Inevitable Nuptial Post, pt 94

I don't particularly care whether they get married or not. They don't seem like monsters, merely people who enjoy monstrous privilege. Come the revolution there will be more important jerks to put up against the wall.

In fact, I don't give a stuff about marriage in general really. I can't get excited about it. I'm at the age now when quite a few of my friends are either married or thinking about it, and that's great for them, but it's virtually impossible to see it as anyone's business but theirs.

So I don't WANT to be annoyed about today. I've tried very hard just to ignore the manufactured enthusiasm that many people seem to be going along with out of a determined sentimentalism, like the smile on a parent's face as they agree to read The Wheels on Barney's Bus once more to their demanding young progeny.

But good gods they've made it difficult. Even watching TV on catchup I've been repeatedly and loudly informed that 'we've all got wedding fever' (Yes, if by that you mean I'm developing a rash). Youtube has some kind of banner animation and every shop is filled with the indescribable tat that would make a Franklin Mint salesman sneer. Even my alarm clock woke me up with news of this bullshit this morning.

I think I must have finally flipped because last night I actually dreamed I was at a street party that was also attended by David Cameron and Gideon Osborne, and that I locked myself in the house and watched them all being eaten by zombies. WHAT COULD IT ALL MEAN?

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I didn't WANT to be all ranty about this kitsch and gaudy celebration of inherited wealth and privilege at a time when public services are being gutted and unemployment is at 2.5 million. The media drivelstorm has forced me into it. ARE YOU HAPPY, JOURNO SCUMBAGS? ARE YOU? LOOK UP FROM YOUR SCREEN AND LOOK AROUND AT YOUR CO-WORKERS. ONE OF THEM'S ON YOUTUBE EVALUATING THE VERACITY OF UPSKIRT SHOTS OF KATE AT UNI, AREN'T THEY? PROUD OF YOURSELVES, ARE YOU? STOP DOING EVERYTHING JUST TO PISS ME OFF. STOP IT.

Anyway, I think I'm going to spend the day with Buffy DVDs and occasionally re-watch the awesomeness that was The Impossible Astronaut.

Easter is a time for remembrance. For sacrifice.

It's a time when we remember a man who died for us. A man who wasn't really a man. A man who suffered for us in ways we can't really understand. A man whose sacrifice we remember because he defeated death itself. Even now, he is watching over us.

So in 3 weeks, on Easter Sunday, spare a thought for him. And remember his words:

'Eee ba tha gum.'*

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*In other words my fanboy sense is tingling. The trailer is the best thing since this thing.

Dear Internets. Yesterday I was on a great big march...

... and I had a great time. Still blown away by it. I think sheer size was what impressed me most. Size and the sense of anger. Size, the sense of anger and the huge variety of groups. Size, the sense of anger, the huge variety of groups and the great placards. Size, the sense of anger, the huge variety, the great placards and the bands. Size ... I'll stop there. I'd love to upload my pictures but like a fool I forgot my camera and my phone doesn't talk to other electeronicamal devices very easily. I'll work it out soon. Highlights of the day:

• The girl with the 'only one man can save us now' placard with a TARDIS on it The girl with a huge homemade banner that looked a bugger to carry, emblazoned with 'This banner isn't big enough for all the things I'm angry about!'


• The anarchist brass band. They weren't attempting to play anything, which is probably for the best. I have no idea how a band would sound, founded on the principle of anarchy, but I'm guessing this would sound better...


• The brass band who struck up the Internationale when passing the bust-up LloydsTSB that had been vandalised.


• The vandalised LloydsTSB. Banks have never been funnier than when someone's chucked something through a glass door then stuffed a baguette into the hole. When I can get hold of the photos I'll update this post and then you'll see. Then YOU'LL ALL SEE! You know, if you want.


• The 'Big Society - compensating for something?' banner.


• The various 'build a bonfire' chants. Some were quite inventive.


• The fact that the back end of the march still wasn't visible near Trafalgar at gone 4 o'clock - more than 5 hours after it first started.


• The number of times that I heard comments along the lines of 'this needs to be the start of something, not the end'.


• The number of people carrying SWP placards calling for a general strike (mine's leaning against the bookcase as I type).

Ahem. Worst points of the day:

• The Kindness Revolution or whatever they were offering free hugs near the National Gallery. It wasn't just the unsubstantiated demands, it was that they were actually from the White Stuff clothing company. Fuck off, White Stuff clothing company.*


• The bloke with the 'Socialism is Theft' banner. Yeah, that's why we're here guys! Let's start a fight during a display of solidarity.**

I would like to end this post with a simple message: GENERAL STRIKE NOW. We run this country, not the Condems or the bankers. We make everything, we do all the work. Let's remind these motherfuckers just whose indulgence they play on when they tell us they're the voice of authority. Build for a general strike.

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*Also, at what point did people start charging for hugs anyway? You need to get better friends, White Stuff Clothing Company.

**Also, brief shout-out for all the 'Tory Scum' banners. It's good to see the old classics getting a play.

There is literally no snark left...

I've not updated for a bit, partly because I've been to busy with ... you know ... stuff ... and partly because I generally want to post on here in order to snark at news stories that make the little veins in my eyes start throbbing with greater urgency than a diarrhoetic in a 10 items or less queue at Boots*, but the absurdity event horizon seems to have passed me by. I mean, look at this:

George Osborne said he would be watching oil companies "like a hawk" to make sure there was "no funny business" following his budget decision to cut 1p from fuel duty.

Honestly, where do you start? It's times like this I am painfully aware that I can never make a great satirist. I can't see it with ironic detachment. It's just a matter of - this is utter, nonsensical madness. What's the right response to this? A clever gag, a series of bullet points explaining the various levels of hypocrisy and untruth at work, or what?**

I know everyone else has pointed this out as well - if even the shadow chancellor's got it then it's a fair bet few are fooled, but Jesus. They really do think we're a Burkean mob, don't they?

We'll see how well this 'stability' that Gideon's created works on Saturday I suppose...

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*Yes, at Boots. Look, if they were in Tesco's how would you get the cue that they were buying imodium? Look, just forget it.

**Note how I avoided the obvious 'a series of bullets' line there. Never go for the easy punchline, kids. Unless it's funny to do so, obviously.

Lovely, thanks. Yours?

So in advance of Xmas, I announced my intention to get some seriously shit films to watch during the festive season. Films of the calibre of Beverly Hills Cop II. Did I get my wish? Well, in the end the closest I got was Beauty and the Beast, unfortunately, which is emphatically NOT shit. And not just because Disney decided that a psychosexual fable that involves the use of Stockholm Syndrome and elements of Bluebeard (and hence legendary paedophile child murderer and neckhole fucker Gilles de Rais) was a suitable subject for a children’s film. Also because a talking clock called Cogsworth says ‘If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it!’

So what was my xmas viewing, I hear you cry? And where’s that cartoon you promised? Well my dears, as to the first: coming right up. As to the second: shut up.
Firstly there was an ace Doctor Who. Combines all my favourite things about Christmas into one neat package. A Christmas Carol had some lovely singing, a message of hope and redemption, and of course an intricate time-travelling plot and a flying shark.

Then there were the little shiny discs I got from my adoring public. I may not have sat through something as dire as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but I did have some genuinely harrowing festive experiences.

First out of the giftwrap was Deep Water. This is a documentary about Donald Crowhurst, who in 1968 got in a boat, tried to sail around the world by himself without stopping, started lying about how far he’d got, got drunk, claimed he was some kind of supernatural entity and killed himself.

Next out of my big comedy stocking and covered in holly leaves and sellotape, we have The Wave, the film in which a well-meaning schoolteacher accidentally turns his kids into the Hitler Youth within a week. With hilarious consequences, it would say on the box, if it were more than usually dishonest.

Anxiously tearing at an infinitude of ‘Merry Christmas’es in a variety of fonts, I then uncovered Hidden Agenda, Ken Loach’s film about the abuses perpetrated by the security services in Northern Ireland and containing a fictionalised version of the coup that nearly happened, to oust Wilson’s last government. With assassinations, grubby politics and the kind of aristocratic nastiness you associate with Thatcherite Establishment types, Time Out didn’t call it ‘More laughs than a barrel of monkeys with kuru.’

What’s this, hiding beneath my lump of coal? Why it’s harrowing docudrama Threads! I’ve used the bit where Sheffield blows up in lessons on War and Peace, but this is the first time I‘ve seen it all the way through. Who’d have thought the nuclear holocaust could be the least distressing part? Anyone who thinks self-important vacuity-fest The Road is a disturbing piece clearly hasn’t seen Threads. Although after you have, you will probably wish you hadn’t.

So that was my Christmas viewing. Paranoia, peer-conformity, corruption, the end of the world and the hell of survival. If you think about it, it’s what the baby Jebus would’ve wanted.

Happy 2011 everybody!

Things you notice about incidental music

Our school's assembly was xmas-themed this week, and a bit of Charlie Brown's Christmas was shown. Peanuts is one of those things you know about because it seems to be a formative part of most Americans' childhood experiences, rather than something I know much about myself, so I'd never seen it.

So hey, maybe you are a big Peanuts fan and already know this. WELL GOOD FOR YOU. But I didn't, so there.

Listen to the background music here!



THE RED FLAG! Is it me, or is that a weird choice for an American cartoon? I used to read the strip in my Nan's Daily Fail, for the gods' sake!

PS more cartoon strip to follow soon, if you like that sort of thing.

UPDATE: Thanks to Roobin (see comments), I have learned that in fact The Red Flag is usually sung to the tune of a German Christmas carol called O Tenenbaum, which in English is rendered as O Christmas Tree. Therefore it is just a coincidence that it appears in Charlie Brown Christmas at a point where Charlie is railing against consumerism. You Learn Something New Every Day.

Shit TV: But How Shit?

I've been contemplating obtaining some proper shit-but-fun films for xmas, to provide relief from my lowly, lonely, pointless existence. I've got the beginnings of a list, but I feel there must be more. I therefore solicit suggestions to function as addenda to this compendium:

• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Lethal Weapon
• Lethal Weapon 2: Diplomatic Immunity
• Beverly Hills Cop
• Beverly Hills Cop 2
• Die Hard
• Die Hard 2
• Ghostbusters
• Ghostbusters 2
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I know I'm missing some obvious ones, but what?

Directions in the Opiniosphere - Update

The perils of anecdata:

1. The immediate response of a 'close family member'* to Jody McIntyre's ordeal was to blame him for being on a demo in the first place.
2. Another 'CFM' just got home after a train delay due to a suicide and complained that their death would have 'eaten into East Midlands' Trains' profits'.

Conclusion: People are inexplicably detestable.

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*Genetically. I've never thought about love when I thought about home.**

**Slight exaggeration. Although not tonight

Pleasing Directions in the Opiniosphere

It's been an interesting few days for democracy, I'm sure you'll agree. For the first time since Iraq there's a strong public protest on the streets whose aims, at least, are backed by a big majority* of the public. Only this time there seems to be a cross-section that are supportive of the elements that the PM is calling 'hell bent on violence' and 'feral thugs'.

On a purely anecdata level, it's been brilliant to see the short shrift that a lot of the hand-wringing 'BUT TEH SNOOKER BALLZ' gang are getting. I have quite an insulated life in some ways, as I don't bother with the tabloids or the right-wing broadsheets, and I stopped that soppy 'got to read opinions from BOTH sides' crap years ago, on the same basis that I don't bother getting the Discovery Institute's reaction to every new fossil find. But the normally centrist people I know through work and through social media (I don't really have enough of a social life at the moment to canvas IRL people) seem at the very least disoriented and frequently openly sympathetic to direct action.

It's a basic tenet of Marxist thinking that revolutions offer points where people's perception of themselves and normal social truths begin to shift, and although we're obviously not at the point of storming Whitehall yet, we are witnessing people normally safely esconsced within establishment notions of 'democracy' and 'peaceful protest' genuinely questioning themselves. I think that at the very least, the Tory attempt to re-write history so that the entirety of Labour's period in office was a disaster is dead in the water. Admittedly, at least one person I know has reaffirmed today that they are 'still proud to be a Lib Dem', just 'disgusted at the leadership' - but I can't take that too seriously, 'cos what does 'being a Lib Dem' mean, exactly? And at least it's in the right general direction.

Anyway, interesting times ahead.

*H/T Adam Bienkov

Xmas - The Prologue Continues.