The Politics of Dress Sense?

I think something is wrong with me. There's a type of (usually) white person that drives me insane. I don't altogether know why. This 'type' is perhaps best summarised as the sort of people who tend to be Drama students my age. I say 'white person,' but that is purely by-the-by. The fact of their being white may simply arise from the fact that my university is a Muslim hub - and hence virtually everyone studying an Arts subject seems to be white.

When I say my university is a Muslim hub, I mean it. Let the words be taken at face value, with no extra layers of prejudice or analysis. It is filled with girls wearing hijabs - a garment so expressive of a certain attitude (particularly towards faith) that even having a sports commentator strapped to one's skull could not compete. There are also a few guys with the little prayer-caps (sorry, I don't know what they're called) and the large beards. Need I characterise the mindset that accompanies such an overt expression of faith? - I think not. Suffice it to say that girls draped chin-to-ankle in carefully concealing fabric are REALLY unlikely to be doing Drama - a subject that requires costume changes, flexibility of appearance and even nudity.

No, (not unlike many South Asians...) most of these girls and boys will be studying things like Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. Chances are that if they're in Languages, they plan on teaching afterwards. In a lot of cases, it's not really their fault - they'd have to fight big-time in order to diverge. Much as I did. So when I see the sort of university sweatshirt and Ugg-boot-wearing blonde-haired guffawing girls (or their tight-jean and striped-cardigan-sporting male equivalent), a powerful and irrational dislike fills my heart.

I think it is their uniformity that annoys me. That universal uniform of the undeservedly comfortable. Ugg boots don't come cheap, and neither does make-up, good-quality or no (I don't even want to think about how much MAC, beloved of two of my mates and probably more people, costs on a regular basis). It is a uniform of aspiration, based on aping people like fucking Alexa Chung and Sloane Ranger-type girls. It is a uniform that says: 'I don't have to worry about getting a real job, because I am white and middle-class, and ultimately I rule this country.' A sense of entitlement radiates from the whole bloody thing.

I hate tribalism, and seeing it signalled in a common 'uniform' makes me uneasy. I feel similarly oppressed around 'typical Asians' - girls with their love of black, tiny-skinny bodies and coloured contact lenses, guys with their oh-so-enterprising minor designer/sportswear brand-blending and gelled-porcupine heads. The way you dress is a statement, I suppose. Some people balk at 'chavvy' sportswear, gold hoop earrings and Burberry sportswear - well, I balk at the cut-off denim minis with black footless tights! I balk at the 'ethnic' scarves and the proliferation of black, brown, denim and if you're lucky, monochrome!

For me, it represents the ugly delusion of the youth of today. Here are all these girls and boys who (to me), are emblematic of an increasingly apathetic and anti-intellectual society. Why do you keep blindly taking what the celebrities, celebrity-worshipping sites, shops and magazines dole out to you? Why in the fuck do you want to look like the ever-vacuous Peaches Geldof? Why don't you descend on the shops and ask them why they keep making clothes for the likes of Agyness Deyn and Alice Dellal? There are plenty of boys and girls - white and non-white - who don't fit the fashionable norm, and instead of trying to bridge reality a little, Fashion simply pounces upon girls like Jourdan Dunn, who, although beautiful, still represent Europeanised ideas of beauty and the ideal shape.

Why on Earth am I getting so worked up over what people wear? - because it matters! In a heavily-mediatised, visually-obsessed age such as is ours, it MATTERS more than ever! Perhaps because the speed of change is so great these days, that young people dress safer and more formal because they start having to 'grow up' sooner. Or maybe they can't be bothered to rebel. Maybe I sound like a fashion-fascist, but I think it's a shame. Why? Your youth is supposed to be a time of experimentation and craziness! Maybe it is simply a sign of the times; maybe people are so sick of gnawing upon their future prospects amid The Impending End of The World (aka the never-ending financial crisis) that risk is (and has been) dying out in the search for stability...

Or maybe the amount of introspection, analysis and obsessive-symbol-seeking of my degree is driving me insane, and I need to get a life?

I will probably post some related thing at some point soon, trying to explain a bit more why I feel this way. In the meantime, I will let VICE sum it up for me (replacing 'New York' with 'London', of course).

No Minds To Make Up

This post on Pickled Politics is making me really mad. I can't blog when I'm this mad, and I have a lot of work to do already, so I'm posting this (somewhat) in response. I suppose it expresses my viewpoint on a lot of other things too. Although I have mellowed since I wrote this (3 years ago)!

(When I see such things, I feel like going 'Oh, oh, OK, can I just pop over there and shoot and bury you, since it's part of MY 'Bastards will not be tolerated' tradition?').

Calm down, calm down self!


No Minds To Make Up
The stereotypes are everywhere,
there’s lack of imagination and
fear and knee-jerk reactions
and all that I hate –

I need a magnifying glass
to look into these hideous
sub-cultures without wincing;
ah, the narrow-mindedness hurts –

Hard to believe that people
will fight tooth-and-nail
to avoid reality wherever possible,
to stop it encroaching on their trails –

On their tails, it follows
ready to poach the misconceptions
that keep them feeling
so safe and protected –

Ignorance is fucking bliss,
when the intelligent refuse
to claim responsibility for their
brains and the poor struggle –

To be noticed, or disdain
their intelligence, or recycle clichés
for their fellows; a challenge
is only fun if you take it –

We frame ourselves in contexts
and place God and Science
just outside of the box
for “intellectuals” to debate on –

Miserable, pessimistic pricks who
can’t handle their thoughts – well,
let them destroy you and
give us a break at last –

We need a predator to
snap us free of these lazy
cocoons of deluded
self-belief; we’ve put change

Too far back on the
agenda for far too long;
let the truth come and
claim its victims from among us –

Your minds and eyes and
minds’ eyes tightly closed; now
even music is a breeding-ground
for dull conformity and suffocation

Of shared opinion, unless there’s no
substance behind it; you need some
personality to have your own minds,
but you don’t have minds to make up.

Reclaiming Feminism.

I have had enough. I HAVE HAD ABOUT FUCKING ENOUGH. Why the fuck are people so fucking dumb? How did the misogynists come to win so easily? Feminism was somehow ascribed the signification 'of female supremacy' and now women everywhere are shirking it if possible, having to explain and/or mediate it (as I do: 'I'm a feminist-egalitarian... Well, I'm a feminist, but people generally get the wrong idea so I have to say I'm a feminist-egalitarian... I want everyone to be equal, but feel that we need to deal with the oppression of women first and foremost... do you get what I mean?!') or, worst yet, they proudly proclaim themselves as not feminist, as anti-feminist even.

The reason I'm so irritated is because of this interview with one of the Loose Women presenters, Carol McGiffin. Is it just me, or does she look decidedly Satanic in the picture? Maybe I'm ascribing Satanicity (my coinage!) to her based on what she said. I am going to quote it so that I can do my nut accordingly:

Are you a feminist?

Deep down, yes I am. But I have to really question what feminism is now. If being a feminist means I want to be totally equal and the same as men, I don't. I don't want to compete with men, I've got no problem with certain things that a lot of staunch feminists have problems with - the fact that men should share household chores and things like that. I don't buy that line. I don't mind if blokes want to help out, but if they don't and they can't, then I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor. So if that makes me a non-feminist, then I'm a non-feminist.

Are there really any men who "can't" pick up laundry from the floor?

Yes, I know ... unless they're completely unable to move, or they've got no arms. But the damaging thing about feminism is that the man's role is completely confused - women want them to take on certain women's roles.

What is a woman's role?

Traditional women's roles: looking after a family, men and children. We argue at work about this: Denise and Andrea [Welch and McLean, McGiffin's co-stars] get blue in the face trying to make [their partners] Tim or Steve do things that they're never going to do, and I say to them, "Why don't you just do it, because your life would be so much easier?" Why can't they just accept that they are men? Yes, they're lazy and they're rubbish, but they married them, now stop trying to change them. So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.

*weeps* You stupid, stupid, FUCKING STUPID BITCH. I'm sorry, I know it's terrible to swear so much, and probably none too indicative of a 'shared feminine spirit' or whatever, but... Christ. What really hurts me is that there are loads of ignorant women like Carol McGiffin, who don't really know jackshit. I must hand it to her for saying 'I have to really question what feminism is now.'

This woman could be my mother. This woman IS my mother - hence my classifying her, too, as Satan. What kind of passive bullshit is that, anyway? 'I have no problem with men helping, but actually I don't think they should, because then they'll be taking on women's roles and then we'll get confused OMG OH NOES HERE COMES THE SEXUAL APOCALYPSE.'

We live in an age where our understanding of transvestism and
transsexuality has developed to the point where enough outrage occurs at a lesbofeminazi (sorry, I really wanted to use that just once!) who attacks transfolk to spur 150 protesters at the Stonewall awards and where a transsexual gets on to America's Next Top Model. We have a long way to go, sure, but you'd think those little things would show people that gender roles are not sacred and set in concrete. Like pretty much everything else that makes up humanity, they are *gasp* able to be changed and destabilised!

So, Carol McGiffin, I'm sure people like yourself (and oh, I do fear that there are quite a few of them out there) find it hard to wrap their tiny minds around this, but: BULLSHIT to traditional women's roles. How about the traditional role of the bitch-goddess, huh, Kali Ma and her equivalents? The notion of the fertile-yet-destructive pagan matriarch? THAT'S a 'role' that's been around almost as long, and funnily enough you don't hear anyone trumpeting that to us. I also really hate the myth that she and many many others perpetuate, which is that feminism and compromise are somehow separate and/or incompatible: 'I've got no problem with picking their laundry up off the floor.' Well, neither have I, love, but I won't stand for being told that I 'should' do it because it's 'my role'. Especially not by you. And yes, there will be be days when he will bloody well do it himself - that's what I call compromise - being flexible and having each other's backs.

This bit was great too, and I feel, comprehensively disqualifies CM for 'feminist' status: 'Why can't they just accept that they are men?'

Well, honey, by turning around and making the mistake that a lot of women do - of saying 'Boys will be boys,' like my mother always did - you're not only insulting feminists and disempowering yourself, but doing the 'men' a disservice too. All men are not the 'lazy,' 'rubbish' figure perpetuated by Hollywood slacker movies, disenchanted mid-life divorcees and the likes of *ahem* Loose Women. I happen to think that by saying things like that, you are being as unfair as if you turned around and said that all women are hysterical and have a father-fixation (Oh wait, somebody did, and it was a man - Freud, that light of illumination who prescribed 'cocaine therapy' and advanced the ingenious theory that non-white cultures were a primitive, 'savage' form of Western culture - a view inherited from the 19th-C colonial romance and R.L. Stevenson...).

Men and women are supposed to be equal under feminism, and the only sense in which they are equal for McGiffin is in her dismissal of both by reducing them to one-tack performers of a gender role. Get a clue, people! The clue's in the word itself: role. A word tied up with theatre, loaded with performative connotations. If you really want to try and assert your views as if they're law, you could at least try and be a bit more scientific about it and say 'function' instead...!

Granted, her point about expecting people you've married to change (and that too, after years upon years of marriage) is fair. This bit, though: 'I don't want to compete with men.' Biatch, it's a bit late for that. See, if everyone thought like you, you wouldn't be on TV on a show like that right now. That's because people used to think that a woman's role precluded any entry whatsoever into the 'public sphere.' You wouldn't BE on ITV, somehow eking out your 15 minutes of fame (I had never heard of her before this, and I looked her up to find out she was a radio DJ or something...?) without feminism. Yet there you are.

'So yes, my view on feminism is slightly flawed, but I would say deep down that I'm all for women's rights.'

As Michael Kyle from My Wife and Kids would say: 'Ah... nah.' You're not, dear - you're just a product of the same mindset that spawns WAG-wannabes and tabloid kiss-and-tells. That would be the 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to work, so I'm going to exploit gender stereotypes to my advantage and find myself a rich man.' Then, when you break up, you think you're leaving with half? Bitch, you trippin'. Except that ol' Carole is of the much more common 'I'm a lazy-ass who doesn't want to think, so I'm going to claim the advantages won by a previous generation while simultaneously undermining said advantages by implying that everyone should just shut up and do as they're told' breed.

See, at this point, if I were a Mail/Express reader, I would start pulling out my hair and screaming that the end is nigh. Instead, I'll go right on and make it a Julie Bindel bumper special by drawing your attention to this interview with Sheila Jeffreys about prostitution. Such an interesting read that my faith in humanity was revived (by Julie Bindel an' all! Imagine!). I didn't know who this Sheila Jeffreys was, but I wanted to marry her! (pun intentional...).

Another bitch is necessary, however. In an interview with ballet dancer Natasha Oughtred, the interviewee says:

[Do you have any style icons?]

No one in particular jumps out. Audrey Hepburn looked beautiful - everyone says that about her. When you think of that era, the stars were all so flawless and they never had a bad day.

What utterly banal rubbish! It makes me burst out laughing when you see this kind of mindless 'soft' conservatism, a thought-free, easy idealising of the past. Of course they were fucking flawless - the gossip industry, if it could even be viably considered an 'industry' back then, wasn't able to insinuate itself into the minutest details of slebs' lives like it does now. Of course people had bad days, they just didn't get papped! Whereas now, it seems that if people want to maintain any measure of privacy, they have to disappear from public life for large chunks of time at a pop, like Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe.

I'm not trying to say that we should rein in the paparazzi or anything (or maybe we should, who knows?), but people need to stop being so fucking facile. Don't go bewailing the lack of demigods when you're daily falling upon the pantheon of performers and associated hangers-on and ripping the shit out of them. People with brains know far better in this age of ever-penetrating inquiry. When the whole point of performance is to act a role, why would you want to risk placing your own person within the gladiatorial arena?

By all means, throw us the scraps - the Peaches Geldofs and the Cory Kennedys (hey, I'm British, I'm susceptible to the underdog and sceptical of people who don't seem to have any job! :P ;)) - but models, actresses etc... the whole point of these people is to be unreal. This bullshit about looking at them in Heat when they're having a bad day and feeling better in yourself is just that - bullshit. It's a temporary fix, not a long-term solution, and it only feeds the ludicrous comparison-culture which is (in my view anyway) what will probably bring about the end of the world. So women of the world, though I know you won't listen, I entreat you to STOP reading Closer and Heat, Star and OK! and so forth, and GET OUT of the gossip matrix.

Feck me, I'm tired! I leave you with this rather amusing selection of quotes from Sienna Miller, who seems like a fun sort if you ask me, and the simultaneously heartwarming ('Yay! Yay for the still-single guy! You're no freak AT ALL!') and depressing Private Lives section (next week's problem made me want to cry and give the lady in question a big hug and take all her pain away, but sadly I'm not God...). I think I was partial to the bloke because he sounds a lot like my man might have done, had he ever written to the Guardian and not been snapped up by me (or some other exceedingly lucky girl) before reaching his late twenties... Mwahaha.

Finally... sleeping around from Chaucer to Castro and a really interesting piece on sex and 'our culture of excess' (which I will read tomorrow because I am really tired). HAPPY WEEKEND, ALL!

C'est un de ces jours-là

Didn't sleep much, woke up shattered and permitted myself an extra 15 minutes, which, if anything, may have made things worse. Spent the first 2 hours drooping in a melancholy muffledness, forcibly insulated from the tide of idea-exchange by fatigue.

Did a little more work (but not much) on my exposé this morning. French III washed over me like a particularly cold and hateful wave. I clung to the barest rock of wakefulness, conscious of a faint strain of panic that grew in me all day.

Evening time came, and the strain of panic had taken on a life of its own. It stepped out of my subconscious and sat, flat and square upon my chest, now shifting to smother my mouth just a little. I thought of jobs, I thought of friendship, I thought of the interminable tide of research, reading and writing upon which I am but bobbing currently. My back pressed harder against the wall. Listlessly, I went to my bed, hoping this pessimism, this universal disdain would fade after a little rest. I slept, for 15 minutes if not more. It wasn't enough.

When I got up, I decided to make dinner, which took almost 40 minutes and pulled myself back to working, firmly removing my mind from forward planning and returning it only to that which is conceivable in this instant.

I am almost certain it will get the better of me anyway. I want to go to a gig on the 29th, but in this hermit state, trailing unfinished work everywhere in my wake, I fear it will not happen. This too will pass - I know it will - but the coldness, the hardness, is unnatural and almost painful.

C'est la blessure même de m'occuper de 'tout ce qu'il faut', seulement d'arriver à en faire la moindre partie... tellement j'ai envie de dire que je m'en fiche, qu'il n'y a rien d'utile, et qu'on tue en moi même l'amour de la chose, tout en me dirant qu'en faisant tout ce travail (ce qui me semble supplémentaire), cela me fera bon!

'Be glad you're not working yet,' everyone cries. Yes, that is all very well, but at least I will hopefully reach a point while working where I become sufficiently 'mechanised' so as to be no longer aware of my inner stifledness. Also, I will have time simply to exist. The joy of simply sitting, for example. Not so at the moment. I have no real wish to do the wife-and-kids thing, so I'm not going to idolise this year any more than I must.

Thursday Night Poetry Corner

'Well!' you cry. 'Seven o'five p.m., that's hardly 'night,' now, is it?'

I am sorry. I am sorry indeed. However, when you are seated, facing out to a matte sky lurking beneath the rain-tear-stained window - punctured sporadically by street-lamps, room lights and the glowing-strip-base of Canary Wharf's pyramid point - 'night' is what encapsulates it in your hungry, unwilling mind. The thought of dinner almost pains me physically though I appear to be constantly hungry. MOODSWINGS! PAIN! IRRITABILITY! SEMI-QUASI PSYCHOSIS! Hoo boy, it's so enjoyable being a girl. Virginia Woolf has made me come over all idiosyncratic and contemplative, but she exacted a heavy price from me first. I spent the whole day, more or less, reading her and T.S. Eliot - occasionally bursting out laughing at her. Though Eliot irritates me somewhat, I do enjoy the cut-glass conciseness of his critical writing. Boy's such a Libra ;-D.

I feel filthy and unclean and slightly wild, like I could run out into whatever remnants of the rain may resurface and wash there. Instead I will settle for putting up this, which I wrote early this afternoon, and attending to my hungry frustration.


Natural (As The Coming Of Age)
Quivering lightly -
oh, so tenderly! -
here I am

A little soap-
bubble perched upon
your lap, so

Fragile, so apt
to be lost
at any moment -

There I dance,
safely couched between
the slight curves

Of your dream-
shell; breathe me
In and hold

Me safe at
the back of
your throat, only

Releasing me in
small, half-munched,
lip-smacking murmurs -

Not smashed between
your palms; not
flattened like road-

Kill; I pray,
if you will,
kill me softly -

Let it seem as
natural as the
coming of age.


Song of the moment, for anyone feeling similarly grandiose and combative: Terri Walker - This Is My Time. Ironically enough, though, (consider the song's title!), it was cancelled before it could really get anywhere. Damn shame, since it's MARVELLOUS.

Oh. My. God.

I'm sorry. This is just a quick blog post to express my sheer fucking amazement at my parents. I am currently trying to plan my Proust commentary, and my mum started talking to me about my cousin, who was/is apparently back home as well. I told her that I had rung her and received no reply. She asked whether she was/is (back home) or not. I replied that I didn't know because I had rung her and received no reply.

My mother then went on to say how my cousin's parents must be very worried about her and that they are 'overprotective' of her. 'How so?' I asked, sceptical, seeing as how I am actually in my cousin's confidence and have some real idea of her relationship with her parents. My mother went blithely on to say how her parents driving down to see her and give her food - like my parents do with my brother - was 'overprotectiveness.'

Nice to see that she's missed the irony there. What would you call what you do for my brother, then, Mater? And why is it 'overprotectiveness'? Might that be because she's a girl and 'can cook for herself' and she doesn't 'need' it like my brother does? Is it 'common sense' when my parents do it for my brother? Mater attempted to rope me in to her cooking up something for my brother yesterday, while my dad simultaneously seemed to be packing up the whole week's worth of shopping, toiletries and all, to drive to him. I asked why on earth she was making Vegemince for him (and getting into a flap) when, last time I asked, she said that the people my brother lives with were 'really nice. And they are all cooking together.'

'I thought they were cooking together?' I asked, bemused.
'No...,' in an increasingly panicked tone as she mediated the addition of the stock to the Vegemince mix, 'he heats up his pizza... and they have their pizza... They just have freezer food, waffles and things, you know how he is!'
My dad came in. 'I found the thing he was asking for... Got his Right Guard... and he needs the waffles he forgot last time.'

My mum asked me for mushrooms, and in a fit of confusion, I dived into the freezer which I had just got the Vegemince from. 'You seem to have a lot of pizza.'
'Yes... Some of it's for G------...'


Hmmm! To get back to the anecdote at hand, my mum, after hypocritically labelling my cousin's family's behaviour as 'overprotectiveness,' then went on to say that they were more like that since the death of my little cousin last year (of course...).
'Well, P----'s death has brought them closer together as a family,' I remarked, suspicious.

Then, Mater followed up her one-two combo with the 'lucky strike.' Note that this is what she said, put in a perhaps slightly shortened form, but the sense of it has been preserved firmly:
'It's no wonder that P------- never learned to cross the road properly then, is it? Because they were overprotective, she never learned to cross the road properly.'
'Mum - I'm sure she learned to cross the road properly,' I said - almost in reflex. Perhaps it was the sheer, farcical disbelief. I always seem to end up in this position where I'm 'testing' what she says, not quite able to believe my ears.
'She wasn't street-wise. She wasn't aware of when to cross the road. See, we scolded and checked you lot, and so you got a bit smarter than that.'

Oh. My. God. Oh. My. God.

I'm sorry, but when my bezzi said the other day that my mother is Satan, and 'I'm sorry, --, but you are the spawn of Satan!' I laughingly agreed with her. Now, I'm thinking agreement but without the laughing.

What kind of person manages, a year after somebody's death in a tragic accident, to blame them for it by saying they weren't 'streetwise' all while assigning secondary blame to their family for 'overprotectiveness'? Not to mention taking the whole sorry incident as a way of fucking GIVING YOURSELF UNDESERVED PARENTING KUDOS?

I don't know whether to cry or scream. On the plus side, I found my photo album from when I was a baby today, and it was a huge relief. It would have been too much for me if I had lost it. It would have felt as though besides being the 'disposable' one of the children, my past - a time when I was cute and carefree and everyone loved me because they had to - had ceased to exist altogether.

But no, I found it. I was so thankful. I hugged it to my chest and I ran into my room with it, lifting it to my lips. I flipped through rapidly, and came to a picture of me on the swing, my lower lip protruding, skirt of my little dress billowing. I was about maybe 1-3, and inches from crying. I kissed my picture-self (protected by the plastic covering) and said 'I love you, even if no-one else does.'

I was, in effect, making a promise to that angry, little curly-haired girl. I will be there for her if nobody else is. At times when I feel like I can't give myself the love and respect I deserve, I will have to reach out to others for help, but I'm in the equation now. I have entered the arena of the battle for my soul. My family will make me cry and doubt myself, and try to rein me in with their insidious game-playing and guilt-based headfucking. Yet I can see it now. I am standing in for myself. There will be no more proxies - it used to be my ex and my parents locked in battle for me. Passivity no more - my current guy is a wonderful person who will be there for me, and keep me centred, but I have me now.

And even if I'm alone in my family, at least I know there are two of my cousins in my extended family who understand. My best friend. A sort-of cousin who I've recently adopted. The whole network of 'less-close' friends, acquaintances etc., who will play their parts. Y'see, I took a lesson from the death of my cousin too. And it was this: People are stupid fucks who will turn even the defining events of human existence into a soapbox for their prejudices and posturing. Someone's always missing the point. (I will probably write more on my cousin's funeral at some point, provided it doesn't freak anyone out).

Life is short. I loved her. I should've spent more time with her. We should've cooked together. Now that she's gone, I have a renewed need to hold onto those that are 'still here.' It's not always easy to maintain regular contact with those you love, but so what? Good things always take some work. I love you, P----, I promise I will never use your death as a way to shore up my own fucking prejudices and I'll never forget you. Thank you for everything. I'm trying to let your sister know I love her all the time. And finally, fuck the haters!

GSH Endorses Obama (+ Comedy Gold)

... not!

I'm just taking the piss out of Sunny on PP, seeing as how he keeps telling us that progressively more and more of the Western world is supporting Barack Obama in the US elections. Well, so they should, especially when his opponent has not much more to his name, than similarities to a certain frozen-food-product-brand and a head like a potato that's been under the peeler too long.

It's my Reading Week, and I'm back home. I have to write an essay on Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way) by Marcel Proust. I have read about 76 pages of 420. I'll have to go for broke this weekend, won't I? I'm pretty scared and stressed, but I'm resolutely avoiding thinking about it too much, reasoning to myself that I'm allowed my Friday and Saturday before I go hard on the work.

So yeah... in the hopes of a resounding Obama victory, I'm going to post this up, with lyrics. For those of you wondering who the heck GSH was, I mean Gil Scott-Heron, a man whose velvet voice I always fall in love with, and who has apparently been described as the 'Godfather of rap'. Wait... come back! It's not how it looks! His is an angry eloquence that transcends the change of time. He takes no shit, and I'm delighted to see that despite being a 51-year-old HIV-positive former-heroin-addict, he's still alive. I haven't heard anything about what he makes of Obama, but I think he would say 'ye' to a first black President...

Listen and read for a fully interactive experience! OBAMAMESSIAH, SIR, THIS IS FOR YOU! BEST OF LUCK IN 3 DAYS' TIME!

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.


For anyone who doesn't know all the people in the song (I don't), here's a helpful guide. And for anyone else feeling even slightly melancholy, I'm going to post the lyrics to this song, which I love so much it hurts.

Lady Day and John Coltrane
Ever feel kinda down and out, you don’t know just what to do
Livin’ all of your days in darkness let the sun shine through
Ever feel that somehow, somewhere you've lost your way
And if you don’t get help quick you won’t make it through the day
Could you call on Lady Day, could you call on John Coltrane?
Now ‘cause they'll, they’ll wash your troubles, your troubles, your troubles away

Plastic people with plastic minds are on their way to plastic homes
No beginning there ain’t no ending just on and on and on and on and on, it’s
All because they’re so afraid to say that they’re alone
Until our hero rides in, rides in on his saxophone
Could you call on Lady Day, could you call on John Coltrane?
Now ‘cause they'll, they’ll wash your troubles, your troubles,
your troubles away


POETRY 4-EVARRR...


And here is the comedy gold as promised... a sex survey on 'What lefties do in bed'.

I found this through A Very Public Sociologist... yay! Hilarious.