Monetomania

« La couleur est mon obsession quotidienne, ma joie et mon torment. » — Claude Monet (1840-1926)

     “Color is my day-long obsession, my joy and my torment.” — Claude Monet

Reading the Roons

In terms of core issues around maximal engagement with keyly committed core components of the counter-cultural community, one of the saddest, sorriest and sighfullest sights among them is that of the talented lad from the wrong side of the tracks who betrays his class by turning himself into a Guardian-reader, in terms of core cultural assumptions and behaviour.

Northampton’s Alan Moore has done it.

London’s Stewart Home has done it.

Huddersfield’s John Coulthart has done it.

How do I know?

[Readers’ Advisory: If you are easily disturbed, distressed and/or disgusted, please stop reading NOW.]

I know because

[I mean it. Stop reading or you may well regret it.]

I know because each of these talented lads from the wrong side of the tracks now bears the Mark of the Beast, metaphorically speaking.

[Last chance.]

Each of them has, on multiple occasions and without the minimalest micro-metric of shame or irony, deployed the key Guardianista phrase “in terms of”.

• For proof of Alan Moore’s deplorable delinquency, please see here.
• For proof of Stewart Home’s dep-del, please see here.
• For proof of John Coulthart’s dep-del, please see in the same place as you possibly saw or are-about-to-see Stewart Home’s, i.e. here.

So. After seeing and lamenting those horrific examples of class-betrayal, I thought I was hermeneutically hardened and would never again experience sadness, sorrow or sighfullness at the sight of a talented lad etc.

I was wrong.

As I learned when I read this interview in The Mail on Sunday:

There was a lot of negativity in terms of my mum getting frustrated with us as kids, messing around all the time, smashing things in the house and my nan lived in the same road, a few houses down. […] In terms of therapy, I have spoken to a few different people. I have never done a period of time where I have done two years with someone and it has been ongoing. […] Everything I am asking of those players in terms of hard work, honesty, trust, commitment…if I was just to turn round and say “I have had an offer, I’m off”, I honestly couldn’t do that to the players and the staff. — Wayne Rooney reveals his secret two-day drinking binges etc

Oh, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne. How could you do it? But I think we can easily guess where he was infected: it was during his therapy-sessions.


Elsewhere other-accessible

Ex-Term-In-Ate! — interrogating issues around why “in terms of” is so teratographically toxic…
All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…
All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates…

Diss-Smithed




At last… it’s OFFICIAL!

MORRISEY IS A TWAT

Exclusive

Cult pop singer Morrisey — hailed as hero by his fanatical fans — is a twat, according to experts. And that will come as bad news to his many admirers who have worshipped the pop idol since he came to fame as lead singer of The Smiths.

VIDEO

Professor Ivan Sogorski of Barrow-in-Furness University’s Department of Advanced Human Behavioural Studies came to his dramatic conclusion about the star after listening to many of his records and watching video footage of his TV appearances. And he summed up his professional opinion in a few short words.

TWAT

“The man is an absolute twat,” he told us.

ARSEHOLE

Professor Sogorski cited examples of behaviour which had lead him to his controversial conclusion. “Take for example Mr Morrisey’s appearance on Top Of The Pops in the early eighties when he wore oversized shirts, National Health glasses, a hearing aid, and flailed about the stage with daffodils sticking out of his back pocket. Clearly, even the most casual analysis could only conclude this to be the behaviour of an arsehole,” said the Professor.

CRAP

As a part of his painstaking research, Professor Sogorski consulted a colleague to obtain a second independent opinion. “I submitted manuscipts and recordings of many Morrissey songs to a leading Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music, and he says they are crap.”

BULLSHIT

The Professor quoted examples of Morrisey’s song titles as further evidence to support his views. “Girl In A Coma. Big Mouth Strikes Again. Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now. These are all bullshit,” said Professor Sogorski.

During his career Morrisey has endeared himself to a huge cult following of pop fans, among them many students, and has also won artistic acclaim for his work.

WANKER

But Professor Sogorski’s comments are bound to fuel speculation that whilst some of his songs might be quite good, the man is, quite frankly, a bit of an arsehole. “I am convinced Morrisey is a twat, and anyone who says otherwise is a wanker,” said the Professor yesterday.

Professor Sogorski last hit the headlines in 1988 when he claimed that page three model Samantha Fox was a “boiler”.

• From Viz


Morrissey ‘Still a Twat in Parallel Universe’ — Hawking

PHYSICS boffin Professor STEPHEN HAWKING has confirmed that pop singer MORRISSEY would remain a bell-end in every conceivable alternate universe.

Hawking, 73, was delivering a lecture at the Sydney Opera House last night when he made the startling announcement regarding the ex-Smiths frontman.

egghead

The Cambridge egghead told attendees: “Theoretical physics may one day be able to prove the existence of multiple universes outside our own. We can predict very little about what these parallel universes would be like, but we do know one thing: Morrissey would still be a twat in them.”

Hawking went on to explain his revelation with a series of complex equations.

pointles

He said: “Multiple universes would probably differ from our own in almost every way. They would be made up of different chemical elements which themselves would be made of fundamental particles different from the ones we have identified. They may even be governed by completely differnt laws of physics. The only constant would be Morrissey behaving like an arse and saying twattish things.”

the chas

The Brief History of Time author continued: “The possibilities in a parallel universe are genuinely limitless: the sky could be purple, the moon could be made of Styrofoam, cats could talk. Absolutely anything is feasible — except Morrissey not being a dick.”

“He still would be one, I’m afraid,” he added. “Nothing so sure.” Hawking has announced plans for a follow-up lecture next week at the Royal Albert Hall, in which he will hypothesise that Sting could still get on everybody’s tits in a black hole.

• From Viz

Wolfwords

• მელიამ მგელს შესძახა: შე უმი ხორცის ჭამიაო!
•• Meliam mgels šesdzakha: še umi khortsis ch’amiao!
••• FOX-agentive WOLF-dative called: thou raw MEAT-genitive EATER-vocative
•••• The fox called to the wolf: “Thou eater of raw meat!”
••••• The pot called the kettle black.

Core War…

In terms of my core ambitions for 2022, I hope to continue the fight against such things as the reprehensible and repulsive phrase “in terms of”, the pretentious and throbbingly urgent adjective “core”, and the cheap trick of trailing dots… I know that I won’t win and that the Hive-Mind will continue to buzz deafeningly at core venues like The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Shropshire Advertiser, but so what? In the core words of Samuel in terms of Johnson:

[I]t remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. — Samuel Johnson, Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language (1755)


Elsewhere Other-Accessible

Ex-term-in-ate! — core interrogation of why “in terms of” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting…
Don’t Do Dot — core interrogation of why “…” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting dot dot dot


Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

How should the first line of this incendiary intervention begin? I suggest: “In terms of my core ambitions for 2022…” → “Among my main ambitions…”

Performativizing Papyrocentricity #69

Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:

Psyches and Psychoses – the work of Guy de Maupassant

Buzz OffThe Wasp Factory, Iain Banks (1984)

Drink InkThe Way to Dusty Death, Alistair MacLean (1973)

LittleratureIn Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World, Simon Garfield (Canongate 2018)

Le Paon dans les PyrénéesThe Man in the Red Coat, Julian Barnes (Penguin 2019)

Bon and OffTwo Sides to Every Glory: AC/DC: The Complete Biography, Paul Stenning (Chrome Dreams 2005)

The Fuel in the SkullThe Jewel in the Skull, Michael Moorcock (1969)

Suspicious SubstanceSubstance: Inside New Order, Peter Hook (Simon & Schuster, 2016)


Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR

The Whisper of the Stars

• Le record de froid peut atteindre -77°C, alors que l’été le thermomètre peut monter jusqu’à 30°C. Les températures hivernales causent des phénomènes étonnants. Par exemple, ce que les Yakoutes appellent « le chuchotement des étoiles » : lorsqu’il gèle, l’homme entend en permanence le doux bruissement de sa respiration qui gèle dès qu’il expire.

• At its worst the cold can reach -77°C, while in summer the thermometer can climb to 30°C. Winter temperatures cause some astonishing phenomena. For example, there is what the Yakuts call “the whisper of the stars”: when it’s freezing, you constantly hear the soft rustle of your own breath, which is turning into ice-crystals even as you exhale.


Elsewhere other-engageable

Cry’ Me A Shiver — an interview with French avant-gardistes Cryogénie, les Rois du Froid and Kings of Cold…

Flaubert le Flaubard du Flaubeau

«Je ne suis rien qu’un lézard littéraire qui se chauffe toute la journée au grand soleil du beau» — Gustave Flaubert, Croisset, 17 octobre 1846

• “I am nothing but a literary lizard basking all day in the great sun of beauty.”

Un Paon Papyrocentrique

Le Paon dans les Pyrénées — a review at Papyrocentric Performativity of Julian Barnes’ The Man in the Red Coat (2019), which contains a lot about Robert de Montesquiou


Elsewhere other-accessible

Portrait of a Peacock — Cornelia Otis Skinner’s biographical sketch of Montesquiou

Ciss Bliss

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil. – Cicero (106-43 BC), Epistulae ad Familiares, Liber IX, Epistula IV

• “If you have a garden and a library, you lack for nothing.” — Cicero, Letters to Friends, Book 9, Letter 4