i'm lovin it
drive up in a cap so noone sees your face
order a synthetic aesthetic then supersize
it's just like the real thing (only slightly more rubbery)
but who cares when it's so lovingly texturised!
blank eyes blank skin blank lips to suck you in
wham bam thankyou ma'am satifaction on demand
assembled in the backroom from reconstitued meat
product placement apes desires fake desires sate real needs
buns with just a bead of sweat to hint at organicity
plastic featureless perfection can only arouse sick in me
if you think you'll find happiness in a box
just don't eat your soul to fill your stomach.
try living like this it's fast and cheap and sleazy
money can't buy you everything but you can try
be warned you'll end up fat and dead of malnutrition
and your wonderful relationship will end in rsi.
Thursday 15 July 2010
Monday 5 July 2010
The Ugliest Thing I've Seen
I was sixteen, and I lived in a one horse town where the horse would kick you in the head if you looked at it funny. And then its owners would come and piss on you for causing the horse distress.
Or so it seemed to me, as a fat buck-toothed young lady with no instinct for camouflage and a knack for getting on chavs’ nerves.
I had just started to enjoy myself, for the first time in my teenage years, as I had met some people who hadn’t gone to my school and so didn’t treat me as the butt of every joke. In fact, they almost treated me as an equal. And with these guys, I’d started to think it was worth coming out of my shell. I cut my hair, got some big boots, and drank illicitly in alleyways. My god, it was fun. Some of the best fun I’ve had actually.
One of the good things about my new friends was that they liked punk and rock. There was a small punk rock venue in my hometown (pop: 200,000, thinking pop: approx 200) which was our destination on Saturday nights after going to the classy establishment of the Bargain Boozer for the obvious. We’d down much of our drinks in the privacy of Back Walk, the street behind it, then take with us as much as we could disguise so as not to have the police or doormen or other killjoys take them off us. On our way to the venue there would be much jumping, playfighting, meeting other people (sometimes the bands, gods know what they made of these 15-16yo drunkards) and eventually queuing up around the block to wait to get in.
Hundreds of people waiting to pack into this room on top of a pub. Their sweat collected on the ceiling and ate away at the plaster, which in accordance with the circle of life fell in fat flakes back down onto the sticky crowds. The floor was an un-rock highly patterned carpet, with occasional black sticky patches like the devil’s loogies that made it noticeably more difficult to get up when you went down. Which you did, often, cos you’d glugged your share of the vodka. Straight from the bottle, in my case, before my system learnt to recognise it and gag. The bands playing I’d hardly heard of beforehand, but some of them I see in HMV now. If that’s not an insulting thing to say about anyone.
Pretty much anyone ‘alternative’ in that city, it seemed, was there. Rows of teenage boys in baggy jeans and black band tshirts (it was the early 00s), girls in stripy tops with tonnes of bead bracelets and baggy jeans. Some of the older ones had dreads or coloured hair: they had special cool points.
And because of the sort of town it was, and Newton’s third law of motion, where there were loads of alt kids – generically called skaters at that point, somewhat inaccurately – there were packs of chav/townie types. Some of them had cars and would drive past slowly yelling stuff out of the windows. Some would throw stuff. And some of them would get hands on.
They got one of the guys I was with. I don’t remember the details; it was a long time ago. I remember:
A group of teenage townies (that’s what we called them: sportswear, hoop earrings, fake tan, expensive trainers, inadequate womb nutrition, difficulty conjugating verbs, anger issues - you know the type) around him. Some guys, some girls. One of the guys punching him.
‘I’m a pacifist.’ He said.
Smack.
‘So you won’t hit him back?’ said one of the girls. Maybe this was impressing her.
Him: ‘No, I don’t believe in it; I’m a pacifist.’
Smack.
Hundreds of people in the queue stood together and pretended they couldn’t see it, glad it wasn’t them.
‘So you’re just going to stand there and let him hit you?’
Smack.
I wanted to go and intervene, but there was only one of me.
‘Come on, hit him.’
Smack.
‘You’re just going to stand there and let him put you in hospital?’
Smack.
I went to go over, but my boyfriend pulled me back.
“It’s not worth it", he said; "they’ll just get you too.”
Smack.
He pulled me with some force, but I could have broken free. I’m not the world’s best fighter but I was angry and at least I’d have done something.
Unlike everyone else who stood there in the queue, like they always did, glad it wasn’t them. United by a dress code and a music style and a lack of spine. Waiting to getting out their anger in the mosh pit on their friends, boasting about their bruises, shutting out the outside world.
I don’t know what happened then. I let him walk me away.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
We came back later and the pacifist was drinking like a fish through his beat up face. Like always.
He’s usually homeless when I see him now, cadging drinks and being the one with the sad mad staring eyes of whichever group he’s in. He’s not a pacifist anymore, I don’t think.
Or so it seemed to me, as a fat buck-toothed young lady with no instinct for camouflage and a knack for getting on chavs’ nerves.
I had just started to enjoy myself, for the first time in my teenage years, as I had met some people who hadn’t gone to my school and so didn’t treat me as the butt of every joke. In fact, they almost treated me as an equal. And with these guys, I’d started to think it was worth coming out of my shell. I cut my hair, got some big boots, and drank illicitly in alleyways. My god, it was fun. Some of the best fun I’ve had actually.
One of the good things about my new friends was that they liked punk and rock. There was a small punk rock venue in my hometown (pop: 200,000, thinking pop: approx 200) which was our destination on Saturday nights after going to the classy establishment of the Bargain Boozer for the obvious. We’d down much of our drinks in the privacy of Back Walk, the street behind it, then take with us as much as we could disguise so as not to have the police or doormen or other killjoys take them off us. On our way to the venue there would be much jumping, playfighting, meeting other people (sometimes the bands, gods know what they made of these 15-16yo drunkards) and eventually queuing up around the block to wait to get in.
Hundreds of people waiting to pack into this room on top of a pub. Their sweat collected on the ceiling and ate away at the plaster, which in accordance with the circle of life fell in fat flakes back down onto the sticky crowds. The floor was an un-rock highly patterned carpet, with occasional black sticky patches like the devil’s loogies that made it noticeably more difficult to get up when you went down. Which you did, often, cos you’d glugged your share of the vodka. Straight from the bottle, in my case, before my system learnt to recognise it and gag. The bands playing I’d hardly heard of beforehand, but some of them I see in HMV now. If that’s not an insulting thing to say about anyone.
Pretty much anyone ‘alternative’ in that city, it seemed, was there. Rows of teenage boys in baggy jeans and black band tshirts (it was the early 00s), girls in stripy tops with tonnes of bead bracelets and baggy jeans. Some of the older ones had dreads or coloured hair: they had special cool points.
And because of the sort of town it was, and Newton’s third law of motion, where there were loads of alt kids – generically called skaters at that point, somewhat inaccurately – there were packs of chav/townie types. Some of them had cars and would drive past slowly yelling stuff out of the windows. Some would throw stuff. And some of them would get hands on.
They got one of the guys I was with. I don’t remember the details; it was a long time ago. I remember:
A group of teenage townies (that’s what we called them: sportswear, hoop earrings, fake tan, expensive trainers, inadequate womb nutrition, difficulty conjugating verbs, anger issues - you know the type) around him. Some guys, some girls. One of the guys punching him.
‘I’m a pacifist.’ He said.
Smack.
‘So you won’t hit him back?’ said one of the girls. Maybe this was impressing her.
Him: ‘No, I don’t believe in it; I’m a pacifist.’
Smack.
Hundreds of people in the queue stood together and pretended they couldn’t see it, glad it wasn’t them.
‘So you’re just going to stand there and let him hit you?’
Smack.
I wanted to go and intervene, but there was only one of me.
‘Come on, hit him.’
Smack.
‘You’re just going to stand there and let him put you in hospital?’
Smack.
I went to go over, but my boyfriend pulled me back.
“It’s not worth it", he said; "they’ll just get you too.”
Smack.
He pulled me with some force, but I could have broken free. I’m not the world’s best fighter but I was angry and at least I’d have done something.
Unlike everyone else who stood there in the queue, like they always did, glad it wasn’t them. United by a dress code and a music style and a lack of spine. Waiting to getting out their anger in the mosh pit on their friends, boasting about their bruises, shutting out the outside world.
I don’t know what happened then. I let him walk me away.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
We came back later and the pacifist was drinking like a fish through his beat up face. Like always.
He’s usually homeless when I see him now, cadging drinks and being the one with the sad mad staring eyes of whichever group he’s in. He’s not a pacifist anymore, I don’t think.
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