never Miss a beat

HOLD TIGHT, THE MEDIA. I am about to plunge to new depths in the heinous world of “blogging”. I am about to blog about a headline without even READING the article. To be fair, the article is out in tomorrow’s papers so it’s impossible for me to read it yet. I just have to sit here pained for a whole 24 hours baited for the onslaught of aghast facial expressions I will be employing while reading – and I will be reading because I am highly intrigued. Also, I can’t talk to someone else about it because I’m doing London Fashion Week a favour by staying indoors, and currently nobody in my flat is awake so I can’t scream “WTF IS THIS ABOUT THE WORLD HAS GONE TO THE DOGS” etc. So you see, I just have to blog about the headline otherwise I’ll start shouting at my reflection in the oven door, like I’m about to re-sit my driving test or something (“You CAN do this. You CAN drive. Everyone can drive… except you”). Soz.

So, in this morning’s Times is an advert for tomorrow’s Sunday Times. Big headline: “WHY RIHANNA IS THE NEW DIANA” – to the left a picture of Di with crown, to the right a picture of Rihanna with probably more expensive and real crown. Sell: “Camille Paglia reveals the STARTLING SIMILARITIES between the singer and the late princess”. H’oh boy, “startling similarities”. I am doing major eye roll.

Admittedly, some similarities immediately spring to mind:

1. Rihanna is pretty/Diana was pretty – both highly photogenic individuals, photographed often, Rihanna mostly naked and suggestive, Diana mostly clothed up to the eyeballs and demure but still totally PILF (Princess I’d…)

2. Rihanna is rich/Diana was rich – money, money, money in  a rich man’s world, Rihanna’s a gift from label pimp Jay-Z, Diana’s in the name of Prince Charles, patriarchal dollar. Except to Rihanna’s credit she does seem to earn hers, even if her hours:fee ratio may suggest she’s on less than minimum wage and is the hardest working entertainment vehicle since Shamu the whale.

3. Rihanna is “tortured”/Diana was “tortured” – Diana and Rihanna are both female victims of oppressive regimes (/promotional schedules). Both also have troubled relationships – Rihanna embroiled in an ongoing physical and mental nightmare of abuse and court hearings, Diana ensconced in an unhappy marriage which ended in a divorce settlement.

4. Rihanna had a plane/Diana had… her boyfriend’s yacht? Here endeth the similarities.

My guess is that this theory on how “Rihanna is the new Diana” (it even rhymes!) will pan out via similarities 1-3 establishing a direct correlation between the two ‘princesses’ (‘pop royalty’ versus ‘actual royalty’). Henceforth will come a moral lesson on how we are all responsible for Rihanna as we were with Diana (yep, still rhymes). The conclusion will go something like: “Let’s do something before RiRi dies, and Candle In The Wind is Number 1 again for weeks on end and Elton John has to hire a nanny!”

Thing is, I have had excellent fun with this “Rihanna is the new Diana” headline. For example, the rhyming (already mentioned twice) is divine. Also here are some excellent puns/jokes:

1. PON DI REPLAY

2. Take A Bow/Curtsy

3. You Di One

4. Shine Bright Like A Di-mond

5. We Found Love In A Hopeless PALACE

6. (Oh Dia-na-na) What’s My Name? (clue: it’s DIANA)

7. Shut Up And D… no, that’s bad taste

But here is why this theory (that I have not read yet) is probably nonsense:

1. Rihanna and Diana may seem similar in their ultimately doomed aspirations to become princesses but look closer and you’ll find they started in very different places. The Spencer clan, for example, is one of Britain’s most illustrious aristocratic families (I ripped that off Wikipedia). The Fentys of Barbados, however, consisted of a drug dealer father and an abused mother. The need to escape unfortunate circumstances seems more pertinent in Rihanna’s upbringing and suggests somewhat different motivations.

2. Rihanna makes pop songs, dominates the charts and promotes various products, including a recent clothing line for River Island and HTC phones. But no product is bigger than the overall product: Rihanna, on sale 24/7. Diana attracted public attention due to her activities as a member of a real Royal family and mother to a potential King. She may have been party to an ever more superficial Royal Family, available on mugs and teatowels, but in essence she was predominantly a person of public interest.

3. Prince Charles is many things, but he’s probably not Chris Brown. (Though has anyone seen them in a room together? The plot thickens)

4. Instagram: Rihanna willingly promotes intrusion into her life on Twitter and Instagram because she lives in a new age where privacy is less precious to some. The activities of the driver fleeing the paps in Paris the night Diana died would suggest that Di was less up for the level of intrusion into her own private world. (Out of interest: if Diana were alive today would she employ a ghostwriter to handle her own Twitter account or would she be live-tweeting Newsnight too? Who knows?!).

5. Princess Diana rarely, if ever, had long hair. Rihanna has had a host of different hairstyles. And tattoos. We know Rihanna has tattoos because we can see all of her. Also, Princess Diana was only Princess of Wales. According to Coldplay, Rihanna is Princess of all of CHINA. In all seriousness, Rihanna is not the new Diana because look at Rihanna, now look at Kate Middleton… ah yes, they are both women. Moving on.

The person who wrote this article is probably way smarter than me and must have books on shelves that people can buy and maybe tomorrow’s piece will say something vastly enlightening and I will regret this (I won’t though I’m still laughing at “Oh Dia-na-na What’s My Name?”). The point is, Rihanna is NOT Diana. She is not the People’s Princess because she is just the People (and on the cover of People, quite often). We don’t always have to make women look like tragic heroines or damsels in distress just because they aspire to succeed. To move away from the headline of the article I haven’t read yet, I guess I’m just bored of constantly being forced to consider the problem with Rihanna. Whether or not we want to focus on the apparent distress of Rihanna’s personal life, we could focus on the fact that Rihanna is dominating pop right now. She is top of her field. Yes, she could put on some more clothes now and then. Of course, it would be amazing if she posed on the cover of Vogue in a full three-piece suit from Saville Row. Absolutely, she might not want to record songs with Chris Brown and parade about in front of the media with him just begging to be psycho-analysed. But ultimately, Rihanna, for me, is someone who makes loud, irresistible club tunes. I can’t be bothered with her baggage and what she does at 3am. I can’t help her. I don’t even know her. I’ve bought her music so I can escape my own baggage. (Incidentally, Diana, I cared about even less, because she didn’t even make loud, irresistible club tunes, or own a single thing I could afford to buy.)

I choose not to theorise that Rihanna is some hounded beauty powerless to stop the chaos of the circus around her. I choose not to posit her as “the world’s most complicated popstar”. What’s certainly true is that Rihanna is the world’s most “famous” famous person yet. What’s complicated about her is us. How, given our unprecedented levels of access to Rihanna, we feel about her. We enjoy Rihanna’s prime while also knowing the extent of the damage it’s doing to her. I am only invested in Rihanna: the pop star. And I can see where this Rihanna is the new Diana theory is going. It’s going to try and make me feel guilty for raving to We Found Love in a field last summer while turning a blind eye to the context of the song in the event that, perhaps one day, Rihanna might heaven forbid meet her tragic demise. Well, if I knew Rihanna I would sit her down, I would force her to take a holiday, I would tell her to spend some time with herself. But I can’t. I don’t know her. And here’s the rub with all the Rihanna theorists: I don’t really want to. 

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Whether for or against, people are obsessed with this phrase ‘guitar music’. When is ‘guitar music’ coming back? When is it in common parlance/ASDA? When’s it due a good spanking? Does it need its nappy changing? When’s it going to fucking grow up? BLOODY HELL ‘GUITAR MUSIC’, STOP WANKING TO BON JOVI WITH THE DOOR LOCKED AND COME AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL FOR ONCE FFS. The idea is that ‘Guitar music’ is everyone’s least well-behaved child. It’s so embarrassing, it hardly ever does anything right. And more often than not it’s a very, very naughty boy.

Apparently the phrase ‘guitar music’ has shown up unannounced again, like Sharon in EastEnders – familiar to those who knew it before, unfamiliar and dodgy-looking to those too young to remember Oasis or Bob Dylan (who are dead alike both with their guitars and their music). Young’uns are getting excited about a load of new music (What?! You people are doing WHAT?!) and it’s so completely dull because it’s just loadsa 6-stringed instruments played in variously totally versatile ways and it’s not as good as it was in someone else’s day and inevitably the music press are going to call it ‘the return of guitar music’. HOW PREDICTABLE.

Well I for one am confused. I’m in the music press and I’m stuck because of this term ‘guitar music’. What is it about? Hard-Fi? Simon & Garfunkel? Santana? Megadeth? The Soup Dragons? Who even invented the phrase ‘guitar music’? Sometimes I think, “COR, I really want to listen to some of that there ‘guitar music’” but then I get stuck choosing between The Breeders’ ‘Safari’ (Kim Deal, such a Dame of grunge), Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Fly Away’ (SEXY AXE SOLOS IN YER FACE), Everything Everything’s ‘Final Form’ (angular, raging, EXPLOSIVE) and Joni Mitchell’s ‘This Flight Tonight’ (*tumbleweed*). So similar yet so absolutely not remotely the same in any sense whatsoever. Sometimes I get really bemused listening to Hurts because according to the Philosophy Of Indie by Dr Creation there should be guitars there and I’m listening closely but, like… I can’t hear them. I mean, they’re two white guys in a band from Manchester so what’s going on there? Then I’ll put on ‘It’s All About The Bejamins’ by Puff Daddy and there’s a riff. Must be some sort of weird human beatbox. Diddy doesn’t own guitars. Don’t even get me started on Primal Scream’s ‘Screamdelica’. Who do they think they are with their keyboards and their beats? The Chemical Brothers?!

Forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious here but ‘guitar’ is not a genre, it’s an instrument. I wonder if they had this problem in Mozart’s day. Was it all “Flute music is SO HOT right now” and “Fuck that violin shit, man”? Mmm probably not. The whole idea of ‘guitar music’ is a construct employed by people who want to a) take a break from thinking, and worse b) batter others’ enthusiasm for a tune.

Let’s fast-forward to 2013 as an example. New bands such as Palma Violets and Haim and Merchandise and Savages (there are others, this is merely an example) are spoken of in the same sentence. “This enthusiasm, this sudden collection must be so intentional,” think the ‘guitar music’ chatterers. Two are a load of boys and two are a load of girls. Is that the uniting theme? Guitars + Music + Girls who like Boys who like girls who meet boys, etc? Nah, chill out grandad.

[Chilli from Palma Violets. Yeah but it’s well boring because it’s a guitar/bass/stringed thing.]

They’re just a collective of upcoming bands who encompass a feeling of mindless invincibility. They’re young, they’re talented, they’re characters, they look amazing and they’re having the time of their lives (well, Jehnny from Savages maybe less so #indiejokes). That’s the uniting theme. The anthems. The bangers. The moment when you go, MAN that feels good, I’m going to lose my mind tonight. Frankly, it’s not about the guitars. Fuck the guitars. I don’t care if the instruments are kazoos found in old cereal boxes. This is about a feeling. Most music is about a feeling. It seems silly to bottle that. To lump this lot in with “guitar music” is to call them the same as, say, The National; phenomenal musicians who make gut-wrenchingly beautiful music, but who come up slightly short when you’re 14 and looking for something with more thrills than, well, anything by The National. Because what else is there? Maths and acne. If I was 14 now, I’d have that one off Peace plastered all over my wall, I’d dress exactly like Haim, and I’d quote Girls verbatim all day. Irritating yeah? But music is allowed to be fun. Especially when you’re 14.

[Oh look another indie boy. Kinda looks like Nicky Wire BUT it’s actually total babe Harry from Peace]

Without naming names I have read some criticism for the enthusiasm displayed towards these bands. It’s been marked out as an agenda to resurrect the flawed construct known as ‘guitar music’. And it makes me laugh. HAHAHA getting excited about a song isn’t an attempt to hatch some plan (though it can often feel like a tiny revolution). To think that young people are trying to learn new slang, decide what posters to put on their walls, understand what makes a bong, straighten their hair, wear jeans properly and once that’s all done re-create the year 1992… Who has the time? Who was alive in 1992? (I was, but it wasn’t my time). The reason Palmas and Haim and Merchandise and Peace and Beastcoast and Child Of Lov and Drenge and Wolf Alice and CHVRCHES (where’s the guitar on ‘The Mother We Share’ again?) all sound great on my iPod isn’t because of any thought process other than, Jeffing heck yes. THIS. So how should we define this new, exciting music? Who knows? Who really cares? Should we just give it all a silly name: Retro-rock. Old-wave. The Soundcloud Revolution. Shrooma… oh wait, that’s been done. It’s a bunch of bands that have nothing to tie them together except for the fact that they make you feel immortal. It’s fine not to like them and go back to watching Top Gear while listening to The Clash. But don’t cheapen a new generation and deny them their chance to one day go, “Yeah but it was better in my day,” with a similar level of malaise and nostalgia. 

So what it sounds like Mozza.

10magazine:

It can hardly have escaped your notice that the music press is in trouble. Circulation figures of rock and pop magazines are tumbling, especially the NME. One theory is they’ve lost readers to blogs and websites. Another, slightly more alarming theory is that music journalism is,…

Justin Timberlake has released his new single, his first in six years. Apparently he has been working on a new album secretly since June (not exactly the two year secret operation of David Bowie but still… covert). That will be called “The 20/20 Experience”. Y’know like Dolland & Atchison. Or Specsavers. Here is the song “Suit & Tie”, which presumably was part of the experience of going to the optician in Prohibition era New York when you had to wear penguin suits all day to conceal heavy artillery. http://countdown.justintimberlake.com/

There are good things about “Suit & Tie”. There are bad things about “Suit & Tie”.

1. It’s called “Suit & Tie”

Pro: This harks back to the smart, Rat Pack obsessed JT. Slick. Easy. Cool. Never out of fashion.

Con: This harks back to Michael Buble, very popular among women of a certain age, but limited in terms of dance moves (Buble’s body-popping skills are quite pedestrian) and street cred. Also: it sounds like an Armani jingle. Goodbye McDonalds “I’m Lovin’ It” adverts, HELLO Marks & Sparks “As long as I’ve got my suit and tie” special January offer.

2. It features horns

Pro: Parp parp parp. Everyone loves a parp. Ghostface, OutKast, Sinatra… all the dons love da horns (that nearly rhymes).

Con: Super Mario 64 also loves horns. When you complete a level. PARP.

3. Timbaland back on production

Pro: IT’S TIMBO. One of the main perpetrators of new age hip-hop and r&b. Missy Elliot colleague and all round major genius.

Con: Timbaland went off the boil around the same time Missy Elliot went off the boil. TIMBER!

4. It picks up where I’m Bringing Sexy Back left off

Pro: I’m Bringing Sexy Back was a very weird comeback single and a challenging sound. Once you listened to it a few times it felt exciting and nuanced and sort of sophisticated. 

Con: This doesn’t sound exciting and nuanced and sort of sophisticated. It sounds like it wants to be those things. Rather than channeling the bravado (and ridiculousness) of “I’m Bringing Sexy Back”, Justin seems to be saying “Yo yo whattup, I just bought MySpace, homies. Yeah I still got it”. He does “still got it”. For now… *sideways glance at Brad Pitt in the Chanel No 5 adverts*.

5. “Shit’s so sick I got a hit and picked up a habit”

Pro: This is not a drug reference. It’s Justin Timberlake’s way with words. He was before Drake’s time. Move over, YOLO.

Con: Perhaps it’s about time JT stopped trying to keep up with the kids (“Going out so hot/Just like an oven”) because there’s probably something more heavyweight he could get down with lyrically in order to be the great singer-songwriter he always wants to be when you see those videos of him sitting at pianos (Elton John, basically).

6. Jay-Z features

Pro: He is the jiggaman. He is the black Sinatra. He is 100% Jay-Z, 100% of the time. 

Con: This just reminds you of great Jay-Z songs that do the whole “this is a classy jam” vibe, ie, ‘Girls Girls Girls’ and ‘Excuse Me Miss’. Both those songs succeed in being classy jams because they’re toned down, subtle, controlled. Justin Timberlake always sounds like the Disneyfied version of that. Because he is the Disneyfied version of that.

Anyway, I kinda like it. So will GQ. (I have really bad eyesight)

[This was written before Julie Burchill happened. In Julie Burchill’s case, it’s good to take five]

It’s been a long week so I’m just going to say something quick and obvious. Well, I say obvious. Maybe it’s not.

Today a journalist left Twitter which is a shame because a) she was lovely and humble on Twitter, b) she tweeted about house music at approx 11pm which is usually the time I play bangers by Frankie Knuckles, SL2 and Capella (all I really listen to is a CD called The All Time Greatest Hits Of Dance 2) and it was nice to share that and 3) she was good at explaining Newsnight and Question Time – TV programmes that are so inaccessible to me they regularly convince me I have severe learning disabilities.

Any road, she left. She left because of what seems to have become a common consequence of being a journalist employed to write opinion. Constant harassment by dissenters, which escalated following several BRILLIANT pieces of journalism she’d written earlier this week. Now I often feel put off by the whole Troll Online Complaints Committee – people constantly and disproportionately going on about being trolled like they can’t just either tweet back “FUCK YOU”, or ignore it, shut the computer down and take a walk. As a child of a generation reared on the internet where irrational insults would be flung across chatrooms “for the LOLs” I view all online harassment as the activity of 12-year-old hormonal mimsies and therefore think it invalid. Because I once was a 12-year-old hormonal mimsy on peer-2-peer networks, illegally downloading Limp Bizkit albums while batting off reams of made-up swear words with lots of “Your mum”s. Really I think every journalist who is harassed online should just do a blanket “YOUR MUM” and it’d be sorted. “YOU RACIST, BIGOT, PRIVALLEGED (w’evs) UGLY CUNT, HOW DID YOU GET YOUR JOB LOL?”. Well frankly, YER MA. 

But I’m missing the point by focusing on how I feel other people should deal with trolling/harassment because 1) I don’t have a column in a national newspaper that’s open to criticism by tens of thousands of people, this ‘Tumblr’ bullshit is read by approx 5 people (apart from that one time when it was read by 20 people and I was morphed into some sort of racist just like Hitler by one website that doesn’t get irony…) so I have no idea the level of harassment suffered by Proper Journos, and 2) the damage has been done so my thoughts are redundant. Journalists are voting about the situation already… with their feet. As this one journalist’s behaviour today proves, sometimes writers feel the only way forward is to no longer be part of a particular forum or conversation. Which is a pure shite-ing shame.

The whole notion of “free debate” has regressed because nothing anyone says can ever be right now. Nothing. Even if meant entirely uncontroversially, with good will, a desire to change or inspire people’s perspectives and a basic thirst for speaking up, NOTHING you say is ever completely right. And it HAS to be right, it can’t just be, like, a work in progress. It has to be totally convinced of its own correctness. In fact, a mere “Hello” is potentially wrong. You should probably not start conversations with “Hello” now in case it’s the wrong language or the wrong time of day or said in the wrong tone or… somehow someway inappropriate. Really why should anyone say anything at all if someone will always inevitably find fault with it? Is that what we’re saying? Amazingly, telling people to STFU has become a very important aspect of freedom of speech. The freedom to disable someone else’s speech by speaking louder and more crassly than them. But loud and crass can never be right. Just infuriatingly worthless.

Because EVERYTHING the commentariat says HAS to be completely 100% right now and pass the test of being non-challenging (challenging is NEVER a good thing), it’s a wonder why any opinion journalist would ever consider saying anything again. Maybe it was always like this but we just didn’t know back when it took a bit more effort to harangue people, back before the world could quietly lie with a keyboard in bed and ruin someone’s day from hundreds of miles away. Who knows. But I’ve seen some journos chatting about being “brave enough” to write about something, presumably debating whether it’s worth the onslaught of abuse they’ll later have to suffer. That’s cool, I totally romanticise that being a journalist is like being a heroic superhero, fighting adversity, saving the world with expertly crafted words employed in the nick of time. BUT what I deduce from this instance is that journalists are fearful of writing what’s on their mind. Which is fear of expression. Do you know where people have fear of expression? In places where freedom of speech doesn’t bloody exist. If you’re afraid to speak you’re not free, are you? Common sense.

Hounding a journalist so much so that they end up doubled over in paranoia about what they should write in the future, or worse still, silenced from writing in a particular forum ever again has foul consequences for everyone. A journalist’s decision to step away isn’t weakness, it’s exhausting to play David against Goliath every single day. There’s of course a degree of responsibility that comes with having your own weekly soapbox but a soapbox is designed to be a launchpad for fair and balanced discussion, food for thought and further debate. It’s a soapbox, not a place for public execution. And no columnist ever elected themselves Spokesperson Of The World, responsible for representing every single person’s stance on everything and liable to punishment if they don’t fulfil that role. Making those people fearful of standing up, silencing them is not winning. Without a conversation starter, without a thought or contribution, there is no longer a discussion. Similarly, battering someone who has already spoken with abuse kills discussion. Talk it through like adults. There are debates to be had about the use of language in the media. Let’s have them. Learn how to debate again. Do you want to go through life like it’s one massive boring dinner date? Because I don’t. I don’t want to live in a quiet world.

 

 

This is a list of things I’d like to be removed from Twitter in 2013. Together we can work to make the virtual world a better place y’all.

1. TROLLED BECOME TROLLS

The latest understanding of “troll” that I have: someone who tries to provoke a person they’re jealous of online to get a hard-on. If you’re being trolled that sucks. BUT STOP TWEETING ABOUT HOW YOU GET TROLLED. “Oh I hate how my trolls think it’s freedom of speech to make me read their troll-y trollings”/”someone is trolling at me”/”have you seen my troll” etc. If like me you grew up on peer-to-peer internet chat rooms/Napster you will have been brought into the world hurling abuse at people with names like giggle_star96 who you’ve never met because that’s now an essential part of growing up.  So ask yourself: a) do you have over 200 followers? b) is your twitter avatar something other than an egg? c) are you actively tweeting? d) is this 2012? If you answer ‘yes’ to any of these then we can assume you are being trolled. If it’s getting to be a problem tell someone in real life - a policeman perhaps… or maybe just your mum. Stop with the “I AM VICTIM” tweets. You are actually now trolling everyone else on the planet.

2. SPOILING IT

You are on the internet. People talk on the internet. If pre-internet you didn’t want to know a football result or what happened on last night’s Blind Date you would sit in a darkened room for a day or disconnect your car radio or wear noise-cancelling headphones in the supermarket or walk around blindfolded or not pick up the phone for the weekend… YOU WOULD NOT WALK INTO A PUB WHERE PEOPLE EXIST AND SIT DOWN. So on Twitter, please refrain from #spoilers, ie complaining about people discussing television programmes, results and the plot points of classic novels you should have read by now. It is vital that we discuss these things. That is why we are here.

3. #JUSTSAYIN

Never ever use this hashtag. I’d rather you twitpic’d a photo of yourself pushing your tongue into your chin or a gif of my own mother telling me “I TOLD YOU SO”.

4. TODAY I DID X

I probably don’t know you. I follow you on Twitter because I want information or LOLs or general colour added to my feed. I don’t honestly care about where you’ve been today and whether or not it was nice unless it’s in the public interest and/or absolutely hysterical. Like… if this was a case about privacy and freedom of speech in the European Court Of Human Rights would your activity today be deemed information vital to the people of Britain? Have you, for instance, discovered a way to get even cheaper drinks at Wetherspoons or a child-free meal at Giraffe? Didn’t think so. Please don’t tell me, “Usual Sunday at Wetherspoons followed by General Curry at Giraffe and a run. LOL.” This is not a LOL situation. You are not laughing. I am not laughing.

ALSO. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. PLEASE DO NOT TWEET PICTURES OF YOUR BABIES. Unless your babies are small dogs or cats. If they are small human beings they probably have legal rights protecting them from this shit and they will divorce you in the year 2020.

5. #ASKINGFORAFRIEND

It was once funny, maybe like the first time. It’s not funny anymore. #ASKINGFORME still has life in it… potentially. Retire #ASKINGFORAFRIEND before you don’t have any friends left to ask for. Just sayin’.

6. JOURNALISTS ARGUING ON TWITTER FOR LIKE EVER

This is not Westminster. There is no time for endless to-ing and fro-ing about matters the layman doesn’t really understand. Your intellectualised heated debates about the state of rock music in the 21st century, the future of print media, the relevance of the Mercury Music Prize, etc should be taken outside. Every 25 minutes spent arguing about something like this online with more and more Twitter users is time you could all spend having a gin and tonic in your local staring at each others’ clever faces. Nobody ever started, fought and won a war in 140 characters. Pipe down.

Worse still, having rants at all of Twitter on your own, ie “Do you want to know what I think about my terrible experience at [insert chain restaurant]? here goes…”. Write a blog. Your 20-part Twitter rant on your terrible experience at [insert chain restaurant] is taking up a lot of space. In fact, you are currently filibustering my entire timeline. (Also it’s [insert chain restaurant]… aka great)

7. LIFE SUCKS

Yes life does indeed suck. Twitter is an escape from that. Don’t come here to dump your shit. Stop posting about your real actual feelings or the problems you’re really having in your life. You know when a group of social acquaintances meet up and one person turns up with a glum look on their face and a tale of “woe is me”? You’re THAT person, except you’re talking at people who a) owe you nothing and b) probably have never met you in real life. For more on this, see @uokhun.

8. THE UNEMPLOYED

There is only one tweeter worse that the socially needy… it’s the work needy. It’s tough out there but Twitter can HELP you get a job. When you apply for a job do you tell people how many interviews you’ve ballsed up or how many emails you’ve had ignored this week or how desperately you hate jobseeking? Fake it till you make it, twitbluds. (I can’t believe I just wrote ‘twitbluds’. Can we please also ban sticking the word ‘twit’ in front of everything? It will be the end of Twitter. Twitanic, if you like)

9. PRIVATE JOKES/MAKING ARRANGEMENTS

There’s a lot of private jokes on public forums. This is why the DM exists and chatrooms and physical spaces like houses where kettles live and kitchen tables and sofas that your friends can sit on. Ditto making social plans with the people in your real life on Twitter (this also applies to the Facebook ‘wall’). Not on my timeline. NB: Hello real life friends. Please think twice before tweeting at me to tell me I’m late for my date at the second table at the window in the Regent Street branch of Itsu. Text me instead. You have my number.

10. PEDANTS

Iam so fastt at tyoing sometimes s I make a mistke. I know I’ve made a mistake. There was a time when I’d delete a tweet and rewrite it correctly. Then I realised this is the behaviour of a nonce. So when you tweet “It’s HomeLand. I can’t believe you call yourself a professional journalist. RT @eve_barlow “It’s Homekand time!” look at who you’ve become. What are you trying to achieve you lonely little weirdo?

I’m not going to post a link to this on Twitter because the only thing I hate more than these Twitter faux pas is people posting links on Twitter to blogs about how not to use Twitter. Actually I did link to this on Twitter didn’t I? Oh resolutions…

mooonrise-kingdom asked: I like that you like HAIM and they're always in NME, it's snazzy

they’re the greatest

[I was so afraid to put this on the internet so I kept it in my ‘drafts’ because I’m a paranoid jew and now I’m putting it on the internet because Eva Wiseman went first and it’s ok now I think I don’t know oh please help]

So I just had this WACKO dream where I was living in the here and now but (I’ve lost the plot this time) jews had become really popular?! No word of a lie it’s like I woke up and you all want to be two stone heavier, schvitzing over a hob and kvelling nachas at your son’s bar mitzvah (HYFR, Drake). Drunk hipsters are getting bagels from an old Jewish business in the East End where bagel was spelt the Yiddish way (“Beigel”). There’s a restaurant called Mishkin’s that serves the best Jewish food ever but it isn’t Kosher so it’s probably not suitable for the real Mishkin household. The credits role at summer comedy blockbuster Ted and it starts with a jew joke. There are even dreadfully named TV programmes about Jews called Strictly Kosher, Jewish Mum Of The Year, Friday Night Dinner and (wait for it) Two Jews On A Cruise that’s about a pair of Jews going on holiday on a cruise. And get this, ever since Midnight In Paris people decide they like Woody Allen again - there’s even a new New York wunderkind called Lena Dunham allegedly made in his image. There are JEWISH POP STARS who used to work at the Jewish Chronicle like Jessie Ware… and the hippest new band from LA are a trio of Jewish sisters (SHALOM, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF) called… Haim! All Jews together! My kopf, I tell you.

[NEXT SEASON’S URBAN OUTFITTERS MODELS]

It’s like I shut my eyes and was transported back to the ’80s when (so I’ve been told) people used to wear Stars of David (as in ‘people in H&M’, not the ‘chosen people’) around their necks as a fashion symbol. Suddenly we’re on top again. Freckled, slightly inflated, really frizzy jews are back in the game. This is happening. It’s like purple coming back into fashion or Kickers shoes or BOY London t-shirts. Jews are trending. The Arab Spring is out, keffiyehs have stopped selling, Gypsys never really took off and thus the passage of time has collided with a window of opportunity. IT’S #JEWBILATION…

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The news is so hard. Psychopaths are on the loose, greed is destroying economies, poverty is rife, people are disgruntled, politicians are lacking, confidence is depleted and things you thought were safe often turn out to be monstrous. All bad news. But not hard news. Not for me anyway. We’ve become accustomed to a culture of paranoia, negativity and dour reporting. It’s par for the course when you switch on the TV in the morning. Like any rational human being I process the information, more often than not I have a reasoned opinion and then I’ll move on out the door. But today the news is so hard because it makes me totally irrational.

I gather that when most people read updates on news in the Middle East they react one of three ways:

1. Soooo far away/sooooo not my problem/oh no the cat’s done a wee on the carpet again gtg; OR

2. HOT HELL THIS IS THE START OF WW3/RELIGION IS THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL AND CAN SUCK MY BALLS; OR

3. I wish I knew what was happening but it’s just soooooo complicated/Is Hamas related to Hezbollah?/Is ‘Palestine’ still a thing?/‘Cholla’ is just the type of bread they eat, right?/What does all of this have to do with the plot of Homeland… 

I, however, don’t follow this pattern because I have this hangover as regards anything Israel related. I don’t know quite where the hangover started or if these effects are really worth whatever made me this way in the first place… but whenever Israel is reported in the news I feel edgy, vulnerable and hot. I know I should try and rationalise the situation, weigh up the scenario, see all the angles but everything I think or say or feel is usually panicked, wrong and senseless. Basically every time there is a story about Israel in the media I go completely insane.

I have grown up impregnated with a loyalty to Israel. At times it makes me deeply uncomfortable. At other times it can make me proud. Sometimes I’m just a bit chin-strokey. I speak Hebrew. I visit the country. My mum volunteered out there, living on a kibbutz during the Six Day War. My dad trained in a hospital there. I have cousins who serve in the Israeli Defence Forces. If there is a need for more reserves in the Army, my friends will have to go to war. I once knew a boy who took a bus there and wound up murdered by a suicide bomber.

This is my experience of the “problems in the Middle East”. I suppose it’s a consequence of being jewish… to a degree. But I’m not a religious person. It’s more consequential of the frankly SHIT HOT times I’ve had there over the years; the family holidays, the tours I’ve taken with friends, the people I’ve met, the kisses I’ve shared, the raves I’ve endured, the stars I’ve gazed at in the desert in the middle of nowhere, far removed from any ‘normality’. And that’s the problem… it’s all just so personal. It’s like – if I’d grown up on Glastonbury and went every year and was completely ingrained in that culture and then Reading Festival (whom I had zero experience of) wound up embroiled in a complex, highly volatile conflict with Glastonbury I’d mindlessly support the big G just cos. It’s that insane. I recognise my impregnation and I try to will it away. I worry most don’t do the same. In fact, I know they don’t.

It’s my observation that a lot of other people go completely insane too. I’d go as far as to say that all the people in the “diaspora” who engage in the debate go a little bit mad. Some - big up David Aaronovitch - seem to remain totally authoritative. But most don’t. Especially your average person with an interest. My Facebook is currently awash with infographics. They’re all about rockets. How many rockets have been targeted at Israel in x amount of months versus how many attacks Israel have taken out against the Palestinians. Banners are everywhere about the right to defend yourself. Pro-Palestinian posts feature images of dead babies with similar infographics about how many babies have died versus how many rockets Hamas has used. Lots of infographics; whichever side they’re supporting they’re all crass as hell. It’s as though they’re trying to validate one side of the argument or another with “fact”s. Numbers always help. I wish someone would just come out and say it: whichever side you’re on there are no “fact”s to hide behind when your strongest justification is, in fact, a gut instinct. It’s all about FEELINGS. My Facebook feed is really intense right now.

My FEELINGS are this. It’s far too complicated. I will never understand it. Imagine having to be a journalist reporting on the whole thing. Nightmare. People try and convince you that they know. They’ll talk about treaties, territories, 1948, 1972, 1994, 2000, Intafadas, walls, peace processes, Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion, Theodor Herzl… Dana International. But really, they just can’t know everything. I realised this when I was in Jerusalem in 2008 and visited a national park which boasted incredible vantage points over the entire city. Up on this hillside, away from the hustle and bustle of the boiling streets, there was an eerie silence only ever interrupted by the calls of Muslim mosques, Armenian churches and Jewish synagogues. When the calls died down there was utter stillness. The West Bank Wall wrapped its way around the whole city, Palestinian settlements side-by-side with Israeli towns… the feeling of stark calm before an unthinkable storm. And in that moment I decided I wasn’t going to form opinions about the rights and the wrongs any more because I wasn’t the one having to live among that anxiety. In that moment all I cared about was that the places I loved remained and the people brave and committed enough to live there would be safe. In that moment I knew that when it came to Israel and news from the Middle East I would never understand. 

I guess I’d like to justify my leniency towards Israel but the truth cannot be explained: I love it. I would live in Tel Aviv in a heartbeat if it wasn’t far too hard a life. I entertained the idea of being anti-Israel on Wednesday when the headlines went mad just to see what matters looked like from that angle. But it was JUST AS INSANE. The people on my Facebook with all the infographics yesterday have gone back to Instagramming. The ones who are actually in Israel are being heroic. Inviting people into their homes, sharing information on air raid shelters, trying to make it through the night. It’s akin to the New Yorkers on my feed when Hurricane Sandy hit. Exactly the same mentality. All that’s different is the aggressor – for the man in the street any aggressor in the Middle East is as preventable as a natural disaster. The level of animosity to the aggressor is at a basic human reactionary level: unite or fall, survive or die. All that changes is which side of the problem you’re on.

So as far as peace goes… it looks tough. Certainly so long as people can’t separate their minds from their hearts. They say religion and money are the root to all evil. I think maybe it’s LOVE. Some people love Israel, some people love Palestine. Love is bad and love makes us crazy and love is totally without compromise. Love is also the greatest thing the world has to offer. It’s hard to put those feelings to one side.

NB: Writing this blog made me a bit (EXTREMELY) nervous. I don’t know if it makes any sense. Like I said – insane. 

I started writing a book about myself yesterday but then I stopped because I realised it wouldn’t have any Chinese people in it. That’s a problem, right? That my book about myself wouldn’t have any Chinese people in it… Because there are Chinese people in society. And I’m not reflecting that. I am not reflecting the real world where Chinese people exist.

Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I need to take a bigger look at my life and ask WHY EVE… WHY are there no Chinese people in your life?!!! Is it because you are not living in the right environment where you have the ability to meet the biggest cross-section of society and mingle with all different races and ethnicities and minorities, including even the odd person who still likes Downton Abbey? Only then can you write the book about your life and your experience of living because only then will you have the right to comment on the world. But now you are just ignorant of how life’s experienced by EVERY PERSON of EVERY RACE and EVERY ETHNICITY because you do not currently have any Chinese people in your life. When was the last time you knew a Chinese person? Was it really as long ago as University? THINK ABOUT IT. Have you buried a deep-seeded racial prejudice against Chinese people and never noticed until now when you sat down to write your book and realised you couldn’t write it because you couldn’t be the voice of your generation while not knowing everything about every minority?! Didn’t you realise that writing a book about stuff means you’ve elected yourself the most proportionally representational House Of Commons OF THE WORLD?! 

[Note: I’m NOT being racist against Chinese people, I’m just exaggerating shit to illustrate some nonsense that’s been going on regarding criticism of Lena Dunham’s show Girls and its apparent “racist” agenda with it’s lack of casting ‘Women Of Colour’. Don’t get all weird on me now.]

Your Political Correctness hasn’t just gone mad, it’s gone counterproductive, it’s become insulting. Here I am thinking about how to actively not be racist by being hypersensitive about people of other races purely because they are of another race. WTF. When I went to see Rob Delaney on Friday night he joked about multiculturalism. Something about how it would be really weird to actually walk into a pub reflecting the perfect microcosm of society where a white girl, a black dude, a gay Muslim and a transgender Japanese person would be sitting round a booth together all drinking a pint of Stella. That would look a bit… staged. Whereas if the diversity is allowed to just actually happen all by itself it ends up totally random - say three Ukranian women with two black New Yorkers. It was funny. I laughed. I recognised the authenticity of that situation.

Of course, sometimes diversity doesn’t happen or isn’t apparently staring at you in the face because it just is. We don’t need to constantly pat ourselves on the back for living in a multicultural world, we can get on with enjoying it, enjoying being humans together. Because at the end of the day, that’s what we all are - humans. That’s the thing we were trying to progress towards with all this positive discrimination stuff - recognising that we’re all merely the same weird facial expressions, awkward hand gestures and weird knobbly bits on our feet.

But no. We are still going over it. Highlighting our differences and searching for our own “type”s in everything we consume. And because Lena Dunham hasn’t included black people in her TV sitcom she has been actively racist against the black community by denying them a voice in her statement dramedy. As someone who got on the school bus once and was met with the comment “YA DIRTY JEW” I fail to appreciate where the racial slur lies here. Maybe it’s too subtle for me. When I think about all the subtlety of this racist act some more, I begin to realise… I guess I never related to Will Smith in Fresh Prince Of Bel Air because I was white. I guess I related more to the characters in Skins because it was a salad bowl picture of youth in all its various races, genders and sexualities even though it didn’t have a realistic plot or make any sense to me whatsoever. I guess I only ever related to Monica Geller in Friends because she was the only girl that was Jew-ish. WRONG. I related to Phoebe the most because she was  CRAZY. 

[I saw a group of people just like this on Primrose Hill earlier today]

THIS IS ALL TOTAL BULLSHIT. I can’t understand why Lena Dunham writing about what she knows makes her a racist. It’s beyond my comprehension. Surely encouraging someone to write about their life but *hold on make sure you have a token few “WOC”s in there* is a far more discomforting affair. It’s augmenting someone’s experience, altering someone’s reality to make it more reflective of some Platonic multicultural society we desperately want to remind ourselves is working. What’s more, this is an issue that’s existed since television, nay THEATRE began. It sounds to me like the world has seen a prodigal, female, forward-thinking brainbox who has made a cool, relevant sitcom that’s actually saying something about my generation and decided to offload this centuries-old issue upon her in a bid to DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY. Well world, screw you. You don’t deserve Lena Dunham. Or Fresh Prince. Or Star Wars. Or Woody Allen. Or The Godfather. Or Destinys Child. Or even The Flintstones. You deserve Affirmative Action policies to be applied to all TV sitcoms so that they look like United Colours of Benetton adverts. What was that show called? Oh yeah, MTV’s The Real World. “Realistic”.