[A Calum thread abt Americans which he has already admitted is dishonestly phrased]

disco is kind of a gray area

So?

Wouldn't he be happier if the review went something like "Now, UK chicks - sorry BIRDS - are usually mingers, but that Sarah Nixey? K-ROWR!!! Who cares about the choons, let's get some nekkid pictures of her in here, STAT!"

Precisely.

Finally me and Callum agree on something.

Yeah must be great to know your leader is the butt of every joke in every country ever.

I'm not anti-American - I'm just wondering what the deal is with dumbass ignorant comments such as the one this thread is based around (Kate - I won't argue with someone who, on an anti-war thread, said she didn't think Iraq wanted freedom from Saddam).

Your threads about men you have shagged/ want to shag. are shagging are more sexist than mine deary. I charge you Kate with sexism and objectification of men.

God, I hate The Stone Roses. This thread makes me ashamed to be British.

Men and women are different, but I like the differences a lot.

Scandanavia has Geir...

But who will represent America???!!!

I don't think The Stone Roses were that pleased to be British.

Gay area surely?

Calum: the first sentence of the review says "exports." The Mondays and the Roses were not successfully "exported" to the U.S., though I know the girl who wrote that and as I recall she at least enjoys the latter of them. Barring Radiohead and maybe Craig David, Coldplay are the biggest and most obviously British export to the U.S. The blurb is saying that now that that's the case, perhaps something similar could happen to Black Box Recorder.

It's a stupid and embarrassing blurb but not as stupid or embarrassing as you're making it out to be, and it displays no more lack of understanding of UK music than you chronically show of U.S. music. (Is Calum aware that while he was dancing ridigly to the The Farm and Deacon Blue, we had Galaxie 500 and the Minutemen, and while he was going gaga for Shed Seven and These Animal Men, we had Sonic Youth and the Swirlies?)

you can't pick a review and generalise like this. its worse then the supposedly 'sexist' crap.

you need to buy records calum.

but yeah, baby steps

yeah fuck all this disco/dance shit! ;-)

Anyway, the writing of that article and the use of the word 'matured' annoyed me. Oasis were successfully imported to the States but then its hard for any band (or film or corporation) that isn't American to succeed in America. That's the nature of free trade though I guess. And Sonic Youth are shit.

So there.

Buena Vista Social Clubbahs to thread!

I haven't talked to her on the train/e-mailed her/gone out to lunch with her in quite awhile... 'sides, my girlfriend didn't care much for her first impression of the girl, once she started taking the train with me...

Was that post a horrible lapse in taste on my part, which I'd previously apologized for? Yep.

Was that post due to a serious lack of consideration for those who might find it offensive, when taken out of context -- or perhaps read it entirely the wrong way? Yep.

Was that post due to my ignorance regarding what sort of material is or isn't suitable for this site? Yep.

Will I sit here and "defend my honor" against the clueless, quasi-judgmental accusations of total strangers who don't know me, who refuse to move on beyond an admittedly horrid first impression, and who persist in acting as though I'm the only human being on Planet Earth who's ever made a bad call????

Well, what do YOU think the answer is????

*smiles*

keep storming those gates of perception baby!

*smiles*

(haha mine or yours, Nicole)

Money + sex=universal topics of interest

This is something I wrote back when I was in...9th grade, I think it was. It is truly awful on every single level, but I like it how it paints me as a Momus Mini-Me (I'd never heard of Momus back then, for the record.)

PROFANITY: A STUDY OF AN ESSENTIAL PART OF CULTURE

It seems to me unecesary to explain why profanity can (and should) be uttered, since this explanation seems archaic. Let us face it: in this (yawn) new millenium of pop culture dominance and the art of slang, even the most respectable of New England ladies has felt the urge to utter the "f" word on at least one occasion. In fact, those who do not use profanity seem to me dangerous fellows: for this shows that they favour a nonsensical code of genteel tradition over the expression of feelings. These people are either hopelessly naive or blind to new ideas, and as such I can only applaud the statement of musician Mark Oliver Everett when he claims that "I don’t trust people who don’t use profanity". Censoring such language, meanwhile, is even more appaling, mainly because profanity is simply the expressing of an emotion. You might as well forbid people from laughing or crying.

Thus, it is not the validity of profanity in modern society that concerns me: the concept of profanity (i.e. uttering words that are supposed to shock and sometimes even hurt) is as old as humanity and, if you hear the hissing of snakes or the growling of tigers, even as old as life itself. What interests me is merley the vocabulary that the human race has chosen to express this concept. Over the course of this essay, I will try to clarify the now fuzzy ideas of what exactly we are saying, and the implications that this has for the human race as a whole. For brevitys’ sake, I shall use exclusively the english language as a basis for my musings. However, I encourage the reader to analyze any language that he or she might know, in order to discover the diferences between swearing words in various languages. I myself have done this with German and Portugese, and the results (this I can assure you), say an awful lot about a nations’ people and their mentality.

THE FOUR TYPES OF PROFANITY:
As a rule of thumb, there are four types of profanity: the violent, the religious, the fecal, and (disturbingly, this is by far the biggest category) the sexual. It is the last one that is most intruguing, and it is the one that really pays off studying such a vulgar subject. But studies should be complete, and so I will analyze all four.

1-The violent

This is the least numerous type of profanity, one which has all but died out. In the USA, the insult "son of a gun" (pronounced sonuvagun) is considered old-fashioned and kitsh. Despite this, it does shed a bit of light on Americas’ darker side: after all, what could "son of a gun" mean? Guns naturally do not copulate, and thus one must accept the irky preposition that the weapon is used as a metaphor for the male sexual organ (which does, after all, play a moderately important part in the creation of life), thus bringing this right back to the sexual genre of profanity. Why Americans would compare their sexual organs with weapons might be an interesting question, but it is not my mission to answer (although I suspect Charles Heston could say a thing or two about the subject).

The other example of violent profanity that i have come across is the British term "bloody". Used as an adjective for just about everything, there is a sense of tradition in the usage of this word. After all, who can forget "Bloody Mary"? When one thinks longer about it, the term also conjures up images of death on the battlefield, a concept all too familiar to the ever-war waging British. It is to their credit, though, that they actually use this term in a negative way. At first, violence does not seem like the perfect subject for profanity, but on closer inspection, it is shocking that we haven’t already used it. After all, what could offend a person more than comparing him or her to an atomic bomb or a missile base? But no, this is never done, and that it isn’t just proves how secretly affectionate us humans are to our devices of destruction.

2-The religious

Undeniably popular and yet widely deemed socially acceptable, the religious profanity is easy to understand and yet somehow absurd. It is clear that, for those who believe in the existance of an omnipotent/omnipresent force, the fact that something bad has happened to them will provoke them to call for their God. Thus, "godamnit", "go to hell" and similiar phrases are easily understood. He or she who utters them thinks that he or she has been wronged, and so wants the object (or person, or situation) that has caused this to be punished by divinity. Of course, this is not a concious act: but it takes little brains to see the meaning behind words.

However, this type of profanity has an archaic flavour to it. Today, most people are closet agnostics, and those who still truly believe in a God know better than to think that he will avenge them if they slip on a banana skin or have a flat tire. No one notices, but a word like "godamnit!" is very, very silly: once you actually examine it, you get this image in your head of a fanatical priest from the dark ages screaming "get thee away, Demon! I damn thee for all eternity!". The fact that is it so socially acceptable nodaways is a consequence of two situations. firstly, the ever dwindling number of people that are truly religious (understandably, no one will find it difficult to invoke something which he or she does not believe exists); and the increased shamelessness with which those who do still believe in God think that he is their buttler. With the abundance of sects, it is no longer considered shocking in our subconscious to invoke the name of God in the most trivial situations.

3-The fecal

By far the most understandable type of insult: after all, what could be worse than to be compared to a piece of feces? Feces is that which the human body can’t use, that which it does not need. In the same way, a "shitty" person is unecesary and bothersome.

But, for the most part, fecal profanity is considered childish. After all, you will unlikely find a grown man saying "poopface!" outside of the realm of Adam Sandler movies. Why? Because for children, the release of fecal matter is that which they are most ashamed of. When they grow up, however, they become more ashamed of...

4-The sexual

Here, then, commences the main part of my essay. If you look at the insults that we use, you will find that 80% of them have sexual connoctations. Fuck, fucking, dick, pussy, cockuscker, ad nauseum (and the nauseum kicks in pretty early in this case).

Before we go on, let us again resume that which we have chosen as insults so far: warfare, Hell, that which is considered damnable by God, and fecal matter. All of this is not particularly nice, and thus easily serves as an insult. But what, may I ask, is so bad about sex?

We learn these types of insults at the same time that puberty kicks in (well, actually, we learn them much sooner, but we don’t really know what they mean most of the time). They are considered "naughty", "tasteless", "crude" and (since youth revels in provocation) "cool". As a consequence, sex too is brought into the realm of the forbidden and immoral. I’ve long pondered on this: why these words come up constantly in porn movies; why it is a common turn-on to talk dirty; why using the correct terms for sexual practices will only get you dumb giggling or blank stares from teenagers. Surely, 30 years of sexual awakening should have accomplished more than this?

But alas, it is true: this suposedly enlightened generation that I am a part of still associates the sexual act with profanity. It is engraved deep in our subconcious, and only serious analyzation (without any giggling or complexes) can reveal this. Over the hours that I’ve spent thinking of this, I can only draw one conclusion: our use of profanity is still deeply connected to a sense of puritanism and a shame of an activity which, after all, can be the most beautiful thing in the world.

Let’s start with a basic word here: fuck. The verb "to fuck", as we all know, means "to copulate". But ah, how incredibly misused this term is! Instead of identifying it with love and the creation of life, we identity it with filth, sludge, all that is immoral. "Fuck you!" is what we shout when someone has done us wrong or hurt us in any way. What exactly do we mean by this? Someone has just insulted us, so why the hell would we want to copulate with him or her? We never realize what we’re saying, but the subtext is there. The act of copulation is, to us, an insult. We are all still crazed puritan preachers, deep inside.

So, am I suggesting that we stop using these words? Am I saying that the only way to get rid of our sexual complexes is to erase the words "fuck", "dick", "pussy", "cocksucker" and so on from the popular conciousness? No. Not only because this would be impossible, but also because such a campaign would serve only to deepen the chasm of ignorance. Instead, I urge of you- use these words whenever you feel like it! Use them when you tripp, when your boss is giving you a hard time, when you’ve just missed your bus. Use them to describe the cowardly, the evil,, the dumb and the unsensitive. But try, with all your might, to no longer think of these words in a sexual content. After all, words are just words: fuck might as well be blrg or wagah or whatever. It is the feeling behind these words- what you think of them- that counts.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about "homophobic" insults. The most easily presentable case of this is rapper Eminem, whose constand use of the word "faggot" has made him the favourite target of gay rights associations like GLAD. What they do not understand is that Eminem is only helping them. On his record, "The Marshall Mathers LP", he uses the word "faggot" to describe those who he doesn’t like. He himself has noted that with this, he doesn’t mean homosexuals. It is only the gay rights organizations, with their complexes- their paranoia that someone might think that they are despicable only because they are what they are- that drive back the struggle for society to judge someone by their character, not their sexual preference. In the thoughts of Eminem, "faggot" has long stopped meaning homosexual. In those of the members of GLAD, it still means that. And as long as it is considered taboo to use such words- as long as it is considered despicable and wrong- so long will homosexuality, too, be looked upon as a flaw by most people. After all, if it’s a naughty word, it can’t possibly be moral?

We have (nearly) accomplished it that we no longer think of copulating when we say "fuck", or feces when we say "shit". If enough people use the word "faggot" enough times, and if society puts no restrictions on this- perhaps then, in a few decades, homophobia will have decreased and anyone can call anyone a "faggot", using the word as that which it truly is: a blank term of agression.

Calum??.... anyone??...

you big gay fags