Actually, quitting Morrissey isn't really that difficult because I've not written a word since June. Things have been pretty awful Chez Shut Up Morrissey so I've lost my oomph, as it were.
As Aerosmith said, 'I guess my get up and go must have got up and went.'
I never thought I'd blog about David Icke again. Will wonders never cease?
Today I learned he's harnessed the power of social media to reach the masses. Bless! He's slotted right into the space made by anti-vaccine and Big Pharma paranoia.
I wonder if people know about his lizard people hypothesis.
I've been trying to figure out appropriate nicknames for Liz and Tim for this blog. Liz's still eludes me but I think I'm going to go with T-Ban for Tim. I'd like it better if I could make it work with Tae Bo but you have to work with what you've got.
I've always been fascinated by tattoos. When I was about eleven I was really into hair metal and Axl Rose and Rikki Rockett all had several tattoos. None of them really held a candle to Nikki Sixx, though, who had a whole sleeve and it even extended onto his chest!
I got my first tattoo when I was eighteen and then my second not long after. I waited for years before getting my next one and then I had another a few years later. I've always been a bit hesitant about tattoos because I was afraid of regretting it.
One day I saw a woman in Starbucks. She had loads of tattoos all over her arms and she was probably in her late thirties. I didn't like her tattoos, mind, but I loved the look. That's when I decided I couldn't give less of a shit about regretting it. When did I think I would get these awesomely tattooed arms I wanted so badly?
So in the last year I've had a fucking shit ton of tattoo work done and it's all fabulous. This has also led me to just get tattoos whenever I feel like it after not that much thought. That's why I have a tattoo of me and my dog under a banner that reads 'TRUE LOVE FOR EVER.'
While visiting Brazilian Rachel in Hawai'i in 2011 I saw loads of haole with tattoos of the island chain and I thought, 'I want one!' I didn't think that much of it, to be honest, but then in the past month or so the idea has really taken hold of me and I finally decided that I had to just go for it. Except by now I want an hula dancer pin up (but Polynesian, for some reason all the pictures I've found are of white women) to accompany my Hawaiian Island piece.
All this leads me to this morning. I didn't sleep much last night and when I finally dropped off I had a terrible nightmare which is just a load of bullshit. I'm a little bit worse for wear today and so tired I feel both nauseated and starving. I can already tell by 7pm I'm going to be so tired I won't be able to sleep at all.
I decided to accompany this Hawaii tattoo I want a tattoo of California on the other side. I was a bit stuck about what I wanted, though, until I decided that I should get a tattoo of a burrito.
What the fuck, brain?
If this is still a good idea next week I'm going to go for it. You have to, don't you?
Additional cast member
Brazilian Rachel: she is my very best friend in the whole world. We met in college and I miss her every day. She is not Brazilian.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about SPM lately and I can't continue to blog about him with any sort of dedication. He's just so ... well, you know.
So, because I'm obviously destined to become a famous blogger (!) I'm going to keep blogging. As R. Kelly Andy says, I 'have a good back story.'
Uno is my favorite game. I've been playing it with my family since I was about five or six years old. I have vivid memories of the joy I felt playing a Draw Four card against my hapless opponents. I'm sure I cackled with glee as I destroyed their hopes of winning. As I've gotten older it's come to me that maybe they let me win because I was only a child. Fuck that shit. I'm sure my prowess at Uno was apparent from even that young age.
Digression: My whole family is fucking crazy competitive. I've inherited this trait in such abundance sometimes it scares even me. Usually I'm able to be adult about it all and bow out of any kind of competition or game because my friendships are important to me but sometimes I can't help but play.
Here are my two favorite examples of my family's inability to play friendly:
When I was about sixteen my mother, my uncle and my grandmother decided to play Scrabble. I was reading on the sofa next to the table and let them get on with it. They are all wicked crazy Scrabble players (I hate the game and never play it because after two turns I get bored and try to spell F-U-C-K-Y-O-U with my letters) and argue all the time. My uncle reads the Scrabble dictionary on the toilet, my grandmother had to institute a timer with a friend because they took too long to play each turn, and my mother is a killer Scrabble player who takes no prisoners. My grandmother had a fucking super fancy Scrabble board that was on a lazy-susan type contraption so you could rotate the board and had plastic dividers between each square so the letters didn't slide around. Serious business. My uncle challenged the validity of a word, the dictionary was produced, the word was valid and he lost a turn. When the turn-that-would-have-been came my Uncle insisted on taking his turn to study the board. My mother, enraged, insisted that he had lost this privilege and anyway the board would be different when his turn came around again (I'm with her on this, for what it's worth). They argued, my mother tried to spin the board and my uncle, unable to take his punishment like an adult, held the board in place. With a loud crack the board split in two and my grandmother was fucking pissed. They had to buy her another board.
Digression digression: For a while my mother and uncle had a weird Minesweeper rivalry and would call each other with their lowest scores, mocking the ability of the other. Yeah, these are adults.
The second example involves Pictionary, a game I love but won't play anymore. When I was about seven or eight I played with my whole extended family (it must have been Christmas or Thanksgiving if we were all together) and another uncle offered to help me read and understand my cards (pro tip: adult idioms can be hard for children). I was supposed to draw a Bearded Lady. I obviously drew a stick figure woman with a beard and when someone on my team said, 'Bearded woman' I said, 'yes!' and considered it a victory. The opposition team, who were all still members of my family, insisted that it was different and we could not have the point.
These people. These fucking people.
So I fucking love Uno and always have. Big Daddy hates Uno and won't play it with me, probably because I'm ruthless and don't want to teach him the rules so I beat him every time we play.
YES, I AM THAT ASSHOLE. I figured that was clear by now but just in case it wasn't I am The Worst Person Ever to play games with. I'm not above cheating but will complain if anyone cheats against me. I'm unscrupulous and will steal from the bank in Monopoly if it means I'm going to win this shit.
I recently managed to convince some of my work friends, R. Kelly Andy among them, to play Uno with me at lunch. I think they might be addicted because after the first game they weren't that wild about it but then all of them showed up at an Uno date I had with LolKate and wanted to play. Uno isn't that great, my ass!
Additional players
LolKate: LolKate is a friend from work. I show my affection like young boys do when they like a girl. I tease her mercilessly and troll her forever. I spend a lot of time trying to get her to let me use her phone so I can update her Facebook status. She always falls for this.
Sam Cojones: Another friend from work. For some reason I'm always surprised when he knows about pop culture even though we're the same age. Randomly a fan of Pitchshifter, Sam's family owns half of Hertfordshire.
NisbetNumeroDos: We bonded when we worked on the same corridor last year. He's a real hipster but won't admit it. He loves the fuck out of the zoo.
JonathanWhite: I always have to call him by his whole name. No one else does this and he calls himself Jon. If anyone talks about Jon I ask who they mean. NisbetNumeroDos calls him 'Jon ... athanWhite' for my benefit. We'd talked on the phone for years and I never knew what he looked like. I recognized him by his voice the first time I saw him, which sounds creepy as shit.
Liz: Liz doesn't have a nickname...yet. She beat me in one of the fastest goddamn Uno games ever this morning! We are friends even though she misspelled my name for ages.
Tim: Tim doesn't have a nickname yet, either. I'm going to work on this! Tim destroyed everyone in his first ever play of Settlers of Catan and somehow failed to gloat. I don't get this at all.
R. Kelly Sarah: R. Kelly Andy's wife. I've only met her once but I'm somehow sure she'll be in this blog a lot. Every time I see this I think of her.
Are you familiar with Jim'll Paint It? I first learned about it when so many of my Facebook friends had liked it I couldn't ignore it anymore. In fact, just yesterday My Favorite Humanities Simon (MFHS) was wearing a Jim'll Paint It t-shirt.
R. Kelly Andy* found out about my blog and immediately sent me Jim's painting of 'Morrissey Ruins Christmas.' I dig it.
And of course SPM orders the nut roast. I mean, I'll admit I've never eaten a nut roast but it sounds awful. Is it more awful than turkey? I don't know, perhaps. If I'm going to have a Christmas meal I want it to be ham, goddammit! Prime rib is also acceptable but I'm not a fan of turkey.
I also don't like mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, or Yorkshire puddings. Basically I'm not interested in your vegetarian Christmas options!
*Additional Cast Members Lovely Ros: she's lovely (obviously) and I'm sure she'll turn up in the blog soon enough. In fact, she's already been in it INCOGNITO. We met powerlifting and I basically heart her. She doesn't like animals in clothes. We differ massively on this because of course I love animals in clothes. Especially theme costumes. I'm undecided about dogs with nailpolish.
R. Kelly Andy: I don't actually call him that but I've forced him to love 'Ignition (Remix)' through some kind of musical Stockholm Syndrome. Toot toot!
My Favorite Humanities Simon (MFHS): Simon is my favorite Humanities Simon. There is one other, who I actually like a lot, but MFHS is my favorite.
Now, The Daily Mail and I are pretty much diametrically opposed in terms of the way we view the world. Their scaremongering bigotry is not really my bag but Big Daddy found a review of Autobiography last night and I had to share it. I think it's spot-on but can't figure out why the reviewer gave it two stars (out of five) instead of one. This charmless man. My favorite bit: Though he can’t stop ranting against
Mrs Thatcher (‘Dispassionate and obviously mad... a swamp of tormented
revenge’ etc, etc), his admittance to Penguin Classics represents the
triumph of Thatcherism, proof positive that there is now no citadel
immune to the demands of commerce. There's the odd sentence with which I disagree but, mostly, I could've written this review. I wouldhave liked to have found another publisher, though.
Yes, you read that right. Morrissey thinks the sexual abuse of children is the same as, you know, the food chain. Sure, the source is Buzzfeed so take it with a grain of salt, but it tallies with basically everything else he says.
He also says, 'If you believe in the abattoir then you would support Auschwitz. There’s no difference.'
No difference.
Jok and I discussed this kind of talk quite recently (I can't remember how it came up but all our conversations are pretty good) and he said, 'people like this don't love animals, they hate people.' He's right, yo! I mean, it would tally with my understanding of (the public persona) of SPM. Misanthropy is peppered throughout his music.
Did I ever tell you by the way? I never did like your face
So I read choice bits of this article to Big Daddy and he said, 'what a fucker. I'm going to have to give this book back to Clint because I'm never going to fucking finish it.'
I said, 'yeah, from his interviews it seems Morrissey is pretty much just a racist fuckbag.'
Big Daddy came to SPM's defense (I think this was a desire for a fair and just analysis of the situation and I can totally roll with that) and said, 'there is nothing in this article to suggest he's a racist.'
'No, but the fact he's referred to the Chinese as a subspecies makes it pretty clear.'
TOUCHE, MOTHERFUCKER!
So here's the thing about society I really don't get. It'll start with a digression but I'll get there, I'm sure (I promise?). When I was, like, 10-14 I was mega obsessed with a few different things. One of them was The Phantom of the Opera (Lloyd-Webber REPRESENT! I was totally going to marry Robert Guillaume who played the Phantom the first time I saw it. Whatever, it could still happen.) and then I grew out of that and moved on to hair metal. I mean, shit, Poison were the best band ever.
Digression digression: I still love a lot of the music I loved at this time but Poison, alas, haven't stood up very well at all. Guns N' Roses and Motley Crue, though, are fucking amazing even now. I listen to them all the time.
I remember watching some show on MTV about a girl who was crazy obsessed with NKOTB and there's an interview with her where she says she'd take a bullet for Joe McIntyre. The interviewer (who I think might have been Kurt Loder) is confounded by her insistence she would die to protect Joey-Joe because she loves him that much. I felt that way about Poison.
So I think this kind of thing is totally normal. This all encompassing love of <insert famous person/band/book series> that is, looking back, supremely unhealthy and hysterically ridiculous. What's also normal is growing out of it.
What I see a lot is the internet (things like Twitter seems to be a major one for this) allows these teens in the midst of their obsession a totally new level of access to their celebrity crushes. It also allows them to connect with other people at the same level of obsession. I think this is neat in some ways (man, I had one other friend who loved Poison and it would have been immense to have a network of hair metal lovers especially since Grunge came in and ruined the party just as I was really getting into music) and really damaging in others. I am seeing a lot of normalization of behavior that isn't healthy. The group mentality seems to make people think their behavior is normal, sane and acceptable for way longer than, er, 'normal'. Some of it is normal but a lot of it isn't. It also seems to last longer than it should. It's almost as if groups of people remain in this stage of obsession because everyone around them is in the same place and says it's OK.
Now, I'm not a doctor and I am fully aware that my anecdotal experience is just that. I may only see the most obsessive of fans. I honestly don't know! The whole thing strikes me as concerning.
Note: I use the term 'teens' and 'celebrity crushes' because they're easier. I am fully aware that not all people like this are teenagers and it's not necessarily a celebrity they're crushing on/obsessed with. Book fandoms (e.g.Twilight, The Mortal Instruments, Harry Potter) often show really good examples of this kind of behavior.I know I'm generalizing here. It's easier for the point I'm trying to make. I also know that there is a spectrum of fandom. Believe me, I know. I also know 'normal' is subjective and a terrible word to use here. I was stumped for a better one.
I have also noticed that (and this is not just amongst teens) people really struggle to separate the person from the art. I don't have an issue doing this. Sure, I want the artists I love to be as awesome as their work but they are human and flawed and some of them are super shitbags. Some people are just super shitbags. Roman Polanski is one of my favorite movie directors but the man? Ugh. Flawed is too nice a term, I think. Is my favorite song R. Kelly's 'Ignition (Remix)'? Um, yes! Would I want to know him? No, not at all. The accusations against him horrify me and there are so many of them.
I recently saw a discussion on the ol' Facebook about this very thing. I have a lovely friend who can't separate the person from their work (this is an oversimplification). She and I have discussed this at length and while I can understand her position I don't share it. But the ol' FB discussion brought up something with which I heartily disagree. I'm paraphrasing here but it was, 'their flawed nature may be why they make great art.' To which I say, 'fucking bullshit. You're just romanticizing them and doing a disservice to their victims by making their flaws OK because it might make them great artists.' I mean, that's a gross and scary way to talk about someone who (in this particular instance) was accused of multiple counts of statutory rape.
Anyway, SPM is an especially interesting one to me. His music has touched a massively diverse population of people so deeply that I completely understand why people hold his work up as this crucial element of their survival. I know what it's like to have a song save your life. Shit, Indeep sang a song about it! His lyrics are so goddamn poignant and Johnny Marr's guitar playing just elevates it to the point where it's like shakubuku. You hear the wail of the guitar in 'How Soon is Now?' and you know SPM gets it. This particular song was used to great effect in The Wedding Singer.
So his fans, who have felt isolated and alone at some point in their lives (I am comfortable with this statement because his fans are all human beings and everyone has felt this way, some more than others) have found in SPM a kindred spirit. Someone who says it better than they ever could. And it's not just that they love the music, SPM touches on some of the hardest emotional shit there is. He does it in a way that is both funny and incredibly bittersweet. This creates an intense, emotional connection. Who knows better than SPM about not wanting to be alone anymore? Note: That clip is such a good use of the song. Seriously, the music in that whole movie is fantastic.The movie is fantastic.
But this intense love of SPM (because of the aforementioned emotional connection) means people want him to be perfect. I suspect (and I'm just going with a little armchair psychology here) it's because, maybe, when someone knows how you feel maybe even better than you do, they are just like you! And who wants to be someone who compares the Holocaust to an abbatoir or pedophilia to eating meat? Not many.
Anyway, this is the weird cognitive dissonance I've seen with SPM's fans. Defending the indefensible (I see this with fans of football teams and players, too). It makes me sad because I wish for everyone to be comfortable with loving the art but not liking the artist. There's no way you can really slice it: if you think eating meat is the same thing as pedophilia then that is super fucked up and disturbing. I won't even go into how it belittles survivors of abuse. Just, ew. EW.
Maybe I'll get Jok to try reading Autobiography. He tried but hated it. PERHAPS HE SHOULD TRY AGAIN.
