Comment Archive:
Thursday 23rd December 2004
A Christmas Message
Wednesday 8th December 2004
Graffiti
Graffiti. There is something about it that irritates the living shite out of me. Oh I know what you’re thinking... I must be some old fuddy-duddy that just doesn’t appreciate the value of street art or the validity of the uncompromising “youth voice” of the disenchanted masses. I obviously just don’t understand that graffiti is the sole voice of the dispossessed, the vibrant cry of the otherwise voiceless victims of our cruel, uncaring society. Graffiti is the passionate and unconquerably righteous anger of Every Man, the ordinary person on the street, the you’s and me’s of the world and every other sod and his bandy-legged incontinent dog. Yeah yeah yeah.
Bullshit.
I’m neither old nor a fuddy-duddy. Nor an artistic Luddite. Nor, I hasten to add, am I a member of The Establishment or even for that matter a property owner. To all intents and purposes I am one of the disenchanted “voiceless” masses that graffiti purports to speak for and I can categorically announce that I have never in my entire life ever encountered one occurrence of graffiti that in any way speaks “for me” or “with my voice” or “in my name”.
I mean where the hell is the working class nobility in statements such as “Michelle Hall is a fat slag” or “Gary Heywood is a gay bender”? Who are these people? What are they to me or you? More to the point who were the so called graffiti artists that decided to judge and sentence these people so publicly that these meaningless names now impinge upon my consciousness every time I walk down a particular street in my own home town? This isn’t performing a public service and it sure as hell isn’t art. Who appointed some faceless muppet with a spray can the arbiter of public morals anyway? Are they so spotless and upstanding in their day to day living that they can sit in judgement on the rest of us without any fear of rebuke or challenge? I mean Michelle Hall may very well be a fat slag but how do I know the author of that graffiti isn’t the biggest slapper in the country and more corpulent than Vanessa Feltz at a horse eating contest? The point is I don’t. And neither do you. The only true fact about graffiti is that inevitably it is the tool of the coward. It is not the voice of the voiceless but the voice of the faceless. Usually a faceless hypocritical wimp who doesn’t have the guts to speak his seedy little mind openly to his peers so resorts to a sly, anonymous insult on the back wall of a pub or somebody else’s house. I mean heaven forbid that you deface your own property.
Oh and then of course there’s the pathetically childish craze of tagging buildings with ham-fisted attempts at “New York subway art” – people coming up with laughably stupid monikers for themselves like “Spod” and “Nektoid”. Spud and necktie more like. I’ve even seen one in my local area that simply reads: “Rim Job”. I mean, please. What kind of mullet could write something like that and actually be proud of it? And as for Spod and his ilk – it’s just a pathetic attempt to bolster an inadequate psyche by appearing to be cool and dangerous among the little incestuous gang of your street mates and glue suppliers. How many cool and dangerous people have ever been called Spod for God’s sake? Answer: none. Just painting a nickname that would make a deaf dog ashamed onto a wall in two foot high letters automatically consigns you to life’s waste bin of ineptitude and eternal derision forever without you even having to prove your moronic status further by waddling around in baggy arse-round-your-shins trousers and NY backwards peaked cap. I mean really, Spod, when was the last time you actually went to New York? Answer: never – because the US airport authorities saw the name Spod on your passport and instantly laughed you all the way back onto the plane and back to the God forsaken backwater English Council estate that first spawned you and your cheap spray can pretensions. You tosser.
And finally don’t give me all this crap about graffiti “art” beautifying our streets and bringing colour into our humdrum lives. Fact: graffiti makes any environment look dirty, unkempt, uncared for and like an ugly no-man’s-land. Any area that has been tagged with graffiti immediately has the ambience of a wasteland in the making. There is something depressing and dour about it. Something disheartening and drab. And it irritates people. It irritates people because it rides roughshod over our rights to NOT have to be confronted with meaningless, trivial, second-hand sound-bites every time we walk home from work. Sound-bites from people who, let’s face it, have all the political and intellectual acumen of empty egg boxes. I don’t need some baggy-arsed fifteen year old with a stupid name advising me of the corrupt machinations of the government and the desperately unfair state of the world. I live and work in the damn place! I’ve acquired my wisdom [poor as it is] the hard way by living my life and learning from my mistakes, not by reading it on an underpass wall or the cubicle partition of a public toilet.
Let’s not ennoble graffiti through our fear of being seen to be out-of-touch or reactionary. Graffiti is less about exercising the right of free speech and more about ignoring the rights of everyone to live in an environment that doesn’t look like an overlooked train siding. Wars and causes are not won by the garrulousness of graffiti artists. But a person’s spirit and enjoyment of their home environment IS eroded by the visual stain of graffiti. And that erosion inevitably leads to nonchalance and an uncaring disheartened attitude. And that eventually leads to the complacent why-should-I-care ethos which currently blights this country and which allows so many crap things to happen to us all.
It’s all the fault of the graffiti artists! Your masterpieces are the senseless cancer of society! A case in point. For a good couple of years now the following has been on the side of a house in my home town: “I hate you Kirton” - Kirton being a reference to Bernard Kirton, a local councillor. This snippet of political activism tells everyone absolutely nothing about why Kirton should be hated, who is doing the hating and how our hating Kirton can in any way improve the situation or the world at large. So aside from making the area look incredibly unsavoury and ugly what is the point?
Spod. I bloody hate you. Reasons? See the above.
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Tuesday 23rd November 2004
Big Kids On Small Bikes
So what is it about big kids riding small bicycles? Am I missing
something? You can't walk down a single street in this entire country
without seeing some sweaty faced, slack lipped youth pedalling what is
little more than a flea circus bike in and out of lampposts and
pedestrians without any consideration for anybody. Aside from the
societal problems that these special needs idiots obviously exhibit
there is a simple, elegant, undeniable fact to contend with.
They look stupid.
They look so stupid I have actually witnessed small children and granny's - the type of people who would usually be far too intimidated to even make eye contact with these twats - outwardly smirking and biting off guffaws of laughter. And with good reason. Big lanky Nike-wearing tosspots and tiny My Little Pony sized bicycles just do not mix. EVER.
Wake up and smell the Clearasil!
There can be no more ridiculous sight than an acne addled, baseball
cap wearing muppet pedalling along the pavement, desperately trying to
appear cool and "hard", while his knee-caps seesaw up and down well
passed his ears and his pock-marked arms loop down below his ankles so
he can hold onto his twist-grip handlebars. How can you steer anything
effectively when your eyes are practically at crotch level? I mean just
what is going on here? Are these incidents a public display of some new
craze for mobile auto-fellation that the rest of us just haven't heard
about yet? Are Raleigh mounted DIY blowjobs now a la mode for the teen
underclasses? It would certainly explain why these monosyllabic amoebas
never seem to be able to control their vehicles properly and why they
always look so drained and red in the face... and come to think of it
they all dribble profusely too...
Urgh.
Oh God. And these lollop-limbed orang-utans are going to eventually help create the next generation of the human race!?
Girls, it's time to buy yourself a chopper and pedal like crazy.
In the opposite direction.
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