Month: September 2015

Marijus Adomaitis- to be forgiven?

I wanted to cover this story and my thoughts on it, primarily because this producer is one whom I have grown to hold in extremely high esteem over recent years. I’ve also read nothing about the debacle that is not succinct and predictably uniform in its content as a result of being published by the likes of THUMP or MIXMAG, so this will be my unmitigated personal response.

Previously this June Marijus Adomaitis or Mario Basanov or Ten Walls very idiotically said some absolutely revolting homophobic remarks on Facebook. Some of which I wouldn’t even like to copy because of their appalling vulgarity and disgusting use of sexual imagery but I’ll post a small extract from them below. He described gay people as a ‘different breed’ and likened homo-sexuality to the pedophilia of priests. It is a mind-bogglingly stupid thing even to think, let alone publicize on the world’s biggest social network. It was a tremendous shame to read:

‘Unfortunately a priest’s lie for many years was uncovered when children were massively raped.

Unfortunately the people of other breed continue to do it and everyone knows it but does nothing.’

I was staggered about this because the quality of his music, its depth and the sheer amount of it that exists is more than sufficient testimony to his genius as a creator. He is also every bit as good a DJ as he is a producer, which is obvious from listening to his mixes and sets like this for example. For me this genius is evident mostly in relation to his music produced under the name of Mario Basanov, whom a devastating amount of people seem to be completely unaware of the existence of. I genuinely think anybody would like his music who is in possession of a half-decent soul. The sounds are always extremely pleasing to the ear and demonstrate an extremely erudite and competent knowledge of music from around the world. The music has a miraculous ability to engage me as a listener, the vocals are pretty much mesmerizing, tracks such as Under Your Feet, Slip Away, We Are Child Of Love, and I’ll Be Gone are perhaps his finest.

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Then we move onto his second and more popular alias; Ten Walls. I must say I only like three tracks from Ten Walls; Gotham, Requiem and then Walking With Elephants which much like The Inbetweeners were actually so good that they won over the national populace and subsequently became almost unplayable. I must have heard Walking with Elephants four times in the same day at Bestival at Port in 2014 and by this time the novelty had worn off. Gotham however I must have listened to thousands of times and I am able to return to it even now for its enchanting and peculiar Gothic quality. These tracks definitely demonstrate a new and trademark approach to electronic music. I very much enjoy their melancholy tone- smooth melancholy sounds in music are always the best for a person who fails to perpetually subscribe to facile bursts of optimism. They are dark and sad but uplifting because they reconcile one with the dark and the sad whilst flattering the ear drums by giving them a bath of glorious electronic profundity. The Venezuelan duo Fur Coat have taken the wheel for me now in his absence but we all know Adomaitis has so much more to offer, being only 32 years old.

Which brings us back to the scandal, after which rather predictably he came out with the following:

‘I want to apologize for the former post in my account. I am really sorry about its insulting content which does not reflect my true opinion. I hope this misunderstanding will not provoke any more thoughts and opinions. Peace’ 

Until I fully investigated what he said in the first place and read his very recent declaration of apology I was under the wishful belief that what he said was in fact a parody of homophobic fascism, but unfortunately I was wrong. It follows:

‘I’m Marijus Adomaitis aka Ten Walls. Earlier this year I posted comments on my Facebook page, that I deeply regret. My post was linked to homophobia and was very offensive. I am ashamed to have hurt so many people: my family, my country, my colleagues, my friends, the Global LGBT community and many others. Since then I have taken time out to reflect on what I did and work out a way of apologizing that expresses how sorry I am.

I am saddened by my own behavior and the impact of my actions on others. I offended a lot of people, was the cause of horrible debates, wrecked both my own and the confidence of others and ruined the plans for many people I was working with. Understandably, I was labeled homophobic and I am not and never have considered myself to be this way. I have to tell you that my action was completely out of character and done at a particularly angry and stressful time in my life. This is not an excuse, but I would like you to know that the content of my post is not a true reflection of my feelings. For many years I have been happily working and collaborating with people from different cultures, religious and sexual attitudes. I have always respected everyone.

My post made no sense, even to me. I’m a musician. My music is for everyone in this world. I always try to unite people to promote respect, equality and tolerance, love and peace. It is my priority as a music maker, in music there is no space for discrimination. It is my intention to do something in my home country of Lithuania, to support LGBT groups and educate others on acceptance and tolerance. I am now part of a group of people who have created an electronic opera ‘Carmen’ with a strong message of this. I hope my involvement in this project will be the first step to educating others in my home country that homophobia is simply not acceptable and that everyone should be free to live the life they choose.

I am sorry for what I have done. I am sorry I let myself down. I hope you can forgive me and that one day through my actions and future behaviour,I will once again be accepted for my music.

Sincerely Yours,

Marijus / Ten Walls’

You see the thing is, once you do something quite as tragic and ignominious as Ten Walls did and you get caught red-handed to the point where serious love has been lost by the public, in any situation practically, an apology is always going to be completely necessary but at the same time also a completely worthless endeavour. It is necessary for two obvious reasons; Firstly in order to reconcile oneself with your newly created adversaries and try and rectify the upset that one has created. And secondly the apology is necessary for the benefit of his own personal welfare in order to re-establish his life and career. This is where the worthlessness of the apology comes in because we will never know which reason he was concerned most with when apologising, and we will never know its true value or purpose. Even if the apology does pledge his support to LGBT groups across the Baltic states, we still do not know!

Midland was one of the skeptical and vehement doubters of the sincerity of this apology and excoriated it thus:

Sorry I said some really disgusting things about gay people, I apologise as it might affect my record sales. Yours. Ten Walls.

What Midland said is obviously fair enough. But much more thought needs to be put into this now the heat has died down. A point has to be made here about the significance of geography in determining cultural values. If you go to Saudi Arabia you will find yourself in a country which brutally enforces radical Islamic law on its citizens. In Afghanistan the national sport is Buzkashi -(literally “goat dragging” in Persian) or the sport in which horse-mounted players attempt to drag a goat or calf carcass toward a goal, when in our case we replace the goat for a bouncy sphere. If you go to China they do bad things to dogs, whereas we keep them on leads, name them and take them out for walks. If you go to the United states you will find people who when they want to find out about what’s going on in the world will tune into Fox News whereas we British tend to be pretty fond of Trevor Mcdonald.

In the UK we probably fail to participate in these activities and tendencies and would probably be appalled to see them practiced on our Island in the Atlantic. But do we deserve credit for our own perhaps more refined standing points? No of course not because the experiences shared in every country that shape the attitudes of the people are COMPLETELY different and play a FUNDAMENTAL role in shaping them. Whether it’s what religion we have, what sport we play, what animals we choose to cultivate or slaughter, what news channel we watch or what views we have of the homosexual community, they are all to a large extent the product of our environments and therefore often largely out of our control. And some of them are always going to be horrifying. Our environment here in the UK for example just happens to be one which has adapted to become highly respectful of other races, nationalities, and sexualities (although I know that it may be argued; NOT ENOUGH! But this is a different conversation altogether). Who knows, in another country maybe even the glorious and morally bullet-proof you and I could have been been the proponents of fascistic balderdash?

I went to Lithuania (Marijus Adomaitis’ home country) this summer and I heard from a few of people that their views on things like homosexuality are generally less developed than ours in the UK due to various factors. I know that this isn’t credible evidence to argue that point, and I know that it won’t apply to a large percentile of Lithuanians who have come to respect minority groups of their own accord and deserve respect for that to the same degree as everybody else does but sadly it seems to have applied to Marijus Adomaitis in this instance. And from this perspective it simply doesn’t make sense for the likes of Midland to get on their high-horses here, because there is serious reason to doubt that Marijus Adomaitis had the same opportunities to become as understanding of homosexuals as they have.

Now you see ladies and gentlemen I realise that having written what I have here I have effectively taken off my trainers, raised my arms to my sides and stepped onto a tight-rope over a fifty thousand foot drop into the abyss. Or I am in danger of appearing as if I am advocating acceptance of fascist viewpoints and am suggesting that we should accept that people hold these views and not challenge them. But quite the contrary! I am saying that we would do well to understand the reasons for the origins of these unacceptable opinions and then it is therefore subsequently an OBLIGATORY duty for us to fight this ignorance with our own much more reasonable opinions. And if that means being vehement about it then yes- whatever is necessary for destroying the ignorance that is the root of all the strange evils and unsophisticated contempt emerging all over the place in the 21st century world!

Everybody was correct in cancelling Marijus’ bookings for the summer. Everybody was right in attacking him on Twitter. And I would accept that the guy has had to seriously question his homophobic attitudes as a result of that (actually believing what was stated in his most recent apology). Ten Walls has been made to pay for his crime in reputation, career and personal misery. Regardless of how possibly dubious the motives might be for his apology he has done everything in his power to repent. My question is would it not be tremendously unmerciful and perhaps even hateful for us not to forgive him and then cast him to the west wind like a palm full of dust never to be appreciated again for eternity? Would this not express the same hatred (and dare I say, intolerance?) that we were trying to vanquish in the first place?

Will we now choose to make him suffer further and also suffer ourselves by depriving ourselves of this man’s remarkable music? We should not. We must respond with Hitchens-esque rationality here and Jesus-esque compassion. Forgive the man! Forgive him and respond to any future episodes of bigotry from anybody else with the same righteousness and vehemence that has been shown to Ten Walls (And good on us! (: )

The public’s righteous and vehement reaction to his words was surely the result of the rational and compassionate principles that were being threatened by this DJ’s ignorant and nasty words. So it would only be fitting to appeal to those principles again now. Yes we should forgive Marijus Adomaitis, because it is the most rational and the most compassionate thing to do.

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Jellyfish speaks out against climate change

Recently the courageous, highly venerated and rational thinking Pope decided that enough was enough and it was time to speak out against climate change and really save our Planet from the brink of disaster and unnecessary turmoil. But he isn’t the only one to have realised the importance of protecting the planet from human destruction, 3 months later an Atlantic jellyfish who wishes to remain anonymous came forward and stressed the importance of a greener future. During interview his tone of speech alternated between both inexorable ire and soul-crushing disappointment. The jellyfish had recently returned from an annual family retreat to the Pacific to find that his journey was massively obstructed by human plastic, much of which he consumed by accident. On this journey the mostly translucent jellyfish had the misfortune of swallowing a Carlsberg beer bottle cap, which will now remain permanently visible through his translucent stomach pouch until the end of his days. The jellyfish professes that the addition of this cap has led him to experience both tremendous physical discomfort and widespread ridicule from the jellyfish community.

“Carlsberg isn’t even a nice beer. That’s what makes having this cap all the more irritating.” The jellyfish told us as he burst into tears. “I’ve somehow become a living advertisement for a product that I don’t even appreciate. Can you imagine how humiliating that is for me?” The jellyfish is also a teetotal proponent of socialism, which fuels his contempt for having this cap permanently on display which has often led to him being mistaken for a less intelligent, capitalistic jellyfish.

“The water is getting too hot now. And the acid in it is burning my tentacles. Enough is enough now” he continued.

“This has got so out of hand now. Humans are NOT amphibious creatures. They should keep all of their horrible human made materials somewhere out of the way of other life or at the very least on land! You don’t see us lot trashing the continents with our filth. We keep ourselves to ourselves in the ocean.”

The jellyfish then went on to describe an area often visited by him and other jellyfish known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is essentially a cluster of rubbish in the ocean estimated by some media reports to equate  to be ‘twice the size of the continental United States’.

“It’s absolutely unreal how much garbage is there. My family and I are increasingly disgusted by it as we swim by it each year. It just gets bigger and bigger. How big will it have to get before you dumb humans realise the importance of recycling your plastics?”

“It’s all right for that Pope to come out and say it from his lovely Pope-sized bed in the Vatican, on his specially made Pope-Ipad. We jellyfish don’t believe in the Heaven, so this hideously awful plastic-ridden ocean life is all we’ve got. It’s us fish life who have to pick up the pieces from your mess (literally)! I don’t even think humans are considering how the jellyfish is affected by climate change.”

We couldn’t help but sympathise.

Knuckleheads

Crab Apple had the best box in the whole of the Underground. It was six metres squared in volume and had perspex walls, a quilted blanket, a small sink, and access to no less than three other boxes across the corridor.

Crab apple was elated because his working hours had recently been reduced to nineteen and a half hours a day, meaning that now he had nearly five hours of leisure time to sleep and to see his friends across the tunnels to play knuckleheads with them, with the bones of dead creatures. Crab apple was hard working and good natured but above all he was almost completely content. He hated working because the practices he was required to do were absolutely insufferable, but he needed to persevere if he wanted to enjoy the fiery thrills of knucklehead combat as regularly as he was doing.

Everyone envied Crab apple because his box was the best. Crab apple prided himself on that smooth perspex finish. He would rub the glass every night before bed with his face, and he would be thankful that he had somehow ended up with such a remarkable gift. He always slept well, then he would wake up, have a few sips water then prepare for a day’s intensive labour, alone. His job was simply to dig, he didn’t know why. He was a good digger, and he dug like no other. He knew that if he carried on working at the same rate, the rewards would come and before he knew it, Crab apple would be awarded a mattress all to himself.

Norman would never have six metres squared or perspex or a quilted blanket or a small sink or a mattress all to himself. Norman was on twenty two hours of work per day. He lived in what was known as a shoe box. He was different to Crab apple in that he was always angry and depressed. This led to him having an awful problem with swearing and not many could tolerate his incessant pessimistic outlook. The sight of the perspex box across the corridor made him want to kill himself.

Norman liked Crab apple because he was a friend to him. But to Norman Crab apple was intolerably stupid and trivial. Crab apple couldn’t hold any kind of conversation that didn’t concern either digging or knucklehead warfare. Crab apple was good natured but brain dead to everything, everything including the one thing that excited Norman; the concept of freedom. That there was something else other than the dusty, hot, narrow channels of the underground. Norman could never convince himself that a mattress represented freedom, to him this was simply not the case, but a sordid mendacity implanted into the minds of the diggers from a dark, dark superior being who was operating from above. But this was just ‘audacious conjecture’ or ‘blasphemous conspiracy’ and he could not announce these opinions to others because they would simply not understand and render him insane.

After an infuriating day of blistering and bone-crushing labour Norman climbed back up to the corridor covered in a layer of dusty rock carpeted to his skin by sweat. He went back to his shoebox and briefly washed his face and hands. He then knocked on Crab apple’s door, hell-bent on suicide.

Crab apple was lying on his back, fiddling with his knuckleheads when his friend Norman called. He leapt with enthusiasm and opened the door to greet his friend.

“Hello Norman. My good friend! Are you all right?”

“No” Norman replied. His posture was flaccid and his voice sounded like over used sand paper.

“Ahh my good friend, that is a shame. Perhaps a good  game of knuckleheads might make you feel better? “

“I don’t want to play fucking knuckle heads”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes”

“Oh okay fine, maybe later then my good friend?”

“I don’t want to play knuckle heads ever again”

Crab apple did not know how to respond to this, and looked well and truly perplexed by this objection.

…

There was a hideous pause.

…

“Well what do you want to do then?”

“I want to cease.”

“You mean you want to…”

“I WANT TO BLOODY DIE CRAB APPLE!”

Again, Crab apple had never experienced such a queer and flummoxing admission. And again Crab apple was perplexed.

…

There was a hideous pause.

…

This one carried on a while longer.

…

” But if you die Norman, then who will do your share of the digging? Above all else, the digging must be done, my good friend” Crab apple assured, rubbing a horrible rotten knuckle bone against his chin pensively.

“I don’t care. I don’t fucking care in the slightest”

“Norman, my good friend! You are so young! There is a solid thirty years solid and intensive labour in you yet. So keep your labour as solid and intensive as possible! Keep working as hard as you are doing and then before you know it you will be perspex, just like me! I mean it Norman I really do. I built what I’ve got now on good, hard labour. You can do the same. You just have to believe in your ability to dig. We are diggers, that’s why we are here. Dig Norman. Dig everything– that’s what my father taught me, and his father before him and his father before him and his father before and his father before him. Dig everything, my good friend, dig everything! That is the best advice you’ll ever hear. And I, my good friend Norman, am living proof of this” Crab apple smiled to himself, a smile of immense pride.

Norman sighed and was becoming extremely frustrated.

“Is this all you want Crab apple? Do you think this is enough?” Norman pointed towards the quilted blanket which was covered in filth, and the ladybird-sized sink, that sat pathetically by the door. Crab apple was offended and confused. There was another pause. “How can you convince yourself that such a preposterous life is ever worth living?”

” Norman, my good friend… I do not follow you. Is this not the finest box in the whole of the known Underground? It is surely not preposterous. Surely it is not that. And is life worth living? Of course it is. “

“Except it isn’t though. Life is absolutely unbearable “

Crab apple flicked a knucklehead across the room and then smiled at it as it hit the floor then went to retrieve it.

“My good friend. Everything is fine. Everything is fine!” He flicked the same knucklehead at exactly the same place and reacted to it in exactly the same way again, smiling as he did it as if Normal was not present.

Norman was growing frustrated. “Crab apple. How simply can I put this…Has it ever occurred to you that we are being hideously mistreated? “

“What do you mean?”

Norman did not know how to respond to this, whether to tell Crab apple his true thoughts or not. He was growing too tired to think and for a second he thought he might be going insane.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. I don’t even know any more ” he said.

“My friend you know your language is terrible! “

“I’m sorry” Norman said ironically.

“Look Norman. I don’t know what strange diggers you’ve been talking to down the tunnels. Or what dreaded underground gasses you’ve been inhaling, but you are speaking like a madman, my good friend! You need to relax. Relax, you must. You only have just under two hours before your next big dig”

Norman looked down, and convulsed for a moment to himself. Crab apple stared at him as if he was expecting him to do something, but when he didn’t he continued to stare at the unthinkable spectacle on his door step. He said nothing.

“Oh go on then Crab apple you simple minded, narrow bundle of knuckle-shagging fuck dust.  Prepare the knucklehead battlefield. We shall have our game”.

Norman walked into the box. Crab apple rushed to prepare the pieces.

“That’s  good to hear Norman, my good friend. That’s good to hear”.

Grey World

There became a greyness that would never relinquish its power. It would engulf you. It would seep through the corners. It would rain grey particles into your consciousness. The grey had a power, an identity and its own obscure and mediocre designs. It was all categorically, inescapably grey.

The grey politics, grey social networking, grey smartphones, grey tablets, grey sports, grey game shows, grey nightclubs, grey restaurants, grey cinema, grey music, grey public transport, grey letters, grey family members, grey friends, grey language and everything else you could ever imagine was lost to grey. The world had slid into a totalitarian system of philosophy and of ethics; greyism. Or this is how I liked to envisage it within the iridescent confines of my hopeless brain. I almost collapsed in despair at the discovery that my wife had recently developed a grey tinge, and left her instantly. I was alone against the world and my obstinate strivings for colour, flavour, excitement and life drove me away from the rest of civilisation- one morning whilst pouring grey milk over my grey weetabix and listening to the vacuous and mediocre surmises of grey politicians and news reporters on my television, I decided I had had far too many days like this. I was finished. My infatuation with the idea of being removed from this unbearable world had come to a head. I caught the first ferry out of grey shores.

I bought no ticket. I ignored everybody. Later somewhere between Guernsey and a barren rock I looked down from the side of the deck, entranced by a vast welcoming sea that would alternate between exquisite shades of green and blue. I saw my opportunity and leapt off the chugging grey vessel. As I jumped off deck I reminded myself of a flying squirrel but then as I spread my limbs and I did not glide I was mildly disappointed at the extent of my delusion. But before I could feel too overtly apathetic towards myself I had smashed into the surface of the waves. I did not hear the bemused grey cries from the deck behind. I registered the splash of a life-ring behind me that had been thrown ambivalently by a dull but mildly concerned lady in a grey fleece but I ignored her and it.

Wanting to hear the grey calls of the deck no longer I swam deep underwater. With my eyes open withstanding the pain of the salt in my eyes which was completely vanquished by my own sense of liberation. I swam until my lungs were about to give up and when I reached the surface I was elsewhere. I could no longer hear or see the ferry.

I continued to swim. I swam, I swam and pierced through the waves like a knife through butter and with a face like the omnipotent. After hours of swimming a barren rock became my destination. It was far from paradise. It was featureless, mossy and mostly covered in bird faeces. But it was not grey. I embedded my fingers in the slimy algae and began to scramble slimy rock after slimy rock. But then I realised I was not quite alone and was confronted with a slimy adversary that kissed my ankle with poison and riddled me with agony. Shrieking, I kicked it in the face and continued my ascent. The jellyfish grinned at me malevolently and swam away with an air of nonchalance. But I didn’t let this deter me from my objective and remained largely unprovoked.

After many failed attempts to reach the peak I came crashing back down to the sea, devoid of energy and in excruciating pain but bursting with a sense of determination. I finally found a correct angle to climb and felt the crushing of crabs under the soles of my feet as I climbed but I didn’t mourn these crustaceans or even consider the casualties as I climbed.

I got to the top of the rocky island, rain broke out and the sea roared. I took off my grey garments and stood balancing one footed on the highest rock. It was then I knew that I would inhabit this place for the rest of my life. And I could forget my wife, forget my uneventful grey past, forget the human race, forget greyism. And live here for ever in vibrant solitude, allowing the world outside to implode into nothing but grey vacuum, miles and miles out of my way. It was no longer my concern. I was euphoric and my thoughts were new, exciting, colourful and free.

And then the big grey helicopter came.

the scariest thing ever

the scariest thing ever happens when you’re just staying at yours on your own and you get up in the middle of the night and you’re still half asleep and not really engaged with life and you get up for a drink or maybe a piss whatever and then all of a sudden you see a human being right there who you didn’t know was there doing something or anything obviously with the purpose of grabbing your attention then that prospect is definitely the most potentially scary frightening horrifying terrifying blood-curdling prospect there ever was so you should always lock your door or doors but even if you do and the scariest thing ever just happens anyway then the scariest thing ever could potentially be even more scary blood-curdling because of the insane crazy lengths that the human being has obviously gone to in order to be there which only really demonstrates shows the obscene levels of their mysterious and probably very evil motives that they must have to be in your house not their own houses or anybody else’s house but yours

Bad Language

I have been castigated all my life by certain people for my choices of language and continue to be, even today. What’s worse is that in certain social situations the use of a swear word has become ignominious, leading to the castigation I speak of and perhaps even worse than this; people apologising on your behalf! We need to clear the air here and eradicate this disingenuous approach towards ‘bad language’. We also need to establish what constitutes ‘bad language’ properly.

I don’t believe that it is ‘unacceptable’ to use certain words because they are wrong in themselves, which is what we have all learned from an early age- being taught this by our parents and teachers. That approach is far too deontological for my liking (who do these people think they are, Kant?). The strength or acceptability of somebody’s language should be in no way determined by whether or not they choose to use curse-words, it depends entirely on the way they speak generally and the way they choose to include these words in their sentences. It is possible to be the proponent of extremely bad language without swearing, and extremely good language whilst swearing. Obviously.

It is perhaps ironic how those who admonish the use of bad language and swear words are the ones who have elevated those words to their current status and made them extremely desirable words to use. Swear words have a gravity to them. Fuck is the word I use the most. It is a very charged word, like monster, or smack, or coke, or fire (All these words have so much of what I like to call a charge that they get taken for the purpose of multiple meanings, mostly to very shall we say- extravagant things). One finds that short, sharp syllables are perfect for a devastating little charge.

Fuck doesn’t ever get used referring to its actual meaning. I feel that all swear words, because they are swear words have deviated from their literal meanings and their importance is now only really due to their power and their charge. I don’t like to use these words aggressively, so I use them largely whilst attempting to be humourous, or being typically sardonic and realistic in the English way, during reflections on instances which are far from ideal- shall we say. Swearing just helps that. Look at this use by David Mitchell, for example. Swearing makes things funny. In a way it’s deeply saddening that most people don’t like or get this humour, and therefore castigate it and as a result are intimidated by it. These are most likely the kind of people who watch stuff like The Big Bang Theory. So at this point I cease to care, really…

I know where the anti-swearing brigade is coming from sometimes- these words get a bad name. You go to hellish places like McDonalds or Sileby and you hear swear words being used in a hideous and intimidating fashion by people who have frightful voices, frightful faces and frightful vocabularies. Morning swearing in particular can be too much and have the power to disturb the ever strove-for morning peace. The words are just too conspicuous sometimes and it can be advisable to avoid using them for the purposes of convenience. Yes. Used in certain environments they can sometimes they stand out and deflect the conversation away from its intended premise. But this is where, your meaning has to supersede the swearing. When best used, swearing amplifies the meaning and adds to the proposition or idea being presented. It is the only language that can truly be used to highlight the absurdity of things, when they are truly, truly absurd.

I remember the day when I learned a word, in year 5 at lunch time. Some big guy called Harry told me of the existence of a superior swear word, one swear word to rule them all. I instantly bothered and bothered him to learn what it was and eventually he gave in and revealed it to me. The word was cump. I have a vivid memory of learning the word cump but obviously I soon learned that this was not the word I had been looking for. There could be three possibilities for this: I either misheard the word, big Harry thought the word was actually cump, or most likely- Big Harry knew what the word actually was and decided to give me an incorrect variation; possibly to protect me from the overpowering vulgarity, possibly for humorous purposes.

Which brings me to the c-word. I still often hear extreme hostility towards this word and again I get why. But it is the same with all swear words really, it only emanates its true meaning if you use it in that way or hear it in that way. It’s the same with fuck- which again I rarely use it in its proper context. When cunt became the one swear word to rule them all, it officially acquired an entirely different meaning altogether. I think we can all be quite certain that if this word was used to mean its true meaning, it would be too conspicuous to ignore and its use would become unbearable. Some guy would say something, then the use of the the one swear word to rule them all would completely trump everything else he was saying, deflecting his true meaning and terminating the development of the conversation, implanting other irrelevant images and associations within the minds of his listeners. God forbid this guy would be trying to say something of importance, in a combat situation, perhaps (Super Hans plagiarism acknowledged). So in this instance, c word-not practical, c word-not good.

But a defense of the occasional use of the c-word- there are certain people who when one describes I would suggest it would be an offence to call anything other than a cunt. To describe Rupert Murdoch, Kanye West, that horrible landlord who threatens to throw you out of your property because you sent him an email asking for a bed in stead of a dirty jagged metal mattress, Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly, Tony Blair, Bush, David Cameron, Katie Hopkins or Mother Teresa for example. What words would you consider ascribing to them if not the C-bomb? The C is all these people deserve.

We could take a mildly inventive approach and beginning with the non-scatological and clean, non-swear words, we might call these horrible people;

Idiot, jerk, cow, git, twit, cretin, louse, pig, prat, rat, scumbag, tool, buffoon.

These words taking you back to your old geography teacher perhaps? I bet he called you them a few times, unless you were especially enthusiastic about map-reading. Although, to be honest, the geography teachers I had had some serious wrath backed up, they were pretty uncrossable. You could tell they swear all the time in private, use these amusing words as substitutes when hurling abuse at sweaty little adolescents, often achieving humorous value. If there is anything in this blog worth learning, it is not to fuck with a geography teacher.

Personally I would call someone a louse if I could remember to. I could maybe even use the word prat if I wanted to. Occasionally I think of a really amusing non- curse word to call people but then I often forget what word I have tried to remember… forever. Goblin in pretty good. Or something fungus related? I wouldn’t want to be considered fungus. Frog spawn is a good term to describe someone, but I’d be careful not to pluralise someone by accident, especially a twat. Maybe one day we might be creative and innovative enough to use non curse-words instead of expletives, but we shouldn’t hold our breath because expletives are both convenient and effective.

The true Bad Language that needs to be addressed here and possibly criticized is the uniform robot language that most people use. Whenever one expresses them self in any kind of inventive way, not just through language, the proponents of the true bad language are bewildered and call you ‘weird’ because they are so accustomed to absolutely everything in their life being dull and familiar. They don’t try and understand anything, and only value people of a certain narrow-minded type; the only people they actively choose to seek in their lives. If ever there was a Utopian society on Earth these people would focus on addressing their narrow-minded approaches to language before castigating others for their choices. In Utopia, instead of telling people off for swearing, people would be told off for not being expressive enough and using shit words. I won’t make a list of all those words that most people say all the time, but they’re crap and you will probably know exactly what they are when you come across them. Even when used ‘ironically’ they are still shit, because we know that they’re actually the only words they know. They don’t ever pull anything better out of the bag.

Getting towards the end of this, I believe that language has an enormous power to define an individual. You can judge someone on their choice of language. Shit people use shit words. Shit people are afraid of using words that other people do not yet use. So avoiding the use of expletives is not the most important thing. Expression is the most important thing.

Great people create their own words, bring old words back into play, mix things up. We are all different, only some people are the same and therefore rely on talking the same crap, the same crap that other people use. Learn to love words. You say them every day, don’t be a boring mollusc, retreating to the slimes of mediocrity. Express yourself. Language is an excellent opportunity to do so. Combine words that have not yet been combined. Words that juxtapose one another like acid and alkali. Is it purple or is it red? You decide. Fucking be litmus paper. You only get one life.

If you’re still a castigator after hearing my views on the matter, why not turn to Stephen Fry? Who often deconstructs stupidity, much like a dreadfully ergonomic spanner might deconstruct a poorly made Apollo mountain bike.

(But you have to be careful. I did an audition for Eggheads over the phone and had to answer a series of quiz questions. When I didn’t know the answers I said on a couple of questions “Oh fucking hell” inadvertently. He didn’t react to it over the phone but unsurprisingly, we didn’t get on the show and we were left bitterly disappointed. The regret still plagues me to this day…)