This may not seem like the most deserving subject for the first rant I’ve put down here in a long time (because few use My Space any more, certainly not for blogging, and my energies have been directed elsewhere – more news to follow) but this particular popstrel has really started to get on my wick of late. That’s partly down to her ubiquity - apparently Radio One’s playlist policy is to feature her every other record - but mainly because of the hypocritical reek that emanates from her.             

I’m talking, of course, about Katy Perry, that emergent manufactured singer whose second single ‘Hot N’ Cold’ is currently inspiring young girls around the world to believe the male gender is more subject to romantic moodswings than their female counterparts. 

When I first became aware of Miss Perry’s existence she struck me as a sort of low-rent Pink (can you imagine such a thing?), produced to fill a gap in the market for faux-rebellious soft rock sung by artificially feisty women who pretend not to have an eating disorder. But at least Pink occasionally lets some semblance of a personality come through in her act. There’s no evidence Katy has any character traits of her own, and she possesses about as much talent as millions of folk doing karaoke around the world right now.

Then you hear the lyrics. “You, change your mind, like a girl, changes clothes...” Remind me what gender you are again Miss Perry? And correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be wearing a different outfit during each of your numerous media appearances. Slob on-stage every night in the same stained trackie bottoms and hand-stitched burlap sack and you might have some justification for delivering that line. Spend three hours in wardrobe and make up as you clearly do and I think we can all spot the problem here. 

And the fictional protagonist of this song is being sneered at for ‘changing his mind’. This from someone who began her career with a Christian gospel album before trying to get all raunchy and lesbo as a tomboyish homophony on ‘I Kissed A Girl (To Draw Male Attention To Myself And Sell More Records Rather Than Because I Was Genuinely Attracted To Her)’. Katy has also recently announced she will be going celibate for all of 2009 after breaking up with her boyfriend. Wooh! Sexually liberated girl power from this latest strong female role model! Helping a whole new generation of teenagers grow up conflicted, that’s Katy.

Mind you, have you heard ‘Gym Class Heroes’? Maybe her ex has actually put the girl off sex for life.

And people who genuinely are gay must love it when a lifelong heterosexual appropriates the lifestyle and identity to further her career, particularly with a song like ‘UR So Gay’ which seems to take its inspiration from pre-pubescent playground taunts and possesses about the same level of wit and insight.

But these songs aren’t really anything to do with Katy at all. She hasn’t written any of them. The girl is purely a puppet, ambition overriding her fundamentalist Christian upbringing as she allows herself to be moulded into whatever the record company wants her to be, slotting wherever market-space allows, however contradictory or ideologically ridiculous the material. Ironically, and in spite of the endless jabs at assertiveness, individuality and rebellion, Katy seems to me the very definition of a bimbo. Generic, soulless, and without a single thought in that kooky little head of hers.

I never thought I’d say this, but bring back Avril Lavigne.

Al.

More Non-Celebrities HERE.

So Gordo Brown has decided to raise the drug classification of cannabis from Class C (slightly more naughty than cigarettes, confiscated only if smoked right under a policeman's nose), to Class B (scourge of society, up to 5 years in prison, one notch below crack).

Now, I'm sure none of you good little MySpacers and MySpacettes have ever smoked the demon weed (it's evil for one thing, go watch the movie 'Reefer Madness' if you don't believe me), but I'm also damn certain Mr. Brown never has. Once again we've got people who think they know what's best for us disregarding the science, the evidence, popular opinion (outside Daily Mail island) and every thinktank ever assembled.

Well, it's not as if our prisons are full to bursting as it is, there's loads of room to bang up anyone caught holding a spliff, plenty of space. And of course, jail is the last place where somebody's habit could possibly get worse. Mind you, this might all be irrelevant. The police have said they're not going to change their approach just because of Jacqui Smith's idiotic directive (currently they confiscate the drug - the same way they take open cans of lager off Australians on their way into Camden tube - and let people off with a warning).

But why does our horribly flawed PM believe that increasing the paperwork in the coppers' in-tray and alienating more of his dwindling support (like me - well, I was his support, until today) is the way to go? Is it because he's swallowed the myths, half-truths and canards wholesale? It's a gateway drug! Ooh, a gateway drug… yes, that buzz of cannabis I enjoy so much makes me believe a similar buzz might be gained from something harder… PCP maybe, or Crystal Meth. They're all pretty much the same aren't they? Shit, it might even lead me on to the biggest killer of all – TOBACCO!

As Howard Marks says: "If you like smoking marijuana, you want to smoke more marijuana." What you don't do is suddenly develop a propensity for heroin or not make it into work because you were up late on a peyote binge. It doesn't work like that you morons.

Then there's the idea that 'de 'erb' is dangerously strong nowadays. Well, alright, it's probably more powerful than what they were smoking at Glastonbury thirty years ago. Archive footage shows that to be mainly a mixture of tie-dye, patchouli and straw. But compared to what they sell in Amsterdam cafes, absolutely legally, whatever us Brits can get hold of on the streets is all pretty much of a muchness. The tabloids might scream TWENTY TIMES STRONGER! Or a hundred, or a million billion, but, as the scientists will tell you, it's all made up.

When you add to that the way the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has said pot should remain Class C several times (and I love the way Brown kept sending that back, as if the evidence would somehow change), the way incidences of schizophrenia have actually fallen in the last decade (proving there's no link between excessive cannabis consumption – which I wouldn't recommend by the way, you'll only start writing a paranoid web site or something – and mental illness), or the way children are actually trying it less than before the drug was downgraded to Class C, and you have a pretty fucking flimsy argument for Brown's stance.

In fact, now that 'the booner' carries more legal risk, it suddenly seems extra illicit and exciting, something which, I would argue, means teenagers are actually more likely to try it.

This all illustrates why Brown is on his way out (not that the Tories are any better, however many former cokeheads they count amongst their front bench they still pretend to think the same way for votes). This PM is a repressed Scotsman building a repressive society, taking from the poor and giving to the rich while rendering what few pleasures we have left horribly illegal.

Still, he wants to "send a message" to people, that smoking cannabis isn't acceptable. Yeah, they're listening to you Gordo, and if you're lucky everyone might go back to the only substance widely available for letting off steam after a hard week, ever since the mushroom loophole got closed and with other alternatives continuing to be demonised.

So forget the pot. Let's all go in for perpetual binge-drinking, let's fight amongst ourselves and end up in hospital with cirrhosis of the liver, let's cost the economy millions of work days each year and lose all sense of decorum. And our children can see that society encourages this instead, whereupon they'll think it's fine to go down the road with a few bottles of industrial strength cider and kick some bloke to death, the sound of the alcohol industry counting its profits in the background all but drowned out by his dying screams.

I love this country, I really do. Go back to bed UK. Drink Stella, watch the new series of Gladiators (presented by Ian 'I'm not your jester!' Wright) and vote for your oppressors. The leaders have it all under control.

Al

More Doobie antics HERE.

Here in London we’re a little over a month away from the 2008 Mayoral Election. The four candidates are the incumbent; Ken Livingstone (Labour, formerly independent), Sian Thingy (Greens) and Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrat) a man who used to be the country’s most progressive policeman, and whose groundbreaking approach to policing soft drugs in Brixton led to a huge drop in crime. Needless to say, he was quickly ousted from the Metropolitan Force.

Ideologically, I don’t know which of these three I’d vote for, whoever’s most likely to win I guess (most likely it’ll be academic, Camden Council haven’t responded to the registration form I sent them months ago, so I’m unlikely to even have the opportunity to vote). The candidate I definitely won’t be voting for is Boris Johnson (Conservative), an upper class fool who makes George Dubya Bush look like a paragon of usefulness and virtue.  

Quick precis of Boris’s achievements; he’s offended whole cities with generalised slurs, isn’t competent enough to host a TV panel show which mainly involves reading an autocue (as anyone who has seen him on ’Have I Got News For You’ will confirm), usually keeps a lover to supplement his wife (his last mistress was put through the experience of not one but two abortions thanks to his ineptitude with contraceptives), regularly used racist epithets in his column for The Spectator and is recorded on tape conspiring with some guy who wants to beat another bloke up.

Oh, and he’s not a politician. Yet most of the current polls put Johnson neck-and neck with Livingstone. Apart from the Evening Standard’s which says Boris is ten, fifteen, twenty points ahead. Mind you, this is the same paper that’s been attacking our current Mayor with a mixture of half-truths and innuendo for years. Recent front page headlines, blaring from billboards across the city, have contained about as much truth as my website. They include: ’Boris Rescues Schoolchildren From Burning Car’, ’Livingstone Selling Londoners’ Corpses To Mugabe’, ’Johnson Turns Water Into Pinot Blanc’ etc, etc.

So why are the people quizzed by pollsters falling for Johnson’s blond, Etonian, ’whoops, crikey, said the wrong thing, there go my trousers’, schtick. Well, rich Selfish Capitalists I can understand. Ken’s an unreconstructed lefty who intends to charge the most polluting vehicles (Porsches, Lamborginhis, 4x4s) £25 a day to drive around London’s city centre, an innovation Boris would scrap (because – hey! – global warming’s just a fly by night fad, right?). But the vast majority of Londoners aren’t rich, they use public transport that Ken is constantly improving, and the poorest rceive subsidised or free travel, something that simply didn’t happen ten years ago.

There are several theories. Some think Boris’s success is down to his celebrity (people recognise him from off the telly, so they vote for him), or the fact that women fall for his bumbling charm (vote for someone because you fancy them – it works on reality TV!). Or maybe it’s because people are bored with Ken after eight years, have forgotten about his achievements like the Olympics and sorting out the Tube’s PPP and want ’a change’. Well okay, but the ordinary citizens in 1930s Germany wanted ’a change’ too and look how far it got them.

An exaggeration? Perhaps, but if Johnson does get in then London, a huge metropolis and business centre, will end up like one of those American towns where they’ve made a goat mayor. The Conservative team have already illustrated their uselessness in the policies suggested so far – let motorbikes use cycle lanes (more danger for the unfortunate cyclists) or replacing the much maligned bendy buses with Routemasters at an estimated cost of £5 million. Only problem is, Transport for London and the independent advisors both say the cost would be nearer £110 million. Not much difference is it? Maybe Boris will plug the nine-figure gap by selling locks of his hair.

The reality is, Johnson doesn’t really know what he’s doing, never has. He’s the last person I’d want representing my city to the world or trying to pull us together in a crisis (imagine him after the 7/7 bombings: "Er, crikey, well, you know, terrorist Johnnies, jolly bad show what…."). Nothing about living here would improve under him, and there’s so much currently running smoothly Boris could fuck up.

If you’re a Londoner thinking of giving Boris your vote, before you do, consider this one probability: At the moment the RMT regularly try and organise strikes, even though the current Mayor (who runs transport), is as sympathetic to their situation as any politician could be. Imagine what will happen when Boris inevitably stumbles into what’s going on with the tube. You won’t feel pleased you’ve backed Boris in however many months time when the underground’s not running, and you can’t get to work because the staff have all downed tools, upset by his idiotic proposals. That’s the reality.

Also, both his names are slang for penis.

Yesterday the part-time players of the Blue Square South Premier side Havant & Waterlooville, whose league games take place five divisions below the Premiership, went to Anfield and twice took the lead, going into half-time on equal terms at 2-2 with Liverpool's starting eleven, a side that took fifty million quid or more to assemble. The 'Reds' were shorn of a few first team regulars it's true, but the likes 'Stevie' Gerrard, Jammy Carragher and 70s porn star Dirk 'I'm Here To Fix The Fridge' Kuyt, had to be brought on in the second half to make the game safe.

I was at the newly reformed Farnborough F.C. while this was happening (Farnborough Town having been liquidated due to Graham Westley's cuntiness a few years back), watching a solid 1-0 win over Paulton Rovers who, despite what you may think, do actually exist. They aren't in fictional in any way. As news filtered through of Havant's 2-1 lead, the Farnborough faithful started singing their fellow non-leaguer's team name in tribute. After all, we knew many of their players well. Goalie Kevin Scriven played for us a couple of seasons ago, scorer Richard Pacquette had a brief sojourn at The Boro, left-wing dynamo Tony Taggart was a hero back in the Westley days and then there's Rocky Baptiste.

The Rock (real name: Jarzinho) showed the same deft touches, awareness and pace yesterday he had when scoring thirty goals a season for us, including the one at Arsenal a few years back. So now Rocky has scored against one Premier league side, played well against another, and is currently studying to live his post-football dream, being a London cabbie. I might have to start taking more taxis in future. Just for the anecdotes.

This is what makes me love non-league football, and it's why the F.A. Cup is the best footballing competition, nay finest sporting event, in the world, bar none. I think a framed photo of the Anfield scoreboard showing Liverpool 2-1 down to Havant & Waterlooville ought to sit on the dodgy American directors' wall, forming a backdrop to the next £350 million pound loan they secure from the banks in order to fool the Kop into thinking they've been generous with their own cash.

And what did 'Raffia' Benitez say to buck them up at half-time? Having 'his boys' in the dressing room, sitting there lucky to be on level terms? Something like: "Oi! Sammy Hyypier! I pay you 50k a week and you've been turned inside-out by a fucking binman! And Babel! 12.5 million quid my arse! You can't even score past a bleedin' builder! Idiots. I'm not even speaking to you, make up your own tactics for the second half. Go on, bugger off!"

Okay, so it was probably a bit more eloquent Spaniard, and a little less Ricky Tomlinson, but you get the idea.

Bentiez has no idea about the F.A. Cup anyway. He expected Havant to behave as most teams do when coming to Anfield – stay in their own half, play a 5-4-1 formation, maybe line eleven men up on the line and wait for Jon Aller Riiise to take potshots at their trembling bodies. But this was the biggest day in Havant's history, they had 6,000 fans up in Scouseland (about 10% of whom are regulars at home games, but I digress) and all the team had been dreaming about scoring a goal at Anfield. They played their normal game, took it to the opposition, and two of them actually did score. It probably should have been more, so fallible did they make the Scousers' makeshit defence appear.

In the end, of course, superior fitness told, along with the International class of Yosser 'Arafat' Benayoun, as well as home bias, the linesman allowing Crouchie's offside goal to stand. But Liverpool weren't the first side to underestimate non-league opposition in the F.A. Cup and they won't be the last. Havant didn't get to the fourth round by chance, they beat Swansea in the previous round who are sitting at the top of League One and will be in the Championship next season. H&W are a skilful passing side, even if, towards the end of the match, most of their players were more concerned with asking Gerrard if they could have his shirt than defending corners.

This is why non-league football is the best soccer experience; charm, friendliness and camaraderie. I pay seven quid to stand on the terraces at Farnborough and watch a game that's likely to have more incident than most matches at a higher level. We've scored over 80 goals so far this season, and the other week we played a side mainly consisting of men with mullets and beer bellies. You don't get that kind of entertainment at Premiership grounds; paying forty quid or more to sit in a cramped seat in a stadium that has all the atmosphere of Heath Ledger's funeral (and when will our society allow gay cowboys to live in peace, without persecution? R.I.P. Heath, may you live any lifestyle you choose up in heaven and lasso a homosexual angel for me). 

In addition to the above plus points, none of Farnborough's players are as bad as Titus Bramble.

Semi-professionals are men who never make it to football's highest echelon for whatever reason; bad luck, injury, not performing at the right times, so instead they build careers outside the sport to see them through life and provide for their families. But many have a similar level of ability to those who make their living from the game, only without an exaggerated sense of their own self-importance, ridiculous wage demands or rape allegations hanging over their heads. They play for the love of it, giving up evenings and weekends because of a drive that has little to do with money or fame, and that shines through when you watch non-league.

Also, we once had a player called 'Fiston Manuella'.

Al.

More sporting mishaps HERE.

It occurred to me the other day that the brand new leaf of 2008 was the ideal moment to pray for the removal of many serious irritants from this mortal plane. With that in mind, and because various reserves of fury have been building up in me for a while now, I present to you Big Al's list of people I'd like to see end their lives unpleasantly at some point this year. 

People Who Say 'Does What It Says On The Tin'

What 'tin'? There is no goddamn 'tin'. Unless you're referring to something that does actually come in a tin, like soup (which stops you from being hungry) or Ronseal (who unwittingly introduced this meaningless phrase into the language) then using this phrase makes you sound idiotic. Music, clothes, books, events – any aspect of the modern world that incorporates features of its title, in recent months we've been asked to believe it "does what it says on the tin"' These things do not come in a tin. Before you know it, we'll be referring to people this way, as in "my mother does what it says on the tin". Then we'll have to start keeping relatives in tins. I don't want to live in that world.

Scouting For Girls

'She's so luv-er-ly, she's so luv-er-ly….'

'Elvis isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead…'

The worst new pop band in the country, having overtaken talentless Freddy Mercury impersonator Mika in the irritant stakes, Scouting For Girls are the musical equivalent of that alcoholic in the pub who won't stop talking to you. They need to be killed, and quickly.

Social Networking Spammers

I've got a comment, and yes! It's someone I've never heard of, and his / her friend has written something nasty about me on their blog apparently, and to find out what it says I should just click on this handy link! Because obviously they know who I am and care enough to mention me on their weblog, and it's definitely not just a way of downloading some nasty virus into my PC and YES! I really am that stupid!

Boris Johnson

Not because I particularly care whether he lives or dies, but if Boris did expire you know it would be in some entertaining and hilarious way, like being pecked to death by wrens or falling down a well while campaigning to be Mayor (which should provide some amusement in '08 whatever happens, particularly considering his only policy thus far is "to put a smile back on Londoners' faces". I'm assuming that means free mood-altering drugs for everyone). Militant pro-life campaigners may, however, be interested to note that this incorrigible philanderer imposed not one, but two abortions on his first mistress….

The Entire Cast & Crew Of 'Top Gear'

It's getting old now lads, that whole cavalcade of bigoted masculinity along with Jeremy Clarkson's secret desire to fellate the exhaust pipe of a beamer or whatever the hell they're spunking over this week. Apart from the pathetic nature of fetishising objects (it's a car! it gets you places! stroke it!) we now know that these men are responsible for a large portion of the planet's climate change worries with their moronic antics. Any ethical government (i.e. one I'm in charge of) would have them all executed immediately, although kudos to Richard 'Gere' Hammond for attempting to kickstart my purge on himself, he really ought to try again.

Anyone Who Uses The Phrase "End Of"

Because straight away it proves they're not the listening type, stopping the discussion on whatever spurious point they've just made and unwilling to brook further opinions. And grammatically, what's that all about anyway? 'End of' what? 'End of…' intelligent conversation? 'End of….' people tolerating you? I prefer to think of it as the 'End of…' your life. And soon.

Art Brut

Long-time readers of this blog will know my opinion of these smug chancers who have somehow managed to trick gullible American alternative types into thinking they add up to much beyond a smirking public schoolboy fronting an unmemorable pub-rock band. Adding to the insult of their continuing existence, last year Art Brut toured the States with my current favourite band (The Hold Steady). Luckily the popularity of this terrible novelty act is already waning, but in 2008 I'm still praying for their tourbus to plunge off a cliff somewhere near Colorado with no survivors. That'll learn 'em.

Charity Muggers

Have you been walking down a high street recently, only to get assaulted by fresh-faced scumbags in fluorescent tops who are in the way and trying to convince you to pledge hard-earned cash for some kind of major charity? In fact, most of the money donated goes straight into their pockets, so you're effectively paying these leeches to bother you. Any intelligent person donates through subscriptions or the internet, in fact you'd have to be quite green to think a fifteen-minute conversation with a student wielding a clipboard in the middle of a busy street is the best way to give something back to the world. That's why the only people they manage to stop tend to be foreign exchange students, lonely immigrants and the mentally subnormal. These muggers prey on the weak and naïve, much like child molesters. Ship them to a remote island I say.

Zane Lowe

What makes me hate this man so deeply is not the fact that he's clearly a thick jock or his radio manner pretending enthusiasm for every record in that fake Radio 1 manner. It's not even the way interviews he conducts turn into discussions around his own self-obsession. No, I want Zane dead because he's working in a genre of music I grew up with and still enjoy. Which makes me similar to the twat in one way. And I really resent that.

'The Noughties'

I cannot believe some people still refer to this decade with such a terrible pun. There are hundreds of perfectly adequate alternatives ('the zeroes', 'the ohs', 'the first ten years of the 21^st century' if brevity isn't your thing, man). Using this label makes you sound like the kind of nudge-nudge wink-wink cretin who wishes real life were more like a Carry On film. Stop it.

French & Saunders (the show)

They can both live (for now) but just imagine what a 'Bucket of French & Saunders' would actually look like – a dirty, metal pail overflowing with middle-aged flab and unfunniness. This pair of 'comediennes' have been putting out weak pastiches of contemporary movies my entire life in the pursuit of cheap laughs. And TV licence payers like you and I are paying for their pies!

Osama Bin Laden

Yes, he's a bad man, and the intermittent video diaries are becoming increasingly predictable ('death to the Western infidel', blah, blah, blah…) but the real reason Ossy should be in his grave is to stop the U.S. and Britain holding him up as the boogeyman and scaring voters to justify further military adventures. All figureheads for jihad (as well as lame ducks on the opposite side who exploit that) need to be extinguished, once and for all.

Fleet Town F.C. and All Their Supporters

Just because they're unpleasant. And really bad losers.

Further suggestions welcome, and remember kids – "release your hate, it's who you are".

As we approach the festive season in a miasma of secular promiscuity and drug abuse (or is that just me?) our thoughts turn from December's widespread pneumonia and child-inspired consumer rage, to the intermittent good stuff and big heap of mediocrity released in 2007.

Personally speaking, I had a blast, seeing somewhere in the region of 150 live bands, some of whom I'd been waiting to enjoy for years (The Jesus & Mary Chain, Built To Spill) while others surpassed all expectations (The Hold Steady, Band of Horses, Wheat).

Of course, there was some utter shite in there, The Bent Moustache supporting Sebadoh in Louisville springs to mind (how many frontmen have to say something like "I know you think we're shit, but we're not shit!" to the crowd? You wouldn't hear that from Thom Yorke. The Bent Moustache are playing London next year kids - run away, run away.).

Also firmly in the cloacal column, that bloke who supported The New Pornographers at Koko, sounded like Phil Collins and seemed to play for at least two hours. Special mention too, for the worst single night of music I've endured which was actually very entertaining in its way, the other Thursday at Salisbury's famous Alehouse where we were "treated" to a double-bill of ATS (four ASBO-candidates who looked like they were holding blades and played as if they hated music – even a shoddy cover of the Inspector Gadget theme couldn't enliven matters) and The Talks  from Hull who couldn't write a melody if they were threatened with death and had their own gormless faces on the t-shirts they were selling. Good luck with that fashion thing lads.

Go and befriend these turds if you've nothing better to do, then you can post insulting comments on their profiles telling them to give up on the dream and deriding their lack of talent. It's fun.

Overall though, and despite any outdoor event meaning you got pissed on, it was a great year for live music, and I like to think it's going to carry on that way, with established bands making more money from gigs than albums nowadays, everyone has to up their game. No more standing on-stage like knobheads concentrating on that difficult fourth chord, musicians have to entertain and put on a real show, whether that means a Seasick Steve-style raconteur, inviting the crowd onstage as The Stooges & The Felice Brothers & The Hold Steady (amongst others) did, or just being compelling in a different way like Chrome Hoof in their bacofoil spaceman outfits (shame the music was terrible).

Meanwhile Tim from Les Savy Fav risked his life hanging from the Scala balcony, wandered around the crowd stealing clothes from members of the audience, got his hair cut on-stage, and generally upset venue security the length and breadth of the country. For that, and because all his band's recent photo shoots were done in Minehead, Butlins, Mr. Harrington is crowned man of the year.

Ricky 'Don't touch me you poof' Hatton was a close runner-up.

And because this interweb 2.0 is all about interactivity, here's my compilation of favourite songs from 2007, for you kids to steal, download, burn, podcast or whatever the hell it is you do. Fits snugly onto a CD too. Listen to this little lot during the festive over-indulgence and familial boredom period, it'll make you more glad to be alive than any X-factor winner since Michelle McManus. Guaranteed.

John Allyn Smith Sails – Okkervil River

The Equestrian – Les Savy Fav

An Exhausted Fixer – Wheat

A Pillar of Salt – The Thermals

Start A War – The National

Party Pit – The Hold Steady

You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told) – The White Stripes

You Get Me – The Broken Family Band

All The Old Showstoppers – The New Pornographers

Honey Bee (Let's Fly To Mars) – Grinderman

Peace Beneath The City – Iron & Wine

(Antichrist Television Blues) - Arcade Fire

Lovers Who Uncover - The Little Ones

You'll Never Catch Him – Buffalo Tom

What This Town Needs - Blanche

Seems Like Home To Me – Two Gallants

This Is All I Came To Do - Dinosaur Jr.

Conventional Wisdom – Built To Spill

No One's Gonna Love You – Band of Horses

Spoke - Shellac

The following are a few of my favourite quotes from the official Status Quo autobiography; 'XS All Areas', extracted from the entirety of this 400 page book so that you never have to read it.

Please be warned that a number of blog readers may find some of the images evoked by Messrs Rossi and Parfitt offensive.

So John Howard, Australia's loveable Nazi Prime Minister, has finally decided to end the eleven years he's spent ignoring the indigenous population of his country, and announced that the Aussie government will be taking strong action to make the collective way of life better for hundreds of thousands currently residing in hellish conditions in poor aboriginal territory. And how, exactly, will his government be improving their standard of living? Better housing? Improved health care? A higher standard of education? Strictly enforced nutritional advice?

Nope, Johnboy's going to ban booze and porn.

Now, completely ignoring the fact that any adult who abuses children, as it has been alleged is occurring in the Northern Territories, must have something wrong with them beyond just being drunk, the point Howard is entirely missing here is that white rulers treating 'abos' as second-class citizens is how these problems arose in the first place. Effectively John's saying these people can't be trusted to drink responsibly. I guess they're just more primitive than the Antipodeans who down twelve pints of 'piss' every Friday in my local Walkabout. Of course, that type of first-world indulgence down Shepherd's Bush way could never lead to sexual irresponsibility, health problems, or any other unpleasant consequences, so it's completely different.

As prohibition taught us time and again, banning something only forces it underground, where said substance quickly becomes more dangerous. Check out the numbers of desperate Russians currently going blind from drinking coolants or lighter fluid. And alcohol's not even officially banned over there, they just can't afford real vodka. Big government always thinks it knows what's best, even if policies such as these are a tacit admission of racism, and even if there isn't the manpower or money to enforce such rules, rules which smack of trying to suppress the symptoms of a much larger problem.

Because citizens don't become desperate to obliterate the world their perceptions show them day after day when they're happy with their lot. Addicts only make up a small percentage of any nation's users, and the rest of these inebriated aboriginals are folk who need their brains messed with in order to cope with the dirt-poor, overcrowded, unemployed, filthy, hopeless facts of their existence. And if the Prime Minister can't do anything worthwhile to help this situation, they're going to turn to whatever comes to hand to momentarily transcend it. Be that legal or bootleg booze, hard or low-class drugs, methylated spirits or antifreeze. 

We shouldn't be surprised though, this is what morons like Howard have always done – tell the electorate how to behave or else. It's not like this is an isolated incident on the global stage, there are plenty of organisations looking to define the liberties of grown adults in similarly 'democratic' countries. Just last week the BBFC voted to ban outright the video game Manhunt 2 because it's a bit horrible, thereby creating a furore and lots of excellent publicity for a "sadistic" killing spree live-actioner that I'd never have otherwise heard of (but am now suddenly keen to purchase on the black market).

That's right, this game is so nasty it's not even allowed an 18 certificate! No consenting adults get to play THIS game, it might lead them to confuse fantasy with reality and go down Soho murdering some actual prostitutes. No matter that the cinemas are currently full of meritless 'torture-porn' flicks, stuff like Hostel 2 of Saw 3 where anyone who feels like it can see real people get eviscerated, flayed alive, forced to listen to records by The Twang, etc, etc…

Quite why a computer game, where the only gore is made up of pixellated graphics, gets deemed more reprehensible than some of the sickest horror films ever made, is something only the British Board of Film Classification can explain. If I remember those long teenage days spent furiously manipulating my joystick, the likelihood is that actioners of Manhunt's type are a cathartic outlet for violent impulses rather than a stepping stone to real life spree killings.  That said, after playing Operation Wolf for too long one Thursday I did go down to the local army base and attempted to blow up a tank, but I think that was a one-off.

Perhaps I'm being too logical. Maybe the next step is for everyone at the BBFC who played Manhunt 2 before (un)rating it to be forced into psychiatric monitoring for the rest of their lives, possibly locked inside metal cages, thereby saving society should these poor unfortunates be overwhelmed by the desire to go out and kill a bunch of people in gruesome ways. Because these are just impressionable grown-ups right? Grown-ups who can't be trusted to make their own entertainment choices. Grown-ups who need other, better, whiter, more morally pure and highly-evolved beings to take certain social possibilities away from them, lest they succumb to the worst kinds of depravity.

More dangers of free will exposed HERE.

Al.