Archive for January, 2007

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romance

January 28, 2007

Today I’ve listened to Tom Waits’ Asylum Years twice.

Twice.

I can’t remember the last time I listened to a record twice in the same week, let alone the same day. Blame it on the easy thievery MP3s and the libraic choice they lend to the listener, or the attention span of a hyperactive toddler that I seem to posess. Either way, it’s a rare occurence that has nurtured something I’ve not felt for a long time. It’s reawakened the romace within me.

The album is a collection of songs he wrote whilst signed to Asylum Records, his early years. The ones he spent presenting himself as a booze sipping lounge singer, wit and observation flowing from his mouth as easily as notes from the piano he pounded and caressed.

Waits himself is just as much a romanticized figure as his music. It’s easily done when you craft songs that display unique individuals in often dingy worlds of booze, sex and unmoralistic circumstances as he did on his later work, his “weird” work. But when you’re seemingly nothing more than a lounge troubador with an occaisionally gravelly voice and sparkling turn of phrase, that’s something to be admired and on repeated listening, something to be adored and deservedly mystified.

Romance is a hazy state of being that’s eluded me for years now, a ghost of an emotion I’ve been searching for using beer as my map and whiskey as my compass. Waits’ lounge songs are drenched in booze and the dramas that begin, end and drift in and out of bars, it’s an underlying theme that links these soap operas together, whether it be the beginning, the middle or the end. It’s this haze and musk, these almost indesrcibable feelings clumped together in vague terminology from which romance is born.

Sure, his later work had more musical scope, but he had just as much musical depth in these tunes. The lyrics are just poignant, if more predictable, in fact, I defy you to be a romantic young man and not imagine yourself as an onlooker in his tales without relishing it. Hell, I defy you to feel like you’re not there when the shit goes down.

So I’ve found romance again, I’ll probably cling to it for a few months. During that time I’m not only going to wallow in it, but take these feelings and use them to dare threw daily events, be it by fist, jaw or lips. With PMA restored I’m going to lounge around in smoke and search for love and fisticuffs.

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Most Haunted

January 4, 2007

Dear Mothers/Sisters/Grandmothers/Daughters you are ALL in danger.

This entry is aimed at the fairer sex. I would like to promote myself as a femisnist, but as you’ll see throughout the rest of this post, I cannot trust her with the nonsense that people deposit into her mind. And this post is duly dedicated to my mother and the thousands around the country like her, who are, like the rest of us lost souls looking for an answer to the only question that matters in the wrong place.

If you’ve ever met me or are one of the few who can put up with this blog for more than a baker’s dozen of seconds of ranting then what I am about to bang on about is most certainly not aimed at you. The problem is, it’s most likely aimed at some family member or friend who is close to you.

Now, you could be a member of MENSA, you could be the village retard, your standing in public opinion matters not, you could still be hooked to this show and the bullshit it perpetuates as possibility, if not flat, undeniable proof.

‘Most Haunted’ is a pox upon our fair kingdom, it’s not often I’ll refer to it as that, but when it comes to common sense and a bit of logic, we’ve the upper hand on most nations. Us Brits are renowned for our ability to shout “Poppycock” when presented with a load of codswallop, but our senses are dulled when it comes to this disgustingly misleading television program. And why? Because we too many people want to believe that there is more than this humble life that we lead, that there is purpose for us besides being born, procreating and then dying. That we can exist in an afterlife without being a believer in any particular faith. Not one of us believes that we are as miserable and insignificant as the anthropomorphic ants that mill about in our way and between us during our day-to-day lives, that we are designed for something greater, that our fathers who died before us were built for something greater. That the aging woman in the queue in front of us for the Gregg’s counter matters more than us and our earthly concerns, because our need for a Steak Bake is infinitely greater than her’s because she is to die soon, and more importantly because we do not know her. And on this fallacy is this piddling show designed. It takes the fears we have from seeing the elders we grew up with dying, it steals the superstition from which we were instilled with as youths and most of all, it feeds on the belief that our feeble little lives are worth more than the eighty years which we imprint upon the lives of those around ourselves and that we come in contact with throughout our lifetime as being worth more than the average Joe/Jane on the street.

The program is ‘Most Haunted’, our level of acceptability for such a show is immeasurable, farcical in fact. The introduction to this rant is meant to draw in as many people of the female gender as possible, its tagline is purposefully controversial; for as much of an educated woman you may be, there are almost certainly those around you that fall for this claptrap every single day of the week. The show is directly targeted at women, from the ex-Blue Peter, female presenter, to the highly effeminate and in some cases androgynous “Parapsychologists” (I’d love to see which universities their degrees came from). Everything in the show is manufactured to make their target audience, mainly built on the 40+ female, feel like there’s a possibility that the father figure who’s vanished from their lives in recent years has not actually left this mortal plain.

Bollocks. It’s a con and I can’t understand how they’re allowed to get away with making such outrageous statements on television. I’m sure they’ll use the defense that they truly believe it, and that other people across the country do. Well Fuck You. If you want to give people false hope that they’re able to get in touch with their dead father or mother, then FUCK YOU. You are despicable. You give false hope to people, regardless of how much they have to live for in their lives. You make them believe that they will never, ever be able to make a better life for themselves because you let them believe that anything that’s gone wrong in their personal lives between them and a dead loved one will be able to be resolved, as long as you’re willing to pay a shit load to some poncey twat who claims he can talk to the dead. In particular someone you’ve known.

Ad what about those who feel they’ve wronged the dead but can’t afford to pay for a “Parapsychologist”? News fucking flash, once someone’s died you automatically remember all the bad things you’ve said or done to them and you know what? There’s not a single thing you can do to change any of it, it’s happened, that means it’s been, it’s gone, and it’s in the past. And yet, these disgusting people feed on that last chance to tell Aunt Mildred that you’re sorry you crushed her Juniper bush, to tell cousin Sabrina that you’re sorry that you kissed her boyfriend at the ball and let him fuck your brains out.

THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

We live our lives from the decisions we make from moment to moment and there is no escaping that. Yvette Fielding, you are an absolutely loathsome woman, the ludicrousy of the show you present and produce does not need to be touched upon here, but your lust for the Great British pound does. You give false hope to probably millions up and down the country for filming in night vision and then pretending to freak out and ultimately run away.

FUCK YOU.

It is from ungallant business heads, like yours, throughout the ages that vicious wars have been fought, and just because you’ve omitted the violence does not make you any less of a disgusting human being. Not only do you feast upon the fear and anger that the death of close family member permeates from an individual, you harness it and turn it your way to make a profit. You are completely despicable, you use the instability of those of a certain age, you quell their fears of death and rein it in as a part of life with which we can all communicate and exist as one with. You are a liar and merchant of a ludicrous false hope to audience who has no trust in itself and so relies on the bullshit you and your religious brethren spread like thinly layered muck on inadequately nourished crops. Guess how you’ll eventually end up? Withered and forgotten. Though not before you’ve earned more than enough to retire on Yvette, I should imagine.

*EDIT* This is the last time I get pissed and try and write anything. I’m going to leave this here as a warning to myself.