Bad-luck wind been blowing on my back...

"Back in my hotel room to write this talk, and I put Glastonbury up on the tv while I write. Springsteen's on. Not a huge fan of the man, though I admire his industry. The man puts in a day's work on stage. And he's sweating, working hard. Got his foot up on an amp as he sings. It's just him, right now, the stage is blacked out, and there's one spot behind him. And he's hot, and it's cold night out there, and he's steaming. And he's just blown the authenticity thing and gone into supermystification, because it looks like he's got an electromagnetic halo, curls of glowing, pearly white light rising up from and playing around his head and shoulders while he stands there in near-silhouette....

He looks like he's The Last Rock Star, the Ascended Master who glows in the dark."

-- Warren Ellis on Bruce Springsteen's Glastonbury 2009 performance.

Obligatory "Michael Jackson Is Dead" Entry

Who cares that Michael Jackson is dead? Why are people making him out to be some kind of saint? People seem to have forgotten that he endangered his child (out of a window!), the allegations of him being a paedophile that were only quashed in court by savvy OJ-esque legal wrangling, and that he had a monkey love-mate called Bubbles. A MONKEY LOVE-MATE!! He should have died, say, twenty years ago, when his career did. And to those saying it's too soon for horrific and crude MJ-related jokes? I say to you no. Nothing's changed. He's still an example of a celebrity breakdown, shown in excruciating detail by our modern media juggernaut. Respect his children, sure, but he was no Mother Teresa.


I'm also intrigued about the Ofcom rules* that purportedly state that you can't say anything negative about a passed celebrity 24 hours after his death. So, what does this mean? That bang on 11pm (or whenever), the insults are going to start rolling in? Is this a form of censorship? Because it's reporting like that which ensures that people *aren't* honest, doesn't it? So have Ofcom overstepped their position in the world?

*Apparently more of a guideline.

This entire situation is one I've watched keenly-- I've recently become more and more aware of how the media outlets report these events, and with that knowledge I realised how... how disgusting everyone is. The BBC, for instance, wheeled out the same specialists, called the same old people, and kept repeating the same two segments last night, as they scrambled for the death-porn that was the footage of the ambulance leaving Jackson's residence.

The world is going to shit.