A shout out for a shut up

My pet hate this week.

Lets talk music. That strangely hostile subject which results in agro between friends and, if you're in Norway, death.

I am tremendously judgemental about music. I think everyone has every right to be... within reason. Personally, I hate with a burning passion the faceless, pathetic whiney nobodies infecting the popular music scene with their repetitive, repugnant crap.

The standard seems to be:

1. No more than THREE notes may be sung in any one song. Penalty is death.
2. Your backing track must be one riff which plays continuously for five minutes.
3. You can't sing normally. You have to either have a piercing, nasal cacophony of vocal range; or else a ridiculously forced ethnic accent (this includes all you try hard cockney Indie get-ups).
4. Despite all the above, the drooling, zombie minded public will fall at your feet like dominoes and practically fornicate the ground you walk on.

La Roux, for example, sounds like someone strangling a cat that's had its lungs inflated with helium. I would rather take a cheese grater to my own face than listen to this particular catastrophe of sound. Rap is another no no. That some chavvy, goggle wearing social retard gets paid more money than is owned by Switzerland to speak into a microphone about how much he's getting laid makes me want to stab pencils in my ears. What is the attraction here? How many 'songs' about bitches, hoes, guns, and asses can you physically tolerate before you start evolving backwards into a big, insecure sperm? Why the hell would you pay your own money to these bastards, to have them do nothing more than speak in time with some god-awful computerised thumping noises?

Clearly then, these particular brands of sonic-effluence appeal to a very special kind of moron, hitherto referred to as "The Public". Cynical? I certainly bloody hope so. An industry which prizes itself on moaning like a hungry 2 year old whenever somebody turns on Limewire deserves every single verbal smack in the mouth it can get. People who rise up from society's asshole and perpetuate their talentless, mindless drawling to a salivating fanbase are just as much a parasite and a waste of organs as so called 'psychics', 'mediums' and homeopathists who similarly make money out of people's utter, unending stupidity.

All this being said, this is not the point of this entry.

What I want to say, is that despite the above, I don't give two ounces of dirt what sort of music you're in to.

I don't care.

At all.

Go ahead, listen to this rubbish.

BUT.

Don't you dare inflict it on me.

This, is where I'm going: I am sick to the nipples, of having to justify to other people, my particular tastes in music. I cannot stand the apparent stigma associated with certain bands that I like. Yeh, some people might get just as angry about Fall Out Boy as I have about La Roux, but that's something for you to moan about in your spare time when I'm not within earshot. Dear anyman, why does it bother you in the slightest to learn that I like FoB? Why is this suddenly a cause for you to disapprovingly shake your head as if you've found out I occasionally partake in bestiality? It's just a goddamn band. I don't tie you to a chair and force you to listen to my iTunes library- so don't hold it against me.

You know what? I do like Fall out Boy. A lot. I also like Simple Plan (despite their inherent Emo properties) and hey, what about the odd Emo song now and then? It's not like I slit my wrists to it and bloody up your lovely clean floors. I like most Punk groups (fine- not much problem in society's eyes of liking say, Green Day or The Offspring) but now and then I get the strange urge to listen to Daniel Bloody Powter- and you can't do ANYTHING about it. So stop trying.

I have a playlist with Mika songs in it.

I see nothing wrong with Abba.

Or the Lighthouse Family.

Or Panic! At the Disco.

Any of this bothering you yet? If it is, I seriously suggest you grab the nearest blunt object and propel your skull into it with whatever strength you have. You deserve the injury if my life concerns you that much.

Grow up.

Get a life.

And if you want to moan, keep it on the internet and away from my face.

-Neop

I promised!

In between making websites, ripping out great swathes of garden, having increasingly surreal conversations with University mates, and moping about doing nothing (very time consuming I assure you), I've finally found a suitable moment to sit down and vent my rising hatred of everything to you, the avid and inconceivably tolerant reader base.

The object of my animosity today can begin with our home grown British media giant, the BBC.

I'd like to start by making it clear that in general, I like the BBC. They make Top Gear (inarguably the best program on TV- excuse my shallow nature), and Radio 4 comedies like The Now Show (inarguably, the best program on the radio). I don't even mind the idea of a license fee. In general the program quality is pretty decent, especially when compared to the festering affront to human decency that is the likes of Channel 4's Big Brother, or similar "here's some twats being twats: let's watch them and waste valuable brain power" dross that so often excretes its way onto our screens.

What I do have against the BBC is something very specific. It's their news reporting.

Actually, it's a certain aspect of this reporting, one which for the most part could be extended to newspapers and other TV news slots: I'm simply lugging this onto one broadcaster as they happen to be my foremost source of the news.

What I'm driving at is the kind of news reporting that makes no mention of the shocking and frankly disgusting incident in London where a taxi driver committed suicide by beheading himself; and yet has a news article listed on their front page as "Brown knackered says Downing street". I should bloody hope he's "knackered". He's getting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers pounds to sit on his fat Scottish arse and stick his oversize, flabby fist into every aspect of society in a vain attempt to fix the catastrophic damage his useless, thick headed party has caused over the past decade. If he gets anything less than a stress induced stomach ulcer he should be immediately fired and subject to the despicably inadequate state pension he's responsible for.

This is the kind of news reporting that favours the death of a deluded, faintly paedophilic, plastic pop star over human rights atrocities in Africa. That runs week after endless week of stories on how his doctor is clearly a murderer, how he may or may not have killed himself after all, and how two weeks later, he is in fact still dead. Obviously the public are as much to blame as the company here- by caring more about the death of a celebrity than of mass tortures, rapes, murders and all manner of inexcusable human atrocities in other parts of the world.

This is also, the BBC that yesterday ran a decent sized television slot about two people who've died of E-Coli in Wales, and ignored the plight of thousands of Burundians who may now face prison for homosexuality.

This is the BBC who (thanks to Marcus Brigstocke for this one) ran articles on how the weather was not quite as sunny as we'd like, and has NOTHING on their website or on their shows about the woman in Sudan facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers. Even the GUARDIAN managed to write about this one. 

Four people died in the Rhine yesterday because of flooding. Did anybody here even know Germany was flooded?

I think my point's hopefully been made here. This is a broadcaster who badly needs to re-examine what it considers to be a worthwhile news article. This is a broadcaster who needs to learn to prioritise. And sadly, this is a public who needs to get it into their collectively ignorant skulls that there is a wider world out there where people are suffering badly; that things CAN be done about it by everybody; and that Jade Goody was a fat, stupid, bigoted racist and socially useless pustule who didn't in any way deserve the vast media coverage she garnered by doing us the favour of dying.

Incidentally, if in any way this has made any minute impact on you as a reader, I'd ask that you have a look at this.