Isn’t that small-faced Trevor from TMWRNJ?
I read a couple of paras, fuck if I’m reading any more. Life is too precious to waste. I can’t believe that ppl get paid to write fluff b.s. like this, what the fuck is the point of it?
i didn’t read it, i have to admit.
That’s more ROFL than rage. Also Norman Phay OTM.
Seems reasonable.
It is called Comment Is Free.
Do they get paid?
I allowed myself a little “oh fuck, give it up will you” when I saw this thread title but that article is one of the greatest pieces of rhetorical contortionism I’ve ever seen.
thread title kind of announces how played my shit is, no?
We should rename the ILM Guardian thread “Alexis On Fire”. See?
Do people get paid for this then? I thought it’s just some blog thing. Is that dude a guardian writing kind of person??
I don’t know! I just figured “appears in the guardian” = “got paid for it”.
a good proportion of the comments see through the yellowed cack haze of the article
That’s more ROFL than rage
Yes.
I think its very easy to pick on Girls Aloud as representative of this kind of musical pap, but the truth is that bland inoffensive music has been around at least as long as The Beatles (I want to hold your hand, anybody?).
he won a blogging contest, among cif regulars.
£30 per 100 words for Comment Is Free, I believe. Don’t quote me on that tho.
cif regulars
lol acronym having ilx resonance
haha CIF ME IM FURRY
£30 per 100 words for Comment Is Free, I believe. Don’t quote me on that tho.
— Dom Passantino
£30 for a hundred words is not bad.
So... £30 for 100 words. He wrote 746, meaning he got paid £223.80 for that. At current exchange rate that’s $441.65, meaning our Ciaran could buy 8,833 kisses from an anthropomorphic fox with his gains.
isn’t “xyzzy” an ilxor?
seasiderock OTM!
£30 per 100 words?? Can anybody write for this then? As evidently they don’t have to go through a very rigorous screening process for retards.
He practically used the sentence “this is how Nazi Germany started” at one point, I liked that bit
it was like “this is how Nazi Germany started...
.. and i like it!”
Hahaha I got to the Nazi bit and went “yeah, don’t need to finish this”.
Don’t stop reading at the Nazi bit! You then miss the crap Hongroid musicology and why a lack of harmonic progression is indicative of our collective disinterest in politics.
OH MY GOD
He totally wrote that on a dare. He must have. I refuse to believe that was a sincere piece of writing.
One way to tell if a song has an interesting harmony is to listen for the bass. If the bassline sounds dull and formulaic, chances are the harmony is too.
NO ONE SAYS SHIT LIKE THIS SERIOUSLY.
Someone just did, Dan *shakes head sadly*.
Overall, it’s a flawed argument—most younger people couldn’t give a toss about the *party* politics that make up the meat and two veg of UK politics (and political coverage; there’s a lot of whinypaws about why people don’t pay attention to the labours of self-important journalists) because the “adults” operate in a climate of dishonesty and quangoes while pushing fear and removing our rights, they know voting for an MP once every five years won’t solve it, and they’ve seen that their opinion counting for something is not remotely proven.
AN Other Guardian columnist of my acquaintance (female, many of you boys haaaate her) reckons most of our more famous leftish pop stars are just plain crap at being left-wing.
isn’t “xyzzy” an ilxor?
— urghonomic (gffcnn...), January 2nd, 2007. (later)
Julio.
AN Other Guardian columnist of my acquaintance (female, many of you boys haaaate her) reckons most of our more famous leftish pop stars are just plain crap at being left-wing.
That’s something of a truism really, isn’t it?
No credit for drumming in Gay Dad?
somewhere, a long time ago, there might have been the germ of an interesting idea there. might have been. but it would take a very talented writer with some serious musicological skills to tease it out and make it work.
as it stands, that’s utter drivel and i really can’t believe a) the dude is happy for it to be printed with his grinning mugshot at the top, and b) nobody said, at any point during the editing process, “hang on, this is absolute guffology of the most nonsensical sort”.
i mean, i spent 30m this afternoon desperately trying to find some way of filling a fucking great hole on the arts page. BUT THIS IS THE FUCKING WEB AND YOU DON’T HAVE THAT PROBLEM, DUDES.
anyway. as someone said upthread: life’s too short, innit?
[still angry]
i tell you: the sooner everybody, and that includes my own employers, realises that the way to win back readers and carve out a glorious new future in the Digital Age (tm) is BY CONSITENTLY CARRYING WELL-WRITTEN, INFORMED, INTELLIGENT, ENTERTAINING WRITING and not BY SETTING UP STUPID FUCKING “BLOG” SITES DREAMED UP BY PEOPLE WHO WOULDN’T KNOW A PROPER “BLOG” IF IT BIT THEM ON THE ARSE, WRITTEN BY SUBLITERATE ARSEHOLES WHO OTHERWISE COULDN’T GET A JOB WRITING A FUCKING RAFFLE TICKET, the better we’ll all be.
i thank you.
Ah, don’t worry, there are a few editors I can have *words* with about this on my return to LDN. Today I’m off to try my luck at interviewing the US’ first Muslim congressman for the same rag, in’shallah and (more to the point) press officers willing.
There might be a better pop’n’politics piece in the new Edgy Style Mag—not by me—in about a week, if y’all can be bothered...
Oh, sweet, you finally got thru to Ellison? How many other journo-types did you have beat down to get access?
xpost: well, it can’t be any worse! keep us posted ;)
BY CONSITENTLY CARRYING
er, and learning to type. and proof-read. [blushes. but only slightly. it’s cold in this office and my fingers aren’t working well.]
The woman in charge of Comment Is Free wrote this dreary we-don’t-need-no-editors we-can-talk-directly-to-the-masses piece once. I pointed out that no editors results in drivel like this article; I was shouted down by baying masses of commenters going “HAHA we d0n’t n33d ediors now, their in the past and we can deciiidd for ourselfs what is the good article”
Kingfish, they just called back and I’ve got my time and everything—there are obviously tons of press crawling over this story and I’ve been chasing it the whole time I’ve been home for the hols. I’ve also got a bit of time tomorrow by the look of things. This is going to be: So. Much. Fun.
Simon, if I do this successfully there might well be a bit of room for me on CiF (easy money if you can actually write and turn in a flawless first draft, yes to both here) and I’ll make sure to bump the idiots off (I’ve written feminist/sociopolitical stuff for ESM for years) since this piece I’m working on is a great break for me.
Hee: “Here’s what my Internet-fearing editors have failed to understand: I don’t want to talk to you; I want to talk at you. A column is not my attempt to engage in a conversation with you.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein2jan02,0,3287162.column?coll=la-opinion-columnists
Talk about insecurity.
LordSummerisle
Comment No. 360124
January
!!!
What does that landowning folkie tosspot know about pop music?
I can’t believe Abba outsold The Shadows in 77.
Also, the comments are more netertaining than the article. I wonder if the Comment is Free contributors are encouraged to be “controversial” and the money is really for attracting comments rather than, erm, whatever people are usually paid for.
I haven’t heard Girls Aloud, but being a manufactured band didn’t stop The Monkees being exhilarating, or the artistes in “The Commitments” or the 70s TV series “Rock Follies”.
Is it time for a Rock Follies revival?
Is he in love or something? Sheesh!
she’s awful. he’s awful. she’s so bad.
Lily emerged oven-ready into a lazy record industry
UH
“half post-Asbo text-message abbreviations”
ONLY ASBO KIDS USE TXTSPK
Nah, he means ‘post-Asbo’ as in postmodern. The world has changed since the dawn of the Asbo. It’s the end of history.
next year marks the 10th anniversary of the ASBO. perhaps there will be a boxset
Is this Paul Flynn the South Wales Labour MP and Goldie Lookin Chain cheerleader? I’m not being funny, I could see him writing this
“Paul Flynn is a contributing editor at the fashion magazines iD, Pop and the gay monthly, Attitude. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Sunday Times, Sunday Express and the Observer Music Monthly.
Other key interests include gay culture, reality TV, slick politicians, pop music, the new working classes, soap opera, Manchester and street fashion. Last year he wrote the Big Brother book for Transworld and is currently writing a book about how Hoxton happened. He lives in the east end of London with his partner, also Paul, who runs the trends consultancy agency Vandal Insights.”
i think suzie knows him
The article linked to is patronising bollocks! Sack the writer! Even PEW could write a better article than that. (ok maybe not)
i like her, but not THAT much
lol ‘Alfie’ video
Also, wtf @ “the new working classes”, as in let’s choose only the right WC people in order to push some kind of bullshit cultural ideology & also continue to prop up some kinda in-media closed-shop wrt the shit that gets the push & the dicks who do the pushing? (rave, snort, roar etc)
New working class: people who have their parents pay their rent yet still complain about being “soooooo pooooooor”
i love zoe williams & think she is doing god’s work at the moment, idk if people still disagree or
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/07/cutting-disabled-ill-people-benefits
that article is amazing—such a jarring contrast to the tim montgomerie bullshit next to it. and yeah zoe williams has been on fire for a while now.
i always find it odd how the ilxors who are usually all over the guardian thread like white on rice getting enraged about the light-hearted flippant articles are conspicuously absent whenever there’s a powerful, brilliantly written one like this.
Vote Liberal Democrat.
I think the main news section of the Guardian is having an amazing, banner year, maybe it’s just better when there’s a Tory government in and it can really rail against something?
I agree with the broad thrust of Zoe Williams’ argument there but the conclusion that it will lead to couples separating strikes me as spurious as best, kind of the miror image of when right-wing columnists talked about benefits for single mothers “incentivising” teenagers to have babies.
... which is of course what the Guardian urged us all to do in the last election! (xp)
don’t think anyone ever particularly criticised the news in the guardian.
tbh I think that article’s kinda par for the course for ZW; stuff like her Nadine Dorries interview was v well written, incredibly level & persuasively, damningly reinforced with the concrete of research and wonkish policy knowledge—she’s v clear & v readable.
I can see what you mean, Matt, re: separation, but I sorta feel like illustrating that it would be the only way to maintain a current standard of living is enough, w/the idea that were people not to move out, which they mightn’t, then they’ll instead be dealing w/a huge decrease in quality of living. & the guy talking to dignitas is illuminating re: what the prospect of these changes means like ‘on the ground’ right now, etc. but yeah fair point.
tbh, & as a remorseful ‘tactical’ lib-dem voter at the last election myself (sorry guys, i punch myself in the crotch every morning in search of absolution), I think the guardian is somewhat insulated from having endorsed the lib dems—iirc the thrust of the editorial was that, had they faith in the power of voting w/one’s conscience, they would encourage ppl to vote LD on account of the kinda ‘game changing’ nature of their display, but they encouraged anti-tory tactical voting, so usually labour, above all else, instead, pragmatically.
Hard to blame anyone for not wanting to vote Labour in the last election tbh
ty, that’s kind
this isn’t the main news section, it’s the comment section which people love to hate so much
and yeah i can’t think of many people who were enthusiastic about voting labour in 2009 (or indeed would be now)—i voted labour then but had voted LD in the past so i’m not gonna condemn anyone
but i should be (literally) condemned
I don’t think people can really be blamed for having voted LD when it wasn’t explicit what they were going to do next! I mean I know people will say “well what did you expect from a Liberal!?” but they didn’t exactly tell everyone they were going to get in bed with the Tories
feel like an effective learning process, one which would remind the electorate not to vote LD in future, would be a two-pronged strategy of paying close attention to their dismal governmental activity, & also executing a bunch of their voters at random, myself included if my number comes out of the hat
but yeah i really did not expect this. i remember, I think i have said this on ilx before, reading an off-hand mention in a david remnick book to a stereotype of the british being ‘the only people capable of harbouring schadenfraude toward themselves’, & it totally sums up how i feel about the LDs; the satisfaction I have in sight is in their crashing & burning as a result of things getting much worse
Surprisingly few self-identified LDs* seem to be doing that though! But I can’t believe they were all on board for this, it feels more like some form of cognitive-dissonance
*As opposed to people who just voted for them because they thought they were the best option at the time—they seem a lot more apologetic about it
do you think? I thought their support had really plummeted—I mean I’m obviously surprised that there are ~any~ LDs who haven’t jumped ship but I thought it was pretty drastic nonetheless. def hard to believe.
i don’t really feel like the LDs had many options—it wasn’t even a gamble going into coalition, it was being caught b/w a rock and a hard place. coalition w/labour wasn’t gonna happen. rejecting a role in govt goes against the whole point of being in politics (and you couldn’t have guaranteed that the chance would arise again—coalition is entirely down to a mathematical fluke, a few seats either way and everything changes). but of course everything that’s happened to them since going into coalition has been entirely predictable, including losing the AV vote which was really their #1 goal of being in govt.
Their support has definitely plummeted yes but I mean more the people who are quite aligned with their party rather than “oh I voted xyz”—may be really wrong about this as basing it a bit on personal experience and people I work with also
support has plummeted but there are still loyal LDs—i talked to a party activist at their conference, very much to the left of the party, who was instinctively repelled by what the coalition is doing to the NHS, but—because she’s a lib dem and this is how they think!—was still all “well...maybe...we should give it a chance! maybe...it won’t be so bad”
I think that now they’ve got that little bit of power coursing through their veins, the Lib Dems would probably agree to the reintroduction of the slavery just so they could enjoy the feeling of power for a little longer—and that goes for the Simon Hughes’s too not just the Danny Alexanders. I imagine they will be shortly twisting themselves into all sorts of shapes over Europe... Labour is now being talked about as the The Pro-Europe Party!
but—because she’s a lib dem and this is how they think!—was still all “well...maybe...we should give it a chance! maybe...it won’t be so bad”
― degas-dirty monet (lex pretend),
Cognitive-Dissonance! and the dangers of identifying too strongly with any label.
TBH I reckon Europe’s the only issue left that could conceivably break the coalition, although Cameron would need to be put under an enormous amount of pressure from the diehard Eurosceptics for that to happen.
Tories would break it, yes. Not the Lib Dems, they’ll go along with anything.
Doubt that—Clegg has surely got one eye on future career, now that electoral reform is dead in the water Europe is probably the one issue he truly cares about. But he’d need to be stretched to breaking point and Cameron isn’t showing any intention of doing that right now.
Future career in a new party perhaps?
Going back to Zoe Williams, I’d say this is pretty much spot-on:
They present something jaw-dropping, encounter a wave of disgust, then row back from the brink of awfulness by 30% (George Osborne probably has a little rowing-backwards calculator, which multiplies the strength of the public backlash by the amount he doesn’t care). We all throw back our heads in relief, yelling a lusty “Thank goodness! You only have to work two days a week when you have terminal cancer, and not five!”, and “Children in poverty won’t have to pay commission on their parental support!”. The mood has been assuaged; the saving made. It’s genius, really, because even as I’m describing it, that doesn’t dent my susceptibility.
It’s an old Blair trick actually, except then at the point of rowing back Brown would present himself as the dude with the oars.
it’s an old, old trick. Thatcher’s government in the 80s were certainly adept, Heseltine’s “we’re gonna shut all the mines...hooray! we saved 5 percent of the mines!” was masterly for example
Nostalgia has reached critical mass and will shortly implode.
The “bring back the Routemaster” crowd has been supplanted by the “bring back exploding Bendy Busses” crowd. My head hurts and I need to have a lie-down.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/11/bendy-buses-london-boris-johnson
i never thought there was anything wrong with bendy buses!
Well, apart from their tendency to explode and their tendancy to become entangled when two of them attempt to go through the same narrow Stoke Newington intersection at the same time... once people discovered they were essentially free, people fell in love with them and TFL fell out of love with them.
the only times i’ve witnessed buses getting tangled up in each other to the point of actual accident, all involved were double deckers! my actual experiences with bendy buses were all unproblematic; i felt there was a slight tendency to ascribe bendy bus accidents to inherent faults in the design whereas double decker/routemaster accidents were one-offs. obv i don’t know what it was like for cyclists, but preston’s point about bendy buses being better for the infirm rings true.
They’re better for the infirm if they can actually get a seat... which normally one can’t because you’d have to batter your way through all the ppl crowded by the doors.
ah, but which is the funnest to pronounce?
I say root-master, you say rowt-master, let’s call the whole thing off.
more: bendybus vs double-decker bus
yes, no, yes, no, maybe, yes, christ no, yes, no, no
Starting bottom left going clockwise?
yes, no
G2 will remain, but Friday’s Film & Music supplement will be merged with its features section
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/16/guardian-redesign?newsfeed=true
Oh well I guess I won’t be buying the Guardian on Friday either. I know there already is huge discrepancies between the internet coverage and the paper version—the year end albums list was not on Friday’s paper—but I and others do actually spend the weekend reading the paper version :(
I stopped buying the Thurday edition when the dropped the science and technology section, think Friday’s will be going too.
i don’t read g2 or any of the weekday supplements. they are by far the worst thing about the paper.
they should replace them with that column in money on saturday where they get insurance companies to send complaining readers £150 and some flowers. i love that.
who is the sufjan guy (pictured)
ty, writing fanmail
Music
Morrissey and me
How an ordinary Asian fell in love with the Smiths
tbf the really racist stuff happens in his solo career
He needed a new schtick
found some chicken in a Lentil Dopiaza in 1986 and went fully mental