Tesco, twats and sneeringly self-satisfied apathy.

'Britain' and 'Apathy' are two words that seem made for each other. Apathy is talked about as if it were a symbol of our nation-state, a trait that is as fundamentally British as cold-resistance is to the Inuit. Our politicians lament how lazy, ill-informed and weary our voters are, whilst opting for lazy, easy, populist policies that only consider the short term. Our media is similarly populist, fewer and fewer risks are taken until it seems like the only stand-out examples of good television and music are the ones that parody, echo or represent stagnant culture. Shameless, Misfits, depressingly accurate dramas, the haunting, industrial, mechanical grind of Dubstep. Off beat and gleefully ugly. Things like this are our answer to the intricate brilliance of HBO televised series, endlessly witty French cinema or innovative and astonishingly well produced Israeli trance.

And, more and more, people are asking me strange questions about my interests. They ask me 'why do I care?' when I rant about abuses of power in far off lands. Or maybe joke about conspiracy theories after I've quoted the BBC or the Guardian verbatim. If I watch footage of (peaceful) English protesters whisked into unmarked vans by plain-clothes policemen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj4yn1RBxHs) and get angry about abuses of freedom of speech, I can guarantee that someone will be around the corner to sneer at my vehemence. But I'm not going to tell people to care about stuff, it's their prerogative. I only get annoyed when someone tells me to stop thinking about the greater issues that affect me. Normally. But then I see shit like this Tesco Mobile advert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWc-UBis4uk

Listen to the words carefully. Listen to the fucking words. The people put on silly voices and they are in ridiculous environments, but let me go through this step by fucking step.

Opening scene: Two people, dressed and told to act like twats, are in a serene environment. They then proceed to talk shite:

'We want to live in a word where we communicate with everybody... and nobody.'

OK, premise established. We now know that we are going to be bombarded with intentional clichés for comic effect. The next bunch of twats appear, dressed pretentiously and talking silly, and we expect then to continue the trend.

'I want to live in a world where we are all free to say whatever we want, however we want, where-ever we want.'

Hahaha, those pretentious fucks. Those stupid, overdressed, pompous, upper-middle class fu... wait, weren't they endorsing freedom of speech? Freedom of speech is a good thing, right? Maybe this is a serious advert and they just fucked up that bit at the start. Oh wait, another twat has emerged saying twattish things. Haha, I guess.

Cue fat, adorable Northern guy, with comfortingly un-stylish clothes, an unpretentious plain-white background and a cheeky little face:

'To be honest with you, I'd rather people stop talking nonsense and offer me [a better mobile phone deal]'

That stuff about freedom of speech sounded quite nice really, but I guess it's only elitist intellectuals, worthy of derision, who go for silly things like 'freedom of speech'. I mean, 'freedom of speech' is hardly worth worrying about when I can get a better mobile deal. Don't worry about it, it's not like Tesco have an increasingly strange record regarding censorship, is it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/nov/28/observerbusiness.tesco

http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/01/30/tesco-still-censoring-the-terrorist-hunters-by-andy-hayman.html

Oh. But at least it's funny. Fat people are funny, right? It's Ok if it's funny. And, the sad thing is, a lot of people laughed at the jolly fat man, absorbing the subtle message unconsciously: "Fuck ideas and ideals, think about money.'

Let's read the youtube comments:

"...classssic"

"...XD"

"I love the way he says nonsense!"

"hahaha i love this advert makes me hoot :)"

"Symbolises exactly what is wrong with society.
No-one cares about the bigger picture, they just want to benefit financially from things."

It's a lonely world for the likes of you, aquinas06, who listens to all the words instead of just the ones in the silly voice.

Be shallow. Don't care. That's all absolutely fine. But encouraging other people to be apathetic is like intentionally spreading disease. Fuck off.


Currently in the news:

 World didn't end. The religious people daft enough to think it was going to now say that the absent apocalypse is a 'test of faith' instead of admitting that they were wrong. I am beginning to understand why they used to get fed to lions.

http://www.suite101.com/content/toddler-and-tiaras---the-business-of-child-beauty-pageants-a243616

I support the linked article: Child Beauty Pageants are voyeuristic, incestuous displays of paedophilic desire as well as keen, maternal attempts at reducing an underdeveloped human being into a totally objectified non-entity.

America is a scary place, learn from their mistakes: Do not attempt to live vicariously through your child, do not turn your child into an inconveniently mobile doll and acquire some actual moral values before you try and turn a screaming ball of flesh into a well-rounded human being.

While I am normally a vehement defender of personal liberty, in my opinion people should acquire some kind of qualification before they attempt parenthood. One question of the test could be:

Q: Does placing a small child in a hyper-competitive environment, based solely on unhealthy and unrealistic body images, benefit or compromise the child's self esteem?

If an individual's answer is 'benefit', the potential parent undergoes chemical sterilisation. If the potential parent does not understand the question, s/he also gets chemically sterilised. No anaesthetic as pain might help the message sink in - an important aspect of the test since those foul corrupters might find a way to adopt.

The hopelessness of it all.

Futility, it seems, has a new form and it thrives within the local photography course. The fusion of art and irony has become something horrible. I’d like you all to bear in mind that the story I’m about to tell you is absolutely true.

This story takes place in a one-to-one session, a private meeting between an academic and one of her pupils. While I’ll leave the details of my friend, the pupil, to your imagination, I can’t help but paint an image of her tutor. She is a rather emaciated woman, who fights her naturally mousy appearance with her hard jaw line, harder expression and sternly feminist haircut. It’s shorn extremely short, revealing the contours of her skull, and she sports its salt-and-pepper decline with cool pride. Her preferred facial expression is an earnest attempt at  ‘intellectually quizzical’ but she appears to be an individual incapable of raising one eyebrow above the other in order to complete the effect. Instead, she settles for squinting with one eye, giving one the uncomfortable impression that she is the world’s youngest stroke victim, or, alternatively, a cartoon villain.

Her voice completes the ensemble, a nasal and patronising noise that seems to emanate from the chin. This is because she cranes her head backward in an effort to look down her nose at people, most of whom are taller than her. Her most credited work is a series of photos that, in her own words, is a ‘serious comment on the Iraq war.’ It consists entirely of novelty jelly moulds backlit on a hill.

The meeting between young pupil and learned teacher begins with a mild bollocking regarding our pupil being absent from a previous meeting. Our pupil missed this meeting due to being accidentally omitted from a register sent to everyone but her, via email. Our teacher reprimanded her less severely upon learning this, but insisted that, should exactly the same thing occur in the future, our pupil would not be absent again. Sadly, my friend lacks the ability to read minds and will therefore be unable to comply.

But that has nothing on the particularly contemporary Catch 22 that followed. My friend produces work in a particular style, dismantling her sketchbooks and reordering her work to improve her project’s continuity. This does not go down well during this meeting, apparently it indicates that my friend is ‘working for the course’ instead of ‘working for herself.’ In order to ‘work for herself’ she must do exactly what our teacher tells her to do: in this case ceasing to dismantle the sketchbooks. Should she ‘work for the course’ by continuing to do what she likes to do, she will be penalised by the course.

I’ll rephrase that: in order to ‘work for herself’ she must religiously adhere to her teacher’s instructions. Should she choose not to conform to her teacher’s instructions, she will be criticised for conformity. Should she obey her teacher to the letter, she will be praised for her rebelliously individual style.

The cherry on the cake and the nail in the coffin is the final demand of our teacher. Our photographer’s photos are ‘too tight’. They need to be ‘more free’. I order you to be free. I order you to do your own thing. I order you to rebel. Should you not comply with my orders, I will make your grades suffer.

On Virgin Media - Sunday, June 14, 2009

The ironically named 'Virgin' is raping the internet as well as our supple, sexy wallets.

Take a look at what is being advertised on Facebook. Mindless Hollywood blockbusters, Lynx, expensive gadgets to be bought with daddy's money and anything else that can be advertised with a gormless internet reference or an even more skull-splittingly stupid bikini model. We are the target audience. The spoilt generation, exposed to too much sex and not enough violence. We are to inherit the economic, social and environmental problems of our parents, which amazes me, because we refuse to wipe our arses without Adidas branded toilet paper. We are the ironic generation, the generation that defies logic by laughing at itself and then, instead of learning from our mistakes, we become a parody of ourselves. The subtle, easy option. I expect that the art, media and literature our generation produces will raise the bar for apathetic wit. Not that it'll do us a damn bit of good when feet of sea level are boiled away. But who gives a shit about the end of the world, amirite?

Also, don't buy anything sold to you by Virgin media. They have way too many fingers in way too many honey pots and a few notable CEOs have let it slip that they intend to bollock up net neutrality as soon as possible. So we'll be like China a few years ago, with restricted internet access. But rather than it being done to preserve Chinese ideologies, it's being done so that websites which won't or can't give Virgin media cold, hard, cash will be shut off by bandwidth limiters. Virgin Media are the mafia of the internet world, demanding protection money. Even if Samuel L. Jackson is in the fucking adverts, do not give them it. Virgin Cola tastes like shit anyway.

EDIT:

I forgot to mention Rowntrees, which have also bought some ad space [there]. The hearty British company was bought up by Nestle, which is an exploitative clusterfuck at best. You like those tasty fruit pastels? Yeah? Good are they? Well suck it up, because the gelatin in them is made from African babies. Well. No. But the end result is pretty similar. Look it up.

On Genesis - Monday, October 5, 2009

Just finished reading the Book of Genisis for Eng Lit.

And it's a bloody chore. Everything from the divine creation to Noah's flood is skirted over in a matter of minutes before the enlightened author gets to the really important stuff: page after page detailing how a bunch of pissant, inbred shepherds bickered, fought and stole women and livestock from each other - while Egypt rose up nearby like a monumental reminder of how shit goat-herding is compared to developing culture and generally being progressive.

After attempting to retain more names than a copy of the yellow pages I gave up and cruised my way up to the point where some daft Pharaoh actually hires a lucky sonovvabitch goat-herder due to his hallucinations. Unsurprisingly, the daft bastard immediately uses his newfound authority to put all his other homicidal goat-herder friends and family into positions of enormous power (after dicking them around a bit and generally being a devious cunt, like most of the other heroes encountered so far.)

Bet that Pharaoh felt like a bit of a twat by then. I certainly did.

The world's ending, and it has been for millennia.

There is an air of impending doom about things at the moment. In the world at large, but also - more importantly, in my little bombsite of a bedroom. I think someone hanged themselves in this room once. There's nothing remotely stable enough to hang themselves on, nor do I have much other basis for assuming so, but I'm just pretty fucking sure. Someone definitely, actually, absolutely killed themselves on the top floor of this house (according to my Landlord). That I know. Everything else is just melancholy presumption.

But my impending doom is rather centralised around the prospect of my future career. I don't particularly want a job, only a career will do, and that means I have to get off my arse and write. Write now. Well. Not now, I can cruise on reposting little bits of wordplay I've done over the years before I actually start properly. But soon. I'll sort my shit out soon. I've been saying that for fucking years.


Currently in the news:

Everyone but me is surprised that the Tories are fucking over education. On the other hand, I'm the only person in the world who didn't think prominent Lib Dems would be helping them.