Off Message

Just look at it! It’s horrible! Come on, Blog.com team. Sort it out. And fix the pageview counter too while you’re at it. It’s stopped working again.

Blog.com’s gone mental again, and Off Message now has all sorts of ugly new design elements all over it. Great. STUPID FUCKING SYSTEM. And why does it say ‘Octadecimal Classification’ at the top right of the Blog.com log-in page? If I ever meet anyone from the Blog.com team, I’m going to take their shoes off and piss in them. And then make them put them back on again.

and it will be my last:

music of the future,

and music of the past. 

I have been selling shit on eBay. Thus far I’ve sold two things, one of which (a sofa) went for an OK amount, the other (a 7″ record which I bought for £3.99 a year ago) for an extortionate amount. I am now selling another record. If that goes well (and it is so far), I might sell more shit. In fact, I might sell all my shit. Everything. And when I run out of shit to sell, I might sell my relatives. And then my friends. And then my body. And then my mind. And then my soul.

Or have I already sold that? 

Only read the reports of it so far, but looks like GB’s Labour conference speech was a cracker. Increase in paid maternity; increase in and enforcement of minimum wage; free nursery education from the age of three; personal tutors for all school children; more student grants; more youth centres. All good stuff, and all exactly what you’d expect from GB. Now, anybody still not clear what he stands for?

Growing up, I didn’t think about the future that much. I mean, I thought about the future in a science fiction sense, immersed, as I was, in a world of Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 and Space 1999. But I didn’t give much thought to what the actual future would be like. I didn’t expect to be zooming around with a jetpack strapped to my back in 2007 or anything. I was much more concerned with the here and now. Or rather the there and then. Actually, make that the imaginative next and tomorrow in the physical there and then. If you see what I mean.

Not having pined for a dazzling jetpack-wearing SF future as some seem to have done, I find it’s the little things that fill me with future-now awe: the first time I had regular access to the internet; the revelation of having instant access to thousands of records with my first (and, indeed, only) iPod; and now – and probably most exciting of all – the discovery of digital telly on demand. Fannying about with the remote control at the weekend, the wench and I suddenly realised we could watch, whenever we liked, the vast bulk of the previous week’s telly. Not only that, we could actually pause, rewind and fast forward those programmes! No setting of videos; no crappy tape quality when you do manage to set the video; no not actually being able to work out how to tape off digital channels in the first place due to a mixture of technological dumbfuckery and sheer laziness. It was all there, waiting for us, almost literally at the touch of a button (a few buttons, in fact). This really was one of those road to Damascus, heavens opening, choir of angels moments. Truly, we are now living in the future. And it’s fucking brilliant.

Sulking under the fug of a lowering head cold, my spirits were raised today by the distinctive whine of a bleating Tory. With Labour and Gordon Brown once again surging in the polls, the always objectionable Henry Porter in today’s Observer spends his column searching for an answer as to why Dodgy Dave Cameron can’t make any headway. Wondering briefly and nastily if “the electorate has no more awareness of the issues than a shoal of mackerel”, he goes on to float a number of spurious but slightly less offensive theories, before deciding that, actually, yes, it probably is the fact that the public are just fucking dense. Proclaiming that a large number of voters are “showing signs of psychological dependence” on Labour, Porter then asks, “Is it possible that we have also become less rigorous in our judgements, less able to access the standards and knowledge of political debate of the past?”

Well, in a word, no. And in a few more words, no, you insufferably pompous prick. The electorate aren’t stupid, and neither are they clinging to the crack pipe of New Labour like the hopeless addicts Porter seems to think they are. The fact is, Cameron’s going nowhere because nobody knows what he stands for, what he believes in, or what the bloody hell he’d do if he was in charge of the country. Simple as that. And long may that state of affairs continue.

I’ve just found Jules’ comment. It’s on my profile. Now I feel rather foolish. Thanks, Jules. Thanks for making me look like a FOOL!

(Not that I need much help there.)

This is Jules’ blog. I’m going over there now to deface it. Join me.

I just approved a comment from someone called Jules (hello, Jules), and now I can’t find it. I’ve never had to approve a comment before, so that was quite exciting, but now I’ve approved it, I can’t fucking find it.

I’m starting to develop a persecution complex. I really do think the people at Blog.com are fucking with me. Disappearing and reappearing features; vanishing posts; random comments, weird links… Mind you, from some of the comments that’ve been left here, I’m not alone: I think those Blog.com bastards are fucking with ALL of us. And we should damn well do something about it. We should rise up! Throw off the yoke of internet oppression! Storm the palace gates! Come on, people! Who’s with me?!

Indie has become a lifestyle choice. That’s indie music, in case you were wondering, not indie cinema, or The Independent, or Indiana Jones. Back in the 1980s, during the C86 heydey, indie was essentially all about the music. Sure, indie bands and fans adopted a certain ‘look’: unkempt hair, dark and shabby clothing. But this was by its very nature non-fashion, a visual statement of outsiderness in tandem with what was then outsider music, despite its essentially conservative heritage (rock music, specifically ’60s art rock like the Velvet Underground). Indie bands were anti-mainstream, anti-pop: minor chords, miserable lyrics; The Wedding Present, McCarthy and so on. Indie was for those of us who felt like square pegs in society’s round holes, who couldn’t afford ‘cool’ clothes and felt awkward in them anyway.

I’m sure that many of The Kids of today feel the same way, except that now it’s possible to adopt wholesale a strand of ‘indie’ as a lifestyle, complete with specific uniform and hairdo. Day-glo and daftness for Klaxons fans; hoodies and mad hair for Maccabees fans; black drainpipes and gothness for Horrors fans. Clothes are cheaper now, the demarcations are clearer: get yer indie clobber ‘ere, all-in-one uniform straight off the rack. The internet and social networking has cemented the various indie cliques. It’s much easier now to find like-minded people, to join a gang. You need never go to a gig alone again.

Are there kids who fall between the indie clique gaps? I’m not sure I see them at gigs if there are. Everyone is neatly slotted into a round indie hole. Where’s the turmoil? Where’s the doubt? Where are the stumbling stuttering C86 misfits? Today’s Kids seem cocksure by comparison.

Having said all that, indie music has been fucking fantastic over the last few years, a period of excitement and energy we haven’t seen since post-punk. And yeah, that includes C86 and Madchester. So what the hell.