This post is kind of borne out of a discussion I was having with my sister, as well as some of the thoughts I’ve had myself about the music I listen to. The conclusion we draw is basically, popular music is totally heteronormative. This is not news to anyone who has ever thought about it I am sure, but we both find it extremely annoying.
I’m going to discuss this with particular reference to Arctic Monkeys, because I have a lot of music by them in my library and the issue particularly comes to my mind when I’m listening to them. To be fair, it’s not like any other artist I listen to is much better on this front1, but it is so glaring with Arctic Monkeys because they have song after song about heterosexual relationships — seemingly every single permutation of personalities you could imagine, from men who adore their lovers and feel totally lost without them (“505″, “Cornerstone”), to men who rape women and think it’s OK and she might even enjoy it (“Balaclava”).
And it’s like, clearly these songs are not all reflections of your own personal attitudes2. Clearly therefore, if you can invent these characters whose heads you get inside to write these songs, you could broaden your horizons and write about a man who was interested in men. But you don’t.
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Firstly, all the people finding this blog by Googling things like “doesn’t matter we’re all fucked anyway” and “I hate myself birds of tokyo”, I sympathise but you’re freaking me out even more than the people who found this blog by looking up my international studies lecturer… before I even wrote about him. Birds of Tokyo are there to ease our pain, okay.
Anyway…
Despite my pessimism late on Saturday night, Australia might not be as fucked as initially thought. The independents are demonstrating a little more antipathy to the Coalition than I was expecting, and while they are still conservatives and Katter is a nutcase, it means Labor still has a chance and that’s important. The fact that all three of these independents care so strongly about telecommunications in the bush is something that bodes well for Labor too, because Labor has its NBN policy that the Liberals have promised to scrap… which, I can well imagine, would infuriate rural MPs. The Liberals’ idea of throwing $6bn at corporations to “encourage” them to develop broadband would likely only benefit the cities, where the profits lie. Whereas a government-mandated network with a clear focus on rural areas — despite the $44bn cost — is going to be more effective and more equitable to rural populations.
So that’s good.
Too bad they’re basically still stupid-ass conservative hacks. View full article »
There was an election today! Did you notice? It sucked. In short, the Coalition won, although it didn’t actually technically win and we technically have a hung parliament. This means shit though, because either side needs 76 seats to win. Current projections are that Labor will get 72 and the Coalition 73, although with one of the electorates on a knife-edge that could turn into Labor 71, Coalition 74. Then there’s the single Greens candidate and four independents — three stupid-ass conservative hacks, and some former spy who used to be a Young Liberal then defected to the Greens then defected to himself presumably and became an independent.
Basically, the stupid-ass conservative hacks are going to wrangle a deal with the Coalition and there’s our government — Tony Abbott and the stupid-ass conservative hack brigade. Basically the only good thing out of that entire mess is that Wilson Tuckey lost his seat, but that’s little good to the world because he lost it to the Nationals. I’ll still take it though, because Tuckey is that fucked.
If you know me at all you’ll know I loathed our Labor government and was CONSTANTLY, CONSTANTLY pissed off at the latest shit they tried to pull, but when it comes down to the line, when it comes down to red numbers v. blue, it’s going to be red every time. View full article »
For months now, there have been ads almost everywhere I look nagging me to enrol to vote. For instance, my student union plastered the campus in pictures of George W. Bush with the caption “This is what happens when people don’t vote… ENROL NOW!” There are many more examples I could mention. The Greens, whom I follow on Twitter for some reason, are posting lots of tweets about how people should enrol; GetUp had its action-packed ad trying to inspire young people to vote which dad emailed me about… yeah. It’s everywhere.
Even though I have enrolled to vote, that doesn’t mean that I get to actually vote in the election. I had basically lost all hope of being allowed to vote anyway, given that my birthday’s not until October, and there was virtually no chance of the government waiting that long. Now that August 21 has been revealed as the day, I have to say that it does not crush my spirits inside that SEVENTEEN-YEARS,-TEN-MONTHS OLD me will not be voting. My dreams — if you could call them dreams — had already been well and truly crushed and I have moved on with my life.
Besides, the choices in this election are so unappealing that I’m not really inspired to vote. Look at them! There’s the ultra-right-wing Liberals, the ultra-right-wing Labor Party, the rightwards-moving Greens… and no doubt a lot of the same shit minor parties we had to deal with last time (DLP, One Nation…). View full article »
I certainly dismiss labels like intolerant or racist because people raise concerns about border security, but we’ve also got to be very alive to the complexity of this and that there’s no quick fix
– Julia Gillard
Oh
My
God.
In Afghanistan, a terrible, brutal war is going on. We know it’s going on, because we constantly hear about its progress (if we follow the news at all). We know how much violence there is an Afghanistan, and we know about the level of oppression there is there. We know that the Taliban attacks girls for trying to go to school, and indeed tons of people who’ve done nothing wrong whatsoever. We know that Afghanistan’s occupying armies kill people, torture people, abduct people, hand people over to the Afghan police to be tortured… and many of these on highly spurious evidence at that. We know that Afghanistan’s new rulers are corrupt, oppressive, and — in many cases — no better than the Taliban they replaced. We also know about drone attacks over the border with Pakistan, in which over a hundred people can be killed because someone, somewhere, decided that a wedding party was a suspicious event.
And yet, this is apparently not a situation people would be in their right mind to want to flee? How dare you not want to be killed? How dare you not want to be tortured? How dare you want your daughters to receive educations? How dare you want to live under a less oppressive government than Hamid Karzai’s amazingly liberal regime? View full article »
