Communism: food for all?

One popular Cuban joke starts with the rhetorical question: “What are the Revolution’s three major achievements?”. The Cuban insider will probably answer “sport”, “education”, “health care”, or any other field traditionally used by Communist regimes as a means of propaganda. Asked again about the Revolution’s three major failures, and after a short span, the puzzled countryman will inevitably hear: “breakfast, lunch and dinner”.

Likewise, another joke points outs that the signs at the Havana zoo that read “Please do not feed the animals” had to be changed to “Please do not take the animals’ food” soon after Fidel Castro seized power. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and an ailing Russia withdrew its aid to Cuba, the new signs, so the story goes, begged visitors not to eat the skinny animals.

Meanwhile, the population of communist countries continues to starve out the history of utter failure by the Marxist production system. Unprecedented humanitarian aid supplies by evil capitalist America couldn’t prevent the death of 5 million Russians, and subsequently the world had to see how Stalin starved to death over 3 million Ukrainians, 1,5 million kazakhs, and other national minorities by the millions.

In Communist China, chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward caused the death of over 20 million Chinese, and in North Korea, Kim Gong Il starved to death 3 million in the 1990s, scil. 10% of the entire population, while he tinkered with a nuclear bomb.

Thus, while the world waits for Jean Ziegler to back with data his guesstimate that “the world can easily feed 12 billion people”, it is clear that Marxism could easily kill many more, if it was ever granted the chance.

All I want for christmas is a Dukla Prague away kit

Pure 80's shoe-gazey class, from Half Man Half biscuit.

A pre-post-modern neo-Marxist disection of the childhood alienation produced by exclusion from the fetishistic modern consumer culture, in which even children are aware that their identity is merely the sum of their consumption.

Or a funny song about subbuteo. You decide.

Fahrenheit 451 - Set the oven to 700, just to make sure

Here are the edited highlights of Pope Susanus XXI's list of prohibited tomes (The second vatican council had a lot of things going for it, but the removal of the Index Liborum Prohibitorum was not one of them).

1. The complete works of Frederick Nietzsche. Is there a single suburban cannibal killer who doesn't claim Nietzsche as an inspiration? Dividing the world into men and supermen was always going to be open to some rather obvious simplifications; I'm convinced that if Zarathusra had just kept his fucking trap shut, we would have been about 6 million Jews better off in 1945.

2. The Bell Curve by Charles Murray. Rich people are educated. Educated people are intelligent. Black people aren't educated. Black people are stupid. There you go, that's the whole 1000 pages summarised for you. If you want the full experience, repeat the above four sentences 25000 times, and draw hundreds of little pictures and graphs based on faulty methodology and logical non-sequiters. Then marvel at how many people are prepared to overlook the fact you are talking unsubstantiated shite because you are telling them things they want to hear.

3. The man in the high castle by Philip K.Dick. Nazi's win the war, blablablabla....I love his short stories, but you get to the end of this one and think, what was that all about? And not in a good way. Too much I-ching.

4. La descoberta catalan de America by Jordi Bilbeny. Columbus was Catalan. He was very Catalan. Look, here's a picture of him wearing a birretina and standing next to a picture of Montserrat (I'm not shitting you). He fought for Catalonia's independence, with his crack team of Portuguese freedom fighters, who later became sea Captains. According to Bilbeny, if you look at the list of crew members on his voyages, you will find they were all members of the Aragonese court, not sailors (which begs the question, who the fuck was sailing the boat?). Chauvinist amateurish sub-Von Danniken dross.

5. The Torah and derivatives. By a collection of people suffering various psychological disorders.

Do I really need to explain?

A public book burning will be held on the 1st of August in the Plaza San Jaime, Barcelona, be there or be viewed as a dangerous masonic libertine free-thinker.

Toyota commercial: Join With Us - sick sex plot

The subject of the commercial is simple, classic stuff: make a dull hatchback look exciting. In the case of the Auris, the advertisers adopted the novel (if utterly absurd) conceit of having the car filled with tiny real people, all doing fun stuff like playing frisbee, skydiving, jumping off shit, doing skateboard tricks and various other things that I hate or would certainly hate if I ever tried. All this as the most inane, heartbreakingly trite and mechanical song plays. It beseeches us:

The world is in your hands,
The world is in your hands,
The world belongs to
Those of us who still believe we can
Come with us
Come with us
Join with us
Join with us

(You can read the rest of these dreadful lyrics here)

The source of these thick-as-pigshit platitudes are to be found in the heart of the ad's imaginary, childlike world of the outlandishly large (this is an old technique designed to make a poky, plastic little turd of a car look like it's an aircraft carrier or something). In the glove box to be precise. Here, The Feeling (in miniature too) perform their song for the skaters, the jumpers and the frisbee throwers.

The Feeling are a band who demean themselves in several ways simultaneously:

Firstly, they call themselves 'The Feeling' - a name which might be amusing if they were some sort of Catholic rock band but for a group of supposed rockers, it generates a feeling of immediate 'Buy now at ASDA!', wouldn't you say?

Their lyrics form the second debasement. I don't want to reprint any more of them but if you're of a strong constitution, you could check them out. They are a masterclass in the sort of idiot-inspiring formless gibberish made popular by such acts as Anastasia and Coldplay. Only the most vapid, shiftless twat could find any solace or meaning in this songsheet. And any singer who actually opens his mouth to utter them is scum.

The third shaming comes from allowing their song to be played on a commercial for the Toyota Auris. Now, we all now that there are tons of pop acts who have made a lot of money by selling their art to enable a multinational corporation to use it to trick witless fools into buying their tat. None of them deserve your time. Listen to the bands who refuse to take part in such commercial endorsement: they are always morally, intellectually and musically better anyhow.

As if The Feeling weren't satisfied with everything they have brought upon themselves, they seem to have decided to perfect the process of utter degradation, by actually appearing in the commercial they shamed themselves with. Performing the same debased song, demeaning themselves right down to the name of their 'band' on the drummer's kit.

It should be obvious that no one would ever degrade and humiliate themselves like this for any normal reason. Not even for cash. It should therefore be equally obvious that The Feeling derive a perverse sexual gratification from this self-mortification. There can be nothing other than a deep need to submit, sexually, which has driven The Feeling to this behaviour.

And Toyota use this filth in a commercial.

When the Wind Blows (1986)

Google video (click here).

YouTube (parts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8).

Boxcartoon

Interactive BBC type poll- 5 books you would make compulsory

Here is my first contribution to the blog of my own creation:

It is one of those desperate BBC-style polls, where they try to get the audience to participate and thereby fulfil some squalid "interactivity" clause in their corporate mission statement. *

What 5 books would you make everybody read, were you to be granted dictatorial powers?

My (correct) selection follows (you recieve 5 points for every book also on your own list):

1: Borges, Brodie's report.
2: Tadeusz Borowski, This way for the gas please ladies and gentlemen.
3: Niall Griffiths, Sheepshagger.
4: Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia.
5: Suetonius, The lives of the twelve Caesars.

That is all.

*If I walked into a bar and found somebody typing the words corporate mission statement on a laptop I would glass them. No questions, no hesitation, no excuses, no "I was writing a blog in which, ironically, I threaten violence against anyone I find writing the words corporate mission statement", no mercy, no nothing.

The Polyphonic Spree: Musical Artivism Meets American Epics

Time flies, and 2009 will mark the 6th year of the ongoing invasion of Iraq by an international coalition led by the United States of America. For some, it will have been over half a decade of war; for others, nearly twenty years of a more or less undercover armed conflict in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Now, those who believe the Iraq War is ultimately about oil, are also likely to think that two successive Texan oil tycoons and US presidents, George Bush Sr. & Jr., have embarked the country in a more or less calamitous military adventure, probably including terrorist attacks and selective murders by central intelligence to create the mindset conducive to the ongoing state of exception & war.

Thus, in the light of such an arguably worrysome record, it is just a thing of beauty how in Dallas, Texas, an original and gleeful pocket of resistance has managed to resist the roughest spot of the Bush administration, stirring local awareness and bearing witness that another Texas is possible. Which is why you will have probably never heard about The Polyphonic Spree, an hedonistic orchestral ensemble somewhere in between a college graduation ceremony, a church gospel and an Ibiza white party.

For some reason, the spree, created in 2000, was experiencing a discreet surge of popularity when it suddenly started facing problems as war drums in Washington grew louder: their records company, 679 (property of Warner Bros.), deserted them in early 2003, and the review Entertainment Weekly (belonging to Times Magazine) branded them ‘fake’ and ‘artificially happy’ in 2004, and listed Together We’re Heavy as the second-worst album of the year, despite its success in the indie scene both at home and abroad, in particular in Great Britain. What is more, the ensemble sports a terrific eclecticism encompassing a broad range of techniques, such as American marching band, classical music, gospel vocals, political cabaret, pop, rock & electronic music, as well as mighty theatrical renditions.

And then, there is the band’s song-writer and alma mater, Tim DeLaughter, an eccentric artist acquainted with the Bible, American classics (Witman, Kerouac, etc.) and Far Eastern literatures, as reflected in many lyrics: Light and Day, It’s the Sun, The Fragile Army or Soldier Girl. The diversity and consistency of sources bestow upon him an interesting profile as a literary guru, not the least due to a certain sense for moral commitment and modern epics (he is father to 4 children). In any case, you won’t find nowadays so many streamlined & beautiful lyrics admitting double, triple and even quadruple-entendres, allitterations, homophonies and all sort of classical resorts showing a complex work of language engineering as DeLaughter's.

Light and Day is a particularly inspiring theme on the solar pannel epic ahead in the upcoming century to replace all non-renewables, scil. both fossile fuels and nuclear power. Now, Boynamedsue will be tempted to erase a post of what appears to be the apology of a green welly American delivering a messianic message as the impersonation of planet Earth during one of his trances. However, it only takes a bit of cosmovision to urge your fellow Texans to reach for the sun -and, possibly, get rich as well- forever.

"Just follow the day"

Change of plan

Alfonso the Idiota just told me where to get off (given I've just worked out who he is, I will swallow that from him) re the monitoring.

I suddenly find myself agreeing...why not just let any one who wants join and publish, with the proviso the site is not used to publish porn or incitement to violence?

Also, I have no idea how we could have two tiers of users, so the ideas a non starter....

A blog about nothing.

An Alcinous, La Bete, Boynamedsue, and De Jong production.

It's a simple idea, based on the UN (because that works so well).

Anybody else with a blogger ID who wishes to may join and publish articles here upon request, but should they irritate any of the 4 above users, they may find their article removed, or even their membership. As in the real world, we the powerful need give no reason for our decision, which will be final.

Boynamedsue.