The 20th-11th best albums of the year (until we remember great records we left out and then do a whole new article pathetically backtracking)

20. Eternal Tapestry | “Beyond the 4th Door”

I mainly sought this out because of the AWESOME name but it turned out to be four tracks of psychedelic instrumental-centric atmos-rock that lived up to my expectations more than satisfactorily, albeit not in the manner I expected. Unfortunately it's so mysterious and not-shit that I can't think of any funny jokes to make about it. Wait wait! Eternal Tapestry? Yeah right! More like SPINAL TAPestry if you ask me!!!!!! Hey, they're broadly within the confines of rock music, fuck you.
JAM: Reflections in a Mirage

19. Wilco | “The Whole Love”

Despite "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" being an utterly magnificent work of experimentalist pop-rock, Wilco have gradually lost their indie cred and embraced the mellow sounds of dad-rock, which is uncomplicated rock music that middle-aged men can bang out to show they're still down with the kids. Example; I showed my dad Dawned On Me from "The Whole Love" and he fucking loved and now he wants to buy the album! In situations like this it's lucky I'm not a pretentious P4K windbag, because it hasn't deterred me in the slightest from my unequivocal belief that the aforementioned Dawned On Me is the best power-pop jam Wilco have put out since maybe I'm Always In Love from "Summerteeth" which was released aeons ago when their instrumental heart Jay Bennett was still alive and people still thought they were alt-country because a couple of their members were in the overrated (where are the hooks, guys?!) Uncle Tupelo.

As much as I hate to declare a record to be a "return to form" or "the band doing what they do best", this is no "A Bigger Bang"; Wilco have returned to the tried and tested formula of weird arrangements and damn good songcraft, songs that are well-crafted including the sprawling (CRITIC BUZZWORD, translation = "long") Art of Almost, Born Alone and Standing O, the latter being so good that we can even forgive the band for writing the first letter of the title's second word and thinking "hey, let's have a cool ambiguous single letter!". There's even a bonus disc with some above-par material for those who know how to torrent or have a bit of cash to spare. The guitars are noisy. Jeff Tweedy still sings in a pretty likable way. I don't think Wilco have ever been bad, but while their last few albums show them getting a little too comfortable and set in their ways, here they find comfort in doing something that challenges them a bit. It pays off!

 

Newly-converted Wilco fan Jack's dad repeatedly mistakes the band for blues-playing Voldemort-lookalike Wilko Johnson.

JAM: Dawned On Me

18. Ringo Deathstarr | “Colour Trip”

You know the drill; distorted, feedbacky guitars and pop hooks, with both female and male vocals. This sounds like a lot of other bands but they do the Dinosaur Jr/Sonic Youth/Ride/My Bloody Valentine/blah sound very well and are better than Yuck. Man I'm wiped out from that Wilco review...does your band reference both The Beatles and Star Wars in the name? No? Then GO HOME.

Also, these nice, enterprising young Texan chappies spell "colour" in the British, CORRECT way. Extra points.
 JAM: So High

 The deathliest picture of Starr I have ever seen. © D. Menham, 2011

17. J Mascis | “Several Shades of Why”

This truly is the year of the male solo artist, or it could just be that I really like them seeing as Neil Young and Sun Kil Moon dominated my 2010 charts as well. This year, however, it's more singers/guitarists from great bands taking the solo routes, with excellent albums from Thurston Moore, Gruff Rhys, Stephen Malkmus and this J Mascis record being welcome antidotes to the abject lack of Sonic Youth, Super Furry Animals, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr LPs. Ok, time-wasting over; feedback-friendly J plays acoustic guitars for the most part and sings in his loveably cracked voice, which is fine at least, especially slathered in gorgeous strings and all kinds of guitar overdubs (even some flat-out tremolo shit that springs out of nowhere on Is It Done!). Naturally his strength as a player is highlighted even with his restraint from his usual Young-esque exploratory solos, as Mascis fingerpicks his way through pretty, lilting pseudo-country highlights like the wonderful Not Enough. Critics put too much emphasis on the album as an event or supposed source of innovation, which to me often sounds like a very boring person sucking a laptop's dick, but J Mascis knows that it's the songs that are important.
JAM: Not Enough

16. Radiohead | “King Of Limbs”

+ (From The Basement)

I don't love Radiohead. Never had much of an emotional reaction to their songs. Don't necessarily see them as this modern Beatles they're pimped up to be. Would never list them as a favourite artist.

They're a great band, though. Let's be fair; over eight albums they've covered a lot of ground and always made sure to write pretty good songs. On "King of Limbs" I would argue that if the songs are maybe not quite up to the standards of their previous work, the band more than compensate with the slippery grooves that run pretty deep through the piece (remember, Radiohead don't write albums, they write "pieces" because they literally spring from the cock of Jesus). The great thing is, that although Radiohead have embraced electronic music, they still play their songs as a band and for this reason I favour "King Of Limbs: From the Basement" over the original album as a chance to wonder at the band's incredible tightness and mastery of their complicated arrangements. The grooves really are awesome.

JAM: Lotus Flower

15. Shabazz Palaces | “Black Up”

Hippitty hoppity electro beatz wiv HARD BARS. Got it because there was a hype surrounding it thanks to legendary (synonym; "they released one Nirvana album, and it was "Bleach"") indie rock label Sub Pop picking up the group when they had previously been averse to rap music. The song titles are as long as MY PENIS (promise the next blurb won't feature a phallic reference) which hints at the intricate lyricism contained within. Also, like, these dudes are like totally HIP-HOP and like BLACK and shit and they're on SUB POP omfg maybe this album will be like "Bleach" except not in any way. I don't even know who I'm making fun of now. Maybe the hype-spreaders? Why hasn't Sub Pop been signing rap artists for the 20+ years of its existence? If there are shit-hot rappin' wonders like this in Seattle then damnit the label should keep more of an ear out. Obviously it renders pretty good results.
JAM: An Echo From The Hosts That Profess Infinitum

Senior Sub Pop executives prior to the discovery of Shabazz Palaces.

14. Creepoid | “Horse Heaven”

Don't be fooled by the album name, "Horse Heaven" is no My Little Pony companion album, but rather totally unclassifiable. Just kidding; it's indie rock, obviously.  Nasty, buzzing guitars run through it like a mass-death-inducing rift in the time-space continuum runs through Conservative Party HQ in my dreams. It is a pleasure to lazily pimp these sleepy drones.
JAM: Grave Blanket

13. Gruff Rhys | “Hotel Shampoo”

If Super Furry Animals are the best band ever to emerge from Wales and certainly amongst the best purveyors of psychedelic schizo-pop/electronic trip-rock or whatever the fuck, then Gruff Rhys' solo material is amongst the best in the market if you lo-fi fruity pop dittying. The singer's gentle falsetto guides these lovely songs over acoustic guitars, pianos, OBVIOUSLY bass and drums (listed them in case of passing pedants) and his beloved Casio keyboard, which provides sikk beats and groovy key tones which are all hilariously cheesy. If this all sounds a bit twee and simplistic, this Welsh stoner has more delightful hooks in his head than prime minister David "Little Lord Fauntelroy" Cameron has frightful crooks in his bed! If the silly sound affects, steel drums and funky brass of Sensations in the Dark don't charm you then I guess you probably don't particularly like this music. Fair enough.

Asshole.

JAM: Shark Ridden Waters

12. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks | “Mirror Traffic”

Stephen Malkmus has as little a desire to be in Pavement as David Cameron does to be in the European Union. This is a shame, as the sloppy dynamic of Pavement always complimented Malkmus' guitar style in the same way that actually having a modicum of allegiance to the countries that neighbour us was more of a help than a hindrance, despite our refusal to adopt the same currency as every other nation mirroring Malkmus' supposed refusal to recognise fellow guitarist Spiral Stairs' songwriting. Admittedly, the pound is stronger than the euro and Malkmus' songwriting is stronger than that of Spiral Stairs but ANALOGY DITCHED

hey doesn't "analogy" look kinda like "anal orgy"?

The Jicks kick ass. I don't know who's in them apart from the fact their bassist is a chick (damn near essential if you're forming an indie rock group with good guitar parts), but they sound great. There's even pedal steel guitar on the catchy-as-all-fucking-hell opener Tigers, an eternally welcome instrument to my ears. Middle-aged SM sounds pretty much exactly the same as his younger self, both in his madcap guitar playing and his vocals, with his voice forever wondering into falsetto or losing interest in the melody, but he has found a solution to the latter; every song is positively stuffed with different musical movements, forever moving and forever catchy. Great LP. Album of the year apart from eleven others!
JAM: Senator
 

The 26th-21st best albums of the year (that we have listened to, obviously)

AKA "Records Jack, the only member of the team remotely bothered with listening to new music, kinda likes but is mostly pretty indifferent to because why listen to these when the Rolling Stones discography exists"

Is your name "Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds"? No? Then Jack hasn't bought you.

This was originally going to be a top 30 but I saw no point in including albums I haven't listened to enough to decide if I actually like them at all.

26.  Fleet Foxes | “Helplessness Blues”

Fleet Foxes kinda piss me off because hipsters rave about them without bothering to even give "Pet Sounds" or "Music From Big Pink" a listen, and also because I'm jealous of their talent. Shit these guys sing good. Generally I like to listen to something that caters to my shitola attention span but the melodies on this album are beautiful, and one of the songs has a totally cool free jazz section. However, if you (rightfully) rip on Beady Eye for being derivative, then you better stop enjoying this album. Luckily for these foxy ladies (ok they're men but they sing some pretty high notes), they write songs approximately A LOT better than Beady Eye!

JAM

25. Com Truise | “Galactic Melt”

Bleepy analogue electrotits. Lacks the impersonal cockfest often brought about by synth music, instead sounding welcoming and fun. However, if you start dancing to this people will think you're super gay. And shit maybe you are, who's judgin'?

JAM

24.  Lou Reed & Metallica | “Lulu”

"Jack!" I can hear you saying "this record is completely terrible!" Well thanks for that. You are incredibly perceptive. "All the songs are one part over and over again, while Lou Reed recites naughty things like a geriatric booze-hound!" I see "Metallica betrayed metal! I'm going to send a death treat to Lou Reed! I don't understand anything about the history of popular music!" Congrats, you win a fucking prize, and it's my dick slamming into your face. While all these are undoubtedly true, except for the latter which is stupid and shows that vast contingencies of metalheads are numbskulls who don't understand what it is to be an artist, I think this record has some merit. For a start, the songs that are bad are laughably bad. Who hasn't let out a chuckle at James Hetfield's constipated cock-rock bellow of "I AM THE TABLE!" ? What is their not fit to giggle at about Lou's faux-edgy sado-porno he dresses up as poetry? Are Lars Ulrich's drums not hilariously rhythmless and tinny, like a mentally-challenged and angsty teen beating a collection of dustbins?

And even with this fantastic merit as a comedy of epic proportions, like a feature-length audio sketch parodying two disparate artists' attempts to "jam" out with some "meaningful" high-school poetry, let's bring attention to the fact that Junior Dad is a really fucking good song, with Reed wistfully half-singing lyrics that somehow are not comparing a knife with a black man's cock, and Metallica displaying some (HOLY FUCKING MOTHER OF SHIT) subtlety. There's even an ambient section, making the track 19 minutes long. This is some ambitious shit. Shit, quite a few of the songs have a genuinely worthy part or two. Not usually two though. Usually just one. Frankly I should have rated this higher just for existing, against all odds, and pissing off Metallica fans so much.

JAM (sorry, Lou sounds much nicer on the studio version)

hahaLOL these faggots just put out an album called "Lulu" METAL 4 LYFE

23. Josh T. Pearson | “Last of the Country Gentlemen”

Josh T. Pearson is a ramblin' man. He made one other record a decade ago and it was pretty good. He had a band then, he doesn't anymore, but he's still pretty good. He likes to play acoustic guitar and he likes to take his time. This record opens with a three-minuter and closes with one lasting only two, but in between we're treated to five songs ranging between 10 and 13 minutes. They're all very slow and very gorgeous, sometimes flanked by strings. If you dig the musical sounds of heartbreak you'll dig Josh T. Pearson.

JAM

22.  The Men | “Leave Home”

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeet I tired myself out with that Lou Reed/Metallica synopsis. This is a good album if you like reverby noisy shit. Good tunes hidden in there. Cool cover and shit. Should probably have listened to it more but every time I've done so I'm all like "RAD"

JAM

21. Sungrazer | “Mirador”

Sungrazer are a cool band of stoned-out, heavy riffage. To listen to their album is to wade through a gargantuan cloud of marijuana smoke, eventually emerging at a satisfactory song. Recommended for fans of Kyuss and their ilk, this is probably the best 'stoner-rock' album I have heard in recent years, referring to the heavy rockin' genre rather than just smoky music. Again; Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

If this is you, you will probably like Sungrazer.

It seems they're Dutch. No wonder they're so stoned!

JAM

COMING SOON; Thom "Th for theology" Yorke & co plus some other records too obviously

Was I Never There?

If nothing I say is heard

And I fall alone unseen

Was there value in my words

And what did I mean?

Did I exist if when I fall

Nobody hears my cry

Did I mean nothing at all

If alone I die.

If forever I preach

To empty chairs

Was there value in my speech

Or was I never there?

THE WIRE

Omar muthafuckaz

Watch it. Now.

The Wire is fucking great. Everyone knows this. Why does everybody in the world not watch it? Why did I wait ten months after getting the boxset to actually dig into the fucken thing? I don't know, people are assholes and I'm a big asshole. Fuck you! See, that was me being an asshole.

I don't know what a Television is so I can't explain to you WHY it's good (ok I could but I'm lazy and I'm only writing this because I haven't posted on this here blog in ages and I'm putting off a Politics essay that's due tomorrow and I really should be doing). There have been numerous moments in the series where I literally drop my mind in a pile of my own semen and think "jeeeeeeeeeeezus even the camera angles on that were fucking incredible" but I don't want to spoil the series for anyone who hasn't seen it all yet so I won't mention them.

Of course the main plot is great (or plots rather, this shit is MULTI-LAYERED), with plenty of great crime and crime-fighting (Season 3 is recommended for any murder aficionados) but like any great fiction its enjoyability rests in the homely situations that are nondescript in the grand scale of things, but make it all that better. Sure, it seldom advances the storyline when McNulty and Bunk go out and get horrendously shitfaced, but as you get to know the characters the little things start to matter so much and bring the show closer to your heart. The scenes of the small-time gangstaz socialising on the street corners as they wait for customers to flog their product to are priceless, a wonderful reminder that while everyone in The Wire is playing the Game in some sort of way, be they police, criminals, politicians or anybody in the fucked city of Baltimore, ultimately they're all playing the game of life.

Now before I disappear up my ass anymore in trying to explain the programme's superlative quality, I should admit to you that the Wire is not for everybody; my mum doesn't like the bleak realism and my friend Henry doesn't understand what all the black people are saying. But if you can get into it then it's definitely worth perseverance (I'm on season 4 and they have all been uniformly brilliant so far, even if I gave such little a fucking shit about those dock workers most of the time after a fantastic first season of black gangstahood, and  that humourless fuckwit Marlo needs to get shot ASAP). The first few episodes didn't quite grab me although I enjoyed them, but once I knew the characters...man this product is the shit.

The Garden

This is laden with philosophy and religion, and shit.

The Garden

We never left the garden; it’s still here in our hearts.

The man who owned the house he built it beautiful and full of life,

With flowers fetching sunlight just to feed the eyes

And grasses where the children of enlightenment could learn to play.

Trees gazing ever-upwards for one day they’d reach the skies,

Propping up its canvas so that nighttime could dance on to day.

He hired me to weed and manage all the beauty there;

To pull up all the roots which goodness left alone, too scared

To touch with righteous fingers and commend as beauty’s own:

Never dipped into the Styx and sentenced to be rid.

But when I looked, I never did find evil’s rotten groan;

And within all the plants a beckoned brightness hid.

And when I turned the house had gone, and never have I found

His face again; the property a project without profit.

But gardening, unnoticed, I went on and worked the lands

As if it was a punishment he’d left to me to do.

Yet I could never weed up any plants, for guilty hands

Would wring my soul and bury me, I knew.

Many came and talked of how before these weeds had spread

The garden was a beacon bearing beauty in its every seed.

Their eyes, they never saw me; I guess that they preferred

To think no gardener could let such havoc wreak its course.

But there I stood and only beauty saw and only heard

The voices of unopened eyes, so hoarse.

I can’t decide if I am mad or if he tricked me from the start

And made sure everything that grows upon this land is beautiful.

But I have always shed a tear as I am growing older

That no one else will ever truly notice how I see,

And maybe beauty’s in the eyes of the beholder,

But it is all still beautiful to me.

The Man Who Left His Keys

In the corner he sat

All evening, holding

His glass to his hand

And his eyes to the glass.

Nobody asked him his name.

He was someone

From somewhere else.

And nobody knew his look;

His empty eyes staring into the glass

Hoping to see something stare back.

His hair dishevelled from the heavens

Unloading their tears.

He must have been out there a while,

He must have walked a while.

He looked cold

He kept his coat on.

And he played with his hands

Like they had answers

Hidden in the fingertips.

Or the palms,

Or adjoining the arm.

I wonder if he found them.

An epiphany in the dim light

(That one always did flicker)

Struck him like the bell for last orders

Had sung into his soul

A hymn of some sort;

Who am I

To know.

And he stood with those empty eyes

Staring as if answering

A question from a ghost ahead.

But there was just

The pinball machine:

It’s broken but

Sometimes strangers try anyway.

He left like a decision;

Marching off as a hollow soldier

With a stare from the trenches

And his hair still wet

And his coat undone

And a blank expression

Wrapped around his face.

I thought that he’d freeze

If he had to walk home.

I think he lived far away,

He’s from somewhere else;

He left his keys

On the table.

By the beer he hadn’t finished

And the coaster he hadn’t used.

Who uses coasters anyway?

Sure the table gets wet

And it might make a mark,

But I don’t mind

I guess you are

What you leave behind.

A mark on a table

From the man who left his keys.

On Poetry

A poet without a pen,

A quill without the ink;

Yet time and time again I’ll try

To build the bridges from my head, I think

I’m hopeless. A lost cause.

A ship destined to sink,

A dying man’s final pause.

A broken bottle sent to bear

Love-letters, no better way

To waste my final words

Than stuttering an utterly unconvincing

Message of pseudo-intellectual

Hopelessness.

Inspired with no inspiration,

Head swarming with thoughts,

But no net or better yet the concentration

To catch them; write their nectar into beauty.

A crying man’s tears don’t make a tragedy

And a dying man’s final words don’t make an obituary.

Just a tongue-tied man trying to talk in the forms

And bring them back to paper;

Draining dregs of ideas from a keg of concepts

Left to lie in mortal feelings of frustration.

Being a poet is the slow acceptance of mortality,

Being human is pretending that’s a lie.

Lines torn from my mind;

A different person left behind each time,

A former version of myself shed like snake skin.

Waking where a previous incarnation lay,

Each day drilling deeper in my mind

To find thoughts to spread like butter on my empty page;

An age spent searching, a life spent waiting

For that elusive perfection to hit me.

Creating trails of torn up paper in my path

I crawl on, surfing on enjambment to a blistered next step.

But rounding up footprints and finding their feet

I know that I’m six lines

From bliss. And poetry is

Making madness from the trails of ideas

That raced on leaving just tyre tracks behind.

Spelling out from burnt rubber in your mind

And moulding the mess into a sentence.

Crawling on and dispensing beauty in your wake.

For God’s sake, it’s beautiful.

You’re beautiful.

Choosing a Gravestone

It’s a director’s cut

To your own life,

Should I be ‘loved by all’,

‘missed by wife’ or

‘lives on in spirit’?

I think this will be the death of me.

The Centre of The Earth

Wake

To a another day of daytime television, takeaways and

‘For God’s sake pay the damn rent’.

Eyes open, mind closed

And the cupboards ajar.

Preserving your own crime scene

With biscuit crumbs and carpet stains.

The clock in the corner giving up

Because you never listen

And a stray sock slowly drowning on the floor.

You could have tidied up more,

There’s a world

Spinning round your apartment

And you’re trying to pry up the remote

With your foot.

i am who i am

i am who i am

I am who I am,

But close the curtains.

The neighbours needn’t see

What I’m watching on TV:

Shut the windows.

In my abode I am king

And my mind’s the castle,

But one thing:

Lift the drawbridge.

The neighbours needn’t know

I listen to The Smiths and enjoy a cup of tea.

Yes, proud to be me but

The neighbours needn’t know

I’m alone,

Thirty, balding.

No girlfriend as such

But a lifetime too scared to say ‘hi’.

And with a lower case ‘I’,

i am who i am.

A shadow stealing the place of a man.

An understudy in my own play,

And screaming in my own way.

No round of applause

As the curtains open;

Mask on, stepping on lies.

And a stronger man trapped in my eyes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a poem I wrote a while back. I don't really share what I write, so please be gentle. But I felt like putting it out there as I really like this one. For me, what I write serves its good because it makes me happy. Moulding a beautiful idea into words is a tremendous power, and feeling. So I've never really felt inclined to share, because it already makes me happy and I'd hate it if I let other people's feelings impose on such a concept which made me happy beforehand.

/sentimental disclaimer

But seriously, thoughts and feelings are appreciated. Hope you enjoy it.

(edit: I moved this introduction to after the poem as I don't want my thoughts marring the poem before you've read it)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(edit:

I felt as if I should write a little about it. I do basically see poetry as moulding a single idea and stretching it out into lines. This idea was based on the fact that I'd always have to take my grandparents' wine bottles to the dump as my grandma refused to put them outside for collection, as the neighbours would be able to see how much they drink. It made me think about the social mask we all wear, and the people we pretend to be for society. Something like American Beauty.

The voice is inspired by The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock massively, because I adore that poem so fucking much. If you haven't read that you should go and read it now. It's utter heartbreak shaped into a single poem.

Peace and love, brothers.

Order and Disorder

Apologies for another blog post based entirely on what I'm learning in my course, but understandably it's taking up a lot of my time and imagination right now. Some bits of it I am finding really interesting though. Our seminars in legal method thus far have been based mostly on the concepts of society, order and the definition of law relative to these which proposes some ideas that I myself am really interested in.

What is 'order'? There's a chapter in Critical Introduction to Law which focuses on this. There is an inherent mantra in society that order is good and disorder is bad. We don't question this as such, but what is interesting is that we don't have a real say on what 'order' is, either. Mansell et al use the example of a desert island. If a child is born on a deserted island, it will take the rituals that its parents perform before it as 'the way things should be done'; standard procedure, what is 'acceptable'. Likewise we are born into a society with its ideas of what is right and wrong already laid out, and rarely do we really question these.

The idea of theft was most interesting to me. It seems a fundamental challenge to our 'order' if people go around stealing. Yet, as a premise solely by itself it could be externally deemed just as strange that someone insists on holding onto their personal items. In a communist society, perhaps. But regardless, to an external set of eyes that could feasibly be just as much a challenge to order as someone insisting on taking it. The example of a psychiatrist is used. A girl insists on holding bread in her hand and refuses to let the psychiatrist take it off her when he tries. When he pricks her in the head, she doesn't respond. She's in her own world, untouchable by the psychiatrist. In our society, we accept the role of a psychiatrist as being within his 'role' to do these things, but without that inherent acceptance of 'roles' set in our capitalist society, it could also be seen as just as strange that a man is standing there pricking a little girl and trying to take her bread off her as the little girl refusing to respond. To the girl, even, in her own world this psychiatrist is the fundamental challenge to her order. He is destroying her order.

So what is order? Mansell et al also challenge us to think about how it differs if we refer to order coming out of disorder, rather than disorder coming out of order. They are subjective concepts. Our only basis for 'disorder' is that it is breaking up our absolute definition of 'order', but what if we start with a definition of 'disorder' and challenge any concepts of order to come out of that? Does it make a difference?

The idea of roles is interesting. The chapter I read is based largely on societal roles, and how we fit into these and as a result conform to certain aspects of behaviour. This can be extended to refer to class roles. Because I mean, really, we do have certain expectations for the different classes of society. In the 17th century it was still illegal for the poor to eat certain foods, or wear certain clothes. But what would your honest response be if you saw a council-estate teenager dressed solely in Jack Wills? In a microcosm, it's a challenge to your perception of 'order'. Not a great challenge; I doubt you'd be going home to write to the Daily Mail about it (although, I'm sure there are many who would) but it's a challenge nonetheless. Because order and disorder are entirely about perception. To an extent, there are no civilised and uncivilised societies, only different cultures and different perceptions of order and disorder.

Kant refers to the natural 'order' when constructing imperatives. He says that one cannot construct a moral statement, an imperative, if when universalised it would impose a threat to the natural order. So for a very long time this idea of 'order' and 'disorder' has existed. Society's interpretations of what it means have not always been constant, but the perception of 'order', or indeed 'law' being this organic, ubiquitous material is an age-old idea. But the challenge is, maybe there are no primary elements to 'order' at all. Maybe it's all subjective. From an external perspective, any concept that we have drawn to the idea of 'order' could appear strange, or unusual. We have that enough with looking at different cultures around the world as it is, but if aliens came to visit there's a good change they'd find all of our unchallenged foundations of morality and perceptions of 'order' entirely stupid.

Law upholds 'order'. But order is a relative concept, so law is not this natural, organic element to society that it always seems to be accepted as. Law is dynamic; through common law it shall transgress and transcend with social rhetoric and relative morality. But as it transgresses, it shall be treated as absolute all the same. Like it's always been this way; or always should have been this way. And nobody shall argue with that. Law is 'law'.

What is law?

I haven't written a blog post since I arrived at university so I decided to post the preparation I had to do for my first seminar last week. For those of you who don't know/haven't been stalking me well enough (come on guys) I have moved from home to go to the University of Nottingham and am studying law.

For our first seminar (it's been entirely lectures up to this point) in 'understanding law' we were asked to buy a copy of the previous day's Guardian and read through it, making notes and picking out articles which relate to 'our definition of law'. I hadn't really thought about my definition of law before now, which was totally the point of the exercise. Not many people do think about it. It's such an inherently self-explanatory concept, almost: law is 'law'.

But once I'd thought about it a bit more and wrote this up, I decided that I wholeheartedly agree with what I wrote. My definition was a bit different from everyone else's and if there was a prize for 'student who's most likely to be studying the wrong subject' after the seminar, then I would have undoubtedly won. But at the same point I think my seminar leader was impressed by my definition, if only because it was less generic and more thought out than most.

"Law is the human application of the metaphysical concept of justice; it is the anthropic ruling of the line between perceived ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, pertaining to social and natural moralities. It is society’s interpretation of justice, stretching its inner fibres as far as the collective human eye can decipher. Law is society’s most thorough attempt at delivering the grey in between the black and white of mankind’s ethical codes; acknowledging the division between what is allowable and what is not before affirming this for the rest of society through parliament or the courts. Law is justice without its conceptual case; interpreted into human hands to create a device for order and authority within a population."

Law is fallible. It's complex; it's long-winded. And this is because it's a human application. My definition is very Platonic. I was talking to someone about my definition before seminar and they were all for going all Aristotle on it, rather than Plato. Like I'd ever do that, the Plato-lover I am. But justice is a concept, and law is the human interpretation of it. We're taking a concept from the world of the forms and it's disintegrating with every second it's spending here. It's a shadow of its real self in this material, moving world. It's eroding away in Heraclitus' river.

And for me, that is law. Law is an inherently human thing. It's a translation of justice, almost. Law is putting justice into Google translate and having to assume the answer it gives out is right. It's never perfect; it never will be. We're humans and whenever there is human involvement something is entirely fallible. Only in concept can things be perfect; pure. The downfall of law is that it's human. It will never be the perfect, imposing body it seems to present itself as by definition as a result. Many people treat law as an organic, natural super-entity, but it's not. Justice is. Justice is everlasting and ever-present in this world whether humans are here to put it into application or not. But when it's put into application, it's interpreted as law.

So that's what I think law is. It's one of those things that I didn't necessarily believe entirely when I wrote it; it sort of just flowed out when I was desperately thinking about what to write, pretentiously and overbearingly flowery (the irony of that sentence is not lost on me, don't worry). But now I've read my own words over and over, I believe it more. I believe it entirely. That is what I think law is.

Yours,

a law student.

about our recent hiatus

Harvey is at uni, too busy having rampant alcoholic orgies to write on this humble blog.

Jack is just pretty slovenly

(I might review the new Noel Gallagher album, love from Jack)

The state of Georgia just murdered Troy Davis. Harvey's furious.

Shit's about to get real.

Linguistic Difficulties

I speak English. I know this may be hard to believe by the standard of my writing, but English is my first language. It's a very good language I think. More suited for humour than, say, German (though Monty Python managed to brilliantly navigate around this cultural difference). If you don't like a word there's probably something to replace it that sounds way cooler and there's American English and so on and so forth. We don't have that STUPID-ASS masculine and feminine words thing, or whatever it's called (le/la, der/die/das, you know what I mean....probably). But sometimes I just end up getting a bit stuck.

Another problem for me is of a different nature. Naturally as a man of dashing good looks, supple charm and an enormous peenos I spend a great deal of my time communicating with the womenfolk. Unfortunately, I am also a laid-back(ish), rock-loving stoner and practically every other word I use is "man". How can this be applied to women? They're not men! It doesn't make sense to use the word as a friendly nomenclature because they don't have willies!!!! Yet, without it, there are several gaping holes (not too dissimilar to the reason "man" is not an appropriate word) in my conversation. As you can see this has caused me great pain.

Fuck words. They're all for bastards. I'm going to become a monk and take vow of silence. Not before I help out Harvey's great cause though, because the death penalty is disgusting and barbaric. I did a speech on it as part of my GCSE English coursework and, hell, it was pretty much a standup routine played more for laughs than any serious political reasoning but;

TROY DAVIS

Troy Davis

At the start of Year 12 I embarked on my Extended Project and after deciding to do it on the death penalty my natural step for the next two years was to regularly check the Amnesty international 'death penalty' section on their website as often as I'd check my Facebook notifications.

In this time Amnesty have covered many cases of supposed 'injustice'. I followed their updates on Khristian Oliver, a man convicted almost entirely because at his trial the jury were passed Biblical passages condoning death as retributive action until he was executed in November 2009. Fast forward two years and I've completed my Extended Project and am staunchly anti-death penalty. I oppose it morally, financially and practically. And for the past two years I've been following the case of Troy Davis, a man who has spent the past 19 years of his life on death row for a crime he still maintains he did not commit.

One of the most emotive anti-death penalty arguments is always going to be that hypothetical innocent man executed. But that innocent man is not hypothetical; he is real. This isn't even a case of being against the death penalty as a form of punishment, it's a simple case of injustice. But when capital punishment is involved, that injustice is maximised to the point where come Wednesday an innocent man is going to die at the self-righteous hands of the law.

During my project I've read letters that Troy has written to Amnesty international thanking them for the support he's been given. T-shirts have been produced with the writing 'I am Troy Davis' and masks worn to symbolise the communal and global injustice that is felt at one man's sentence in the state of Georgia, USA. I've seen pictures of campaigners who have visited him and the 560,000 signatures on petitions to commute his death sentence to a life sentence. When I finished my essay on capital punishment, I wrote of how he was undergoing a last ditch appeal to the Supreme Court, generally considered as the last hope in the long-winded stretch of appeals processes for those sentenced to death in the USA. I wrote that in June 2010 Troy had been 'given an opportunity to present new evidence that could prove his innocence' at a hearing in Savannah, Georgia. I wrote that despite persisting doubts that Troy did not commit the crime for which he is set to lose his life, he is still currently on track for execution.

He was convicted solely on the fact that 9 witnesses told a court of law that they had seen him murder police officer Mark MacPhail but 7 of these witnesses have since gone on to retract their testimony, with 'several citing police coercion'. There is no physical evidence linking him to the crime and of the two witnesses who have not retracted their statement, one was an original suspect, with other witnesses claiming it was he who murdered MacPhail. I had a project on the death penalty which spread over 2 years of my life but Troy has a sentence of the death penalty which has already lasted him 19 years of his, before it inevitably takes it away.

One of the arguments in my project against the death penalty was that those convicted essentially serve two sentences; a life imprisonment, followed by an execution. I considered it a breach of human rights to essentially trick justice into giving a man two sentences, when the average time spent on death row in the USA is over 10 years. People spend longer than 20 years there, losing their will to live before it's taken away from them anyway. I've read essays on the 'death row phenomenon' where the awful physical conditions of death row combined with the mental torment of knowing that they're in death's waiting room have caused severe psychological and physical trauma to those sentenced to death. But Troy wants to live. He's battled through all of this and despite the slow death of justice, his will to live struggles onward.

Thousands came out and protested around the world last night against his sentence. Marching to let a man keep his life knowing that justice has been twisted and shaped into a noose. But regardless of how you feel about retribution, how you feel about taking someone's life as a punishment, this is not justice. This is carnage masquerading as justice. This is, to sum everything up, a man who is most likely innocent being killed at the hands of the law. He might be guilty. He might be lying, but there's too much doubt. All the evidence that convicted him in his original trial all that time ago has since disappeared and countering evidence has come to light. His conviction has lost all credibility and the world is about to see what happens when a real miscarriage of justice takes place.

It's not too late. Amnesty international is doing what it can in a last ditch attempt to save the life of an innocent man. This isn’t happening in the ‘third world’; this isn’t happening somewhere obscure where media coverage is lacking. This is happening in the west’s back garden.

Troy is sentenced to be executed on Wednesday 21^st September. His lawyers are fighting and his supporters are fighting. You’re not fighting against justice; you’re fighting for it. Pledge your support for Troy Davis and help save someone’s life today.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/

On The 50p Tax Rate

With David Cameron assuring us "we are spending too much and taxing too little" this time last year, and George Osborne drawing up the Tory party line in crayon from his estate as "we are all in this together", one can't help but feel that the public must be missing something when a tax cut for the rich is planned as a bombastic sequel to massive public sector cuts and unemployment.

To the 300,000 expected job losses in the public sector: your sacrifice is not in vain. We are 'all in this together' and your duty to this country will be repaid through that extra pocket money to the Eton collective of 2011.

England prevails.

I'm not an economist, and I'm sure there are many reasons to empathise with those who are sceptical over just how effective the 50p tax rate is. But I do believe that after winning a country over by convincing us that we are 'living beyond our means' and that we are 'taxing too little', tax cuts for the rich shouldn't score too highly on the government agenda right now.

In a time of austerity and attempts to create a united face against this country's debts, it would be far more reassuring if I could truly trust the government when they say that 'we are all in this together'. A government works on trust and at this time one can't help but question who exactly this 'we' is that they've been referring to. The super-rich, who will not feel the skinning of the public services? Nor even the slight benefits of a tax reduction from their cavernous bank accounts.

As Mikhail Bakunin said :

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

Especially if the People's Stick is hitting some far more than others.

Why University Should Be Free

This isn't actually a blog post on the university fee changes, but more of an ideological argument as to why there should not be any fees for higher education whatsoever. To me, a human being has certain 'rights', and indeed most of these are covered under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Under Article 26 it is defined that each human being should have a 'right to education'.

Now obviously the main argument here is where does the pin fall? You wouldn't find many people disagreeing that free schooling should be provided to anyone up to 16, or 18, but there is a lot more debate over university level qualifications. To me, these are still a right. Just because not every human being will get the grades to go to university, or indeed have the desire to follow that path, does not mean that an entirely level playing field for every citizen to get to university should not be provided. Just because you choose not to exercise your right to go to university does not remove the fact that you had the right in the first place. And what we have to recognise is that tax based systems do not actually pay for certainties; they pay for opportunities.

Just because you choose not to exercise your right to remain silent, does not mean that the right did not exist. Just because you choose not to exercise your right to use the NHS does not mean that you should be exempt from paying towards it. Law is all about what citizens are offered, not what they are guaranteed. Because really you cannot force an individual to do anything, so all that is ultimately possible is to provide them the opportunities and the support to exercise their right when the chance so arises.

For me personally every citizen has certain definable 'rights' which should be free, because if you have to pay towards them you don't have 'rights'; you have a shopping list. One must accept that under a capitalist society inequality is unbreachable, unemployment is infallible and poverty is unconquerable. So even if university fees were just a few hundred pounds it will still be clearly disadvantaging poorer students unequally. Because when you're talking about money, £100 in the hands of a poor family is worth so much more than in a rich one; this goes without saying. Essentially it's the same idea as inflation. That £100 has a far inflated value in the poorer family in the same way that the figure would have been worth so much more in the 1980s compared to now.

Obviously 'free' is a very loose term to use, considering nothing is really 'free'. These rights would be paid for by taxes, so the money is still going in. But when something is paid for by taxes it just means that every citizen is 'buying in' to these rights. So maybe either way it's like a shopping list, but when every citizen is obligated to contribute towards the maintaining and support of an opportunity such as university accessibility it becomes a right. It becomes a right because they've already paid for it. It becomes a right because they've all got an equal footing in it. A 'right' is absolute, and thus absolutely affecting equally. A right is a concept, and Plato would tell us that concepts do not waver. They do not change. And for something to be constant, it must provide equality; you can't give someone slightly less of a right than another because a right is an absolute term. It reminds me of an argument I was having on 'justice' earlier in the week. One cannot have 'tough justice', messrs Clegg, Miliband and Cameron, because 'justice' is absolute. Justice does not waver and one cannot order justice in larger portions. Justice only comes in one portion, because it's a concept just like a right. So for these concepts to follow their very meaning, and definition, it's necessary that these portions are offered entirely equally.

Now, I'm sure there are those of you who would say that every citizen already does pay towards university fees, which is true. But when a price is put on a right at its access point it is not a right. True equality of opportunity can never be guaranteed unless there is equality at the access point, because people will always look at a figure and be deterred. Every student when looking at the fees for university goes 'wow, that's a lot'. And even though they understand just how these are paid for over time, it's still a deterring factor just from the emotive dynamism that is created initially. It doesn't feel like a right when one knows that one is paying £3,300 a year towards it and the remnances of this 'right' will be lingering alongside them under the alias of 'debt' until they are in their 30s. A debt is a reminder that one owes something. That from choosing to exercise the right to higher education, they are indebted to society. It's a punishment. It's a constant reminder almost to tell them off; to say they were wrong to go to university. And sure the repayment schemes are very generous, but if it's still £7 a week off your wages that's still society slapping you in the face and taking your money to remind you of your terrible past. That terrible past where you decided to aim for something; to educate yourself. You selfish motherfucker.

And that's the stench of capitalism. But I believe free university fees would work within this towards a far more equal society. A right is free and it is unwavering. It is equal and constant. When one has to pay towards rights at their point of access, then the original right is being undermined: the right to life. Because you're not being given a right to live; you're being given a loan to live - to be born and to pay towards what should be offered equally to begin with. And that's not a right; that's a debt. Your entire life is lived to be repaid; and your breaths a further bite into the overdraft.

Yes, that recurring anti-capitalist sentiment to close off.

Why don't more people appreciate America's sweethearts, the Grateful Dead?

Essentially the be all and end all of music is that classic rock is awesome and if any band picked up a guitar between about 1965 and 1975 they were probably really fucking great and even if they weren't, so what, The Rolling Stones were tearing shit up.

I first heard of the Grateful Dead a couple of years ago when I decided that there was no finer genre than psychedelic rock. Seeking out the trippy sounds of the Dead I raided my dad's CD collection for American Beauty and stuck it on the stereo expecting to be blown away by the mindblowing far-out psych rock nonsense. Then they played a load of snoozy country shit and I listened to some other band instead.

Of course, American Beauty is the Dead's finest studio album. Everyone knows this. Workingman's Dead might be a contender if about a quarter of it wasn't by-numbers rustic bullshit. In fact, all their '70s albums are good. Anthem Of the Sun, their second record, is an enjoyable one but a messy one (REAL PSYCH ROCK), and I'm not even going to attempt to spell the name of the one that came after that. There are some good albums, but none as good as American Beauty, a masterclass in songcraft that holds Box Of Rain, Sugar Magnolia, Ripple, Candyman, Truckin' and various other earth-shaking classics.

Herein lines the dichotomy of listening to the Grateful Dead's enormous body of work; there are two different bands and neither are perfect.

LIVE DEAD: The Grateful Dead in a live setting were a wondrous spectacle, jamming out their rootsy hippy rock for many hours at a time with seriously kickass instrumental dynamics, not least the fantastic playing of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. At least, this was the case throughout their earlier career; in later years they had a tendency to turn even the most fantastic composition into dull, meandering crap. And believe me, they had a lot of fantastic compositions; their live arsenal of songs was always incredible. Unfortunately, a few years on the road and it turned out that everyone in the band was an absolutely fucking AWFUL singer, apart from Jerry himself, and even his voice was paper-thin. Seriously, sitting through a live vocal by Phil Lesh makes me want to tear my dick off and mail it to him in an explosives-filled envelope.

Best records: Europe '72, Fillmore West 1969 boxset, Grateful Dead (1971, partly studio), Live/Dead (1969), Reckoning (1981)

Note: On some "live albums" there are studio overdubs, especially of vocals. This is good, as you DO NOT want to hear the Dead sing in "harmony" (lol) most of the time.

STUDIO DEAD: People overlook what a wonderful group of songwriters the band were. Get together every Garcia/Hunter original, all the Weir/Barlow songs, the various other combos within the group, and that is a hell of a lot of FINE ASS jams. Not actual jams, though, because the Dead saw no point in trying to emulate their instrumental-crazy live show on record, instead crafting tight and accessible song-based things for the most part. In the late 1970s, however, tight and accessible started to mean DISCO and that is why every Dead record from Shakedown Street onwards are worthless pieces of shit.

Best Records: American Beauty (1970), Workingman's Dead (1970), Wake Of The Flood (1973), Grateful Dead From the Mars Hotel (1974), Anthem Of The Sun (1968)

Note: Blues For Allah can fuck off. If I wanted to listen to Steely Dan, I'd ram a breadknife through my head.

Basically you're best off with Europe '72, because it combines the epic rawk jamz of the Dead at their live peak with the countless wonderful songs of the Dead at their studio peak AND, because they overdubbed the vocals, they don't suck! Looky here; some Dead songs that kick ass;


Ripple (a beautiful track that makes me want to both laugh and cry)
Dark Star (the ultimate Dead jam)
Wharf Rat (more jamzxxxx)
Tennessee Jed (fun hicky BS, good harmonies!)
Sugaree (from Jerry's first solo record, great song)
Candyman (there's an even more kickass version on the expanded edition of American Beauty)
Stella Blue (intense jam)
Uncle John's Band (absolutely lovely and fantastic...just listen when the instruments all drop out)

in short the Grateful Dead are sikkkkkkkkk and better than you.

A Middle Class White Boy on the State of Hip Hop

Nas said in 2006 that hip hop is dead. He's right, in many senses. You have people like Drake and Lil Wayne making masses of money when they can't even rap. Somewhere along the line people forgot that flow was pivotal to rapping and everyone believes Kanye West when he says he's 'the voice of a generation' because he's the best available. Soulja Boy is actually allowed to release music and be successful to the utter confusion and derision of the grounded souls amongst us. Eminem has spent the last 10 years being a parody of his early brilliant self and spends more of his time speaking in stupid voices than thinking about what he's actually writing down. That said in the few times he actually puts the effort in you can tell he's far and above the rest of the rappers out there at the moment, see his collaboration with Drake, Kanye and Lil Wayne for this juxtaposition (Em starts at 4.57)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOEvBlNI-wc

He is the one redeeming feature of this song and it sums up what hip hop needs right now really. Kanye's been alright; The College Dropout is a great album but he's always been a better producer than rapper; the Dre of his generation, perhaps.

And talking about Dre, his latest album is a bit of an embarrassment to his earlier (also brilliant) self. The production as always is great, but 'I Need a Doctor' is basically 5 minutes of Eminem sucking Dre's dick and I'll be honest, the novelty's worn off that - he's been doing that since 'What's the Difference' in 2001. The way I see it we have another score of rappers coming out now and Odd Future seem to be leading the way with Tyler the Creator at the forefront. Again, the production's brilliant but his rapping lacks flow. Not as much as so many of the other half-arsed 90s imitations out there, but still enough for me to have not regained faith in 'the game' as of yet. Earl Sweatshirt, also of Odd Future, seems like some pretty good stuff but they're still all conforming to the mantra that flow is no longer important in hip hop, in rapping and that's just a stupid trend which needs to be countered.

Hopsin goes some of the way to doing this. I like Hopsin, his flow (as all of his Youtube videos will have comments suggesting) is exactly like a young Eminem. It's refreshing. Ill Mind of Hopsin 4 is great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bULBnef6w6k&NR=1

But he has way too many half-rhymes and the production is lacking on his released material still. I'd like to see him team up with some good production and see what he's capable of. He's definitely refreshing though, against the stream of shite which is being churned out through the rusty cogs of 'the game', once with people like Dre, Pac and Biggie at the helm and now with Kanye sitting in there staring in the mirror at himself while everything goes to shit around him. The better rappers out there are now sidelined and even brilliant rappers like Nas struggle to get the attention that Soulja Boy could get by recording a shitty song about a sex manoeuvre in his own bedroom.

The golden 90s are gone and there's a worrying mantra around hip hop at the moment. When Lil Wayne is allowed to make music you know that everything's messed up and inverted. The better are getting older and their apprentices are all twats. It probably started with 50 Cent. When such a great rapper as Eminem signs 50 Cent to be his apprentice you know that shit's messed up.

I'll end with my favourite hip hop put down of all time. As much as I love Tupac, what 'you claim to be a playa but I fucked your wife' from Hit 'Em Up has in magnitude is usurped by the sheer genuine comedic value and skill of Masta Ace in his rhymes to Boogieman.

'You that little fish that I catch and throw back

Oh, and by the way - give 50 Cent his flow back.'

Attempting to write a blog about my A Level results without sounding like an arrogant cunt

I'm off to do a law degree, it seems.

Yes, a law degree. I've been told many times it's not very 'me', and I totally empathise when people tell me that. I'm fairly sure I'll be the only socialist on the course, and I'm sceptical about the proportion of hip hop fans in law postgrads.

But fuck you, I'm doing it.

I considered that maybe I'm doing a law degree just because it was the most pretentious thing I could study. Not only that, but I'm planning to be involved in human rights, rather than just greasing the capitalist machine and picking up all the masses of money that falls off it in business law. Seriously - it's a very cuntishly self-righteous path I intend on taking, and it's a very capitalist degree for a massive socialist.

I also considered that maybe I'm doing it ironically. Pretty much everything I do is intended ironically, so it seemed a real possibility, even though I wasn't consciously aware of this in my decision making. I still persist in saying that I own a BlackBerry and wear Hollister ironically.

But the truth is I'm just interested in the degree. It's a pretty kick ass degree to have under your belt regardless of your intentions. I pretty much intend on picking up the law degree and then showing my middle finger to the establishment, but I'm sure I'll end up a capitalist swine in the end.

I've been told I should be doing English a lot. My English teacher looked at me in disgust and said he 'thought I'd be doing something useful' when he found out I was going to study law. Then there's philosophy, and politics, or PPE. I enjoy a lot of things really, but I was always most interested in the intellectual aspect of the law degree.

It doesn't mean I want to wear expensive suits and fresh-smelling cologne right from the oily depths of the evil capitalist drone, it just means it's something I'm interested in.

As Bill Hicks once said, it's just a ride. I don't have a lot invested in this ride; I'm not here for the money or the fame or the bitches, (OK, maybe the bitches) but I'm in it to enjoy myself and to do things I'm passionate about doing. By the end of the ride your money will be worth nothing and when you step off the only thing you have left will be the person you left the ride as. God, I love Bill Hicks. I'd feel like becoming a pointless rich lawyer would be sucking Satan's cock, as Bill Hicks again once talked about, although in a different sense. Look it up, it's the best Luciferean oral impression that you will ever experience. Unless of course you're Vanilla Ice and were there to experience it in person.

It's a bit paradoxical and pointless for me to have written an entire blog post with nothing but the worried assurance that I'm not nothing but a money-hungry dick, but fuck it - it wouldn't be one of my blog posts if you didn't leave with that familiar taste of regret that spawns from that final full stop like a woman giving birth and finding out that she's got a fucking ugly baby.

That was an awful analogy; I'm going to go make some food.

Why The Rioters Are Right

Now that I've caught your attention with that extreme blog title, I'm going to go ahead and clarify that I don't actually believe that the rioters are right at all - it was just a shameless ploy to grab your attention. Because the last thing you want to read is a self-righteous blog pointing out for everyone to see that the rioters are, in fact, wrong. Great job, voice of morality. Now go ahead and point out to us why rape is not actually the way to go, and racism is becoming that little bit too lame.

That's not how I roll.

But I do believe I am one of those lefties being pigeon-holed as 'defending the rioters'. I can't defend their actions; it should go without saying that they are doing entirely immoral things, creating havoc for not much reason at all.

But that doesn't mean the actions don't have a cause.

Here's where the determinist element of this blog is going to stick out. I don't believe in free will. I believe that all actions have a cause. Sure, the cause is probably too long-winded and complex for humans to ever understand to the extent that they can predict actions, but that doesn't make it not true.

When we make a decision, it is our character which makes it. Now our character is an abstract idea built from birth by external forces. Society, genetics, family. From the moment you're born society will impress ideas onto you. The things you experience; the situation you grow up in. The events you witness. These all build your character. Sometimes it's obvious how certain things have developed our character, and other times we won't see it at all. But the causes are there.

We're all in the giant conga line of Cause and Effect; it's just a question of whether we trudge along, or dance.

That's a quote. From me. Aren't I great? But that's how I feel. Human actions are subject to cause and effect just like everything else in the universe. Knowing this, you can be free. Other than that freedom is a fantasy idea. Freedom is accepting that you're not free. I really am master of the paradoxes today, aren't I?

How does this relate to the riots? Well naturally these actions had causes. There's no simple cause. Obviously the death of Duggan may have catalysed the fall of the dominoes, but elsewhere I think the main cause was poverty. It might not be, but regardless there is a cause. Calling these rioters 'scum' in an attempt to dehumanise them is just missing the point. They *are* human. Just like you. They weren't born 'scum'. Society has raised them scum. A lack of equality in society creates a disillusioned working class, some of these will end up less educated, less prone to bow to authority. Not all, of course not. But these people have causes for their actions, no matter how mindless they may seem.

I might not have pinpointed the causes for their actions exactly, but so what? That's not the point of me writing this. I'm not justifying their actions either; they are wrong, pure and simple. But what is without doubt is that they have a cause that is bigger than those who committed these crimes, bigger than your self-righteous 'rioting is wrong' preaching. Fuck it, a lot of these people are probably too stupid to understand the causes to their actions themselves. That doesn't make it not true, and let's face it - they're stupid for a reason.

So don't be self-righteous and expect the Morality Police to come along and give you a golden star for pointing out the painfully obvious 'rioting is wrong'; they're out of gold stars. They've already handed them all out.

So let's end with a recap.

There's no such thing as a stupid person; only stupid actions. When someone acts stupidly don't condemn them for condemnation's sake. Condemn them for justice, to reform but never for condemnation's sake alone. Morality is not self-serving. These riots are despicable, but the rioters are human and there but for the grace of Cause and Effect go you.

Carolina Rain

 

Stopgap post until I write something about drug legalisation.

On Hipsters

I decided to write this before blogging about hipsters got all mainstream.

I never really considered myself a hipster until recently. I don't dress especially hipster, I only own one pair of chinos and while my band shirts are all fairly pretentious, they're pretentious in the sense that you know I only listen to the most critically acclaimed music of all time, rather than because I listen to bands you've never heard of.

That said, I did go to see a friend's band last night at a small, fairly hipster, bar venue in Bristol and hung around with members of the band afterwards.

But that's just how I roll, motherfuckers.

Anyway, hipsters. I'm beginning to think that I'm writing this blog post perhaps as an outlet for my subconscious to reassure myself that I'm not actually hipster, although it's becoming increasingly hard to fight off - one cannot battle against the metaphorical hipster virus as it was, naturally, there inside my body before it got mainstream and I joined it.

I think the thing most hipster about myself is my insufferable persistence in irony. It's got to the stage where I'm genuinely having a bit of an identity crisis as my entire life is lived ironically. It's all very well ironically (honestly) joking about how much 'gash' I am going to get because I'm such a 'lad', but those inverted commas are becoming increasingly less distinct in real life situations. It gets to the point when one jokes about how he loves nothing more than getting bitches to make sandwiches for him so often that he wonders if he really does want that.

Obviously in reality I'm the least laddish person in the world. Not only did I go round my friend's to help her with the washing up a few days ago but my ex-girlfriend also had the background picture on her phone as me making her a sandwich.

This is a bit of a gap-filling blog post because I realised nobody has blogged for nearly a week so I thought I'd step up to the plate (without sandwiches on it) and write this. My hipster friend assures me that hipster jokes are lame now, probably because they're so incredibly mainstream, so I will try my hardest not to leave a closing statement riddled with a hipster-joke essence.

Instead, here's a picture of me rocking up to the first showing of Harry Potter dressed as Darth Maul.

God, that's unbearably ironic. And Darth Maul sure looks fly in those chinos.

A List Of People Who Could (almost) Legitimately Have Sued Noel Gallagher For "Whatever"

...and by extension "Don't Look Back In Anger" as the verse of the former shares the structure of the latter's chorus. Each provide the principal hook of the song.

You'd think Beatles copyists would stick together but no, it seems Rutles/Bonzo Dog Dooh Dah Band hero Neil Innes in 1994 was in no mood to sit down and shoot the shit with Noel Gallagher, Jeff Lynne and the surviving members of Badfinger, so he sued Noel for pinching a little bit of his track "How Sweet To Be An Idiot" for Oasis' wonderful christmas single. I mean MAN, the first line sounds the same then it's all just srs retro Oasis pwnage w/ added orchestra.

If anything, when Noel was writing the song he was probably more worried (and as if he'd give a shit) about the resolute familiarity that any music-listener could well have with the song's descending chord progression. The following songwriters could all have taken issue with the single;

• Robbie Robertson The Band's best and most famous track "The Weight" provides a perfect midpoint to their enchantingly rootsy 1968 debut "Music From Big Pink". After each chorus there's that little instrumental break. Sure the tempo's different but slow it down and you're singing "Whatever"!
• Jerry Garcia I love the Dead. "Friend Of The Devil" is a good bluegrassy yarn. Listen to those chords!
• David Bowie Sure he throws a B in there, but that didn't stop Liam singing "All The Young Dudes" over the coda of numerous live performances of Whatever.
• Ringo Starr I'd like to be under the sea, in an Octopus' Garden in the shade...

 G F#/Dsus4 Em7 Dsus4 Cadd9 Dsus4 G Dsus4

or, if we're talking root notes;

G F# E D C D G D

Which is so simple and regular in popular music that my point of this rather meandering post is that nobody should have been sued for this song.

Still, I doubt Mr Gallagher gives much of a shit about the settlement he made seventeen years ago. Like any sane being he loves The Rutles and hey, at least Neil Innes seems a decent guy and not a mean spirited prick like his erstwhile comedy partner Eric Idle. I mean, The Rutles 2? An opera version of the Life Of Brian? Get to fuck.

The Most Beautiful Passage on Sexual Intercourse in Literature

I'm not talking those half-arsed passages on sex, because when it comes down to it every poem you ever read is about sex. I'm talking about a passage that is explicitly about sex, and dwells on nothing but the ins and outs (pun fully intended, because I'm a fucking funny guy) and an abstract response to it.

It's in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera. Now, not only did this book inspire the album title to one of my favourite albums ever, (Soviet Kitsch, by Regina Spektor) but it also opens by pondering upon the concept of eternal return, and Nietzsche.

Seriously, how fucking swell is that?

But yes, this passage really struck a chord with me. Ultimately it's about the concept of infinity more than sex itself, but regardless I find it magical that the two concepts can actually be intertwined in any sense. Although thinking that, Bright Star by Keats is almost exactly that, in a more pervy fashion; Keats wants to be eternally 'pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast', which is, y'know, cool and stuff. But it's no Kundera. It's a very laddish poem though, credit to him, but wanting to spend eternity with your head in a nice pair of tits isn't quite the highbrow literary prestige Keats earned after the Odes, nor indeed in Kundera's magical passage which I shall show now.

"Darkness attracted him as much as light. He knew that these days turning out the light before making love was considered laughable, and so he always left a small lamp burning over the bed. At the moment he penetrated Sabina, however, he closed his eyes. The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. That darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us. (Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!) And at the moment he felt pleasure suffusing his body, Franz himself disintegrated and dissolved into the infinity of his darkness, himself becoming infinite. But the larger a man grows in his own inner darkness, the more his outer form diminishes. A man with closed eyes is a wreck of a man. Then, Sabina found the sight of Franz distasteful, and to avoid looking at him she too closed her eyes. But for her, darkness did not mean infinity; for her, it meant a disagreement with what she saw, the negation of what was seen, the refusal to see."

Magical, absolutely magical. The idea that infinity can be found really inspired me; I once wrote a poem about how to be free and infinite is just to close one's eyes. But it's truly beautiful. It's translated from Czech so Michael Heim probably deserves credit too for the magnificent flow of the sentence beginning 'that darkness was pure, perfect...'; it's poetry in prose. Pure poetry. The only time I've found such poetry in prose is in the beginning of Lolita, by Nabokov, which is simply unrivalled.

This blog post hasn't really been much about sex, so for that I apologise. I guess you could say that it's really just a helpful metaphor to let you know a little more about me:

Pseudo-intellectual, rants about literature and the sex is always underwhelming.

But if you've read this far - here, have a hypothetical cookie. Don't worry, not one I hypothetically baked, because even my hypothetical cookies would no doubt taste like hypothetical shit. Alright, lay off, ok? This is my blog post.

I guess seeing as this was supposedly about sex I should probably end it on a high, but writing this has made me feel pretty good so I'm not going to bother giving you any pleasure out of this and just end it abruptly, with myself satisfied.

Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is prose at its finest. And yes, if you're looking for infinity - just close your eyes!