Month: August 2023

We love you?

Reading up on l’affaire Redlands last night sent me back to “We Love You”… I was always fond of Satanic Majesties (a terrific example of the flawed but fascinating classic) from when I first heard it back in 1992, and I was similarly fond of “We Love You”, the attendant single that preceded it, when I finally heard it for the first time several years after that… remember the days when it could take you years to do that sort of thing rather than a few minutes with Youtube’s help? Good times…

Anyway, I’ve always felt since then, too, that it was a far weirder and more unsettling song than I ever saw it getting credit for being. I think many at the time (including the band themselves) viewed their brief psychedelic period as a moment of identity crisis and insincere trend-chasing, and I used to see “We Love You” be dismissed as pseudo-psych fluff. I don’t think it’s actually anything of the sort; starting with the sound effects of a jail door being locked (reference to the infamous drug bust), then going into Nicky Hopkins hammering out a thoroughly ominous piano riff, the slightly recessed falsetto vocals (featuring a certain Lennon and McCartney, the former of whom would later slam the song as a knock-off of “All You Need is Love”, and with all due respect, John, it really wasn’t), then Charlie coming in on drums and Brian grinding on a Mellotron that sounds like the tapes are being chewed up inside the machine… “we love you… of course we do,” Jesus, that sounds more like a threat than anything else. All finally collapsing into an Arabesque Mellotron freakout. More sarcastic and sour than this sort of thing tended to be, and I think a lot darker and stranger than it’s given credit for being.

I give you the original promo film:

Also the official lyric video… which has subtitles that differ from the lyrics in the video, so I still don’t know exactly what’s what… it still sounds murky as shit in this stereo mix as the mono single does:

Of course they were, Keith

I can’t find an exact date for this article but it mentions the Stones’ collaboration with that wanker Godard, so it has to be from 1968. Keith should’ve been more worried about Her Majesty’s constabulary landing in his garden, cos that was what they did the previous year when they busted him and Mick for having speed and pot on the premises. Just wondering what else may have been circulating at Redlands that brought on Keith’s more cosmic visitors…

Besmirching Beatrix

Germany: Man smears dog feces on far-right AfD politician

German lawmaker Beatrix von Storch, of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), was smeared with feces during an event, she and police said on Saturday.
Von Storch is the deputy leader of the AfD, which advocates anti-immigration and anti-green policies.
She was attacked on Friday in an event hall in the town of Daun in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
“Yesterday there was another disgusting attack on me [and] the AfD in Rhineland-Palatinate,” von Storch said in a video published on her account on the platform X, more commonly known by its former name Twitter.
“We fight with arguments; AfD-haters fight with feces,” she said. “No matter what despicable means they resort to, we will fight unwaveringly and now more decisively for the spiritual and moral renewal of our nation.”

Personally I feel that AfD fight with things like racism and antisemitism more than arguments, but I will give Beatrix one point: trying to get dog shit on her was disgusting. Use your OWN shit, for fuck’s sake. At least put that much effort in if you’re going to weaponise the stuff, don’t be lazy and get your dog to provide…

Dates for your diary

So we finally have a date for the Voice referendum. October 14th. Only six more weeks of this bullshit…

From the front page of today’s SMH site, this irrelevant onion-gobbling cunt surrounded by a bunch of black kids still too young to realise what a piece of shit they’re rallying round. To be honest, I’m a bit surprised we’re actually getting the referendum this year; I presume Albo is striking before the iron gets much colder…

Also, the Trump trial is finally set to start on March 4th, which means it’ll be going on through the 2024 election and the latter process will be even more ridiculous than usual. The date is also, if perhaps unintentionally so, hilarious, in that March 4th apparently used to be the traditional presidential inauguration date until 1933 and some QAnon dickhead a few years ago decided March 4th 2021 would be the day Drumpf was finally declared the actual president after the uprising on January 6. Weird how that didn’t happen…

What’s in the box?

A muddy reveal for mysterious West Point time capsule from 1820s

Staff and students at West Point, the famed US military academy, gathered on Monday for what was supposed to be a historic moment: the opening of a mysterious 1820s time capsule, discovered months ago at the base of a campus monument.
The event was live-streamed, starting with pre-recorded remarks from academy historian Jennifer Voigtschild, inviting the audience to “literally uncover a piece of West Point history”. Cadets were filmed offering their own predictions for what was inside the nearly 200-year-old lead box: an American flag, boots, or maybe a class ring.
But instead, there was mud. […]
The box had been found a few months earlier, during the removal of a bronze statue of war hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Underneath the marble face of the monument the box was discovered, apparently placed there during the completion of the statute in 1829.
“We’re guessing that it’s an artefact, or what we would call today a time capsule, put there when the monument was completed in 1829,” Ms Voigtschild said from stage.
But they were just guessing, she explained, because West Point researchers could find no reference to a box, artefact, time capsule or any other object being placed inside the base of the Kosciuszko statue. And because the box was made of lead, an x-ray of the suspected time capsule showed only some “anomalies” in the interior – taken a sign of something, though no one was sure what.

Oh dear. Somewhere Geraldo Rivera is reading this and having flashbacks to the Al Capone vault. Assuming this was a time capsule (and I feel that assumption may have been the first mistake), then someone in 1829 had a somewhat advanced sense of humour… though I don’t suppose they ever imagined that if their box of mud was discovered, it would be reported on by a British news source so that a guy in Australia could be amused by it…

Friends like this, etc.

One of many things I’ve found while going through a Tumblr archive I’ve downloaded. Evidently a still from a video, and a video that I’m guessing was made for kids and/or adults who never read the Bible… cos the big book is fairly clear about the fact that Paul never even met Jesus, except as a vision on the road to Damascus in which “Jesus” struck him blind for persecuting Christians. That’s some friendship for you…

Punching Nazis properly

This would be almost tragically sad if the stupid bastard didn’t deserve what he got. Basically, this is the (barely) crypto-Nazi incel Nick Fuentes‘ fault, in that he said something on Twitter and someone else drew the French-Israeli MMA fighter Natan Levy’s attention to it, and Levy made a crack about him being built like a chopstick. Which, frankly, is an insult to chopsticks everywhere, they would find the comparison to Nick Fuentes odious, but anyway this guy called Ben jumped into the conversation by offering to fight Natan Levy. And the latter took up the offer. And, well, the fight between Natan and Ben went about as badly for the latter as you might’ve expected… and I can’t feel the least bit sorry for him somehow, he trolled his way into a situation where he was hopelessly out of his depth and thoroughly earned what he got. Personally I just hope Nick Fuentes is aware of the entire situation and boiling with rage at one of his guys being powerfully owned by a Jew…

Also, fuck that shade of orange

Um… speaking as someone in favour of the Indigenous Voice, I’m not sure this is really the best way to sell it, i.e. by presenting it as, frankly, a new layer of bureaucracy… I know they’re trying to counteract the “No” team’s fear-mongering about it and what power it’ll have (and I remain convinced that even the ALP government won’t let it have much actual power), but I don’t know that this is the best way to promote it…