Blessed exempt and the nameless

Bin full of gialli
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

Society’s attitude towards substances has declined in many respects since the Victorian age. What once were considered private vices at worst or medical problems at best are now shunted into the world of criminality. As the days of Capone demonstrated, people want to self-medicate for pleasure, foolishness, anaesthesia, hastened death whatever and it is the role of State to minimise harm rather than pretend it can be prevented, creating criminal supernormal profits in the hypocrisy. These arguments are too well rehearsed to breathe again and change may come in some places over generations but at present the law is worse than an ass – The idea that identakit city centres infested by ethanol fuelled barbarism is more pleasant than people giggling quietly in Amsterdam style caffs is self evidently obscene.

People with connections, luck, bodies of note or all three are exempt from normal life and law. When the videos of ‘La Moss’ hoovering and passing round large amounts of fun chalk on a grainy mobile cam appeared in the pig press, I realised that the chances of her facing the same fate as an unlucky youth not beloved of industry caught out with half a wrap of heavily cut crap half dead after a party was as slim as the genitals of a dried cuttlefish. The Bill are making noises due to the aging mannequin’s arrogance about the whole thing but the amusing image of the Croydonwaif unironocially cuffed to a bench in a piss reeking cell for a long time will never come real. “The jury found him famous…” etc.

On another puff page did noticed the not quite 21 Keira Knightley ripped out of her tiny brain at some Beverly Hills party being propped up by her grimacing madeforlife ‘playwright’ mum Sharman Macdonald like a piece of supple shoe leather stretched over some matchsticks. Of course, Stateside while you can get an assault rifle five years before you can touch grog absurdity is taken to Hummer proportions. However, the idea that pixies from Pirates of the Caribbean 3 are held to a happier standard than poor high school kids who just want a good time smells of injustice. I’ve seen them ‘card’ people with grey hair over there. Maybe if the blessed paid the same price as the nameless the world could change.

Sticky critics and the hoodie chasers

Marrakech Modernity
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

For a simple salaryman, the holidays come and go as fast as an openhanded slap from a youth on a speeding minibike fitted with a cameraphone and a rubber arm on one of the handlebars.

Struggling along the Northern Line back to the ranch feeling like Travis Bickle on absinthe and paint fumes, I found myself reading the Evening Standard again. It feels dirty – at least the thing is cheaper than a tin of warm pop but one of the presumably news rich Great Cities surely could find it in itself to support a newspaper with more weighty content. Sure it is tabloid crude but I can live with that. Sam Fuller was tabloid crude but the Standard is devolving into some kind of combination of Heat!, a gossip website populated with bubbly sycophants and a haphazard crime column.

Page 2 is often occupied by stories such as the odious hippychic fleshwisp personpuppet that is Sienna Miller, whose IMDB credits are a slur on cinema, deciding to have a new haircut inspired by mid-80s Bowie. Then on to a bevy of columns usually more shallow than a pub urinal (City Lives? Single Life? Minty hair cake?!). It is as if the rag got mixed up with Now! at the presses.

As Social Control compelled me from creating any kind of compelling news myself on public transport, I wondered if the Government’s latest attempt to corral the feral through parenting classes mild repression et al would have an unintended consequence: The silencing of the amateur, chewing gum and pen armed critics who are the only defence against the sugarculture machine that pimps its wares all over the Tube system. How else will the dead eyes of Reese Witherspoon be enlivened? Who would else would counter the march of the Woman in White with the incontestable statement “Haile Selasssie I the world is a whore”? How will the anatomy on display in the latest tired bumpf for “Chicago” be taken into three dimensions with discarded oral sculpture? Food for thought, etc…

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