Yes, We Do Have Priorities.

"Stop talking about this and think about this!" I've been seeing this sentiment a lot recently.  My language might be vague and you're probably already wondering, after a whole sentence, why the fuck you clicked on this blog.  You need to bear with me.  I have a point, but I'm going to waffle a bit before I get there.  Make yourself a cup of tea or relax yourself with some porn, whatever it takes, I'll be waiting^*.

Done?  Got yer tea and biscuits in comfortable reach.  Cleaned up?  Dribbled tea everywhere when you thought you'd be a smart arse and try to do both things at once?  Sicko.  We'll assume you've done whatever thing you needed to relax yourself and we'll say no more.  Especially about the stains.   Oh, the stains.

You know when you see something so odd that it stops you in your tracks?  Sometimes you go, "Oh, right," and carry on with your day and pour out those cold beans from the can and shovel them into your mouth^**.  Sometimes that weird thing gets you thinking.  It could be anything, but let's go with a celebrity's face suddenly changes to something unrecognisable^†.  It's obvious that's she's had work done.  Enough to alter the way she looks so drastically.  Now, I don't think it's fair to shame her, she's a victim of a hypocritical system that pulls women one way then another, mocking them for just about any decision they make.

The small rumble of interest caused a few people to start wailing about all the other things wrong in the world.  Excuse me?  "There are more important things in the world than Renée Zellweger's face!" No kidding, crazy person.

Even stranger, and more odiously, was when Nigel Farage waded into the vague nonsense that was the UKIP Calypso this week.  Now, the song was an offensive piece of crap on a number of levels, and I'm not going to link it.  But the pan-faced goblin that is Nigel Farage got on his high horse in the Independent.  He does the same, "There are more important things to be angry about," rant and then points, obliquely, at Ebola and more blatantly at historical child abuse in Rotherham.  In this article you can almost see the straining erection he has for getting more column inches and air time for such a stupid thing and then thrusts a veiny, probably corkscrew-shaped, stiffy in the faces of anyone close by.  It was easy publicity for a racism-factory that runs on a sticky fuel of grubby attention^‡.

This curious phenomenon of pointing at things that are more important to shift attention away from something seen as fairly trivial does a disservice to people in general.  You are aware that we can give thinking time to other things, right?  Some things make a bigger impact, and time does dull them – be honest, in a few months both of the examples above will be forgotten.  By squealing about them you've got people thinking about them for longer and perversely taking attention away from the thing your trying to point out.  People are weird, contrarian and arseholey about that.

People do need to think about other things than all the horrible shit that's going on in the world – even if it is a minor scandal or uproar – because we would become either fatigued or humourless existers who can't eat because they are stuck in constant sad face.  It's like having a tiny bit of salacious gossip and screaming at the person, "I don't care if he fell into bed with his brother-in-law's wife, what about fucking PALESTINE^§!?"

Yes, giving any thought to the small things is silly, and that's kind of the point.  We're still aware of the giant ogres and injustices stomping around the world, we just need something to take the edge of or we'd go fucking nuts.  I notice no one ever berates anyone for looking at cute animal vids on Youtube.  Sometimes we need something less horrible to be able to deal with the nightmarish shit that's going on.

And then, of course, looking at my half-formed examples above more closely, you'll start to see that they're indicative of much bigger issues with society.  Poor Renée Zellweger is a new poster child for our fucked up attitudes towards women – she shouldn't have felt the need to use surgery to look younger, but she conversely shouldn't be pilloried for doing it.  Nigel Farage and UKIP are fucking cancerous political spectres, stoking hatred against certain demographics, giving voice to the worst kind of bigotry and polishing it up as mainstream politics.  You know why Farage and his particular breed of ghoul are trying to do this?  To line their already pretty money-padded pockets.  They are an expression of our greedy-shit political system, amplified to a chinless, guffawing, hundred pound note-smoking, poor-mocking caricature straight out of a Dickens novel.

In Nigel Farage's case in particular, you have to ask who benefits from the distraction: the song itself was a distraction on its own, but still shone a spotlight on UKIP's spineless dickery, so Farage^§§, the slippery fuck, did a bit of crafty sleight of hand.  He got publicity for the party while diverting attention away from their abhorrent policies.  He's clearly been getting lessons from David Blane^§§§.

So, everyone, just calm the fuck down, take a deep breath and let's just agree that Nigel Farage is a cunt.

^* Just keep thinking about that when you're trying to crank one out.

^** Oh?  That's just me.  Okay.  Fuck.

^† I mean, seriously, if the captions and headlines hadn't said who she was, I wouldn't have known.  No, Russell Brand, that's not a result of getting older.  Ageing a few years in adulthood doesn't cause that level of appearance change.

^‡ And, fucking hell, the BBC have been doing enough of that.  How much of Farage's tainted champagne have BBC execs drank to constantly shove that cunt to the forefront of political debate in the UK when UKIP are still essentially a fringe party?

^§ But really it's still fucking awful there.

^§§ He might be a giant grinning thumb, but he's a sharp grinning thumb, that's why he's so dangerous.

^§§§ Is that charlatan shithead still around?  Levitation, fucking hell.



Will

The Quiet's Worrying.

Last week was my fiftieth blog post.  Don't all stand up in ovation at once, it's taken me almost six years to rack those up, often after long lulls.  But very few lulz, I'm sure some of you are sniggering to yourselves, buncha shitty bastards.

Being internet quiet bothers me a little, because it makes me think I'm not doing anything.  Actually it usually coincides with a time when I'm not doing very much creatively.  That's an odd thing to notice, I know, but it fills me with the worries.  Oh so many worries.

What if I stop writing blog posts and my creativity drops off?  Ah, fuck!  The torture that is!  It means I'll have to keep the motor running on this, and most of the time I find it hard to think of something to write about.  So you end up looking at this self-reflective babble.  Can't be fun for you.  Poor unfortunate internet wretches – but you're all still bastards.

Don't worry, it's not all going to be close-up pictures of my belly button fluff right at the source, though that's now tempting^*.

What I'm going to do this week, and probably other weeks in the future is just magpie shit.  Plonk stuff here as the week goes on until it resembles some kind of post and publish it once on my Wednesday schedule.  A nice theory, and we'll see how it works out.

I'll mention things like that utter nonsense from the Brit Awards^**.  David Bowie, upon winning something or other, sent forth the Spidery Coke Monster – AKA Kate Moss – to deliver an acceptance speech.  I don't know most of what was said, as I have no interest, but it seems it was signed off with "Scotland, stay with us."

What the thundering fuck?  Stay with who?  Ex-pat English musicians?  I mean, seriously, man, a bit of clarity won't go amiss here.  But what does it matter to him whether Scotland remains part of the UK?  I suppose we can be thankful he said please.  And just so you know I think Sean Connery's a bit of a cunt by shouting for independence, but showing no inclination to living in the country.  Can you tell what side of the argument I'm on?  I might actually do a blog about it in the future.

Ideas!  I knew there was a good reason to do this!

My wife and I went to the Jack Vettriano retrospective at Kelvingrove the other week.  Interesting exhibit, as it starkly shows up the artist's weaknesses.  The man has serious trouble with faces, like, off-puttingly so.  It was packed, though, to the point where it was hard to get close enough to see some of the paintings.  That was a week before the exhibition ended.  We went to Kelvingrove again this Saturday to buy a poster from the shop and holy fucking shit!  I'm glad we'd already gone to the exhibition.  Some of the poor buggers in the queue were told they might have to wait up to an hour to get in.  An hour!  You can't help wonder how much money's been made on this^†.

It's also been pointed out that it's over a year since the Playstation 4 was announced.  That went fast.  Mind you last year went fast leading up to the release of the console.  I may have some words on this too.  Brainstorming, that's the fucking ticket.

And more fucking swearing.  Can't have too much.

^* No, no, no!  Don't want to become a blog that comes up in one of those kinds of searches.

^** That I, funnily enough, didn't watch.  Fucking commercial music wank-material.

^† Turns out a fucking frightening amount, most likely.


Will