A Few Minor Issues.

Another year, another truckload of cultural offal consigned to the box marked 'categorically shit'.
You'd think that in the space of a whole year, my worldview might have broadened a little. But then, you would be wrong. DEAD WRONG! HAHAHAHAAAHAAH.a.
It's not so much the hernia-inducing, vein-popping rage such general shit trends induce in me, but more my actual amazement that - like the Emperor and his new clothes - (good comparison there Chris, most EXCELLENT comparison) people fail to realise how high they register on the 'I look like a preening fucking peacock afterbirth' scale, spurred on by cocaine-addled indie fops with roadkill hair and lack of blood circulation to the brain from excessively tight jeans.

Ok so, yeah, so 1.POINTY SHOES - Like some eternal mystery up there with 'if a tree falls in the wood and noone's there to hear it does it make a sound?' or 'why is Kerry Katona's head not stuck on a pike, perpetually danced around by baying crowds?' the question is whispered - 'so... what are pointy shoes actually... you know... for?' I think maybe a brief chronology is in order.
Let's look at past instances of *shudder* pointy shoes:



a)Look at them. Go on. Savour it. 'Rustic Christmas Minstrels'. No wonder the people of the 15th century failed at life. Where are they now? Exactly. That's where wearing needlessly fucked up footwear gets you. Were they alive today, I have the feeling the'd be in some form of dogshit, 3 chord, style over substance band beginning with 'the' and wearing a skinny tie/flatcap/winklepickers/waistcoat in some kind of pathetic 'retro' statement based on an irony they only half-understand while glancing nervously from side to side, hoping that NME might see how well pressed their trousers are.



b) Dear god. I think the less said about this the better. At the very least it reminded me to try my hardest every night before I go to bed not to believe in fairies, in the hope that one might come down with a terminal disease or be eaten by a snake. More on the effects of girls thinking that liking Tinkerbell is cute and appealingly childish on my blood pressure at a later date.

So, to sum up, previous users of the pointy shoe: One is dead, and the other is not real. Well if that's not pathetic, wholesale failure I don't know what is. Then again, merely knowing that they're sported by the dead and the imaginary needn't necessarily be the only reason. There is more. Hitler wore pointy shoes. Probably. Surely the fact you're willingly making yourself look as if you have deformed feet competing for a land speed record and actually associating yourself with footwear that brings to mind extreme fascism, ethnic cleansing, medieval minstrels and sparkly wands is a reason in itself to avoid this cultural abortion. It could be likened to the charmingly ethnic practices of tribespeople stretching their necks with brass rings or swaddling their babies' skulls to make them look like the alien queen. Could. However i'll let them off for the fact that, partly through lack of satisfactory - or any - education in addition to a lack of homely commodities such as mirrors, they don't realise that, in actual fact, their ancient and revered traditions make them look absolutely fucking STUPID. You, however, have no such excuse. Get on it.

Right, 2.-LEOPARD PRINT...

Chomp. Bleurgh.

I'm kinda used to starting off with a peppy raison d'etre with each bile-encrusted nugget of pessimism I spawn here - but I won't. It's late in the day perhaps (and i'm speaking figuratively here, although, as usual, it's literally true as well) to note this, but CHRIST, isn't John Prescott just... an utter failure? Let's clarify things first and foremost though: i'm not speaking of *insert incisive political trivia here* or even, dare I say it, *insert egg-related public tits-up* but just that, well... what an utterly shit bulimic. I mean really, come on. Seeing the wave of blubbering sympathy for his flabby-jowled confession, it made ME want to be sick. On him.

To be honest though, it's not his almost-comical incompetence and penchant for fast cars and being sick that irritates me; nor is it the electrified macaw he continually parades as his wife. No. What annoys me is the uproar of saccharine bullshit from everyone just because he admitted he's bulimic. 'Prescott braves bulimia!' Hooray for little quiver-lipped Johnnykins! SO bwave! Why brave? He gave in to a last ditch charm-offensive to try and sway public opinion? It's not like i'm shocked by the audacity or anything, just massively amused. I mean C'MAAAN, if you're gonna do something, at least do it properly Prezza: jam those pudgy little sausage-digits right down that greasy gullet and do it like a man! Or, more realistically, do it like an alienated 14 year old girl with a warped sense of self-worth, that's the spirit! Chuck yer guts you fat shit!

Look at him though, what a decidedly rubbish bulimic. Failed as a politician, failed as a bloke who tries to throw up to get slim. I just don't see how others miss the HIlarious irony. It's about equivalent to Stalin, with a grave and trembling face, admitting that some nasty girls were shouting names at him and made him drop his ice-lolly, or Genghis Khan whinging to his mum that horsies give him the sniffles. I'd almost give him credit if he managed to lose weight - although maybe he did and I didn't notice, it's a bit of a deck chair thrown off the Titanic scenario - but it's like those people that repeatedly fail at suicide: their failure to top it off in any kind of grand way just proves their reasoning for doing it right all along. I can't help but wish they'd stop dithering about with uncertain methods, cramming dog deworming tablets and passing out in the bath or whatever, or ringing the local council and threatening to 'do something stupid'. That's what these suicide-y types are lacking: forward-thinking decisiveness. Amor fati and all that.