F*** stuff

God bless the Landless Peasant Party.

And God save Angus X, wherever he might be after his unfortunate loss in the British national elections this spring.

An old friend was musing about the present doings of Land Is Power -- the party annual meeting is coming up Saturday at an Edinburgh cafe -- so I wandered over to the website of Angus X and the landless peasants . . . and found an amazing video.

No, really. That's it above -- The Story of Stuff. Please watch it.

WHEN I was watching this amazing presentation by Annie Leonard, I thought "This is pure Catholic social-justice kind of stuff here. I'll bet Glenn Beck hates it." And sure enough. . . .

Gosh, I feel so dumb now. The conservative ubercapitalists quickly reassured me by saying market efficiency and ongoing miniaturization will solve many of the problems of the sustainability and disposal of our abundant stuff.

Besides, we have a whole planet to be mined. We've barely scratched the surface. Why, if we mine deep enough -- through the earth's crust and well into the mantle, which we could do as technology advances -- we could have all the raw materials we need to make more and more stuff.

Deep extraction, that's the ticket. What could go wrong with that?

Like I said, The Story of Stuff is pretty standard Catholic social teaching. Don't believe me, look it up.

This little fact -- in addition to making Glenn Beck even crazier than usual -- also is likely to dismay one of the film's producers, the Tides Foundation, which believes we can best care for the poor and powerless of the world by helping them abort their poor and powerless offspring.

Sigh . . . in a fallen world, nobody bats 1.000. Well, at least fetuses are biodegradable, right?

WE NOW return you to Angus X, who remains not safe for work . . . or the kids. But kind of spot on, nevertheless.

Jolly good show, Rupe!

As we used to say in junior high school . . . DUHHHHHHRRRRRR!

Imagine . . . Rupert Murdoch locked up The Times website in a virtual Tower of London. His competitors didn't.

And, after he no doubt did all kinds of research to justify what he was hellbent upon doing anyway -- and after no doubt spending loads of money putting up the paywall -- what happened was what I could have told him would happen in exchange for a MacBook and a bottle of good bourbon.

THE READERS all went somewhere else, and The Times was quite effectively removed from the Internet conversation. But don't believe me, believe The Independent -- where you can read all about Rupert's Folly for free:

As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O'Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O'Neill's exclusive – only follow-up stories by rival news organisations such as The Guardian and ITN.

Two months after Rupert Murdoch's decision to erect a subscription paywall around the websites of The Times and The Sunday Times, thus removing their content from search engines, the bold experiment is having a marked effect on the rest of British media. There are many who still wish the 79-year-old mogul well, hopeful that he is at the vanguard of a cultural shift that will save newspapers. Yet elsewhere there is dismay among analysts, advertisers, publicists and even some reporters on the papers.

Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, "We are just not advertising on it. If there's no traffic on there, there's no point in advertising on there." Lynam says he has been told by News International insiders that traffic to The Times site has fallen by 90 per cent since the introduction of charges. "That was the same forecast they were giving us prior to registration and the paywall going up, so whether it's a reflection on reality or not, I don't know."

He warns that newspaper organisations have less muscle in internet advertising campaigns than they do in print. "Online, we have far more options than just newspaper websites – it's not a huge loss to anyone really. If we are considering using some newspaper websites, The Times is just not in consideration."

THE TROUBLE with newspaper dinosaurs today is that advertisers aren't nearly as stupid as they are. DUHHHHHHRRRRRR, indeed.


P.S.: Thinking on this a little more, I believe there's only one way you'll make paid online "newspaper" content work. It needs to be iPad friendly; it needs to be a rich, flashy multimedia experience . . . and once you've bought it, you need to be able to keep it on your hard drive, or whatever. Just like you can keep a dead-tree edition of the paper.

As they say -- or at least used to say -- in the housing market: Why rent when you can own?

Poor, poor pitiful Brits (sniff)

Pity the poor British. Apparently, we're being mean to them.

It's even said that Barack Obama hates them.

And there's this one other little thing. They're invested up to their formerly stiff upper lips in BP stock, which is getting pretty close to becoming worthless.

To paraphrase the illustrious Eric "Otter" Stratton, "Hey, you f***ed up, you trusted 'em." That mournful sound you now hear is the world's smallest violin playing "My Heart Spills Crude for You."

THIS SAD, SAD tale of woe and ruin from across the waters comes to us from MSNBC:

“Obama’s boot on the throat of British pensioners” read the front-page headline in Thursday's Daily Telegraph, which added that the president's "attacks on BP were blamed for wiping billions off the company’s value."

“U.K. alarm over attack on BP” was the Financial Times' take on the crisis, which it suggested could damage transatlantic relations. The newspaper accused President Barack Obama of employing "increasingly aggressive rhetoric" against BP.

Shares in BP hit their lowest level in 13 years on Thursday. According to the Telegraph, BP executives are so worried that Obama’s comments could continue to drive down BP's share price that the firm has asked Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene. Cameron is due to speak with Obama this weekend.

Obama and U.S. officials have repeatedly referred to BP as “British Petroleum” -- despite the fact that the company officially changed its name in 2000. Some have interpreted this as an attack on the country's reputation.

Last Friday, Obama declared “what I don’t want to hear is, when they’re spending that kind of money on their shareholders and … TV advertising, that they’re nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf.”

Some are concerned about the battering the U.K.'s image is taking in the U.S.

"I do think there's something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America,” Boris Johnson, London's New York-born mayor, told the BBC on Thursday. “I do think that it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the international airwaves.

"I would like to see a bit of cool heads and a bit of calm reflection about how to deal with this problem rather than endlessly buck passing and name calling."

At London’s King’s Cross train station, Thelma Aengenheister echoed the mayor’s sentiments.

“It’s easier for Obama to kick a British company than an American one; there will be fewer repercussions,” said the 80-year-old, who was on her way to Brussels. “It’s like kicking someone when they’re down. But I do feel for the people of Louisiana, it must be dreadful for them.”

OH, YES. It is "dreadful" for the people of Louisiana. Then again, they're used to people -- and companies . . . and countries (particularly their own) -- being dreadful to them.

I don't live there now, but I was born and raised there, and my family has been In Louisiana since long before "les Americains" were. So I don't think the people of the Gret Stet would mind too much if I said a few words to these "dreadfully" put-upon Brits on their behalf:

Kiss.

Our.

British Petroleum-slimed.

Ass.

When wankers get portfolios

While the shores of America's Gulf coast are slowly being choked to death by a foul tide of British-owned petroleum, some in the new UK government are terribly, terribly concerned that the colonials are being mean to them.

No, really.

British Petroleum -- as a byproduct of greed, corner-cutting and blatant disregard for, well . . . everything -- killed 11 American oil workers, 140 miles and counting of the Louisiana coastline, God-only-knows how much of the Gulf's wildlife and ecosystem, a big chunk of the Dead Pelican State's economy and culture, and then the livelihoods of thousands all along the coast, and now some asshole minister in the British government is terribly, terribly concerned that Americans are saying harsh things about the Limeys?

Really?

YOU CAN'T make this crap up. It's in the Daily Mail:

Vince Cable has hit out at the "extreme and unhelpful" anti-British rhetoric from the U.S. over BP's handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The Business Secretary stopped short of criticising President Barack Obama personally, and declared that Britain should not use "gunboat diplomacy".

Some MPs, however, have said Mr Obama was wrong to blame Britain for the problem.

The comments, which came yesterday as BP announced that a plan to funnel the oil away had partially worked, risked provoking a trans-Atlantic rift.

American politicians and broadcasters have laid the blame for the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig at the feet of the UK - despite BP being a multinational company.

Mr Obama has continually referred to the company as "British Petroleum" although it changed its name to BP more than a decade ago.

Mr Cable said yesterday: "It's clear that some of the rhetoric in the U.S. is extreme and unhelpful."

He added that the fury being levelled at the company was "a reaction to big oil".

Mr Cable cautioned against the Government resorting to "gunboat diplomacy" by aggressively lobbying the White House on the oil company's behalf.

He said Mr Obama was treating BP no more harshly than he would a U.S. company such as Exxon -- the previous holder of the dubious record for the biggest oil leak in American history.

But other MPs voiced their concern about the hostile tone of the U.S.

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said: "It is not the British government or the British people who are to blame. It's a multinational company and it is up to them to fix this."

HOW DOES ONE argue with such arrogance and condescension? One doesn't.

One just points out that the f***ing Brits are evah so quick to condemn America and "brutish" Americans over our "insane gun laws" every time an English tourist takes a slug in the gut trying to score some weed in the 'hood, yet we're supposed to be nice about it when British Petroleum rapes whole cultures, peoples and ecosystems in the former colonies.

Holy s***, the "wogs" really do "begin at Calais" . . . and on the North American shoreline, don't they? And the wogs are supposed to . . . what? Say "Thank you, Tony, may we have another dose of death"?

NO, YOU CAN'T argue with the likes of Vince Cable and some of the other swells trolling the halls of Westminster. Or is is trolls swelling the halls of Westminster?

All one can do is remind the right members of Parliament what happened to Britain on Jan. 8, 1815 -- the last time it tried to screw with south Louisiana -- and leave the right members with some friendly final words.

Piss off.

Wankers.

Kill the Man, cuz we wuz robbed!

Even in the patently whack, one can find kernels of truth. Welcome to the world of Angus X and the Landless Peasant Party.

As I've said before, if American tea partiers weren't such crypto-racist, whiny tossers, they'd be forming a U.S. branch of this.

After all, can you really totally hate an entertaining Scottish eccentric who blatantly steals from Patrick Henry and makes it his own right under the nose of the British monarchy?

If tea partiers had bollocks

See the bloke behind Gordon Brown at last night's vote count in the British prime minister's Scottish constituency?

Yeah, that one. The one with the upraised fist. Right on. Can you dig it?

That is Deek Jackson of the Landless Peasant Party. And he -- along with the Jesus Christ guy and the Monster Raving Loony Party -- is why British politics is far and away more entertaining than the colonial brand of democratic futility.

BELOW, enjoy a not-work-or-family-friendly advert for the Landless Peasant Party, featuring Mr. Jackson, whom we'll refer to as Angus X. This is what the tea partiers would be on this side of the Atlantic . . . if only they had . . . er, bollocks.


AND HERE is Scotland's No. 1 peasant, Angus X, on the campaign trail.

AYE, 'tis a bonnie thing to have a candidate tell a voter he thinks he's daft. Almost as good as when the BBC's Jeremy Paxman gets a hold of a politician who unwisely tries to "spin" him.

Bad night for Jesus in the UK

David Cameron may be hard pressed to win an outright majority for the Conservatives in the United Kingdom, but he had amazingly little trouble dispatching the King of King and the Lord of Lords in his Witney, Oxfordshire, constituency.

No wonder no one thinks it will go well for the British after the politicking is done and the attempts at governing begin.

Another disappointment was the poor showing of the Monster Raving Loony Party, though I believe it did come in ahead of the Almighty.

ALL IN ALL, you have to admit there is far greater entertainment value in British elections than in ours. Then again, I'm just geeky that way -- as you can see here.

A most pleasant surprise in the BBC coverage of the UK national balloting is the emergence of veteran Beeb presenter David Dimbleby as the most entertaining damn thing on network television since Dan Rather spun his last Election Night simile and mangled his last metaphor.

Dimbleby -- who has a refreshing lack of patience for any kind of television, or political, foolishness -- even came up with a Ratherism fine enough to warm a colonist's heart: "But behind the scenes, you know they're fighting like cats in a sack."

And then there was this question from someone on the BBC team to a Labour minister: "It's 20 past 3 in the morning, couldn't we please just have a straight answer?"

Hear! Hear!

When radio mattered

Once upon a time, radio mattered.

Once upon a time, popular-music radio mattered so much, "pirate" Top-40 stations off the English coast scared a government and provoked a massive official backlash.


Once upon a time, "pirate" disc jockeys were bigger stars than the musicians they put onto the airwaves -- and the youth of a nation fought to keep them on "free radio."


AND ONCE HER MAJESTY'S government -- in 1967 -- finally succeeded in pulling the plug, the staid facade of the British Broadcasting Corp., cracked under the weight of demands that it program for the people, not at the people. Later that year, BBC Radio 1 was born.

Top-40 BBC Radio 1.


Many of Radio 1's original DJs were hired off the pirate ships. Because the pirate ships mattered . . . and because radio mattered.

Across the pond and across four decades, things have changed mightily. Because radio no longer matters.

At all.

Meanwhile on the isle. . . .

While English and Welsh "freshers" were out getting pissed last week, Rifleman Craig Wood, 18, was otherwise occupied after a short stint in Afghanistan.

The jihadists may have a point

When a country has its knickers in such a twist as Britain -- literally -- that's when sharia starts to look not half bad by comparison.

By the time it's a common thing for college students and other "drunken yobs," as the Daily Mail put it, to shuffle down city streets with their drawers around their feet -- at least when they're not pissing on war memorials -- you're either musing about sharia (or something close enough), or you're looking for a good monastery to hide out in as the Dark Ages descend and civilization disappears.

I MEAN, for God's sake:

The image of a drunk student urinating on a war memorial has provoked a furious backlash from relatives who had laid wreaths of poppies in tribute to their loved ones.

John Ievers, the grandson of a World War I soldier who died in 1917, branded student Philip Laing, 19, a 'drunken idiot' for desecrating the memorial in Baker's Pool, Sheffield.

The 49-year-old software sales consultant said: 'I am annoyed - he's a drunken idiot.

'He should be made to clean the streets of Sheffield or do some kind of community service.'

Mr Ievers placed the tribute - a solitary wooden cross with poppy decoration - to his grandfather on the memorial on Remembrance Day last November. Edwin Ievers was 32 when he was killed in France in October 1917.

The youth was one of 2,000 university students taking part in an organised seven-hour pub crawl in Sheffield, during which many familiar scenes of debauchery were seen.

Half-naked women collapsed on the street while young men ran among passing traffic.

But by far the worst moment came when Laing, a sports technology student at Sheffield Hallam University, staggered to the World War I memorial and urinated on it. Other revellers seemed oblivious, but the incident was reported to security staff who washed down the memorial with water.

'He should be made to clean the memorial at the very least,' Mr Ievers added. 'He must have been paralytic.

'I don't think he should be flogged in the streets or anything but there should be some reparation.

'But this sort of thing goes on all the time in Sheffield with freshers week [Freshmen week -- R21]. They had to take the fountain out because someone was killed. They would do a pyjama jump but too many of them came down with hypothermia.'

ACTUALLY, after looking at that picture, I think flogging in the streets might not be such a bad idea. Flog one, teach 1,000?

What I see in these pictures -- and in stories such as this and this -- is a culture at the end of its days of wine and roses. A culture living for its distractions, because distractions are the only reasons it has anymore.

The distractions, meantime, are having the last laugh.

Getting "stewed" in your own juices not only is a bitch, it's also fraught with irony.

Silly Sunday

3 Chords & the Truth: Let the sun shine in

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we look at dreams. Broken dreams and the "losers" who once dreamed, but no more.

People like, for example, Fantine in Les Miserables. She had a dream; it turned into a living hell:

But the tigers come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder,
As they tear your hope apart,
And they turn your dream to shame.

IT HAPPENS. A lot.

And we declare people "losers" a lot, too. We take one quick look and throw them onto the refuse heap of life. A lot of the time, we're very wrong on that score -- not that we ever know it amid the utter certainty of our judgment.

But sometimes . . . sometimes we get to find out just how wrong we are. The clouds of our cynicism part, and the sunshine breaks through.

OF COURSE you've heard of Susan Boyle by now, and you've probably seen the video from Britain's Got Talent, too. There it is above this post, in case you haven't . . . or just want to watch it again and rejoice in having your prejudices smashed to bits. Go ahead and watch, because there's an amazing backstory.

See, that's the sunshine parting the clouds.

This week on the Big Show, we're all about the sunshine -- all about a long musical exploration of the topic. And it's all because we were just gobsmacked by a bright ray of the stuff, and it feels pretty damn good.

Sunshine. Maybe that's what Winston Churchill had in mind when, during the darkest days of World War II, he said:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

ESPECIALLY WHEN the enemy is ourselves. If we give into the darkness, we'll never see the sunshine on the other side. Never get to prove so many people so horribly wrong . . . like Susan Boyle did.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Fat, drunk and dentally-challenged . . .

. . . is no way for a country to go through life.

Who knew that the Brits' famed stiff upper lip got that way from trying to make it to the 'loo before blowing chunks?

FROM THE DAILY MAIL in London, we get this depressing account of the Big Night in the U.K.:

Binge-drinking revellers fuelled a chaotic start to 2008 as over-stretched ambulance workers battled to cope with emergency calls flooding in at a peak of one every eight seconds.

In the capital alone the London Ambulance Service had to deal with its highest number of emergency calls since the Millennium - the majority related to excess alcohol.

As midnight came and went there was mayhem as scores of drunken partygoers around the country tumbled into the streets, some wearing little more than their underwear.

Fights erupted and a string of dishevelled young men and women collapsed on benches and in doorways, too inebriated to remember or care that the night was supposed to be a celebration.

There to mop up the mess were thousands of emergency workers drafted in to provide cover on the busiest night of the year.

In the first four hours of 2008, London Ambulance Service (LAS) dealt with an astonishing 1,825 calls alone, peaking at over 500 calls an hour between 2am and 4am. The volume of 999 calls was up 17 per cent on last year' and four times worse than a normal night.

Meanwhile in the West Midlands the ambulance service fielded 1,400 calls in just five hours - a rate of one every 12 seconds. It was mirrored by the North East Ambulance Service which received 1,860 calls between 11pm and 5am.

Last night the astonishing number of calls to deal with booze-fuelled illness of injury prompted accusations that lives of those in real emergencies were being put at risk and demands for partygoers to wake up the costs of binge-drinking.

LAS spokeswoman Gemma Gidley said: "These calls put the Service under increased pressure to manage demand when we have to ensure we respond quickly to other patients with potentially life-threatening emergencies.

"People need to think about the real consequences of drinking so much that they require treatment."

In the south, the South Central Ambulance Service dealt with three times more incidents that normal.

OR, IN THE WORDS of that English prophet, Johnny Rotten:

God save the queen,
The fascist regime,
They made you a moron,
Potential H-bomb.

God save the queen,
She ain't no human being.
There is no future,
In England's dreaming.

Don't be told what you want,
Don't be told what you need,
There's no future no future,
No future for you!

God save the queen,
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves.

God save the queen,
'Cos tourists are money
Our figure's head
Is not what she seems.

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh lord god have mercy
All claims are paid

When there's no future
How can there be sin?
We're the flowers in the dustbin,
We're the poison in your human machine,
We're the future; your future.

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves.

God save the queen
We mean it man
And there is no future
In England's dreaming.

No future no future
No future for you
No future no future
No future for me.

No future no future
No future for you
No future no future
No future for you
No future no future for you.