enough

ok now is the time to call it quits on the following stories:
virginia tech massacre. it happened over there, not here so why on earth have the press devoted so much time to it? it is not like we don’t have our own problems with guns and knives. if there is any benefit to the endless attention paid to the story it is it reminds us that there are many differences between the uk and the usa. we will never understand their love of the gun, their belief that the ability to have a gun is an inalienable right.
but we had the usual spokesbollocks from the national rifle association that it wasn’t guns that kill people but it is people that kill people. while pretty much everyone knows this is total hooey the nra still get away with it. it makes you wonder why the tobacco lobby has never used it, or for that matter why colombian drug lords haven’t started to use it as a means of getting drugs made legal.
if the mantra of the nra wasn’t bad enough the other plank of coverage of such events was wheeled out. the perpetrator was influenced by a (shock! horror!) film. the film of choice this time is “oldboy”. part of the “conclusive” evidence is a picture of the perpetrator with a hammer in his hand, oh look there is the character in “oldboy” with a hammer. well that is me convinced.
(meanwhile b&q have a new slogan” “hammers don’t kill people…”)

we have all had enough of kate middleton. move on from it now. it was never that interesting to start with, and now it is just getting silly. even worse are all the commentators who go on about how “our obsession” with useless celebrities. the argument seems to be that these people have done nothing worthwhile and that our constant need to know what they are doing and have done is an example of what is wrong with mass culture. of course when they talk about it what they say is not frivolous it is incisive and relevant.
i don’t mind them writing all the drivel in the world about the state of celebrity but please don’t pretend what you are writing is important; don’t pretend that because you are critiquing the concept you are not as much in its thrall as everyone else. mostly try not to come across as not being jealous because no one cares what happens in your life.

no more banksy. i like graffiti. i like banksy. what i am bored with is the shock that occurs every time a banksy piece of graffiti is covered up by building contractors. often the article implies that the painters are stupid for not recognising the banksy piece before them. this is quickly followed by the “fact” that the piece in question is worth x thousands of pounds. how? banksy’s graffiti art is done on a building, so quite how you are going to sell the bricks to a collector or a gallery is beyond me.
part of the nature of graffiti is that it is ephemeral.
one of the more interesting aspects of the banksy situation is that it opens up the debate about the nature of art, though most of the people who would defend the work of banksy would be among the first to criticise the vandalism of the unnamed graffiti artists whose work sometimes brightens up the city other times just makes it look messy.
if banksy is to be criticised it is for his popularising of stencils, now the darned things are ubiquitous when it comes to graffiti.
mind you banksy isn’t crying about it as each time a piece is covered up the story is always reminding us that the artist has just sold another canvas at a gallery.