for something to eat, did we decide that even if it’s human shaped, if it looks slightly different to us we should kill it? Between foraging for berries and learning how to paint?
Why can’t I shake the feeling that when this ship sinks all of us, no exceptions, are going to be dragged with it?
Scrabbling around with the human scum, mewling weakly for the end of the world.
Not a single member of the human race is worth saving.
Filed under: Angry Slurred Shouting
I was Stumbling around (if you have Firefox and don’t have a Stumble button you’re doing it so wrong you shouldn’t be allowed a computer) and I just found this:
If we could shrink the earth’s population to precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 8 Africans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south52 would be female, 48 would be male
70 would be non-white, 30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual, 11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition, 1 would be near death, 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education, 1 would own a computerWhen one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent. The following is also something to ponder:
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness…you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation… you are ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death… you are more blessed than three billion people in the world. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep… you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace… you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. If your parents are still alive and still married… you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada. If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Puke.
Sure it raises a good point. Why, then, add the preachy little text-block at the end of the cold, hard facts?
Fuck, look at this stuff:
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness…you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
One, you can not empirically measure ‘health’. ‘Health’ has no scale, you can’t have “15 health today, Mr. Johnson, what were you up to at the weekend?” Life isn’t a videogame.
More ‘Blessed’? BLESSED!? What the shit? Now it’s god’s fault that I’m healthier than people who drink their own shit?
No.
Moving on.
Battle, torture, starvation; fair enough I don’t know about them and that makes me lucky.
Attending church without fear of harassment and attack; I choose not to attend any sort of church based thing and there are people in the world who would attack me for that, but I guess it’s not the same. And again they use ‘blessed’. It’s nothing to do with some higher power gifting us this stuff.
Why would a loving god put people in situations where they have to boil piss so they can drink and get shot at if they love him/her/it?
No.
This. This is where it starts to get annoying;
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep… you are richer than 75% of this world.
That was stated in the facts, as such reiteration is pointless, but also patronising. I’m richer than 75% of the world because I was born in a country that is relatively rich. I didn’t fucking ask to be born here, did I? Given the choice I wouldn’t have been born into a country where I would live in a gutter and get a fresh batch of AIDS every day as hobos raped me, no, but neither would the writer of this piss-wash drivvel. The only reason people want to change the world is if it makes them uncomfortable.
If people were never told about this kind of shit, they’d be happy as that chirpy bastard Larry. But no, people want this kind of stuff to stop because they were born into a rich country and feel guilty about people being poorer than them. Everyone is a self-serving bastard, no exceptions.
And then this;
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace… you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on, you’re trying to make me feel guilty? Because I have some money? There are people in the world who could feed and clothe an entire third world country on their fucking yearly salary, who could educate a city’s worth of people and provide them with simple medicines on what they make IN A FUCKING WEEK and you want me to feel guilty?
Because I was born where I was born, you want me to give my money to people who have less than me. Fine. Charity is great and I’m not devoid of a soul, but why make everyone feel guilty when the four, maybe five or six, richest people in the world could solve world hunger on their fucking own?
Why are you guilt-tripping me? I don’t have that much money either. Granted, I have more than starving, disease-ridden street orphans, but fuck, I have to eat too.
A stupid person would see this and go ‘Oh noes! I must give all my money to a charity immediately.’ At which point they’d give a substantial amount, an amount they can’t really afford while rich fuckers sit in their boardrooms guffawing at the stock market or something and people still die.
I just think this quote should have stuck to the facts and not got all preachy. They were interesting, eye-opening and made me all riled up for some kind of world-changing and then I read that fucking drool and lost interest.
I’m not heartless. I know I’m in one of the best off countries in the world, in terms of healthcare, schooling and general quality of life.
I know there are people in the world who deserve my sympathy and help, they didn’t ask to be born in Grime Hole, Shitland any more than I asked to be born here.
Luck of the draw, and I, like any self-respecting person, do what I can to help them, even if it’s just the occasional donation.
I don’t think they brought it on themselves, I don’t think their own governments (if they have any) can sort it out, I think the only way to stop this kind of shit (if there even is a way to stop it, which is an interesting if depressing philosophical point) is for people who can afford it to stop whining about their Porshce, their £400 hair-do and their perfect manicures and pitch the fuck in.
Footballers – Pitch the fuck in.
Businessmen – Pitch the fuck in.
Musicians, writers, directors, producers, lawyers
Get off your fat fucking arses and PITCH THE FUCK IN.
Do something with your (undeserved, in many cases) mountains of cash besides buying spinners for you fucking hummer (or ‘Bastardmobile’) or a new swimming pool in your summer house in the woods that’s as big if not bigger than your normal house or a new fucking Super-Mink and Panda fur coat for your one-week-girlfriend who’ll spill £2000 champagne with gold in it down the fucking thing and just bin it.
Argh, get the fuck out of your own little pissing worlds of money, ‘glamour’, ‘success’ and pointless bastarding decadance and help someone who needs help for a fucking change.
Would it kill you? Would you die if you gave money away to help someone who not only doesn’t have a house but can’t afford a fucking sheet of tarpaulin to sleep under?
No. You might even find that some of that knawing depression goes away and you can sleep at night. If you aren’t too busy snorting overpriced Ket off a hooker’s labia, that is.
What is so wrong with maybe NOT buying that fifth Ferrari just to fill your one mile driveway and giving that money to people who care, people who aren’t constantly guilty of being the worst scum humanity could possibly find stuck to the bottom of it’s shoe.
Fucking help someone who can’t do it themselves you actual bastards. What the fuck is wrong with you.
You’re the kind of people that if given a clear perspective of your lifestyle by some futuristic machine would actually REQUEST to be first against the fucking wall.
I fucking hate you and everything you stand for you slimy, worthless, evil, nasty, horrible fucking scum-sucking, festering, idiotic, heartless spawns of something foul-smelling.
Do something for someone else, or pretty soon there wont be anybody left to farm your organic fucking lettuce that you waste half of anyway and you’ll starve to death and I hope it fucking wracks you with agony, you twats.
Get the fuck out of my existance.
Nick Shearon posted a blog last year that was just a link to this article.
I was reading through his archive and it caught my eye.
It was this little phrase that caught my eye like it was flying around of it’s own accord, flapping it’s tiny, wet wings and shooting bile on people from it’s tiny eye-mouth. Wait, what?
Amichai-Hamburger speculates that rather than contributing altruistically, Wikipedians take part because they struggle to express themselves in real-world social situations. “They are compensating,” he suggests. “It is their way to have a voice in this world.”
Personally I prefer the term ‘Wikipedos‘ pioneered on the *chans (which frankly, aren’t as bad as everyone thinks. Until they are. In which case they’re the fucking worst showcase of human interactions and humanity in general you could ever wish to see. The Holocaust was fucking horrible but on the *chans there’s pictures from Auschwitz in a thread about gore-porn).
I was thinking; if this is “their way to have a voice in the world” they’re pretty sad people.
Get a blog. I can’t recommend it enough, blogs are amazing.
The only reason you wouldn’t get a blog to have your say on the vast waves of piss that are the internet is if you write like a mentally handicapped three year-old who’s had too much Sunny D (the fetid waste-water that is).
In which case what’s stopping these people becoming activists or outspoken members of their community? Pick up a fucking megaphone, write a letter to the council congratulating the local youths on not being as much like little shits as other youths. Do something in the world that isn’t sitting in the dark deleting new research from scientific articles because you don’t know about it yet and assume it’s a joke.
But wait, that would involve being around people, wouldn’t it? I’m sorry, I forgot to take into account the fact that throughout life you’ve been picked on and mocked and possibly assaulted for being a bit of a tech-savvy kinda guy.
This grew into a distrust of people, didn’t it? You retreated to the internet; a place where all that matters is knowledge, information is currency and you can’t be attacked for the way you dress or the things you enjoy.
Too bad the internet isn’t a serious place. It’s a new way for crypto-fascists to display their warped ideals, it’s a place to deliberately annoy people like you and laugh as they rage.
You are the butt of every joke on the internet, because you are so dependant on it. You are the definition of a lolcow and if you continue to threaten anonymous people, delete people’s wiki input out of spite and treat the internet like serious business you will be milked dry and left a burned out husk. Like a hooker’s soul.
I love the internet. Love it like a retard son, but I have no stake in it. I haven’t sunk an important part of my life into being on it. The time I waste on it would otherwise be used to fart around, piss about or waste time in other ways, like sleeping.
If I left and never came back it wouldn’t be a major detraction from my life. I have no money invested in it, I haven’t used it to define myself.
I love the internet, but I don’t need it.
I love the internet, but I’m not really a big part of it.
I love the internet, but I hate that fucking place.
Go outside.
J Bov.
P.S. I’m not being as explosively insulting today because I’m blogging this at Uni. I would be working, but
1. My project is on my personal laptop, back in my room.
and
2. I’ve got three weeks to finish it and I already have, sans tweaking.
Anyhow, I’m outta here.
P.P.S. IBM want me to cut my carbon emissions, says an ad on the article I posted. I’d have to be dead to cut MY emissions, but the emissions I cause by use of things like computers is so negligable as to not matter. Just as one person’s ‘Carbon (fucking) Footprint’ would not even go a millionth of a way towards effecting the plant even one iota, one person cutting theirs down wouldn’t help.
I’m not big industry. I’m not an oil company. I’m not a country that refused to sign the Kyoto Agreement because they can’t accpet incontravertable proof that while the planet warms on it’s own, it’s been doing so a lot faster since the Industrial Revolution. I’m not an upcoming country trying to find it’s industrial feet while fighting the Caste system or beating Tibet into a blood, piss and tears coloured pulp.
Fucking IBM.
I’m not. I’m annoyed at fans of music that incorporates screaming. Emo, metal. Actually, that’s all.
I’ve been Youtube trawling to get myself all riled up (because becoming inarticulately angry at the fact that some of these idiots are allowed to operate computers with internet connections then calming down enough to write a venomous blog is a hobby of mine. Catharsis) and it’s worked.
All these fucking children internet-yelling about how their favourite ‘singer’ can scream the best, the loudest, the longest. Whatever. It’s enough to make me sick.
1. It’s not singing.
2. There are things out there so much better that are done in much the same way.
Damn, I wish I had audio examples. I’ll have to do a video of this.
Essentially, I found some emo kids net-screaming about how some pansy’s screeching was ‘beautiful’ and ‘deep’. I listened, expect… well, expecting something good. I was disappointed, even with my standards set to ‘low’. Oh, boy was I disappointed.
This little slip of a man effectively just cried the word ‘Sacrifice’ and these fawning idiots proclaimed him the singingest singer in song town.
Then some metalheads were E-peening off about their guy. How his scream was more ‘brutal’ more ‘heartfelt’, and in one case more ‘feral’. I looked into it. He growled some word or another. It was pretty impressive inasmuch as I can’t do it and it must push his Strepsil bill up quite high.
Then I got really angry, because I was basically watching people whine about how their guy was the best at making sounds with their throat rather than singing. I prefer real singing, myself, y’know; people with good voices and good lyrics? Not sissies crying about their ‘pain’ or idiots growling about dismemberment.
Then, of course, I got more angry, because none of these fuckers is anywhere close to the best at throat-based noises.
Ladies and gentlemen, where can you hear multiple harmonies with just two people? Where can beautiful, heartfelt music be heard in nothing but throaty noises?
Boys and girls, where can one person harmonise four different vocal tones at once?
That’s right:
THROAT SINGING!!!!
You fucking idiots have no idea how a real throat musician does what they does.
Not even SCIENCE has found an answer yet. Not fully.
Anyway, I lost my angry stride because I just found this guy ronaldjenkees on Youtube.
He’s actually fucking amazing.
Look him up.
Fuckin’ peace or whathaveyou.
I’m sat in a coffee shop. Because I’m so fucking cool.
I’m a writer, bitches. Are you? No. Not like me. You aren’t fit to suck my pen. is.
Although this place is full of fucking college students who are more pretentious than me.
SHUT UP! Seriously, your stupid friends might care about what you said in chemistry, but the rest of the FUCKING WORLD doesn’t.
Climb a wall of dicks.
We’re flops.
Failures.
A generation that hasn’t been around long enough to blow it’s chance at greatness and we’ve already decided to skive that day so we can laze around.
We’ve nothing to fight for anymore. We were born into a world that was locally quite stable and pleasant and weren’t told about the rest of the world until years after the apathy kicked in.
Injustice, someone else’s problem. Poverty, someone else’s problem. The slow, agonising death and stagnation of our cultural, sub-cultural, anti-cultural and omni-cultural identity. What do those words mean? They must be someone else’s problem.
Let’s make a list of my generation’s likes and loves, then rip it to bits. Because I’m feeling entitled to do so, as a superior specimen:
1. Clubbing.
The rave scene was late 80′s early 90′s. We’re too young to have ridden the crest of this resurgent hedonist attitude.
In former Soviet countries in the ‘winding-down’ period of the Cold War they’d have all-night raves they called ‘End-of-the-World Parties.’ Drink, dance and enjoy life like the world was ending around them. Because it fucking could have.
I wonder if we’d do any more than panic about our £40 neon orange afghans or where in the afterlife we could get a latte.
The threat hasn’t changed. We’re just blissfully, deliberately, stubbornly unaware.
2. Chain stores.
This is an entire post in itself right here, but I’ll save it.
Suffice to say that mostly we know they’re both shit and evil, but we use them anyway out of sheer laziness.
Convenient please, but don’t mention the slave labour or disgusting practices.
Don’t click those links, by the way. They lead to MacDonald’s and Starbucks respectively and the less traffic the two of them recieve the happier I’ll be.
3. Celeb gossip.
Just who are these gurning fucknuggets?
They stare out of glossy magazines at me with this expression (they’ve all ‘mastered’ it) that’s supposed to be deep and meaningful. It basically looks like they’ve been asked for their opinion on the political decisions of George Bush regarding the national debt of Africa.
They. Look. Stupid.
Why does no one else see that?
Why, oh fucking why, do people worship and idolise and fawn over these illiterate scumbags? Pus-spewing morons with no talent or personality, products of the media run by the generation before us but aimed squarely at the values of this one which are…
4. Having ambiguous moral standpoints.
Soundbite from a coffee shop: “I’ll have a soya latte, I’m vegan you see. Ooh and a chocolate brownie please.” “Our brownies contain both milk and eggs maddam.” “Oh, It’s fine. *wink* I’ve been good this week. *giggle*”
Oh my. I pray to any god that’s listening that Moby be given PCP and a loaded gun and let loose in Huddersfield.
I’m not vegan, but that even offended me.
5. Indie bands.
Not good ones. The ones that all sound the same. So the term ‘Indie’ is redundant in this instance. In any sense; they aren’t individual and they aren’t independent because they all rely on the bland sound of the others to make sure they’re still popular.
I’m looking at you:
The Black Kids
Kaiser Chiefs
The View
Maximo Park
MGMT*
That other band that sound exactly the fucking same as The Black Kids.
(Special mention for the Arctic Monkeys, who will probably get their own post if I can get over the FUCKING RAGE they cause in me. Shit fucking bastard band. Wankstaff motherfucking cunt-stick shit eaters.)
Pavorotti died during 2008. I was fucking gutted.
I mentioned this in my favourite (independent) coffee shop, which is where I spend most of my time (Ooh, get me; a puppet of Friends, living in a coffee shop and making it through crises with the help of my ecclectic friend-group. The composite ‘friend-group’ is sickening anyway. It implies a certain detachment, a clinical term that suggests meetings and interviews and paperwork and bastarding phonecalls. Bastarding phonecalls).
Anywho, upon my mention of this greatest of singer’s death a girl actually ask me ‘Who?’
I sighed and explained, resigning myself to the fact that my day had been ruined.
*MGMT are almost good. Unfortunately they fall short in the same way as everyone’s favourite electronic producer du jour Hot Chip.
That way is by being bland and ultimately poorly made but everyone says they like them because everyone else said it and apparently you have to.
Fuck you, your shitty beats and poorly constructed melodic structures will never match let alone better Aphex Twin.
No, they aren’t different genres; if you want to make electronic music, the Twin is the yardstick in my book.
That’ll do.
Basically I wanted to say that my generation has become numb to the world to the point of not even caring enough to make it seem like you don’t care.
I just hate that we’ve become something of a null-generation. To add to our own shortcomings; university graduates of the future will find it progressively harder to get jobs.
We may as well be phantom people.
I had no real point.
Whatever.
