Andrew Reid: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Download new song here (right click and ’save as’) 

I like surprises and that’s why I got today on the CSS website where not only had they announced a new album due 22nd July called Donkey, but the had a new song from it for free. So I downloaded it and the website crashed.

Thankfully there are lots of music blogs who have been reporting this new song, and I downloaded it from them instead. It seems my suspicion that under the electro-clash synths there is a incredible rock guitar band lurking was right, and the new song allows it to surface like a big military submarine of brilliance.

The new song Rat Is Dead (Rage) is probably about a rat in terms of a nasty boyfriend, a wrong doer or even a mafia style ‘rat’ who rats on his associates. But I prefer the literal take I got from my first listen. And this is what I like about cryptic lyrics - in my mind’s eye at least, you can make up stuff…

…about a pet rat who was killed or tortured…and the owner (upon finding the dead corpse of their dear pet at 4am in the morning) raging in her room, tearfully smashing up all her stuff.

Lovefoxxx in that Brazilian accent rages: 

#She was sitting there cryin
She had smashed all the glass on the mirror
Which was scattered all around the room!#

#She screamed so loud until there was nothing.
And now there’s no more reasons for her to cry.
It was so late it was 4am#

#I know I know I know he will never hurt you again#

I don’t know why but the tragedy of a bullied rat who has been murdered and tormented by a sadistic and cruel human being simply gives me goosebumps to this music. Other lyrics however point toward a more profound angle:

#There was a dead man waiting.
Waiting for someone to find him out.
And bury him deep down in the ground.
He looked so scared.
But now he’s greatful!
On the other side of town a car drives past
Hard to tell fear from happiness#

Then Adriano states matter of fact with his backing vocals:

“Rat is dead.”
“Rat is dead.”
“Rat is dead.” 

Complete with spitfire guitars and machine gun drum beat Rat Is Dead (Rage) has that infectious spirit about it which demands you replay the song again as soon as it finishes. You get the rollercoaster thrill factor by the end, so when it finishes you just want to jump straight back on again because it has originality by the bucketload.

It’s certainly a lot harder and more paired down than the last album. The only electronic trickery here are the studio layered screams of a muffled Lovefoxx shouting “loud!” and “scared!”. Gone completely are the bleepy synth beats - this verges well away from Nu Rave and into straightforward guitar rock. But my God - I’m struggling to think of another guitar band as good as CSS right now, especially one composed almost entirely of Brazilian girls.

Most importantly - Rat Is Dead is pure undiluted fun with added spine tingles. I can only imagine what future CSS live gigs bring.

What they have always done well is to take away stuff for the benefit of the overall impact of the song. If Let’s Make Love and Listen To Death From Above was like a shot in the arm, then Rat Is Dead is like a shot in the head. A knock out blow.

The only cloud on the horizon is that the bassist Ira has left due to concerns about global warming, flying less, and wanting to settle down as a fashion designer. But frankly, a young six piece becoming a five piece isn’t the same cataclysmic event as an established four piece losing a drummer or a bassist.

CSS’s music has an ability to lift your mood like no other. Should the new album live up to and exceed they’ve put out so far CSS are set become the biggest band ever to come out of South America. And if the tide keeps turning in favour of these exciting new bands like Klaxons and New Young Pony Club, then the new music scene has truly arrived. CSS are a force.

Not bad for a bunch of Brazilian art students playing music together for a joke.

DONKEY IS RELEASED 22nd JULY. TRACK LISTING:

• “Rat Is Dead (Rage)”
• “Give Up”
• “Jagger Yoga”
• “Hit and Run”
• “Move”
• “Believe & Achieve”
• “Left Behind”
• “Buenos Aires”
• “How I Became Paranoid”
• “I Fly”
• “You And Yourself”
• “Reggae All Night”
• “Beautiful Song”
• “Dallas 141″

With the F1 season about to take a sharp left turn into insanity (it has been suggested that Lewis Hamilton is now crap, though it is clearly obvious to anyone with eyesockets that Ferrari have a faster car) I am turning the focus of this blog onto something else.

I won’t cover myself in glory by speaking about my own life, because most of my life reads the blog and will probably not speak to me again.

And so back to motor racing. F1 driver Niki Lauda, says Clive James, had a philosophy about his craft - which was to win going as slowly as possible. This economy of effort, decided James, could be applied to life as well - but only if the friends in your life were adapted to the same activites as you. For example, putting your effort into staring in a trance like state at a rose bush for 4 hours is all very well if you’re an artist, but might not be as acceptable to your business associates on The Apprentice.

So inspiring was Lauda’s philosophy as viewed through Clive Jame’s insightful wit I have decided to also be more economical with my effort - toward friends. 

In deciding on which people to direct my efforts over the past 6 months I seem to have lost focus on what I really enjoy. What should be the recipents of my efforts - in order or importance: badminton, film making and people who aren’t idiots, have taken somewhat of a back seat not helped by the fact that each one of these persuits depends in one way or another on someone who’s an idiot.

I have been in Manchester over a year now and have met many nice people. Some nice people continued to be nice and some people are still nice now even though I know what their real game is. In particular one person I’ve known since last September has always been a take it or leave it situation but someone I am very fond of as a person. But even a saint would have a hard time putting up with the lack of reproach and the overwhelming feeling that you’re being used as some kind of temporary emotional support mechanism whilst they are in England. As games go I’d rather play badminton.

It seems that through experience I have run out of patience.

If the last 5 years have gone by in a blur then the colours are well and truly blended white on the past 2. Therefore I have decided there must be some kind of thief at work.

Maybe every time I use my credit card at Tesco it deducts time and turns it into club card points. Or maybe the two decades I’ve added to my life by never buying cigarettes, they have some how managed to reclaim over the last 2 years making me wait for 10 minutes to buy my overpriced chicken while some dick head figures out how to use the automatic till robot. When I was a student I used to see the city dwellers doing their shopping in Tesco Metro before waddling off to their swanky apartments, and young Andrew saw them as being quite ‘cool’ but now I’m one of them there are times when I feel like breaking a basket over my head in pure rage.

The question of how to use the next 2 years must therefore be taken seriously and the avoidance of compressing time into a smudge must also be considered. Unfortunately by the time I’ve worked out the answer to the question the time thief would have put me in my 30’s and the question would no longer be relevant.

Therefore I have decided to look at who could be good role models for me when I’m old. Rather than look back and wish to be a Brandon Flowers or Vernon Kaye (not that I wish to be him) I am now looking forward in the direction of people like Ernie Wise, Abreham Lincoln and Robert Altman, that is I would be if they wern’t all dead, for the time thief is also a life thief.

Time is also money so maybe I could slow time down by spending less money. Whilst spending money is definitely a precursor to running yourself into an early grave I don’t think saving money can help very much, because like energy, money can not be destroyed only transferred to a bank. Maybe it is to do with my job and maybe I should become a forrest dweller on a hill instead. But I expect that up there time would indeed go slowly and I’d probably be bored to death before time’s natural death knell strikes up a tune on the bell tower (not that I could hear it up there anyway).

As Eienstein pointed out time is relative. With that in mind, the true length of the next 1 and a half years remaining of my 20’s is directly related to how long I have left alive. Therefore maybe the answer to slowing down time is to avoid the kind of ‘friends’ who upset me, thus bringing the harbringer of doom just that little bit closer to my doorstep with every encounter.

And with that it’s 2.40am - what a fine use of time when I have work in the morning.

Hilary is still behind Obama, yet where all the biggest states in the US are concerned, she may as well be president. This seems to be for one reason only - that she has scared them all shitless.

While Obama’s messages has been one of a fresh start (god knows they need one) and of hope, Hilary’s has been somewhere along the lines of “If you don’t vote for me, terrorists will come in the middle of the night, creep into your kid’s bedroom and gut them from the inside out”

How dare Clinton use fear against the American public, after the last decade? 

It’s the same trick Bush has been using for the past 8 years, and it has done him no harm at all. But while the US and - the world - needs a fresh start, the American public seems to think we’ll do OK with an ‘experienced polititian’. That Hilary Clinton is also a wild-eyed psychopath doesn’t seem to have figured. They take all the bait they’re given, even though anyone with double figure IQ can see that it’s bullshit propaganda and game playing of the highest magnitude.

All the while the Democrats tear themselves apart from the inside out, John McCain (…spit) rides the globe like a cowboy with a whip. Yeehar!

Faced with the most formidable political talent the world has ever seen in Obama (not to mention the opportunity to give hope to an entire race of African-Caribbeans downtrodden as 2nd class citizens for the best part of 200 years in the west), they’ve chosen the wife of someone who couldn’t keep his dick behind his fly.

I don’t have anything against Bill Clinton, as you can see from the facts - the world went rapidly downhill after he was replaced by the Republican henchmen. When watching the 2000 election I shouted at anyone who would listen that George Bush would cause a major a war, in much the same way I know shout at women who coo and bat their eyelids at Alex from the Apprentice. Yes - he may have a pretty face, but he’s a bastard. The sophisticated American electoral saw something of their father’s in George Bush in much the same way they see Dad in John McCain. That is on the whole - a fat bastard who shot some American Indians generations ago, of whom would be dead himself if it wasn’t for the invention of the gun, which overcame his severe lack of intelligence and allowed him to breed.

In Hilary Clinton, they see mom.

If you thought it was bad having American Dad lead the world, wait till you see what home made apple pie Hilary will cook up. Anthrax flavoured and distinctly Iranian in texture, I suspect.

Barack Obama, for the stiff blue collared whites of Pennsylvania, may not be dear old papa - but at least he’s talented and intelligent, with workable ideas based on facts, rather than on whatever democratic worth pandering to next. Sadly the gullible US electorate couldn’t see a winner if they were paraded around the streets on a magic floating cloud sprinkled with stardust. They are deluded to think having a female president will balance out the world and supercharge the poor old female species with a new sense of purpose. If you ask me, it’s men who need a bit of a leg up at the moment if just to avoid this happening.

Quite apart from that I urge the Americans to adopt a black brother, to put their racial prejudices aside. Because if Bush got the world half way to hell, John McCain will send it all the way into the lava.

Mrs Clinton? Well, she’d be a good lawyer. 

Mugabe is politician second, a criminal first, who has been in power for the best part of 3 decades. At 84, the fresh faced Mugabe (evil doesn’t age, just look how old Mother Teresa looked) lost the election because he sent his country’s economy down the shitter, and money talks. As he calmly cast his vote in a pretend-democracy-photoshoot he announced that if he rigged the election he wouldn’t sleep at night. So he got his henchmen to rig it for him.

They went out with axes, metal bars and gasoline and proceeded to burn, destroy and mame the public who voted against him. Not even George Bush would do that in Florida. But because this is happening in poor old Africa, the powerful countries like England and America just shrug and add it to the growing list of poor old Africa stories to give to the press - such as AIDS and starvation. From that perspective Mugabe The Mugger doesn’t seem like such a threat after all.

I don’t know when Africa will sort itself out but I do know that it’s about time we helped it into the 21st century after giving it such a good kicking during the industrial revolution and slave trade. I just don’t don’t know how…the whole country might as well be under the sea by now.

As I washed my organic strawberries tonight, and prepared my pasta cooked in the hills of Italy in mineral water, I wondered what I could do to stop Mugabe. Well, I would first have to save up for the air ticket because I’ve spent all my money on Marks & Spencer’s food. And then I’d have to consider the environment, because I watched that Al Gore documentary and it was quite touching. Then I’d get distracted by poor old Tibet and forget about it for a year, while chomping on organic chicken.

When I did arrive in Zimbabwe I’d make my way to the government house. That is if the vaccination didn’t give me an alergic reaction - in which case I’d have to spend time in a Zimbabwe hospital - which I would probably not come out of again.

At the government offices I’d ask where Mugabe was, and they’d say it was sleeping soundly in his mansion by the lake. So I’d leg it up there, with a mental bar and some gasoline.

Once there I’d begin lacing his mansion with gasoline, but I’d have to establish a supply chain of natives passing one canisters between them. Three days later if the gasoline hasn’t evaporated into the hot African sun I’d get my zippo out.

Mugabe would probably be frying an egg or something, and assume he’d put a bit too much oil in the frying pan.

Two weeks later once all the fuss had settled down, Mugabe’s crispy corpse would be replaced by a military general who was mates with his 2nd in command. And I’d have to establish the supply chain once again.

Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton would be scaring the shit out of the American electoral with stories about Bin Laden knocking on their children’s doors at night, with a big hook instead of a hand. Pillock that she is, she says the war in Iraq diverted the US military from the all-important task of establishing a gasoline supply chain to Bin Laden’s cave, and the money spent on Apache helicopters meant there was nothing left over for the zippo.

Maybe it’s time for American to wade into Zimbabwe to oust Mugabe… or maybe I’d have just as much effect on Africa with my idea of burning down his mansion. Either way, I don’t think either Andrew or George Bush can do very much - unless they get paid in oil, then we’d happily take over the whole fucking world.

What is abnormal? Does abnormal exist? And if not, what is John Prescott?

He’s recently admitted he’s bulimic which means he feasted on trifles and then sicked it up. Not a pretty thought to visualise in your visualisation compartment to say the least. But whilst you give your mind’s eye a rest, feast your logic processing units on this:

In the wild it is common for dogs to eat bones. While in the domestic household, if you catch your dog devouring a chicken carcass this is apparently cause for concern. So what’s going on here? What makes the domestic environment influence your view on what is normal and what isn’t? When my mum caught Spike the greyhound eating even the smallest of bones, said bone was promptly wrenched out of his throat in a chaotic panic of gurgling and flailing limbs. Usually the words “he’s going to die!!” were heard streets away. The Bone - The Dog: a terrible event. I don’t think the dog sees it the same way, and I don’t think they regret eating the bones when they are sick later on. Neither, I feel, did John Prescott when he sicked up his Sunday roast. The more worrying thing for him was how people would perceive him. Like a girl.

But he wasn’t a skinny model. He was a big fat bastard.

Now rest your mind’s eye again, and think back to the dog in the woods, feasting on a chicken it had just taken from old McDonald’s farm. It needs to get the most out of this chicken. It hasn’t got the means to scrape the meat off the bone with a knife and fork, neither has it the inclination to get a tooth pick out afterward. The dog wants to lap up every ounce of nutrition for the unfortunate poultry.

A little later it sicks out the bones and says thank you very much to the chicken dinner. Job done.

Firm believer in evolution that I am, I started thinking that maybe John Prescott is actually quite normal. Maybe we should let him into our society once again, and maybe even celebrate the fact by holding national “sick-it-up” days. People could digest his government whitepapers and sick them up all over their desks.

But much as I long for that day of celebration to happen, it won’t - because society does not see bulimics like dogs - it sees them as human beings with problems, and human beings with problems are best avoided at all costs. This is society’s attitude as a whole. While some will take pity on John Prescott, secretly we all snigger when our backs are turned and cringe at the thought of him being ‘abnormal’ when in actual fact he’s just like the wild dogs, roaming free and dignified in the haze of a evergreen forest, on a crisp winter’s morning, listening to Gwen Stefani on their iPods while sicking up bones.

What could be more normal than that?

I await to see what other foibles are present in the rich and famous. We already know that Max Mosley enjoys the odd S&M session, John Prescott has an eating disorder and George Bush has a permanent itch on his trigger finger. But maybe they’re not abnormal after all despite what society says, they’re just human. Society is the one that is abnormal - and god help you if you ever meet it in a darkened alley.

Like the wolf at the top of this blog - you will probably look rather domesticated afterwards.

Above: tampon man, spotted on the bus in Manchester as I made my way back from a gig with Woody. Anyone that denies there IS a problem with young people, is probably young.

I remember the day fondly, it was last month.

I was 28 and I decided I was no longer interested in doing what I used to do. I had grown up - and thank fuck for that. Because I used to be a young person - a member of an exclusive club of arse holes.

I am not talking about all young people. Or people 4.5 years younger than me. Interestingly, although my sister Zara is 4.1 years younger than me at 24, she feels the same way. Yes there are those interesting ones, who have a slightly more mature head on their shoulders than their age might suggest. But most of them below 22.3 are plonkers.

Most of them pretend they live like adults but the crushing reality of living like an adult hasn’t quite penetrated their skin yet because they’re too busy watching Hollyoaks, and that is really annoying. For example one of Zara’s house mates came back from the super market the other day really excited. “They’ve undercharged me!! They’ve undercharged me!!” Apparently this incredible act of undercharging was a till mistake at Tesco - probably the first time he’d done his own food shopping. He’d saved 50p in the process and was stomping round the house like he’d just invented fire. Yes boys and girls - he is growing up and really living!

A few months ago Zara returned to the house at 8.30pm after a long slog in the library. On returning she said to her house mate that she was not particularly looking forward to working every day from now until after the weekend at the florist as well. The idiot exclaimed “Where have you been!?” before muttering “OH…welcome to the real world Zara!”

This from a collection of rabble, who happen to eat and shit in the same house as my sister. They’re not even worthy of the same tap water. While she works her arse off, little boy Danny next door plays Counterstrike full blast through his PC speakers into her room. 

Fast forward to the weekend where Zara is indeed working all day and night, she goes to bed after telling her house mates Dan and Tom that she needed a peaceful nights sleep. They went out to a night club and Zara went to sleep. Suddenly at 1.30am my sister was woken by a barking dog. Only it wasn’t a barking dog it was a drunk boy she’d never seen before outside her house knelt on all fours barking. The next door neighbours called the police and they promptly arrived and carted off the boy. Then her house mates turned up at 3am from the night club with a bunch of complete strangers for a house party. When the strangers heard that there was someone trying to get to sleep in the house they slowly left one by one, feeling uneasy at just how incredibly selfish and unpleasant Dan and Tom could be.

Why did they do it? Of course, the usual excuse comes out - “we have a right to have fun!”. Yes young people - it’d be fun to take a flame thrower to your heads, but I don’t do it, do I?

That isn’t even the first frosty on the iceberg. While Zara attempts to get away from it all by travelling up to Buxton to see her boyfriend for two weeks, she returns to Cornwall to find her bedroom door open and a pubic hair in her bed. While Zara prays for a normal night out clubbing unfettered by vanity, unnecessary noise and over-the-top drunken idiocy, the idiots stand around going ‘ra ra ra’ while taking constant pictures of themselves being pricks. Just to prove to the world that yes - they really are pricks.

Then there are the parties at the house. Drunk strangers trying to force Zara’s locked bedroom door in the middle of the night. It’s a wonder she hasn’t yet been raped. Pointless immature parties. The sort that if I held when I was 19 I’d be ashamed of myself. If I held one at 28 I’d be rightly locked up in a lunatics asylum, the keys for my flat taken back by the letting agent.

So after a few months of this Zara decided to move out. However the estate agents were not concerned so much about the dangers of living with lunatics day in day out and more concerned with the MIGHTY DOLLAR. Therefore, to move out she needs to replace herself with another person, capable of paying her rent. So the sunny day came last week, when she found a young girl to take her place and a nice flat to move into, thanks to the people at her work. What could go wrong?

Well there Zara is with her stuff in boxes today, and the young girl (I say young, she’s probably in her 20’s, you’d think by 20 you’d know better) TXTS Zara - “sorry can’t move in now got job smwhere else xxx” 

There are two factors at work here. The immaturity that comes with being pampered into your late teens and beyond and the idocy of being an idiot. Dan, Tom and the latter girl are both and I hate people like them, and not just because they put kisses at the end of everything.

“Soz about your dad getting crushed under that bus. xxxx”

“You are well out of order, how mny times did u stab him? xxx” 

Then there are young people who aren’t idiots but they’re still young. My dearest ex flat mate Andy for example. We tried to stay together for the kids…but it didn’t work out. Not because we didn’t get on - we’re still mates - more because there is an age gap of over 7 years. If it was an age gap of 4.6 years it would have been fine, but it’s those extra years that *just* push it over the boundary point of no return. For example, Andy’s idea of a great night out would be to go to a night club. That’s not in itself always such a bad idea (apart from when you’re approaching 30) but when you need £1.50 bottles, loads of inexperienced, horny drunk and senseless 18 year old students and shite music to have a ‘good time’ it troubles me. I have done it before, many many times. It’s now officially boring. Andy would often exclaim the day after that he’d “pulled a fitty”. This usually involves grinding against someone for 10 seconds or “getting a kiss from a girl”. Amazing.

The youngster’s exciting lives do not stop here. They compete against each other for the most banal of reasons. Every event that we elders would consider rudimentary would be considered a huge feather in the cap for a 21 year old. Got a car? Can drive it? (Who cares?) Wow…yes you can drive. Well done. I can walk and catch a train. Amazing too hey? Just found a new fashion to embrace? Got your waistcoat all matched up with your shirt? Wow…tell me more…you’re incredible. “But my waistcoat was from Top Man and yours was from Burtons…loooser!”

Ahhh, the unnecessary competitiveness. With youngsters I’ve often simply brought up in conversation the memory of a holiday or something, expecting a nice conversation to occur about it. But often with youngsters you just get a load of “OH! I did it too.” And then they have nothing else to say. It’s as if they’ve made their point. Anything else doesn’t seem to grace their mind.

Young people are also crap at washing up. When Andy did the washing up 99.67% of the dishes needed doing again. I am going to send him on a new university course - one of the sponsored ones. Fairy Liquid Soft Hands BA HONS.

Then there is jumping around. I need a damn good reason to jump around. At a gig for instance. A nightclub with good music and a dance floor you can actually move on, not squashed together in groups of 5 all taking photos for Facebook. Not one of those nightclubs. In most circumstances it just doesn’t interest me to jump around. I am not a jumpy person. I don’t giggle like a girl. I don’t slide on my knees down the hallway floor. I don’t like people who jump around when they’re not at gigs. Never have.

Then there is fashion. By 28 you kind of have an idea of what you like - and you like it for reasons that are true to yourself. It can be an creative expression, a desire to outwardly reflect your personality, a decision to support a group identity - a culture that you support and enjoy for the right reasons, or more often than not it’s just a case of wearing whats comfortable and warm - slippers by the fireplace for instance. But with the youngsters its a whole new ball game. They seem to exist simply to ‘fit in’ with other people, like fashion victims in a movement for all the wrong egocentric reasons on God’s green Earth. Nu Rave for example - I like it, I wear a bit of bright colour occasionally, to a gig or simply when I feel like it. But I don’t go to the super market in it. Every day. And then there are The Goths.

These are a dying breed these days (maybe they’ve all topped themselves?) but I recently came across a situation where a goth who walks round with his girlfriend attached to his wrist by a dog lead attached to her neck.

All well and good you might say - freedom of expression, civil liberties and all that.

The problem is, they then got chucked off a bus by the bus driver who said the fact the girl had a lead round her neck connected to her boyfriend’s arm might have posed a slight safety issue should the bus crash. Example 1: said girlfriend’s neck would be broken due to having a huge dead weight attached to it on a rope.

The civil liberties of the passengers was an issue, also. For example the passengers sat in front of the deadweights behind might find that their heads have been decapitated by the said lead, and after the crash their heads would be rolling about the floor bumping into each other, murmuring “sorry” in that oh-so-English way we’re accustomed.

So the bus driver politely asked the FUCKING IDIOTS to get off the bus. By all means - if you want to walk around with your girlfriend attached to your wrist by her neck on a rope, do so. But not in public. We don’t want to see it. It’s stupid. Its deluded. Why do you do it?

I’m off to walk around with a big t-shirt on now, which says “I HATE GOTHS”. But I won’t, because I’m not an idiot. And I’m no longer young. And before you say ‘don’t be cynical Andrew, you were young once!” Yes, I was young once. But I still wasn’t an idiot.

OH and before you say I am hitting out at everybody under the age of 22. I am not. I don’t even have anything against people aged 21.3 or 19.9. I just dislike people in general. All of them. Young, old, gothic, neon, pink.

I’m sure some people who read this blog will be more confused than a goldfish in a hall of mirrors. My point is I’m not hitting out at all young people…but alas let the TXT MSGS flow…

XXXX 

Part 964 of the world’s spiral into insanity. The Royal Mint has redesigned the British coinage with ‘contempoary art’.

I am all for change (though I do get sentimental sometimes, a bit like an old lady being forced to move out of her home due to a Tesco being built on it) but I don’t like this, precisely for the fact that I DO LIKE art. Coin’s are not art. Maybe you could use them as inspiration for art. Maybe you could ironically comment on the design of traditional coin with your modern contemporary art piece. Personally, I’d rather bask in the emotion of a good painting, let my brain run riot over an installation, or rave to my friends about a new trend in music. But art coins? That takes the piss doesn’t it.

No, I feel I must stand up for art - even contemporary art. Putting it on a coin devalues it. Not to mention the coin itself. If you wanted one thing to speed up the coin’s journey to the grave in the most demeaning way possible - you dress it up in a frock and remove it’s numbers.

It’s like taking the gun off Saddam Hussain and hanging him. Some things need to remain stable. 

Remember when British Airways painted their tail-fins with ‘ethnic art’? Margret Thatcher was so enraged she wrapped her handkerchief around the tail-fin of a model plane in front of the BA boss. Her point was made. We preferred the Union Jack, over the art. They should have asked us this in the first place, thus saving many millions of pounds - which could have been spent making an airport which works properly.

Art has it’s place, and that place is not in reality. What next, will we be painting the gears of a car green and calling it the Ford Postmodern Ironic? Why not stop there, how about the frame of my television set. Shall we paint it with a Mondrian so when the programme gets too boring I can appreciate the mathematical and symmetrical beauty of the huge brightly coloured grid of squares wrapped 360 degrees round my plasma?

My kettle - actually, not the kettle itself, the base. Why not shape the base like the footprint of a worker made on the launch pad of the NASA shuttle? We could then call the kettle the Postmodern Tea Shuttle, and I would lose the will to live. It’d take me more caffeine to restart my jaded soul than it would to protect against a biological anthrax attack - although at least we can be sure that England can survive the most deadliest of terrorist attacks yet to come.

The reassuring functionality of coins should remain separate from the stimulating escapism provided by art. I wonder if the boss of the Royal Mint would like to wear a painting to work, smashed over his head, only a pair of Y fronts to conceal what dignity he has left. That’s what I think the intellectualising cretins who designed the latest set of coins have done to our currency.

What point do these people have? Are they ‘enriching our culture’ by taking the numbers off our coins and turning them into an ugly laughing stock? Is there nothing left untouched by these moronic victims of capitalist branding and over-thinking fidgeting?

It’s totally unnecessary.

I expect once our tax has been spent rectifying this mistake, we are given the defunct art coins to pelt at politicians and businessmen when they pop out for lunch.

To coin a phrase…’Artbastards’. Is there anything worse? Everybody thinks they’re an artist these days. Give me David Hockney or Damian Hurst any day over these wan-pretentious champagne socialist ‘designers’.

The very existence of the Bible is proof that every so often the world goes down the toilet. Morals and all that’s good - flushed away down the u-bend. We’re on a downward curve to hell once more, powered by materialism and a ‘who cares less’ attitude to pretty much everything other than looking good and being rich.

I blame America.

So I guess we need a second coming. A collective kick up the arse. A man who comes down from the sky to give us a good bollocking. And who better to do that, than Alan Sugar

Yes, he of The Apprentice fame would fit the bill marvellously in this modern climate. A suited and booted cockney from the business world - not of shiny teeth America - but of good old Essex. He’s the only person those pesky jumped up young professionals on The Apprentice stop partying for, when he walks into the room - they go a bit quiet. That’s what the whole of the middle east did when Jesus arrived on his cloud. The same thing needs to happen now in South London when Alan arrives in his Bentley.

The he could hop on the Eurostar and stop off in Paris, and tell those frogs that next time someone attempt to travel the world powered only by the good will and generosity of the people - he shall not fail south of Dijon. And tho lo wo, he shall travel even further south into Africa and tell them to wear condoms. And while he’s at it, give those poor children some clean water to drink. It’d be a big contrast to Alan Christ’s mission in America - to create a society which doesn’t constantly sue each other. They have no problems over obtaining clean water and living into double figures, but you wouldn’t think it was all so civilised to look at them.

Alan Christ would be a blessing to man kind. He’d dish out the kind of bollockings in China usually reserved for the office tea boy upon putting too much milk in the coffee. Tibet would be freed immediately.

Then he’d go onto Japan and ask them politely to stop turning their entire country into one large brightly coloured cyborg schoolgirl.

Onward then, into Australia. Where rather than simply apologise to the aboriginals, they’d give them their land back - the whole of Australia. That may displace a few ozzys, but I have no problem with them living here in Manchester.

To make room for that Great Event, I’d prey to Alan Christ that he does something about Kerry Katona’s breeding. It’s out of control.

And in summary, while it was not very tactful (to say the least) of Apostle Williams to post on a Facebook group of 22,000 people concerning Daniel Hall (Missing in Thailand for 6 weeks) the following: 

“Come on, guys. There are a lot more important problems than Danny Hall to worry about. We have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.”

I agree with every word of it. Alan should stamp down on people joining pointless groups simply to make themselves feel better. Let the police get on with their job of finding Daniel Hall, and let his family get on with the grieving - for he is not yours to grieve over. Unless he had 22,000 close friends - which I very much doubt.

Alan Christ’s last stop (before he is hung from a cross for his efforts) would be in Turkey, where he’d tell the people who rape and murder artists who pass through their country dressed in a wedding dress for a project to raise awareness that actually the world isn’t such a bad place, that they’re going to go to hell if they do it again. Then he’d chop their hands off and let them bleed to death - the white concrete under them stained like the tragically innocent white wedding dress of the artist.

It all makes for a dramatic story, which once turned into a new Bible will become a best seller for 2000 years, by which point it won’t be relevant any more and we’ll need to make up something else. How about in the year 4000 we’ll have a super hero shaped like a giant condom, who tours the world curing people of AIDS and urging them to be less promiscuous.

I’d love to see the painting of that last supper.

Clubbing, drinking, shopping, careering, TV. It all means fuck all yet so many people’s lives seem to revolve around it to the point where they become mute empty vessels.

By mute I don’t actually mean silent, they still squawk but everything that comes out of their mouths is meaningless. And if the function of all of this is for them to have as much sex as possible, its a fucking good job we invented condoms because otherwise evolution would slip into reverse.

Their excuse? It’s fun. No it’s not - not to me anyway. But because I don’t fit in I am seen as being negative about ‘fun’. I am not being negative about fun. I am being negative about YOU. I am the freak sitting in the darkened corner listening to Joy Division, looking on jealously at all the people bumping and grinding into each other and ‘really living’. To them, I am not much fun at all. But they can’t even begin to imagine with what disdain I view them. They’re less than unfun. They’re inhumane. Its important to draw attention to the fact that the great past times of our career and commerce orientated nation - clubbing, drinking, shopping and TV are fine. I like clubbing. I like drinking. I like shopping. I like a lot of TV. I enjoy my work, I need my career to go well.

But not to the detriment of my personality, my curiosity, my intelligence, my imagination, my desire for change and my outspokenness. 

If you speak out against the constant emphasis in this country on drinking, clubbing, shopping and watching rubbish TV then God help you, because as I am finding right now, there isn’t a lot left of the other people. They seem to have been indoctrinated into the cult of the mainstream believing themselves to be unique when they’re floating in a huge river of mediocrity. Many divisions and cracks have opened up. The outsiders feel stigmatised for being unable to connect with the majority. To hell with the majority. I don’t want to be part of it - but my God I am pretty much alone now!

I have to drive my life around these people everyday because they are everywhere, paddling around in the river. Now I know what you’re thinking - that Andrew Reid is the ultimate snob. Just because he likes French cinema over Sex and the City he thinks he’s better than anybody else. Nothing can be further from the truth. I am just concerned that a generation has arrived that has nothing to say, which does not appreciate the beautiful things about life, that does not care. All they want is the next shopping fix, the next drink fix, the next drug fix and the next sex / boyfriend / girlfriend fix, and that’ll do nicely thank you very much.

It’s all scarily like just one big ego trip. 

WAKE UP. Fucking wake up. Life isn’t a teenage-kicks gang-bang until you die. It’s about speaking out about what you care about - and saying “to hell” with what others might think of you because of it. It’s about changing, growing up, suffering hardship, coming out from under the shelter of your attractive looks and trendy clothes. I don’t care much for your Facebook photos which shout “Oh look at me, I’m having so much FUN!”

Why am I angry? Surely I can just ignore them? No, there’s so many of them they’ve bent society to their own ends and I no longer fit in. 

Don’t miss my point - it’s not that I dislike someone (or a group of people) because they like trashy TV or get kicks from bullshit movies for instance - it’s when they become a character from them that I lose interest. A walking pastiche of the drivel they’ve been brought up on all their life. A cardboard cut out of raw instincts laced with fakery and fantasy.

Brain dead.

A walking sex stick who’s only aim in life is to settle down with a partner, have a career and a nice sofa, and breed yet more alcochick dumb-ass girl who lives for the colour pink and her boyfriend’s cock. (Or as many cocks as possible, both literally and metaphorically). Oh, there is nothing wrong with sex of course. But when was the last time they did it sober?

Put simply - evolution is drunk. 

“FORMULA One boss Max Mosley is a grotesque sexual deviant who acts out Nazi death-camp fetishes.” - The News of the World

So said the tabloid today, determined to stick the knife in even more. While I still don’t see how exposing someone’s private life to public consumption by hundreds of millions is lawful, I’m prepared to look at the facts, unlike the tabloids.

F1 can ill afford to lose Max Mosley as he saves lives through his leadership on safety. 

And the other (less important) facts are, Max Mosley got kicks from a German prisoner S&M orgy with 5 prostitutes, and this while morally disgusting to the less liberal minded, is not a crime and nor is it a reason for him to lose his reputation, passion, career, wife, family and potentially his life.

The paper has now published full transcripts of the S&M session, and not one sentence uttered in either English or German references the Nazi death camps, Jews or the World War. Nor was anybody killed. One thing is for sure - here is a family and a man going through hell, and by implication here is a disgusting hatchet job on F1 as a whole. What makes it even more of a piss take is that the tabloids like to think they’re some kind of shining moral guardian, exposing filth and holding ‘evil’ people to account. I think they’ll find that’s the role of the police and courts, not a jumped up ‘journalistic’ filth fanzine.

That the car companies have distanced themselves to it all, is purely from a political and PR point of view. Their executives probably do the same thing themselves every weekend with prostitutes. The only difference is, we don’t get to know about it.

And nor should we. 

So why are tabloid newspapers lawfully operating in this country? If a sick and grotesque pervert stuck a camera in your house and published your sex life on the internet, wouldn’t the strong arm of the law have something to say about it? Newspapers like the News of The World bring the free press into disrepute, and I frankly don’t know how you can have free speech when sick gutter dwelling so called journalists use their voice in such a negative way.

If I was a celebrity and had gone through a rough time (with drugs for instance), I could expect every detail of it to be in the public domain even though the only person harmed, is the celebrity themselves. How does this help anyone? What is next on the tabloid agenda? Raiding hospital files for patient history? Chasing celebrities until they suffer fatal car crashes in dark tunnels?

The News of The World’s website entices people with promises of cash, to sell their story. Frankly this kind of journalism is so negative, sick and unlawful that there should be no question that the company and editors in question should be locked up.

The sums in question are actually very low, compared to the money earned from selling newspapers off the back of toilet dwelling. An example of the illegally obtained voyeuristic shit we don’t want to hear about is paraded on this link: http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sell_your_story.shtml 

These are the flagship bundles of muck the newspaper has managed to dredge up from the gutter from the vile sewer dwelling rats desperate for any money they can get their hands on. Money for kiss and tell stories, money for heaping humiliation on people who are already down in the gutter. Who cares about unfaithful footballers or Ian Huntley’s tears for his dogs? It’s depressing to read, vile, hypocritical and in the words the newspapers so often use themselves: “Ban this filth!”

As for the saying ‘never kiss and tell’ this is especially true to a newspaper read by millions of people - that’s a million times worse than telling one person. 

It amazes me why it still goes on. Its reaching the point now where it threatens the integrity of the whole media industry and leaves behind a trail of ruined lives.

To me, the case with Max Mosley is where I draw the line and take a stand because here is something I really care about - the well-being of F1 and it’s participants. I want to see Max continue the great work on the rules and safety he’s lead over the years, I have always seen the logic in his arguments and while he’s had a difficult time of it - he has done the right thing time and time again.

It’s so plain to see he isn’t a ‘Nazi’ and it’s time people realised the difference between sex roll play behind closed doors and the actions of a man in real life. The fact his family history has been portrayed as having some perverse effect on his character is an abomination. That his father was a fascist is being used against an innocent man. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be reminded that the father he loved as a kid was a fascist leader, and I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate his whole family past being described as ’sick and racist’, just for the deluded actions of his father. Also don’t the tabloids understand another moral - never speak ill of the dead?

When you have tabloids, having a free press is about as good an idea as having a free roaming prison system in a city centre. Everybody who suffers anything negative that happens to be newsworthy (you don’t always have to be famous to succumb to the tabloids) automatically becomes a victim before the full facts or heard, ironically more so if they are the victim in the situation that is reported in the first place. The last thing that most people want is to see themselves subject to a negative character assassination in a national newspaper read by millions.

You never know when a tabloid or paparazzi photographer might creep up on you - if they can spin a story which exploit’s peoples natural voyeuristic curiosity, they will stop at nothing. It breeds a society of paranoia.

The tabloid is now sending the full uncensored 5 hour sex tape to the FIA senate - those people who will directly decide Mosley’s future. I’m sure they don’t want to view the video, in the same way I wouldn’t want to watch my friends & colleagues in hard core sex videos either, but the tabloid demands that they view the tape and ‘make up their own minds’. While they’re at it, for the benefit of parity, let’s also make them film the tabloid editor’s mistress giving him a blow job while later, she takes it up the arse while he calls her a whore, and see what judgement they make about the editor in question and whether he’s still fit to edit a national newspaper after the footage is broadcast on television. 

The free press has blood on it’s hands. Its possible to attribute just about every negative character trait to a tabloid - hypocrisy, lying, corruption, voyeurism, greed, irresponsibility, moral bankruptcy, psychopathic behaviour, bullying and obtaining money through the illegal actions of others.

If, as a citizen of Manchester I behaved in the same way as a tabloid, I’d be in jail by now. So I’d like answers…

But meanwhile, at the risk of legal action, I’d like to say that the editor of the News of The World, Colin Myler is a sick voyeuristic pervert who participates in bestiality sex bondage sessions in farm yard barns. I’ll try and get a video for you, and see what his wife thinks about it all. If he’s married in the first place - that would truly be a miracle for someone so disgusting and morally bankrupt.

And to prove their is no justice: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jan/26/newsoftheworld.pressandpublishing3

Andy Coulson is now press officer of the Conservative party, which tells you all you need to know about the Conservative party.