video

This post is defunct. The video in question has been removed. It was a Rolling Stones Cover so bad that comedy could not be derived from it. Deleting it was the right thing to do. I quite like Tay Zonday and all, he’s self aware - it’s a good act, but that was too much. He should stick to his own stuff, which is funnier, and tolerable to well adjusted ear drums. This post is not defunt. FFS x 100.

What follows this paragraph is yet another [1] reason [2] that copyright should be extended on music here in the UK. So pensioners like The Rolling Stones and The Who and Cliff Richard can maintain their royalties for stuff they did when they didn’t have bits of their bodies wearing out. Apparently they’ve “poured money into the British economy and enriched people’s lives” and “They are not asking for a handout, just a fair reward for their creative endeavours” according to Roger Daltrey. He has good hair. For an old guy. So he must be right. Plus, I like fishing.

One of the most excellent things were music copyright laws to be extended would be that bands like the Rolling Stones or their representatives or whoever handles that sort of thing can authorise things like this:

Tay Zonday does Start Me Up

I think we can all agree that extending musical copyright is a good thing. Like fuck.

[1] Bullshit.
[2] Cos there are no reasons. What reasons do you need? Oh Oh Oh Oh.

I’ve been watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, the UK and US formats, and they’re funny. The funniness increases proportionally with the foibles and madness of the people running the restaurants. The formula is that Gordon Ramsay goes to a restaurant that is in financial trouble, and after much drama recommends that they:

• Find a niche
• Use local products
• Keep it simple
• Think about portion size
• Keep management efficient
• Fire or remedy incompetent staff

Which is every episode in a nutshell. With swearing and idents with whooshing knives. Mental people are well funny.

My favourite episode is apparently available here.  Because it all works out well.  Aaahh.

There is a video doing the rounds on the internet of a US soldier tossing a puppy off a cliff (click here to watch it). It purports to be shot in Iraq. It looks and sounds real. Cruelty to animals is wrong. But I think it has to be placed in context. Caveats apply:

If you’ve ever been to a country that has a problem with feral dogs, you’ll know that dealing with wild dogs can be a total pain in the arse because they’re unpredictable. They’re mostly scared of people, because, as scavengers, they’re chased away with sticks and shouts. Other times, with children, or if they feel threatened, they’ll bite, and in packs they can attack. They can carry rabies and present a public health issue. Under Saddam Hussein the infrastructure in Iraq was held together with bubblegum, duct tape, and tyranny. After the invasion, the coalition political leaders, those so keen on war, had no decent plan, at all, to deal with the aftermath. Rather depressingly, it’s been repeated by politicians calling for a pull-out of Iraq; with no detailed plans to deal with what happens next.

During the invasion, and its aftermath, all of the pest control, public services, and public service infrastructure, were destroyed, looted, or both, here’s what Donald Rumsfeld had to say at the time:

“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things … stuff happens”

The destruction of public services was allowed to happen. Simple things like pest control were looted out of existence - and worse was to come. The people who dealt with practical things, the people running ministries, what was left of them, emigrated to neighbouring states like Jordan and Syria, or were fired in the de-Baathification of the Iraqi state. As a result wild dogs are a bigger problem in Iraq today, than they were prior to the invasion. And they were a problem prior to the invasion. Tossing a puppy off a cliff isn’t the best form of pest control, but placed in context, it’s different from someone buying a puppy in a pet-shop specifically to toss it off a cliff. It’s still cruel and it’s still wrong, but given the situation soldiers are in, dealing with the arse-end of geopolitics, it is, to my mind, forgivable. Many people seem to be more incensed at a soldier tossing a dog off a cliff than they are about the situation soldiers have been left to clean up.

Human all too human (Heidegger).  A cunt.  There are clever cunts don’t ya know.

Thought for the day

There is nothing vile about vagina.  Cunt is a deeply misogynistic word.  However it does have emotional impact.  If anyone has words with similar impact/utility that are less misogynistic please email me, I will use it instead.  I feel a bit of a cunt using it.