Bloody Hell........
Thursday, 23 January 2003 22:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apollaToday has not, in the grand scheme of such things, been what you'd call fantastic. Or good. Or remotely tolerable.
For a start, Sony promised me that my computer would be back with me today. My dad received it down in London because they 'forgot' or whatever that I gave them a totally different address at the other end of the country. So I suspect I'll be bloody lucky if I get it back by Monday.
Secondly, I have an essay due tomorrow (extended from last friday because of computer issues). So far, of 2000 words I have 96.
Thirdly, I've got such bad toothache that two aspirins have done nothing and it feels like one side of my face is about to explode. I had to give a presentation earlier in US Foreign Policy and totally naused up reading it because of my tooth. The same tooth I spent $200 on in California about a year ago. The same tooth that I've had problems with since my former sodding dentist replaced a filling. A filling that had given me no grief whatsoever. Oh, and it's the front tooth. I highly suspect that they'll want to remove it, but the dentist here will, I'm told, only take me as a private patient (Thanks Mr Blair! Appreciate it, you badly dressed, smug, student-destroying, war-mongering, Bush-poodle, GIT. And your wife too). Now, as anyone who is a student or has ever been will tell you, I'm hardly in a position to afford another filling, let alone a replacement tooth. And it's the front. Tell me, how many Hollywood starlets do you know with a tooth missing? What am I supposed to do with my life? Do voice-overs?
Rant over. The pain is such that I'm having trouble concentrating on this, let alone an essay due tomorrow. When I get back I may just give in and call the Nurses' Unit. That would admit defeat though....
Chirpier note: I came up with an idea for a story and for once it's not remotely related to Harry Potter. I thought I'd post the opening here because I'd really like to know what you all think of it. Just remember though, that it's a very rough first draft and it's meant to be amusing. No offense intended to anyone, it's just a 'what if'. Bit like 1984 really. Except without Winston. Or those rats. Or Big Brother. So not like it at all. Anyway, let me know whether it's any good.... Oh, and the title means... absolutely nothing.
Travelling Riverside Blues And Other Stories
The world of 2009 is a vastly different place to the world you know now. It is so different that I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps I should tell you firstly that the man just sworn in as President of the United States of America goes by the name Jeb Bush and is the brother of the departing President George.
But I think that more important than that was the twenty-eighth amendment to the Constitution, the Unorthodoxy Clause. It was passed simultaneous with the Act of Unorthodoxy in Britain and also signalled the complete, legal takeover of the British Isles by the American government. The Clause, ratified in 2005 was the pinnacle of President George W. Bush’s career, even for such an esteemed political mind that held off outside threats and domestic deviants. The Clause gave the state and federal governments the power to criminalize any “unhealthy, un-American, dangerous or subversive materials including but not limited to: musical recordings, motion pictures and literature of both fictional and non-fictional nature.” The Clause was ratified on the 25th of February 2005 and by the end of March the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and several other musicians of note had disappeared from music stores across America and Britain, finally ridding us of the evil inherent in rock and roll music.
Well, that was how the Establishment put it. That first list from February of outlawed music became known as the ‘first Cull’ while in reality, Britain become nothing more than a docile American satellite state. The power of the European Union was cemented at this time as well. The Federazione Delle Condizioni Europee Unite (Or the FCEU as it was known) was formed on 14th December 2004. In March 2005 similar unorthodoxy laws were passed there. The theory, the legislation in the USA and the FCEU promoted togetherness, community spirit and good, wholesome lifestyles. In practice, it was the systematic outlawing of any cultural product even remotely dissident or rebellious. It was one of a series of steps to ensure complete control of the people.
The Clause also had another side effect that seemed accidental but had in reality been planned for and expected. Races fractured and towns became more segregated than they’d ever been. The only place you could hear Dr. Dre now was in the black section of town, and in fact, it was illegal for a white person to own a copy of most black-created music. Cities and towns became divided into sections for black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever communities made up the towns. These areas were then further divided: White Catholic, White Jewish, White Protestant etc. Furthermore, these subdivisions were divided: White Protestant Anglican, White Protestant Baptist, White Catholic Irish, White Catholic English, whatever existed in a town that could be divided was thus divided. In theory, this promoted the community spirit so beloved by President Bush and Governor Blair. In practice, it separated people by colour, religion and anything else that could be used to divide people. Many of the people who had ever voted for the Bush brothers were what music writers would previously have described as ‘middle of the road’ and they didn’t see the loss of hip hop or heavy metal as any great tragedy. The crash of 2003 had left so many people without DVD players that they were willing to agree to anything to get back their calm equilibrium. If artistic freedom was the sacrifice, it didn’t matter much. Most of Elton John and Charlotte Church’s back catalogues hadn’t been culled.
It wasn’t all bad. As promised, the President had decreed that all spending be spread out equally across the country. Therefore the White Jewish section in Fulton, Missouri got the same level of social services that the Black Baptist community in Manchester, England received. It was for things like this that people so willingly gave up their freedom.
Not everyone agreed that it was a fair trade. A small but determined rebellion had sprung up immediately. It was based in London, right under the nose of the Establishment but not too close to the really Important People in Washington. Some of the rebellion had names that you in the present day would recognise, but for security I shouldn’t name names.
Of course, it was not enough for inappropriate music to be removed from circulation, it had to be completely and publicly denounced. Therefore, anyone who made such music (and of course, movies, books and other art) were either arrested or went into hiding. After a member of outspoken Welsh band the Manic Street Preachers was beaten up in London, most went into hiding. Those who didn’t were noisily discredited. The honoured dead of the rock Pantheon came off worse, not being able to defend themselves at all. The portrait of John Lennon in the National Portrait Gallery in London was burned on the Ten O’Clock news while his memorial park in Central Park NYC was victim to a mob wielding sledgehammers. Worse happened in France. Spurred on by both European and American politicians, a mob of hundreds descended upon the Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. They completely destroyed most of Poet’s Corner, paying special attention to the homosexual Irish writer Oscar Wilde’s tomb and the headstone of Sarah Bernhardt. Fortunately, the slow-moving gendarmes arrived in time to stop the mob exhuming the body of demonised rock and roll singer Jim Morrison. Morrison had been adopted by the Establishment as their scapegoat. Gone was the popular if tragic image of a rock god and in its place was a person considered to be the Devil’s Son. Doors records had been in the first Cull. In turn, the rebellion had taken Morrison as their poster boy, a man of rock and poetry, rebellious and everything that the Establishment hated and despised.
The rebellion was known as The Artists Colony, although the Establishment press (there was no other sort anymore) called them far worse, was a hard thing to find. Although based in London, they had no fixed headquarters, instead learning to live a life constantly on the run, which was just as well. Governor Blair had started off with a tough approach to unorthodoxy and unlike every other stance he’d ever taken, had kept this one up. Rumours that this was because his leash was now especially tight went unconfirmed.
In the midst of all this, most people were just trying to live. The late 2003 crash, known as the ‘Horrific Weekend’ because millions had left work on Friday with steady jobs only to lose them by Monday, had ripped the heart out of many towns. Those worst hit were towns whose main employers were health clubs and other tertiary jobs. By early 2009 thanks to the dedicated and delicate touch of the Bushes, we had never had it so good. Unemployment was right down everywhere except Barrow-in-Furness after the USA and FCEU decided that what the world really needed was more motorways and factories making home entertainment systems. Everyone had at least half-decent pay and by 2009 there were more DVD players and health clubs than ever before.
Maria Russell was a 25 year old university graduate who worked as a receptionist in a health club in North London. She had been at university when the Horrific Weekend cut a swathe through the western world and had been able to sit out the worst years in Media Studies lectures. She’d found it hard, however, to find work anywhere other than her local health club.
Maria also had a dark, terrible secret lurking in her home in North London. She shared it with her brother Vincent and his wife Maxine, for they could not afford London house prices alone. This dark secret surfaced every night when she arrived home from work. She had the same routine every night: quick greetings to Vincent and Maxine before bounding upstairs into her room. Kicking off her shoes, she locked her door once ensconced in the room. She then closed the curtains so tightly that no light could get in or out. She then dove to the bottom of her wardrobe (Closet, she reminded herself. Under the new rules, she was required to speak American English) and grabbed a little brass key hidden under a shoebox full of photographs. Flinging herself quite dramatically over her bed, she went to the electric log-effect fireplace and reached behind it to find a latch. Finding it almost immediately, she flicked it and the fire swung on a hinge away from the bricked up chimneybreast. Being careful not to dislodge any of the mortar, she pulled one of the bricks out to reveal, rather curiously, a lock. She inserted the key and turned it until she heard a familiar *click*. She replaced the brick and swung the fire back into place. Then she went over to the alcove between the outer wall and the chimneybreast. Without a pause, she pulled the beige carpet up to reveal the bare floorboards below. Knowing exactly where to look, she prised up a board. It appeared that several of the boards were attached and there was an invisible hinge, because what she pulled up was most definitely some type of door. Underneath was a steel box. Pulling her necklace from under her jumper, she inserted what appeared to be a decorative key hanging from it into the lock in the box. She opened the box and pulled out two things. Hurriedly, she shut the box, closed the boards and replaced the carpet. The two things were a Discman and Led Zeppelin IV.
She had to go through this particularly ridiculous routine every night. She had ten discs hidden away in that box, which had originally been installed by a cocaine dealer who once used the house. That’s what the estate agent had said, anyway. When Maria learned of this very special feature, she begged her brother to get this house. She’d only managed to save ten of her father’s CDs from what had once been a magnificent collection, but it was better than nothing.
Maria loved rock music, just as her father had before his arrest. She, like many others, considered the Act of Orthodoxy to be one of the most ridiculous laws in the history of the British Isles, but knew there was nothing she could do about it. Yet…
She remembered bouncing along the street to Rock And Roll by Led Zeppelin and studying to the sound of John Lennon. She remembered nights she couldn’t sleep and passing the time watching VH1 Classic. She remembered the poster of Jim Morrison she’d blu-tacked to her bedroom door. She remembered the days when Keith Richards was a hero, not an outlaw. She remembered when Morrison was that sexy-but-dead rock god with millions of fans, not the leatherclad demon son of Satan whose only ambition had been to poison the minds of generations of impressionable youth.
Remembering such things always made her angry. But she could show no outward signs of it. The Act was being used in ever more stringent and pernicious ways. One woman who came to the health club three times a week without fail had once been arrested for complaining a little too loudly about the inclusion of Dean Martin in the latest List. The government had decided that his drinking, gambling, womanising image was not one they wanted to promote and she didn’t like that. She wasn’t seen for a week and a half and when she returned was completely mute on such subjects.
Maria was young enough to have ideals and hope yet old enough to remember real freedom. Teenagers now did not rebel, they dressed nicely and listened to that lovely Britney lady. Maria though, remembered going to clubs like godskitchen, Gatecrasher and the Ministry of Sound. It wasn’t really her bag, but she’d had a good time and it was good to feel the freedom that comes from being able to walk a little drunkenly with friends through Sheffield at three am. She also remembered when white kids could- and would- buy records by black artists. She remembered when Missy Elliot and Ja Rule were regulars on MTV and when Eminem somehow straddled the worlds of black rap and white pop like a foul-mouthed Colossus. People only a few years younger than her remembered these as distant memories, as real as myths or legends. After all, Eminem hadn’t been seen in public since the first Cull.
Perhaps it was always inevitable that Maria would end up joining the Artists Colony, but in January 2009 with a new President and a steady job at the health club, nothing seemed less likely for her.
***
Hope you liked it!
PS. Does anyone know where I can find half-decent pictures of Phil Lynott on the internet? I'm trying to make a collage of rock stars and I can't find Phil!
For a start, Sony promised me that my computer would be back with me today. My dad received it down in London because they 'forgot' or whatever that I gave them a totally different address at the other end of the country. So I suspect I'll be bloody lucky if I get it back by Monday.
Secondly, I have an essay due tomorrow (extended from last friday because of computer issues). So far, of 2000 words I have 96.
Thirdly, I've got such bad toothache that two aspirins have done nothing and it feels like one side of my face is about to explode. I had to give a presentation earlier in US Foreign Policy and totally naused up reading it because of my tooth. The same tooth I spent $200 on in California about a year ago. The same tooth that I've had problems with since my former sodding dentist replaced a filling. A filling that had given me no grief whatsoever. Oh, and it's the front tooth. I highly suspect that they'll want to remove it, but the dentist here will, I'm told, only take me as a private patient (Thanks Mr Blair! Appreciate it, you badly dressed, smug, student-destroying, war-mongering, Bush-poodle, GIT. And your wife too). Now, as anyone who is a student or has ever been will tell you, I'm hardly in a position to afford another filling, let alone a replacement tooth. And it's the front. Tell me, how many Hollywood starlets do you know with a tooth missing? What am I supposed to do with my life? Do voice-overs?
Rant over. The pain is such that I'm having trouble concentrating on this, let alone an essay due tomorrow. When I get back I may just give in and call the Nurses' Unit. That would admit defeat though....
Chirpier note: I came up with an idea for a story and for once it's not remotely related to Harry Potter. I thought I'd post the opening here because I'd really like to know what you all think of it. Just remember though, that it's a very rough first draft and it's meant to be amusing. No offense intended to anyone, it's just a 'what if'. Bit like 1984 really. Except without Winston. Or those rats. Or Big Brother. So not like it at all. Anyway, let me know whether it's any good.... Oh, and the title means... absolutely nothing.
Travelling Riverside Blues And Other Stories
The world of 2009 is a vastly different place to the world you know now. It is so different that I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps I should tell you firstly that the man just sworn in as President of the United States of America goes by the name Jeb Bush and is the brother of the departing President George.
But I think that more important than that was the twenty-eighth amendment to the Constitution, the Unorthodoxy Clause. It was passed simultaneous with the Act of Unorthodoxy in Britain and also signalled the complete, legal takeover of the British Isles by the American government. The Clause, ratified in 2005 was the pinnacle of President George W. Bush’s career, even for such an esteemed political mind that held off outside threats and domestic deviants. The Clause gave the state and federal governments the power to criminalize any “unhealthy, un-American, dangerous or subversive materials including but not limited to: musical recordings, motion pictures and literature of both fictional and non-fictional nature.” The Clause was ratified on the 25th of February 2005 and by the end of March the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and several other musicians of note had disappeared from music stores across America and Britain, finally ridding us of the evil inherent in rock and roll music.
Well, that was how the Establishment put it. That first list from February of outlawed music became known as the ‘first Cull’ while in reality, Britain become nothing more than a docile American satellite state. The power of the European Union was cemented at this time as well. The Federazione Delle Condizioni Europee Unite (Or the FCEU as it was known) was formed on 14th December 2004. In March 2005 similar unorthodoxy laws were passed there. The theory, the legislation in the USA and the FCEU promoted togetherness, community spirit and good, wholesome lifestyles. In practice, it was the systematic outlawing of any cultural product even remotely dissident or rebellious. It was one of a series of steps to ensure complete control of the people.
The Clause also had another side effect that seemed accidental but had in reality been planned for and expected. Races fractured and towns became more segregated than they’d ever been. The only place you could hear Dr. Dre now was in the black section of town, and in fact, it was illegal for a white person to own a copy of most black-created music. Cities and towns became divided into sections for black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever communities made up the towns. These areas were then further divided: White Catholic, White Jewish, White Protestant etc. Furthermore, these subdivisions were divided: White Protestant Anglican, White Protestant Baptist, White Catholic Irish, White Catholic English, whatever existed in a town that could be divided was thus divided. In theory, this promoted the community spirit so beloved by President Bush and Governor Blair. In practice, it separated people by colour, religion and anything else that could be used to divide people. Many of the people who had ever voted for the Bush brothers were what music writers would previously have described as ‘middle of the road’ and they didn’t see the loss of hip hop or heavy metal as any great tragedy. The crash of 2003 had left so many people without DVD players that they were willing to agree to anything to get back their calm equilibrium. If artistic freedom was the sacrifice, it didn’t matter much. Most of Elton John and Charlotte Church’s back catalogues hadn’t been culled.
It wasn’t all bad. As promised, the President had decreed that all spending be spread out equally across the country. Therefore the White Jewish section in Fulton, Missouri got the same level of social services that the Black Baptist community in Manchester, England received. It was for things like this that people so willingly gave up their freedom.
Not everyone agreed that it was a fair trade. A small but determined rebellion had sprung up immediately. It was based in London, right under the nose of the Establishment but not too close to the really Important People in Washington. Some of the rebellion had names that you in the present day would recognise, but for security I shouldn’t name names.
Of course, it was not enough for inappropriate music to be removed from circulation, it had to be completely and publicly denounced. Therefore, anyone who made such music (and of course, movies, books and other art) were either arrested or went into hiding. After a member of outspoken Welsh band the Manic Street Preachers was beaten up in London, most went into hiding. Those who didn’t were noisily discredited. The honoured dead of the rock Pantheon came off worse, not being able to defend themselves at all. The portrait of John Lennon in the National Portrait Gallery in London was burned on the Ten O’Clock news while his memorial park in Central Park NYC was victim to a mob wielding sledgehammers. Worse happened in France. Spurred on by both European and American politicians, a mob of hundreds descended upon the Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. They completely destroyed most of Poet’s Corner, paying special attention to the homosexual Irish writer Oscar Wilde’s tomb and the headstone of Sarah Bernhardt. Fortunately, the slow-moving gendarmes arrived in time to stop the mob exhuming the body of demonised rock and roll singer Jim Morrison. Morrison had been adopted by the Establishment as their scapegoat. Gone was the popular if tragic image of a rock god and in its place was a person considered to be the Devil’s Son. Doors records had been in the first Cull. In turn, the rebellion had taken Morrison as their poster boy, a man of rock and poetry, rebellious and everything that the Establishment hated and despised.
The rebellion was known as The Artists Colony, although the Establishment press (there was no other sort anymore) called them far worse, was a hard thing to find. Although based in London, they had no fixed headquarters, instead learning to live a life constantly on the run, which was just as well. Governor Blair had started off with a tough approach to unorthodoxy and unlike every other stance he’d ever taken, had kept this one up. Rumours that this was because his leash was now especially tight went unconfirmed.
In the midst of all this, most people were just trying to live. The late 2003 crash, known as the ‘Horrific Weekend’ because millions had left work on Friday with steady jobs only to lose them by Monday, had ripped the heart out of many towns. Those worst hit were towns whose main employers were health clubs and other tertiary jobs. By early 2009 thanks to the dedicated and delicate touch of the Bushes, we had never had it so good. Unemployment was right down everywhere except Barrow-in-Furness after the USA and FCEU decided that what the world really needed was more motorways and factories making home entertainment systems. Everyone had at least half-decent pay and by 2009 there were more DVD players and health clubs than ever before.
Maria Russell was a 25 year old university graduate who worked as a receptionist in a health club in North London. She had been at university when the Horrific Weekend cut a swathe through the western world and had been able to sit out the worst years in Media Studies lectures. She’d found it hard, however, to find work anywhere other than her local health club.
Maria also had a dark, terrible secret lurking in her home in North London. She shared it with her brother Vincent and his wife Maxine, for they could not afford London house prices alone. This dark secret surfaced every night when she arrived home from work. She had the same routine every night: quick greetings to Vincent and Maxine before bounding upstairs into her room. Kicking off her shoes, she locked her door once ensconced in the room. She then closed the curtains so tightly that no light could get in or out. She then dove to the bottom of her wardrobe (Closet, she reminded herself. Under the new rules, she was required to speak American English) and grabbed a little brass key hidden under a shoebox full of photographs. Flinging herself quite dramatically over her bed, she went to the electric log-effect fireplace and reached behind it to find a latch. Finding it almost immediately, she flicked it and the fire swung on a hinge away from the bricked up chimneybreast. Being careful not to dislodge any of the mortar, she pulled one of the bricks out to reveal, rather curiously, a lock. She inserted the key and turned it until she heard a familiar *click*. She replaced the brick and swung the fire back into place. Then she went over to the alcove between the outer wall and the chimneybreast. Without a pause, she pulled the beige carpet up to reveal the bare floorboards below. Knowing exactly where to look, she prised up a board. It appeared that several of the boards were attached and there was an invisible hinge, because what she pulled up was most definitely some type of door. Underneath was a steel box. Pulling her necklace from under her jumper, she inserted what appeared to be a decorative key hanging from it into the lock in the box. She opened the box and pulled out two things. Hurriedly, she shut the box, closed the boards and replaced the carpet. The two things were a Discman and Led Zeppelin IV.
She had to go through this particularly ridiculous routine every night. She had ten discs hidden away in that box, which had originally been installed by a cocaine dealer who once used the house. That’s what the estate agent had said, anyway. When Maria learned of this very special feature, she begged her brother to get this house. She’d only managed to save ten of her father’s CDs from what had once been a magnificent collection, but it was better than nothing.
Maria loved rock music, just as her father had before his arrest. She, like many others, considered the Act of Orthodoxy to be one of the most ridiculous laws in the history of the British Isles, but knew there was nothing she could do about it. Yet…
She remembered bouncing along the street to Rock And Roll by Led Zeppelin and studying to the sound of John Lennon. She remembered nights she couldn’t sleep and passing the time watching VH1 Classic. She remembered the poster of Jim Morrison she’d blu-tacked to her bedroom door. She remembered the days when Keith Richards was a hero, not an outlaw. She remembered when Morrison was that sexy-but-dead rock god with millions of fans, not the leatherclad demon son of Satan whose only ambition had been to poison the minds of generations of impressionable youth.
Remembering such things always made her angry. But she could show no outward signs of it. The Act was being used in ever more stringent and pernicious ways. One woman who came to the health club three times a week without fail had once been arrested for complaining a little too loudly about the inclusion of Dean Martin in the latest List. The government had decided that his drinking, gambling, womanising image was not one they wanted to promote and she didn’t like that. She wasn’t seen for a week and a half and when she returned was completely mute on such subjects.
Maria was young enough to have ideals and hope yet old enough to remember real freedom. Teenagers now did not rebel, they dressed nicely and listened to that lovely Britney lady. Maria though, remembered going to clubs like godskitchen, Gatecrasher and the Ministry of Sound. It wasn’t really her bag, but she’d had a good time and it was good to feel the freedom that comes from being able to walk a little drunkenly with friends through Sheffield at three am. She also remembered when white kids could- and would- buy records by black artists. She remembered when Missy Elliot and Ja Rule were regulars on MTV and when Eminem somehow straddled the worlds of black rap and white pop like a foul-mouthed Colossus. People only a few years younger than her remembered these as distant memories, as real as myths or legends. After all, Eminem hadn’t been seen in public since the first Cull.
Perhaps it was always inevitable that Maria would end up joining the Artists Colony, but in January 2009 with a new President and a steady job at the health club, nothing seemed less likely for her.
***
Hope you liked it!
PS. Does anyone know where I can find half-decent pictures of Phil Lynott on the internet? I'm trying to make a collage of rock stars and I can't find Phil!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-01-23 15:11 (UTC)Sorry to hear about the computer and the tooth. As for the story, I love it - it truly is a "worst case scenario" for the world (although you *could* have thrown in a tongue-in-cheek reference to us all waiting for Book 6 of HP for laughs ;)). I tell you what, if Jeb Bush ever becomes President, I think there's going to be worldwide protest. And if they ever destroy any of that music, there'll be anarchy.
Cheers,
Dan
no subject
Date: 2003-01-23 17:44 (UTC)Nicely done! I hope you continue.
Hugs,
Elia