Please note this blog contains plenty of f bombs read with caution.
September 2024
I like Rick Rubin , nah I think I actually love Rick Rubin , or I did. The hipper than hip zen producer from New York City just ruined my day. Why ? I’ll get into that in a bit. First I’m going to get right back onto my social media disease hobby horse. I think I’m prepared to stand up and debate with anyone , ANYONE that right now social fucking media is the scourge of the western world – it might actually be the scourge of the whole world. It’s hilarious and highly ironic to me anyway – maybe a few others who have jumped on this, that X the new name for Twitter is also a street term used for heroin. Funny no ?As everyone seems to have gotten themselves hooked – and although that name is specific to one social media platform we might as well re-brand the whole of Social Media as X. Culture and sub-cultures -things that massively inspire me seem absolutely fooked right now as they are sucked into a digital demise in the vacuum of social media algorithms. Fucked. And I want out. But exactly where is out these days. I’ve started Ashtanga Yoga School last year (and it’s brilliant btw) and I’m about to jump back into the daily grind of running a yoga studio – ok it’s hardly going down the pit , but it can be hard work , running the studio , teaching the classes and promoting the whole she-bang. But it’s only wee – 6 people, so fingers crossed it’ll not kill me- hopefully. So how do I let folk know about me new yoga tings ? Why of course it’s social media where else – what joy. – What a pain in the ass more like. Ya know when digital took over from print – ie instead of printing leaflets and distributing them by hand , the leaflet got digitalised and stuck on Facebook – this was in the land time forgot when Facebook was the only online platform. But we ( we as in most of humanity who wanted to tell other folk about what we are up to) embraced it and it was a little fun at first. Ah but then Zucks wanted more bucks and started to up the stakes by first of all charging you to ‘advertise’ ie show your ‘followers’ on FB (and not FAB) and then the fucking algorithm arseholes got involved ie it didn’t matter how creative you were with your flyer designs as now it was all about hashtags and ticking fucking boxes (ie target audience shit – so that people who were into the same shit as you and might be interested in your shit might , just might get to see the shit that you were promoting on FB (and not FAB) – I say might – the more dollar you paid the more chance folk might see your shit – what a load of shit eh? And sorry for cursing a lot. But fucking this shit makes me lose it).
To quote myself ( and I don’t do that , that often ) we are now in the land of ‘donning a tiny pair of speedos and throwing a few yoga shapes whilst showing a bit of ass on an Instagram reel in the hope of getting strangers to like me’ remix that sentence to whatever flava you like but it’s basically the same thing. And it’s one big ginormous cess pit. We’ve now got literally every Tom Dick & Deidre on da gram giving us the minutiae of their boring fucking lives. I mean WHO WATCHES THIS SHIT ? AND WHY? How have we gotten to the stage where we are so bored of our own fucking lives that we have to watch every single mindlessly boring detail of other people’s boring lives for entertainment. Can I suggest a remedy ? Read a book ? Maybe – can’t do any harm can it- maybe go take a walk say hello to a stranger or summat. In fact I’m gonna start a campaign #sayhellotoastranger – shit the bed – see what I did there without even thinking about it ? I added in a hasfuckingtag , my brain hurts.
There’s actually no end game for any of this shit – apart from berks like me shouting at our laptops in our own angry old man echo chambers. No one will take any notice – (yoga) people will continue to fake smile and throw some weird yoga pretzel shape with a quote from Patanjali telling us ‘it’s not about pretzel shapes but its dead dead spiritual init’ on their X of choice – I mean to quote myself yet again – why do these fookers feel the need to tell us that it’s not at all about the ability to do weird yoga postures with a photo of themselves in a weird pretzel shaped yoga posture- nonsense init. Now where’s me speedos…
Was gonna finish it there with the speedos gag but forgot I haven’t mentioned my Rick Rubin meltdown. So here it is. I was listening to a podcast Rick did recently and he was talking with some bloke who was involved with The Beastie Boys in their early days. I was painting a brick wall in the aforementioned tiny studio – and all was well with the world. I also love The Beastie Boys. I don’t love painting but the podcast was good and made me forget about the fact there was more paint on me than was on the walls. Anyway the conversation went on and on and suddenly I realised what these 2 blokes were talking about was no longer fun but stank of well to put it bluntly 2 blokes blowing smoke up each other asses – Rick ‘Your dead ace’ , other bloke ‘thanks you’re dead ace too’ ad nauseam. Anyway they got to a part about buying expensive shit and Rick mentioned the fact that he doesn’t really buy expensive shit (clothes cars whatever ) but one day he just happened to be passing a Hemes shop when he saw a rock in the window that had been painted with the Hermes logo on it and in Rick’s own words ‘I just had to have it’ Yes it was just a normal fucking rock that some dork had painted a logo on and now had an obscene price tag put on it. ‘I had to have it’ rang round my brain and I was gonna smash my phone up but thought better of it and just turned off the podcast – that’s me and Rick finished for ever. Because of a Hermes fucking rock – well just a rock with a logo on it. Ya know I’m all zen n peace n lurve and all that but certain things I ain’t zen and not at all peace or lurve – and Rick’s rock was the epitome of all that’s bad in the world , in modern culture -it’s the symbol of X and in the style of Bill Drummond who set fire to a million pounds (Google it- I’m already waaaaay past the amount of words that anyone is likely to read , in fact I’ll be amazed if anyone has gotten this far) I’m gonna buy me a Hermes rock (actually I couldn’t afford one – maybe I’ll break into Rick’s gaff and nick his) and blow the fucker up. Live on Instagram of course ; ) .