I deleted my Twitter account today. I deleted my Facebook account early this week so I suppose it has been coming, but I didn't see it coming. I had been merrily tweeting away just minutes before, in fact.
But I have, for a number of years now, earnestly been telling everyone who listens that I think Twitter has become something of a social problem and I'm pleased that I've finally demonstrated any kind of moral backbone. If I'm completely honest, I had only been maintaining my Twitter account because I had joined the VENERABLE MICROBLOGGING™ SITE in February 2007 and as such was something of an early adopter. It made me feel like an internet wizard.
When it came to the crunch, it was all Andrea Leadsom's fault.
Earlier in the morning I'd tweeted that Andrea Leadsom is a daft moo. John Dobson, who is well worth following if you are one of the BRAINWASHED SHEEPLE still on Twitter, replied "but... she's... a mother", which if you ask me was a pretty ribald comeback.
I replied that I had not implied she wasn't my moral superior, merely stating that she was a [lots of swearwords] moo. This obviously triggered a mechanism deep within the bowels of the Twitter engine. Irregardless of the fact I had at no point tagged Andrea Leadsom (the daft moo) anywhere, nor referenced her in the specific tweet that Twitter took umbrage at, I was naughty stepped for 12 hours.
Hmm, I thought. This seems punitive, considering that earlier this week Twitter had let Leave.EU tweet a bundle of hideous racism without so much as a query. I concluded that Twitter was, finally, broken beyond repair.
Andrea Leadsom IS a daft moo. Swearing is wrong.
So, I finally gave Twitter what it has wanted from me for 12 long years - my mobile phone number - so that I could delete the offending tweet and be redeemed, welcomed back into the bosom of society once again. But! It was my cunning plan. As soon as I was back into my unlocked account, I FUCKIN' DEACTIVATED IT! Woof. Game, set and match to me.
So anyway, that's why I'm not on Twitter any more. Or Facebook. Actually, there are different reasons for my leaving Facebook which I will not trouble you with, but needless to say I was right about that, too. If my parting has caused you unimaginable grief, you can still find me here, on Instagram or you can email me using the email address you will find on this very site.
If I like you enough, maybe we'll even become WhatsApp buddies? (Yeah, right)
My only regret is that almost everyone who actually wants to be party to this information will never see it, because I can't tweet it out. Still, I figure if you're not clever enough to have found it anyway, I almost certainly didn't want to talk to you.
This is why I fear no backlash from Andrea Leadsom, who is a daft moo.
Showing posts with label Sound and fury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sound and fury. Show all posts
Friday, 11 October 2019
Tuesday, 25 October 2016
337 songs that changed your life
Last Saturday evening, hungover to tits and listening to The Velvet Underground, the conversation turned to the maddeningly inexact science that is musical taste. As with any such discussion, the issue of the one song that you really cannot stand was never far from our thoughts.
In a moment of idle curiosity, I asked Twitter for some nominations.
It is safe to say that I had never anticipated what would happen next. By Sunday afternoon, my Twitter notifications were giving me a microcosmic indication of what it might be like to be famous. It turns out that being famous isn't all cocaine and hookers: or rather, if it is, those people aren't on Twitter. You wouldn't have the time: it turns what is normally a desert of anguish and boredom into a full-time occupation. I tried to imagine what it would be like if a significant proportion of each new tranche of notifications were abusive, quickly concluding that it would be straight up bullshit. Gary Lineker is an admirable man.
If I'm honest, I expected my tweet to go much the same way as all the other 68-odd thousand I'd done: shout into the abyss, wait for echo, forget it entirely, repeat until death. This time, however, I had touched a nerve. The medium was prepared just right: time of day, day of the week and subject matter all made for an extremely fertile thread. Overwhelmingly so, at times.
However, it was all entirely positive. One hundred percent. Not one single response was even slightly antagonistic, let alone insulting or to tell me that I had done a poo on a football pitch. It was a reminder of the goodness in people, and that social media is just as capable of reflecting this goodness as it is the badness. The whole thing was a genuine pleasure and if you are one of the many people who contributed, thank you.
So far, 337 songs have been nominated for the list. Some have been mentioned countless times - countless because I didn't realise that I should probably have been counting them and now I just don't have the time nor the inclination to wade back through. Others are outliers, including some entries that provoked astonishment at their inclusion.
Overall, it is a thrilling glimpse into the fragility of the human mind. I hope that some people were heartened to find themselves a ready-made online support community while others were just able to get something off their chest. The resultant Spotify playlist, which I have called Kryptonite Songs, is perhaps the most tantalising song roulette anyone could ever play. If you are anything like me, you probably like a significant percentage of the following songs and can tolerate a large rump of the remainder. But it's in there, isn't it? Just waiting for you.
Without any further waffle from me, here is the list. Free from the (admittedly slim) restraints of Spotify's library, it appears in its unexpurgated form. There is one small rider to this, which is that I will have almost certainly forgotten to include some of the songs: things were coming so thick and fast on Sunday afternoon that in the time it took to write up the latest 50 replies, there would be 65 more. So, if I missed yours off, I apologise. However, the list - and my Twitter - remains open, so I can almost certainly be nudged to fix any mistakes. Finally, if you haven't contributed yet and would like to, the original Twitter thread can be found here, or you can leave your nomination in the comments below.
10cc – Dreadlock Holiday
10cc – I'm Not In Love
The 88 – At Least It Was Here
Ace Of Base - All That She Wants
The Animals – House of the Rising Sun
21 Pilots – Ride
The inclusion of this song riled up one respondent's teenage daughter. This delighted me: people were playing the Spotify list to their children. Hearts and minds.
4 Non Blondes - What's Up?
ABBA – Dancing Queen
I love this song. More updates on this as we get them.
Aerosmith – I Don't Want To Miss A Thing
Aerosmith – Janie's Got A Gun
Aerosmith. Music for people who like to be uplifted but hate music.
Akon – Lonely
Amy Grant – Big Yellow Taxi
The Big Yellow Taxi saga was interesting. Many replies just said "anything by [artist]" or "any version of [song]". Big Yellow Taxi, however, was unique. Initially picked with the stipulation that it was any except the Counting Crows version. Within an hour this, too, was on the list.
Andrew Gold – Lonely Boy
Anohni – 4 Degrees
Aqua – Lollipop (Candyman)
Artful Dodger ft. Craig David – Re Rewind
The B52's - Love Shack
Oh, this one is really, REALLY unpopular
B*Witched – C'est La Vie
Babybird – You're Gorgeous
Babylon Zoo – Spaceman
The most disappointing song of all time?
Bananarama - I Can't Help It
Band Aid – Do They Know It's Christmas?
Barry Manilow – Mandy
The Beatles - Across The Universe
The Beatles - Hey Jude
The Beatles - She's Leaving Home
The Beatles - When I'm 64
The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The Beatles – Yesterday
The Beatles, objectively the greatest pop group in history. Just accept it. However, I can't particularly argue with any of these selections.
The Beautiful South – Perfect 10
BUT SHE WEARS A TWELVE
Bee Gees – More Than A Woman
Belinda Carlisle – Circle In The Sand
Belinda Carlisle – Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Belinda Carlisle – Leave The Light On For Me
Some have queried whether Belinda Carlisle deserved such shoddy treatment. But the people have spoken and what they said was, do our ears deserve such shoddy treatment?
Beyonce – Single Ladies
Billy Joel – My Life
Billy Joel – Piano Man
Billy Joel – Uptown Girl
Billy Ocean – When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Going
Billy Ray Cyrus – Achy Breaky Heart
Bjork - It's Oh So Quiet
Black Crowes – Hard To Handle
The person who nominated this song tells me it is an FM radio staple in America. No wonder things are getting so fraught over there.
Black Eyed Peas – I've Gotta Feeling
This is one of the most nominated songs. The level of angst that it inspires, if harnessed properly, could end our reliance on fossil fuels.
Black Lace – Agadoo
Blondie - Heart of Glass
Blondie – Rapture
I was glad these were nominated. It's nice to have some great songs in any playlist.
Blue Mink - Melting Pot
No argument.
The Bluebirds - Young At Heart
Dunghampers.
Blur - Song 2
Bobby McFerrin – Don't Worry Be Happy
Two songs by otherwise popular acts, completely ruined by their ubiquity.
Bobby Pickett - Monster Mash
Bon Jovi – Livin' On A Prayer
These two are on rotation as the elevator music in hell.
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart
Brand New Heavies – Midnight At The Oasis
Bruce Hornsby – The Way It Is
Bryan Adams - Everything I Do, I Do It For You
Sixteen weeks at number 1. Sixteen! Someone must have been switching out the HRT pills for M&Ms that summer.
Bryan Adams - Summer of '69
Bryan Ferry – Let's Stick Together
Crap, warbled by a prick.
Buckcherry – Crazy Bitch
The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man
The worst band in history.
Callum Scott - Dancing On My Own
Carl Douglas – Kung Fu Fighting
Carly Simon – You're So Vain
Carly-Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe
The Carpenters – Yesterday Once More
A brother and sister, singing love songs to one another.
Catatonia – Road Rage
Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On
Chas & Dave – Rabbit
Cher - Believe
Dance music for people who don't like dance music.
Cher - The Shoop Shoop Song
Cher - Walking In Memphis
My own personal choice. A song of irredeemable awfulness.
Chris De Burgh – A Spaceman Came Travelling
Chris De Burgh – The Lady In Red
Run away!
Christina Aguilera - Lady Marmalade
Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
Cliff Richard – Mistletoe and Wine
Cliff Richard – The Millennium Prayer
The first Christmas songs on the list. They will not be the last.
Coldplay – Clocks
Coldplay – Yellow
Coldplay invoke all kinds of ire, but these were the only two specific songs chosen. (Update: someone nominated every single song Coldplay have recorded, in alphabetical order of the title. Is this what my life has become?)
Coolio ft. L.V. – Gangsta's Paradise
The Coral – In The Morning
Counting Crows – Big Yellow Taxi
Courtney Barnett – Pickles From The Jar
The Cranberries – Zombie
Crash Test Dummies – Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Hnngh hnngh hnngh hnngh.
Crazy Town – Butterfly
The stink of RHCP all over it. Music for the tattoo parlour where you caught hepatitis.
Crystal Waters - Gypsy Woman
Cutting Crew – (I Just) Died In Your Arms
Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want To Have Fun
D:Ream – Things Can Only Get Better
Danny Wilson – Mary's Prayer
I'd forgotten about this one. One of my favourite choices on the list, it is a howler.
David Bowie – Across The Universe
David Bowie – The Jean Genie
Dead Or Alive – You Spin Me Round
The curse of 2016 stuck just a day later. Sorry, Pete.
Deee Lite – Groove Is In The Heart
Deep Blue Something – Breakfast At Tiffany's
Of all the songs nominated, this one inspired the most hatred and anger.
Des'ree - Life
Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
A brilliant song by a brilliant band, so there.
Diana Ross – Chain Reaction
My mum's least favourite song.
Dire Straits – Money For Nothing
Dire Straits – Romeo and Juliet
Dire straights.
DJ Otzi – Hey Baby
Perhaps the only good argument as to why leaving the EU was a good idea after all.
Dobie Gray – Drift Away
Dodgy – Good Enough
Don McLean – American Pie
Doobie Brothers - What A Fool Believes
I sang this tunelessly the entire morning after it was mentioned. My wife left me.
Doop – Doop
Dream Academy – Life In A Northern Town
"President Kennedy... and The Beatles (scream)...". A sackcloth full of watery cum.
The Eagles – Hotel California
The other worst band in history.
Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You
Eiffel 65 – Blue
Elbow - One Day Like This
Ellie Goulding – On My Mind
A friend played this to his 4-year old daughter. Her response? "Why's she saying that? This isn't even a song, dad".
Elton John – Candle In The Wind (1997)
Well, obvs.
Elton John – Crocodile Rock
Elton John – Your Song
Elvis Presley - Return To Sender
Eminem – Lose Yourself
Enigma – Sadness
For when your ambient dance track needs more Gregorian Chant.
Eve ft. Gwen Stefani – Let Me Blow Ya Mind
The theme tune from Everything's Rosie
The curse of cBeebies.
Fairground Attraction – Perfect
Fountains of Wayne - Stacey's Mom
Frank Sinatra - My Way
The Fratellis – Chelsea Dagger
The sound of losing your virginity in a public toilet at a darts match as they counted up the results of the EU referendum.
Fun – Some Nights
Fun ft. Janelle Monae – We Are Young
Gary Puckett and Union Gap – Young Girl
A brilliant choice. I applaud whoever it was who suggested this one.
George Ezra – Drawing Board
Gerry & The Pacemakers – You'll Never Walk Alone
Full disclosure: the person who nominated this song's Twitter avatar is the badge of Everton Football Club. However, it all checks out. This song is bobbins.
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Extraordinarily popular choice. Because no-one likes saxophones.
Glasvegas – Daddy's Gone
Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
The most nominated song to include the qualifier "I'm sure no-one else has said this, but..."
The Goo-Goo Dolls – Iris
Green Day – Good Riddance (Time of your Life)
Guns 'n' Roses – Sweet Child o Mine
Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl
Hinder – Lips Of An Angel
House of Pain - Jump Around
The early leader in the popular vote. The party song for people who don't go to parties.
Idina Menzel – Let It Go
Inner Circle - Sweat
The Jam - A Town Called Malice
James Blunt – You're Beautiful
James Brown – I Feel Good
Someone was obviously having a bad day.
Jamie Lawson – Wasn't Expecting That
Jamiroquai – Canned Heat
Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation
Janis Joplin – Mercedes Benz
Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind
Surprisingly, this is not on Spotify. So you all dodged a bullet there.
Jennifer Rush – The Power of Love
Jim Diamond – I Should Have Known Better
JJ Barrie – No Charge
Joe Dolce – Shaddap You Face
John Lennon – Imagine
John Mayer – Your Body Is A Wonderland
Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi
Journey – Don't Stop Believin'
I have a long-standing suspicion of songs with abbreviated words in their title.
Justin Bieber – Baby
Baby baby baby, ooh (repeat x1 fucking trillion)
Kate Nash – Foundations
Kate Tempest – Circles
Katie Melua – Closest Thing To Crazy
Katie Melua – Nine Million Bicycles
Katrina and the Waves – Walking On Sunshine
Some people don't like to be happy.
Katy Perry – California Gurls
Katy Perry – I Kissed A Girl
Katy Perry – Roar
Katy Perry has three songs on the list, representing 50% of her entire artistic output.
The Killers - Mr. Brightside
An outstandingly unpopular and awful record.
Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire
Ffffuuuu
Kings Of Leon – Use Somebody
The La's – There She Goes
Lady Gaga – Bad Romance
Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven
Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah
Lighthouse Family - Lifted
Lighthouse Family – Ocean Drive
The elevator music in Purgatory.
Limp Bizkit – My Generation
Lisa Stansfield – Around The World
Little Eva – The Locomotion
Lo-Fang – You're The One That I Want
Los Del Rio – Macarena
Lou Bega – Mambo No. 5
Lukas Graham – 7 Years
Lulu - Shout
Lulu - The Boat That I Row
Lulu is not nearly as popular as Absolutely Fabulous would have you believe.
Madness – Baggy Trousers
Madonna – Like A Virgin
MAGIC! - Rude
Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
A solid choice.
Manic Street Preachers – SYMM
A song. About writing a song. About Hillsborough. A song about writing a song about Hillsborough.
Marc Cohn – Walking In Memphis
The worst song ever written, performed by the culprit.
Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You
Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk
Maroon 5 – Animals
Maroon 5 – Moves Like Jagger
Maroon 5 – This Love
No-one likes Maroon 5.
Meatloaf – I'd Do Anything For Love
Do it and get off.
Meghan Trainor – All About That Bass
No treble?
Men At Work – Down Under
Mercury Rev - Goddess On A Hiway
Michael Buble – It's A Beautiful Day
Michael Jackson – Earth Song
Considering his enormous popularity, ubiquity and cultural significance, a surprising solitary vote for Michael Jackson. Then again, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen didn't get any. But then again, neither of them recorded Earth Song.
MIKA – Grace Kelly
Mike and the Mechanics – The Living Years
This one made me nod my head so hard I think something broke off inside.
MN8 - I've Got A Little Something For You
Mousse T ft. Tom Jones – Sex Bomb
Mr. Big – To Be With You
Mumford and Sons – I Will Wait
Natasha Bedingfield – These Words
The New Radicals – You Only Get What You Give
Inspires nought but rage.
Nicki Minaj – Anaconda
Nickleback - Rockstar
Oasis - Champagne Supernova
I think the original nomination sums this one up better than I ever could:
Oasis - Shakermaker
Oasis - Wonderwall
One of the most nominated songs of them all. Is it because it has been over-played? Or just because it is shit? Or both?
Oasis – All Around The World
"IT NEVER FUCKING ENDS" argues the nominator.
Ocean Colour Scene – The Day We Caught The Train
Offspring - Come Out and Play
OMC – How Bizarre
This song inspires such ire that it renders a lot of people speechless.
Paolo Nutini – New Shoes
Paul McCartney – We All Stand Together
Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmastime
Peter Sarstedt – Where Do You Go To My Lovely?
An exceedingly popular choice.
Pharrell Williams – Happy
Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight
Phil Collins - You Can't Hurry Love
Phil Collins – Easy Lover
You couldn't not have a bit of Phil.
Picture House – Sunburst
The Pogues and Kirsty McColl - The Fairytale of New York
The Proclaimers – I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
The Prodigy – Firestarter
Psy - Gangnam Style
This song is the national anthem of the list.
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen – Don't Stop Me Now
Queen – We Are The Champions
Queen – We Will Rock You
I like one of these songs, but you'll have to guess which one while I go and throw up.
R.E.M. - Shiny Happy People
My mate Kev's choice, the first song committed to the list.
Razorlight - America
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Under The Bridge
"Whenever anyone hears a song and asks 'what is THIS shit?', the answer is always Red Hot Chilli Peppers"
Rednex – Cotton Eye Joe
The Cast of Rent – Seasons of Love
Reverend and The Makers – Heavyweight Champion of the World
Richard Harris – Macarthur Park
Ricky Martin – Livin' La Vida Loca
The Righteous Brothers – You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling
Rihanna – Take A Bow
Robbie Williams - Angels
Robbie Williams - Millennium
Robbie Williams - Rock DJ
Robbie Williams – Candy
Robbie Williams – Freedom
Robbie Williams – Mack The Knife
Robbie Williams – Rudebox
No-one has as many entries on this list than Robbie. He has touched many lives.
Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love
Robin S – Show Me Love
Robin Thicke – Blurred Lines
One of the most frequent choices. A dumb-as-shit, rape apologist, piece of fucking garbage sung by a peenarse.
The Cast of The Rocky Horror Show – The Time Warp
Rod Stewart – Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?
Nope.
Roy Orbison – Oh, Pretty Woman
Run DMC ft. Aerosmith – Walk This Way
Rupert Holmes - Escape
Sacred Reich - 31 Flavors
Sam Smith – Money On My Mind
Sandi Thom – I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker
Santana – Smooth
The soundtrack to trying to pick up a really runny dog shit.
Sash – Encore Un Fois
Savage Garden – Truly, Madly, Deeply
Music for, and by, virgins.
The Scorpions - Winds Of Change
The Scorpions – Still Loving You
The band that made people want to rebuild the Berlin Wall. Not on Spotify, you lucky people.
Scouting For Girls – She's So Lovely
The Script – The Man Who Couldn't Be Moved
Shaggy – It Wasn't Me
Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like A Woman!
Songs with unnecessary exclamation marks in the title.
Shanice – I Love Your Smile
Shut Up And Dance – Raving I'm Raving
A rave track that samples Walking In Memphis. What's not to like?
Simply Red – Fairground
You know how smug Hucknall's face must have been when he finished this one.
Simply Red – Stars
Sister Sledge - Frankie
Sixpence None The Richer – Kiss Me
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody
I like this one and I don't care. Although, not in October.
Smash Mouth – All Star
Snap - Rhythm is a Dancer
Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
Social Distortion - Story of my Life
Sophie Ellis Bextor – Murder On The Dancefloor
Space ft. Cerys Matthews – The Ballad of Tom Jones
No nomination made me laugh as much as this one. It is perfect, brilliant and entirely correct.
Spice Girls - Wannabe
The Spin Doctors – Two Princes
One of the most magnificently unpopular songs on the list. I guarantee that when I go back to Twitter after finishing this post, there'll be a new tweet nominating this. Probably with the word "fucking" in it.
Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now
Starship – We Built This City
Stereophonics - Hurry Up and Wait
Stereophonics – Have A Nice Day
If you ever doubt how much people hate these two groups, just read the Twitter thread.
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra
Steve Walsh – I Found Lovin'
Stevie Wonder – I Just Called To Say I Love You
Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney – Ebony and Ivory
Perhaps the two most hateful songs ever written, for any fans of irony out there.
Stiltskin – Inside
The Stranglers – Golden Brown
Supertramp – The Logical Song
Survivor – Eye of the Tiger
Sweet – Wig Wam Bam
The fucking Sweet. The other, other worst band in history.
T'Pau – China In Your Hand
I like this, so nur.
Take That ft. Lulu – Relight My Fire
Tammy Wynette – Stand By Your Man
Taylor Swift – I Knew You Were Trouble
Taylor Swift – Shake It Off
Taylor Swift is not on Spotify so you won't be able to enjoy what a brilliant song Shake It Off is. Or how arse-clenchingly dreadful the other one is.
Terence Trent D'arby – Wishing Well
Terry Jacks – Seasons In The Sun
A tumour.
They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul
The inclusion of this one sparked controversy in my timeline, with calls to name and shame. Cards on the table, I like it. Many, many others do not.
Tina Turner – The Best
Hah!
TLC – No Scrubs
Tom Petty – Free Fallin'
Tony Christie – Is This The Way To Amarillo?
Toploader - Dancing In The Moonlight
Hands down, this is the popular choice for the most hated song in history. The sound of Hard Brexit happening as Jamie Oliver runs over your dog in his VW camper van.
Traditional - Jerusalem
"...when it is sung by old posh ladies".
Traditional - Little Drummer Boy
Traditional – I'm Proud To Be An American
Trio – Da Da Da
Twista ft. Anthony Hamilton – Sunshine
U2 – Beautiful Day
A song so cataclysmically awful that it drew the fire from the remainder of the U2 canon.
UB40 - Red Red Wine
Ultrabeat – Pretty Green Eyes
Ultravox – Vienna
Van Morrison - Brown-Eyed Girl
Vance Joy – Riptide
Waterboys – The Whole of the Moon
The overwhelming choice from Irish and Scottish respondents.
The Weathergirls – It's Raining Men
Westlife – You Raise Me Up
Wet Wet Wet – Love Is All Around
Wheatus – Teenage Dirtbag
Whigfield - Saturday Night
Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You
My dad's least favourite song.
Wings – Mull Of Kintyre
Wizzard – I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day
Yello – Oh Yeah
Oh no.
++ LATE NEWS ++
There continues to be significant interest in this project, significant enough to increase the 337 songs to 373 and then to 380. Which is more. For the benefit of science, here are the new entries:
Anohni - 4 Degrees
Basement Jaxx - Do Your Thing
The Beatles - Octopus's Garden
And yet, still nothing for Rocky Raccoon. Or Oh-Bla-Di, Oh-Bla-Dah.
Benny Mardones - Into The Night
Beverly Knight - Shoulda Woulda Coulda
Billy Swan - I Can Help
Bran Van 3000 - Drinking In L.A.
Songs from adverts, a surefire recipe for resentment and anger.
Bros - When Will I Be Famous?
Caro Emerald - Liquid Lunch
Charlene - I've Never Been To Me
Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
Corinne Bailey-Rae - Put Your Records On
The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
Donna Fargo - The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.
Elton John - Passengers
Eternal - I Wanna Be The Only One
Europe - The Final Countdown
Dur dur dur dur, dur dur dur dur dur.
Flying Machine - Smile A Little Smile For Me
Fools Garden - Lemon Tree
Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax
Look, I don't choose these songs, OK?
Jeff Beck - Hi Ho Silver Lining
Although if I could, I would.
LMFAO - Sexy And I Know It
Madonna - Die Another Day
The Mavericks - Dance The Night Away
The creeping menace of modern country music.
M.C. Hammer - U Can't Touch This
Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning
Nelly Furtado - I'm Like A Bird
Okkervil Rover - A Girl In Port
Outkast - Hey Ya!
Prefab Sprout - The King of Rock and Roll
Hot dog.
Procul Harem - A Whiter Shade of Pale
R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts
Rod Stewart - Sailing
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil
I fundamentally disagree with three out of these four choices. I will leave you to guess which is the odd one out. (It's Rod Stewart).
Sheryl Crow - All I Wanna Do
Stan Ridgway - Camouflage
Steve Winwood - Higher Love
Southern Sound FM, Woodingdean 1991, representing.
The Streets - Fit But You Know It
Swing Out Sister - Breakout
Tight Fit - The Lion Sleeps Tonight
I can see how these could wear you down.
In a moment of idle curiosity, I asked Twitter for some nominations.
 |
| The moment that torpedoed my next 72 hours |
It is safe to say that I had never anticipated what would happen next. By Sunday afternoon, my Twitter notifications were giving me a microcosmic indication of what it might be like to be famous. It turns out that being famous isn't all cocaine and hookers: or rather, if it is, those people aren't on Twitter. You wouldn't have the time: it turns what is normally a desert of anguish and boredom into a full-time occupation. I tried to imagine what it would be like if a significant proportion of each new tranche of notifications were abusive, quickly concluding that it would be straight up bullshit. Gary Lineker is an admirable man.
If I'm honest, I expected my tweet to go much the same way as all the other 68-odd thousand I'd done: shout into the abyss, wait for echo, forget it entirely, repeat until death. This time, however, I had touched a nerve. The medium was prepared just right: time of day, day of the week and subject matter all made for an extremely fertile thread. Overwhelmingly so, at times.
However, it was all entirely positive. One hundred percent. Not one single response was even slightly antagonistic, let alone insulting or to tell me that I had done a poo on a football pitch. It was a reminder of the goodness in people, and that social media is just as capable of reflecting this goodness as it is the badness. The whole thing was a genuine pleasure and if you are one of the many people who contributed, thank you.
So far, 337 songs have been nominated for the list. Some have been mentioned countless times - countless because I didn't realise that I should probably have been counting them and now I just don't have the time nor the inclination to wade back through. Others are outliers, including some entries that provoked astonishment at their inclusion.
Overall, it is a thrilling glimpse into the fragility of the human mind. I hope that some people were heartened to find themselves a ready-made online support community while others were just able to get something off their chest. The resultant Spotify playlist, which I have called Kryptonite Songs, is perhaps the most tantalising song roulette anyone could ever play. If you are anything like me, you probably like a significant percentage of the following songs and can tolerate a large rump of the remainder. But it's in there, isn't it? Just waiting for you.
Without any further waffle from me, here is the list. Free from the (admittedly slim) restraints of Spotify's library, it appears in its unexpurgated form. There is one small rider to this, which is that I will have almost certainly forgotten to include some of the songs: things were coming so thick and fast on Sunday afternoon that in the time it took to write up the latest 50 replies, there would be 65 more. So, if I missed yours off, I apologise. However, the list - and my Twitter - remains open, so I can almost certainly be nudged to fix any mistakes. Finally, if you haven't contributed yet and would like to, the original Twitter thread can be found here, or you can leave your nomination in the comments below.
10cc – Dreadlock Holiday
10cc – I'm Not In Love
The 88 – At Least It Was Here
Ace Of Base - All That She Wants
The Animals – House of the Rising Sun
The inclusion of this song riled up one respondent's teenage daughter. This delighted me: people were playing the Spotify list to their children. Hearts and minds.
4 Non Blondes - What's Up?
ABBA – Dancing Queen
I love this song. More updates on this as we get them.
Aerosmith – I Don't Want To Miss A Thing
Aerosmith – Janie's Got A Gun
Aerosmith. Music for people who like to be uplifted but hate music.
Akon – Lonely
Amy Grant – Big Yellow Taxi
The Big Yellow Taxi saga was interesting. Many replies just said "anything by [artist]" or "any version of [song]". Big Yellow Taxi, however, was unique. Initially picked with the stipulation that it was any except the Counting Crows version. Within an hour this, too, was on the list.
Andrew Gold – Lonely Boy
Anohni – 4 Degrees
Aqua – Lollipop (Candyman)
Artful Dodger ft. Craig David – Re Rewind
The B52's - Love Shack
Oh, this one is really, REALLY unpopular
B*Witched – C'est La Vie
Babybird – You're Gorgeous
Babylon Zoo – Spaceman
The most disappointing song of all time?
Bananarama - I Can't Help It
Band Aid – Do They Know It's Christmas?
Barry Manilow – Mandy
The Beatles - Across The Universe
The Beatles - Hey Jude
The Beatles - She's Leaving Home
The Beatles - When I'm 64
The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The Beatles – Yesterday
The Beatles, objectively the greatest pop group in history. Just accept it. However, I can't particularly argue with any of these selections.
The Beautiful South – Perfect 10
BUT SHE WEARS A TWELVE
Belinda Carlisle – Circle In The Sand
Belinda Carlisle – Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Belinda Carlisle – Leave The Light On For Me
Some have queried whether Belinda Carlisle deserved such shoddy treatment. But the people have spoken and what they said was, do our ears deserve such shoddy treatment?
Beyonce – Single Ladies
Billy Joel – My Life
Billy Joel – Piano Man
Billy Joel – Uptown Girl
Billy Ocean – When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Going
Billy Ray Cyrus – Achy Breaky Heart
Bjork - It's Oh So Quiet
Black Crowes – Hard To Handle
The person who nominated this song tells me it is an FM radio staple in America. No wonder things are getting so fraught over there.
Black Eyed Peas – I've Gotta Feeling
This is one of the most nominated songs. The level of angst that it inspires, if harnessed properly, could end our reliance on fossil fuels.
Black Lace – Agadoo
Blondie - Heart of Glass
Blondie – Rapture
I was glad these were nominated. It's nice to have some great songs in any playlist.
Blue Mink - Melting Pot
No argument.
The Bluebirds - Young At Heart
Dunghampers.
Blur - Song 2
Bobby McFerrin – Don't Worry Be Happy
Two songs by otherwise popular acts, completely ruined by their ubiquity.
Bobby Pickett - Monster Mash
Bon Jovi – Livin' On A Prayer
These two are on rotation as the elevator music in hell.
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart
Brand New Heavies – Midnight At The Oasis
Bruce Hornsby – The Way It Is
Bryan Adams - Everything I Do, I Do It For You
Sixteen weeks at number 1. Sixteen! Someone must have been switching out the HRT pills for M&Ms that summer.
Bryan Adams - Summer of '69
Bryan Ferry – Let's Stick Together
Crap, warbled by a prick.
Buckcherry – Crazy Bitch
The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man
The worst band in history.
Carl Douglas – Kung Fu Fighting
Carly Simon – You're So Vain
Carly-Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe
The Carpenters – Yesterday Once More
A brother and sister, singing love songs to one another.
Catatonia – Road Rage
Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On
Chas & Dave – Rabbit
Cher - Believe
Dance music for people who don't like dance music.
Cher - The Shoop Shoop Song
Cher - Walking In Memphis
My own personal choice. A song of irredeemable awfulness.
Chris De Burgh – A Spaceman Came Travelling
Chris De Burgh – The Lady In Red
Run away!
Christina Aguilera - Lady Marmalade
Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
Cliff Richard – Mistletoe and Wine
Cliff Richard – The Millennium Prayer
The first Christmas songs on the list. They will not be the last.
Coldplay – Clocks
Coldplay – Yellow
Coldplay invoke all kinds of ire, but these were the only two specific songs chosen. (Update: someone nominated every single song Coldplay have recorded, in alphabetical order of the title. Is this what my life has become?)
Coolio ft. L.V. – Gangsta's Paradise
The Coral – In The Morning
Counting Crows – Big Yellow Taxi
Courtney Barnett – Pickles From The Jar
The Cranberries – Zombie
Crash Test Dummies – Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Hnngh hnngh hnngh hnngh.
Crazy Town – Butterfly
The stink of RHCP all over it. Music for the tattoo parlour where you caught hepatitis.
Crystal Waters - Gypsy Woman
Cutting Crew – (I Just) Died In Your Arms
Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want To Have Fun
D:Ream – Things Can Only Get Better
Danny Wilson – Mary's Prayer
I'd forgotten about this one. One of my favourite choices on the list, it is a howler.
David Bowie – Across The Universe
David Bowie – The Jean Genie
Dead Or Alive – You Spin Me Round
The curse of 2016 stuck just a day later. Sorry, Pete.
Deee Lite – Groove Is In The Heart
Deep Blue Something – Breakfast At Tiffany's
Of all the songs nominated, this one inspired the most hatred and anger.
Des'ree - Life
Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
A brilliant song by a brilliant band, so there.
Diana Ross – Chain Reaction
My mum's least favourite song.
Dire Straits – Money For Nothing
Dire Straits – Romeo and Juliet
Dire straights.
DJ Otzi – Hey Baby
Perhaps the only good argument as to why leaving the EU was a good idea after all.
Dobie Gray – Drift Away
Dodgy – Good Enough
Don McLean – American Pie
Doobie Brothers - What A Fool Believes
I sang this tunelessly the entire morning after it was mentioned. My wife left me.
Doop – Doop
Dream Academy – Life In A Northern Town
"President Kennedy... and The Beatles (scream)...". A sackcloth full of watery cum.
The Eagles – Hotel California
The other worst band in history.
Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You
Eiffel 65 – Blue
Elbow - One Day Like This
Ellie Goulding – On My Mind
A friend played this to his 4-year old daughter. Her response? "Why's she saying that? This isn't even a song, dad".
Elton John – Candle In The Wind (1997)
Well, obvs.
Elton John – Crocodile Rock
Elton John – Your Song
Elvis Presley - Return To Sender
Eminem – Lose Yourself
Enigma – Sadness
For when your ambient dance track needs more Gregorian Chant.
Eve ft. Gwen Stefani – Let Me Blow Ya Mind
The theme tune from Everything's Rosie
The curse of cBeebies.
Fairground Attraction – Perfect
Fountains of Wayne - Stacey's Mom
Frank Sinatra - My Way
The Fratellis – Chelsea Dagger
The sound of losing your virginity in a public toilet at a darts match as they counted up the results of the EU referendum.
Fun ft. Janelle Monae – We Are Young
Gary Puckett and Union Gap – Young Girl
A brilliant choice. I applaud whoever it was who suggested this one.
George Ezra – Drawing Board
Gerry & The Pacemakers – You'll Never Walk Alone
Full disclosure: the person who nominated this song's Twitter avatar is the badge of Everton Football Club. However, it all checks out. This song is bobbins.
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Extraordinarily popular choice. Because no-one likes saxophones.
Glasvegas – Daddy's Gone
Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
The most nominated song to include the qualifier "I'm sure no-one else has said this, but..."
The Goo-Goo Dolls – Iris
Green Day – Good Riddance (Time of your Life)
Guns 'n' Roses – Sweet Child o Mine
Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl
Hinder – Lips Of An Angel
House of Pain - Jump Around
The early leader in the popular vote. The party song for people who don't go to parties.
Idina Menzel – Let It Go
Inner Circle - Sweat
The Jam - A Town Called Malice
James Blunt – You're Beautiful
James Brown – I Feel Good
Someone was obviously having a bad day.
Jamie Lawson – Wasn't Expecting That
Jamiroquai – Canned Heat
Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation
Janis Joplin – Mercedes Benz
Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind
Surprisingly, this is not on Spotify. So you all dodged a bullet there.
Jennifer Rush – The Power of Love
Jim Diamond – I Should Have Known Better
JJ Barrie – No Charge
Joe Dolce – Shaddap You Face
John Lennon – Imagine
John Mayer – Your Body Is A Wonderland
Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi
Journey – Don't Stop Believin'
I have a long-standing suspicion of songs with abbreviated words in their title.
Justin Bieber – Baby
Baby baby baby, ooh (repeat x1 fucking trillion)
Kate Nash – Foundations
Kate Tempest – Circles
Katie Melua – Closest Thing To Crazy
Katie Melua – Nine Million Bicycles
Katrina and the Waves – Walking On Sunshine
Some people don't like to be happy.
Katy Perry – California Gurls
Katy Perry – I Kissed A Girl
Katy Perry – Roar
Katy Perry has three songs on the list, representing 50% of her entire artistic output.
The Killers - Mr. Brightside
An outstandingly unpopular and awful record.
Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire
Ffffuuuu
Kings Of Leon – Use Somebody
The La's – There She Goes
Lady Gaga – Bad Romance
Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven
Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah
Lighthouse Family - Lifted
Lighthouse Family – Ocean Drive
The elevator music in Purgatory.
Limp Bizkit – My Generation
Lisa Stansfield – Around The World
Little Eva – The Locomotion
Lo-Fang – You're The One That I Want
Los Del Rio – Macarena
Lou Bega – Mambo No. 5
Lukas Graham – 7 Years
Lulu - Shout
Lulu - The Boat That I Row
Lulu is not nearly as popular as Absolutely Fabulous would have you believe.
Madness – Baggy Trousers
Madonna – Like A Virgin
MAGIC! - Rude
Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
A solid choice.
Manic Street Preachers – SYMM
A song. About writing a song. About Hillsborough. A song about writing a song about Hillsborough.
Marc Cohn – Walking In Memphis
The worst song ever written, performed by the culprit.
Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You
Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk
Maroon 5 – Animals
Maroon 5 – Moves Like Jagger
Maroon 5 – This Love
No-one likes Maroon 5.
Meatloaf – I'd Do Anything For Love
Do it and get off.
Meghan Trainor – All About That Bass
No treble?
Men At Work – Down Under
Mercury Rev - Goddess On A Hiway
Michael Buble – It's A Beautiful Day
Michael Jackson – Earth Song
Considering his enormous popularity, ubiquity and cultural significance, a surprising solitary vote for Michael Jackson. Then again, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen didn't get any. But then again, neither of them recorded Earth Song.
MIKA – Grace Kelly
Mike and the Mechanics – The Living Years
This one made me nod my head so hard I think something broke off inside.
MN8 - I've Got A Little Something For You
Mousse T ft. Tom Jones – Sex Bomb
Mr. Big – To Be With You
Mumford and Sons – I Will Wait
Natasha Bedingfield – These Words
The New Radicals – You Only Get What You Give
Inspires nought but rage.
Nicki Minaj – Anaconda
Nickleback - Rockstar
Oasis - Champagne Supernova
I think the original nomination sums this one up better than I ever could:
Oasis - Shakermaker
Oasis - Wonderwall
One of the most nominated songs of them all. Is it because it has been over-played? Or just because it is shit? Or both?
Oasis – All Around The World
"IT NEVER FUCKING ENDS" argues the nominator.
Ocean Colour Scene – The Day We Caught The Train
Offspring - Come Out and Play
OMC – How Bizarre
This song inspires such ire that it renders a lot of people speechless.
Paolo Nutini – New Shoes
Paul McCartney – We All Stand Together
Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmastime
Peter Sarstedt – Where Do You Go To My Lovely?
An exceedingly popular choice.
Pharrell Williams – Happy
Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight
Phil Collins - You Can't Hurry Love
Phil Collins – Easy Lover
You couldn't not have a bit of Phil.
Picture House – Sunburst
The Pogues and Kirsty McColl - The Fairytale of New York
The Proclaimers – I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
The Prodigy – Firestarter
Psy - Gangnam Style
This song is the national anthem of the list.
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen – Don't Stop Me Now
Queen – We Are The Champions
Queen – We Will Rock You
I like one of these songs, but you'll have to guess which one while I go and throw up.
R.E.M. - Shiny Happy People
My mate Kev's choice, the first song committed to the list.
Razorlight - America
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Under The Bridge
"Whenever anyone hears a song and asks 'what is THIS shit?', the answer is always Red Hot Chilli Peppers"
Rednex – Cotton Eye Joe
The Cast of Rent – Seasons of Love
Reverend and The Makers – Heavyweight Champion of the World
Richard Harris – Macarthur Park
Ricky Martin – Livin' La Vida Loca
The Righteous Brothers – You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling
Rihanna – Take A Bow
Robbie Williams - Angels
Robbie Williams - Millennium
Robbie Williams - Rock DJ
Robbie Williams – Candy
Robbie Williams – Freedom
Robbie Williams – Mack The Knife
Robbie Williams – Rudebox
No-one has as many entries on this list than Robbie. He has touched many lives.
Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love
Robin S – Show Me Love
Robin Thicke – Blurred Lines
One of the most frequent choices. A dumb-as-shit, rape apologist, piece of fucking garbage sung by a peenarse.
The Cast of The Rocky Horror Show – The Time Warp
Rod Stewart – Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?
Nope.
Roy Orbison – Oh, Pretty Woman
Run DMC ft. Aerosmith – Walk This Way
Rupert Holmes - Escape
Sacred Reich - 31 Flavors
Sam Smith – Money On My Mind
Sandi Thom – I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker
Santana – Smooth
The soundtrack to trying to pick up a really runny dog shit.
Sash – Encore Un Fois
Savage Garden – Truly, Madly, Deeply
Music for, and by, virgins.
The Scorpions - Winds Of Change
The Scorpions – Still Loving You
The band that made people want to rebuild the Berlin Wall. Not on Spotify, you lucky people.
Scouting For Girls – She's So Lovely
The Script – The Man Who Couldn't Be Moved
Shaggy – It Wasn't Me
Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like A Woman!
Songs with unnecessary exclamation marks in the title.
Shanice – I Love Your Smile
Shut Up And Dance – Raving I'm Raving
A rave track that samples Walking In Memphis. What's not to like?
Simply Red – Fairground
You know how smug Hucknall's face must have been when he finished this one.
Simply Red – Stars
Sister Sledge - Frankie
Sixpence None The Richer – Kiss Me
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody
I like this one and I don't care. Although, not in October.
Smash Mouth – All Star
Snap - Rhythm is a Dancer
Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
Social Distortion - Story of my Life
Sophie Ellis Bextor – Murder On The Dancefloor
Space ft. Cerys Matthews – The Ballad of Tom Jones
No nomination made me laugh as much as this one. It is perfect, brilliant and entirely correct.
Spice Girls - Wannabe
The Spin Doctors – Two Princes
One of the most magnificently unpopular songs on the list. I guarantee that when I go back to Twitter after finishing this post, there'll be a new tweet nominating this. Probably with the word "fucking" in it.
Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now
Starship – We Built This City
Stereophonics - Hurry Up and Wait
Stereophonics – Have A Nice Day
If you ever doubt how much people hate these two groups, just read the Twitter thread.
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra
Steve Walsh – I Found Lovin'
Stevie Wonder – I Just Called To Say I Love You
Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney – Ebony and Ivory
Perhaps the two most hateful songs ever written, for any fans of irony out there.
Stiltskin – Inside
The Stranglers – Golden Brown
Supertramp – The Logical Song
Survivor – Eye of the Tiger
Sweet – Wig Wam Bam
The fucking Sweet. The other, other worst band in history.
T'Pau – China In Your Hand
I like this, so nur.
Take That ft. Lulu – Relight My Fire
Tammy Wynette – Stand By Your Man
Taylor Swift – I Knew You Were Trouble
Taylor Swift – Shake It Off
Taylor Swift is not on Spotify so you won't be able to enjoy what a brilliant song Shake It Off is. Or how arse-clenchingly dreadful the other one is.
Terence Trent D'arby – Wishing Well
Terry Jacks – Seasons In The Sun
A tumour.
They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul
The inclusion of this one sparked controversy in my timeline, with calls to name and shame. Cards on the table, I like it. Many, many others do not.
Tina Turner – The Best
Hah!
TLC – No Scrubs
Tom Petty – Free Fallin'
Tony Christie – Is This The Way To Amarillo?
Toploader - Dancing In The Moonlight
Hands down, this is the popular choice for the most hated song in history. The sound of Hard Brexit happening as Jamie Oliver runs over your dog in his VW camper van.
Traditional - Jerusalem
"...when it is sung by old posh ladies".
Traditional - Little Drummer Boy
Traditional – I'm Proud To Be An American
Trio – Da Da Da
Twista ft. Anthony Hamilton – Sunshine
U2 – Beautiful Day
A song so cataclysmically awful that it drew the fire from the remainder of the U2 canon.
UB40 - Red Red Wine
Ultrabeat – Pretty Green Eyes
Ultravox – Vienna
Van Morrison - Brown-Eyed Girl
Vance Joy – Riptide
Waterboys – The Whole of the Moon
The overwhelming choice from Irish and Scottish respondents.
The Weathergirls – It's Raining Men
Westlife – You Raise Me Up
Wet Wet Wet – Love Is All Around
Wheatus – Teenage Dirtbag
Whigfield - Saturday Night
Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You
My dad's least favourite song.
Wings – Mull Of Kintyre
Wizzard – I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day
Yello – Oh Yeah
Oh no.
++ LATE NEWS ++
There continues to be significant interest in this project, significant enough to increase the 337 songs to 373 and then to 380. Which is more. For the benefit of science, here are the new entries:
Anohni - 4 Degrees
Basement Jaxx - Do Your Thing
The Beatles - Octopus's Garden
And yet, still nothing for Rocky Raccoon. Or Oh-Bla-Di, Oh-Bla-Dah.
Benny Mardones - Into The Night
Beverly Knight - Shoulda Woulda Coulda
Billy Swan - I Can Help
Bran Van 3000 - Drinking In L.A.
Songs from adverts, a surefire recipe for resentment and anger.
Bros - When Will I Be Famous?
Caro Emerald - Liquid Lunch
Charlene - I've Never Been To Me
Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
Corinne Bailey-Rae - Put Your Records On
The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
Donna Fargo - The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.
Elton John - Passengers
Eternal - I Wanna Be The Only One
Europe - The Final Countdown
Dur dur dur dur, dur dur dur dur dur.
Flying Machine - Smile A Little Smile For Me
Fools Garden - Lemon Tree
Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax
Look, I don't choose these songs, OK?
Jeff Beck - Hi Ho Silver Lining
Although if I could, I would.
LMFAO - Sexy And I Know It
Madonna - Die Another Day
The Mavericks - Dance The Night Away
The creeping menace of modern country music.
M.C. Hammer - U Can't Touch This
Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning
Nelly Furtado - I'm Like A Bird
Okkervil Rover - A Girl In Port
Outkast - Hey Ya!
Prefab Sprout - The King of Rock and Roll
Hot dog.
Procul Harem - A Whiter Shade of Pale
R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts
Rod Stewart - Sailing
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil
I fundamentally disagree with three out of these four choices. I will leave you to guess which is the odd one out. (It's Rod Stewart).
Sheryl Crow - All I Wanna Do
Stan Ridgway - Camouflage
Steve Winwood - Higher Love
Southern Sound FM, Woodingdean 1991, representing.
The Streets - Fit But You Know It
Swing Out Sister - Breakout
Tight Fit - The Lion Sleeps Tonight
I can see how these could wear you down.
Monday, 15 June 2015
Everything you thought you knew about dogs is wrong
I have a dog now. People who have been with me every step of this disjointed and increasingly stationary journey will no doubt be pleased to hear that it is the same dog as they have met before on these pages. He is still very much the same dog. I am still very much the same man. Although we are now both two-and-a-half years older, neither one of us has grown any wiser. We both smell a little worse and find standing up more of a chore but we remain, fundamentally, fuckwits.
The last time the dog and me had this association, he was just visiting. But now he is here to stay and we can dedicate ourselves full time to our ultimate goal, which is ruining each others' lives. He is winning and will win, as I was already convinced that my life was in ruin. Plus, you know, he is a dog and therefore pretty contented with his lot.
But even though the enriching life lessons part of pet ownership will almost invariably pass me by, I have nevertheless decided that I must use this opportunity for scientific enquiry and in so doing have discovered a great many things. Among these nuggets (of what are probably dog faeces) sit some pieces of information which will bust myths, explode paradigms and blow minds in equal measure. Everything you thought you knew about dogs, it turns out, is in fact wrong.
1. Dogs do NOT eat bones
Not a single bone. Not a one. Anyone expecting to see my dog sat down chowing into some osseous tissue will be shit out of luck. What dogs eat is in fact dog food, which is readily available in shops. But here's the rub: if you take your dog to the veterinary hospital and have it x-rayed (for example, on a night when there's nothing on the telly), you will find it to be completely full of bones. I do not know how these bones get in there.
2. People who do not like dogs or are scared of dogs will NOT like your dog
Anyone with a caninically nervous disposition has heard this one. "Oh, you'll like MY dog". In fact, you will not. Most people who are nervous around dogs dislike the rush of the approach, the jumping up, the frenzied and slobbery attempts at friendship, the barking. My dog does all of these things. It is, to be fair, only a little dog and as such these tendencies are more potentially adorable than if it was one of those horse-sized dogs. But the fact remains. My dog acts like pretty much all the other dogs and as such, if you do not like dogs you will probably not like my dog.
3. All dogs owners clean up after their dog
I am aware that this is a contentious belief and one directly challenged by the fly-strewn, humming, practically sentient, mountainous egg piles that adorn pretty much every busy thoroughfare and public park in the land. However, I have never seen a dog owner without a sack full of brown swinging, or at the very least the paraphernalia to hand to address the situation.
The massive, stinking, steamy curlers that you see everywhere are, therefore, utterly unexplained by science and may even be evidence of extra-terrestrial involvement in Earthly doings. A humbling thought and certainly one in the eye for anyone who has ever walked around Hove Recreation Ground this lunchtime and seen all of the dozens of piles of dog shit and thought to themselves, "for fuck's sake, clean up after your fucking dog, fuck me... Jesus, look at that one, fuck". It was as though the circus was in town and they'd been looking for somewhere to exercise the elephants. Or it would have been, had I not already explained that they were done by aliens.
Some of whom I would advise should probably consult a doctor.
The last time the dog and me had this association, he was just visiting. But now he is here to stay and we can dedicate ourselves full time to our ultimate goal, which is ruining each others' lives. He is winning and will win, as I was already convinced that my life was in ruin. Plus, you know, he is a dog and therefore pretty contented with his lot.
But even though the enriching life lessons part of pet ownership will almost invariably pass me by, I have nevertheless decided that I must use this opportunity for scientific enquiry and in so doing have discovered a great many things. Among these nuggets (of what are probably dog faeces) sit some pieces of information which will bust myths, explode paradigms and blow minds in equal measure. Everything you thought you knew about dogs, it turns out, is in fact wrong.
1. Dogs do NOT eat bones
Not a single bone. Not a one. Anyone expecting to see my dog sat down chowing into some osseous tissue will be shit out of luck. What dogs eat is in fact dog food, which is readily available in shops. But here's the rub: if you take your dog to the veterinary hospital and have it x-rayed (for example, on a night when there's nothing on the telly), you will find it to be completely full of bones. I do not know how these bones get in there.
 |
| Not a bone in sight |
2. People who do not like dogs or are scared of dogs will NOT like your dog
Anyone with a caninically nervous disposition has heard this one. "Oh, you'll like MY dog". In fact, you will not. Most people who are nervous around dogs dislike the rush of the approach, the jumping up, the frenzied and slobbery attempts at friendship, the barking. My dog does all of these things. It is, to be fair, only a little dog and as such these tendencies are more potentially adorable than if it was one of those horse-sized dogs. But the fact remains. My dog acts like pretty much all the other dogs and as such, if you do not like dogs you will probably not like my dog.
3. All dogs owners clean up after their dog
I am aware that this is a contentious belief and one directly challenged by the fly-strewn, humming, practically sentient, mountainous egg piles that adorn pretty much every busy thoroughfare and public park in the land. However, I have never seen a dog owner without a sack full of brown swinging, or at the very least the paraphernalia to hand to address the situation.
 |
| Hove Recreation Ground, mentioned in the text any moment now |
The massive, stinking, steamy curlers that you see everywhere are, therefore, utterly unexplained by science and may even be evidence of extra-terrestrial involvement in Earthly doings. A humbling thought and certainly one in the eye for anyone who has ever walked around Hove Recreation Ground this lunchtime and seen all of the dozens of piles of dog shit and thought to themselves, "for fuck's sake, clean up after your fucking dog, fuck me... Jesus, look at that one, fuck". It was as though the circus was in town and they'd been looking for somewhere to exercise the elephants. Or it would have been, had I not already explained that they were done by aliens.
Some of whom I would advise should probably consult a doctor.
 |
| The end. |
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
All my Ukip
You may follow me on Facebook or Twitter, in which case you probably already know that I really don't like UKIP. No, I tell a lie. I hate them. For all their claims and all the careful manicuring of their manifesto and public statements, I believe that they ARE a racist party, if only for the simple reason that no-one has ever voted for UKIP for a non-racist reason. The sad thing is, the majority of people who have done the deed don't even realise this, so insidious is the UKIP machine. Their sole reason for existence is to peddle fear, suspicion and intrigue. I think we need them out of British politics and out of Britain.
I have chosen to express this via the means of art and some interpretive dance, but the latter need not detain us further. I thought that I should collate all my UKIP themed artwork into one handy grab bag for your convenience.
I have chosen to express this via the means of art and some interpretive dance, but the latter need not detain us further. I thought that I should collate all my UKIP themed artwork into one handy grab bag for your convenience.
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| This is the first Nigel Farage that I drew. Typically enough, I also think it is probably the best one. |
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| Here is Nigel in the ascendant. |
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| And here he is, fallen back to Earth as a scarecrow. Pretty scary. |
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| Here is Nigel, after Francis Bacon's Study After Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X |
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| And here is Nigel after The Scream by Edvard Münch |
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| Ukip isn't all about Nigel, here he is with his two MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless |
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| Here's an election poster I made for them, free of charge |
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| After the first TV debate I made Nigel be a frog |
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| Which led me, naturally enough, to Toad of Toad Hall |
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| After that, Nigel was a snail |
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| But ultimately, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that Nigel is a person just like the rest of us. |
Monday, 4 May 2015
The continuing disenfranchisement of E. Carter (aged 35)
No-one cares who you are going to vote for. Or why.
So, here's who I am going to vote for and why. In 2010, as I had in 2001 and 2005, I voted for the Liberal Democrats. They seemed like a nice bunch. But, it turns out, they are not a nice bunch at all. Putting aside for one moment my dark suspicions that they have perhaps always been the Diet Conservatives, they have facilitated the worst government since the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia in the 1970s.
I live in the safest of the safe Conservative seats. The last MP who did not represent the Tories that our constituency returned to Westminster was a fish who had not quite evolved the full capacity to live on dry land, back when the Earth was just a ball of molten rock hurtling through space shortly after the Big Bang. You could argue, then, that it doesn't matter who I voted for. But tell that to my conscience. One day British politics may change or, more likely, my address will and the Liberal Democrats will need my vote. They will never get it. Not in this lifetime.
So, to 2015. My political convictions have not changed in the last five years, although my understanding of political realities have taken something of a kicking. What I want above all other things is for a change of this wretched, awful government. Learning to love Ed Miliband has been the answer.
Again, safest of safe Conservative seats. It doesn't particularly matter who I vote for on a local or national level, the way the British electoral system works. So it all boils down to conscience again. Last night I realised that I cannot, despite earnestly believing that I would until yesterday, vote for the Labour Party in 2015.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Ed Miliband is like every other politician in the world, where expediency and the desire for power rather than principle is the sole guide to their actions. But his hard line denial and refusal to try and work with the SNP seems to me to suggest that he is willing to let the Conservatives get back in to Downing Street again based on nothing but principle and vainglorious pride.
This is not just the Conservatives bolstered by the stinking Liberal Democrats, either, but the Conservatives with help from the vile UKIP and venal Democratic Unionist Party. It would be the worst coalition since the one George W. Bush built to go and rain death on Iraq in 2003 and this time, the blood (hopefully only figuratively speaking) would be on Ed Miliband's hands.
I like Ed Miliband. I admire him. I think he would be a good Prime Minister and I hope that by this time next week he will have been given an opportunity to prove it. But above all, I would like to be able to vote for him and his party again in the future. If I vote Labour in 2015 and his intransigence leads to five more wretched years of Conservative government (and we really ain't seen NOTHING yet) then, after last time, it would be more than my conscience and I could possibly bear. So this is why I am going to be voting for the Green Party on Thursday morning.
So, here's who I am going to vote for and why. In 2010, as I had in 2001 and 2005, I voted for the Liberal Democrats. They seemed like a nice bunch. But, it turns out, they are not a nice bunch at all. Putting aside for one moment my dark suspicions that they have perhaps always been the Diet Conservatives, they have facilitated the worst government since the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia in the 1970s.
I live in the safest of the safe Conservative seats. The last MP who did not represent the Tories that our constituency returned to Westminster was a fish who had not quite evolved the full capacity to live on dry land, back when the Earth was just a ball of molten rock hurtling through space shortly after the Big Bang. You could argue, then, that it doesn't matter who I voted for. But tell that to my conscience. One day British politics may change or, more likely, my address will and the Liberal Democrats will need my vote. They will never get it. Not in this lifetime.
So, to 2015. My political convictions have not changed in the last five years, although my understanding of political realities have taken something of a kicking. What I want above all other things is for a change of this wretched, awful government. Learning to love Ed Miliband has been the answer.
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| Ed Miliband: everyone should vote for this man or no-one should |
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Ed Miliband is like every other politician in the world, where expediency and the desire for power rather than principle is the sole guide to their actions. But his hard line denial and refusal to try and work with the SNP seems to me to suggest that he is willing to let the Conservatives get back in to Downing Street again based on nothing but principle and vainglorious pride.
This is not just the Conservatives bolstered by the stinking Liberal Democrats, either, but the Conservatives with help from the vile UKIP and venal Democratic Unionist Party. It would be the worst coalition since the one George W. Bush built to go and rain death on Iraq in 2003 and this time, the blood (hopefully only figuratively speaking) would be on Ed Miliband's hands.
I like Ed Miliband. I admire him. I think he would be a good Prime Minister and I hope that by this time next week he will have been given an opportunity to prove it. But above all, I would like to be able to vote for him and his party again in the future. If I vote Labour in 2015 and his intransigence leads to five more wretched years of Conservative government (and we really ain't seen NOTHING yet) then, after last time, it would be more than my conscience and I could possibly bear. So this is why I am going to be voting for the Green Party on Thursday morning.
Friday, 17 October 2014
Brand new bollocks
The other evening Twitter alerted me to the fact that erstwhile comedian, actor and television presenter Russell Brand had occupied Wall Street. This came as little surprise, as he is turning into a right prat.
Russell Brand is an interesting sort of chap. Most people grow out of the risibly simplistic and teenage desire for revolution, or any other such tearing down of the existing social fabric, in their early twenties or whenever else they have finished college. Alas, Brand claims to be interested in doing so only now that he was reached comfortable middle age. One can only assume that this is born out of a desire for self-flagellation stemming from a lack of self-esteem, because come the revolution the first people against the wall will be big-gobbed Pre-Raphaelite millionaire fannies.
Brand cannot just be dismissed out of hand. He has respect and an eager audience, not least off the back of a lot of his intelligent, sensitive and thoughtful journalism. But his transformation into a slacker messiah is particularly ill-timed. His arguments against voting could not really come at a worse time.
There are elements to his argument which are easy to sympathise with. British politics has been turning itself into a grey-brown morass of sameness for the best part of twenty years, ever since Tony Blair decided that the Labour Party were unelectable without transforming themselves into a nasty bunch of Thatcherite weasel bags. Voting is an increasingly difficult sell in these circumstances.
But there are still significant differences between the major British parties. No-one could pretend that a Labour government would have different inclinations and priorities to the current Coalition one, or that the path of the current government hasn't been influenced or tempered by the lousy, Quisling stink-bag Liberal Democrats. Yes, British political figures are a largely unlikeable bunch of braying, over-privileged tits, but ever was it thus.
The only result of apathy, however, is demagoguery. Political parties will tailor their policies towards those people who are likely to vote and to people who are likely to vote alone. What sort of policy would that make? Well, just check the polls and see how well UKIP are doing. Young, open-minded liberal people may feel increasingly marginalised by this but they're not going to see any improvements by disenfranchising themselves further; worse yet, by disenfranchising themselves through their own choice.
I like Russell Brand. I like him as a comedian, I like him as a broadcaster and I like him as a writer. I respect him. As such find his efforts to turn himself into David Icke all the more painful, not least because of the fact that he - ironically enough - represents many of the good things and positive things that a British government should be interested in fighting for. He is an intelligent, engaging and stimulating presence in our cultural life. But, to paraphrase Chris Rock's thoughts on Flavor Flav during the 2008 US Presidential election, Russell Brand needs to shut his fucking mouth until after next May. Because this is more important than his ego.
Russell Brand is an interesting sort of chap. Most people grow out of the risibly simplistic and teenage desire for revolution, or any other such tearing down of the existing social fabric, in their early twenties or whenever else they have finished college. Alas, Brand claims to be interested in doing so only now that he was reached comfortable middle age. One can only assume that this is born out of a desire for self-flagellation stemming from a lack of self-esteem, because come the revolution the first people against the wall will be big-gobbed Pre-Raphaelite millionaire fannies.
There are elements to his argument which are easy to sympathise with. British politics has been turning itself into a grey-brown morass of sameness for the best part of twenty years, ever since Tony Blair decided that the Labour Party were unelectable without transforming themselves into a nasty bunch of Thatcherite weasel bags. Voting is an increasingly difficult sell in these circumstances.
But there are still significant differences between the major British parties. No-one could pretend that a Labour government would have different inclinations and priorities to the current Coalition one, or that the path of the current government hasn't been influenced or tempered by the lousy, Quisling stink-bag Liberal Democrats. Yes, British political figures are a largely unlikeable bunch of braying, over-privileged tits, but ever was it thus.
The only result of apathy, however, is demagoguery. Political parties will tailor their policies towards those people who are likely to vote and to people who are likely to vote alone. What sort of policy would that make? Well, just check the polls and see how well UKIP are doing. Young, open-minded liberal people may feel increasingly marginalised by this but they're not going to see any improvements by disenfranchising themselves further; worse yet, by disenfranchising themselves through their own choice.
I like Russell Brand. I like him as a comedian, I like him as a broadcaster and I like him as a writer. I respect him. As such find his efforts to turn himself into David Icke all the more painful, not least because of the fact that he - ironically enough - represents many of the good things and positive things that a British government should be interested in fighting for. He is an intelligent, engaging and stimulating presence in our cultural life. But, to paraphrase Chris Rock's thoughts on Flavor Flav during the 2008 US Presidential election, Russell Brand needs to shut his fucking mouth until after next May. Because this is more important than his ego.
Thursday, 16 October 2014
The idiots are winning, on both sides
What is happening to the UK now only time will tell, but it's a chastening period nonetheless. Experience and knowledge of national character suggest to me that in the end there will be very little change, as to gain any measure of wider acceptance in Britain has always required a degree of moderateness. Moderation is, however, not currently in abundance. There is a distinct sense of the lunatics taking over the asylum.
On one side you've got UKIP, let's face it. One could try to find some sort of overarching name for them, but it seems a futile challenge. "Right-wing" is too relative a term while "fascists" is far too inflammatory and dense with historical implication. They're just UKIP. UKIP is the name given to the thing that embodies a recognisable British trope: deeply conservative, aggressively against change, NIMBYish, easily scared, blinkeredly nationalistic. All UKIP the political party have done is given them something specifically targeted to vote for.
They don't like Europe, the barmy EU or that crazy European Court of Human Rights. We don't need that sort here. We got by without them before. And by the way: re. World War II, you're WELCOME.
These people are idiots, but they've always been walking amongst us. My grandparents would probably all have been UKIP voters, given the chance. My grandparents weren't bad people. They certainly weren't snarling fascists, though people like that, too, have undeniably also always been part of the Great British melting pot. No, my grandparents were just not particularly clever.
The good thing about people not being particularly clever is that the situation is relatively easy to address: you educate them. Doing so is fairly easy, too, in this case. Tess Daly, Simon Cowell or Keith Lemon strongly coming out against the UKIP mentality would do it. As would The Daily Mail, The Daily Express or The Sun stopping being such unutterable bastards. A little bit of education would go a long way.
Of course, a little bit of education can create problems of its own. On the other side of the British equation these days are people so bleeding heart liberal it's a wonder they can even stand up. Their brand of hyper-equality is so relentlessly unquestioning and accepting that they would be just as big a problem as UKIP if they hadn't been brought up so well. They're less in-your face, but don't ever doubt that these sweaty, hand-wringing wassocks are just as big a bunch of idiots as the others.
They're the ones who argue that a there need to be more black football managers, disabled contestants on The Apprentice and that dogs and cats over five years old should get paternity leave. They are so busy trying to level the playing field that they don't realise that behind them they've been ploughing it. Call me old-fashioned, but I've always thought that the best person for the job is probably the best person for the job. If that person happens to be a 50-year old white man from Surrey, then so be it. 87% of people who live in the UK are white, after all, despite what the UKIPs will tell you, sweatily grinding their teeth down to powder.
The hand-wringers do have a point. It is, sadly, inescapable to note countless times throughout even this country's recent history that someone equally as qualified, as good for the role, will have been passed over because they are a woman, because they are disabled or because they are from an ethnic minority. Luckily, there are now laws against this. The victims of such discrimination have recourse to compensation and the culprits can and should face prosecution.
This is not an ideal scenario. In a perfect world, it wouldn't happen at all. But it is a good fall-back position. Better than the idea that, for every future managerial vacancy at a football club there should be at least one black candidate in the mix. Oh goody. We've (somehow) negotiated our way through the most turbulent and dangerous century in human history and what has popped out at the end? Tokenism. Get a token black candidate in. Make sure someone is disabled, too. There probably ought to be a Muslim, now we think of it. And a Christian, yes, OK. Anyone else for anyone else?
It's a hard-fought battle between two equally blinkered, difficult and self-righteous foes. For the people stuck in the middle it seems like an unrelenting deluge of shite. Luckily for us, social media at least lets us accurately design our own little worlds, free from the bellicose forces of dumb that rain down all around us. They're also a good place to share the latest viral videos! Today's one is of a child with a really very bad case of headlice!
Yes, they are speaking Spanish, why do you ask?
On one side you've got UKIP, let's face it. One could try to find some sort of overarching name for them, but it seems a futile challenge. "Right-wing" is too relative a term while "fascists" is far too inflammatory and dense with historical implication. They're just UKIP. UKIP is the name given to the thing that embodies a recognisable British trope: deeply conservative, aggressively against change, NIMBYish, easily scared, blinkeredly nationalistic. All UKIP the political party have done is given them something specifically targeted to vote for.
They don't like Europe, the barmy EU or that crazy European Court of Human Rights. We don't need that sort here. We got by without them before. And by the way: re. World War II, you're WELCOME.
These people are idiots, but they've always been walking amongst us. My grandparents would probably all have been UKIP voters, given the chance. My grandparents weren't bad people. They certainly weren't snarling fascists, though people like that, too, have undeniably also always been part of the Great British melting pot. No, my grandparents were just not particularly clever.
The good thing about people not being particularly clever is that the situation is relatively easy to address: you educate them. Doing so is fairly easy, too, in this case. Tess Daly, Simon Cowell or Keith Lemon strongly coming out against the UKIP mentality would do it. As would The Daily Mail, The Daily Express or The Sun stopping being such unutterable bastards. A little bit of education would go a long way.
Of course, a little bit of education can create problems of its own. On the other side of the British equation these days are people so bleeding heart liberal it's a wonder they can even stand up. Their brand of hyper-equality is so relentlessly unquestioning and accepting that they would be just as big a problem as UKIP if they hadn't been brought up so well. They're less in-your face, but don't ever doubt that these sweaty, hand-wringing wassocks are just as big a bunch of idiots as the others.
They're the ones who argue that a there need to be more black football managers, disabled contestants on The Apprentice and that dogs and cats over five years old should get paternity leave. They are so busy trying to level the playing field that they don't realise that behind them they've been ploughing it. Call me old-fashioned, but I've always thought that the best person for the job is probably the best person for the job. If that person happens to be a 50-year old white man from Surrey, then so be it. 87% of people who live in the UK are white, after all, despite what the UKIPs will tell you, sweatily grinding their teeth down to powder.
The hand-wringers do have a point. It is, sadly, inescapable to note countless times throughout even this country's recent history that someone equally as qualified, as good for the role, will have been passed over because they are a woman, because they are disabled or because they are from an ethnic minority. Luckily, there are now laws against this. The victims of such discrimination have recourse to compensation and the culprits can and should face prosecution.
This is not an ideal scenario. In a perfect world, it wouldn't happen at all. But it is a good fall-back position. Better than the idea that, for every future managerial vacancy at a football club there should be at least one black candidate in the mix. Oh goody. We've (somehow) negotiated our way through the most turbulent and dangerous century in human history and what has popped out at the end? Tokenism. Get a token black candidate in. Make sure someone is disabled, too. There probably ought to be a Muslim, now we think of it. And a Christian, yes, OK. Anyone else for anyone else?
It's a hard-fought battle between two equally blinkered, difficult and self-righteous foes. For the people stuck in the middle it seems like an unrelenting deluge of shite. Luckily for us, social media at least lets us accurately design our own little worlds, free from the bellicose forces of dumb that rain down all around us. They're also a good place to share the latest viral videos! Today's one is of a child with a really very bad case of headlice!
Yes, they are speaking Spanish, why do you ask?
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
A child's Christmas ruined by marital infidelity
It's Christmas and so everyone's new favourite pastime is engaging in a ceaselessly circular and completely insoluble debate regarding the identity of the best Christmas film (it's It's A Wonderful Life). Fortunately, music has spared itself this fate by the release of A Christmas Gift For You in 1963. On 22nd November 1963 to be precise, the day of the Kennedy assassination. It is, was and ever shall be the ultimate festive selection and anybody who says otherwise is mistaken. It's as simple as that, for once.
Which is not to say that it is not without fault or should be immune from further analysis. For a start, the album's auteur is of course Phil Spector, one of the human race's most unassailable gitcaptains. A genuinely nasty piece of work, a hateful and spiteful man and one for whom pointing out he's a mole-faced bald-headed twat seems oddly unsatisfying when one considers all the deeper personality flaws that could be picked on instead.
Secondly, it is an album filled with songs which have unfortunately inviting lyrics for dirty minded people. Phil Spector's output is full of these. The Crystals' And Then He Kissed Me would be incomplete without the addition of "... on the tits", but drawing us in on a celebration of Christmas is particularly unseemly and unfortunate.
In fact, the worst offender is the song which I want to talk about in more detail. Thirdly and most damningly is the inconsistencies that run rife through I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by The Ronettes. Let's get it out of the way early: it is a particularly filthy song. I saw mommy sucking Santa off, underneath the mistletoe last night. I saw mommy tickle Santa's balls. I could go on. But these are small potatoes when compared to the bigger picture.
The song itself was not written by The Ronettes or Phil Spector but by Tommie Connor, a British songwriter who was operational during the middle of the 20th Century. The original recording of it was by Jimmy Boyd in 1952. Boyd was 13 years old at the time, and therein lies the whole problem with the song. It is a song written from the child's perspective. An excited child on Christmas Eve sneaks out of bed and down onto the stairs to see if they can catch a peek at some of the magic of the season happening. What he sees, of course, is made clear by the title of the song.
The problem is the lines, "oh what a laugh it would have been/ if Daddy had only seen/ Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night". I presume that these were put in as a knowing reference for any parents listening. Of course we all know that it is daddy dressed up as Santa Claus. Ho ho ho. However, it doesn't so much break the fourth wall as drive a reindeer-pulled sleigh through it. The child doesn't know this. What he sees is Father Christmas in flagrante with his mother, the filthy whore. So quite why he would think it would be such a big laugh I do not know. Had this happened to me during my childhood, it would have ruined my Christmas completely. Oh no, my parents are going to get a divorce. I'm going to be one of those children with a single parent and then spend the weekends with the other one walking round a goose park being told how much I'm loved. Fuck's sake.
Maybe he thinks it's a step in the right direction? Maybe his father is a rather staid and boring man, an office drone. Maybe he thinks having Father Christmas be his new dad would be a much more exciting and fulfilling life? Of course, it could be that his father is an abuser. Take that, dad! Mommy is kissing Santa Claus!
The other possibility is that the child hates Father Christmas and has secretly always wanted to watched him get decked. This child's bedroom is full of mouse traps and crossbows on a hair trigger. One way or another, Father Christmas is going to get fucked up tonight. He's not leaving this house in one piece, that's for damn sure. Whichever is the correct reading of it, what is undeniable is that this child is either deeply psychologically disturbed, or is about to be. Is that really what we want to be dwelling on at the festive season?
Which is not to say that it is not without fault or should be immune from further analysis. For a start, the album's auteur is of course Phil Spector, one of the human race's most unassailable gitcaptains. A genuinely nasty piece of work, a hateful and spiteful man and one for whom pointing out he's a mole-faced bald-headed twat seems oddly unsatisfying when one considers all the deeper personality flaws that could be picked on instead.
Secondly, it is an album filled with songs which have unfortunately inviting lyrics for dirty minded people. Phil Spector's output is full of these. The Crystals' And Then He Kissed Me would be incomplete without the addition of "... on the tits", but drawing us in on a celebration of Christmas is particularly unseemly and unfortunate.
In fact, the worst offender is the song which I want to talk about in more detail. Thirdly and most damningly is the inconsistencies that run rife through I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by The Ronettes. Let's get it out of the way early: it is a particularly filthy song. I saw mommy sucking Santa off, underneath the mistletoe last night. I saw mommy tickle Santa's balls. I could go on. But these are small potatoes when compared to the bigger picture.
The song itself was not written by The Ronettes or Phil Spector but by Tommie Connor, a British songwriter who was operational during the middle of the 20th Century. The original recording of it was by Jimmy Boyd in 1952. Boyd was 13 years old at the time, and therein lies the whole problem with the song. It is a song written from the child's perspective. An excited child on Christmas Eve sneaks out of bed and down onto the stairs to see if they can catch a peek at some of the magic of the season happening. What he sees, of course, is made clear by the title of the song.
The problem is the lines, "oh what a laugh it would have been/ if Daddy had only seen/ Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night". I presume that these were put in as a knowing reference for any parents listening. Of course we all know that it is daddy dressed up as Santa Claus. Ho ho ho. However, it doesn't so much break the fourth wall as drive a reindeer-pulled sleigh through it. The child doesn't know this. What he sees is Father Christmas in flagrante with his mother, the filthy whore. So quite why he would think it would be such a big laugh I do not know. Had this happened to me during my childhood, it would have ruined my Christmas completely. Oh no, my parents are going to get a divorce. I'm going to be one of those children with a single parent and then spend the weekends with the other one walking round a goose park being told how much I'm loved. Fuck's sake.
Maybe he thinks it's a step in the right direction? Maybe his father is a rather staid and boring man, an office drone. Maybe he thinks having Father Christmas be his new dad would be a much more exciting and fulfilling life? Of course, it could be that his father is an abuser. Take that, dad! Mommy is kissing Santa Claus!
The other possibility is that the child hates Father Christmas and has secretly always wanted to watched him get decked. This child's bedroom is full of mouse traps and crossbows on a hair trigger. One way or another, Father Christmas is going to get fucked up tonight. He's not leaving this house in one piece, that's for damn sure. Whichever is the correct reading of it, what is undeniable is that this child is either deeply psychologically disturbed, or is about to be. Is that really what we want to be dwelling on at the festive season?
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| Father Christmas: who is your mother to resist, eh? The filthy harlot |
Thursday, 29 November 2012
Twitter shitters
Imagine the screaming hysterical horror that greeted the news in August that One Direction (who?)'s Zayn Malik (who?) had deleted his Twitter account, citing the slew of negative comments that he received. I'm not particularly surprised he found this, having seen the stream of invective, death-threats and shrieking insanity unleashed at Taylor Swift (no idea) last week when it was revealed that she is currently hanging out the back of Zayn's bandmate, Harry.
Celebrities are leaping off Twitter in ever-growing numbers at the moment. Trolling is increasingly blamed, to the point that even the jaded old colonels and concentration camp guards from the Boer War who make up the readership of The Daily Express are aware of what "trolling" is. But they're actually not. Calling wild, unfocused abuse "trolling" is like calling all cheese "cheddar". For older hands, trolling is a much more textured, varied and cultured activity.
It's just a sign of the times: as a previously niche activity becomes saturated with new participants, becoming da rigeur in the process, it changes in nature for everyone. It's a pity, too. For years, people discussing their favourite films, TV and music online were the butt of every joke going. Now the creatives have entered the forum, they are frequently chased away by negative comments and insults. What a wasted opportunity! The chance of a dialogue between the makers and the consumers spoilt for everyone.
But who is to blame? They are. You heard. It's them. For years, the internet was a great leveller, a field of anonymity and created persona, where people could choose to be who they wanted. The insatiable ego of the celebrity has meant that they are unable to enter into this barnyard without being the showiest, struttiest, most crowing rooster in the place. Look at me! Look at me! I was in Saved By The Bell! There is no reason that celebrities can't use Twitter, or any other online forum for that matter. But the onus is on them to play by the rules by which everybody else abides, not mince in and expect to be considered special simply on account of their name. Many of them do, of course. You can easily identify these people from the fact that they are still on Twitter. Good on them.
The internet is a true democracy. An egalitarian utopia of the kind that philosophers could previously only dream of. But equality demands that everyone enters without any preconceived notions of superiority. And thus, celebrities on Twitter are pricks. Luckily, all their Twitter accounts have almost invariably since been reactivated, so if you are that way inclined you can tell them.
Celebrities are leaping off Twitter in ever-growing numbers at the moment. Trolling is increasingly blamed, to the point that even the jaded old colonels and concentration camp guards from the Boer War who make up the readership of The Daily Express are aware of what "trolling" is. But they're actually not. Calling wild, unfocused abuse "trolling" is like calling all cheese "cheddar". For older hands, trolling is a much more textured, varied and cultured activity.
It's just a sign of the times: as a previously niche activity becomes saturated with new participants, becoming da rigeur in the process, it changes in nature for everyone. It's a pity, too. For years, people discussing their favourite films, TV and music online were the butt of every joke going. Now the creatives have entered the forum, they are frequently chased away by negative comments and insults. What a wasted opportunity! The chance of a dialogue between the makers and the consumers spoilt for everyone.
But who is to blame? They are. You heard. It's them. For years, the internet was a great leveller, a field of anonymity and created persona, where people could choose to be who they wanted. The insatiable ego of the celebrity has meant that they are unable to enter into this barnyard without being the showiest, struttiest, most crowing rooster in the place. Look at me! Look at me! I was in Saved By The Bell! There is no reason that celebrities can't use Twitter, or any other online forum for that matter. But the onus is on them to play by the rules by which everybody else abides, not mince in and expect to be considered special simply on account of their name. Many of them do, of course. You can easily identify these people from the fact that they are still on Twitter. Good on them.
The internet is a true democracy. An egalitarian utopia of the kind that philosophers could previously only dream of. But equality demands that everyone enters without any preconceived notions of superiority. And thus, celebrities on Twitter are pricks. Luckily, all their Twitter accounts have almost invariably since been reactivated, so if you are that way inclined you can tell them.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Let me explain how this thing works
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| The big man |
We've all heard this one. It is a charming thought, too. Unfortunately, it's a thought which is at best only half-formulated. Because people who are "in heaven" are now immortals, unhindered by the same rules of temporality or dimensionality as us poor bastards slogging away on this damp rock. They don't need to be in one place at a time, or have to rest.
This means that your mother, father, grandparent, teacher or mentor will also have seen you do any of the following:
1. Fuck a dog.
2. Have to worm your cat and then the cat poos everywhere and you get a bit in your mouth and swallow it.
3. Fuck a kid.
4. Have a really gnarly and involved shite.
5. Have a really sweaty, grunty, hollow wank over some really exceptionally grotty porn.
6. Vote Conservative.
7. Tread on your sister's hamster's head.
8. Steal money from a tramp's hat.
9. Murder a prostitute.
10. Stuck things up your bum.
This may be painful to find out now but believe me, you'll thank me in the long run. You filthy, disgusting, freak.
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Telecom problems
As you probably already know by now, my hatreds are many, varied, almost always unjustified and barely thought-through. But I will tell you this, some fountains of bile never seem to run dry and besides, I have genuinely managed to convince myself that I am always right, so my more enduring pet peeves I consider to occupy the same status as a Papal edict.
So yeah, adverts that have ongoing storylines. What the shit?
We've had to endure these throughout my lifetime. The Bisto family brought pathos to powdered meat, as well as dodging a major bullet when they successfully sidestepped casting Jimmy Savile as the father. The Nescafé Gold Blend couple made us all sick before Anthony Head finally got up the courage to pump Sharon Maughan in their twelfth (TWELVE!) commercial together. I remember Nescafé taking out adverts in the press advertising their advert on the day the denouement to this particular series hit our screens. I remember specifically tuning in to see it, too. In the days when there were only four television channels, this was event TV! The specific event that I was hoping to see was a asteroid striking their flat, or them getting the clap. Perhaps the failure for either of these to materialise is the root cause of my hardline aversion to commercial series? I think it's more likely to be the fact that they are fucking shit, but anything is possible.
The biggest repeat offender in this hideous sweating gonad are BT. Seemingly without any regard for my feelings, blood pressure or pursing anus, British Telecom have decided that the best way to sell their services is vignettes of family drama. We've had Beattie the meddling gossipy housewife. Beattie wasn't so bad. She was more a chance for Maureen Lipman to bring her almost inexplicable worship of Joyce Grenfell to bear. But it was a shot across the bows, a warning that should have been heeded.
Because now they're on a roll. Kris Marshall became the new young daddy to a hideous family in a seemingly unending series of adverts which successfully managed to become more mawkish, turgid and ghastly by the installment. Eventually, Marshall got himself in a pickle with a traffic violation in real life, which saw his character cast out into a gloomy, takeaway curry in a bedsit, grindingly Onanistic nightmare before the plug was finally pulled. The nation (i.e. me) rejoiced and wondered why Marshall had taken so long to make a social faux pas. I mean, I alone must have sent a hundred hookers to his house in the hope he'd get caught out.
But the horror was not over. Now BT's spokespeople are a hideous group of housemates. A snot-nosed studenty male and an avuncular landlord at least twice his age coexist in perfect harmony until the new girl, who the elder one wants to fuck, arrives. But these commercials are so half-arsed they can't really even be bothered to keep up any sort of narrative strand beyond the fact the people are the same in every new outing. Simon's need to get some filthy bingo begins as being sufficiently strong that he is willing to download the entire back catalogue of Duran Duran. But come the Olympics, he's perfectly happy to chase after a room full of Spaniards. Now, at Halloween, he's concerned only for the integrity of his carpet.
At least the Gold Blend couple had some semblance of dramatic tension. The new BT gang are completely lackadaisical. A series of seemingly unrelated events occur to them without ever really ruffling too many feathers. So dead inside are they, maybe Simon and Simon's Bit Of Fluff bump uglies every single day but they're both such profound psychopaths that it doesn't even register with them the following day?
I hate all these people. Which, sadly, must mean that I do care about them. And that is exactly what the advertisers want. The fact that the majority of my investment in their story is that I want to see them all dying of the shits is neither here nor there. At this present moment in time I rather fear that I would buy anything Simon suggested I should, and I would like to protest about this state of affairs. No-one that I actually know, whose ongoing story arc I am familiar with, could make me do anything at the drop of a hat in the same way.
Television advertising has rotted my mind in ways I had rather hoped would be reserved for the rotting of the BT housemates' private parts. When they all die, screaming, of Atomic Crabs.
Bloody bastarding hell.
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Coffee problems
There is a general tendency for any discourse taking place online to resolve in a reductio ad Hitlerum, leading to the evocation of Godwin's Law and the end of the discussion. So one must tread very carefully when making any form of broad, sweeping statements but coffee house baristas are the worst thing in history and should be rounded up and shot.
Oh OK, not the people themselves, who I am sure are all very nice and give money to the Dogs Trust and buy the Big Issue and worry about the environment. But the word needs to be expunged from the English language and the prevailing attitude that created it crushed like a BAG OF ADDERS.
Self-aggrandising pricks are not a rare commodity in the United Kingdom, but until baristas came along they didn't have a union. There've always been people who gift themselves preposterously overblown titles for the job they do and there always will be, so I'm not quite sure why the concept of a barista so riles me. But it does, oh how it does.
We live in a society where people train for decades to earn the title "Doctor", and for even longer to become a specialist, at which point their title reverts to "Mr." or "Mrs.". So your GP is technically able to lord it up over your prostate specialist. Meanwhile, the muffin-shovelling beanlackey (GCSE Mathematics: "C" grade, 2006) who makes them both their morning cup o' mud is lording it up over everyone. What kind of example does this set for our children? Where will the dentists of the future be coming from, when high-fallutin' honorific titles can be yours simply by dint of a successful application to Beans Beans Beans? This is actually a particularly pressing concern, as I seem to have ground all my teeth down to a powder in a fit of uncontrollable rage.
But don't mistake this gibbering outburst of insanity to be one which is negative towards people who work in coffee shops. Theirs is a perfectly respectable job, as much as any other. And I'm sure that most of them wouldn't introduce themselves to you at a wedding by saying they are a barista. But I am equally sure that some of the bastards fucking would, and that's far too much to be able to stand.
The next step is surely to find a similarly vaunted moniker for the people who work in the kitchens at Burger King and Chicken Cottage. They, too, are providing comestible items that are uniquely different to the sort that you could make at home. Meatista? Chookista? Gristleshepherd?
It's a work in progress.
If you're still talking to me, maybe you might like to buy your Christmas cards from my Etsy Store this year? A percentage of at least some sales will almost certainly be heading a barista's way: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration
Oh OK, not the people themselves, who I am sure are all very nice and give money to the Dogs Trust and buy the Big Issue and worry about the environment. But the word needs to be expunged from the English language and the prevailing attitude that created it crushed like a BAG OF ADDERS.
 |
| A half-caf demi-frap caramel macchiato, please. With a pube from your beard in it, yeah why not. |
We live in a society where people train for decades to earn the title "Doctor", and for even longer to become a specialist, at which point their title reverts to "Mr." or "Mrs.". So your GP is technically able to lord it up over your prostate specialist. Meanwhile, the muffin-shovelling beanlackey (GCSE Mathematics: "C" grade, 2006) who makes them both their morning cup o' mud is lording it up over everyone. What kind of example does this set for our children? Where will the dentists of the future be coming from, when high-fallutin' honorific titles can be yours simply by dint of a successful application to Beans Beans Beans? This is actually a particularly pressing concern, as I seem to have ground all my teeth down to a powder in a fit of uncontrollable rage.
But don't mistake this gibbering outburst of insanity to be one which is negative towards people who work in coffee shops. Theirs is a perfectly respectable job, as much as any other. And I'm sure that most of them wouldn't introduce themselves to you at a wedding by saying they are a barista. But I am equally sure that some of the bastards fucking would, and that's far too much to be able to stand.
The next step is surely to find a similarly vaunted moniker for the people who work in the kitchens at Burger King and Chicken Cottage. They, too, are providing comestible items that are uniquely different to the sort that you could make at home. Meatista? Chookista? Gristleshepherd?
It's a work in progress.
If you're still talking to me, maybe you might like to buy your Christmas cards from my Etsy Store this year? A percentage of at least some sales will almost certainly be heading a barista's way: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Celebrity problems
It's been quite a week for Britain's beloved celebrities. Accusations and revelations abound and with both Justin Lee Collins and Jimmy Savile now feeling the full force of public anathema, I'm finding myself beginning to wonder just who the next celebrity who it was patently obvious to everyone beforehand that they were a cunt that it will be revealed that they were in fact a cunt, is.
But I'm going to do some thinking outside the box here and say that the problem is not these celebrities at all, rather it's Britain's bewildering expectations of them that are all broken. People rarely lead blameless lives, and celebrities are - for all the pink-top wiffling - just people after all. Like everyone they eat, they sleep, they poo, they watch golf, they have one off the wrist, they walk dogs, they psychologically abuse women, they buy Ryvita, they sexually abuse underage girls, they look up recipes for Brandy Alexanders online and they subscribe to Bird Watching magazine. These are things that we all do, to a greater or lesser extent.
So, my radical solution is that you should do what I do. It's not that I am always right, more that everything I do turns out to be the considered and ultimately correct solution to all problems. Celebrities are famous because they do things. So if you must worship a celebrity, worship their ability at that thing that saw them rise above the herd in the first place. That's the only aspect of their being that anyone else has any right to feel ownership of. Leave the being a person to them, just as they leave your being a person to you. And if they transgress in some way, then they will be disciplined in the same way that you or I might be.
Even if they do fuck a dog.
You can order my Christmas cards here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration
But I'm going to do some thinking outside the box here and say that the problem is not these celebrities at all, rather it's Britain's bewildering expectations of them that are all broken. People rarely lead blameless lives, and celebrities are - for all the pink-top wiffling - just people after all. Like everyone they eat, they sleep, they poo, they watch golf, they have one off the wrist, they walk dogs, they psychologically abuse women, they buy Ryvita, they sexually abuse underage girls, they look up recipes for Brandy Alexanders online and they subscribe to Bird Watching magazine. These are things that we all do, to a greater or lesser extent.
So, my radical solution is that you should do what I do. It's not that I am always right, more that everything I do turns out to be the considered and ultimately correct solution to all problems. Celebrities are famous because they do things. So if you must worship a celebrity, worship their ability at that thing that saw them rise above the herd in the first place. That's the only aspect of their being that anyone else has any right to feel ownership of. Leave the being a person to them, just as they leave your being a person to you. And if they transgress in some way, then they will be disciplined in the same way that you or I might be.
Even if they do fuck a dog.
You can order my Christmas cards here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration
Saturday, 29 September 2012
The Long Man of Wilmington is a prick
Heritage.
If I went out and broke my bloody back digging out a huge great big long man-shaped trough in a hillside and then filling it with limestone, frankly I'd expect the rozzers to catch me in the act and gently dissuade me from continuing by the means of a swift kick in the knackers. Even if I were able to finish it, I imagine that the National Trust or some other group of beardy people to say outraged things on the breakfast news and fix the damage to their hill - A HILL! - as soon as possible.
However, if I somehow managed to carve a 200-foot tall figure in the side of the hill and no-one kicked me in the spuds or noticed for about a thousand years, this piece of gibbering insanity becomes heritage and art and important. I understand this point of view. Heritage is a very important thing and should be protected.
This is not to say that the Long Man of Wilmington isn't a cunt. Because he is. I'll say it again. The Long Man of Wilmington is a cunt. Always has been and always will be. It hurts me to say it because Sussex Pride Should Never Be Denied. It's a bit of a stinger that the UK's finest county is also home to its lousiest hillside figure.
The UK, a global leader in heritage after all, only actually has two such human figures. To be honest, that's for the best. If there was shit drawn on every hill they'd start to lose their impact. There's the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset.
And therein lies the problem. Every day, a million conversations about the Long Man of Wilmington run thusly:
"I saw the Long Man of Wilmington yesterday."
"Oh yes?"
"Yep."
"Eh, you could have your eye out on that, eh? eh? Lads? Am I right? Cor."
"Ah no, that's the other one."
"Oh."
"No, the Long Man of Wilmington is the one who just stands there holding two walking sticks."
"Ah."
"Yeah, it's the Cerne Abbas Giant you're thinking of, with the knobbly club and the love truncheon and the face and the nipples and the awesome."
"So..."
"Yeah. The Long Man of Wilmington is just a cunt."
Global heritage sites shouldn't be this disappointing. It'd be like finding out that the Taj Mahal is made of Lego. I'm clearly not the only person to have felt this way. On the night of 17th June 2010, someone painted a 20-foot high phallus on the Long Man. This is by turns a disgraceful act of vandalism and a desecration of a world-famous historical site but also a brilliant thing to do. Such acts of wanton brazenness should, of course, be frowned-upon and discouraged but when they are just done with the line marker from a sports stadium (as was the case) and no permanent damage was done, we should probably try to retain some sense of perspective and sense of humour about it. Heritage is only worth anything if it helps to shape and inform the present. Plus, it gave a million conversations a moment of blessed respite.
"I saw the Long Man of Wilmington yesterday."
"Oh yes?"
"Yep."
"Eh, you could have your eye out on that, eh? eh? Lads? Am I right? Cor."
"Yes, some cunt's drawn a massive boner on it."
"Really?."
"Yep."
"God, what a cunt."
"Funny though."
"Yeah."
"Shall we go and see it?"
If I went out and broke my bloody back digging out a huge great big long man-shaped trough in a hillside and then filling it with limestone, frankly I'd expect the rozzers to catch me in the act and gently dissuade me from continuing by the means of a swift kick in the knackers. Even if I were able to finish it, I imagine that the National Trust or some other group of beardy people to say outraged things on the breakfast news and fix the damage to their hill - A HILL! - as soon as possible.
However, if I somehow managed to carve a 200-foot tall figure in the side of the hill and no-one kicked me in the spuds or noticed for about a thousand years, this piece of gibbering insanity becomes heritage and art and important. I understand this point of view. Heritage is a very important thing and should be protected.
This is not to say that the Long Man of Wilmington isn't a cunt. Because he is. I'll say it again. The Long Man of Wilmington is a cunt. Always has been and always will be. It hurts me to say it because Sussex Pride Should Never Be Denied. It's a bit of a stinger that the UK's finest county is also home to its lousiest hillside figure.
 |
| The Long Man of Wilmington: dreary |
The UK, a global leader in heritage after all, only actually has two such human figures. To be honest, that's for the best. If there was shit drawn on every hill they'd start to lose their impact. There's the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset.
 |
| the Cerne Abbas Giant: hung |
And therein lies the problem. Every day, a million conversations about the Long Man of Wilmington run thusly:
"I saw the Long Man of Wilmington yesterday."
"Oh yes?"
"Yep."
"Eh, you could have your eye out on that, eh? eh? Lads? Am I right? Cor."
"Ah no, that's the other one."
"Oh."
"No, the Long Man of Wilmington is the one who just stands there holding two walking sticks."
"Ah."
"Yeah, it's the Cerne Abbas Giant you're thinking of, with the knobbly club and the love truncheon and the face and the nipples and the awesome."
"So..."
"Yeah. The Long Man of Wilmington is just a cunt."
Global heritage sites shouldn't be this disappointing. It'd be like finding out that the Taj Mahal is made of Lego. I'm clearly not the only person to have felt this way. On the night of 17th June 2010, someone painted a 20-foot high phallus on the Long Man. This is by turns a disgraceful act of vandalism and a desecration of a world-famous historical site but also a brilliant thing to do. Such acts of wanton brazenness should, of course, be frowned-upon and discouraged but when they are just done with the line marker from a sports stadium (as was the case) and no permanent damage was done, we should probably try to retain some sense of perspective and sense of humour about it. Heritage is only worth anything if it helps to shape and inform the present. Plus, it gave a million conversations a moment of blessed respite.
 |
| The Long Man of Wilmington, June 2010: like a baby's arm |
"I saw the Long Man of Wilmington yesterday."
"Oh yes?"
"Yep."
"Eh, you could have your eye out on that, eh? eh? Lads? Am I right? Cor."
"Yes, some cunt's drawn a massive boner on it."
"Really?."
"Yep."
"God, what a cunt."
"Funny though."
"Yeah."
"Shall we go and see it?"
Sunday, 2 September 2012
Match of the Day problems
There's been far too many blogs and podcasts beating up on Match of the Day in the last few years that it feels like it would be wrong of me to join the chorus. However, I'm going to have to. It was a toss up between that and just going mad and ranting with a recursive impotence at the television every weekend. However, I am pretty good, so I have in fact managed to do both.
I'm not going to focus on some of the problems that other football correspondents and commentators have levelled at the BBC's venerable old football show. Yes, considering the advances in TV technology and social media, the football highlights show has started to feel a bit anachronistic, lumpen and omni-directional. But it does the job and it is, lest we forget, a television institution. We Brits like those. My problem is with the cast of characters.
Back in the day, all you needed to present a football show was a magnificently patterned terylene shirt, a desk with an oddly redundant telephone atop it. Brian Moore would tell us who was playing, then probably also be the commentator on the highlights before popping back to the studio and giving a succinct summary of events without editorialising. The reason that Match of the Day appears so dated is not that it fundamentally follows the same structure that football highlights programmes have always done, but that they felt the need to tart it up. Extra guests, prolonged tactical analysis and needless graphics packages when really all we need is the games and Jimmy Hill.
This blunderbuss of opinion and flapdoodle that BBC1 fires into my face every Saturday night and Sunday morning has left me resigned to the adoption of a number of coping mechanisms. Namely, I have turned it into a soap opera. Every single one of the regular cast are a character, all with their own problems, struggles and burdens. And like their EastEnders counterparts all cramming into the Queen Vic, they are not entirely always in control of whose company they will be in as their storylines develop. Sparks can and will fly.
Gary Lineker is the landlord. He's contractually obliged to be there every week, no matter how bad a seven days it has been or how odious that night's punters are. His strategy is to damn his enemies with faint praise and low-level jibes about their past, but mostly he just farts strangely odour-free platitudes and half-puns into the air where no-one in particular will hear them or care.
Alan Hansen is the most long-standing patron. His seniority means that few will cross him or even make a helpful suggestion about his skincare and moisturisation regime which would stop him from looking like a smoky bacon flavour tortoise. He remembers every single failure and mistake that all of his friends, colleagues and acquaintances have suffered (except for the number of times Alan Shearer kicked someone in the head, oddly) and this makes him a distinctly dangerous competitor.
Mark Lawrenson is the drunk old aunt propped up in the corner, leftover from a wake that took place some time around lunchtime. He's fed up with everything, wishing it could have been him that they had put in the ground but still happy enough to complain endlessly to anyone who will listen, until that great day finally comes. The fact that no-one is listening any more is of supreme disinterest to him as he just runs through his well worn sherry-scented monologue day in, day out.
New blood comes in the form of Lee Dixon and Alan Shearer. There's a little friction between them too, which is always exciting. Alan Shearer is basically Benny from Crossroads, a bungling but largely aimiable village idiot. It's impossible to get too upset by Alan Shearer unless you forget yourself and start to attach any credence to whatever he's spouting. But the sheer amount that he shovels out makes it more and more likely that this will happen, just due to the laws of probability. And this bothers Lee Dixon, who has probably the freshest ideas of the bunch but finds it hardest to get a word in edgewise. Force of personality, rather than intelligence of opinion, is what always prevails in this particular soap opera, which is what makes it so compelling.
That and the ever-present possibility that Alan Shearer might kick someone in the head.
I'm not going to focus on some of the problems that other football correspondents and commentators have levelled at the BBC's venerable old football show. Yes, considering the advances in TV technology and social media, the football highlights show has started to feel a bit anachronistic, lumpen and omni-directional. But it does the job and it is, lest we forget, a television institution. We Brits like those. My problem is with the cast of characters.
Back in the day, all you needed to present a football show was a magnificently patterned terylene shirt, a desk with an oddly redundant telephone atop it. Brian Moore would tell us who was playing, then probably also be the commentator on the highlights before popping back to the studio and giving a succinct summary of events without editorialising. The reason that Match of the Day appears so dated is not that it fundamentally follows the same structure that football highlights programmes have always done, but that they felt the need to tart it up. Extra guests, prolonged tactical analysis and needless graphics packages when really all we need is the games and Jimmy Hill.
This blunderbuss of opinion and flapdoodle that BBC1 fires into my face every Saturday night and Sunday morning has left me resigned to the adoption of a number of coping mechanisms. Namely, I have turned it into a soap opera. Every single one of the regular cast are a character, all with their own problems, struggles and burdens. And like their EastEnders counterparts all cramming into the Queen Vic, they are not entirely always in control of whose company they will be in as their storylines develop. Sparks can and will fly.
Gary Lineker is the landlord. He's contractually obliged to be there every week, no matter how bad a seven days it has been or how odious that night's punters are. His strategy is to damn his enemies with faint praise and low-level jibes about their past, but mostly he just farts strangely odour-free platitudes and half-puns into the air where no-one in particular will hear them or care.
Alan Hansen is the most long-standing patron. His seniority means that few will cross him or even make a helpful suggestion about his skincare and moisturisation regime which would stop him from looking like a smoky bacon flavour tortoise. He remembers every single failure and mistake that all of his friends, colleagues and acquaintances have suffered (except for the number of times Alan Shearer kicked someone in the head, oddly) and this makes him a distinctly dangerous competitor.
Mark Lawrenson is the drunk old aunt propped up in the corner, leftover from a wake that took place some time around lunchtime. He's fed up with everything, wishing it could have been him that they had put in the ground but still happy enough to complain endlessly to anyone who will listen, until that great day finally comes. The fact that no-one is listening any more is of supreme disinterest to him as he just runs through his well worn sherry-scented monologue day in, day out.
New blood comes in the form of Lee Dixon and Alan Shearer. There's a little friction between them too, which is always exciting. Alan Shearer is basically Benny from Crossroads, a bungling but largely aimiable village idiot. It's impossible to get too upset by Alan Shearer unless you forget yourself and start to attach any credence to whatever he's spouting. But the sheer amount that he shovels out makes it more and more likely that this will happen, just due to the laws of probability. And this bothers Lee Dixon, who has probably the freshest ideas of the bunch but finds it hardest to get a word in edgewise. Force of personality, rather than intelligence of opinion, is what always prevails in this particular soap opera, which is what makes it so compelling.
That and the ever-present possibility that Alan Shearer might kick someone in the head.
Friday, 24 August 2012
Ah, young love
Over the last few months I will admit that I was starting to wonder if the world might not be such a bad place after all, but then last night I watched a programme called Toddlers & Tiaras and I'm right back on track. We are all doomed.
If you haven't seen it, then first of all you have to see it. It's a programme about those dreadful beauty pageants that they have for children in America. You know the ones: not the bouncing baby parades judged by disinterested vicars at church fetes on the village green, but the dress your child up as a hooker and make her strut to Lady Gaga records ones. The two episodes I watched were both set in southern States, so the possibility that any child not deemed beautiful enough would be fed to the alligators was ever present.
The alligators may have met their match with Laci, mind you. Tia is eight and has three ambitions in life: to be Miss America, to be Miss Universe and to shoot a deer. Shoot a deer right in the fucking face. To that end, she and her father went on a hunting trip. Two hours they spent with Laci cocking a rifle out of a hide window, but to no avail. "I'm disappointed I didn't shoot a deer", said Laci, gleefully ignoring the fact that there had neither been any deer nor had she fired a single shot, both of which are important parts of the deer hunting process. At one stage, Laci goes missing backstage just before her slot in the pageant. Her mother is beside herself with worry, because (I swear this is what she said) if you miss your slot you'll lose marks. Eventually she turned out to be out the back with her grandmother. Taking pot shots at elk.
Heaven is six and lives in Georgia. Her father is called Benny but it is pronounced "Beany". Heaven is something of a trooper, taking it with admirable calm when Beany forgets he's an integral part of her Pinocchio dance routine and leaves her up on stage folded in half for minutes on end. Heaven also has a serious chewing gum habit. Quite how her prospects in the facial beauty round will fare when her jaw muscles develop and make her look like David Coulthard, only time will tell.
But the undeniable star of the show is Alana. Alana is also six. She is sure that she will win beauty pageants left, right and centre because her face will win her da mon-neh. The potential adorability of her gormless catchphrase "Honey Boo-Boo" (which has since made her sufficiently famous to get her her own series) is undermined by the fact that she has a head that looks like a pork pie with a mouth. Luckily, her vile mother is on hand to brainwash her past this notable shortcoming and into doing her bidding. To this end, she helps lubricate the strings with Go-Go Juice. This is her own concoction, although from the effects it has it's fairly easy to guess at the ingredients, presumably Mountain Dew, Lucozade, Red Bull and a bag of sherbert. She was far from the only one filling their child with sugar backstage though. Virtually all the competitors are shovelling sweets and energy drinks down their gaping maws whilst their mother gives them a vajazzle. The elder children were all doing coke in the lavs.
It is difficult to know quite who the villain of this particular piece is when such bewildering acts of supervillany are coming from all directions. In the end I plumped for the organisers, but really I could just have stuck a pin in the screen. However, I don't buy into the complaints of people who say the worst thing about these pageants is that they sexualise children. Their argument seems to be predicated on the thought that everyone in the world is basically a dormant paedophile who just hasn't met the right child yet. Anyone who isn't wanking themselves a blue streak can tell how dazzlingly unpleasant this all is at a single glance. The outfits and the make-up and the dancing just serve to enhance the horror, rather than to lure you in.
Still, in many ways I'd rather have these preposterous melées of bouffant hair and bump 'n' grind dancing for the under-fives, than what is happening on television in a broader sense. Advertisers are particularly to blame for this, peddling the belief that everyone, everywhere must have a boyfriend or a girlfriend regardless of age, background, circumstances or species.
It's possible that I am just a deeply repressed bumpkin from Woodingdean (I am) and that my experience of growing up was atypical, but when I was of primary school age, boys and girls came from different worlds. We didn't have anything to do with one another and we didn't want to. I think it's possible that I didn't talk to a female human being my own age until I was about 9 years old. Nowadays that would get you a one-way trip to the Palookaville Autism Clinic, but at the time I don't think my experience was so rare.
Nowadays, everyone is pairing off. My niece, who is 6 in a fortnight, recently moved to a new town and started a new school. She already has a "new boyfriend". She works fast. I can only hope they use protection.
I don't want to turn into one of those people who spends their life moaning about the venality of the modern world and patiently (but furiously) explain how things were so much better in the olden days to anyone who will even pretend to be listening. But this is going to require some co-operation on the world's part, too. Namely, it has to stop being so shit.
If you haven't seen it, then first of all you have to see it. It's a programme about those dreadful beauty pageants that they have for children in America. You know the ones: not the bouncing baby parades judged by disinterested vicars at church fetes on the village green, but the dress your child up as a hooker and make her strut to Lady Gaga records ones. The two episodes I watched were both set in southern States, so the possibility that any child not deemed beautiful enough would be fed to the alligators was ever present.
The alligators may have met their match with Laci, mind you. Tia is eight and has three ambitions in life: to be Miss America, to be Miss Universe and to shoot a deer. Shoot a deer right in the fucking face. To that end, she and her father went on a hunting trip. Two hours they spent with Laci cocking a rifle out of a hide window, but to no avail. "I'm disappointed I didn't shoot a deer", said Laci, gleefully ignoring the fact that there had neither been any deer nor had she fired a single shot, both of which are important parts of the deer hunting process. At one stage, Laci goes missing backstage just before her slot in the pageant. Her mother is beside herself with worry, because (I swear this is what she said) if you miss your slot you'll lose marks. Eventually she turned out to be out the back with her grandmother. Taking pot shots at elk.
Heaven is six and lives in Georgia. Her father is called Benny but it is pronounced "Beany". Heaven is something of a trooper, taking it with admirable calm when Beany forgets he's an integral part of her Pinocchio dance routine and leaves her up on stage folded in half for minutes on end. Heaven also has a serious chewing gum habit. Quite how her prospects in the facial beauty round will fare when her jaw muscles develop and make her look like David Coulthard, only time will tell.
But the undeniable star of the show is Alana. Alana is also six. She is sure that she will win beauty pageants left, right and centre because her face will win her da mon-neh. The potential adorability of her gormless catchphrase "Honey Boo-Boo" (which has since made her sufficiently famous to get her her own series) is undermined by the fact that she has a head that looks like a pork pie with a mouth. Luckily, her vile mother is on hand to brainwash her past this notable shortcoming and into doing her bidding. To this end, she helps lubricate the strings with Go-Go Juice. This is her own concoction, although from the effects it has it's fairly easy to guess at the ingredients, presumably Mountain Dew, Lucozade, Red Bull and a bag of sherbert. She was far from the only one filling their child with sugar backstage though. Virtually all the competitors are shovelling sweets and energy drinks down their gaping maws whilst their mother gives them a vajazzle. The elder children were all doing coke in the lavs.
It is difficult to know quite who the villain of this particular piece is when such bewildering acts of supervillany are coming from all directions. In the end I plumped for the organisers, but really I could just have stuck a pin in the screen. However, I don't buy into the complaints of people who say the worst thing about these pageants is that they sexualise children. Their argument seems to be predicated on the thought that everyone in the world is basically a dormant paedophile who just hasn't met the right child yet. Anyone who isn't wanking themselves a blue streak can tell how dazzlingly unpleasant this all is at a single glance. The outfits and the make-up and the dancing just serve to enhance the horror, rather than to lure you in.
Still, in many ways I'd rather have these preposterous melées of bouffant hair and bump 'n' grind dancing for the under-fives, than what is happening on television in a broader sense. Advertisers are particularly to blame for this, peddling the belief that everyone, everywhere must have a boyfriend or a girlfriend regardless of age, background, circumstances or species.
It's possible that I am just a deeply repressed bumpkin from Woodingdean (I am) and that my experience of growing up was atypical, but when I was of primary school age, boys and girls came from different worlds. We didn't have anything to do with one another and we didn't want to. I think it's possible that I didn't talk to a female human being my own age until I was about 9 years old. Nowadays that would get you a one-way trip to the Palookaville Autism Clinic, but at the time I don't think my experience was so rare.
Nowadays, everyone is pairing off. My niece, who is 6 in a fortnight, recently moved to a new town and started a new school. She already has a "new boyfriend". She works fast. I can only hope they use protection.
I don't want to turn into one of those people who spends their life moaning about the venality of the modern world and patiently (but furiously) explain how things were so much better in the olden days to anyone who will even pretend to be listening. But this is going to require some co-operation on the world's part, too. Namely, it has to stop being so shit.
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