Unhinged

I've been working for the bank for about 23 years now. My last pay rise was in 1993.

I stood outside the building in the rain. My suit was becoming saturated. I never liked it much. I've had it since 1993, you know? I celebrated my payrise by getting myself an expensive, lush suit. But it's worn out now, I've been wearing it so long it feels like a part of me, woven into my skin. I no longer have a personality, just the suit. I crunch numbers everyday, no one speaks to me. My wife left me in 2005, she took the children. I don't think any of them were particularly fond of me anyway, I never really made much of an appearance. She'd cook me dinner, always lukewarm by the time I'd got to it. We hadn't made love since 1999. What woman wants to make love to a suit, anyway?

That's all I am now, another face in the crowd. My features are ageing faster than I am. My features are irrelevant, because the suit is me. Some nights I sleep in it because I cannot bring myself to remove it. Could you take out your soul before you slipped into your nighty? Rip out your heart as you brush your teeth? It's not an extension, it merely is.

So it's raining on me. I can feel the cold raindrops slapping insultingly on my bald head. Did I mention I lost my hair a year after my divorce? The Doctor told me it was stress induced, and that I had a tear in the lapel of my suit. I thanked him for pointing it out, then sat in my car and wept for an hour and fourteen minutes, before returning to the bank.

I take my cigarettes out of my pocket, pull one shaking hand towards my crinkly mouth to place one of my lips, and the other to light it. I inhaled deeply and began walking down the street. There were a lot of children, a school trip. The line snaked as far as I could see. I didn't like it.

What are they looking at? What, my suit? Yeah, I've had it for a few years so what? Leave it be, it's mine.

All their eyes are picking me apart, devilish little fuckers. What do they want? Where are they going, for that matter, what School trip requires them all to be on the high street. And the line never ends, Jesus. They keep coming, staring, judging, laughing at my expense. Because my suit is old? I told you to leave it! I could feel my face breaking out into a cold sweat, I don't usually get nervous. I tried to take a drag of my cigarette but my arm wouldn't lift. Lift you bastard! My knees began to tremble and they were all still fucking staring at me. Everything began to spin, as I stumbled on their gaze became more fixed and greater in numbers. I fell to my knees, I was vulnerable and weak and these children wanted to get me. I forced my arm up and held my cigarette aloft. One of the children approached me slowly, and the sky began to turn a deep crimson, the rain turned into needles and the child grinned sickly in my face. "Be gone!" I screamed, and with that plunged my cigarette into its cheek. It recoiled and yelped and cried and I shouted "Victory!" as it fell to the floor. I heard a faint voice in the distance, it sounded like "Oh my god what is he doing? What's he done?!" but I don't know I was too busy trying to finish the child off.

I felt something grab my shoulders and pull me back. Then there was a sharp pain in the back of my stupid bald head, and every colour in the world faded slowly.

Beth Ditto: Just, No.

I'd like you to do something for me. I'd like you to take a look at the following image, and tell me exactly what about it is right or good. What about this image embodies anything at all relative to things that are considered amazing, jovial, fantastical and just plain great? I'm going to be honest with you, very small readership, I'm looking at it and I'm not finding anything at all good.



Go on, look at it. Let the coloured pixels soak into your mind like a visual bubble bath. Of course, by now, you must be drowning youself in that bath, as to avoid the gaze of this sweaty, globulous human atrocity.

I could take the easy road and lambast Beth Ditto for covering the same surface area as a gazebo. Make no bones about it, Ditto's a big lass. Some would argue vehemently that, considering her size, her willingness to parade around in outfits that semi-expose her hirsute mons pubis displays a great deal of self confidence and pride. She is not ashamed at all for who or what she is. I guess this would be okay if Beth Ditto wasn't actually, literally, morbidly obese.

Not long ago I saw some columnists in various newspapers and magazines rip into popular supermodel Kate Moss for her statement that "Nothing ever tastes as good as skinny feels." Understandably, this could be construed as telling people that being ultra-thin is a great deal better than eating foodstuffs of any type. Dont eat! What're you doing! Put that down. She's advocating the unhealthy superslim lifestyle, something which has proved to be life threatening.

So I ask, why is okay for Beth Ditto to advocate obesity? Beth Ditto's philosophy seems to be that you are who you are, and that no one should try and change you or tell you otherwise. That's cool, Beth, but if you're going to succumb to heart failure by the time you're 42, then perhaps 'being yourself' needs a bit of a reformation? As for her outlandish outfits, these are just the hallmarks of an exhibitionist, nothing more, nothing less. There's no message in that lyrca bikini, just sadness.

Also, why tell us that you wear no deodorant? Why do I need to know that? Now I can smell you while I look at your horrific shell of flesh, and smell is linked to taste, so now I can taste you Beth. Bloody hell.

Being morbidly obese is not better than being dangerously underweight. Just because being fat makes you look like a children's T.V character doesn't make it any more acceptable, you tool.

James Corden is also a fat cunt.

Vampire Weekend: Dog Shit Sandwich?

As this blog seems to be slowly degenerating into some sort of unnecessarily vindictive and crass archive of unfair criticism, I feel it's only appropriate to mention another one of the bands I hate. Shit, I'm in too deep now, eh? Might as well continue.

So, next on my list is Vampire Weekend. As if the name wasn't enough fodder for you to deduce that these dicks are just (an incredibly homoerotic) foursome of clueless prats then maybe you should go back to school and redo your Year 6 English SATs because you are obviously retarded. I'm already sick of typing Vampire Weekend so from here on in I'll refer to them as 'The Shits'.

Let me just clarify that I have no personal problems with The Shits, my thinking that their music is the audible equivalent to Hiroshima has nothing to do with them as people. This differs to my opinions expressed in my article about Crystal Castles, who I'm sure are just the worst kind of Mephistos jizz.

Where The Shits really yank my scrot is with their monotonous sound. Monotonous, simplistic sound does work sometimes, don't get me wrong, but when that sound is the sound of a thousand Venezualan tramps scratching their long, dirty fingernails on a thousand different chalk boards, accompanied by a banshee orchestra, then I find it to be a less than pleasurable listening experience. Arguably The Shits' most popular song, 'A-Punk', is a perfect example of their inability to A. create a varied and interesting sound, and B. create a sound that doesn't make me want to tear off my arse and suffocate my self with my own buttocks.

Usually I would forgive a band for releasing a song like this, but with The Shits, it's every fucking song. I don't know why they do it. I'm not going to lie, when I heard they had a new song out, aside from my obvious feelings of impending doom at the prospect of it becoming popular, I had a vague sense of hope. Maybe The Shits have cleaned up their act? Maybe they're producing something of interest that doesn't remind me of simultaneous flushing bogs?

Alas, no. 'Horchata' was terrible. Arfican drums interspersed with tacky synth and lead singer Ezra Koenig's bile inducing vocal work make for, yet another, painfully shit song. Only a few days ago I heard their first official new single, 'Cousins'. Do you even need me to tell you what I think? Go and listen to it, it barely qualifies as music, as if they went into the studio, threw the drum kit at the microphone and got a 12 year old novice guiutarist who's heavy into high pitched thrash solos to guest on the track, then 'Cousins' is what you'd get.

Fuck you, The Shits, you're making my life worse than it needs to be.

Crystal Castles Is The Sound Of The Apocalypse

If there's one gaggle of 'musicians' I loathe more than those dirtbags down at Vampire Weekend, it's the syphilitic duo known as Crystal Castles. Fronted by pseudo enigma and general ugly bitch Alice Glass (her real name is obviously something like Gladys Prole), this unreal tripe is truly an insult to anyone with functioning ears. You know what, it's an insult to everyone, functioning ears or no. I reckon even deaf people can feel the shit in the vibrations. Basically some cunt has discovered how to make Super Mario sounds on his little machine and thought "Yeah, people will go for that." Soon after he discovered young Glass, who's talk-warbling fitted perfectly with his not-fit-for-contra video game shite. Glass is quoted as saying that she ran away from home at the age of 14 due to an existential crisis. Are you having me on, Glass? Are you actually having me on? Any 14 year old who claims to be having an existential crisis needs a swift jaw realigning with a spikey iron glove.

After she willingly moved out of her house to join the echelons of drug addicts, tramps and rapist alcoholics, she was discovered by SNES brained, mentally quadraplegic arse Ethan Kath. Together they were to spawn the worst thing to happen to music since... Well, just the worst thing to ever happen to music, ever.

Crystal Castles' one song that I've managed to stomach a minute of without jamming sharp pencils in my ears, "Crimewave" is as much of a pretentious flapping as the name suggests. Lacklustre lyrics coupled with just the worst vocals that literally sound like a robot trying to force a spanner out of itself, and of course, a sub par Nintendo inspired backing track all make for a revolting display of anti-talent.

Basically, I don't like Crystal Castles. D:<

Fight Club Review

Director David Fincher’s career has been based around dark films. From the biblically gruesome thriller Se7en to the troubling hunt of a cryptic serial killer in Zodiac, Fincher’s filmography is decidedly brooding.
Perhaps Fincher’s magnum opus, however, is his adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club. The story revolves around an unnamed protagonist, (Edward Norton (let’s call him Joe)) who suffers from insomnia, and resorts to attending group sessions for terminally ill people to help him sleep. He is tired of his materialistic and monotonous lifestyle and, after his apartment explodes, seeks help from ‘single serving friend’ Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). As a condition of lodging with Durden, Joe must start a fight with him, an action which evolves into weekly meetings of fatherless, aggressive men, wanting to exert their rage. As the story progresses, so does the club, eventually morphing into a revolutionary group of soldiers, ‘Project Mayhem’, willing to do anything that their leaders say. Stirring up trouble in the middle of this maelstrom of anarchy is Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman Joe meets at a support group, and subsequent love interest for Tyler.
All the characters in Fight Club are stars in their own right, from the frenetic and boisterous Durden to the reserved and afflicted Joe, played sublimely by Pitt and Norton respectively.
The cinematography in Fight Club is really quite impressive, surrealistically fluctuating from conventional filming and shifting frames with subliminal flashes, always keeping the real intentions of the film ambiguous, something which is affirmed in the final scenes. I’m reminded of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream in certain scenes, the dark subject matter punctuated by dazzling picture.
Fight Club is a fantastic piece of film, a sharp stab at consumer culture, and excellent example of book-to-film adaptations. So often there are films that never really capture the magic of the novel, failing to draw the appropriate imagery, disappointing many people. Chuck Palahniuk is quoted as saying that he prefers the ending of the film to the ending that he gave the book, and as someone who has experienced both, I’m going to have to agree with him.

Vices II

Paul pushed the key into the door. His wife and children surrounded him, silently, in anticipation, waiting. Paul ground his teeth, jammed the final millimeters of the key into the lock, and twisted it sharply. The door, painted a mellow red, swung open. The house was clean, it looked almost untouched, perfect, save a few of Bonnie's toys littered on the floor. Paul led the way inside, the rest of his family left some distance before melancholically sauntering inside.


Paul looked around, and sighed loudly. Nothing in the house had changed, but the atmosphere, the feeling, was drastically different. The floral wallpaper, yellow and peeling, seemed darker. That's what Paul then placed. The house seemed darker than usual. Maybe it was just in his head, after all it was the middle of the day, and the sun was shining brightly now, the rain clouds had faded away. Nancy led her young sister up the old staircase to their joint room, leaving Paul and Gloria alone.

Gloria sighed, collapsing in her armchair. Paul merely stood in the center of the rug, his hands firmly in his pockets. He observed the rings of dull colour; greens, browns, burgundys - why did he ever buy it? He hated it. Standing on it became increasingly inappropriate. Whilst still looking at the floor, he side stepped off of it.

"Paul," Gloria began. Paul had not made a sound since they left the graveyard. He neither coughed nor yawned, sighed nor sneezed. The only evidence that he was still alive was his moving limbs, which he still did in a sort of dazed and mournful manner.

"Paul, it wasn't your fault. We don't blame you, no one does. It just happened." Gloria did her best to prize something from her husband. It had always been difficult, even before their son's passing, to get any overt emotional response from him. He always reserved himself, never showing weakness.

"Paul, you know we still love you and everything you've done-"
"Shut the fuck up Gloria." Paul interjected "I don't need your comforting platitudes. I know what I am. I'm going upstairs, don't follow me."

As Paul walked nonchalantly upstairs, Gloria, back arched, bit her lip and looked at the floor, tears beginning to blur her vision.

Vices

The year was 1956, it was mid October time, rainy season. The graveyard was vast, but only a few hundred headstones occupied the acres of land. Ralph Steadman's headstone was tragically one of these. As light drizzle trickled down on the black clad mourners, the casket was delicately lowered down into the sodden ground. Ralph's bereaved parents did not hold an umbrella over their heads, the droplets of rain joined the tears on their faces. The hole in the ground seemed to never end, bottomless, the shiny wooden box descending for what seemed like an eternity. Paul Steadman, Ralph's father, made the coffin himself. He holed away in his toolshop stockroom for 3 days solid, crafting the casket. He lined it with the finest silk, cushioned all the way inside. For 3 days he didn't speak to his wife Gloria. He said nothing to his daughters, Nancy and Bonnie. He served no customers, he acknowledged nothing but his work. It was the morning of the funeral, and Paul had still not spoken. Gloria, in the privacy of their bedroom, tried to coax something from him, but to no avail. They all got ready, black dresses and headwear for all the girls, and a black suit for Paul. It began raining as the coffin was being brought to the gravesite, a light trickle soon evolving into heavier shards. The reverend spoke of commending Ralph's body to the ground, and Gloria let out a yelp. Paul stood, staring blankly into the hole his son was being 'commended' in to. He did not acknowledge his wifes anguish. Instead, he let her cry alone, just as he cried in the shop when Ralph fell from the ladder and hit his head. Just as he cried when he watched his son's blood drip from his ears. Just as he cried when he held Ralph on the hard floor of the shop, knowing the his precious son was gone. Paul looked into his son's eyes, watched the whites turn to red, watched the life in his pupils escape. They had been laughing and cavorting the moment before, a lapse of concentration by Ralph caused his footing to slip whilst stocking the nail shelf. And that was it. His head his the floor first, his brain haemorrhaged and it was over. His life, 17 years of it, was done. Finished. That's it. Paul had already pondered this over and over. His outlook had not changed. He didn't think anything more on the fragility of life. His views were not tarnished. But he was somehow different. He had always been distant emotionally, always headstrong and logical outspoken only when appropriate, something he had passed on to his daughter Nancy. But as he stood in the graveyard, the shaded sky insulting him with its ablution, he had changed. He decided, as his two creations were touching the soil at the bottom of the hole, that neither of them shall be spoken of again. By anyone.