Emancipate Yourself

So, it's April and the Brighton Summer vibes are beginning to roll in. You can tell this for a multitude of reasons. Most obviously we have more daylight and can actually see the sun through the usual grey layering of cloud. Tourists are beginning to flock around the pier lining up to use the 2 pence slot machines and consequently blocking up the cycle lane like Johnny Vegas' arteries. The biggest tell-tale of the changing of the seasons would be this:

Nice tan...

We've all seen them, nonchalantly walking around as if orange is a natural skin tone. Honestly, why would someone do this to themselves? If we were to correlate a graph with how much fake tan has been applied running down the X axis and an a decrease of intelligence running along the Y axis then i'm sure we would prove fake tan to be a direct contributor to the education epidemic sweeping across the UK today.

The 'Cocksquirt Orange' as they have become locally known are an odd breed of females. I tried to do a bit of research of what makes these beings tick. Obviously my method was meticulously constructed to allow the academic validity of my results to shine through. My results were frankly, shocking. The average profile of someone living the tangerine dream can be seen below.

The women will be in her early twenties but will have the average sexual experience of a women way into her forties but this will however have been at detriment to all her other studies that would have actually made her interesting to most people. She claims to be into music and has her Ipod charged full of current female icons such as; Sticki Mivaj and Jizztina Aguilera (Now refusing to say their names). She will believe that she has found a connection and meaning behind these artists music and lyrics and her television choices too reflect this thinking that her life is so like Jersey Shore and Sex In The City. She's on top of all the latest fashions sporting wide sun glasses and perhaps even an angel wing tattoo one lower back, because you know... she's so quirky and interesting like that. She may be a little over-weight but that doesn't stop her from allowing her belly cellulite to be on show to all the world around.

A push chair pram and can of cider are an optional extra, but she can rarely be seen without a super-king cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She is currently unemployed and claiming benefits because she decided to take a bit of 'me' time out of work to get away from the stress her boss was laying on her. Her girl-friends congratulated her on being such a 'strong women'. To have her on Facebook is a death sentence. She continually mixes her grammar like a bad DJ, posts statuses about nothing, but worst of all we have to see how deep and cultured her and her mates are when they upload 78 pictures doing this:

When Miley ducks she's looking for...

OK, all this is a little harsh. I do believe that society and the media are particularly predatory towards women, particularly the slightly thick ones. Fake tan is just another unnecessary product dubiously marketed and advertised in extreme measures to trick people into thinking it will improve their lives. It is a total con as is pretty much everything else in this market. A few months ago I had to sort out a box of various products into make and type. The overall sale value of this make-up was over 5K! For essentially powder and face paint. I have to ask myself, who is this really benefitting? Not you, that's for sure.

The more make-up is applied to someone's face, the more I feel that person is hiding. It's the kind of thing you should only notice someone wearing when it is too much. Why would someone want to look plastic and also surely there are way more important things to be worrying about in life? The line is drawn between society pressure and vanity. Vanity is the most instantly obvious of someones fatal flaws and shows that:

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes straight to the bone

It is crazy how social wrong doing can be accepted across the board just as long as enough people do it and don't question it. Bill Hick's said that we don't always listen to the good guys and allow the demons to run amok in our society. As you peer closer into some of our trusted institutions, or rather should be social responsible institutions... such as banks, restaurants and entertainment businesses we can see that the way they invest their money is at an absolute impediment to the way we should live our lives. Like I've mentioned before with the whole Spiderman thing; 'with great power comes great responsibility', well as it turns out trying to find a mega-multinational organizations that doesn't reinvest money into weapons development or manufacture is like trying to masturbate in a public, it just doesn't happen. 

For instance here is a poster from the organization SETI who fund research into various means of scouring our colossal universe for life: Click Me!. This put America's defence budget at 663.8 Billion dollars a year. What gets worse is that the war machine is the single most profitting business model out there! This also makes it perfectly excusable for (pretty much everyone) to invest your dirty dollars into. Ever heard of a company called Lockheed Martin? What about General Dynamics? If you're a consumer chances are you've indirectly given them your cash. They are just some of the many, many businesses that exist below the average public knowledge line. A quick look at this shows just much the stocks held by some of these banks, technology manufacturers and conglomerates are actually worth... Barclay's shares alone are worth $223.19M and they are nowhere near close to being top share holders. 

I really don't get this guys. I really don't. I for one would really like to believe in the power of the human spirit to overcome obstacles and most of all the power of love to unify us. If I didn't then what would be the point? I don't wake up in the morning to go to some dead end job to then come home to consume and repeat till I die. What sort or world are we living in where I and you ALLOW this to happen. I am not an economist, but I am not stupid to know that to survive as a race and to fulfil our potential we have a duty to ourselves to get off planet earth and to further explore space, life, ourselves and perhaps even other dimension... who knows? But surely in order to do this we need to find peace and some sort of structure that doesn't allow this to continue:

Speechless

We cannot better humanity until we actively better ourselves. The way we live our lives and the way we think and the actions we take all have a knock on effect. Buddha said “If you propose yourself to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind”. If you can reflect the society you wish to see in your way of life then I believe you are directly contributing to the social morality obligation I feel comes with our intelligence and understanding of the world around us. If you do not then you are part of the issue that continually slows down our growth, a complete dead weight that society is burdened to carry forward with it. The only point someone should subscribe to the whole 'one person can't make a difference' thing is when they are dead. End of.

We can make this heaven and we can make this hell. If you are contributing to someone else's suffering then stop. If you are through ignorance then think. It is time to:

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery"

We take so god-damned much from the world around us and it is time to give something back. I for one don't have any answers but I am god-damn trying. What have you done for the greater good recently? Is this really how you want to live your life? Think and be kind.

So all in all a very dramatic turn of event in today's rant. I've established that Orange people suck which led me to reason that mass accepted ignorance is the downfall of our modern society and perhaps humanities ultimate undoing. Apathy is the enemy and empathy is the cure. I may just be blowing hot air and perhaps talking utter rubbish but it's all speculation. 

(F)art

Here we go, another week down which means a whole new week's worth of social entropy and personal distaste to comment on. When I watch TV I have a habit of turning over to Kerrang! during the ad breaks on the other channel. It's a throwback to when I was younger and actually enjoyed some of the bands they used to play. Back when Green Day actually looked their age and Metal bands didn't look like skinny suburban dick- heads. It has slipped over the past few years as anyone who has read the magazine in the past will know. It's become a modern day version of Smash Hits just with a little bit more "edge" to ruffle mom's feathers a bit. Bit It really is a pants music channel. It other shows a video they they've had the rights to exploit for about ten years or it exposes some of the more insidiously regressive bands that are available on the tween market today.

That is soooo 2007

Rather than another eternal re-run of Metallica's “Enter Sandman” Kerrang! had decided to show us this: Under the Influence – FML (Just watch it). I can deal with all the YouMeAtSix and All Time Low bullshit, it's shamelessly crap music that knows it's crap. We know and they know that their music is just a quick shortcut to sweaty pre-pubescent girls panties who think they're actually connecting with the music. It's almost OK for people to make such shamelessly bad music that rapes the charts like a rabbit on heat because, well, basically... If you are too retarded to realise that it's bad then fuck you, you measly social cretin. There is no artistic merit to be found in here. Honestly there is more artistic expression found in any of the UK's tabloid papers. But it is OK to like crap... as long as you know it's crap!

That is chocolate however

It almost makes me feel bad ripping into a band who hasn't brought in Youtube hits by the million, but fuck it, these things need to be nipped in the bud. Under The Influence's FML was so bad that it literally made me want to fuck my own life... with a knife... through the chest because whatever social and cultural phenomena that caused this to happen has to be eradicated immediately. Like the dropping of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, society needs to learn not to let this shit happen again!

Artist's forewarning of Lady Gaga's upcoming UK tour

Boys, if you are reading this. You're lyrics are about as interesting as a boxing day crap. In this age where recording equipment is as cheap as it's ever been you've somehow managed to create a sound that has the audio quality of a odd sized piece of carpet, let alone how undeveloped and boring your actual music is. Then there is the vocals. No. Just no. What is this east London wannabe on about? This isn't the grime scene, if it were your shitty excuse for vocals would almost be excusable because at least all your audience members would be to incapacitated to give a fuck. What are these lyrics about? Surely having FML, the meme based acronym for Fuck My Life as a lyric in your tune is about as artistically lazy as me taking a crap on a piece of A5 paper. No wait! IT ISN'T. At least that would say something about my state of mind, you guys have pasted together to very trendy forms of music... well trendy if you happen to be someone who owns one of these:

If so press ⌘W on Mac or alt F4 on Windows

That Enter Shikari-esque trance, meets poorly done metal meets a suburban rude boy faker (plus a few too many burgers on the waist). You have managed to amount to zero artistic merit. Well done... at least Susan Boyle was ugly enough to fake the public, but no matter how rough your faces look, no matter how weak your artistic credibility is or how manufactured and pathetic your image can be, times will never be hard enough to accept you.

Anyway, fuck these guys. I've been roaming around this week and Under The Influence aren't the only skid mark on the underpants of culture and society I've seen this week. The other being dog turds. Literally wherever I go there's a dog turd just a stone's throw away. Long ones, thick ones, sticky tar coloured ones. They are literally everywhere. There just seems to be something about Kemptown in Brighton that gets a dogs colon looser than Nicki Minaj on a photo shoot. It doesn't even end there. I live in a block of flats on the sea front as frankly I cannot bare to live with the shit munchers further in land. But with premium living accommodation you expect premium tenants around you. It's one thing to accidentally kick a poo into the road in the morning but it's another thing to see this:

Somewhere a native Indian is crying

A symbolic piece of our suburban loneliness perhaps? An unmade bed abandoned by its resident, a double bed parked on double yellow lines. Like piece of modern art the bed answered no questions. Its only purpose was to be there, in that moment as itself, leaving us to ponder questions of our existence in a forever shrinking yet expanding cold and callous world... perhaps it is us who is parked on double yellows? How long can we continue our addiction to oil. Pounding the earth for all its resources, yet cutting down the lungs of the planet and building motorways where once green pastures used to be? One day we will be forced to sleep in the beds we have made, except they shall be unmade, taxed and on the side of a freeway. Or maybe it's just a bad example of fly tipping.

Either way the council picked it up a few days later, it really had become a bit of an eye-sore and depressing to the elderly residents on floor four. But speaking of art there is another category I've started to put what I consider faux-art to be. Or (f)art in short. Here is an example of a (f)art on side entrance to the block of flats I live in:

Premium... We have CCTV!

I'm all up for graffiti. I think if you have something important to say to people it can be extremely effective to paint it across your city. Simon & Garfunkel said in the “Sound Of Silence”:

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls

Right on! For all it's worth, be a prophet. Just don't be the spaz that writes something like that. You should never (f)art and especially not when it is at the inconvenience of others. We all know what follows a (f)art. A big, stinky flatuating anus that just shits all over us. Speaking of which, having done a bit more research, Under The Influence have made a full length album which is more than enough evidence to make my theory here a fact. This concludes my post of today. For every bad piece of art there is a consequence:

Never. Ever. (f)art in public!

"All photo-shoots are conducted outside"

Next Post Tuesday 16th, April

If you have enjoyed this post then please let me know and send me a comment and forward to your friends... unless you are Under The Influence or Nick Minaj's manager of course.

My Job Application Nightmare!

It's Monday morning again, my most hated day of the week is back. Seriously, what is this day's problem? It seems its only meaning of existence is to mark the anniversary of last weeks perpetual cycle of self loathing and animosity towards the establishment that rages on till the midnight tick... An establishment whose soul purpose in life is to make me feel small and meaningless... An establishment where only the cream of the lobotomised crop may flourish and one day become the bitch dog of an organization who never cared about you anyway... Enough with the petty pop anti-establishmentarianism for now. Anyway, My inner monologue is filled with existential questions about my life and many so many "what ifs?" that forever go un-answered only to reemerge once more as a more hardcore reincarnation of itself next week.

"Not again..."

Even whilst writing this I can feel the solemn drag that is caused by travelling too close event horizon of  the ever-growing black hole of unispiration that has formed in my chest cavity where my once beating heart used to be. Worse still, it's not till I started applying for the more menial, soul destroying jobs this morning that I started to feel this way. It has spread across my day like a nasty disease. This narcissism was carried with me to the local newsagents where I decided to veto my Dr. Pepper as they didn't have the Salt & Vinegar McCoy's I was after. I had accepted this as a failure and decided I deserved nothing.

At least this gets me

This is all due to the social conditioning I have allowed my self to fall into like a booby trap in my head whereby I allow myself to be judged how much money I make. Making no money means I am worth nothing. Or to put it shorter, “I am nothing”. But part of the setup in my weekly spiral of despair comes the part where I try and fight back. “Fuck you” to the man I say. But in reality what we end up with is this:

I wish to live in a world

With no money or systems of control

Where wealth is a state of mind

Not the size of your pay roll

*Slaps forehead* I like to think of myself as some sort of beat poet, a Jack Kerouac if you will when I write this. Although I like my sentiment, sitting around and mentally writing poetry about a utopian society where I essentially get what I want for nothing has to be the laziest of my thought experiments recently. This is the problem. This is where the paradigm is split wide open. I am obviously in two minds about this working situation. However, it's obvious, till the day comes that I can support myself as fully unemployed for life/self employed I will have to experience being bottom bitch.

As I don't seem to getting much out of CV littering and applying for crap online I've decided to try and get work writing. For those who don't know, I run my own music reviews site. I really enjoy it, I get sent CD's from bands who on the most part a pretty awesome plus I get to get into local shows for free and that's all I do it for as essentially there isn't a way to make money out of it. But because I'm trying to branch out and accept that perhaps some people might be interested in what I can do I thought I may as well give it a go.

But what really pisses me off about this shit is that a lot of the time, and you get this in degrading minimal wage jobs as well, but the person on the other side must have literally have a penis and a pair of balls for brain. There I am slightly degrading myself for the sake of a few bob and there is this literal retard spouting shit at me. What the fuck, man? If only the vagina had some sort of sperm screening process, I wouldn't have to deal with this shit as people... like... Nicki Minaj will have been terminated at source and in a way that is ethical and natural. That's right, I still hate you Nicki you utter, phenomenal waste of sperm piece of shit.

Don't encourage her!

But anyway, I sent an email to some bell this morning about a writing job, and this is what I get back:

What the fuck! I'm going to take the time to admit that often my grammar isn't all that and often I'm sure neither is my spelling. I do try, honestly. But most the time I spend ranting on a crappy budget version of Office. Let's call it Noffice. But as it's free it doesn't feature a spell checker so I'm sorry if I get the occasional things wrong. We all have blindspots. This stupid piece of wasted sperm can't even do the thing he is asking me to do. Even still, what the hell is that... it doesn't even resemble a job. Fuck this ball sack. So of course I let him know.

I don't honestly expect a reply from this oxygen hoarder as i'm sure he took the high road as he is way to uber employed to be wasting his time with me. But it really sucks. I've spent fecking ages over the last few months writing covering letters and CV's to send to random companies and the doing it all over again. But none of these people even have the decency to email me back. This just falls back to my post on human decency really, but still the sight of this would make me somewhat happier:

Sweet

At least I would know that the people care enough to have actually responded to you. This brings me to another point. When you are in employment, for the most part you are just a piece of meat that clocks in, makes the company more money than they are paying you and then clocks out. A faceless addition to the corporate machine. You may be earning a salary, but where is your value? This is why applying for jobs I don't want to do for people who are assholes is almost worse of than the feeling of not having a job because at least I am in control this way.

My life right now is about trying to gain balance. You need to work in order to live in order to do the things you like. Without work in my life at the moment I feel unbalanced. It's not good for the brain and if you don't know why then please scroll up the page and read my poetry again. (or just enjoy that line)

But honestly:

They are fucked and they're fucking us!

I may be being a little blind here so please correct me if I'm wrong... society has made me very cynical recently. Is it more, or is everything around me in the modern world some sort of advertisement for some shit that I don't need. Shit that I either have or don't have that I can compare to my fellow man so that I know where my place in life is? We are forever competitors in the rat race where the finish line is death and there are no prizes for the winners. The only choice you have is when to run. Once you do you begin to completely miss all that you are passing by with your attention firmly placed on that goal.

Don't get me wrong, I honestly do want to work but God damn the man is making it difficult, which is why:

“I'm just a victim of society, bleed me dry”