Dead to Irony

I see some twerp on the front page of yesterday's Notional Past has accused Jack Layton of missing his "Blair moment" to turn the NDP sharply right. Nice to know that the NP considers it a loss to abstain from following the example of a liar, cheat, and very likely war criminal who rode his party to ruin in the last British election. I suppose in the eyes of the NP, Blair's fellating of George Bush absolved all sins.


Bush is certainly guiltier, but in a way, I'd prefer to see Blair in the dock first. Blair is the greater hypocrite: who Bush was and what he would do had always been fairly obvious, but B-liar tried to polish Bush's turds with the spit-shine of a false and contrived statesmanship. And then, after he left office, one of his first priorities was to join the Society for the Promotion of Pedophilia, ooops, otherwise known as the Catholic Church. What a sorry piece of human shite the man was, and is.

Weinergate

In the spirit of completeness, and also to get some people on the Left off the window sill (though god knows the Left as a whole would probably be better if we pushed them), let's run down some positive consequences of Weinergate:

1. We got rid of a weak link in good time. Weiner was a bomb waiting to go off. Breitbart the alleged genius showed himself a f*cking idiot in this respect. Weiner gave us the dick; Breitbart the premature ejaculation. Imagine this happening at a crisis point -- a key vote for instance. But now, the chief consequence is....
2. Breitbart is full of himself and preening. Which is a bad career move for him, since now more people hate him that ever and his earlier bullshit isn't any better supported. He thinks he's god. Look for him to get a nasty reality check in the near future. Pride goeth before, &c.

They're frightened

I see that the Notional Past, our perpetually in the red source of sage wisdom about capitalism, has decided that the most interesting in-depth news story for the day is not global warming, the financial crisis, Canada's dismal economic performance, or even Harper's breaking his own expenditure rules but.... DFHs. Dirty F*king Hippies. In the form of a five-part series on the horrors of growing up with a radical father. Who no doubt will confess in the final installment that he was terribly in error, and will join either the Catholic Church or the Toronto Stock Exchange.


They're frightened. And with good reason.


Enjoy your fantasies while they last, assholes.

On Motivation

I have always hated national anthems. Not only national anthems, but group songs of all kinds. Much later, after years of this, I read Bloch and found the reason. As he says, "You cannot argue with a song." You either take it in whole and sing, or you refuse. And, in the case of national anthems and a lot of solidarity songs, refusal is likely to draw a shitstorm down on your head.


Music is a drug, and I want control over the drugs I take. No one doses me without my permission.


But there are times when music is useful, so long as it is controlled by me. It's an acceptable non-prescription substitute for Wellbutrin in beating down background noise and static in my thinking. For this it has to be loud and harsh. Something with a driving beat is best, and it doesn't matter if it makes much sense. I used to use Pink Floyd for this while I was at university, though a lot of their songs are borderline for the purpose -- they make too much sense. Non-English bands like Rammstein are better, or the more forceful sort of movie theme music (Pirates of the Caribbean, anyone? The theme for the latest Batman pictures is good too), or best of all decent-quality video game music. Some of the music that Nine Inch Nails did for Quake II is ideal. It hammers and thrusts, mindless but endlessly active. Or the infamous Hell March from Command and Conquer, a game that I've never actually played. Some of the tracks from the original Unreal Tournament score do very well, such as "Run" and "The Course."


I wonder why this works? Of course, it tends to shout down the static in my head, but I think there's also a sense of process to this type of music, the feeling that you're off and running and for the time being at least, successfully ignoring where you are going. 


Process is all. Destinations suck.