IkoStar

This one’s excellent, I don’t care what they say. This is the sort of song that if you wrote it, you could retire and live off the royalties forever. If you wrote it in the 70s.

Unfortunately, about 3 minutes in, the singy bloke decides that it would be best if he starts fucking about with the tune - which is something I’ve complained about before, but people never learn.
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This one isn’t really a song, but it’s got a spinning dog in the background so like, whatever.

That chick’s sister looks exactly like Nat as well.

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This one isn’t the one that’s about shampoo, but another one from the same record… which is better, in a camp sort of way.

I wrote a thing about Youtube being the new punk in my first ever guest posting, several years ago I think. I didn’t manage to keep the momentum of going with that one though.

I’m actually running three blogs and guest-writing on another one at the moment, and this is the only one that I ever get around to doing for some reason.

Falkirk, Scotland.

Anyway, it recently got number one in OOBJECT’s top 10 greatest elavator ride videos.

YUS!!! Scotland triumphs again. Suck on that ye sugary wee sasanach shites.

This is a picture of Vicky who is excellent in every concievable way. She’s a chanteusse.

She’s in a telephone box - which is also excellent… at least according to the local residents who upon hearing that it was about to be replaced by one of those non-descript modern ones arranged for it to have a preservation order slapped on it - so now it’s a listed building (with a proper plaque and everything) a bit like this:

But instead of a Capability Brown Garden, it has a telephone - which seems like a bit of a bad deal in some ways… until you need a telephone that is, then you’ll wish you’d gone for the phone rather than the landscaping. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

I don’t think Capability (and what kind of name is that?) knew about telephones - had precious little use for them in any case, because what’s the point of a phone if no one else has got one? “Yay, I’m the only one in the world with a phone. That makes me special etc”. Not.

Anyway. This is Vicky talking to someone else who also has a phone.

Though probably not…

Adi who is also (frequently) on the phone - one of those ones that that bloke off Wall Street used to have… What’sisname. Married a Welsh bird. “Ooh, Aye” he’s probably saying. “T’oven”. “Eeh oop Flower” etc. It’s not always easy to make it out, and I wasn’t listening in any case so it’s up to your imagination.

Anyway, that’s my phone-related piece out of the way. I’m in a cafe in Wellington. I can see my car out the window, and if one of those giving-you-a-ticket people come, I’m going to go rushing out and remonstrate with them. I’ve been waiting here all day.

This
is
a
long
gratuitous
list
of
words
to
stop
the
flash
thing
below
fucking
about
with
the
large
size
version.

You need to play these videos at the same time.

You can kindof play these at the same time. If you adjust the volumes and whatnot. Something to do innit.

This is Brocha. I think. He’s from Poland and I follow him on Twitter although I can’t actually understand a single thing he says, because he’s from Poland, and I’m like, not.

But that’s ok. You don’t always have to understand people, and sometimes it’s better that you don’t, but how would you know?

Anyway, he looks like a great bloke - if this photo’s anything to go by.

Some sort of thing with loads of things on it.

“Woo woo woo” they went. “my country has the most billionaires. We win”

“Hurrah. The US of A wins again.”

Reality check people : Living in a country with lots of billionaires doesn’t increase the chances of you becoming one of them.

If you want to live in a country that gives you the best chance of becoming wealthy, you need to live in one that has healthy levels of social spending… countries that invest in education, health and the welfare of their citizens generally.

From www.mydd.com

If you live in Scandanavia, you have a 100% better chance of becoming wealthy than if you live in US.

I feel sorry for US people in some ways. So many people will spend a large part of their lives paying for some billionaires yacht (working the longest hours in the west) and throughout, being one serious illness away from bankrupcy. Their children won’t inherit their house, because they’ll need to borrow against it to pay for their health-care at the end of their lives, because everything’s privatised. Yay billionaires.

People emmigrated from Europe to the US, to get away from chronically unfair social conditions… that they’ve now recreated in the new country to such a severe extent that many people would now be better off if they just went home again.

US policy doesn’t seem to be discussed in terms of empirical evidence or results. Instead it’s endless arguing over the merits of a (limited; prescribed) set of Magic-Formulas, each with their own unassailable systems of internal logic. When the formulas fail (and they do), the answer always seems to be “we aren’t applying them rigourously enough”.

So the answer to failing drug law is “zero-tolerance”, the answer to an intractible military fuckup is a troop-surge, the answer to chronic teenage pregnancy is “more abstinence education”, the answer to an economy destroyed by unregulated corporations is “less regulation”, the answer to a chronic gun crime problem is “more guns”. Tthe reason Bush is a disaster is that he isn’t conservative enough, not because conservative policies always fail.

Everywhere something is fucking up, someone is getting rich and a large proportion of the victims have been conditioned to “believe” that the best way out is to do even more of the thing that’s causing the fuck up. They argue for it tooth and nail. They see it as some sort of moral imperative.

Congratulations, you now have a ruling class.