LAND OF THE FREE... FREE TO SHOOT SHIT

Yay, thanks to smelly Republican Supreme Court justices, the ban on handguns in Washington D.C. has finally been lifted. Now I can go and buy back my Smith & Wesson, and finally shoot my fucking neighbour's yappy little dog, because God damnit I'm Amurrrcan, and this is the land of the free. And then I'll shoot the neighbours, too. And then I'll start spelling it neighbors, to make it sound like I'm actually American. Damnit.

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that as an American, you have the right to bear arms. That was originally devised in 1776. At that point, there were Native Americans running around, angry because Europeans had stolen their land, pretty much wiped out their Eastern tribes, or moved them into the wilderness. On or anywhere near the frontier at that point, there were scary snakes and buffalo and shit. Not to mention French, Spanish and British forces. America, at that point, consisted of a fairly small population of people, spread out over quite a lot of land. Thus, they encouraged each landowner, who were all technically militia men, to bear arms (this amendment is NOT the right to arm bears--but that would be so funny). Cool.

Fast forward 232 years, and there is a National Guard. And a state-funded, very powerful army. Defence is something America certainly has. So to claim Americans have a constitutional right to own a gun is severely outdated. Most people who own a gun in America, if they purchased it specifically for defence, would use it to shoot other Americans. Or Mexicans. This shit is fucked up. It's always been a tricky subject for the Supreme Court to address, for obvious reasons, but the last thing the American gun-slinging population needs is further defence of their actions, and the excuse that as long as they're gun-slinging Americans, it's cool. And this does not help.

The U.S. should really try increasing knife crime in urban areas, that's worked pretty well in the UK. Or they should actually arm bears. Now THAT would scare off terrorists/Mexicans.


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JOYEUX NOEL, LOVE RONNY

So I may be stretching the morbidity link here but whatever, this is awesome. I'm doing work experience in an advertising agency that covers Chesterfield cigarettes. Now almost entirely unsmoked elsewhere, they continue to prosper here in the land of baguettes, berets and copius armpit hair. But that's not the point; the point is that 50 years ago these babies were the third most popular cigarette brand in the USA, and were publicly endorsed by James Dean and Ronald Reagan. And this old poster is fucking sweet: Reagan kicking back at Christmas time with several cartons and a reef for company. 'Tis the season.

THESE ARE THE END TIMES

The following post is deeply insensitive and very, very poorly informed.

I recently had the misfortune of being directed to the Sun website, only to find myself faced with an image of what we in the medical profession call Henan Dickback Syndrome (HDS). Perhaps you had a similar experience just milliseconds ago, in which case you feel my pain and you are my brother. Embrace me.

My first reaction to this story was 'You lucky bastard'. After all, there must be some logic behind the phrase 'as happy as a dog with two dicks', in which case this kid has the best of both worlds - the ability to be the filling in a delicious mandwich AND possession of opposable thumbs. Then there's the career prospects of being a sideshow attraction and the star of one of Channel 4's thinly-veiled televised freakshows. He must be fucking thrilled.

Upon further inspection, however, I discovered that HDS is merely a very slight form of a condition called FOETUS IN FOETU - also known as The Horror - and realised what really makes this kid so lucky. It could have been so much worse. Plus, spinal phalluses probably don't even work.

For the blissfully ignorant, full-blown foetus in foetu is 'a developmental abnormality in which a fetus gets enveloped inside its twin and an entire living organ system with torso and limbs can develop inside the host' (thanks, Wikipedia). That roughly translates as 'a semi-human parasite that lives inside your child' or 'pretty much the worst thing I can think of ever'. That is, until you read further in the wiki entry and realise that this occurs in around 1 in every 500,000 live births. 

MATHS TIME!

• The Horror occurs in 1 in every 500,000 instances of baby.
  
• There are around 6,705,000,000 people on Earth.
• 6,705,000,000 divided by 500,000 = 13,410 demonic parasite twins.
• Therefore there are enough of these horrific mutant bastards to populate a small town and form an army.
• We are all fucked.

This article brought me back five years to Channel 4's 'The Boy Who Gave Birth To His Twin'. Snappy title and incredibly disturbing content. In true Bodyshock 'whaaw, fuck look at that!' style, it followed the story of Alamjan Nematilaev, a boy from Kazakhstan who at the age of seven had been given the seriously raw deal of being diagnosed as one of these twisted human matryoshka dolls. I won't bore you with the details but there's a scene near the end where, after a complex surgical procedure, the kid shakes hands with The Horror as it sits nicely pickled on a stainless steel bench. It looks like somebody deflated Sloth from The Goonies and it is truly hellish.

Oh look, YouTube's got it!

Sleep tight.

Fucking Hell...

...was our immediate response to encountering this somewhat daring exhibit by the infamous brothers Jake & Dinos Chapman at the central London White Cube gallery earlier this week. It's also the name of the artwork itself - a series of nine large glass cabinets, each containing perfect scale models of a wholly unwholesome battleground. Among the noble pursuits featured are decapitation (see photo), necrophilia, cannibalism, and... pig-rape. All washed down with a dash of Nazism. Well, I say a dash - more like a tidal wave. Even the cabinets are arranged in a swastika, although that particular touch of genius escaped me at the time.

It's all a bit sickening, and even more so because it clearly took such an exceptional level of craftsmanship to make every single severed head, crucified skeleton, etc. etc. Such attention to detail, especially in the infrastructure and terrain, almost appealed to the 10-year old in me, and I definitely had to stop myself saying 'that's so cool!!!' out loud. Not at the pig-rape though.

Anyway, I couldn't really tell who was winning out of the Nazis and the skeletons/zombies, but I sense that wasn't the point. What, then, was? The Chapmans must have employed a vast team of highly skilled model-makers for a pretty massive space of time. You get the sense that they could have asked them to build absolutely anything, and yet they chose this.

Incidentally, the other side of the gallery is devoted to original Hitler watercolours from back in his bohemian student days when he was twice-rejected from Vienna's art school, only they've all had big clumsy rainbows daubed on them. That part was actually quite funny, but overall this was still by far the most disturbing exhibition I've ever wandered innocently into.

Take a sickbag, and don't take your mum. I didn't but it would not go down well.

http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/jandd/fucking_hell/

POOR BABY, CHRIS

Chris Martin, shown here apparently sleeping in a bus station, has caused a ruckus by criticising BBC Radio 4 to its face, and momentarily walking out of an interview because he "doesn't like talking about stuff." Sorry, what?

Even the BBC seems to be a bit taken aback by this rather unprofessional behavior. I don't know a huge amount about Coldplay's new album, but I seem to recall reading in various places that the whole revolutionary theme was deliberate, so Martin should probably have expected that in an interview, there was a small chance he might be asked about why and how he applied this theme to the music. If he didn't want to talk, he shouldn't have done the interview. Wasn't he all about making a statement and using his celebrity status to promote Make Trade Fair or whatever a few years ago? Didn't he claim when Coldplay first got popular that he wanted attention? I know times change, Chris ol' buddy, but if you really wanted to hide away from the limelight you could probably do so. If you had the slightest thread of selflessness in you, you might have considered that making a big deal out of answering a normal question made it incredibly awkward not only for the interviewer, John Wilson (who was worried he'd upset Martin), but also for your monosyllabic drummer, Will Champion (who had to pretend he cared about how Martin pens his trite music). Furthermore, there are more polite and professional ways to refuse to answer a question than having a mini hissy-fit and going for a little cry. Hopefully Gwyneth and Pomegranate gave him the loving support he needed that day; everyone else just thinks he's a twat.

QUEUE-JUMP AND DIE

According to the Daily Mail, someone went to Sainsbury's the other day, got in an altercation over who was first in line, and "was hit so hard in the face... that he collapsed to the floor unconscious and in a pool of blood." Then he died. 

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This is further proof that supermarkets in the UK are becoming hotbeds for criminal activity. First self-service checkouts encourage ubiquitous theft, and now this. What's next? Terrorist attacks? Supermarket shootings over who gets the last 2-for-1 Tesco Value canned hot dogs deal? Drug dealing in the bakery aisle?

Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I'm considering avoiding supermarkets of any kind. A few months ago an elderly lady struck up a conversation with me in the fresh fruit section of Tesco, only to reveal to me the details of her rampantly unpredictable bowel movements. That was enough to keep me away for a while out of fear of crossing paths with her again, but I eventually went crawling back to their half-price deals and own-brand discounts. But this is enough to convince me to revert to the hunter-gatherer status that I know exists somewhere in my instinct. From now on I'll shoot pigeons from my window, pluck them and cook them myself on a little barbecue. Sweet.

On a completely unrelated note, a picture of one of La Boite's contributors in the blog office the other night.

SEXUAL SPORTSWEAR

Sebastien Tellier - Sexuality

I wanted to like this album, I really did. I wanted it to be great. “La Ritournelle” still gets played on my iPod on a near-daily basis, several years after I first heard it. I find it to be a very beautiful song.
For someone to claim that Sexuality is a beautiful album, however, a looser definition of beauty would have to be used. Perhaps in the same way as one might remark that a lesbian threesome is beautiful. Gone are the jazzy drums, the groovy bass and reverberating grand piano. In its place, several synths and a primitive drum machine. The whole 80’s revival is in full force, which I try my hardest to stomach, with moderate success.
But what I just cannot understand, is who decided it would be a good idea to have the sound of a woman in apparent ecstasy moaning throughout the entire album. It’s as if an incredibly cheesy porno is on in the background of whatever room you choose to listen to the CD in. Whoever this wench is, she apparently climaxes somewhere during “Pomme,” but the euphoric whimpers don’t stop there, unfortunately.
Elsewhere our sexy lady contributes odd backing vocals, most notably in “Divine,” the only song I’d heard before buying the CD, thanks to Tellier taking it to Eurovision 2008 on behalf of France. “Divine” is upbeat and interesting, but sadly is the only song of its sort on the album.
Another major flaw of Sexuality, porn soundtrack aside, is its repetitiveness. The songs all follow similar formulas: lots of arpeggios, synth chord stabs, and loops. Most songs could easily have had a minute or two shaved off them, though I suppose if they were intended to be long and… uh, sexy?… then perhaps this can be forgiven.
And yet, I seem to be forcing myself to like some of it. Perhaps it’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s production, although if I didn’t know he was one half of Daft Punk I’d probably just claim it was shit. “Roche” is quite slow and monotonous for an opening track, but I like the tune, so five minutes of the same tune repeated does work… I guess. I suspect it shall soon start to grate.
I read somewhere that Tellier likened Sexuality to Justin Timberlake or Beyonce’s style of RnB, except that his approach was “less vulgar.” But as far as I’m aware, nowhere in Beyonce’s discography is there a track with members of either sex apparently fudding themselves in the background. Or a naked bitch on the front cover.
Come on now, Sebastien, I know you’re french, but give me a break.