#6: The Self-Proclaimed 'Mad'

 -When asked to sum themselves up, certain people will jump at the opportunity to convey how ‘mad’, ‘wacky’, ‘crrrazy’, or ‘totally bonkers!’ they are.

-This is one of the most irritating ways in which socially maladroit people choose to introduce themselves.

-Generally, the people who do this work in professions that don’t quite correspond to how ‘barmy’ they apparently are, such as accountancy, human resources or management consultancy.

-‘Madness’ is an elusive concept anyway, and can act as a springboard for exploration into the individual’s perception of reality within a society that operates under distinct social and cultural conventions.

-For our purposes I’m going to use Charles Manson as a measuring stick for what constitutes actually being ‘mad’, because he arguably defied such social and cultural conventions when he established an esoteric cult based on the musical output of The Beatles and manipulated several women into committing a gruesome tally of high profile murders in order to spark a race war that he believed would be the precursor to Armageddon (as had supposedly been prophesized to him in the lyrics of the proto-heavy metal song Helter Skelter).  

 -By these standards, earnestly declaring yourself as ‘mad’ should carry some pretty heavy connotations. There’s about as much social appeal there as would be found in going to work wearing a pointy white pillow case over your head with eyeholes cut into it.  I would hate to think that middle management professionals who declare themselves ‘a bit bloody mental!’, upon meeting people in an All Bar One, are genuinely planning an apocalyptic bloodbath based on a delusional premise of racial bigotry encoded to them through the music of the biggest band in the world – which nowadays would probably be U2, sadly.

-I’m sure they aren’t, but I have always kept these people at arms length all the same. Generally, in my experience, people who try extra hard to be personable, funny and slightly off the wall, are doing this to conceal a hidden agenda, or a disposition that’s actually neurotic, uptight and flakey around money.

-This is exemplified by the fact that self-proclaimed ‘loonies’ and ‘total nutters’ are all fun and games when they feel it’s appropriate (regardless of whether or not anyone else does), but it doesn’t take much for them to switch back into the world of the non-mad when it suits them. The up-turned traffic cone will quickly be removed from the crown of the head, the finger-through-the-trouser-fly withdrawn, the moment they notice that someone hasn’t chipped in for the taxi.

-Would Charles Manson behave like this? It might be comforting to imagine so, but I really doubt it. And it’s irrelevant anyway, because, as previously mentioned, he is genuinely mad, and what with his never-ending onslaught of extended life sentences, I doubt we’ll be hearing much from him any time soon.

#5 Hipster Fisherman Hats

-I have always been unexplainably infuriated, yet strangely fascinated by these hats. Why are they always worn at a jaunty angle?

-They are often complemented by the thin, waxed veneer of a barbour jacket and a pair of cigarette leg jeans that don’t quite meet a pair of Doctor Marten’s airwair boots, thus leaving a gap revealing pasty little legs. Judging from this, as well as their size, I have concluded that these little hats really can’t do a great deal for helping to keep warm.

-Where, in the name of Christ, did this style originate from? Not that I want to declare myself a beacon of sartorial knowledge, but I generally subscribe to the idea that the fashionable affectations of artsy types are usually derived from some kind of basis in 20^th century pop cultural imagery; 

Plaid shirts = Kurt Cobain / vintage Americana

Pompadour haircuts = rockabilly / rhythm & blues

Trenchcoats = film noir

Big spectacles = Buddy Holly / Graham Coxon,

Ironic moustaches = Dali / The Marlboro Man

Customization / intentional dishevelment = Richard Hell / '77 punk

…and so on, and so forth. 

-Of course, this is a crude and very basic observation. It's pointless trying to literally trace and pinpoint the origins of every detail in something so vacuous as 'hipster' fashion. But I imagine you see what I'm getting at. These little hats that I constantly see, whizzing past at the speed of fixed-gear bicycles, seem to have fallen out of the post-ironic blue on to the heads of every person who's ever read Vice magazine. Which is a shame for them, because they look ludicrous.

-The only thing I can think of is that these hip young movers and shakers are really into Captain Birdseye, or the kind of burglars you see in children’s cartoons, with striped outfits and bags of loot strung over their backs.

-This leads me to conclude that, in originating a style that makes the adherent look like a strange, nerdy, fictional thief / a fisherman on laundry day, perhaps these guys have come up with something fresh and unique – an achievement I have long considered impossible. This would make me feel jealous, enraged and inadequate, but it doesn’t, because I can’t get over how hilariously stupid I find these little hats.

 

*Just a note about hat-wearing in general; contrary to popular male dresscode, I would like to point out that in most cases, you should not wear a trilby or pork-pie hat unless you are Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, or a Delta bluesman circa 1920-1970. Similarly, the ridiculous, gnome-like big woolly tea-cosy hats that generally accompany bicep hugging t-shirts from All Saints (with necklines that dip low enough to show pectoral cleavage and terrible tattoos of meaningless credos rendered in cursive script) are really stupid. And always worn at unnecessary times, like summer, or in a bar.

#4: Bad Lyrics

-The history of popular music is absolutely heaving with lyrical shockers.

-Some bad lyrics are offensively poor, some just mildly comical. For instance, though I’m certain it’s unintentional, I’ve always felt that verse three of Jailhouse Rock is slightly - or rather, screamingly - gay. I’m talking about the bit where Number 47 tells Number 3 “you the cutest jailbird I ever did see”. If we’re assuming that this is an all-male prison (which we are, because mixed-gender prisons only exist in exploitation films), then I presume you catch my drift. It might also be the only potential reference to the very serious and totally neglected issue of male prison rape ever made in a US Billboard Number 1 single.

"I'm gonna stick around - I wanna get my kicks!"

This is a fairly sinister line, given the men-in-a-Southern-States-prison context.

Say it to yourself in a Deliverance-style 'squeal piggy!' accent and feel the shudders.

-But pop music is made for, and appreciated by the masses, and to pick apart all its lyrical content would be unfair, pointless and time consuming. I’m not going to start wading through ‘oh oh oh baby’ type stuff trying to make wittily scathing remarks about it, because the results would be similar to that of getting impaled falling out of a pear tree: unamusing, and ultimately fruitless.

-Independent and underground music is where the truly bad lyrics are at.

-Musicians and performers who self-impose exemption from the mainstream are inherently attaching themselves to a notion of artistry, as opposed to popular appeal and record sales. So when their lyrics are bad, it’s far more painful than when Lil’ Wayne tells us that his Maybach is ‘all black’, and thus sitting in it is like ‘sitting in an asshole’. 

I get a real kick out of Weezy, but his verse here, like the rest of 

his ouvre, reminds me why we no longer buy CDs.

Almost as good as the Rick Ross joint in which the 'big boss' compares himself to John Lennon,

whilst boasting about his gun collection, from a wheelchair with spinning rims.

-It would be nice if the music and lyrical output of underground and independent artists could act as an antidote to such uninspired numskullery. Also, it should really constitute a decent grounds for justifying the fact that they don’t get paid a lot for making it, and should probably have a proper job, like oral hygienist or haberdasher’s assistant. When the lyrical output is out of wack, I get irritated. 

I have some examples:

-I (like everybody else who writes a blog) am a massive fan of J-Dilla (though I can’t stand people who over-egg the pudding on this topic – he was a wonderful producer, but he didn’t change my life, and I’m not convinced he changed yours, so take that t-shirt off). And I love both Slum Village albums as though they were my own well-behaved children. But some of the lyrics are a pretty suspect.* This one is arguably the most feeble attempt I have ever heard at trying to get a woman to sleep with you;

You’re sexy, girl - and also quite confident. /

You could sell goods and probably market it.

Tell Me – Slum Village

Not only is the lucky girl told that she’s sexy, but also that she’s ‘quite confident’. Pretty raunchy stuff. And the second line, which I sadly interpret as MC Baatin really going in for the kill, sounds like the way Rainman would try to seduce a woman if he’d been unable to get out much in the last few months due to studying for his degree in Business Management. I reckon there are very few men who could get laid by informing a woman that, if she was interested, it’s likely she might be able to scrape some career selling unspecified ‘goods’.

*Despite what’s said here, I am genuinely a great SV fan, 

and acknowledge that the untimely deaths of two of the group’s 

members is a real tragedy for modern music. The production here is,

as ever, tremendous. The lyrics are just slightly less than tremendous.

-Next;

When the cactus are in full bloom /

I’m gonna ask you to be my wife.

Fortune Teller – Forest Fire

Aesthetically, this band subscribe to a particular hipster template, which will be familiar to those who have ever spent 5 minutes in Santa Cruz. Something along the lines of ‘we look like earthy, tinker-ish, wandering poet types who live an anachronistic lifestyle which is part Chekhov play, part 1970s commune – but we do all have subscriptions to Wallpaper’. 
-The plural of ‘cactus’ is ‘cacti’, as most people are aware. Thus, unfortunately, in attempt to sound esoteric and kooky, they have made the massive gaffe of totally fucking up their grammar. Unless it was an attempt at Jamaican patois - in which case it's still phrased incorrectly. 
-Also, the line, unsubtly wrapped up in creaky allusion to Pueblo Indian culture, renders itself totally redundant anyway. Telling a woman up front that you have plans to ask her to be your wife, not right now, but at a more significant and romantic point in the future, sort of shits on the romantic element you were holding out for in waiting for the CACTI to reach full bloom.

There's no excuse for this absolutely dismal performance.

If you have to try your hand at twee 'nordic-woolly-sweater' indie pop,

then lock yourself in an icy cabin in the middle of nowhere and do it

properly, like Bon Iver (who also happens to have a dodgy lyric somewhere about 

parking tickets, embedded in an otherwise heart-wrenching 

love song about the futility of romantic expectations and the pain of loss). 

-I could dig out a lot more examples, but I’ve had enough of this now. 

In general, bad lyrics are bad. But worse from artists whose ‘cool’ factor tricks us into believing that they might know better.

#3: Bonfire Night

-The week leading up to the fifth of November always leaves me feeling like a troubled Vietnam war veteran – not to be melodramatic or anything, but my reaction to huge explosions going off at unexpected times during the night is akin to that of a small dog, in that it puts me on edge, makes me disgruntled, and as a result I want to urinate in unusual places in the house to make a point of this.

-Halloween is bad enough, especially when it falls on a Monday, allowing people who actually buy into it to milk it dry over the course of the weekend, squeezing every drop they can from its spooky udder. Halloween pisses me off because I hate getting heckled by an overweight Beetlejuice / totally unsexy ‘sexy vampiress’ on the tube. Also because, whereas it might only be an annual event for some, I dress like a post-car crash matinee idol every other day of the year, so it’s the one day where I don’t feel special and different.

-After all the trauma of the 31^st of October, we then have Bonfire Night.

-Bonfire Night is a celebration of early 17^th century British prejudice and oppression. Every firework you watch tonight, though they may be pretty and colourful, is effectively celebrating the appalling tokenistic torture and execution of a man who was foiled in a plot to rebel against the totalitarian regime of an absolutist Monarch who was enacting religious oppression against non-protestants.

-Though placed at one remove from the popular consciousness, we still keep this in mind when we burn ‘Guy’ effigies on bonfires.

-Many people don’t think of it this way, but it would effectively be the equivalent of Germans unthinkingly burning an effigy of Johann Georg Elser once a year. I’m pretty sure they would never, ever consider introducing that tradition.

-Right wing country bumpkin creeps in Lewes, a county town in East Sussex, still burn an effigy of the Pope every bonfire night. Try that one out for size on any religious group or denomination other than Catholicism and see if it doesn’t result in widespread condemnation/international outcry/fatwã.

-I have my own personal gripe against Bonfire Night, because I once had a bad mushroom trip on the 5^th of November, and the fireworks really weren’t helpful.

-That is all.

#2: Needing a piss in the centre of town

-Not a day goes by when I am not in agony at some moment, needing to urinate in central London.

-Public toilets in London are generally either drug dealing epicentres, or have been turned into trendy pop-up clubbing venues.

-Urinating in public is a deeply risky business for females. As for males, it is unacceptable when you are past the age of 10 and the sun is out. There are few things more nerve-wracking and shameful than standing in a cobblestone mews off Kensington High Street, in broad daylight, hurriedly shaking drops of urine from your penis. And then, having to spend upwards of £1.80 on a bottle of Evian in order to wash your hands.

-There is something very depressing about having to divert a moment in your life by venturing into a McDonalds, Burger King, or any other fast food misery shack, with the sole intention of visiting their toilets. Additionally, the toilets in these kinds of establishments are always inevitably situated at the back of the downstairs seating area. This means wading through the usual crowd of ghouls who prefer to sit and eat in the only section of a drab, BBQ sauce-stained cesspit that lacks natural light.

-Though fast food franchises are aesthetically unrewarding, at least there’s a decent chance you might actually get to empty your bladder. Starbucks may appeal with its groovy contemporary jazz soundtrack, spacious disabled facilities, and full length vanity mirrors, but I have rarely ever walked straight into a Starbucks toilet without having to wait eight minutes or so for it to be vacated by a very sheepish looking middle aged dog-walker type.

-The best option is to find the nearest 4-5 star hotel and walk in with your iphone in hand, like you own the fucking place. Then make for the shitters and go bananas. Not only can you urinate (and more) in pleasant environs, but you can also take liberties with complementary Molton Brown hand soap, and even pilfer a few embroidered hand towels - if being a lowlife is your thing. And, on top of all that, a well-spoken doorman in a top hat will greet you and see you off when you’re done.

-In conclusion, needing a piss is a total rigmarole, and the sooner they create a weekly injection that alleviates the human need to excrete waste, the better.

#1: Blogs and Blogging

I have never understood the purpose of blogging, and have thus always hated it. But, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Or, more precisely, if you feel intimidated every time you meet someone who appears more successful, together, and hip than you do, start writing a blog about all the things you hate. Here’s why I hate blogging:

-It has created a new sub-genre of non-fiction, which allows people to create an illusive, narcissistic vision of themselves as fascinating, edgy, creative individuals, all from the comfort of the dimly lit, semen-drenched keyboard that they probably never actually leave.

- It has changed the way we write, think and speak, with the perpetuation of a cutesy, yet ironic, Americanized ‘Carrie Bradshaw’ writing style. Which involves unnecessary full stops. And melodramatic short sentences. Everywhere.

- It assumes that we are open to giving a shit about the quotidian rituals of spoiled brats who either live really fast (from behind their computer screens), or live really well (from behind their computer screens). I would post a link to my ex-girlfriends blog, read by thousands of subscribers in Sweden, in which she details, amongst other earth shattering revelations, every skin, hair and beauty product she uses on a day-to-day basis. But she’d probably use her daddy’s black AmEx card to sue me for defamation, and I think I’m bitter enough as it is.

- New forms of online social media seem to promise us the notion of up to the minute insights into the real lives of our peers. Yet among all the posts along the lines of ‘…running for a Greyhound bus in Tucson, AZ!’, or ‘…sipping a dry vermouth whilst thumbing through a battered copy of A Farewell to Arms’, I have yet to come across a tweet, facebook status or blog entry that reads along the lines of ‘…having a shit, and considering whether or not to bleach my top lip’. Not that I’d want to, but I’m just saying.

- It distances people from the present, by causing us to aspire towards a constructed ideal of reality, by which enjoyment of the present moment is cast aside in favour of recording it. Unless, of course, you’re taking a shit and considering whether or not to bleach your top lip. In which case, since you’d never dream of sharing that with your online peers, there’s a chance you might actually be mindful of it enough to enjoy it.

Welcome to The Arbitchuary

- I spend my day-to-day life desperately trying, and failing, desperately, to accept the ins and outs of the 21^st century (not that the crumbs of the 20^th century were any better).

- Throughout my 20 odd years of existence, a lot of my time has been spent carefully picking apart people and things that I don’t like.

- I have only ever really shared these resentments with women. Mostly ex-girlfriends. So I haven’t had a girlfriend for a while now.

- This means that recently there’s very little between me and a merciless, ‘zodiac’ style rampage.

- Thus, having reached the crossroads between suicide, religious conversion, and self-imposed exile, I decided I would start a blog.

- Detailing and cataloguing, week by week, things that I dislike, I hope to exercise and exorcise my resentments, and find myself at peace with the world I live in.

- This being the case, I’m hoping the blog will be shortlived: I’ll run out of things to moan about and realize that the world is actually full of beauty and joy. But I’m not counting on it.

- There will be anger, there may be insight, there may, at a push, be humour. But mostly there will be cussing.

- Welcome to The Arbitchuary.