Flowers in your dustbin

It's funny how I don't get more right wing as I get older. Most people do, you see. Or at least, that's how the theory goes. I find myself becoming more and more socialist as I get older. By the time I die I imagine I will essentially be Lenin. Although being Lenin on your deathbed would be fairly handy: they could just turn your bedroom into a mausoleum. I would quite like people to file past my body when I'm dead. Especially if they had to or else they'd put your children in a gulag.

What I've come to realise this weekend is that I essentially hate almost every single institution in Britain. I love this country. I have in fact never left it, and have never even wanted to for a single day in my life (apart from when I saw that documentary about dancehall parties in Jamaica on BBC4). But it's a fucking shithole, rotten from bottom to top and, more importantly, from top to bottom. And I increasingly find myself feeling nothing but disgust at the whole wretched writhing mass.

I'm particularly fed up with the stupid things we accept without thinking, when even the most basic analysis could bring the whole thing crashing down.

It's a long story, and one which is none of your business, but I have had cause to think about marriage recently. I personally think that marriage is the most offensive, anachronistic institution in society today. The sad fact is, the country is still set up in such a way that for countless administrative and financial reasons it is a prudent step. But it shouldn't be. When it works, it adds nothing to a relationship. And when it doesn't, it just makes life much more uncomfortable and complicated.

I know this bloke. He obviously read his Book of Common Prayer very carefully and decided that marriage was a contract that signed his wife over to him like a slave. Any vague attempts at love or mutual respect that had been used in the run-up to the whole thing could therefore be abandoned at once. The title "husband" itself was enough to imply love, even though there was none. Only dismal, pathetic dependence and unreasonable expectations. Needless to say this marriage did not work. Needless to say he dealt with it with the amount of intellect and equanimity as he'd brought to the whole union in the first place.

Oh, but if it had worked. Oh the tax breaks. No explaining "oh yes well we're not married but..." When a society is set up so that it's easier for the fucking lawyers to do their job, that society is not worth preserving.

Speaking of things not worth preserving, it's Jubilee Weekend here in Blighty. It's rather quaint and jaunty, having all Queens and Kings and Princes and Princesses living in castles, what what? Brings the tourists in! No it doesn't. Britain brings the tourists in. Britain is a beautiful land, with as rich and varied a social history as any country on earth. For several centuries our country was the hub of the entire world. It just was. Plague pits and The Great Fire of London and Jack the Ripper also bring the tourists in, and no-one is seriously arguing that it would be good if we could bring them back. Maybe Jack the Ripper could work on a system of inheritance, like the Royal Family. The Ripper is dead, long live the Ripper, look out whores.

The entire Royal Family is an obscenity, when people can't afford to feed their children properly or to receive adequate healthcare, despite working several jobs. In this country we force people to work for nothing, just for a pittance of money from the State every week, whilst retaining and maintaining a Royal Family. I'm continually staggered just how many people who are exactly the people worst served by this inequality who are the most devoted and dedicated to the Royal Family as an institution. Given half a chance, they would harvest your children's organs. They would. They'd take both their kidneys, just in case the first one itched. They probably don't even eat Monster Munch. I suppose that it's hard to cry rape when you don't even realise you're being fucked.

The biggest problem of the lot: I've written this. This is what I'm going to do about it. Because I am British and that's what we do. Nothing. Fuck all. Just roll on.

I'm angry today. Hello.

Two cats driving the Monte Carlo Rally

You can click this for bigger if you would like to see it but bigger

It's learning time

Ufer

U is for many things but unfortunately few of them exist in the bewildering and, on the whole sexy, animal kingdom. Without wanting to be the bringer of bad news unicorns simply don't exist, and nor have they ever done. Even in France. So, instead U in my animal alphabet stands for uakari, the spirited bald-headed monkey from South America who have pink faces.

So, just to emphasise this point to all those of you wishing to colour this in with accuracy, they have pink faces.

Pink.

If you would like to download an A4-sized version to print out and colour in and then throw in the sea, you can find one HERE.

(Pink).

Prolonged absences

I've been terribly lax updating this blog recently. Unfortunately, actual life has been getting in the way, which has significantly impacted on my ability to imagine a whole different life and then fill the internet with a series of lies about it. So this morning I thought I should quickly explain that, and apologise. But then I thought, why should I? Honestly.

I love posts like these, but at the same time I have to admit that they are never anything beyond pointless, self-indulgent and self-important drivel. I'm afraid that people who have blogs, especially blogs that people actually start to read, just unavoidably find themselves cast in the role of a celebrity guest in the episode of Going Live! that is taking place in all of our heads.

I guess that this makes you readers the TV viewers or perhaps even the little kids who made up the studio audience. People who comment are the kids who called in to actually speak to the guests!

Kid 1 Hello Chris who does your hair?
(sound of a baby sibling wailing and screaming in the background)
Chris Isaak Hey kid, I do ma own hair
Kid 2 How do you get the ideas for your song?
Chris Isaak Hey kid, I needed money

So, just to be clear, you are my fans and hanging on my every word, I am famous, what I have to say is important, I am Chris Isaak.

Non-explosive Tupperware box disrupts Olympics

The British newspapers are up in arms today. Well, the red tops are at least. This is always a good sign. Firstly, it means there's no actual news to report, which is a good thing for scaredy cats like me. Secondly it is a sure sign that no English footballers are currently cheating on their wives, which should help them concentrate on their preparations for the European Championships next month.

The issue is that, during a security exercise, a policeman successfully smuggled a dummy bomb into the London Olympic Park. In this world of terror-threats and religious fundamentalism, this is a great concern. Particularly for The Sun on Sunday, who are always keen to distract people from any of the numerous terrible things that their parent company has done.

I love news stories like this. They are designed to cause panic and outrage. In so doing, they prove the futility of both of those emotions. They are snap reactions, devoid of any reason or perspective. If you really analyse anything deeply and properly, panic and outrage should quickly dissipate. If they don't, you are probably in trouble. But even so, having a brain clouded by either is unlikely to be a constructive platform for action.

In days past, I would panic myself up into a tree over silly things like this. Luckily, over the years I have learnt to be both more analytical personally and more cynical of the motives of the news media. Sorry, the news media. But you did kind of bring this on yourselves.

The whole point of exercises is that they are supposed to discover flaws, so that when the actual thing is in progress it won't happen again. Maybe if News International's hacks had practised not tapping phones and not rooting through celebrities' bins more often, their current and future troubles would be significantly smaller. Furthermore, it was a dummy bomb. I don't know about you, but you're welcome to smuggle as many dummy bombs as you like into anywhere. You can smuggle some into my anus, as long as I'm not breathing out at the time. Go nuts. Give your children some dummy bombs to play with. Feed a few to your dog. What I'm actually concerned about is real bombs.

Of course, this will all seem very silly come July and Usain Bolt's attempt at defending his 100 metre sprint crown is waylaid as he trips over a lunchbox full of Blu-tak and batteries, hurled onto the track by a mischievous urban terrorist. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

It always helps to put your trust in the people who are in charge of these things, after all. The fact is, whether you want to believe it or not - and whether the press want us to believe it or not - they know what they're doing better than we do. And even if they don't, thinking that they do is a nice warm feeling, although I may just have wet myself.

Personally, I'd be more offended if someone tried to smuggle a copy of The Sun, or Rupert Murdoch, into the Olympic Park.

Music is on its arse

Subjectivity sucks big fat meat-stench testicles. There always comes a time where there will become an objective truth so self-evident to every observer that nevertheless gets to escape ruthless punishment because it can hide behind arguments regarding taste and subjective value.

Music is appalling now. No-one's doing anything of any value. It's a great brown blancmange of auto-tuning and oh-so-tinny perfect beats, mass produced in a great sausage press.  No, it's even worse than a sausage press. At least a sausage press retains some secrets. There's no magic or mystery to music any more. We might speculate that the sausage we're eating is 90% cysts and fannies but unless you're actually privy to the factory's procedures you can't know for sure. Music now is manufactured before our very eyes.

It is ghastly, but it's not really a problem. We still have all the old music to listen to. That still retains all its own splendour and creativity. Not for nothing did the album charts suddenly fill up with 25-year old re-entries as soon as the rules were changed to make digital downloads eligible towards sales figures.

The problem, though, is that you can't replicate the shock of the new. Even someone hearing a great masterpiece of music for the first time will have to do so in a world which has already digested the innovation, absorbed it and - inevitably - commodotised the most commercially-viable elements into all manner of dreary conveyor belt pap pop.

As such, I present my five point guide to reinvigorating music into a long, long overdue renaissance of creativity, novelty and discovery.

1. No honkies - we all know that no good can come from white people making music. All of the best popular music has come entirely out of black culture. The only white artists who are worth a damn are the ones who are completely aware of that fact and tip more than just a hat in its direction.
2. No release - all new albums will be presented to an independent panel (yeah, me, why not). If it is worse than pre-existing records already in circulation it will be destroyed with fire and bees.
3. Bring back Tony Wilson - he'd know what to do
4. House bands - All the old soul music factories mass-produced pop songs for the kids, but they were brilliant and not shit. Reason: house bands. Actual bands playing the music, rather than some spotty oik in a studio putting down a bassline and then manually correcting every note on a computer, get a funky fucker with an afro, a purple velvet suit and a spliff on to lay that shit down, warts and all.
5. Make Toots Hibbert the Education Secretary - unless he's busy, when Lee "Scratch" Perry would do very nicely as a replacement.

You're welcome.

If you would like to listen to something which is both new and good, I suggest you could listen to Richard Tingley's Variety Hour Podcast, now featuring elements of my obsessive compulsive list-making behaviour.