Ladyfingers Hates

The High-Rising Terminal, or "Uptalking"

2011-09-07T05:40:00.001+02:00

You know it well. The Australian/Valley-Girl tic of making declarative statements sound like a question: "So I went to, like, the shop? And, like, saw this dress? And it was, like, so cute? I, like, had to buy it?"

Fuck. Off.

Intoning every sentence as a question makes you impossible to listen to or take seriously.

Don't be one of these apologist cunts who excuse this bad verbal habit saying it's a natural evolution of the language that somehow shows sensitivity to the listener by checking to see if they've understood. Because it isn't that, and even if it was, I'd call that "condescension".

The constant yoyoing of pitch is a way of making the listener pay attention, something like the whine of an annoying child or spoilt dog. It is narcissistic approval-seeking, and a petty, continuous attention-grab by the vacuous. It is a verbal probe in search of ego-stroking nodding heads and murmured assent. It removes every shade of intonation from proper elocution and turns your speech into the equivalent of a flashing advertisement. It is mentally taxing, forcing you to repeat mentally what you've just heard to parse the grammatical structure.

This used to be an exclusively pubescent female thing, but now you seemingly can't avoid it from people of any gender or age. But you still sound like a pubescent female to me and so I'm going to consciously accessorise you with a a small, pink, Swarovski-studded handbag and "Princess" T-shirt.

I am going to make an actual suggestion here. When the people you know and care about start to do this: Call them out on it.

I want teachers punishing children to prevent it becoming standard English. I want parents soaping mouths. I want friends playing games that involve inflicting pain on offenders.

Get to it.

Intra-Female Babytalk

2011-08-17T05:36:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, when strategising for my personal apocalypse (or when I'm stuck in a waiting room), I browse women's magazines.

There are definitely interesting things in ladymags. One can definitely learn a lot about how truly inadequate one is as a person when confronted with one-season outfits consisting of about one handkerchief's worth of material that cost more than a second-hand car. Sadly, I do think the sex advice subject matter well dried up in about 1982 because the truly interesting stuff, as covered by Dan Savage, is just going too far for most sponsors. What does prey on my mind though, when reading about womanly matters, is the language used.

Why do they write articles for adult women in babytalk? What is this paedolinguistic abomination that is female-targeted copywriting? Why are outfits for grown women "cute"? Why, after puberty, do you have still have "tummies"? Why, in a magazine that features tips on the act of fellatio, do you resort to infantile euphemisms for your breasts?

If they write it because it's proven by marketing people not to confront the readership, then, come on, harden the fuck up, ladies. That cheesecake-distended, orange-peeled abdominal sac of adipose tissue that's hanging over your pantihose isn't getting any smaller when you refer to it in the diminutive.

Post-War Architecture

2011-06-24T03:55:00.002+02:00

I recently had an argument with an architect friend about the merits of Brutalist Architecture. I argued that, as with all things, Sturgeon's Law applies and the vast bulk of it is an utter blight. Poured concrete fortresses designed specifically to upend the viewer's sense of space and mass ("exhilarate") do not make liveable environments.

You could argue that it represents a vision, that it is bold, striking, clear, clean, and has of late acquired a historical "warmth" through familiarity and association. You could argue those things, but then you could argue that quite a few nice people have been born as a result of the many rapes committed in the tangled concrete intestines of cheaply-erected poverty warehouses like the Trellick Tower.

I'm not saying that I don't see the stylistic boldness in the cantilevers, I'm just saying I don't want to be underneath them, because the impression of hanging weight above you is not "exhilarating" as much as it's immensely disconcerting on an animal level. This kind of thing makes for striking video game levels and sci-fi movie sets, but vast expanses of temporarily congealed grey slurry hanging above you in person are threatening. Additionally, the sheer finality and planar blankness of Brutalist design does not lend itself to anything much in the way of modification and softening but graffiti, something it attracts almost as well as the walls erected by political segregationists.

This particular dislike of mine forced me to examine my stance on contemporary architecture. Do I, in fact, like any of it? I had to think hard. I admit that I like looking at books of architecture. And I like how some of the more imposing designs look in carefully composed and lit photographs. But do I actually like any of the buildings in person? No, I actually don't.

Of particular vexation is the popularity of utterly talentless swine like Frank Gehry, who apparently think that building a rapidly decomposing structure composed of concave mirrors in a hot climate is a tenable architectural style. His Los Angeles Walt Disney Concert Hall is renowned by locals for creating a "death ray" that heats the surrounding pavement to sixty degrees Celsius and sunburning passersby.

I can't help but feel that something went horribly wrong with architecture after the Second World War. The understandable desire to leave history behind was acknowledged as a flaw by Post Modern architects, but their solution was not to move back and carry on from where the pre-Modern styles left off, but to tack hideous, infantile references to older styles onto the same asymmetrical building blocks. The funny thing is that I like challenging art, but challenging architecture is art you can't escape. Have you ever got hopelessly lost in one of these "adventurous", award-winning public facilities designed to escape the confines of the grid? This is bad design. There seems to be a genuine problem of architects needing to escape modish peer criticism instead of building something likeable.

Of late I've noticed that materials like stainless steel and stone have made a pleasing comeback here and there, but I still haven't seen a new building that looks remotely inviting. Every time I see a small, humble old house made of carefully cut stone with lumpy windows next to a towering robot factory, I can't help wondering if the architect in question felt like a bully when observing the contrast himself.

I hope he did.

Blue LEDs on Everything

2011-04-01T02:52:00.002+02:00

Let me explain this one: an LED is a light-emitting diode, and is familiar to most people in the form of the tiny blinkenlights festooning nearly every gadget ever made. As it happens, blue LEDs were a serious technological challenge and not available until fairly recently. The moment they became available it sparked a technological revolution as suddenly white light was available from these tiny, extremely economical bulbs, and technologies like Blu-ray could exist. This is a truly great thing, and I therefore love blue LEDs.

The problem is that every gadget manufacturer simultaneously suddenly saw the popular appeal of the intense blue they produced, and now one almost cannot buy a gadget without the things on the front of the device. Why is this a problem? Why has it elicited my hatred? Because they are too fucking bright for their actual purpose and do not inherently communicate anything.

This is very simple. Green means "on", orange means "standby", "charging" or "processing" and red means "off". It's a scheme that has worked for ages and is still employed by responsible manufacturers because everyone who lives near a road with a traffic light understands it.

But now nearly every device has a bloody blue-violet eyeball-tanner instead of a proper status LED. This is particularly galling on audio/video components, where, when watching a movie late at night, it is difficult to see low-level detail on your TV screen because you are blinded by the power lights on your gear rack. I have a USB wall charger that I bought specifically to charge things overnight without the sound of a computer intruding on my precious sleep, and the stupid blue LED on the thing is so damn bright that it's actually possible to read in bed with it on.

Are we all over this new colour yet? I am.

"Cute" as an All-Purpose Superlative

2010-07-13T11:41:00.006+02:00

I'm sorry, ladies (and twee gentlemen), but I can't take you very seriously when everything you like from kittens, to clothes to shirtless firemen apparently triggers some giggly maternal reflex.

Please try to emulate a semblance of intellectual worth by using more specifically expressive words so we have insight into why you like the things you like and stop wasting our semantic attention with what amounts to a satisfied grunt, devaluing yet another word.

The New Infantilism

2010-02-28T05:34:00.001+02:00

I'll admit that I'm something of a child. I like poring over gadgets, cars, helicopters and fighter jets, and I regularly make a detour past the toy section to see if there are any satisfying tiny versions of real machines I can't otherwise afford to own. I have told the occasional cashier that my purchase is a gift for a younger relative. I'm not proud of it. I'm vaguely concerned that someone's going to call the cops on the sinister adult male figure lurking in the toyshop fondling the blisterpacks.

All this said, I'm beginning to find the current trend towards an infantile iconography of style really worrying. You must have noticed it. Those overweening Apple ads with their twinkly, soothing, neo-folkie lullabies. The unbearably twee soundtrack of "Juno", featuring Kimya Dawson's glibly chirpy vocal stylings. The children's-chorus-escapee quacking of Joanna Newsom. The adult-hipster-targeted "Where the Wild Things Are" with hipster-approved soundtrack. Hello Kitty vibrators. Hell, Hello Kitty everything, snapped up in bucketloads by everyone from playful executives trying to cutesy up their thronerooms to goth princesses hoping to up their lolita quotient. The rehashing of toy-hocking 1980s cartoons as feature films. The explosion of shops selling cupcakes. Women's fashion reincorporating the babydoll dress, the empire line and gathering of toddlers' party dresses. The electric guitar has been usurped by the glockenspiel.

What's going on here?

I think we've got to the point where we're so far up our own collective recta in inoffensiveness that we seek to couch our beast urgings in unthreatening mock-playfulness. Cute is the new sexy, and it's fucking repulsive. It's repulsive on 21 year-olds who don't need to look any younger. It's repulsive on 40 year-olds who are fooling no-one. It's repulsive when it's megacorporations like Apple infiltrating the scene like John-Wayne Gacy in his clown-suit infiltrating a playground.

Is it because you all started sharing playlists and discovered that guilty pleasures were the new sophistication?

Stop it.

Hair-Shirt Hamburgers

2009-10-14T04:46:00.005+02:00

It's interesting how the laws of form and function do not apply to gourmet food. Gourmet hamburgers, in their attempt to appear to be a kind of handheld cornucopia, are almost impossible to eat with your hands. So much produce spills out of them while you eat that you need a knife and fork to clear your plate. The worst part, however, is the near insistence on the use of hard, crusty rolls.

Crusty rolls are the product of a mentality that regards food as better the more physically punishing it is to consume. Hearty chunks of fibre stuck inextricably in your teeth, gums abraded near to bleeding by the carborundum crust, flour all over your face and clothes, and filling squeezed out the back due to the rigidity of the fucking thing. Texture is fine and dandy, but sandwich something soft between two crackers and see if it stays there when you bite into the little bellows you've just created. And it's nearly impossible to tear puffy wholewheat rolls apart without a grimacing, messy gymnastics routine.

Also, whoever gave trendy eateries the suggestion that it was a good idea to replace lettuce with rocket deserves a herbal enema administered with a fucking firehose, although I suspect they'd enjoy that. When the garmish overpowers the flavour of the patty and sauce, your hamburger has failed.

Self-Declared Feminists

2009-10-08T08:43:00.002+02:00

I dislike the reactionary backlash against feminism, as if all feminists were basically Andrea Dworkin, sharpening their knives for the next pair of hapless testicles. I find that the kind of person who is quick to roll his (or her) eyes at feminism, as if the word were somehow in-and-of-itself distasteful, usually has a few words lined up waiting to quickly reveal their prejudices. Much the same as "I'm not racist, but..." means "I'm a huge racist, and..."

Before we continue, I'll quickly spare you the effort of trying to gauge what kind of sexist I am. If you're the kind of person who regularly comments on sites like Jezebel and Feministing, you can skip the rest of this because you already made up your mind when you read the title.

In short, I'm a misanthropic, egalitarian sexist. There are many, many things I dislike about women in general, and there are many, many things I dislike about men in general. Listing the things I hate about men is pointless, basically, because most of civilised society generally already hates loud, drunken, rapine, violent boors. I don't prejudge women or assume them to be less competent or rational than men at any given enterprise, since I don't think most fellows are nearly as competent or rational as they think they are either. I wholeheartedly embrace the rejection of torturous fashion standards. I already wrote nice long lists of the things I hate about both genders, so if you're interested, you can search for them.

If you're thinking "oh, he's about to launch into some tired tirade about 'reverse sexism'..." I assure you, I'm not. I have no issue whatsoever with women standing up for their rights. I mean, someone has to and it's definitely not going to be me. It's not my place to speak for your gender and, more importantly, I'm a lazy bastard.

So, no, I don't hate feminists, I hate self-declared feminists. I like women who take the time to think objectively and rationally about gender roles, or better yet, are by their nature completely oblivious and simply fail to observe them. Pursuing interests regardless of gender makes you an interesting person. Self-declared feminists, however, are excruciatingly fucking boring.

I define a self-declared feminist as a person who introduces themselves, and their every action, as feminist. Written a book about ladies? Feminist book! Written a poem about men? Feminist poem! Sing annoyingly twee little songs about racy topics? Feminist singer-songwriter! Put on some ghastly, ill-considered outfit? Feminist chic! Flogging crocheted toilet cosies on Etsy? Feminist handicraft!

And they're not content with calling their own things feminist, either. Helen Gurley Brown—in my humble opinion the absolute fucking postergirl for the exploitation of feminine insecurity—is rich as Croesus, so according to some of this lot she's a feminist icon because dagnabbit, she did it her way. She is, to use a word that I can barely type without retching, "empowered". I know she's by no means a universal feminist icon, but the unconditional rah-rah cheerleaders I'm talking about here think women can do no wrong. Except to disagree with them, at which point they are simply "unenlightened". The motto, it seems, is feminist first, critical thinking second.

In between relating everything they like to their political agenda (boring...) they'll make damned sure to let you know how things they dislike relate to it too (also boring). Oh, it's true, rape is bad. And female genital mutilation, too. Also wifebeating. Glass ceilings, an unfortunate situation. Pay disparity? Yep, unfair. Patriarchal hegemony is a bitch, I know. I don't like being excluded from the boys' club either, they've got some great stuff in there. No, I really don't know how it feels to be looked at like a piece of meat, even though I really wish somebody would at least occasionally look at me like that. We all fucking know this by now, you utter fucking bores.

If you're caught in their headlights, whatever you do, don't try to lighten the mood with an appropriately inappropriate joke*. Don't try engage them in sincere debate, either; they live for nothing else. And dear Lucifer, don't impugn the ambit of their agenda as suspiciously self-interested, they've got a whole bunch of canned answers ready for that one.

The problem with this type of person is that in their opinion debating against them is debating against all women everywhere, and your motives stem from your unconscious desire to maintain the sexist status quo. You are motivated by ignorance rather than, say, your nagging belief that their endless academically-endorsed (who else would employ them?) rhetoric is setting back their cause.

It's no wonder the world seems so oppressive to self-declared feminists. It's because they're so monomaniacal and humourless that nobody else can fucking stand to be near them. They are, to a grrl, insufferably sanctimonious prigs**.

*How many college chicks does it take to change a lightbulb?
It's college women, and it's not funny.

**Although maybe "prigs" just isn't strong enough. I suppose you could rightfully call them "complete cunts" in the way George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama are complete cunts, but it's important that you never, ever call a self-declared feminist a cunt. Pick a nice gender-neutral epithet like "arsehole".

Slow Walkers

2009-05-16T22:08:00.002+02:00

I think this is a fairly universal annoyance. I mean, with only one hour for lunch who wants to lose five minutes to watching somebody shuffle in front of them?

What I don't understand is how people actually manage to walk as slowly as they do. In situations where I am unable to overtake the person due to being in some kind of pavement chicane section, I find it almost impossible to keep the same pace without actually stopping every few steps. Some offenders are old, which is forgivable. Some are female, usually hobbled by ridiculous heels. And then there's the extra jolly, cuddly folk. Aren't you in a hurry to get to your sugared-lard sandwich buckets, you heavy-breathing land-whales?

Of all these, the worst variety is The Wanderer, the one who veers all over the pavement, stymying your attempts to get ahead. It's too early to be drunk, isn't it? No, actually the worst variety is The Cork. You know this one, they bump into someone they haven't seen for fifteen minutes and just have to stop at the end of the escalator or the narrowest point in the thoroughfare and do that keening, toothy-grimaced greeting that goes with the pseudo-European double hug.

Since it now seems de rigueur for killjoy city planners to divide the streets into cycle lanes, can you fuckers spare a minute and paint a line on the pavement? A wide, slow lane for wide, slow people and the narrow fast lane for people who don't apparently have their ankles chained together.

Also, I suggest giving people in wheelchairs harpoons. What they can catch, they can eat.

Hipsters, BoingBoing and "Geek Chic"

2009-04-04T08:11:00.002+02:00

Since it's an easy pack-bonding ritual for the vapid and less-attractive to deride the differently vapid, fit and moneyed, it's now advisable to affect a codified ugliness to dispel "cred"-diluting accusations of alpha-humanity.

If you're one of these smug imbeciles who think it's clever to have an "ironic" tattoo to parody people with "serious" tattoos then I suggest you consider the irony of the act of permanently, painfully and expensively branding yourself as a parodist of the trendy. You've allowed yourself to be visually defined only in relationship to the things you are opposed to. You follow a stylistic iconography as fickly trendy as high-street fashion. You are the prisoner who spits at the wardens while he whips himself unconscious.

In this new subculture so careful to avoid the subculture label, women identify themselves as anti-bimbos with chunky spectacles, tattoos, piercings, blue-black bangs and kittenish, figure-hugging thrift-store finds, while men are allowed to disguise their leering misogyny by fawning over women who believe that prurience is obviated by props. While it is considered seemly as one of the enlightened to sneer at women who dress up as cheerleaders (or simply strip naked) and spread their labia for male inspection, we are supposed to believe that dressing up as a burlesque performer, punk chick or "geek"-approved fictional character and spreading your labia is somehow "empowering" or "edgy".

Witness for instance the hipster-canonical blog BoingBoing's tenuous relationship with "enlightened" sexuality. Firstly, in Xeni Jardin's now-regretted embrace of the almost overpoweringly repulsive, chunky-spectacled Violet Blue - a relationship which ended in their eventual expunging of any record of her when she finally crossed the line from geek to gauche. Secondly, in poster Mark Frauenfelder's apparently well-received fixation with nubile young women in tight, ironically-screen-printed T-shirts playing ukuleles and singing beguilingly on YouTube.

Ladies, here's a clue for you: fuzz-headed, chunky-spectacled men saying "that's so cute!" is exactly the same as muscled, tanned gorillas saying "yo, I want to fuck that."

Human nature is universal, and our behaviours remain consistent in type if not degree. Surrounding yourself with like-minded apes only disguises your objectionable, base primate nature from people from people who believe the disguise works.

I have a proposition. I hate swaggering, muscled cocks as much as anyone, but I propose that we marshal them to perform random inspections of chunky spectacles. Upon discovering a fake lens, they are to snap the frames and administer a nose-breaking fist to the face. The we'll let the goths and metalheads slam their spiky boots into your torso as revenge until you bloodily cough up your boutique chai and spray your "hilarious" boxers with the faecal matter you pretend doesn't smell.

"Bouncing Baby"

2009-03-20T06:12:00.002+02:00

Why is it required that this phrase is used when announcing someone's latest veiny loin-extrusion? Is this some long-written social statute?

"Jack and Jill McBreeder are now the proud parents of a bouncing baby boy."

This never sounds cute or even remotely plausible. It's a newborn. It's lying flailing and screaming in a puddle of its own excreta. Hell, even if you dropped a newborn, it'd be unlikely to bounce. Unless you dropped it onto a trampoline, I'll concede, but I don't think very many new parents do this and if they did, I doubt they'd want it announced.

Is it the buh-buh alliteration that you like? Why don't you just cave and say it in full-on baby-talk to more properly satisfy your insufferable fawning urge.

Randomly-Sized AV Components

2009-03-12T01:38:00.003+02:00

It's nice how devices are getting smaller and cables are being reduced to single-strand digital thoroughfares (although HDCP is a joke) but whatever happened to devices all having the same area with big rubber feet to allow breathing when stacked?

My desk could have one unsightly stack of components, but because nothing stacks any more, it now has five. The concession to the lack of vertical stacking options is to package a little foot to flip the device on its side. Or be clever and charge extra for it. And a curved top? Fuck you, Sony.

And if you do flip these devices on their side, you have to look at the hideous Death Star underside of the thing with all its miserable warning labels, authenticity certificates and ugly ventilation.

And, when gadgets were stacked, the cables were all safely hidden behind them. Now the back edge of my table looks like a plastic-coated liana infestation; a veritable hammock of flex.

Has an entire generation of designers somehow managed to grow up with neither Lego nor Meccano? Or are they secretly dreaming of the day when their little box generates some kind of aura that drives every other thing out of the room so that it becomes a minimalist, Cupertino-approved shop display?

Give me back my rackmount options, you chunky-spectacled cunts.

Spray Tans

2009-01-27T10:12:00.002+02:00

Somewhere in the distant past, a tan indicated that you were too poor to work indoors. Later when the ubiquity of steam power meant everybody worked indoors to pay for their bosses' steam-powered leisure cruises to warmer climes, a tan indicated you were rich enough to go overseas.

It's particulary strange to me that of all the world's racial groups, the one who specifically clings to skin colour as a marker of its innate superiority is the one that believes that pale skin looks "unhealthy". You know what looks unhealthy? Premature aging and skin cancer, which is what happens when you tan. Tanning doesn't cause skin damage, tanning is skin damage. It's your skin's equivalent to a good, hearty, post-overindulgence vomit. But, if you must spend time with all the mad dogs and Englishmen, then a tan is hard to avoid, so it's understandable. Not a good, healthy look - in fact your skin looks like the leather of an old suitcase - but hey, you've got do to what you've got to do.

Now, all this said, it's obvious that I'm in favour of skin in its natural, healthy state. But, if healthy is not an option because you like being outdoors, then at least natural in terms of your skin looking like actual, tanned human skin is preferable to the revolting shade of pumpkin that is now fashionable amongst bleach-blondes the world over.

"Bronzer", they call it. "Instant tan".

You look like an oompaloompa, you fucking idiot. Your skin bears no resemblance to human skin. You are not brown, you are orange.

What makes it worse is that because you, having long since dedicated yourself to cosmetic artifice, fail to see that the lip gloss and eye makeup you picked for your prior, slightly more natural state simply does not work with your newfound amber complexion. And it's not just the bad makeup, spray tans do not penetrate like light. The apparent stencil effect of the pink edges of your eyelids lead to the illusion that you're wearing a vermilion latex mask, amplifying the unnaturalness to an almost mesmerising level of awfulness.

What I don't understand is how this look has become popular. Everyone I know - including people I dislike and don't agree with on anything beyond the day's weather - thinks that this chemical abomination looks ridiculous. There's practically an entire genre of insults out there about how terrible it looks, even in the crappy magazines you allow to dictate your eating disorders. Who exactly is suggesting you do it? Is there some shriveled, leathery old bat bullying you about how pale you look?

A tip: if your hair is lighter than your skin, you have gone too fucking far.

The Mainstreaming of Tattoos

2008-09-28T10:41:00.006+02:00

This is a dangerous topic for me to write about because I know and love far too many people with tattoos not to offend anyone close to me. But I'm going to write about it anyway.

There are a number of things that annoy me about the proliferation of tattoos. Not all tattoos, mind you. Some people make very clear and very significant statements with their tattoos. These are scary people.

Firstly, tattoos are ugly. Really, really fucking ugly. All of them. Even yours. You may beg to differ, but then this was once the point of tattooing, confrontational ugliness. That's why they were the sole preserve of the violent: the underbelly and the warrior. Maoris and Yakuza have at least had a few hundred years to develop their design ethic, you have a catalogue or at best a third attempt at improving your own scrawl. I don't even have a problem with making ugliness a personal stylistic affectation. In that regard, I actually enjoy the aesthetic variety that results from people shucking conventional taste. The problem is that the fact of their ugliness has failed to dawn on most of their wearers. No, you once-gorgeous leggy gazelle, your left buttock dolphin is not cute. It's a bumper sticker on a Jaguar. It's a graffito on a cathedral. It's fluorescent highlighter on an illuminated manuscript. Feel free to make that choice with your body, but don't expect me not to call it vandalism. No tattoo is as beautiful as the human body and the combination is not the sum of its parts: it's the average.

Secondly? Pretentiousness. You are not Chinese. You don't speak Chinese. Why is a Chinese ideogram that most likely means "fried noodle" more deep and meaningful than the same word (or at leat the word you intended) in your own language? Do you think that inscrutable foreign things are automatically magical? You are conflating being mystified with mystical, you stupid fucking idiot. You are ultimately deeply ordinary. You are a middle class westerner. You have an ordinary job, an ordinary house or apartment and an ordinary retirement plan. What does your tattoo say about you, exactly? That you're so cuh-razy you went out and... got a tattoo? Bravo, you and every other semi-suburban imaginary class warrior wearing long sleeves in summer so as not to rock the office boat. How deeply radical of you to wear the uniform of family-safe radicals everywhere.

Third: poor taste. I don't mind kitsch. Kitsch is a the comfortably trite and nostalgic, and we all need a bit of that from time to time. But your once-favourite ironic-retro cartoon character stretching and fading on your pimpled right deltoid is not comforting. It is the ticking clock of your spiritual and biological doom. Your self-designed tribute to your favourite hobby or animal may, in fact, be art - it's just really bad art. I partly blame the internet-aggravated society of unconditional self-esteem and unwarranted self importance for you surrounding yourself with a clique that only ever echoes your own sentiments and has you convinced that your opinions and tastes are both impeccable, as opposed to being the childish crosshatched line art adorning the back pages of schoolbooks everywhere. And the guy who works the gun, bless him, is Leonardo. That's why he works at a tattoo parlour.

Fourth. Willfully addled, dishonest justifications that do you no credit. You've always wanted a tattoo? Really? You're now what? Thirty? It's not a big coincidence that you're only now getting one and your tamely edgy social echo-box all got tagged over the last year or so.

It's a fad. It'll end. I'll be right and you'll be out the price of the laser therapy you need to remove your distorted pelvic butterfly. The one that appears to be a recently hatched bug flying out of your cunt.

The Middle

2008-09-27T08:20:00.002+02:00

I don't believe in democracy.

It's not that I don't believe it works (although I don't entirely trust mob logic); I don't believe it exists. Disgruntled voters whose party lost always moan about the sad current state of affairs being a product of the stupidity of the average person. This theoretical everyman is strangely never them. What they fail to realise is that when both left and right pretend to balance the pretend seesaw, they only ever add more weight and the pivot sinks or the beam snaps.

Voting does nothing. Are we so gullible that we believe that the Hobson's choice we are offered at the polls is a representative product of our collective beliefs? The world is owned - yes: owned - by a tiny economic and political elite that answer to no-one but their shareholders. And not even them lately. Now they just pretend they have more money to keep their business afloat.

Let's pretend that the parties that we're presented are actually competing for our ballots to attain power instead of merely accruing it and moving it around. I know, I know! I could barely type that shaking from the hilarity. But humour me. Don't you find it amazing how each party "checks and balances" the other and we end up deeper in it every year? We have the left arguing for social freedom, the right arguing for economic freedom, and we get what, exactly? CCTV everywhere, spooks in the communications networks, regulations to prevent children learning about anything that might offend their parents, secret prisons dotting the globe and a neverending series of high-minded wars on nouns and hapless foreigners. This machine operates covertly and independently of party politics, and it's in nobody powerful's interest to dismantle it; they merely jostle for a turn at the controls.

Some people who are marginally aware of this believe that you can ultimately vote with your wallet. No, you can't. The free, organic local enterprise you love is based on and pays insurance, rent, rates and tax to the same Leviathan that doles out sweetheart deals, bailouts and subsidies to the faceless megacorporations we all love to hate. There is no escape. You are bought and sold like cattle. Resistance is not only futile, it's a depressing joke.

Between left and right is moderate?

Moderate what?

The Left

2008-09-27T08:20:00.001+02:00

While the right is a safe, unchallenging home to inbred, subhuman filth of the lowest order, the left, with all its vaunted intellect and moral fury, can't even beat them.

I find the right's complaints of the left's elitism tiresome, but by Satan, I find the left's sanctimony, naïveté and complete lack of self-awareness and perspective almost stupefying. Give some pampered middle-class buffoon a degree with all the instructive value of a few days in an encyclopaedia and all of a sudden they're Mohandas Gandhi and you with your ill-gotten paycheque are a machine gunner at Auschwitz.

I love George Orwell, but I remember someone saying that he couldn't blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry. So it is with the modern left. While I feel deeply concerned about the plight of individuals in whichever abject demographic the media feels is profitable to feature in a shocking, award-winning exposé, I really don't I'm morally superior because of it. It doesn't keep me up at night for the same reason that the thermal death of the universe doesn't: there's nothing I can realistically do about it.

Every solution the left offers to assuage their overactive consciences is window dressing. The Kyoto protocol will merely shift the location of the offending smokestacks. Recycling paper causes more pollution than growing and cutting down trees. The lovely organic process of paper manufacture uses more energy than plastic. Growing fuel crops starves children, puppies and kittens. Reducing consumption of imported goods to either protect local jobs or wash hands of sweatshops results in the collapse of developing economies. The frog-eyed infants of Africa that were saved by Band Aid's musings on their awareness of a western holiday are now fully-grown, heavily-armed, rapine thugs macheteing their way to a brighter future free of labia minora, clitorides and other, slightly different Africans.

I also do not think that privileged people are automatically morally inferior. I am very, painfully aware of the level of privilege I am lucky to have been born into, and I am aware that it's fairly near the top of a voracious economic ecology. I call this "luck", and I'm honest enough to believe that I'm so far from even beginning to relate to the people at the bottom of the food chain that I'm not going to pretend I have any empathy for them. I've worn out that gland and it didn't do me or them any good.

The left loves nothing more than to champion the cause of the working man, except perhaps cringeing at his unspeakably vulgar McMansion and Hummer when he makes it into their suburban enclave.

The left is also conscientiously oblivious of the lunatics that populate its fringes. Just like their analogues on the right, the left aggressively stifles dissent. I don't like the right's dismissive catchphrases like "feminazis" or "treehuggers", but it would be nice if the sanctimonious left kicked some of its hectoring embarrassments out of the flock for a change. Where the right has its Hitlers and Pinochets, the left has its Maos And Stalins. And yes, during the cultural revolution and the five year plans, the left did actually support the heroic efforts of Mao and Stalin, much to the chagrin of the few Chinese and Russians who managed to get out of their respective death farms.

The west is guilty of many horrors, to be sure, but what the left in all its handwringing and self-loathing sometimes forgets is that we at least record them, pay lip-service to feeling bad about them and even make token restitution on occasion. We could do better, but don't be asinine and call us the worst.

Where once the left fought against slavery, Apartheid and the divine right of kings, and for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, women's suffrage and the right to abortion, it now fights against simple happiness. Where they once fought against unfair laws, they now fight to legislate their current version of fairness with ever more picayune regulations. Their ideal world consists of a medicated-to-sexlessness, beige-on-grey, heavily-padded cell supervised by an omniscient, omnipotent, entirely benevolent state that protects us from the thoughts of others by euphemising things to obscurity.

I'd gladly pay more tax to keep them locked in it.

The Right

2008-09-27T08:19:00.000+02:00

I don't disagree with the right's purported ideals of self-determination, reduced government and rugged individualism. Except they don't actually believe in those things.

The right will insist that it wants the state out of its homes, churches and gunlockers but is ever-so-willing to place surveillance cameras in every bedroom, mosque and uterus.

The right's particular notion of "conservatism" is not a conservative application of state fiat, but rather a belief in conserving an entirely mythical golden age when man was free, strong-jawed and righteous.

I have always maintained that idiocy is evenly spread amongst races, creeds and sexes, but I think it's fair to say that certain groups of people do band together over a common idiotic cause. It's not fair (or even accurate) to call everyone on the right racists, sexists, homophobes, bigots, religious zealots, jingo nationalists, creationists, fascists, warmongers, reactionaries and philistines, but I do think it's fair to point out that most racists, sexists, homophobes, bigots, religious zealots, jingo nationalists, creationists, fascists, warmongers, reactionaries and philistines are in actual fact right wing.

The right believe that they are under siege from everybody who is not like them. Consequently, they blindly follow and excuse the failings of every political candidate who is "like them".

I suppose that it's surprising in retrospect that I never bothered to rant about the Bush administration now that it's finally, mercfully drawing to a close. Despite their spectacular incompetence and naked fascism, I don't find them particularly historically exceptional. If you want borderline democide and malfeasance from a US administration, Nixon and Kissinger are the fellows you're after. To be fair, there has never been a good president, and pointing out the particular failings of this particular gang of Nazis is, firstly: too easy, secondly: hackneyed, and thirdly: usually done in rampant ignorance of the failings of their competition.

But...

George Walker Bush plays up his down-home, homily-chawing folksiness to appeal to ignorant, atavistic backwater hicks (I'm a snob) because US electoral law grants backwater hicks more power than they deserve. What's depressing is that it works.

Bush is the blue-blooded son of a New England, Mayflower-landed political dynasty that's already had a president in the family. His grandfather was Adolf Hitler's American banker. He's a spoilt, coke-snorting, dry-drunk brat who poisoned every enterprise he was handed by his festering brood. He has benefited from every privilege available to a human being, including a daddy-bought ticket out of the conscription the right so adamantly believe is a noble patriotic duty. I suspect - and have read things that confirm - that even his rural twang shifts depending on who's in the room. Yet all this oligarch has to do is pose for some ranch-wranglin' photo ops, mangle some English and he has the hicks in his pocket.

You can be sure that if any viable candidate ever rose from actual humble stock, bettering himself through diligence and intellect (this never happens; it's all dynasties), the right would decry him as an "elitist", as though their particular brand of plutocrat didn't regard them as means to a cynical end. Somewhat amusingly, the right - who distrust uppity intellectuals and the "liberal elite" - are quick to point out that their boy is a Yale graduate when his glaringly apparent mental retardation is brought up. I mean, if you're going to be deluded, at least be consistent.

Like I said: it's depressing that it works.

Harley-Davidsons

2008-03-29T16:17:00.001+02:00

I really wouldn't care about these slabs of rudimentary ironmongery expensively packaged as a ticket to the American spirit were it not for the sheer obnoxiousness exhibited by their attendant subculture. The riders are nearly always middle-aged-because the bikes are fantastically overpriced-and so the leather gear tends to do to their sagging flesh what string does to ham.

I won't begrudge a person their right to dress like a twit (I mean, I wear black and a stetson...) but the noise... the fucking four-stroke flatulence that these male-menopausal cunts belch from their unsilenced tailpipes is so jarring that I actually become angry when they pass me by. It's not so much a cry for attention as an on-the-floor, legs-kicking, snot-nosed tantrum.

I suppose that one of these people will try to convince me in Harley Marketing Department-approved vernacular that the experience of the phallus-substitute throbbing between one's legs is unutterably sublime, but I say "fuck you", Harley Riders.

I don't recommend enforced noise regulation on the bikes, but rather that the exhaust pipes are required to terminate in front of the rider's face. On the open road I can imagine that the wind reduces some of the "experience" for the fucker on the bike, so I say let them suck not only on their zero-performance racket but also their carbon monoxide. Perhaps the combined deafness and drowsiness will increase the likelihood of their being T-boned by a large truck.

"Autorun"

2008-01-24T22:03:00.000+02:00

No, I don't want to install your shitty spyware application, you presumptuous motherfucker.

"Urban"

2008-01-14T11:47:00.000+02:00

Ah, I see you're aware of fashion trends. Are you perchance from an area inhabited by human beings other than yourself?

I suppose that somehow labelling your overpriced tat (which is the same as the tat in the megafranchise branches in all the small towns not "scene" enough to be "urban") gives it "street" "cred".

From what I can surmise, "urban" means tattooed young men in saggy trousers with purposely tousled hair and a pair of white earbuds attached to an iPod full of forgettable irony. Also, lots of graphic design with mock-stencil overspray motifs. Young women dressed much like the young men. Vandalism and flyers with a "clever" set of references to expletives and blasphemies that nowadays offend only the most pious of churchgoers.

Except that now, everything aimed at school-leaving thumbsuckers destined for a career in marketing or finance looks like this. Unless you're "emo" and then you just look worse.

If you halfwitted fucks have decided that "urban" is your secret term for "young", I'd suggest you direct your attention to the fat old bastards that are putting underpaid little clones of you into their neo-minimalist boutiques to sell you a downpayment on their next private jet.

I'd end this with some kind of "urban" buzzword, but I have long since stopped paying attention to those. The intelligent individual prefers cogent erudition to verbal shibboleths, you utter hopeless cunts.

Please - please - retire this word.

The Loudness War

2007-12-21T11:05:00.000+02:00

Since about 1992, CDs have sounded fucking terrible.

This isn't because I'm an old fogey who only likes old music (although I'll admit that's a small factor...) but because modern CDs have no dynamic range.

Dynamic range, in layman's terms, is the potential a medium or player has to resolve changes in volume. To explain, imagine an orchestra playing. There's silence, there's the sound of a triangle, and there's the sound of the entire orchestra playing at full volume. A CD is almost capable of recording that entire gamut of volume. Very soft to very loud. This makes music move. A quiet piece can swell to vast, overpowering crescendo and shake the rafters and raise your neck hairs.

Not anymore.

The recording industry (which is a marketing department, not a group of musicians or engineers) is competing to make every CD sound as loud as possible, which means that all the soft sounds are now as loud as the loud sounds.

This is immensely stupid.

Observe:

The top track is a song by Cranes called Adrift. It is by no means a quiet song. Those whiskery bits are drum hits. Notice how loud they are in comparison to all the other instruments. They jump out of the track. The drums stop, and then an absolutely vast howl of distorted guitar and fortissimo bass starts to roar, which you can see as two big chunks of sound. Even though it's very loud (listen to the track: it's LOUD), the drums still have room to thwack out a pounding
rhythm.

The bottom track is Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) by The Arcade Fire. Not a very loud song if you go by instrumentation. By modern standards, this is relatively restrained, but notice how there is never any variation in volume once the song starts. The drums are as loud as everything else. No matter what part of the song you're in, it's the same fucking volume. The net effect? I turn the volume down to escape the constant fucking shouting despite the fact that I really like the song.

You know how ads on TV are so loud that you have to quickly turn down the volume? Same thing. It's called dynamic range compression.

This is a fuckwitted practice. It makes music lifeless, static, unlistenable, fatiguing and in the worst cases (quite a few recordings lately), actually causes a phenomenon called "clipping" where the tops of the waveforms are sliced off, resulting in a shitty crackling sound where there should be music. This not only sounds abominable, it can damage your amplifier and speakers.

The worst part is that the cunts in the recording industry are now going back and "remastering" older works. Imagine Stairway to Heaven with an intro as loud as the climax. That would be idiotic, right? Notice how very reissue of every album seems louder. Except it isn't: they've simply chopped off the loud bits to make the soft bits louder. It doesn't even matter what the artists or engineers recorded, the CD gets "fixed" before it reaches the shops.

The recording industry has decided that since you like a bit of salt, they're going to screw off the cap and tip the entire fucking cruet on your meal.

The recording industry has decided that since you enjoy driving fast, they're going to bolt your accelerator pedal all the way fucking down for you.

Thank you, recording industry, for further removing any incentive to pay for music.

Spyware / Adware / Malware / Trojan / Virus / Rootkit Coders & Their Pals: Microsoft & the DMCA

2007-09-18T22:13:00.000+02:00

I like to believe sometimes that security threats are a kind of eugenic predator on the digital savanna that, in the long run, acts as a Darwinian selector and results in better and safer operating systems for everybody.

But they don't, because the only operating systems they tend to affect are created by Microsoft, who are cunts, and decide to limit problems by limiting user options. This creates a situation where only people who are able to hack Microsoft products are able to really effect change on the operating system. The old "if guns are outlawed only outlaws have guns" argument.

I recently bought a new computer. Within one day of using it, going online only to get an update for Internet Explorer, the latest Service Pack, the latest version of Firefox and pick up a few of the latest versions of my favourite security programs, I had a trojan that constantly popped up browser windows hocking me anti-spyware and antivirus software, and keylogging me and sending my info to the scumfucking, cocksucking, arsehole twats who were trying to sell it to me. I investigated their product and discovered that a class action suit is being filed, but it boggles the mind that the bastards aren't in jail already for invading user privacy, since the trojan has their company name on it.

What made the situation fantastically worse is that these clever chaps, not being scrupulous, wrote code that made Windows refuse me permission to terminate the trojan process and delete the file. I tried every fix available, but this particular gremlin mutates, and so none worked and I had to format and start over.

You know why the fixes don't really work? Because nobody playing by the rules can write software that does the necessary actions, because Microsoft has the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protecting their "secrets". The secrets all the hackers already know. Yes, even violating the DMCA for reasons of protecting one's own security is punishable. No, really: your tax money will pay for the jackboots to kick down your door because Microsoft and their ilk don't trust you to do the job that they won't.

The Academy Awards

2007-02-26T21:12:00.000+02:00

Watching the Oscars is like watching a fat old man masturbate while cooing over his reflection.

Wait...

Watching the Oscars, for all intents and purposes, is actually watching a fat old man masturbate while cooing over his reflection. Just subsitute "fat old man" with "the American film industry". Actually, you needn't even bother with the substitution. I suspect that throughout Beverly Hills is a passel of quivering, liver-spotted, senile voluptuaries who scream like copulating hogs for more Swarovski-encrusted bribes from each film's award appeal committee.

Let's knock this into your thick fucking skulls.

The Academy Awards is a semen-encrusted pimp slapping his favourite bitch on the arse after a free privilege-fuck.

The Academy Awards is dog that eats its own faeces, vomits it up, eats it again, and then licks your face.

The Academy Awards is an obese, filthy, gurgling mental deficient recording his own braying on a Fisher Price cassette deck. He then sits on you, laughing, and plays the tinny screech into your ear.

For fuck's sake: Titanic won. Titanic. That three hour gauntlet of hackneyed sanctification of the working classes that took such special delight in their screaming deaths and associated merchandising. The movie that had a shrieking fucking Celine Dion song relentlessly promoting it on the radio (that other stooge of the entertainment industry) for over a year.

If you consider the attentions of the Academy a reliable indicator of a film's quality, you are a dupe. A patsy. A gull.

Enjoy the glamour.

Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T20:46:00.000+02:00

I'm not going to stoop to cliché and bash Valentine's Day for being tacky and commercial, because everyone hates that. It's done, it's been said.

Instead, I'm going to draw your attention to something more insidious.

Have you ever noticed how inescapably female the whole aesthetic of Valentine's Day is? As though Love & Romance™ was solely the province of women. I'm not going to suggest that women exert any less effort than men selecting their V.D. (coincidence?) gifts than men. That would be churlish. But I've certainly never seen a Valentine's Day campaign marketing, say, a nice, thoughtful bottle of Scotch and a subscription to Chainsaw Weekly. It's all rings, perfume, rom-coms, poetry, jewellery, sweets, chocolates, lingerie, plush toys, cards and flowers. Do men not deserve Valentine's logistics? Is it something that is assumed to happen by default?

You have to wonder what this implies. We're all familiar with the "amusing" sexist stereotype of men being insensitive dunderheads requiring instruction as to what gifts to select. And women being faultlessly intuitive and nurturing, suffering their idiot suitor's wretched attempts with kind patience.

Are we really still slaves to the tired spectacle of men having to present pleasing offerings to win the affections of their desired receptacle?

Haven't we moved on at all?

I don't claim to understand women (and I don't like what I do understand...), but if some guy thought that the sum total of my romantic worth was any of those hackneyed pieces of shit, I'd probably think he was sexist. Like presenting a man with a guide to belching and arse-scratching, because that's what men like, right? Teehee!

Yes, I know I'm not getting laid today.

Oh, and as an afterthought, even if you agree with your inamorata that the holiday is a joke, you're fucked (or not fucked, as the case may be...) if you don't do at least something. It's like agreeing to shirk Christmas. It will never happen because you're going to be a complete heel if you do.

Wired

2007-02-10T15:58:00.000+02:00

Did you miss an ad for a large corporation's new product? Are you committed to letting other people tell you what to think about "the latest thing" 6 months after it's been discovered, taken over and ruined by AOL and MySpace kids and advertising execs?

Do you really want to pay attention to a "magazine" written by "journalists" that has an entire section called "Cult of Mac"?

Get wired to the Rolling Stone of the online world.

Whores.

The Lifestyle Revolution (or: Tacky Consumerism's New Disguise)

2007-02-10T15:57:00.001+02:00

There's nothing that can't be sold to people who believe that style is equivalent to price. Tapwater in an expensive bottle. Semi-digested coffee beans excreted from the anuses of civets. Carbon crystals.

People have always been easy dupes, but the extent of the gullibility is now accelerating as the middle classes scramble to differentiate themselves from the newly commercially-exploited plebes by selecting only the acceptable brands of denims, retro-futurist furniture or compact cars. The new marker of status is not the quantity or nature of possessions, but only the manufacturer.

As an object lesson, let's take a look at denims. They cost approximately $2 to make. I'd wager that the Asian lackey who stitches them together earns less than that. You pay $150 for the "good ones" without batting an eyelid, providing some justification to yourself about the quality of the fit or stitching.

In fairness, this has always been the case to an extent, but now it's not only about buying, it's about having the whims of your palate dictated to as well. I've never seen such a profusion of irritating cunts hocking glossy books about the recipes on their tastefully lit cooking programmes. You cannot turn your head without seeing that scooter-riding mockney fuck Jamie Oliver's moist, floppy lip pouting at you. He might have some good recipes, but so does the fucking internet, people, and you don't have to put up with his fauxletariat pattering pseudoguvvery and mate-isms.

Coffee. Fucking coffee. When the office machine's down, I can't sip a cup of instant coffee at work without being evangelised as to the wonderfulness of some overpriced corporate franchise brand that requires me walking a few blocks, waiting in a line and spending money, then carrying the stuff in a cardboard cup back to the office. It's COFFEE. I've drunk plenty and it's never so fucking fantastic that spending money instead of getting it free has ever seemed remotely justified.

Gyms? Run. Do pushups. Situps. Use your own personal ablution facilities and stop buying into some go-getting tough-guy fuck's bullshit "martial arts" that make you look like a fucking ten-year-old Spice Girl wannabe. If you've even said the word "spinning" in reference to pedalling a stationary bicycle, you're a dumb fuck. Buy a real bicycle and get out and actually see things instead of a TV screen featuring the metallic-sheened buttocks of steroid-abusing leo-retards. These apparently "fit" people are always complaining about how they strained something. Fit for what? Hunching in your desk with sore shoulders and limping to the watercooler?

Being up-to-date is not the same thing as being informed or intelligent. Picking the right products is not the same thing as being creative.

Apple

2007-02-10T15:55:00.000+02:00

It's not that Apple produces inferior products. Some of the products are, in fact, quite good. Some are really well designed, even. Quite aesthetically pleasing.

What goads me about Apple is that somehow, this unscrupulous corporate behemoth has duped a whole generation of schmucks into believing that they're cool. That they're "authentic" or "alternative" or "independent" or whatever Apple's marketing department has discovered to be a valuable perception to instill.

How can messenger-capped silhouettes dancing to generic music on a primary coloured background with stupid white earplugs possibly be "cool"? What universe is this?

These immense cunts sell you music that's more expensive than buying a CD and ripping it, that's low quality, that has DRM crippleware preventing you from playing it on anything they don't produce.

Their spokesman is a creepy old wannabe-hip blowhard who wears turtlenecks.

You have to pay a substantial premium to own black versions of the same thing that's only available in hideous room-wart white. No extra features. Just the colour costs extra.

An upgrade means an entirely new computer. An extremely expensive one.

Games? They laugh at the notion.

Apple: pay the market-savvy megacorp to get fucked, you dumb hipster swine. It's a CORPORATION, you "indie"-loving cocksuckers, and you admire how clever they are in convincing you they're cool. You worship marketing. Well done.

Christmas

2007-02-10T15:54:00.000+02:00

I recall, as a child, regarding Christmas as nothing more than an acquistive and gastronomic opportunity, and enjoying it thoroughly. Sadly, in my teenage years, all the angst that accompanied that horrible time was channeled into a kind of iconoclast, puritan Christian piety that had me hating Christmas because it was a flagrant abuse of my deity's name to excuse a consumerist debauch.

Now, free of religion's multiple attendant psychoses, I hate it for a host of reasons.

The Music.
Tacky, sentimental songs about... Christmas. It's self-referential to the point of an obsessive-compulsive brainlock, as though somehow merely adding the word Christmas (and some sleighbells) to yet another tawdry song about getting some pussy somehow adds something to the collective Christmas spirit. Then there's the "traditional" stuff. The "haunting", mediaeval-lite songs about angels and other shit. Sometimes sung by children for maximum emotional firepower. Worse, sung by some fucking multi-platinum pop whore who cannot end a verse without a "soulful" trill. And you can't escape it, it's fucking everywhere. Even your relatives feel obliged to play it at the fucking Christmas dinner.

The Presents.
Listen, I'd really rather keep and spend my own money on something I actually fucking want, and I'm sure you feel the same. Let's end this expensive, waseful fucking obligation. We can do it. Just say no.

The Parties.
Spending time using alcohol to take the edge off your relatives' boringness while hiding how drunk you are is not fun. Neither is the office party. The office party is not fun at all. You're expected to be cheerful about spending time with people you would never socialise with, who would never socialise with you, and enduring their fucking inebriated jollity as though it were very clever and amusing.

The Food.
There's only so much grease and sugar you can ingest before you feel nauseous. I'm not sure why anyone gets enthusiastic about the traditional Christmas comestible accoutrements. I mean, if they were nice, we'd eat them at other times during the year, no? Turkey is a shitty meat. Fruit mince pies are nearly always utterly fucking vile.

The Shops.
Everyone's in a frenzy, road rage simmering in carbon-monoxide-choked parking lot queues. The decorations are a grim memorial to the remains of your bonus. The thing you want is sold out. The music is inescapable. The staff want to be elsewhere.

The Weather.
You lucky cunts in the northern hemisphere have it easy. You think Christmas is tough in winter? Try doing all this shit in 35°C.

The Children.
We enslave them into the Christmas tradition by making their Christmas phantasmagorical. A debt they'll feel obliged to repay when they grow up. I hate your fucking brats at the best of times. I hate them and you to the point of bloody murder when you've got them sugared to Hell, dressed in painful finery and singing Away in a Manger and Silent Night to sate your need to sentimentalise the ungrateful little parasites. Fuck you. Fuck them. Fuck off.

Religion.
No, He wasn't born on this day. No, He didn't die for my sins. No, He wasn't borne of a virgin. No, He probably wasn't a special, wonderful, non-screaming newborn. Take your cutesy child-indoctrination techniques out of my sight, please.

Charity.
What's so fucking special about a shamelessly materialistic religious holiday that it requires that I donate more? Fuck you, you guilt-exploiting cunts. Fuck you and the limbless, hunch-backed midget you install in a wheelchair in the supermarket entrance to squeeze out more than my usual freely-given loose change by means of wretched, abject pity.

Merry fucking Christmas.

Florid Copywriters

2007-02-10T15:50:00.000+02:00

English has the broadest vocabulary of any language. It allows precise expression of specific ideas, and if you don't have the finest possible word or phrase at your disposal, it is quite acceptable to purloin the words and phrases of other languages.

Language is about the transmission of ideas, not words. Having a large vocabulary allows you to use less words to convery more ideas. Also, while a word like "mellifluous" is quite superb, if you surround it with other, equally superb words, you diminish it. Adjectives and adverbs will not reduce the blandness of your writing. You're very obviously polishing a turd when you have to haul out the commas to form lists of descriptors.

Florid copywriters make frequent use of a thesaurus, but they've never read a book.

Romance / Love / Sex / Flirting / Dating

2007-02-10T15:47:00.000+02:00

I don't like being lonely. I don't like lying in bed staring at the ceiling until 3AM unable to sleep. I don't like having no-one with whom to share enjoyment. The problem is that ending any of this will require me to engage in The Game.

The Game, from what I can make out, involves liking someone and pretending you don't until they give you their unspoken permission to admit that you do.

There are a few stages to this. First eye contact is made. Presumably then signals are given to the male as to whether or nor the eye contact is welcome. Once this is overcome, one must present one's conversational gambit. In it, you must present yourself as intelligent, non-threatening and confident, so that you may be appraised as worthy of further discourse.

I do, truly, genuinely, completely understand why these permissions must be obtained. Who wants a creep who won't go away? But why must everything be unspoken? Why does saying something out loud spoil it all? Why is all literal sexual interaction frowned upon? Why does admitting in any shape or form that you want sex prevent it from happening? Why is any guy who takes his time to figure out what you want relegated to "nice guy" status, a socio-sexual fate worse than death? Why do I always find out that someone liked me after I'd given up in frustration?

I know, I know... I may be an autistic who can't read your signals anyway, but even if I could, could you all stop being so fucking passive? Thanks.

"Aaaafricaaaa"

2007-02-10T15:46:00.000+02:00

Let me explain "Aaaafricaaaa" as distinct from Africa. Africa is a continent. A chunk of Earth's surface. "Aaaafricaaaa" is a concept, a kind of marketing ploy to instill pride in its denizens and wanderlust in its visitors.

Let's face facts for a second. Africa, as a whole, is a fucking dump. What isn't wartorn is disease-ridden. What isn't disease-ridden or wartorn is full of cultures that think women are filthy without their external genitalia replaced by a chunk of festering scar tissue filled with menses and urine that can't escape. Full of cultures that are totally okay with rape as a substitute for consent. Full of corrupt politicians who'll sell out swathes of their population to Western business in exchange for a new Mercedes. Full of people who think nothing of hacking off children's limbs with machetes over forgotten disputes. One African nation has an AK-47 on its fucking flag, for fuck's sake.

Despite this, I don't hate Africa. I feel something between pity and despair, but I don't hate it.

"Aaaafricaaaa" is a continual stream of bullshit that's created by Western-style marketing departments for Western-style businesses to make them seem less Western and consequently more "genuine": less nakedly avaricious. I take its name from the basso-profundo generic-African-accented grunt which is used to intone the word "Africa" on an advert about the merits of a local brand of, say, curry powder.

"Aaaafricaaaa" is a leopardskin scarf on a white air hostess on a Boeing 747, flown by foreign pilots.

"Aaaafricaaaa" is a continual stream of smug Northern African models (local models are not considered worthy) looking bemused at incapable, racially stereotyped white morons bumbling with the competition's products to the accompaniment of a synthesised marimba soundtrack (marimbas are also no more local than, say, violins).

"Aaaafricaaaa" is the populist howl of potentates in Hugo Boss suits decrying the abuses of the White colonial past while hocking chunks of the country to China and India for a holiday in Monaco.

"Aaaafricaaaa" will fuck you, every time.

Jewellery

2007-02-10T15:45:00.002+02:00

You know, one of the little things I fear in life is meeting some girl who's lovely in almost every way, proposing to her, and then finding out the hard way she expects a diamond ring. And some ghastly showboat wedding, but I've already done a post on how much I detest those.

Jewellery is worthless.

Let me repeat that and let it sink in: jewellery is worthless. You can't sell it, because you will never, ever fetch a cent of what you paid for it.

Diamonds are carbon crystals. The De Beers cartel, one of the world's nastier companies (you know, slavery, child labour, corrupting states, involvement in land seizure...) has created a false value through marketing. They CREATED the phrase "diamonds are forever". Diamonds, as it happens, have only been "forever" for about sixty years, thinks to a bravura move on their part some decades back to renew demand for the pieces of hardened compost when their value was dropping.

The diamond engagement ring as it is known today is an invention of an advertising company, and it's testimony to the programmabilty of the human race that an otherwise rational adult woman can still get completely beside herself with excitement when her moronic suitor blows three paycheques on a symbol that in the greater scheme of things has all the lasting cultural importance, timelessness and meaning of the ORLY owl.

And gold? It's UGLY. Tacky. Without other colours to set it off (see: ancient Egypt) it just looks like piss-coloured stainless steel, which is in some ways probably a better symbol of marital endurance than gold, being harder, more practical and composed of elements that depend on each other for their most valued attribute.

Also, if you like the way it looks, there's costume jewellery, which at its best is frankly indistinguishable and costs a pittance in comparison, allowing a wider range of aesthetic choices to match your wardrobe or mood. Yet you've all been duped into believing it's "tacky" in comparison to, say, I don't know, conspicuously flaunting your wealth with shiny baubles.

Ladies, gentlemen: sell your grandmother's diamond ring. She and her programmed drone were sheep and it's a monument to their stupidity. The diamonds were produced by slave, child and/or prison labour, the gold is very probably from apartheid-era mines. Better yet, destroy it.

Diamonds burn, gold melts, but intellectual integrity is forever.

Women

2007-02-10T15:45:00.001+02:00

The vast bulk of female speech and thought is devoted to complaining. Complaining about weight, complaining about the tyranny of weight-consciousness, complaining about how your dreams were crushed by the demands of your uterus, complaining about how no-one takes you seriously, complaining about how your man always tries to provide help instead of sympathy, complaining how he never picks up on your "hints", complaining about how you're so abused by all the media YOU generate and consume.

Free tip: If you can't look at a skinny 14 year old fashion model without feeling the need to miss some meals or puke them up, try not reading the magazines in the first place. All they're doing is selling you stuff, you gullible, easily-manipulated little twits.

I hate your ability to feel shame about your own bodies, and then feel shame about feeling shame, and so on, until you've found something on which you can blame it, at which point you feel "pro-active" or "empowered".

I hate your tendency to emit excruciatingly high-pitched keening noises when gravitating toward each other in public in order to display something other than the contempt you so obviously feel towards your peer's new outfit/boyfriend/bodymass.

I hate your ability to generate a complex soap-opera background to any completely mundane conversation.

I hate your stupid, expensive footwear. The kind that consists of two tiny pieces of leather, wrecks your feet and costs four times more than something comfortable that lasts for more than one season.

I hate the way you justify abusing men's kindness because "pushovers deserve it".

I hate keeping up with the politics in your little "like bodies: like minds" "social" groups.

I hate this new belief that "girl power" is behaving like particularly boorish men.

Here's the real reason you'll be the victim all your life: because you're really good at playing it for all it's worth.

Men

2007-02-10T15:44:00.000+02:00

You know why real men hate homosexals? Because you're not supposed to enjoy it when real men buttfuck you, faggot.

Women who do not shave their bodies are filthy, men who don't are just men. It's okay to frequent a strip club and stuff bills in a stripper's thong, and to fuck "cool" girls in the parking lot, but whoa-ho-ho, what a bunch of sluts, hey boys! Sure, they all took turns fucking the same drunk bitch in the back room, but what a drunk bitch!

You see, you can't win against men, because male dominance assures the ability to confidently change the rules at the end of the game, and any argument to be met with violence legitimised only by the fact that they're the ones whose voices are quavering least.

I particularly hate groups of men. Their stupid pack-bonding guttural chuckles. The congratulatory back-slapping at an atrocity well perpetrated. The assumption that everyone needs to be informed just how much wattage your car's sound-system is packing because it's obviously connected to your perceived virility.

And then there's the actual pride men take in their repulsiveness. Drinking until you vomit is a sign that you lack self-control and the ability to hold your liquor, not a sign that you're "extreme". Yes, yes, it's really clever of you to throw money at your internal organs until they protest. Enjoy cirrhosis.

I miss manners. I miss people holding open doors and being thanked it. I miss people dressing and maintaining themselves well because it's selfish to subject others to your slobbishness. I miss being able to sit with a group of men without having to hear the word "pussy" used as anything other than a colloquialism for a cat.

Well, I'm at least slightly gladdened by the fact that the apes in question lose their testosterone quickly enough that all their bad habits manifest in the form of a spare tyre in about 5 years after adolescence. It's rather gratifying to see how all the macho prats with whom I spent my school years now look ten years older than I do.

Meg Ryan

2007-02-10T15:41:00.001+02:00

Cute is fine. Knowing you're cute, however, is utterly repulsive.

What irks me most about this chirpy, loveable Hawn-spawn is that she's occasionally in a passable movie and spoils it with her mere presence. I was watching the otherwise average Kate & Leopold, which is fairly snappy and amusing as these saccharine sorts of things go, and I was wondering why anyone thought it would be a good idea to make her the love interest of Hugh Jackman's character, who must be half her age; a fact apparent because when the lighting wasn't soft enough she looked like a shrinkwrapped sac of runny wax.

Sure enough, the movie featured scenes with Ryan doing her usual spastic, squeaky little dances, punching the air when overcome by whatever emotion was supposed to be filling her scarecrow-blonde, crypto-crone cranium.

To make matters worse, we're supposed to believe that an egalitarian, technologically innovative, well-mannered 19th century duke can succumb to Meg Ryan just behaving like her normal, awful self.

You're past your sell-by date, you ghastly little pixie. You're so insipid that you're poison to the genre of romantic bloody comedy. Shut up, fuck off, enjoy your money and leave cinema alone.

Pedal Pushers / Capri Pants / Clam Diggers

2007-02-10T15:40:00.001+02:00

There are many items of clothing that decrease your apparent IQ. Baseball caps, dungarees, $200 "casual" shoes...

Then there's these damned things.

What compelled women in their millions to put on a visual reference to a fussy, martini-sipping 50s suburban housewife? I know they're pretty much on the wane, but they should be as embarrassing by now as safari suits were in the 80s.

What makes them even worse is that they're invariably worn with those pointy, expensive little high-heeled shoes that make the wearer totter about like Peg Bundy, making that ridiculous slapping noise as the heels smack into the feet. And then there's the simultaneous resurgence of the cheesiest, trashiest accessory ever: the ankle bracelet (qv: Hyperfeminine Effulgence).

They call those sleeveless shirts "wifebeaters", I suggest they start calling these "broodbearers" or "payspenders".

Way to look like a dumb whore, ladies.

Children

2007-02-10T15:39:00.000+02:00

I don't necessarily dislike individual children. Okay, well, maybe there are one or two out there that I don't hate. Theoretically.

I don't know why people specifically like these little mewling clumps of stimulus/response. They are loud, barely-controlled sacs of unpleasant fluids. They invariably seem to have problems respecting personal property. They don't enjoy good art, besides the occasional Children's Classic. They become randomly tired and screamy in between being overstimulated and sugared. They don't seem to understand anything and continually ask irritating and/or incomprehensible questions. They do not appreciate gestures, only material goods.

Tantrums.

Incontinence.

Expensive clumsiness.

Keep your spawn away from me.

Shaving

2007-02-10T15:38:00.000+02:00

I just don't get why scraping hair off your face is the norm. It's unpleasant, expensive, and time-consuming. Zits, ingrown hairs, stubble, cuts... ugh.

What particularly irks me is that all men have beards, but should you chose to reject this idiotic practice, only then are you referred to as "having a beard" or, more pertinently "hairy".

Women, by and large, seem to feel free to opine that they don't like beards. I suppose I could use this as a springboard to tell the person that they should depilate their legs, underarms and pubes, but then I don't like that either.

It's funny, as a child I remember dreading being hugged by my father at certain times of the day because of the porcupine effect of a few hours growth. I never got one complaint from my girlfriends about prickliness, and considering the areas my face went, I think they'd know. Beards are soft, stubble is ghastly.

And the expense issue is no joke. It's over US$15 for 3 freaking blades here, and the cheap stuff is facial genocide. Aftershave, shaving cream... pricey. I paid $20 for a buzz-cutter 6 years ago, I do a full trim once a month, with occasional scissor maintenance on the strays that pop up from time to time. I've got days of my life and thousands of dollars on all the "normal men".

"New Age"

2007-02-10T15:35:00.000+02:00

New Age of what? More efficient genocide?

Seriously, does anyone who prances around saying they're taking up the faith of their ancestors have the faintest clue as to what primitive cultures tend to be like? Or do they really believe that somehow whatever traditional faith was held by the ancestors that predated the scourge Christianity was somehow better because it was closer to Nature? Primitive people were violent. If they weren't, they were wiped out by other primitive people.

Let me clue you in on something.

Until The City became the dominant place in which humans lived, and Nature became a holiday destination, Nature was utterly terrifying. Random, inexplicable sicknesses, snakes, famine, storms, earthquakes, plagues, big predators, and of course capricious demons and spirits everywhere to which this was all attributed.

You didn't worship Nature because Nature loved you and nurtured you, you worshipped it out of fear. You practised magic because despite all evidence pointing to its lack of efficacity, you needed to control Nature somehow.

So, magic. It's bullshit. It doesn't work. Ever. There, that's established. Let's move on. It might seem to work to some people, because most of the time, it seems like bad things aren't happening, so they keep doing it, just in case.

So along come The Christians, with a new, very powerful magic. Magic that said the Angry Sky God didn't really hate you, he just had some rebel spirits that you were guaranteed to be free from when you died if you accepted a whole bunch of entirely plausible (to you) stories written in this Holy Book from yonder miraculous city of light and magical "technology".

Anyway, they embrace it quite happily, and nothing really changes, because like their last religion, the magic doesn't actually work. So, everything's okay. So all the "faith" stuff becomes extremely ingrained and sincere, and a few of the remaining magical practices live on, incorporated into the new Christianised culture. Shock. Horror.

Anyway, just like before, a bunch of people are able to use this superstition to manipulate people to evil ends, just like before, only this time the numbers are bigger. Shock. Horror.

Well, civilisation moves on, and (the actually quite useful) rationalism takes hold, and all's relatively well aside from some good old cases of the old mass-manipulation-by-misinformation-and-exploitation-of-prejudice until that old irrational longing for control pops up. Enter the New Age.

Insecure? Gullible? Don't feel like the old Effecting-Change-Through-Personal-Discipline routine?

Idea!

Make up a new religion with all the bits of other religions that strike you as being nice. Special points awarded with your middle class conscience if you pick bits of a religion held by people persecuted by the dreaded Christians! Native American stuff is extra special, ignore the nature-devastating, cannibalistic Anasazi and all that nasty scalping and hunting-the-Inuit stuff. Never mind that before the Christians seized power, they were persecuted by the same sweet, noble, natural pagans you like so much! If you have any problems with implementing this bastard theology, simply replace the problem parts with something nicer!

Yay!

Also, The Mystical East: ask the Untouchables how they feel about this "karma" concept that you're using to justify your guilt-soaked vegetarianism. I bet you they'll ask for the meat.

Unsolicited Sexuality

2007-02-10T15:30:00.001+02:00

I'm all for free access to pics of naked ladies, or naked ladies in the flesh, for that matter, but I really can't stand random smut.

Sex is a private biological function. Maybe perfumes and colognes are designed to assist in the acquisition of coitus, but having Futurama interrupted by a writhing half-naked female with a breathy french accent telling me how the latest $100-a-spritz, cancer-of-the-armpits chemical waste causes her vaginal walls to dilate and moisten borders on harrassment.

Worse still, just because it's after 11PM, there's no reason to haul out the stretched-like-beachballs-sillycones every fifteen minutes to remind me that for a "small fee" I can download "erotic" wallpaper for my cellphone during some genteel old black and white movie I was rather enjoying.

And for that matter, who actually HAS pornographic wallpaper on their cellphone, anyway? Is this considered cool or something?

"Look, ladies, even my cellphone has an effigy of a member of your sex parting her labia minora for my masturbatory amusement. Submit to my powerful sexual magnetism!"

You can call me uptight or whatever. I probably am.

The Lounge Revival

2007-02-10T15:25:00.001+02:00

This started happening sometime in the mid-90s, but it continues to this day.

Millions of young people embrace the music of their grandparents' generation to stake their claim to inviduality in a world where every form of musical rebellion and individuality has been commodified and sold back to them. Including, eventually, lounge. When Robbie Williams is doing covers of Sinatra et al, it's time to move on, you faux hipster nitwits.

Oh, they'll claim, "no, we just like it because it's great music." Tony Bennett is great music? What? Really?

It's rubbish. It's sedate, anodyne, empty rubbish for the privileged set circa 40 years ago. The very generation that's occupying positions of power that deprive them of jobs through cronyism, send them to fight illegitimate wars, plunder the environment, enact laws that send their contemporaries to prison for taking the drugs they like.

Yay for marketing.

Child "Artists"

2007-02-10T15:21:00.000+02:00

1 - Endorsing the celebrity status of minors is tantamount to actually sticking the heroin needle into their arms yourself.

2 - There's something immensely perverse about a 12-year-old singing love songs penned by adults.

3 - They may be "good for a child", but they're still shit in comparison to adult artists. This is art, not the Special Olympics, or a performing animal exhibit.

Weddings

2007-02-10T15:18:00.000+02:00

Love. That biological narcotic that makes people write bad poetry, listen to bad music, buy the obligatory red and white Hallmark cards and ignore every warning their upper-brain gives them about the object of their affections.

So, we devised a means to legally shackle the idiots together, because if the shackle wasn't there, any sane person would run the moment they realise that at some point they've probably chickened out of every principle they've ever held just to keep the peace and maybe to get sex without extra trouble.

Anyway, to initiate this bond, we throw a "wedding".

This "wedding" is an elaborate, farcical spectacle put on to symbolise the couple's undying love for each other by showing how the man is willing to subject himself to any humiliation to satisfy his lover's most lurid exhibitionist tendencies.

Observe: she wears a white dress. Really? She's a virgin? The three guys keeping out of the groom's way at the back table at the reception seemed to think that she wasn't, but I guess I'm being silly. This is a particularly poignant display of her ability to use social symbols to manipulate sentiment. In later years, she will do much the same thing with her man's credit card, jewellery and designer outfits to show that world at large that her husband is a successful man, and that she just wanted to remind everyone of that.

The husband wears a tuxedo, a symbol of the Antarctic penguin, to symbolise his impending wing-clipped flightlessness and his forthcoming gradual introduction to a new realm of perpetual frigidity. Keeping with visual theme he's even got black rings around the eyes, acquired at the prior evenings' debauch, an evening which also explains his slight odour of fish.

Behind these two a cavalcade of "bridesmaids" wearing matching nylon outfits and a small child entrusted with either a ring or some flowers. They symbolise the bride's many personal facades and the child the groom's general approach to life.

The vows are read. Now, these two haven't been in a church for ten years, and have been cracking very offensive Jesus and Christian jokes since highschool, but don't let that detract from the immense display of religious pusillanimity they're affecting to keep in tone with this charming little stone chapel they paid so much to rent.

Oh, listen to that! They wrote their own vows! That's not sickeningly mawkish in the slightest, especially not the way they're written in a mangled, semi-literate attempt at archaic quasi-formal English! They won't keep them! He'll fuck other chicks, and she'll tell his every secret to her friends and stab him in the back whenever he forgets to assist in her attempts to display their social status, but these vows are really quite sincerely meant now, especially since they've both fucked their prenuptial strippers to "get it all out of their system".

They say their "I dos" (lying, technically...) and they kiss, which is so sweet, but not nearly as sweet as when she sucked his cock blue after he bought her the most expensive ring he could afford, the one she picked out, which is placed on her finger like a collar to symbolise her status as his well-owned bitch. It's all so sweet and pretty!

The family cheers, the lovers walk down the aisle to a piece of music they've been mocking since they were children, everyone tossing symbolic semen in the form of confetti, and head for the reception, where embarrassing speeches will be drunkenly intoned, and everyone will pretend to ignore their children's questions about the meaning of the garter toss (It's her hymen being removed). People will get very drunk, and existing marital vows will be broken in the form of clandestine bathroom trysts.

And then, they're off to the Honeymoon! Although a disappointment as traditionally it was the evening of ceremonial deflowering, they'll still be as sweetly romantic as if they'd never resorted to anal when her recurrent yeast infection played up last June.

Bliss.

Trendies

2007-02-10T15:13:00.001+02:00

Quick! Everybody assimilate some random aspect of an ancient culture you don't understand!

"Don't these 500 year old Malayan temple doors look fabulous on my neo-Modern/Minimalist cube?"

"They're so last season. This year it's raw Sequoia. You know, like the environment and stuff."

"I guess I'll trash them, then. Catch you at the sushi bar later?"

"Sushi? That's completely retro. We're doing fried yak pancreas. Tibetan style."

"Thanks for the tip. Here's some good karma at ya!"

"Karma... Puh-lease. Eastern religion's totally out. This week it's Kabbala."

I'm not interested in "what's hot". I care about what's good.

Blackheads

2007-02-10T15:10:00.001+02:00

This is a confusing one for me, since I actually am an obsessive squeezer of the damn things and derive no small satisfaction from the act, but I hate the little bastards.

Why are they ALWAYS on my nose? Why? I know everyone has them, but what has led our species' nasal pores to malfunction like this? Do the little reservoirs of congealed oil serve some heretofore unknown purpose? What can we do to stop this gritty, oily little plague?

Oh, a sidenote. Fun blackhead-squeezing simulation: take a porous cracker, butter thickly, place another cracker on top and compress. Giddy delight. Add marmite to the top cracker for extra verisimilitude.

Enya

2007-02-10T15:09:00.000+02:00

Enya creates breathy music for spirits floating in clouds. That is to say her music is damp, cold and without any libido, to use the Jungian meaning of the word.

She is the leading proponent of that ghastly branch of the recording industry: New Age. You know the stuff, crystals, rainbows, angels, eating your placenta and giving birth in a paddling pool.

I can't really bring myself to expend too much energy on critically flaying the poor soggy dear, because merely thinking about her and her castrated-music-for-medicated-grannies saps the life from me.

Wait, I'll muster some gall.

It's over-produced. She has a voice, and not a bad one, but you wouldn't know listening to most of her songs because it's multiplied to overdubbed infinity, robbing her pipes of any semblance of diaphragm they might have once possessed. There are no dynamics, merely the very occasional "boonk" sound as her synthesisers struggle to replicate the sound of a pizzicato orchestra, something she could well afford to employ considering how successful she is. Notes never attack, they fade in, fade out and reverberate slightly, dulling the sound to a warbling flutter.

I'll let on that I actually like one of her songs, Exile. Why? It's got a good tune, simple instrumentation, and her voice is raw and alive, and it actually seems to be coming from somewhere other than a pack of tampons. But that was on Watermark, long, long time ago.

In truth, I feel tepid about her tepid music. But what I hate is her persistent deification by pleb media in "spiritual" scenes.

It's not spiritual music, you twits, it's DEAD music. There are so many tasteful options in the "sacred music" bin, Tavener, Gorecki, Penderecki, Part, even Schoenberg on occasion, why the hell do you always use Enya?

Ugh.

Also, she pinched most of her ideas from Cocteau Twins, ironically from their weakest period. You know, Elizabeth Frazer, the other vocalist on the Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack? The good vocalist? Never mind.

Madonna

2007-02-10T15:07:00.000+02:00

Revelations 2:20

"Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. "

Good grief, I hate Madonna. Hate, hate, hate, her.

Let's examine the career of this purveyor of the tawdry, the unoriginal and the adulterated.

She started as the Material Girl. The chirping, squeaking, slightly atonal prostitute espoused the virtues of unmitigated avarice, of sexual profligacy for the sake of cupidity. In other words, a paragon of the 80s. I'm okay with this, really. It was just a silly little song, no harm done. It merely reflected the attitudes of the time, noxious as they were.

Then, when that phase was over, came the first serious "re-invention". In other words: "there's not much more that I can milk out of this manufactured persona, and it's going out of fashion, as it happens."

So she aped Marilyn. A million girls bleached their hair, subsequently lost their hair, and padded their training bras. Still, this is okay. A trifle. I can't quite explain why she remained so popular in light of the general mediocrity of her music, but what the hell.

Then, when this persona (fake) was exorcised, came the stripper, the Gaultier-clad dominatrix. You remember. Cones on her teats, and a ridiculous, ugly topknot. Here was a problem. Kids emulate their idols, and to be sure, Madonna didn't really appeal to adults (except for gay men) nearly as much as she appealed to rebellious young girls. Millions of girls put on rapist-bait, fought with their parents about their newfound sexual guru. This isn't the end of the world, though. I blame the parents, and the teenagers.

Then she wrote "Sex". So highbrow. A series of pictures of her, naked, with lots of other people, naked, in suggestive poses, accompanied by third-rate soft-porn text. It was banned in some countries. People were outraged. Some were titillated. You know what? Bravo, old girl, you made a packet on this one. People were stupid enough to consult your crappy book instead of, say, Hustler, for a quick frisson.

Well, the years wore on, and she turned eventually into a "mother" of sorts, charitably naming her child "Lourdes". She took up the Hebrew mystical tome, the Kabala (which contains secrets on how to make such totally real things as golems), and turned into the Earth-mother-goddess of such trite pap as Frozen. "You're frozen when your heart's not open." Great stuff if you're in preschool. Simultaneously pushing back the lyrical boundaries of Barney, and ten-year old rave music, she smashed the envelope of popular music, which was at the time, as I recall, The Macarena.

Then she did that glitter-and-cowboy hat Boogie Nights-ripoff thing. Which was crap.

Well, she went on to record a thoroughly generic version of American Pie, already a sucky song, with a video featuring her rubbing her pudendum on a football player during the beep-boop-beep solo bit. Eh. Crap.

Now she's releasing books for children based on the Kabala. Hopefully this is the end of her "music" career.

Now, you're asking, where's the hatred? You've been quite forgiving. Quite salutory. Possibly a bit snide, but where's the BILE?

Ahem.

My bile is with the stupid cunts who give this talentless whore a twenty year career exploiting the total pig-ignorance of the mass market. She's fucking MEDIOCRE, you slobs. She's not beautiful, or clever (aside from a low animal cunning) or talented in any way. Wow! She has lots of money! She can pay off "cutting edge" "artists" like William Orbit some money to make her completely bland, atonal quasi-torch songs sound FASHIONABLE!

She's not original. Everything she's done has been a studied ripoff of some other thing, or has simply been created for her by consultants.

She's not daring. Porn-stars do more extreme stuff than she has EVER done. Every day.

STOP.

PAYING.

ATTENTION.

Need I even mention her "acting" career? Good fucking grief.

If you ignore her she'll GO AWAY.

Pollyannas

2007-02-10T15:05:00.000+02:00

Everything will not get better. That cancer won't heal. The sun will wrinkle your skin. Cake will make you fat. Birthdays mean you're a year closer to death. There are millions of people suffering as we speak. The nature of any democratic political system means that only the scum rises to the surface.

Fuck your optimism. How can I take anyone seriously who hasn't learned that life is a series of disasters and disappointments, ending in death?

Here's a series of things that I have learnt.

1 - Expect the worst of people.

2 - It'll probably rain when you get there.

3 - It's going to hurt like hell.

4 - No, you're aging badly.

5 - Everything makes you look fat. You are fat.

6 - That serial-killer was a widdle chubby baby too, at some point.

7 - No, you can't believe in fairies.

8 - Depressing music is nearly always better.

9 - It won't be over in a minute.

11 - The worst is yet to come.

12 - That homeless guy just bought a bottle of meths with your spare change. No, not to clean stuff.

13 - It's not going to be fun

15 - Your tax got spent on weapons that killed people.

16 - There's nothing miraculous about birth, especially when you don't want it to happen.

17 - Family. You're stuck with them.

18 - Women are not as good as men, they're just as bad.

19 - Children are not innocent. They're monstrous little narcissists bent on finding out how much they can manipulate you into doing what they want.

20 - It won't make you stronger.

I could go on all night, but there are other things that need hatred, too.

Matrix Fanatics

2007-02-10T15:03:00.000+02:00

Why, specifically, do I dislike Matrix fans, out of the reams of geeky cultists surrounding every significant film or TV series?

Pretense. Ignorance. Philistinism.

I like The Matrix. It's fun, flashy, and exciting in a mindless way. Even the sequels are okay. Silly fun, if a bit waffly in parts, and plagued by unbelievably awful CGI here and there, and occasional pointless, half-baked money-shots, and entirely-too-precious pseudo-religious symbolism.

I like Trekkies. They have some humour about them. Funny in-jokes. Usually (but not always...)they have enough insight to realise that Trek is actually just silly, campy fun. Likewise Warsies (if that's what you call them...) who always have the sense to gang up on Jar-jar. Ringites can be awful, but most of them are entertaining because they can find the inescapable hilarity inherent in the delivery of Legolas' lines. Anyway, I have a certain sympathy toward them because in high-school, I learned how to write in Elvish. I'm over it. I like the book, that's all.

Matrix fanatics, on the other hand, insist that not only is their film a totally original, groundbreaking piece of sci-fi cinema (it's not, but that's not really important...) but it's a valid spiritual/metaphysical/epistemiological document.

I have literally had a stoned, filthy bloody hippy sidle up to me and my date in a bar, and try to get me into a debate about whether or not WE ACTUALLY LIVE IN THE MATRIX. I'm not kidding you.

This is not a new idea. It has been done in countless science-fiction films. Some even a a mere year or two before The Matrix. Dark-city, anyone? The Truman Show? Whatever.

Brain-in-a-jar stuff is, according to my BA-qualified friend, the most elementary part of the the philosophy course. Bloody hell, I remember writing stuff about it in HIGH SCHOOL. Inspired by Philip K. Dick, who was writing it in the fifties. It's not a particularly novel literary conceit, you twits.

It's also poorly acted, lacking in the fun bar-humour quotes that B-grade-cinema usually provides ("There is no spoon"? Thrilling...), and so utterly nonsensical and facile in its utilisation of the possibilities afforded to a GODLIKE BEING CAPABLE OF ALTERING REALITY, that I kept asking myself questions throughout. Bad questions. This is a failure on the writers' part.

Oh, I don't know. Watch Blade Runner. Maybe Total Recall if you're feeling silly, at least it has gore and tits.

Routine Infant Circumcision

2007-02-10T15:02:00.000+02:00

I notice a welter of jokes made at the expense of the marvellous male organ, the foreskin, on American TV, so allow me to retort.

You're born. Forced out of the warm, soft, quiet, home in which you've spent your entire existence until this point into a blinding, cold hard place, where you are slapped.

Now, this is just the way it goes. It's part of how we are introduced to reality. Harsh, but so it goes, and it's probably good for us.

But then, some brute takes you away from your mother, pries your legs open, straps you into a harness to prevent you wriggling, and scrapes off the tip of your penis. Yes, scrapes. It's not a loose piece of skin until you're about 6, but is attached to the head.

This is almost certainly the worst agony you will ever feel, because it is nearly always done without anaesthetic, and not only are there more nerves in the foreskin than in the glans, but you're in pain for a month, sleeping poorly, feeding poorly, while the raw, bloody tip of your cock scabs over into a dried keratinised stump.

I'm sure I speak for all the intact men here when I say that knowing what I know about how much fun it is to fool around with one's complete tackle, I'd be pretty fucking angry if someone had the unmitigated gall to removed the best part of my favourite part of my anatomy. I'd go so far as "violation of human rights".

Nature spent millions of years evolving us into what we are. Do you know what the most absolutely crucial organs are for the survival of a species? Genitals. That's right, they do exactly what they're supposed to do. The foreskin keeps the glans moist and sensitive, while the sliding motion reduces friction during coitus.

"It smells!" howls the occasional mutilation-crazed woman, usually American, who has never encountered an uncut member.

No, it doesn't "smell". I resent the intimation. Your breath smells if you don't brush your teeth. Your armpits smell if you don't wash them. And sure, the female genitals... entirely odourless. Right.

"It looks better!" howls another.

Oh, you're right. Wait! IT MOVES BACK! NOW IT LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME!

Anyway, if I went around insisting that all women trim their unsightly flaps for my benefit, see how far I get.

Most people think it's "more hygienic". Right. It's probably also "more hygienic" to remove the fingernails, but you wouldn't catch me doing that. Hygiene is not passive people. You make it happen.

The REAL reason the practice took off in western society is that during the 19th century, at the height of moralistic sexual paranoia, it was thought that removing the foreskin would prevent males from masturbating, because the normal method of masturbation is to... da-da-da! retract the foreskin. It was recommended that it be done at age 13 without anaesthetic to "instruct the child as to the perils of self-abuse." Now it's a multimillion dollar money-spinner for doctors.

Leave your kids cocks alone, sickos.

Anne Geddes

2007-02-10T15:01:00.000+02:00

I know I have mentioned this infant-pimp, but, my gentle readers, I have not yet ranted.

Anne Geddes produces child-pornography.

Let's discuss the uses of the word "pornography". Aside from facials, beaver-shots the display or silicone-enhanced mammary glands, Pornography is that use of a medium that values sensation over subtext.

www.rotten.com is an example of pornography. It titillates our gag reflexes, piques our reprehensible morbid curiosity. I value it and respect its right to exist, as I do all archives of human experience.

Ms. Geddes, however, produces pictures designed only to trigger brainstem maternal responses in females, much like erotica triggers brainstem responses in men.

These travesties of photography do not "capture" the human infant, as a photo-journalist would capture history, but rather the hapless larvae are squashed into a series of humiliating poses, symbolically decorated with symbols of consumable fecundity, dressed in ghastly costumes, objectifying and animalising the damned mites as much as any hardcore gangbang and subsequent splattery closeup objectifies and animalises a woman. The difference is that NONE of the infants gave their permission.

You know, I wonder, Anne, what it is about babies that you're trying to say?

I notice, that despite their nudity, they are always "decent". De-sexed. Sanitised. Heaven forfend that we should have our hyper-idealised, commodified image of the human spawnling utterly shattered by the notion that they, too, are entire human beings, possessed not only of chubby-wubby faces and legs, but also of puckered, stinking, squirting anuses and aesthetically-disappointing genitalia. No, they are reduced to pot-plants, insects, food.

Aren't they cute?

Fuck you, Geddes.

Boom-Cars

2007-02-10T14:59:00.000+02:00

I love high fidelity audio reproduction. Love it. If I had money to spend on my anechoically-surfaced Krell and Wilson Audio-equipped fantasy auditorium, I'd spend it. No question. Real bass? Bring it on. I love the gut-churning thwack of a reverberating bass drum, the enveloping thunder of a full-scale cathedral organ, the mighty rumble of a sci-fi space-ship. And yes, I'm sure you do, too, gentle readers.

If I had a decent car, with some extra space in it, sure, I'd probably spend some cash on kitting it out with a decent little subwoofer, to flesh out the overall tone of my little JVC and Jensen system. That would be fine. I listen to some pretty bass-intense stuff myself.

However...

Your damned lowered-chassis hatchback does not require twin 18" bins powered by a 1kW (RMS) amplifier. Specifically NOT to play the latest CD of remixed R&B, consisting entirely of a harmonic-free three-note synthetic bassline, some inner-ear-needling triangle and cymbals, and some witless hoop-earringed whore lamenting her umpteenth fight with her unfaithful, shiftless, abusive buck.

The world is not your theatre, nor should it be the receptacle of your territorial urine. I already noticed the sound of your cars flared exhausts, its loud custom paint job, and your clothes consisting of twenty clashing logos printed on as many carcinogenic synthetic fibres sweat-shop manufactured by companies that sponsor basketball match-fixing. You didn't NEED to remind me that you were an aspiring delinquent by playing your music so loud that the only thing we can hear after your passage is howling dogs.

Die.

Cellphones

2007-02-10T14:40:00.000+02:00

Yes, they're useful. A miracle of modern technology. Saved many a life, certainly.

However...

Why the blue fuck did the inventors see fit to allow the owner to program their terrible little speakers with versions of popular music that sound like a ZX Spectrum, circa 1984? Ah, you say, the newer ones are polyphonic. Pish! I say, the benighted thing still sounds like a tinny child's Casiotone demo-track. It's not impressive in the bloody slightest, you timbrally-insensitive musical vandal. And ANYWAY, when I leave home I don't want to hear you, your phone or your gasping, shrill conversation with your friend that you only saw bloody yesterday. Shut the fuck up.

Also, do you really need to spoil our conversation by telling me to carry on while you answer an irrelevant two-line text message in Stupidly Mutilated Syntax?

And, a special Fucking Sack of Shit Cunt Award goes the the stupid prats who LEAVE THEIR PHONE ON IN THE CINEMA. I didn't pay a bloody fortune to have my involving artistic experience destroyed by your ghastly little permutation of the latest Euro-trash dance sensation. And, if you do actually answer the thing, heaven help you, because I will get up and haul you out of your seat. Yes, I will. I've done it before to a man twice my age, and got a round of applause and a thank you from the usher.

Also, ladies, yes, you can multitask. Amazing stuff. Beyond my grasp how you do it. But not ON THE ROAD, please. I value my life more than you value your latest update in your little kaffeeklatsch's gossip database.

The "Brazilian" or "Landing Strip"

2007-02-10T14:37:00.000+02:00

Ah, the female form...

The curve where the arm meets the shoulder, then bulges elegantly to become the breast. The waist tapering like sinuously lathed carpentry. The thighs flaring to bracket the inside of the thighs and groin which form a perfect "V"...

Oh.

Well done, you just bollocksed up that part of nature's perfect geometry. It doesn't look good. I understand a trim of the "bikini line", since displaying pubes at the beach is somewhat out of the question in Western society, but to go and shave or wax the damn thing into a freaking little strip looks bloody stupid.

Firstly, it's not flattering. It makes your hips look fat. Not wide, which is great, nice wide hips are fantastic on a lady, but fat.

Secondly, unless you're paying a few thousand for cutting-edge depilatory treatments, shaving in such an environment invariably leads to prickly stubble after one day, and then horribly engorged pustules when the sharp little hair stumps inevitably become ingrown.

Thirdly. Now, I can understand the desire for a smooth pudendum and the manifold advantages it confers. If nature had not put hair there, I'd have no problem at all. Don't get me wrong, I love the female body in its entirety. I'm not even slightly revolted by the innermost parts, the labia minora, the pink orchid, the the love oyster, the spam butterfly, the axe-wound, the gash. Sometimes, a (complete) wax is not a terrible thing at all, if your yoni is of the neat and compact dainty-slot variety. However, one only has to browse the net's infinite magnitude of lousy nudie pics to realise that when most adult women go bald, it looks like a mangled squid first heavily bruised the area before half-heartedly half-settling in there to die with the tentacles hanging out. This is really not a turn-off, per sé, because I have only the happiest of happy feelings about vulvae in all their delightfully various manifestations, but it's total visual distraction from the overall shapeliness of the female body.

Fourthly, spending inordinate amounts of time fussing about the cosmetic maintenance of your genitalia makes an unfortunate statement about your priorities in life.

And I don't really care if you go in for this kind of thing, but these days, finding relatively normal-looking women in porn WITHOUT Brazilian waxes or completely bald gashes is nigh on impossible, unless you browse certain slightly horrifying specialist sites, where the unifying factor amongst the models is not so much their 70s-style Bermuda triangle, but their utter hideousness. Also, I'm not into "hairy" women. I'm 100% behind completely natural hair growth, maybe a trim, on normally-furred ladies. If you have legs like a Scotsman or a chocolatey upper lip like a pubescent R&B sensation, well, no thanks, Ms Sasquatch.

For now, I'll stick with my vintage Playboy girls. Fashion be damned.

Creationism

2007-02-10T13:11:00.000+02:00

Let's be serious here, people.

I'm an agnostic with an atheist intellectual default, but I had a Christian past, and even then it was insulting to the intelligence to think of a God that placed fossils to trick His doubters.

I actually had an argument about the meaning of the original sin in Genesis devolve into a serious discussion about what variety of fruit Eve actually ate. "No, not an apple like everyone says."

"Self Help"

2007-02-10T13:08:00.000+02:00

Let me explain this carefully. Unless you have experienced severe trauma, abuse, rape, mutilation, murder, sickness, have a genuine mental condition, or a disability or whatever, your pathetic affluent, suburban problems do not deserve sympathy.

This is how self-help works. If you take an interest in honestly understanding yourself, and make a genuine effort to improve your life, you will do both. It really does not require a guide-book, especially not one written by a man who claims to have actually had a conversation with God, but sells his drippy, platitudinous tome at full retail.

You know, wisdom is not automatically superior because it stems from an ancient and extinct culture, or exotically foreign author who uses Yodariffic archaic phrasing to put forward ideas that put forward ideologies that excuse every crime as adventures in the spirit of self-knowledge. Guilt and regret are frequently the correct thing to feel.

If you actually have friends, quit insulting them by paying to learn how to "love yourself".

McDonald's

2007-02-10T13:02:00.000+02:00

Yes, easy target, but let me explain the depth of my hatred and whence it stems.

McDonald's infiltrates popular culture so pervasively, that when they arrive in a foreign country, without so much as a TV ad, queues form around the block as every automaton in the vicinity decideds to integrate themself with the collective.

Let's examine why this is a symptom of a greater disease.

1 - McDonald's food does not taste good

I have been bought various semi-digestible petrochemical distillate snack doses from the Golden M, and I have to say, you can get a better burger / apple-pie / milkshake... wherever else these things are available. The "apple pie" tastes like sweetened synthetic syrup inside rock-hard cardboard. The burgers taste like meat-flavoured vomit. The fact that they get return customers is in defiance of belief. I have asked WHY people return, and the answers seem like the confused justifications of cult-members. "I don't know, they're... reliable."

2 - McDonald's is aligned with Di$ney

Not content to have every parent on earth buckling to their squawking progeny's insatiable desire for TV-approved comestibles they also facilitate the Di$ney dream of creating a homogenous pseudo-spiritual, culturally and aesthetically bankrupt planet by placing plastic effigies with every Happy Meal®, thereby rewarding mindless gluttony with low-grade idolatry, and furthering the idea that animation is a "children's medium".

3 - Employee Conditions

The phrase McJobs should suffice here.

4 - Faecal Content

Due to poor slaughterhouse practice, their "meat" actually contains faeces.

Please support your local greasy spoon.

Sub-Culture Mentality

2007-02-10T12:54:00.000+02:00

Listen, I'm aware that you people like specific artists. I'm aware that you have specialised interests. I'm aware that the "mainstream" is filled with clíque-y materialistic, shallow buffons. However all that you've done is put yourself amongst a smaller group of buffoons whose shallow materialism and clíque-y-ness are simply more limited in scope.

Your rejection by the world is not exacerbated in any way because you look like this:

You know, I'm of the belief that if you're going to take a stand against the world, you actually have to be better than them in some way. I'm sad to say that surrounding yourself with stuff that is below the actual quality of modern cultural advances is probably not the way to do it.

How very clever of you to reject mainstream conformity by embracing conformity with an infinitely narrower set of guidelines.

Yes, Mister Embracing-extinct-religions, I'm sure that the bulk of the Christian church is ignorant of the fact that they used the pentacle before the cross, but having a great big one tattooed on your forehead isn't going to help.

I take heart in knowing that when an STD gets into these little bands of idiots, it tends to spread rather quickly.

Magazines

2007-02-10T12:53:00.000+02:00

What better way to retard your intellectual development than to read material specifically tailored to your neuroses and prejudices?

Women! Enjoy pages of poorly-researched articles about the joys of random sex, celebrity worship and the vagaries of fashion, interspersed with advice columns about gynaecological health, eating disorders, and the pursuit of spirituality. Don't worry, the price will be kept low by advertisers that use 15 year old models wearing accoutrements that make you feel entirely inadequate about your body, wardrobe and sexual accomplishments.

Men! Enjoy back-slapping locker-room bravado, prescriptions on what to find sexually attractive, lessons on how to score more chicks with simple manipulation techniques, the veneration of phallus-substitute gadgetry and fashion tips designed to appeal to homosexuals.

Readers, you deserve the pain that these gutter rags introduce into your lives.

Hyper-Feminine Effulgence

2007-02-10T12:50:00.000+02:00

Let me make this clear. I'm a man. I like the general physical appearance of women. Every shiny, garish thing that you stick through protruding flesh, wrap around your fingers, slop onto facial features, toenails and fingernails, draw on your skin, every lump of synthetic material you slip into unwilling organs to enhance them, every hour of pain you voluntarily endure (and then complain about) to remove perfectly normal body hair, serves only to highlight the vapidity of the relationship between you, your body and society in general.

It only gets in the way, anyhow.

The New Age Wolf

2007-02-10T12:46:00.000+02:00

Now, while I don't particularly condone the unfair demonisation of this impressive creature, the hateful, rainbow-edged perversion that has led to this flesh-ripping marvel being reduced to a tail-wagging Nature-Spirit-Companion-Guide must cease.

This is a creature that forms packs to hunt and tear the legs out from the weakest of the cuddly creatures (the young) by locking its 2 inch canines like a vice around their ankles, while the other pack members tear out the throat.

No, on their own, they might not attack a stray human, but in a pack, you're toast, lentilheads.

They revel in carrion. Bring back the fangs, and slick the fur with blood!

SUVs

2007-02-10T12:38:00.000+02:00

Your war-sponsoring behemoth of a vehicle, cosseting your fragile fresh and that of your mewling brats from the inevitable collisions that result from driving while holding a conversation on your hands-free-kitless cellphone, while obscuring the road ahead from the vision of other drivers, drivers that your accidents will pulverise will leaving you only moderately inconvenienced by insurance procedures, this vehicle, this blight...

We can only hope.

Angels

2007-02-10T12:35:00.000+02:00

These previously wrathful and smite-prone beings have been adopted as cheerleaders by the touchy feely New Age greetings card philosophy that predominates amongst housewives prone to eating too much cheesecake and buying Ann Geddes merchandise.

The horror that is modern angelic appreciation varies from the tall, invariably blonde, clean-shaven Fabio-with-white-robes and dove-wings vision of repressed but unthreatening sexual longing, to the (blonde) vision of ascetic female perfection that resulted in juvenile eating disorders, while the worst involves genitally-discrete naked infants with small wings and vacant expression that appear to represent the fact that God protects us from unfriendly bathroom scales and angry, credit-card-drained husbands by providing airborne spiritual escorts without fully-developed bowel control and a hankering to suckle.

Burn in hell, winged WASP filth.

Ladies, Gentlemen...

2007-02-10T01:24:00.000+02:00

I have decided to start a blog, not because of vanity (although I don't lack it), but because of a series of requests from people who have read my bilious tirades on other parts of the web.

They became rather popular and so I will start by transferring the existing tirades to this blog to save them from the obscurity of the little forum in which they currently reside. I will certainly add and embellish with time.

Thank you, gentle readers, and enjoy.