James’ Poor Brain

Bah! Every time I see or read about Beth Ditto (singer from re-releasing one-hit berks The Gossip, creators of that song in the Skins advert. Skins is also quite shit, by the way) I want to pull my eyebrows off. Interviews with her tend to go like this:

Interviewer: <question about music, not making references to anything other than music whatsoever>

Ditto: Its about homophobia, which exists in every white heterosexual man in existance, regardless of whether I know him or not and whether his opinion actually means shit. Also, I’m gay. Did I mention that? I’m very, very gay.

Way to strike a blow for equal rights, Beth! Angry man-hating accusations of fascism speak louder than actual evidence of said fascism ever could. You’re so right - being a white, straight bloke makes my opinion moot. And good work on reminding us that you’re gay; after all, it is the most important thing about music, isn’t it? Oh.

People like her suck. I’d bet a good deal of homophobia exists not because of fear or ignorance, but because everyone else is just plain pissed off at people who won’t shut up about who they like to sleep with. Being homosexual is hardly “radical”, as Beth puts it. How are the millions of non-annoying gay people supposed to achieve equal rights and break down misconceptions with bitches like Ditto around?

Get a clue. She’s the hardly the only overweight perosn in showbuisness either. Apparently she likes to take off her clothes at shows, because, obviously, that makes her unique and cool. One time she even took her knickers off as well. Nice, you can add “Attention-seeking whore” to your list of social stereotypes you seem so keen on categorising yourself into, on the grounds that you “don’t care”. Yeah? Try telling that to the thousands of people with weight-related eating disorders or who are too afraid to express their sexuality. Although, what with your tireless campaigning against things like this (by which I mean ‘writing a song with ambiguous lyrics that might be about George W. Bush. Like no-one else has disagreed with him before’) I doubt there are any cases left.

Further reading: The people Beth Ditto can’t be arsed to be

Matt Foreman’s site (LGBT Activist)

Jo Moreley’s site (Big People UK)

1- iPods. sTupid nAme, aNd oVerhyped, oVerpriced mP3 pLayers. sO iT pLays mP3s - bIg dEal! sO dOes mY pHone. iTs nO dIfferent tO aNy oTher mP3 pLayer oN tHe mArket, eXcept tHe mAssive pRice tAg. oH, iTs nOt sHockproof eIther, sO iS mOre pRone tO bReaking.

2- Video Blogs. Imagine all the boredom of the average “and today I did this yadda yadda…” blog, but with the added pain of having to look at someone’s ugly face as they generally force a bored expression when talking about something they don’t like and forcing..well, the exact same face when talking about something good. Yawn. What a waste of YouTube bandwidth.

3- The phrase “Don’t get me wrong”. It’s generally used by stupid/racist/narrow minded/intolerant people in a vain attempt to seem less stupid/racist/narrow minded/intolerant by saying something that contradicts whatever stupid/racist/narrow minded/intolerant thing they’ve just said before adding “but I just…” and then repeating said stupid/racist/narrow minded/intolerant bullshit. Example:

“Don’t get me wrong, I respect the beliefs of other people, but I just think WHAT they believe in is a load of degenerate shit”

Fuck off. It means nothing.

4- The fact that Firefox won’t let me copy and paste.

5- Stupid parents who forget about their moron kids and let them do moronic things, then blaming someone else, instead of doing their job as a parent. Grow up.

6- Anything that’s in NME these days. Especially Jack Penate.

7- Rickenbacker basses. I don’t really know why. They’re just ugly and sound like trebly pieces of shit. Basses should be so low they empty the bowels of listeners. Although I quite like Lemmy’s custom design, so I’ll make an exception for that. 

8- The Killers. They keep popping up on Kerrang TV for some reason, like finding thumbtacks in a bowl of Weetos. Except most of what they show is rubbish as well. HelloGoodbye, for example.

9- The word “fooking”, or putting stars where swear words should be. Just say “fucking”, you retard. I won’t tell Mummy.

10- Activists. Of ANY kind. There are few things that are likely to induce severe bouts of yawning than people trying to convince me I should be vegetarian/Pro-choice/pro-life/christian/jehovah’s witness/atheist/blood donor/pro-war/anti-war.

11- Fall Out Boy. Sounds like Busted, but with a clothing line. Except that lame song song where Pete Wentz “screams”. I’m not the best source on what “screaming” is considered to be, but what Wentz does isn’t it.

12- Pete Wentz, in general.

13- Speaking of shit music, Arctic Monkeys. Just, no. Fuck off. Get off my TV and go back to Sheffield, and learn to write songs that aren’t about doing The Robot. And wear your guitar lower.

14- Weird names for paint. I had to paint in ‘Oatmeal’ once. Oatmeal looks, smells and tastes so bad I could almost cry. One time I was at Alton Towers and someone threw up after they got off Air. It had the same texture as oatmeal, which didn’t bode well for my opinion of it. Here are some other ill-advised paint colours I just made up: Intestine Pink, Bile Green, and Ingrown Toenail  Discharge.

15- the blatant hypocrisy of MSN.com. Despite having hosted internally-written articles about how reality TV should be removed from TV schedules, it continues to sell out to the “blithering idiot” demographic by having a regular Big Brother updates. I hate Big Brother as well, but who doesn’t these days?

Matt Damon is a moron. He induced cringes galore in Saving Private Ryan and now he’s shooting his mouth off about James Bond films being “anchored in the 1960s”.

Dumbass! Maybe the tennis court-foreheaded dunce has forgotten the fact that 15 of the 21 “official” Bond films were released after 1970 and four of the six actors who have portrayed Bond took the role after the 60’s ended. Not to mention the much-publiscised reinvention of the series with Casino Royale.

Has he even seen the films? Did anyone see invisible cars, guns made out of golden ballpoints and men with stainless steel teeth in the 60’s? One of the archetypes of the series is that it has always been fiercely modern, in the storylines, props, settings and even the characters. Would you have seen a character like Jinx in the 1960s? Hell no.

What annoys me the most is that Damon seems to think that Bond is somehow inferior to Jason Boune, the dull-as-spaghetti “hero” of Damon’s Bourne films:

“Bond is an imperialist and a misogynist who kills people and laughs about it, and drinks Martinis and cracks jokes. Bourne is a serial monogamist whose girlfriend is dead and he does nothing but think about her.”

Wowee, an action hero who does nothing but think about his dead girlfriend. Maybe he should try being a REAL action hero, it might take his mind off things. People who kill people and either a) apologise or b) start crying about it have no place in the same films as fisticuffs and sniper rifles. Ergo, characters who act the opposite of Bond are wusses. You’re not in PSHE any more, nancy boy - martinis and cracking jokes about people who have been recently been electrocuted via a razor-tipped hat is cool. 

Bonus fact: Casino Royale is the 37th highest-grossing film of all time, and 6th highest in Britain. Just saying. 

I was flicking through the Saturday newspaper earlier and was quite content doing so until my eyes came accross Grand Supreme Dickweed General, Richard Dawkins. It seems this time, Dawkins has pulled his head out of his ass long enough to make a program where he confronts astrologists, psychics, mediums and the like and generall makes them explain how they do it.

Whilst you (by which I mean ‘he’) may think he’s doing a public service by exposing their fraud, all he’s really doing is taking what we already know and turning it into some kind of New Age Dragon’s Den, letting the psychics etc. try and convince him what they’re doing is real before shooting them down in flames. Wow, what a hero he is from saving us from these lies! Pfft. Everyone knows Astrology is crap. Everyone knows people who claim to talk to the dead can bullshit you for a fee. And the ones that don’t? What, is some middle-aged bloke whose main tool of negating things is to scoff and look down his nose like some posh Eton-attending twat going to change their mind? Fat chance. So the question must be asked: why is such a program neccessary?

The answer is tragically simple: Dawkins likes putting other down to make himself feel big. It’s hard to argue when you combine his Canary Wharf-sized ego with what is essentially his life’s work of rubbishing the beliefs (and now, for whatever reason, the low-paying jobs) of ther people. Why he des it is anyone’s guess; bullied at school? A bully at school? Parents never hugged him? Small penis? Whatever it is, it appears that no-one is safe from the Richard Dawkins PrejudiceMobile. Except minorities like Muslims and Hindus. You don’t hear him bullying them much, obviously because to do so would be racist. And, of course, it’s impossible to persecute people who aren’t in a minority, so it’s all okay to do so, right Rich? 

Orcas rule. Why? Because they don’t take shit from nobody. If you’re stupid enough to catch an orca and put it in a tank for fat American tourists to gawp at, you can bet your fat American ass it’s only a matter of time before the mghty orca stops putting up with your shit and gives you a face full of muscular orca flipper. Pow!

Want to save the whales? Tough shit, cos most of them are killed by Orcas as a light snack, and, as a member of the otherwise wussy dolphin family, they have superior intelligence. Hell, even the mighty shark is nothing but fodder to these. Did you know the boat from Jaws was called “The Orca” because  Orcas kick do much shark ass?

Another time, this film crew was filming on a large block of ice, obviously impeaching the Orca’s territory. Not about to let these dumbass humans walk all over HIS frozen body of water, the Killer Whale (what a cool name) started pounding the ice block, making the film crew soil themselves and generally ruining their shit.

There’s only one way to protect yourself from Orca attack: become a Pirate. Orcas are second only to pirates on the High Sea Hierachy, and as such will grudginly leave you alone.

Until you leave the ship. Then it’s a free-for-all.

People who claim to be non-conformist are liars. Like ‘moral’ vegetarians, they can’t wait to remind everyone at every oppotunity about their crusades against conformism. What, you mean like not buying records by indie bands? Not eating at popular restaurants? Wow, nice work! Take THAT, capitalist pigs!

Pfft. I hate this kind of person’s blind elitism. How can you call someone “conformist”? It’s not like they wake up in the morning and think “Hmm, today I’ll be really conformist, and will do this by only buying music in the Top 40 charts, regardless of whether I actually like it or not”. Bullshit! People don’t just wait around for the media to beat them around the head with popular shit, they seek it out themselves. That’s another thing, I’m sick of people blaming everything on the media. Newspaper editors don’t come round your house and kidnap people in order for people to swallow their opinion (outside of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia), people buy newspapers or watch TV out of their own choice.

But back to why Non-conformists are attention-seeking frauds. In order to actually be non-conformist, you can’t do such typically conformist things as involving yourself in popular culture, wearing fashionable clothes etc., and that sounds an awful lot like a set of rules to me, meaning that to be non-conformist you must conform to typically non-conformist ideals. But wait! That would make people who claim to be “Non-comformist” hypocritical liars, and that would completely ruin the self-righteous asshole’s image! OH NOEZ!

I appear to have upset the odd person on the Myspace-hosted version of this blog.

Good stuff! It’s hard to get more than a couple of lines out of you lot, truth be told. This could mean one of two things:

1) You’re thicker than my Myspace readers and can’t think of a response

2) You’re smarter than my Myspace readers and are therefore fully aware my entries make so much sense its impossible to argue with me without looking like a dolt.

Anyway, the myspace version is HERE. 

It’s fair to say I’m rather fond of Muse indeed. But in order to comprehend just how much, other bands must be brought forward for comparison.

The first such band is Billy Talent. I love Billy Talent. Take note Pete Wentz - this is REAL punk rock. The guitars will chop off your head and the vocals will scream down your neck hole. Songs like Devil in a Midnight Mass make me wish I could sing in a key other than D. But I can’t, so I’ll listen to it on repeat whilst miming the “SIIIILIENT NIGHT” bits instead. In fact, I’d go as far as to say Billy Talent are the best chorus-writers in the buisness. No joke. But what is most seriously awesome about this band is the guitarist. He’s MENTAL. His guitar playing is mental; his vocal style is mental ; even his goddamn hair is mental. On one song he plays a sort of stabby lead riff over some gentle rhythm strumming. It was a fair enough assumption that it was two separatly recorded parts, put I saw a live video where he plays RHYTHM AND LEAD AT THE SAME TIME!!1!FOUR!!!!CO$INE!! Holy shit!!

The next compari-band (I made it up) is Wolfmother. Wolfmother get instant extra awesomeness points for having such awesome afros. If I could grow such hair, I’d wear a bag over it and only take it off when people paid me, just for a glimpse of my awe-inducing curls. Secondly, I believe the world owes Wolfmother for bringing back what was (in its day) one of the most innovative music genres ever. Without Hard Rock, all your identical metal bands wouldn’t exist, and so Wolfmother should be praised for taking back what is considered “hard” from these shitty bands. I burped earlier and it sounded just like a death metal “growl” (read: Pig/Daffy Duck squeal). You need no talent to be in any of these bands, but bands like Wolfmother combine actually decent songwriting ability with rock that will knee you and everyone you love in the spleen.

Finally, an honourable mention goes to the Foo Fighters. Admittedly their ouput can vary a bit, sometimes being somewhat mediocre, but when they get it right there are few things in life that kick more ass. I’m tired, so here’s my argument in three words - All My Life.

So there you have it. But how do these bands compare to the mighty Muse? Well, to answer that question in the most poorly-edited way possible, I’ve made this graph:

I pretty much don’t write “Diary” stuff anymore when it dawned on me that no-one would find it interesting, but this was actually pretty damn funny.

Anyway, I was at a pub whilst this cricket game was going on in an adjacent field. Being a straight-edge sort of bloke in a pub meant that I was bored off my face, until the cricket ball came soaring towards the beer garden we were in. Everyone except this one guy followed the ball, until it went through a tree and beaned said guy right in the spine.

Naturally I started laughing in the manly way that I do, and the guy saw me and came over to ask why I was laughing, and I told him it was because he got a ball in the spinal column, and then he started shouting at me and tried to punch me, but I ducked under his legs and, before he could turn around, a punched him the back of his head, which came clean off. Everyone thought it was so funny they all gave me money.

Disclaimer: I may have made up that last part.  

I’ve only had it for 12 hours but I love this book. It’s written by Maddox, the guy who writes The Best Page in the Universe, and the whole thing drips with his signiture rants and ramblings. Its basically an A-Z of manly topics (A for Ass Kicking, L for Lumberjacks etc.) with a chapter’s worth of comedy gold on each one. Seriously, if comedy was traded as currency, the value of this book would be equivalent to the current exchange rate of gold. Or something like that. But don’t take my word for it, you greedy bastards. Have a small taster…

“The baby seemed like he was loving it (the hot sauce) at first, but he suddenly started crying, so I did what I always do when babies cry: I put him in the garbage can. His mom started yelling and screaming, then she tried to punch me, so I stepped to the side and she accidently tripped and fell down four flights of stairs, and then she accidently got peed on.”

Eh? EH? Name one other author who makes falling down the stairs funny. You can’t, and that’s because Maddox is the only one that exists. And if there was one, he has probably already gone and elbowed him in the ovaries for stealing his idea. All hail.

On a much more hateful note, I went to see the Simpsons move the other day. It was going fine until it got to the trailers, at which point the teaser for this came on:

Never before has something that lasted less than two minutes made me want to go postal in the middle of a crowded theatre, preferably with something loud and inefficient like a petrol-powered chainsaw. Just look at the picture. Look at the bent, cartoon-haired silhouettes. You don’t need facial expressions or even colours that aren’t pink to convey how much of an Americanised, semi-anorexic bitch you are.

The subject matter is equally excretable. Plastic dolls, in this case. Nice one Hollywood! The bloke who came up with this film probably just saw his fat, spoilt daughter playing with her whore-clothed dolls and thought “Hey, set it in a High School, its a hit!” Dumbass. There have been Bratz films before - I’ve seen the straight-to-video monstrosities at supermarket tills for £3, like the “Rock Chick” one that was obviously made by people who don’t know their Epiphone from their elbow - and they clearly didn’t become popular, so why does this film even exist? I’ve decided not to seek an answer, in the interest of maintaining a healthy blood pressure. I’m sorry, but even the slogan sucks.

Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not sorry. But the tagline (High School Will Never Be The Same, Apparently. Hey, It’s Fun To Talk Like This) makes it seem like its different from every other lame High School/teenage/coming-of-age “comedy”. I hate those films, and I hate this. Seen the “Cartoon Wars” episode of South Park? Remember when the manatees push idea balls out of a tank to make a Family Guy joke? Well, its kind of like that, but instead of Family Guy, its this film. And instead of idea balls, its cow shit.