Hallelujah for Buckley and the Burke!

HOW many candles does it take to produce the light of a star? Judging by Alexandra Burke's Hallelujah video, ten thousand (approx.) for Jeff Buckley, he was the star and the light and his enduring influence and appeal continue to burn bright.

I'm not happy with Alexandra Burke's cover of Leonard Cohen's song, Hallelujah. The recent chart battle for Xmas no.1 between the X-factor version and Jeff Buckley's has already been well covered but I feel I have to say something on the subject.

The people will always want to have their cake and, no doubt, to eat it. That's fair enough, everyone likes different things. But I can't stand to let Alexandra Burke's version get to the top of the charts, here are my reasons.

Many people have credited Alexandra Burke's version with turning people onto the Jeff Buckley's cover, which is great but if you hear Jeff Buckley's version and immediately prefer it to Alexandra Burke's then surely that means that his is the superior cover.

Not many people know this, except for Michael Pane, but Jeff's version is actually a cover of a cover. Jeff himself stated that he preferred John Cale's (ex-Velvet Underground) cover of Cohen's original, with the alternative set of lyrics. But when he set out to record his version he was beset by the usual problems of his freewheelin' style as Jeff was prone to playing a song differently each time from his Sin-E days playing solo in New York cafes. He played Hallelujah in different keys and with different guitar passages, so his versions are much more than just "stripped down" as many people refer to them.

Buckley's overflowing invention, his inability to be complacent with his music is very noble sounding, but it was no doubt a bitch to record properly. In the end Buckley's producer at the Grace sessions, Andy Wallace, put together several takes of Hallelujah, creating a unique hybrid of performances.

Alexandra Burke's Hallelujah, by comparison, is more an achievement of volume and style without substance. Where Buckley reached for beauty, Burke drowns us in shallow bombast. Loudness and candles does not equal a powerful cover of an emotive song. I'm not a huge fan but at least some of Mark Ronson's version album had some interesting covers on it, different takes on the same pop songs, but Alexandra Burke plays it so straight as to be square.

My point is simple: Jeff made Hallelujah his own, Leona Lewis just sang it back to us.

After Jeff Buckley's death in 1997, Bono in his infinite self-righteousness, described him as "a pure drop in an ocean of noise". This could be interpreted in many ways, such as a comment upon Jeff's full and clean sound against the tidal slur of grunge or the insincerity of the Mock-ney chirp in Britpop. I've always seen it as a comment on Jeff's place in the musical world, especially around the time Grace was released.

When Grace came out people were stunned at Jeff Buckley's voice and musical style, particularly as a different reincarnation of his father, Tim Buckley. Jeff sounded Happy/Sad but also was his own musical man, not entirely riding the coattails of his father's shadow. The important thing about Jeff's cover of Hallelujah is that it proved him to be something else as an artist, full of potential for changing music. And that's why he's so sorely missed today because everyone is reminded how poorer the world of music, and our conception of talent, is without him. In the age of the cover, the remake, the sequel, the re-issue and the manufactured plastic star, we need some of that purity again.

Urbex. Baby, I'm so slow...

I just found this amazing site. Bunch of guys explore breaking down buildings, just for kicks. Some really beautiful, haunting photography.

Click the Rabbit hOle to find it...

It's a forum site so look for the "report" links

Ignorance and Bliss are the Kiss of a Pig

It's nothing new that Barack Obama's latest statement has landed him in hot water:

"You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

The evidence against him has been bandied around at great length already. The initial criticism being that Barack Obama had offended and thus further alienated a number of female voters some of whom are already believed to have been won over by the Republican party's surprising appointment of a woman vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. This is confusing in itself; should offense be taken that Obama might have compared Palin to a pig and not the self-flattering "pitbull in lipstick" she had made herself out to be?

Probably not. And if he did mean it, I think he actually dealt her something of a compliment. It is common knowledge that pigs are one of the most intelligent mammals, though not the most noble of creatures; as they are also well known for bathing in mud & faeces. As well as eating swill without finding a pearl (that's Dolphins, right?)

Socrates himself made the comparison between the temperament of the pig and human beings as being heavily weighted in the pig's favour. Onboard a sinking ship a human will panic and cry, whereas a pig will often go with the rocking flow of the boat, content in their ignorance. Humans easily become mired in their own complex emotional frameworks, such as being paranoically offended over minor turns of phrase, and lose sight of consideration for others and the simpler (cheaper) pleasures in life. The nature of the pig is a similar attitudinal state to that of the Pyrrhonian sceptics, who promoted freedom from high-minded thought and other, other-worldly considerations, such a philosophy and politics.

Perhaps then Obama has made a veiled nod toward an ancient philosophical problem he sees as a dominating feature in modern politics. He has drawn out for us a crucial paradox that whilst humans are often content to see themselves as highly articulate and ridden with deep thought and selflessness, especially when compared to our animal brethren, so many of us are often loathed to forget our deep seated alleigances (to be sure, some of us never forget) so stuck in our ways, so eager to reach the trough, and much like the stubborn donkey, we plough a blind-minded furrow we believe righteous, whatever the cost to other people. Which, ironically, makes us seem just as ignorant as the free 'n' easy piggies over whom we claim mental superiority, lipstick or no.

'Cus nothing sucks like a McDonalds

What's it like to work for McDonalds?

Shit, apparently...

Meaty Tower of Babel Facing Collapse!

See my previous article about not eating meat to avoid the so-called "Credit-Crunch", or click here

Cindy McCain: Plastic spitting Politik.

I've never seen anyone so fake. Watching Cindy McCain's speech at the Republican convention in Minnesota has left me sick and scared. Anyone who sees "Hockey-Mom" as a good qualification to help lead one of the greatest potential nations in the world (when referring to the Republican V.P. candidate, Sarah Palin. See nutty picture below)


Everything Mrs. McCain says suggests to me that she has a pull string lodged deep in her plastic spine. She talks about goodness/righteousness/justice/equality as some kind of simple universal properties that only certain people (White Conservative Republicans) are capable of possessing. I think it's a good thing to aspire to such grand ideals, Obama makes similar claims, but to see yourself (and your entire family line, when she celebrates four generations of McCains being involved in various wars and killing people) as being the embodiment of such perfection is an exercise in pure delusion as great a folly as the notion of colonial righteousness in manifest destiny.

She refers to John (McCain) as a leader of "great strength", because he spent six years in a Vietnamese prison camp. Does this constitute a war hero? What I am certain of is that at the grand old age of 72 McCain ain't quite what he used to be. Reagan was accussed of senility (McCain constantly nods towards him as a kind of great precedent to excuse his own old-age) particularly in his second term. If McCain serves two consecutive terms, without croaking and handing power over to "Hockey-Mom" incaranate, then he will be approximately 80 years old when he finishes his presidency, ready to be wheeled out at public ceremonies, or kept in a Futurama-jar, point being: He will be well past the best of his faculties, both physical and mental and that is dangerous for all concerned.

But what really gets me about the latest lying mouth of all time is her constant gesturing and posing. Like James Dean she pouts and preens after every second sentence, as if her pauses were so precious and inward reaching that we should all find the Great American Spirit within ourselves as we are fortunate enough to witness her own playacting in self-deception. Cindy McCain recieved so much more applause when she didn't say anything it compels me to wonder: If she were able to shut her damn mouth right up until the election period, then the Republicans will surely win the Presidential race. However, knowing how eager she is to spill vision over substance and logical rhetoric, to stand pretty and tall, much like a lamp shade by her ailing husband's side, she will probably speak again. And again. And again. There is hope for the Democrats yet.

There's so much White in the Stars and Stripes"-Manic Street Preachers

WelcometotheMachine.

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/blog/archive/2006_02_01_archive.html

"This way of life that's so devised/To snuff out the mind that moves"-Jeff Buckley.

The Modern human being, when not engaged in the mass-production of the species/crowded around communal troughs or watering holes, is otherwise located at their current place of gainful employment. The set-up varies depending upon the individual and their circumstance but for many people it's the classic 9-5 grind, for others, a weirder time-frame 6am-2pm, or nights. What troubles me about these alternative ways of life is that they're not good for anyone. As a worker the individual's health is bound to suffer.

Working strange hours affects regulated sleep patterns, which can eventually lead to mental health as a significant lack of good quality sleep, perchance to dream, can cause a person to see the real world in a distorted fashion; through a glass darkly. Whilst these visions are perfectly acceptable in the dream world and to a certain extent in the real world (you often see people holding court shocked and small audiences regaling them with wild tales of their latest cheese-dream trip) when they spill over, uncontrolled, they cause a person general detachment from the actual state of things making people come across as very strange without their fully realising it.

Much research has also been carried out of people @work. For example, working as a refuse technician (a Binman, who they kidding) exposes you to lots of infection and all weathers, scratching on the dusty floors of a warehouse or factory floor keep people in poorly ventilated areas, breathing in said dust, and out of sunlight, which, in controlled exposures, is good for the regeneration of skin cells and also improves mental health and tiredness levels (the back of the knees go first.)

But by far the most significant issue regarding this way of working is the mechanised routine of it all. I dropped this in earlier on; treating people in uniformly and with a colder reserved manner, less as human beings more as tools that can be forced to crank out greater profit, is bad, both for business and for the workers themselves.

If you treat a worker badly, especially by giving them the same dull jobs day in, day out, teaching them blind repetion and servility until death will only lead them to work below their full potential, which is inefficient. If for example, one were a janitor, and had to mop the exact same areas of floor every day they went to work (approx. 5:2) then they would soon come to appreciate the crushing boredom of their work and due to the many physical restrictions upon their working life (education/native intelligence/physical attributes) they come to grudgingly accept thus the pointlessness of hoping for a change in their life that probably won't ever come. This can lead to complacency in their work (already, that is a health and safety issue in many of the industry areas I have mentioned) and this harms the quality of their and the industry overall, as many other people in the same workplace are in a very similar position to one another (often this common ground is one of the only solid tenures of good relations amongst fellow workers)

The argument is simple, and uses Master Yoda's schema for the problem of Evil, as shown in "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi":

-Crushing routine leads to boredom (Mmmm), and thus, complacency.
- Complacency leads to a reduction in effort (it does), and so the quality of work suffers as a result.
- This in turn causes suffering for the worker who berated by their boss/kapo (they will be), and so they feel worse about themselves and the whole cycle begins again but only ever seems to get worse each time.

(F)lyng Ntz

Now you've done it.

Randy Finewax --- Ubermensch Journalist (?)

Does he Offend You? Yeah! Should he?

Clearly "in-trouble", ex-star, G.Glitter has recently been returned to us in the U.K. and I'm sure everyone is quite upset. However I am often concerned as to the validity of people's offence, or even anger, at the return of Mr. G. The cause of their upset is no doubt rooted in his release for serving almost a three-year sentence in Thailand accused of paedophilia. But the reaction of Glitter's supposed U.K. peers concerns me for two reasons:

The girl was probably a hooker. Something a great many people in this country tolerate all the time in this country, but especially when they themselves choose to play away abroad (the "Brit-on-Hols" amoralist, which is fast-becoming an enduring stereotype.) What offends us is more of an aesthetic sentiment, than a moral one. Correct, it is very wrong to abuse, or to sleep with a child that is under the age of sixteen (interestingly, a few days ago Glitter said that he did not know the legal age for sexual intercourse in Thailand is eighteen years of age) for many good, shall I say, "pragmatic" reasons. However, I can't help but feel that what upsets us more, is the fact that we cannot appreciate why or even how a consensual adult might find a person under the age of sixteen sexually attractive, for the majority of U.K. residents this is, simply put: A substantial head-fuck (I don't know the medical-Latin.)

And whilst I realise it would be a fickle and naive thing to claim outright that people who object to paedophilia on the grounds that it is not our cultural way of engaging in sexual relations with another person; that it is essentially a matter of taste, I think it would also be an act of powerful self-deception to say that most people dislike paedophiles, and are consistenly ill-prepared to give them a second chance, because we find them disgusting and repellent. We are angry not because of what they have "done" to another person, the interaction might have been mutually pleasurable, this is a side we never do, or (justifiably) want to, see, and so we cannot allow that it might have had any positive outcomes at all.
What becomes clear is that we are not so much angry with the crime itself but with the age of the particular persons involved, it is the nature of the intercourse that causes us offence. This once again lends itself strongly to the hypocrisy/hysteria/Much Red-top banner waving we can expect in the coming days and weeks.

Glitter himself has called into question the fairness of his trial and in the statement given this morning by his solicitor at Uxbridge Crown Court it was hinted that the trial might have taken place under illegal circumstances, Glitter's right of appeal was never considered by the Thai court, and so it should be considered null and void in the U.K. However, this really is a moot point. Glitter was previously convicted of child pornography offences (in the U.K.) back in 1999, so in the eyes of the law he is already damned and this case seems merely to confirm his predilection for small children. Not only that, the damage to his reputation and ability to live openly is damaged irreparably. The problem is that we as a nation have become so, overly-sensitive to the "p-word" a love that cannot even whisper its name, that we come to near hysteria over suspected or even confirmed paedophiles, even though they might have been forced into early-retirement by chemical castration, in the very British manner that we look for things to complain about, we get all 1984, and start to see the potential for paedophiles everywhere (restrictions on the use of cameras at schools is a good example) which, I feel, also invites cause reasonable for reasonable doubt, and as such we have allegations and slander, without evidence or proof, and yet it still it seems to carry the resounding power to ruin "normal", good-people's lives, who are in reality (i.e. sans-media hype) perfectly innocent.

p.s. It's also very hard to accept, from an aesthetic point of view, that G.G.'s hair looked better in the Glam-days than his current Machiavellian beard, which I think is doing his social persona, no favours at all.

I'm seeing Double/They're both Blowing Bubbles...

Click Me:
Mushareff Resigns to avoid Impeachment: I win!

Dieting=Anorexia?!

I finally clicked on that infernal "P*ink Patch" link (3/4 down the web-page)
that pervades the ad. banners of F*Book Inc. (Perhaps this a sign that all-invasive, repeat, repeat, advertising does work?)
and one of the so-called models
looked frightfully skinny (see the above pic.)
Surely the patches are intended
for people
who need to lose weight
in order to gain health benefits,
not just people who desire
to shed weight for its own sake
and so damage their health in the process.
I really feel this image is improper, not on moral grounds;
I'm sure there are some people who really dig 'rexia-porn, but on the simple fact that the picture misleads as to the correct usage of the product. Surely this breaks the definite descriptions act of 1985? Regardless, she looks gratuitously trimmed in the 'mid by some kind of digital-butcher.

Junk to the Left of me; Jokers to the Right.

Striking a personal note I've started clearing more "stuff" (with its grab-anything catchment, this is a deplorably over-used word, but here it meets my needs exactly) out of my room. I have just spent several hours photographing, cataloging, and posting it all on *bay. This is a depressing and (probably) futile task. If I don't want it, its hard to see why on earth anyone else might. It's hard to price the "stuff" because from many perspectives it is all CRAP. I'm desperately trying to find Niche-Heads who have an immense passion/addiction-to Mecanno or W*ndoS-95 Ethernet Cards.

But like a great many things I've tried to salvage something worthwhile from one of the many mini car-crashes in my little life. I've come to a strong conclusion about "stuff" I really HATE it. In a peculiar fashion it makes me envy the Poor (that is those severely lacking "stuff") if only because it allows them to be so much freer than I am. With "stuff"comes responsibility and dull labour. I appreciate this isn't too cool: There ain't nothing fun, or funny, about poverty. But I still wish I had been more sensible and not accumulated so much more "stuff" that makes me miserable and takes up more space on this rapidly shrinking Junk-dump we call: "The World".

But now I've had this chat witcha' and so we're friends now, could I just ask: Would you like to buy any pegs?

Wading Unreal into Murky Waters...

Freedom isn't. China is getting pricklier by the minute regarding the freedom of the press in their country. Many people have criticized the government for a lack of the transparency that was promised. This is compounded by the gradual seeping out of dirty little truths (see my previous blog entry) now including the revelation that the giant's footsteps we all marveled at, stomping toward the birdsnest stadium, were in fact computer generated for the delight of audiences at home. I thought they looked amazing, and I was really impressed at the skillful display, and sheer firepower of so many 'works, but I was quite gutted to learn that they were fake C.G.

Claims have been made in China's defense, but they seem trifling when China continually attmepts censorship of reality, and with long list of restrictions upon foreign journalism a devaluation of what Journalism is supposed to be about: Reporting Truths. However, this does give greater credence to the Bloggers, as we should be expected to speak freely and offer more honest opinions than registered journalists are able to:

Read the propaganda/evidence, form an opinion, then publish or perish. GO to it!

See here

Join my campaign for the testing of Chinese Athletes (here) to determine whether or not they are in fact little Android robots, or at the very least; Cyborgs!

"Transparency"+ The desire to Impress the World (inevitably) = Bullshit.

Love the Song but Not the Singer - Part 1

The latest revelation from the Chinese Olympics has emerged. The little girl in the red dress I mentioned in a previous article has returned to haunt us, but in a very different form. Like the ghost of innocence in Schindler's List and the un-shakeable presence of the Don't Look Now kid, she was one of the focal points of the entire four-hour ceremony. I went on and on, as I'm sure many of us did, how perfectly her neat and practised behavior stood in perfect synthesis with her gilded notes of her crystalline tones. It turns out she was miming: The voice and the face are not one and the same.

Despite my clear ability to be duped, I am only half-surprised by this. The ever-benevolent Chinese government decided that the girl who actually sang the song was not considered aesthetically pleasing enough to be the latest face of nu-Communism. And so, in the 'interest of the state' (that old chestnut is beginning to crack) she was replaced by a prettier girl, minus the talent (stop me if you've heard this one before.)

This new scrap of forced-hand Chinese honesty strongly undermines the myriad of voices from the press, Olympic athletes, and by implied murmur, the Chinese government themselves, that we should always keep politics and sport separate (there is a similar claim often made regarding the ethics of an author and the reception of their artworks; but I'll talk about that in part 2) Attempting to deny the debate about the relation between human rights and what has been popularly hailed as one of the best Olympics EVER, has blown up in the faces of all concerned, no pun, because it has only served to raise awareness of many political issues in the combined minds of a multi-million global audience. And like a simple cut left to fester the damage has already been done. If China, for one, had been more open about its past and the modern realities of its human rights situation, they might have avoided such an embarrassing, and self-inflicted, injury.

China has suffered for its botched deceptions; the murder of the American volleyball coach, two bomb attacks (despite widespread security precautions), the very public waving of several Tibetan flags, and now, the sheer artifice of the perfect, miming Child in Red. In isolation these minor events could, perhaps, be shrugged off, but when taken together they provide a damning testament to the reputation of a highly-secretive country trying to appear something that its not, an enlightened and free state, now having to patch up the cracks. The Olympics must go on!

With distinctly Orwellian tones, this causes one to remember many naughty things: China's attempts to erase its past through the strict filtering of information and restrictions upon internet access (Googling Tianeman Sq. in China mentions nothing about the massacre), it has tried to divert the attention of its critics, and quickly fold away all of those wrong flags, and stamping down any occasions of protest (the right to free speech that we can take for granted). As I have stated before, the seeming gullability of a world audience who allow themselves to be strung along the yellow-brick road of Olympic celebration, eager to see only what they want to see, implicates us in a united state of political complacency and so we cannot just blame China for forgetting the skeletons under the Birds Nest, as we too remember these things not-happening.

Another striking example of the consistent ability of politics and ethics to intrude upon the public domain is the rising conflict in Southern Ossetia; now titled the "Russian Five-day War" (a dubious claim seeing as it's not over by a long shot.) The first fighting between Russia and Georgia went largely unreported on Saturday morning. In a few of the newspapers it was given only a brief mention, several pages in. Daily Mail reporters, of all people, being the only publication to mention S.Ossetia on the front page.

This came to a head with the rise of the Irony curtain as a Russian and a Georgian athlete won Olympic medals in the women's badminton finals. The two girls hugged one another, seemingly in a show of solidarity, and nobly stated that politics had no place in sports (China won the gold medal but the poor girl was sidelined by the political significance of the bronze and silver medallists' embrace). It was a fine statement but I'm not convinced that their amiable gesture was in fact a rejection of the influence of politics in sports. In stating their renunciation of the aggressive divide between their two countries, the girls were in fact acknowledging its significance upon current affairs. If their intent was to claim a permanent distinction between sport and politics then the amount of press attention they recieved as a result of "not" saying or doing anything remotely political, quickly dissolved this notion in the minds of everyone else who watched them. In effect, they've given us a compelling doublethink: A contradictory statement; whereby one deceives one's-self into believing exactly what they don't think they do believe.

In trying to be apolitical, the girls have actually made a highly political statement. And have in turn served to raise further doubt as to the validity of China's claim that is necessary for them, and us, to keep their authoritarian reality apart from the neon-wonderland of the Beijing Olympics. However, their free use of deception has only increased the glare of the foreign media spotlight into the truths surrounded the murky smog of Chinese illusion.

End of part One.

"Keep your eyes on mine, o.k."

Whilst I hate to reference a mortal enemy, I thought the Daily Mail made a really good effort today. Their front page featured a double headline referring to both the Olympics ceremony and the rapid beginnings of future international conflict in Georgia that has already led to an emergency meeting of the U.N security council.

We are often so easily misled by propaganda magicians. In one open hand they show us what we want to see, in this case perhaps the best opening Olympic ceremony ever! Whilst, in the other hand, containing bad news about possible ethnic cleansing as Russia and Georgia fight over the disputed rights of another scrap of land (South Ossetia), a story is kept firmly tucked behind the magician's back.

I also think this ties in nicely with my comments about the Olympics themselves almost completely overshadowing China's terrible human rights record. See here.

(Being the Daily Mail, I couldn't help but "Jokerize '89" their color scheme. I think it looks pretty cool.)

Joey Snags (no, he's not a friend)

In a previous article The Crunching Sound of Credit Devoured I argued that vegetarianism is both a healthier and more environmentally sound way to eat more cheaply. I have now found there might be another way, Down Under...


(Sorry Skip!)

When Lights and Might make Right

Watching the truly epic display of the opening ceremony for this year's Olympics. 2,008 Chinese drummers beat 2,008 square drums calling down thunder, amazingly choreographed with sweeping stances, the skin of the drum lights up with the strength of the beat and the strikes of the rhythm.

It sounds like war. I can't help but think of the Nobel prize winning Hitler Youth; Gunter Grass and his novel, Tin Drum. Whenever the war strikes near the child in the story bangs his drum as a protest and warning of what's to come. What scares me is the military power of 1.3 billion people and the arrogance of their leaders should they decide to expand beyond their own borders.

Everyone knows that China has endured/undergone super-massive growth in recent years but I think it's still been all too easy to underestimate, speaking purely in condescending colonial tones, just how far the country would come; both in terms of its' modernization and obvious its' desire to form a solid cultural identity, to be recognised on the world stage.

But I don't think anyone should necessarily doubt that China deserves its' Olympics and the bright future of a country brave enough to go against neo-classical Western chauvinism and its dominance of world politics and economics. What is hard to stomach is any attempt by China to engage in international relations with the world are always carried out on their own terms. If China were a handshake it would grip too tightly, try to out-shake you, and make sure that somehow, its' hand was always wrapped over yours.

China makes claims to transparency, at least while the Olympics are on, but to my mind its own conception of the freedom of the press is thoroughly jaundiced. We only ever see the right side of China, the rest remains hidden in shadow. China's history is similarly obscured; all of the nation's mistakes, old and new, are neatly wrapped up in the phrase: "Human Rights Issues" which helps to maintain the charade of a silk curtain we will probably never see behind.

A little girl in Red is singing, she doesn't fidget or cry, she has obviously been well-trained; but she is also smiling. A Communist red flag marked with five yellow stars, representing the five united districts of the country, is stiffly marched along, a nod to the past.

I appreciate China's attempts at opening up to the world. It seems the best we can hope to do is cooperate and try to ingratiate ourselves with China. The commentators note that there have been no boycotts of the games by any country thus re-enforcing the claim that the politics and the sports should be kept separate. In principle, like so many other things, I agree with this claim. Little or no advantage would be gained by certain international teams not attending the Olympics. The main consequence of this would be further alienation from a country that has only just attempted to build bridges. I'm not saying we should forget what China was, nor should we ignore what it might become. My point is simple; that an uneasy alliance with China is better for the world at large, than total alienation and deepening feelings of enmity.

All over the city colored fireworks shoot up along the roads, some of them in large circles representing giant's footsteps moving toward the stadium. Blinded by the lights, silenced by a crowd cheering and united; in this setting its no wonder we forget Tiananmen, Tibet, and the many workers who were injured building the "Birdsnest" stadium (some workers are also rumored to have died during its construction), which for a few days at least, the eyes of the world will be focused upon; all of the controversial issues it raises well out of sight.

The New Nixon?

Richard Milhouse Nixon resigned from office before he could be impeached. It seems Mr. Musharaff, Abuser of Endangered Animals (see pic.) and the President of Pakistan, might be about to do the same thing...

Just as Reagan had his Monkey, Nixon, his Spirow Agnew, Musharaff has a Panda and seems destined to follow the greats...

A Blind Read - Reunited!

As to the article I wrote a few days ago about people leaving books for others to find, it has a name: BookCrossing! Cool!

The Crunching Sound of Credit Devoured

Like the slow rise of a doom laden Zeppelin all we hear in today's financial reports is more and more disastrous news about Inflation. Delivered to us from on high by the red-rags and the broadies alike, the message of indelible gloom faced by a nation without purchasing power is scattered and blown on the winds of un-certainy in one terribly phrased slogan: "The Credit Crunch", striking fear in the hearts of all British men (and women) equivalent to that klassick whispered warning; "Ze Germans are coming!"

Everyone is apparently feeling the pinch. Consumer spending is falling, as are house prices. To my mind this is no bad thing. Firstly, too many people piss their lives away patrolling the high-street for "bargains" (accumulating more stuff) when they could be doing something that is actually fun, useful, or creative.

Secondly, it's about time house prices fell! Between greedy bastard Monopoly Men buying up whole streets and upping the rents, and other people refusing to move home so they can stay put and watch their property "options" appreciate, there is little or no room for people with less money (students and, well, the poor) to buy a small plot of land to call their own.

What really is problematic, both for the common U.K. consumer and people in developing countries, is the rise of food prices. This is an issue featured on the news almost every night, and the supermarkets themselves are acting out with the creation of "bargain-bundle" deals, an assortment of random items (some of them branded, ooh) some of which you might want, the rest, meh. The price of food affects everyone and one of the most popular "solutions" (read: way of skirting around the issue without solving it) is to go to cheaper stores, the names of which, are both four letter words, and do more of your shopping there. The reason I say "more of your shopping", and not all, is because these foreign devils do not stock many of the items people need, half of their products are at best shonky (yeah, I swore, what you gonna do)and their prices, keeping in line with (you guessed it) inflation, have also increased! Have your wages followed suit? I doubt it.

My suggestion is that we instead EAT our way out of this recession we're apparently having, or going to have. The economist and Bloomsbury bed-hopper; J.M.Keynes had men digging, then filling, holes in the ground just to keep them working (so did Auschwitz, but the Jews weren't paid.) This meant that people had money with which to purchase and consume goods which stimulated demand and thus the need for workers to both sell and produce these items.

The framework of my proposal is complex, but sound: Eat less meat! Without spouting any ethical mumbo jumbo, which as a vegetarian I feel obliged to do, meat is more expensive to produce than vegetables and grains. Crops are a more efficient way to produce food than livestock, they use less water, eat no bone meal, and we harvest much more food from a field of crops than a few cows in a field (or metal box) and veg. is more environmentally sound, just don't mention Soya and Rainforests! These savings are passed on to the consumer (vegetables and pulses are CHEAP) and several servings can be gleaned from a variety of plants and bags of grains as opposed to a single pack of chicken. The alternative is to buy cheaper meat, further endangering your health, your taste-buds and most importantly, for some; your wallet (prob. leather.)

Note:

TAKE THAT B.N.P!

BBC news recently reported that a large surplus of Summer fruit crops have gone un-picked this year because of new government restrictions on the number of un-skilled foreign workers allowed into the U.K. If British people weren't so work-shy and reliant on accusing immigrant workers of "Te'kin ar jubs" (See South Park Goobacks from the Future.) then this fruit would've been picked and Sainsbury's "Basics" Cherries wouldn't cost £3 for 100g!

Like "No Logo", but Fun!

I've just started reading Matt Mason's; "The Pirate's Dilemma" and feel compelled to write a review before finishing it because I want other people to start reading it. So, this is not so much a review, nor is it a preview, because I already have the finished product in my hands, so I'm calling it a "pre-temps" review. It's a review of what I've read, before I've read it.

In short, I think the book is, and will be; great. Mason's writing really snaps, everything he says is new, exciting and highly engaging. Like the nu-capitalists he describes bursting out from the corpse of the crusty punks who killed rock and roll the sections within chapters are refreshingly concise and to the point, and teach you about really cool exciting technologies and ways of doing things: 3D printers anyone?

Unlike Naomi Klein, who wrote the heavyweight but important "No Logo", Mason is far better at reaching downward to be with the kids, and in some respects his book is like the much cooler younger brother of Klein's book having descended into further middle age with the "Shock Doctrine" To make specific my shanty comparison "No Logo" taught me some really important facts about the power of the brand over the product it was actually selling, how our percieved impressions of associated meanings, such as being fashionable or ethical, that come with the product completely overshadow much of its truth as a mere item. However, at the age of not so sweet 17 I couldn't finish the damn thing! So much of the book was endless statistical analysis temepered with interjections from a highly educated but downbeat optimist ("Forget it, its Labeltown.") that I too felt myself being dragged down into the murky pit of no-hope cynicism that has scarred so many of an already quite apathetic generation.

Against this Mason's friend or foe consideration of the potential threat of the emergent pirates is much more thrilling as is the books overarching message: nowadays everyone is a Pirate. So if you don't like the way things are in today's culture/politics/capitalism: D.M.Y, D.I.Y!


p.s. If the owners of the above logo attempt some kind of legal shenanigans I will ironically piss myself.

A Blind Read

Taking others leavings is rarely considered appropriate behaviour. But like my compulsive penchant for breaking the pocket-clip wings of cheap and easy pens, it’s a developing trend that has bloomed since my early noughties. My steal of the moment is books that are found, borrowed, stolen, or blue it doesn’t matter, all I know, is that I really like it.

My latest find, during my mild-mannered janitor routine, is the novel; “Being There” a tale of political garden naivety gone mad. It belonged to no one (that I know of) and so it came to be mine. People do it as a hobby, which I think makes it ok. They leave each other books on the Subway, bus, or train and swap, then read, without ever knowing the other person their locked in with for a stealing, reading tryst.

(I'm curious to know if anyone else engages in this kind of Guerilla reading, or wishes to attempt it, or if they do the pen thing?)

Find more, read more...

The Legacy of the Original Fallout Boy Shines On..

Regarding my previous article: I’m both impressed and shocked by Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to step out of the upcoming elections in Zimbabwe. As a powerful volte-face his course of action is comparable to Richard Nixon’s sudden resignation from his presidency in 1974. Facing impeachment and, many thought, inevitable conviction following the accusations levelled by the Watergate scandal Nixon’s sudden deflationary tactic meant that he could no longer face trial as he formally stepped down from the legally vulnerable position needed to carry out the prosecution process. Thereby allowing him to make the famous claim “I have never been acquitted” because he literally removed himself from the line of fire. Morgan Tsvangirai’s choice of tack is equally ingenious.

Without meaning to trivialise the matter, or to compare him too closely with the odious Nixon, Tsvangirai has done a great thing, both politically and from an ethical standpoint. Whereas Nixon could have righteously been accused of weaseling out of his predicament, Tsvangirai has made what you might call a courageous retreat. Faced with the numerous assassinations and rising intimidation of his fellow party members, the atrocities carried out against the Zimbabwean voters, and the fact that even by winning the election he would in some respect end up losing overall, Tsvangirai has attempted to quell Mugabe’s reign of violence. In doing he has also announced a highly provocative j’accuse that was already on everyone’s lips, perhaps also a subtle dig at the international community who are too complacently avowed to fight the wrong battles, in the wrong countries, which should bring greater pressure to bear on the horrific regime Zimbabwe is forced to suffer.

Now that Mugabe will win his election Tsvangirai has certainly put the ball in the opposition’s court. It is with a weak sense of optimism that I hope in gaining this hollow victory by his own dirty bloody ways, Mugabe will now stand under the crosshairs of the world, and that their aim will come to bear. Leaving Mugabe to face the realisation that almost all dictators will at some pointed in their jilted “career” succeed in hanging themselves if only by the testimony of their own actions.

Pretty in Print

How many newspapers do you buy? On average my surrogate university family would purchase a Guardian (the most lefty of the UK newspapers) every couple of days, always getting the weekend issues so each member of the household could enjoy the glossy but shallow supplements they felt best represented them and their “lifestyle choices”. We stick loyally to our news brand, often without fully understanding why. I imagine its through some faint sense of belonging to a readership made up mostly of current and ex-university students, some trying to get a life, others trying to relive one, old habits dying hard.

My parents read the Daily Mail (a red-top in sheep’s clothing) another “lifestyle choice” I can’t quite understand, both of them being ex-university students. However I believe they both voted labour so perhaps that explains it. But regardless of the Mail’s dubious claims I respect their right to buy it and even their attempt to read it, despite the fact its’ reputation is at best, much derided. Discussing with much astonishment Prince’s decision to give away his latest album for free with the paper, a certain music critic for the Independent on Sunday once brilliantly referred to the paper as ‘Fascism in a cardigan”

All this pondering led me to conduct a kind of aesthetic experiment. Having a discussion with one of my former flatmates, Colonel Shaughan, currently in exile somewhere in Europe (debating competition) in which he sagely pointed out to me the differences between the appearance of the two newspapers (in doing so highlighting the age old content debate between the tabloids and broadsheets, the Guardian being something of mid-size broadsheet) Semi-intrigued, I went out on a brief recce and purchased today’s copy of each paper in order to strike a concrete comparison.

The best way to start, I feel, is in the classical fashion of our morning BBC news reports, by comparing the day’s main headlines; this gives a strong indication of both the overall vision of the paper, what they feel is the most burning current issue, and the sort of topics they feel to be more newsworthy in general. For example:

The Guardian said:

(subtitle in brackets)

‘Mugabe has declared war and we will not be part of that war’

(Tsvangirai withdraws his party from election saying to continue would cost supporters’ lives)

The Daily mail said:

FEAR FOR GIRLS AS THE PILL IS SOLD ONLINE

(Contraceptives available on official website)

Before I go scratching too deeply beneath the surface, as to the content of the respective headlines, fascinating as the divergence is, I want to briefly mention the way the pages look. Both feature a “free” item, (v.f.m for tight middle England) The Guardian has a “Great Songwriters” booklet on Morrissey, the Daily Mail an ancient Michael Caine film, both dubious choices when viewed under different critical lights. The main picture on The Guardian is of a torn poster featuring Morgan Tsvangirai, to represent his loss in voter support and his subsequent stepdown from the electoral process in Zimbabwe. The Mail has a tall picture of the Tennis player, Maria Sharapova, with a caption commenting on her decision to wear shorts at Wimbledon, not the usual skirts expected of female players, so “admirers” will be unable to fully appreciate her “shapely legs”.

So, there is a vital difference between the two papers already, whilst the Guardian ably chooses a picture that in some way represents the essence of their headline, the main story of the paper, The Mail has a completely unrelated picture of a Tennis player that could be viewed as a bit sexist/shallow, depending upon your own persuasion. Unless Miss Sharapova were actually on the pill and was getting it for free from a UK website I can’t see any reason for her, or her legs, to be anywhere near the front page of a national(ist) newspaper, because she has no bearing on the headline, whatsoever.

You could easily argue with me and claim that the picture on the front doesn’t have to be representative in any way of the main article etc. To an extent I would agree with this, it is primarily an aesthetic choice, but what a choice the Mail made! It makes a lot of sense to attempt at some synthesis between words and pictures if only to better communicate the intent of the article, to overall reflect the spirit of the times.

The Guardian’s picture of ripped apart Tsvangirai suggests desperation and a sense of loss at his (ultimately forced) withdrawal from the Zimbabwe elections, a quiet death for democracy in a country where cries for foreign intervention continue to go almost completely unheeded. This is journalism intended to educate and inspire, to raise awareness of human suffering and need.

By comparison the picture of Sharapova is another example of limp totty for middle-aged execs (apologies Ms.) which gives me nothing (certainly not an erection) about the story of free contraception being made more widely available for a younger, more computer literate generation, not an especially well represented demographic in the hallowed pages of the Mail.

Now onto the headlines themselves; The Guardian has a quote from Morgan Tsvangirai, the (former) leader of the political opposition to Robert Mugabe. Whilst this isn’t terribly original, being a quote and therefore not strictly written by the journalist themselves, it is probably the most newsworthy thing to be reported today, there is a common consensus behind this in the fact that most of today’s papers featured a similar headline, certainly, almost all of the nationals focused on this issue. The Daily Mail, on the other hand, put it on page 6, with a real big picture to fill up the space.

The Guardian’s headline is neat and to the point, as is the Mail’s, but moving beyond appearance and into the “realm of ideas” the Guardian’s headline at least contains some information about a specific situation. By comparison the Mail’s headline, warning us, once again, with foreboding and gloom, of the latest social threat to this great nation of ours (this time it’s free contraception). This is clearly emphasised in their frankly gigantic big bold lettering written in CAPITAL letters leaving barely any room for actual content, that is; meaningful information you can take home with you (after reading some Guardian articles I feel compelled to spill my statistical guts to anyone who can be made to listen). Although big writing is much easier to read so that’s a bonus.

The main problem, however, with the Daily Mail’s headline is not just its vulgar appearance but its dumb content. Not even the subtitle tells me who or what company is offering the pill over the internet so as a Whitehouse loyalist I don’t even know who to deride or protest against. The fact that the Mail waste so much space cramming in the epic and yet vague headline leaving little room for the article itself (it is crammed into flat, page-wide “columns”) suggests both a lack of ideas, but more importantly a dangerous habit toward sloganeering. As shown with the Sun and the other tabloids, bulls may not see red but humans seem positively magnetised toward it. And very much like the bull they seem doomed to follow its every flutter. If a tabloid paper gives you a thick black headline tarring the latest individual or organisation then it follows that I have no real need to read the one paragraph article, all I need to do is accept what I’m reading prima facie, and follow the red paedo trail all the way to the court/gallows and some kind of justice will be done, one way or the other.

My point being, if you print inflammatory, not informative headlines, then yes you will get a reaction, but it won’t necessarily be the “right” one, or at least a deserved one. Just because a headline is provocative it does not dictate that someone will buy the paper and read the article no matter how good it is, papers on newsstands are all competing for attention so they have to be eye-catching and interesting, that’s partly how the industry works, I’m just not sure if that’s all it should be, as in the case of the Mail. Reactionary words, even if they don’t lead to action, almost always have consequences.

In closing, I can’t see the point in newspapers that only tell half the story. Its good to warn or advise people of things that they might not know about, or to point out interesting cultural trends or situations (such as the difference between good newspapers and bad ones) but to my mind the main reason to have a free press is to inform and to raise opinion and debate, but not to do so in a way that causes harms to others, and create problems or issues out of nothing. When people keep looking for fires where they think they see smoke, they begin to start fires of their own.

N.B. Due to geographical limitations, and borders restrained by national pride, the issues featured in today’s paper refer to the “Scottish” Daily Mail, which I’m sure is just as good as its southern bastard cousin.

P.S. Kudos to Colonel Shaughan for his Buddha-like temperance and wilful ideas.

When, at last, your work is done…

Having just spent a good hour and a bit trying to clean my oven and other nefarious parts of our slum-like kitchen I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I was doing here. In a week I’ll be evacuating from my current domicile, the typical student-filth soaked flat and moving to more consistently hygienic surroundings, namely the middle class nest of my parent’s house. I’m cleaning for a number of reasons, partly in time for my “rents” arrival to conduct the big move, to salvage as much of my deposit from my landlord as I’m constantly reminded of the tea bag stains I’ve made on the walls and ceilings, and lastly through a personal sense of shame that is driving me madder with loathing each and every day I pass in solitude.

I got to thinking with my head in the oven (the gas was off, although it was tempting) how well should I clean this particular white appliance? One of my flatmates has already moved into a new flat shared with his long-term girlfriend and has a great deal of domestic bliss/hell awaiting him, the other has deserted me on a three week tour of Europe, taking in the mixed delights of London, Estonia, and Copenhagen, which leaves just me waiting to descend further into half-insanity and boredom.

Faced with the choice between flat cleaning, if only for better health, and getting on with my CV and covering letters for job applications. I leapt at the chance to clean something, swapping one highly potent boring chore for another. So here I was, in my oven speculating as to how much of it I should clean, and what standard of hygiene I should seek to attain for my efforts, in what felt like a task almost worthy of Sisyphus; forever rolling boulders up the mountain face. Without going into too much graphic detail I knew the oven would take ages to clean “properly” and is epic in scale if you let it get on top of you. The hinges were gunked up with gunk, dust, and disease. The glass of the door had that faint brown trickling grease that seems a particularly nasty form of chip fat rain. The floor of the main oven was thick like the Somme with black and brown crud that I had to remove with a metal spatula like scraping wallpaper but twice as hard and ever so fiddly when done in the dark of a big square box. For a while I felt like this my destined end, I’d found my tomb and now all I had to do was settle in and make the best of it for the next thousand years but I knew the dust mites and other assorted beetles would devour me long before then.

What was hard to decide was what I should clean first, and how hard. Some of the stuff just wouldn’t come off and I could only guess that it was eternal muck sent from Heaven. It wasn’t as if I badly qualified or ill-equipped, I had my trusty sponge, spatula, and Mr. Muscle™ (I was even wearing the official uniform of white vest) but some of it just wouldn’t budge. I also resigned myself to knowing that eventually it would all get dirty again. Inevitably as soon as I tried to cook some Instant Noodles or some other form of virulent anti-food I would lose a few strands over the edge and the blue light of the gas ring would in seconds burn them to a crisp and solidify them like a line in the mountain scape of the hob. Perhaps it was the gas fumes or the intensely hallucinogenic qualities of assorted cleaning fluids but this realisation that we never stop cleaning gave everything I was trying so hard to do a powerful sense of futility, of being beaten when I had only just begun, so young and already drowned in the mixed waves of despair and charred onion slivers. Nothing would ever be clean again.

If you look closely enough nothing is ever as clean as it should be, and it never can be. People are always keen to criticise NHS housekeeping staff (cleaners, to you) for the spread of C.diff and other such “superbugs” without realising that the staff clean everything, and then clean it again, all the time. The pressure put upon the underrated, barely over minimum wage, staff is immense and they only have so many hours in the day to do their job, and two hands to do it with. My point is apart from aseptic pre-packaged syringes, or airtight rooms the possibility of absolute cleanliness really is very much next to Godliness in their shared status of pure mythology, like chastity we can aspire to great heights of overcoming nature, but all too often, being human, people will fall from the horse.

Another strange aspect of this situation is the double life some people lead in their jobs and private lives. It was a always strange for me whilst at sixth form college going out to dinner and being waited upon, my current job at the time being a kind of employment as a kitchen potwashing facilitator, sitting there knowing that behind the ridiculous double saloon type doors there was another young guy or girl just like me having to go through the awful degrading motions of sweeping and wiping away other peoples filth; spittle mixed with sauce, chewed up gristle, bones picked clean by greedy fingers, another Orwell from his Paris years slaving away at someone else’s pleasure. This reversal of the assigned roles struck me as being quite surreal, and served as a distinct reminder that I was working the next day, and before I went to work I would have to wash up my dinner plates at home first. As with the hospital cleaners who spend all day cleaning and bleaching wards suffering cracked whitened hands and breathing in chemical fumes that to the lungs feel something like sulphur, they get to go home, feed their kids and then clean their own home, then get up early next morning and do the whole thing all over again.

The Mugabe Custom Pistol, lets hope he uses it.

Fargo. This time for real, eh.

How many feet must a man lose/Before you can call him murdered?

I think two.

Orwell Obscura

Orwell survives in Spain, but in the oddest way...

While I’m like Mrs Dalloway

Another morning, waking up, still “half-cut” as they say, it suddenly occurred to me that I have a great deal in common with the eponymous heroine of Virginia Woolf’s famous novel “Mrs Dalloway”. Having just graduated from university at the tender age of two and twenty I find myself jobless and complacent. Like many unemployed persons I have a lot of spare time on my hands, much like Mrs Dalloway. But what I find most interesting about our situation is how each of us chooses to spend all this free time, and how we might spend it better.

The heroine of the novel; Clarissa Dalloway, was purely a creation of Virginia Woolf’s mind and I’m a real person but it still seems that for both of us the purpose of our respective existence remains largely unwritten. We both fritter away our time on somewhat trivial matters designed to keep ourselves busy, for lack of a singular vocation that might channel our time more effectively.

The novel begins with Mrs Dalloway’s decision to “buy the flowers herself” and so she enters into the busy streets of London and dreamwalks basking in the glow of other people with lives she feels must be much richer than her own. She is famous for her great parties and keen socialising but it is something of a front. In order to while away the hours that make up her life, to quieten her deep sense of dissatisfaction Clarissa does her best to speed up the slow drip of time and thus make her life faster, a whirl of busy engagements and trivial matters blown out of proportion by the intense force of her stream-of-conscious monologue. The exact nature of her sadness is hard to pin down to just one particular cause but it is clear that she is unable to live in pure silence as she is often too busy running away from her own reflection, terrified by the truth that her life is somehow incomplete.

The other lead character in the novel is Septimus, whose story runs loosely alongside that of Mrs Dalloway’s, briefly intersecting toward the end of the book. His own struggle with life echoes the harsh sterility of Mrs. Dalloway’s, his maddening shattered memories of the First World War trenches endless pounding of the heavy guns cause him both detachment, and a rising fear of reality. As he descends further into insanity it becomes harder for him to disseminate experience the world as it really is, everywhere he hears and sees the signs of the war, until his entire vision becomes one continually blurred state.

There is a contrast between them in the way Mrs Dalloway actively seeks out noise, movement, hustle and bustle. She loves London, simply through being there, she engages, perhaps too deeply, in living for the moment. Often, for example, beginning fleeting discussions with party guests about whom she knows all the latest news but cannot bring herself to care about enough, so she moves on from one to the next, never quite settling in one place for to long.

As a result of their conditions both characters find themselves unable to fully engage in love; Clarissa because she is constantly apart from the one man she truly desires, Peter, and Septimus because his psyche is far too damaged and self-absorbed to meet the level of emotional investment that love requires. Both characters are so caught up in themselves the outside world is something of a violent intrusion to their way of life, a distraction and also an abstraction from their private chamber of thoughts.

Clarissa Dalloway is lost in a peculiar fashion. She’s like a moth in a darkened room, with four candles equally spaced apart. She wanders aimlessly in the centre drowning in voices that speak to her but say nothing. Lacking guidance Mrs. Dalloway can make no defining choices in her life, not only that she can find no choices worth making. Her life is marked as a felicitous wandering, building nothing, just existing but without knowing why.

We can draw a parallel between Mrs. Dalloway’s condition, a fear of silence and unchallenged free introspection, with a more modern pre-occupation that comes from living in a digital age. Where Mrs. Dalloway blinds herself to certain truths of her position, married but only half in love, never truly restful, always seeking noise and the violence of flux, the kids of the supposed “Generation-Y” (a loathsome term) have the wonders of modern things to do, or rather to sit around, to watch and listen but without much engagement. In my current state of unemployment I find myself heavily steeped in these electronica activities, something is always on and talking to me. I either have the radio, dreaded classic FM with its jibbering adverts that gradually seep into my prostrate sub-conscious till I know them by heart, or I’m playing GTA (running over pedestrians for three hours can’t be healthy) or I’m listening to another album full of voices and notes to decipher, or repeatedly watching old re-runs of the Simpsons. I go out, like Mrs Dalloway, my heart skips a tremulous beat as I race to Sainsbury’s to find new shiny things to buy and restock my cupboards, even though they are already full, my higher pleasure is simply the kick of spending money!

My point is that in living this way I find myself reading and doing far less than I used to, my life seems a little less meaningful. What do I mean by that? It’s better to sit and write/make music/draw/to talk things over, than to vegetate just watching which celebrity is now fat or thin or stoned or dead, or all of the above. To do something artful, whatever it might be, is a way to fill the gaps in time.

Perhaps “Generation-Y” is a generation of Mrs. Dalloways? A bored generation. We have it too easy so we get bored, throw stones, get drunk, pick fights, then we get up and do it again. This is a boring generation. The majority of us have little to say politically but we do have mass spending power, for what its worth.

In conclusion I think it’s supremely healthy to have a job, an enterprise, everyone needs a cause to fight for, a path to follow. Because in doing so we give our lives meaning, something that Mrs Dalloway and to an extent myself are sadly lacking. So in order to avoid a full transformation into the wilful self-indulgence of the damaged Mrs. Dalloway, or to be absorbed into a bored generation I don’t want to be a member of, I intend to find a job that means something to me, and in doing so escape my cocoon of apathy and emerge a career-seeking butterfly.

Vile Bodies

“I eat too much to die, And not enough to stay alive / I'm sitting in the middle waiting” – Follow me…

It recently occurred to me the other day browsing through a random assortment of girls magazines and sitting by the radio hearing of constant protest from the NHS, that a savage dichotomy is arising in the nation’s health, and what we have come to view as constituting healthy behaviour and a healthy body has changed radically. On one side we have glossy celeb-obsessed magazines that track, attack and promote celebrity, they act as the modern authority deciding when and what makes a body “hot”. On the other hand, we have governments rattling sabres with modelling agencies, B.M.I’s, and waxing lyrical about the rising tide of morbid obesity that threatens to consume us all.

Many so-called beauty magazines are notorious for pushing onto younger people stark images of both the high and low life of celebrity bodies. Some magazines, written for people on HEAT, seem to exist almost entirely to chart the ill-led lives of a great many famous persons, their only content being a drawn out biography of people in the gloriously self-contained media world, some having achieved nothing but being famous for its’ own sake, their stories are told very simply, week by week.

MORE people, especially the men/women who read these magazines, should be honest, and admit to their own sense of sick fascination. At its worst it strikes on a par with the faint titillation imagined by readers of J.G.Ballard’s Crash in which people gain deep sexual pleasure through witnessing and being involved in horrific car accidents. The damaged ones then covet pictures of the vicious wounds they receive because they seem to form a bizarre symmetry between body and technology occurring when the two, literally, collide. With the same sense of desire and loathing certain magazines document the run of surgical operations had by a celebrity, providing photo-lists of nip/tucks, face-lifts, laser cuts, bad skins, weight loss, weight gain, muscle mass, caved in chests, and carved out cheeks, and the loyal audience read with made-up smiles and revel deep in their own schadenfreude, especially when the ops go wrong and everything turns South.

The political side of the story involves the NHS who often acts pejoratively when it comes to health risks; using scare tactics to stop people killing themselves prematurely (read: to save money) A policy I agree with, to an extent. Many people don’t understand the extreme damage they’re doing to their bodies when they smoke/drink/eat too much but all too often this message is displayed in an alarmist and thus reactionary way, a la mode the celebrity magazines, which instead of providing simple information and so educating people about a healthy lifestyle, the NHS demonises lifestyles that are not deemed healthy enough, such as smoking, and so takes a slightly antagonist stance toward the people they aim to help.

This makes the NHS complicit to the same accusatory ideals of the magazines because in waving around pictures of obese people and predicting an obesity epidemic, as if you could catch it like the plague, they help to make subsequent generations afraid of putting on any amount of weight, not simply to the point of obesity. This makes it harder for people to live and eat normally, to happily accept who and what they are and so to be content with their body. Skinny people get thinner, heavy built people feel worse about not looking like the girls in the magazines, and all the while we are offered solutions and fixes to make us look “right” and so to live a life more cleanly prescribed by our most beloved media.

As a society we are moving further and further toward a universal state of acute nausea and self-loathing when we are faced with other human bodies, but most alarmingly with our own bodies. We become well-trained in envy, to idolise the latest of the airbrushed angels and thus to hold up our own physical state as an ugly kind of mirror, to be disgusted by others who are not classified as beautiful, a kind of equivalent to body-fascism.

Through narrowing the natural diversity of acceptable body types, we exert greater social pressure and force people to live under a shadow of inadequacy. The reason such body paranoia is so serious is it often turns, along with our stomachs, into something much more disconcerting, such as anorexia or bulimia. These are mental illnesses most commonly associated with a need to exert control over one’s body, to control how we appear both to ourselves and to others, often leading to a distorted self- image. Like the growth of a virus, anorexia and other eating disorders need the right conditions in which to flourish and then spread. In this case provided by governmental paranoia and media obsessions; two party lines that have much in more in common than we would normally expect. Together they act as a key trigger for eating disorders, cultivating in people an absolute fear of being fat and so not looking at one’s best, according to whatever the current ideal might be. No clearer case can be found than the story of the young Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston who in 2006 died at the age of 21 with the body weight of a 12 year old girl.