Hilarious in its audacity...

I stumbled upon a facebook group entitled "Support Australia's 2022 Official FIFA World Cup Bid". Fuck yes, me joining a facebook group will totally help Australia's chances of hosting the largest sporting event in the world. It'll totally negate the fact that Australia's various football codes seem to have a malicious chip on the shoulder about each others popularity, or the fact that, for a long time, football (soccer if you're retarded) has been denigrated and labelled as the sport of wogs and weirdos in this country. It'll completely wipe clean the memories of the fact that, until we finally qualified for the 2006 World Cup, ending a 28 year absence, the vast majority of this country collectively didn't give a shit about the endeavours of our disastrously named "Socceroos". Fuck you, all you people who would worry that it'll disrupt the "footy". Fuck you, all the people who are so xenophobic as to think that the FIFA World Cup is an irrelevant sporting event. Fuck you, Frank Lowy, for having the audacity to suggest we deserve it and fuck you anyone who agrees. We've got a long fucking way to go.

All That Glitters...

I have liked every song associated with the twilight franchise so far, with the exception of Robert Pattinson's insipid folk offering. Decode is good, I don't usually like Death Cab For Cutie but I liked Meet Me On The Equinox and Neutron Star Collision is brilliant in its pomp. Additionally, the "soundtrack" albums (they aren't really soundtracks, just a bunch of associated songs) read like a who's who of (good) indie and alternative music, with the Eclipse album featuring Metric, The Dead Weather, Florence and the Machine and UNKLE, to name a few. I'm all for getting great talent together in one place, but hot damn do I feel conflicted about the Twilight brand being on it. I'm gonna come clean, I have read all four books, and I did derive some enjoyment out of the first one. The thing is, the fact that it is very thinly veiled religious propaganda and the retarded level of fandom associated with it (I've seen fifty-year-old housewives wearing "Team Edward" shirts) makes me want to ignore it and avoid ever having to acknowledge that, during the course of my life, it existed at all. It's like Pokemon, except instead of having a mouse that shoots electricity (awesome) you have a mopey vampire who avoids fucking his wife (it's in the third book, if I remember correctly). I've trumpeted the "enjoy music for music, not its associated trappings" tune long and hard and I enjoy the music of some artists whose personalities or image i quite dislike, but I can't seem to let this one go. It's not even the "sellout" argument; a lot of the music that goes onto said soundtracks is pretty accurately representative of the artist's styles anyway. I suppose, in the end, ingredients like vampires, Ashley Greene and good music may be awesome on their own, but they may not necessarily add up to something good, especially with a Mormon at the helm.

Clowns, addendum

Coverage of the electoral debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott has been rescheduled to accommodate Masterchef. While this may sound retarded, the simple fact is that the average person in Australia is more committed to watching people cook dishes they've never heard of than watching the two potential future leaders of the country discussing policies. My hat goes off to the people scheduling the coverage, they were honest with themselves and their audience, they accepted that they would never wrestle the average viewers attention out of its routine, especially for a political debate and they didn't commit to a fight they couldn't win. To anyone who feels insulted or offended by the fact that the electoral debate had to be rescheduled, ask yourself; are you offended because it seems like the people scheduling it are condescending you, or is it just that you know you would have been one of the people tuning in to Masterchef (or whatever) and it saddens you? Be honest.

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right.

Well, well, well, what a sorry fuckin' state we find ourselves in as election time rolls up here in the merry old land of Oz. I've heard several compelling arguments against both major candidates, what with ALP leader Julia Gillard being an atheist redhead with a vagina and a live-in boyfriend and Liberal leader Tony Abbott having funny ears and wearing speedos. To anyone who has made these arguments, or feels that they are in any way valid, I hope you get viciously raped. Without protection. You're a moron. I half wish Peter Costello was still in the fold at Liberal, because "Abbott and Costello" is a pretty solid way to describe the toss salad of idiocy that has been everything political these past few weeks and months, from the decisions to the media coverage to the opinions spouted by the kind of people who send letters into newspaper write-in columns starting with "I'm not prejudiced, but.." and sign off as Indignant from Mongoloid Central. What the fuck is wrong with you people? I'm not saying "vote for who I tell you", but at least have the common decency to fire off a few synapses and form an opinion based on something a bit more cerebral than "I don't like the way they look/speak/scratch their nose". These are the people who are going to be running the country! Grow a fucking brain cell or two!
And while the momentum of rage carries me, what the fuck is the horse meat issue? I bet you're sitting there, all smugly self satisfied, telling yourself that only wogs and deviants eat horse while you chow down on your chicken wrapped in bacon with a side of meatballs, hopelessly ignorant of your own hypocrisy. There is no difference whatsoever between eating horse and eating any other bred and farmed animal. They're cute? Alright, let's go get some lamb chops, or some veal if you're gutsy. It's tough? First of all, no it isn't (and I have eaten horse, so blow it out your ass), and second of all, as if you would know, incinerating steaks on a barbeque for a good hour until it resembles a sneaker in both taste and texture, you uncultured shit. I swear, I can nary catch a snippet of conversation without hearing a view so malformed it makes Joseph Merrick look like Grace Kelly. Not that any of you idiots would even know who they are. Ugh, fuck this, I'm going to go eat a panda and vote for the Sex Party.

Gift Horse Dentist

I love getting free stuff. It’s like winning a prize for being yourself. In a world where you are charged for earning money (traditionally called income tax, but it’s basically the same thing), it’s nice to get something for nothing. So, when I heard that How To Destroy Angels was offering their debut EP as a free download, it was like Trent Reznor himself was buying me a drink, just for being a champ. Cheers, Trent. For the record, I don’t download any free EP that comes my way, but being the salivating Nine Inch Nails fan that I am, I was pretty excited for this project as it was. For the terminally clueless, How To Destroy Angels is a project composed of Nine Inch Nails main man Reznor, his singer wife Mariqueen Maandig and producer Atticus Ross. It was promised to be a more ambient, laid back sound than NIN, but with Reznor’s track record of brilliance, expectations were high.
He didn’t disappoint. Just from listening to the EP, I can tell that he handled most of the instruments, while his wife sung and Atticus Ross produced. It’s synthy and has a lot of cool beats and grooves, as well as some catchy sections that would be right at home on the radio, in a good way. Even when Trent ramps up the abrasion factor, like the atonal guitar on “Parasite”, it’s still melodic and catchy. Fans of NIN’s heavier stuff may be disappointed, there’s no “Wish” or “March of the Pigs” here, but it has the indelible stamp of a Reznor work from the composition to the playing to the production.
The cynic in me is demanding that there has to be a catch. The EP is definitely worth more than the $0 dollars I paid for it. Of course, it’s obviously a marketing stunt; the EP was released through Reznor’s label; The Null Corporation, and in releasing it for free he has ensured more people will get to hear it. It’s like handing out free samples; if the product was crap, no one would care, but with this quality EP he’s ensured a ready and waiting audience for the full length album when it is released. Hell, it worked on me; I’d fork out for it when it comes out.
Is this really so bad? Rather than seeing banner ads for the latest American Idol abortion and having to listen to the stew of stupidity that is FM radio (that new Travis McCoy and Bruno Mars song, something about being a billionaire, is fucking mind poison. I want to castrate them both.), this kind of marketing lets the consumer decide for themselves, and it ensures that the music that stands up to a discerning audience is the music that is successful. With any luck, for the price of a free EP, I also got another nail in the music industry’s coffin. And a very entertaining nail it is.

I'm the indoorsy type...

Ok, what the hell? Camping? Who the fuck goes camping? There is literally nothing appealing about it. Seriously, what do you do? You pile in a car with a whole bunch of shit, drive off to somewhere that has no houses (the good kind of habitation structure), unload the car and then sit around, fighting off the cold and bugs while your burn meat over a piss-weak fire you slaved over making while getting drunk and reminiscing about times when you weren’t being face-raped by mosquitoes. Camp is a word used to describe flamboyant homosexuality, and camping is dumb.

Where's Your Messiah Now?

There has nary been an instance in the history of mankind where some humourless, semi-literate mismatch of amino acids, generally with awful taste in music, does not chime into any discussion about the merits (or lack thereof) to a certain band or artist with the most inane contribution to any discussion imaginable; “well, that’s just your opinion”. They’ll generally say it with a self-righteous haughtiness in their ability to so amazingly dismantle your point with an observation as unnecessary as a steel-capped condom. Well, no more dice, I’m sick of hearing this one size covers all conversation rapist spouted any time I express a view on an artist that I happen to dislike. So, here’s what’s going to happen; I’m going to tell you why a certain artist is devoid of anything remotely positive WITHOUT using any opinions. Obviously it’s hard to do this, considering anything expressed on music is inherently subjective, but there must be an artist whose very existence is veritable mind cancer, a black hole of merit that warrants that they never be allowed to make music again.
That artist is Pink (or P!NK as it is typeset nowadays). Demolition of syntax notwithstanding, Pink represents almost everything bad about people in one compact, bulldog-looking package. Pedantic, childish, opinionated, hypocritical, artificial and crude, she is a study in how not to be a human being. A member of PETA, she spoke out about the practice of mulesing in the Australian wool industry. For the uninitiated, mulesing is the process of removing a small amount of wool-bearing skin from the anus of sheep, preventing them from contracting flystrike. The National Farmers Federation has stated that “without mulesing up to 3,000,000 sheep a year could die a slow and agonising death from flystrike”, a statement supported the Australian Veterinary Association. That’s correct, Pink was opposed to procedures that prevented a horrible death for millions of sheep. To her credit, she retracted that statement when she did further research indicating PETA misled her. But also after she vociferously attacked a long-standing and hard working industry based on something that, effectively, she took to be true by a bunch of hippies. Staggering intellect there.
Furthermore, her unfortunate habit of firing off her tongue before thinking has been documented on a much more open stage: the international pop music charts. Her song “So What” features lyrics that explicitly call her then estranged husband a “tool” and states that she’s having much more fun without him, and that she doesn’t need him. This was released on September 7, 2008. In March 2009 they began dating again, and are now back together. So, either she’s married to a tool who she hates and has more fun without, or her song was a childish rant when things got too difficult. Which is it, dear? It would seem that she is one of the “stupid girls” that she sung about.
And that’s another thing! Despite her claims that she is, in fact, a rock star, and that she wants to smash the system (check the song “Funhouse”, it’s all there), which I assume means the music industry, she hires with hit-machine songwriters and producers, funds ridiculously over the top live shows and productions and lines the pockets of the “evil clown” record executives with the money from her fans! Burn it down? Pink, you’re watering the pot plants and dusting the banisters of the system, you’re its annoying maid. And a girl power icon? Way to promote equality and feminine empowerment by wearing a one-piece and showing your arse on the cover of your “Live in Australia” DVD, or by wearing nothing by a robe and some nipple tape in the “Like a Pill” video clip.
So there you have it, demonstrably a loudmouthed, hypocritical and unpleasant person. It’s just my opinion? Nope, it’s just shit.

Now With Samples!

So, it happens that Pete Wentz is starting a new band. A female fronted electro-pop outfit. Good for him! After all, it’s high time he cast off the shackles of cynically cashing in on pop trends with pop-punk and moved onto the greener pastures of cynically cashing in on pop trends with electro-pop. For the uninitiated, Pete Wentz was the bassist (and lyricist!) of Fall Out Boy. Among his talents were applying eyeliner, sculpting a fringe and knocking up the dud Simpson sister. I know, that’s harsh, but you know it to be true. At any rate, he took a break from music after Fall Out Boy’s break up but is currently working on the yet-unnamed project. Obviously, as a cynic and a music fan, I’m not expecting anything good out of this, but it does make you reflect on certain trends, namely how punk became pop punk, which is now morphing into electro-pop. Sound familiar? Green Day and Blink 182 inspiring Fall Out Boy and All Time Low, which paved the way for the latest synth pop abortions like Cobra Starship? Blow it out your ass. 70’s punk like The Sex Pistols and The Damned facilitated post punk groups like Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow, as well as more experimental fare like Magazine, which would in turn inspire the electro movement. All this is following a pattern! Young anger/angst/rebelliousness/whatever gets co-opted and softened to appeal to teenage girls, then some dickhead discovers synthesisers and music fans have to suffer through a good 5-8 years of bleepy shit (that gets revived a decade or so later because it’s kitsch) before someone flips out and invents grunge. I’m not a fucking prophet but I can tell you right now it’s only a matter of time before the nineties aesthetic comes rolling back and kicks all your arses for wearing two hats and clothes on funny angles. And you’ll deserve it.