Rubbing Sh*t in God's Eyes

Dead Rock Star fashions was ahead of it's time.

gives me another opportunity to alert people to one of your finest hours:

http://thequietus.com/articles/00104-black-sky-thinking-kanye-west-sensitive-soul

Props for getting in Francis Fukuyama, too.

of your being offended?

i wrote an essay in uni dismissing that whole theory. just nice to see that name again.

also i got that copy of Bang. one of the clearest things i remember from it is a review rubbishing a Sonic Youth. I must of only been about 16 at the time but even then i thought something like that was really brave for a new magazine to do.

It's a ridiculous headline which serves no real purpose. The offense lies in the unnecessary juxtaposition of an obscenity with the name of God, which several major world religions come under. Fact is, there's no need for it.

even tho I went too far and wrote a carpark rape soundtracked by Audio Bully's as an album review, which they didn't publish. I just presumed that it woulda all been written by Swells but apparently it didn't quite fit : )

it did however provide me with an opportunity to sit in a pub with many of the finest writer's of our generation and hear the fire pour from their mouths. looking back at it now, i'm not sure i've ever met a group of people before or since who had so many opinions on anything 'n' everything and a visual way with language. but i've seen glimpses of it in individuals and a culmination of a lot of it under the umbrella of theQuietus. but seems clear to me is that without having known or seen or felt this world of journalism/criticism/opinionated writing with such a visual prowess, i doubt there could be a next generation of it, inspired by it. the main reason for this week is the fact that the 16/17/18-25yr olds now, who start blogs, submit copy to sites like DiS for consideration, don't have these reference points. it's like bands who think sounding like new order or blondie is inventive, when in fact its been done long before. and i hope, despite the fact i've forgotten to capitalize any of this, that this week has shone a touch and invigorated and inspired some people to write about music. thatisall.

Those were a handful of men among a sea of hacks. They were exceptions to the norm (the norm being that most people do a terrible job of writing about music). New bright young things with an insatiable appetite for culture and a desire to spew forth their own informed brand of vitriol upon it continue to be born. Nothing has really changed in that sense.

I've written since I swapped my altarboy's cassocks for some tabs of LSD in 1987, should create such antipathy from such a holy-minded individual.

But then that's Christians for you eh? Always falling over themselves in a rush to get upset about stuff, without parsing the actual meaning of what's being said.

"But mummy! He said that lazy people who were priveleged with good jobs were insulting God by not trying harder! Boo hoo!"

what i meant to say is, it's offensive?

Good.

It's a shame a good chunk of the interesting music writing has shifted to the internet because now, there's nothing to read in the toilet.

have an old skool dot matrix printer set up in my bathroom so when I press print on my laptop the articles come pouring out of the cistern as I shite.

I tryed posting it once and it didn't work so you can have an added extra now...

...I just tear the papper down the aloted dotted lines when I'm done and whipe.

Well, quite.

Replace the word God with "rape", "warfare", "subjugation of women", "abuse of the working classes", "slavery", "the perceived superiority of lighter skinned peoples" and you can start to see the faintest of problems with this guy's argument.

Why are you limiting this to current religions? The recognition, whether man-made or not, of a higher being goes back much farther than the slave trade and the "subjugation of women" (which I would argue was often not opposed by women of the time, and was, more often, a repectful attempt to define the relevant positions of men and women in society).

Also, your issue with any of the replacement words above stems from what? Your moral code? In asserting that these things are repulsive, you've validated my point that things can be offensive. I'm not trying to be a moron here, I'm trying to explain how the article title is more offensive than necessary.

With regards to my apparent inability to comprehend the your article and thus realise that it was okay after all: it's not a metaphorical work of genius. The article's title stands alone in large type on the front page of a major music website. Profanity can exist as an entity in itself, whether there is another intention behind the entity in question or not.

I've been sucked into this and its ridiculous. Surely everyone here can look at the title reasonably and see how it can be seen as offensive to large numbers of people, and how redundant the title really is in terms of the article itself.

I'm out of here

cheers.

"I'm sure you'd all agree the article would look hideously out of place in any newspaper - why should the editorial and linguistic standard of music journalism be so base?"

I'm not writing for a newspaper though, I'm writing for a website. Different format. I've written for all the nationals before as a news and features writer so I'm guessing I'm in a better position than you to judge what is or isn't acceptable in terms of formatting.

Swearing, as any fule kno, is older than any monotheistic, Christian belief system that would be recognizable today. Check your ancient Chinese and Egyptian history. The idea that blasphemous, profane or shocking imagery in journalism, pamphleteering, poetry, literature etc is wrong is completely erroneous. In my corner I have Shakespeare, Chaucer, James Joyce, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Martin Amis etc. In your corner you have The Daily Mail. Congratulations.

If you wish to debate a decline in standards then lets use something useful like defining the reading age of my piece, or pointing out where the bad grammar it etc.

(Something that I'll apply to your opening post, as it is poorly written, if you like.)

"Why are you limiting this to current religions?"

Because none of the followers of Ug God Of Mangrove Trees are claiming to be upset.

"The recognition, whether man-made or not, of a higher being goes back much farther than the slave trade"

No it doesn't.

""subjugation of women" (which I would argue was often not opposed by women of the time, and was, more often, a repectful attempt to define the relevant positions of men and women in society)."

Wow. You utter, utter cunt.

"Also, your issue with any of the replacement words above stems from what?"

You clearly made the risible claim that just because religion is old it deserves respect and you suggest that by sheer dint of its age there must be something in it. Which is bullshit.

I haven't claimed to have produced a "metaphorical work of genius" - I'm not sure what one of those is. What I have done is come up with a relevant eye catching headline, which I was fully aware that some (maybe more religious than myself) readers might initially think 'What the fuck?' before reading it and going 'Ah, I see what he's driving at, even though the language is a bit ripe.'

FUCK ME. Do you need everything spelling out for you, you tedious, whining, cock juggling, pant pissing, stripy trouser wearing, big bearded ghost in the sky worshipping little thunder cunt?

(Actual, ahem, LOL, at the naval gaze gag.)

well aware that a diverse range of people in the number of 20k-30k look at the frontpage everyday and you have made the only complaint. you are clearly offended but at the same time you seem to neglect the fact the letter started could be any vowel but you presume it's an i.

I was trying to convey the idea that the phrase (which IS profane, by conventional standards at least) is offensive to such a large group of people, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian etc. I have blown this out of proportion though, I was a little bored and tipsy last night.

The problem with "interpreting" this kind of thing is that there's no end to it. I've heard it said that "Life of Brian" was actually reverent in its treatment of Christianity due to its comedic, affectionate nature. It's natural that someone who is not offended would have difficulty comprehending the fact that the film is, beyound all doubt, defined as profane by all branches of Christianity. Similarly, a docile-looking image of a docile-looking prophet Mohammed sitting on a bus beside a bomb could have a secular excuse, something along the lines of it being a sharp satirical take on the differing beliefs within Islam. I think you'd agree there would be outrage.

afterskoolklub's argument is interesting, althogh it fails to operate within the philosophies in question here:

If there is a God and blasphemy has been specifically defined for us in some kind of revelation, then profanity does not rely on the human mind to any great extent, and can exist without in-depth interpetation - all we can do is try to avoid it. If there is no God, profanity is nonsense anyway. Whether someone identifies a profanity or not is irrelevant to its offensiveness to a higher being.

But lets forget about it, shall we? Its nothing unusually terrible anyway, its just a bit callous. And thanks for the abuse above, Mr Doran.

excellent article, a pleasure to read. dont know why any cunt has to try to pick holes in something that has none.

and it just being a reiteration of 'why swells hates sonic youth'. which is fun and all, but I'd read it before.