March Of The Pigs

Cacophony in the UK - tabloids baying for blood from one end of the newspaper aisle to the other, wild-eyed media moguls screaming through print in one last desperate spurt of rancid discourse, anything to drag those foolish atheists away from certain destruction and eternal retribution in fire, burnt bodies and the old sagging cunts of the sex industry pushed reluctantly to page fifteen...

London. Out of the dust and the filth, somewhere in the near distance, reeling in and out of the fog, a great armoured car, hideously stuffed with epithets of holy war, penetrates the vision of the crowd and, arms flailing wildly, an old decadent figurehead calls out to deaf ears, eyes clouding over in doubt as the cheering begins to fade and perhaps through the cobwebs of his mind some far-off and distant thought emerges, at last, ‘’Gott ist tot – und wir haben ihn geotetet*!’’

Two grotesque vignettes which neither objectively chart the Pope’s visit to the UK, nor do they present the occasion in any meaningful and constructive way. Indeed, such vibrant and shamelessly subjective accounts of this demonically powerful politician of the void are quite destructive. Yet it seems there is no other way to cover or analyse or simply relay the events unfolding in London which surround the Pope – indeed, which surround the Catholic Church – because one becomes immediately embroiled in the dogmatic values of the Church itself, within a matter of seconds.  The imagery of hellfire and brimstone, and the so-called ‘’war lingo’’ one is more accustomed to seeing in Iraq/Afghanistan reporting will always rear its ugly head, simply because the temptation to do so is almost entirely overwhelming.

Never before has such a prestigious, revered and literally worshipped figurehead in the discursive movements of this era been torn down from his coach and drenched in the filth of his followers with such vigour and enthusiasm. First came the wave of child abuse allegations, corrosive to the minds of the loyal, but sweet nectar to victims, atheists, cynics and free-thinkers alike. Then Professor Hawking murdered God via the Times, just as countless free-thinkers have done so before him: Darwin, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Sade, Foucault, Montaigne, Bachelard, Houellebecq, Russell, Shakespeare...

While this strange creature writhes and moans on the ground, the only remaining possibilities are to remain the passive observer and grossly gape on, or indeed to participate in the sacrilege, the heresy, the natural order of things. Even Catholics have dealt fatal blows to the Pope without even realising it – Anne Widdecombe’s disastrous attempt to portray the Catholic Church as a source for good, via ad hominem arguments and dogmatic values, stands as a valid testament to such a bold claim. Each time devout members of the Catholic Church condescend to the level of the thinker  (as opposed to the follower -another inversion of the natural order not uncommon in this cult) their clumsy attempts to jam the pieces back together only tear more stray threads from the garment itself. Total disintegration. Grab a limb, and pull as hard as you can.

*''God is dead - and we have murdered him!'' Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche

Morrissey Strikes Again...Meat Is Not Murder...Death To Burnt-Out Indy Statesmen

Morrissey For Rolling Stone

There must be some obscure cosmic law about blows to ideologies coming in twos, as this is exactly what occurred to me last week when I was emotionally raped by Morrissey’s self-interested, publicity-hungry, compound adjective-saturated rant about sub-species to Simon Armitage, and then aurally raped by the equally self-interested, patronising and rather barren early Smiths offering ‘Meat is Murder’ which I’d checked out through a dubious combination of personal obligation and morbid curiosity (Rape rape rape rape rape rape rape – Guardian readers know what I’m talking about it).

Most people probably perceived the Morrissey/Armitage faceoff as a car crash days before it even took place, but maybe someone had decided to set the editor of G2 up for a fall – or indeed perhaps the editor wanted to watch from afar as sparks flied and all eyes turned reluctantly away from the tabloid centrefolds and onto the Guardian’s front page. Either way, the interview between M and A was by all accounts an absolute train wreck –for M at the very least – which barely succeeded in stretching beyond the usual sycophantic drivel of starry-eyed journalists (or poets in this case) being pissed on by their teenage idols. Enough of these pithy, corpulent sentences, goddamnit.

 Morrissey is obsessed by animal rights – the cynic inside wants me to draw his attention to the wealth of crises and orgies of suffering which strike his own species, but I guess even fluffy cuddly little balls of cells also need some kind of spokesperson. There is an impressive backlog of Morrissey interviews carried out by celebrities and straight, respectable (ha ha) journalists alike which all contain the hallmarks of a bitter, anxious attitude towards the future, and this one was no different. People are used to Morrissey moaning and lamenting the loss of his melancholy yet totally fictitious Golden Age of the North, but they’re not used to poet laureates getting the verbal equivalent of a kick in the head. How ironic that Morrissey’s disdain for eating animals alive does not include fellow northerners, the hardiest and most obstinate species of them all.

The second blow came in the form of what I believe is the second Smith’s album, following their impressive yet flawed eponymous debut (not my words – except eponymous, because it’s a great word), aptly entitled ‘Meat Is Murder.’ The meat in question seemed to take on many forms throughout the album: initially it was the trembling, angst-ridden Manchester schoolboys, quivering with homesickness and fear of pseudo-homosexual punishment from their captors, ahem, teachers. Then it was the unrequited teenage lover, reduced to meat in the broil and beer-soaked hedonism of the local fair, pining and whining after one of many worthless whores, greater victims to their own caprices than anything which bandy-legged Indy kids could unleash on them. Then, finally, it was the fluffy, adorable little animals themselves (mainly cows, I believe, due to the cacophony of anguished mooing in the background) in the final track. This was, I suppose, intended to shock and horrify middle-class, ignorant contemporary listeners about the horrors of meat but it simply came across as patronising and self-righteous. Especially that awful, awful chorus.

 There’s something rather beastly about dragging up a dated album and beating it into the ground. Especially from the standpoint of a generation already desensitized (raped?) by propaganda such as ‘Meet Your Meat’ (do check it out, it’s rather flamboyant, considering the subject matter) and all those other shock-tactics docudramas out there. Anyway, it’s unlikely that this latest Morrissey bomb is going to do any harm to the legions of die-hard Smiths fans out there – in fact, I’ll bet it even caused a sales spike in copies of Meat is Murder. Oh, I’m such a pig.