Song and quote of the day

"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." ~Charles Darwin

I made this Flash Music Player at MyFlashFetish.com.

From Madonna to Whore - A Prickly Road

Britney, Lindsay, Nicole, Christina. Such sweet girls once. Lovable and kind, virginal with a big smile.

What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice, all that’s nice.

What happened to these sweethearts? Who put filth on them? Why did they go “dirrrty”?

We all know sex sells. But actually is not that simple. There’s all kinds of sexy. When launching an artist, it’s marketable to go for a wholesome image - that way you can sell records to little girls in the religious south as well as teenage boys everywhere. Britney is the most blatant example of this. Saying you’ll stay a virgin until married, makes fathers everywhere happy to purchase to your CD for their little pumpkins, thinking you’re a good influence - and at the same time draws daddies into a fantasy. Isn’t it every mans dream to teach an eager virgin the ways of love? At least it’s a collective cultural daydream.

The wholesome marketing plan has it’s limitations though. It doesn’t ensue press coverage for ever. Days of Doris Day are over and in today’s day and age we wait for the kill. So you see, at a point in time the virgin needs to be deflowered. The more fiercely it’s done, the more headlines it’ll get. This is why I believe Britney has made all the right choices career wise. Her persona can be sold, and has been sold with many different marketing slogans. Come see the amazing virgin in a catholic school girl uniform! She sings and dances. Witness the downfall! Laugh with us. Now she’s crazy and shaved her head. Look at her twitch and fumble!

But let’s talk about Xtina also. She’s reformed. She’s a nice girl now. Once the dirrrty girl is now singing about mercy, the voice within and understanding. I think that for Christina the whole journey was easier. She has a great voice and for her going “back to basics” works. However, it’s interesting she is still selling less records than Britney. It can’t be anything to do with the music - it must the story. Britney’s story sells more.

What’s to become of our gal then? I honestly don’t know. If she can pull out a comeback this time around, get people to buy her new CD, then I think sky’s the roof. If she fails however, her career probably ends here. There must be a balance of unstable personal life scattered all over the tabloids and professional success. If she’s only a has-been, then were not bothered. We want her to pull it off once more, then fail, then rise, then fail. Let’s sell some magazines!

Join me all for a prayer for Britney. The lyrics are from Christina’s new song.

Lord have mercy on my soul
For I have walked the sinful road
That I'm down on my knees
Lord have mercy on me, please

Woah, woaa yeah yeah
Woa yeah yeah oh oh
Oh-oh yeah yeah yeah, ohh

So don't let me fool around no more
Send your angels down to guide me through that door
Well I've gone and confessed my regrets
And I pray I'm not held in contempt
I'm so lost, and I need you to help me repent

Do you want to?

Today I have a plan. I'm on a mission to list all the art references I can find in the Franz Ferdinand video "Do you want to?".

Alex Kapranos, the lead singer, has said the song has no hidden meaning. It's simply conversations he overheard at an art gallery party. Diane Martel's video, however, has many hidden meanings. Here are some of them:

Writing on the wall reads:

"SKELETOR, DICK DASTARDLY,
C UNT DUCKULA,
TOM CAT, CAPTAIN PUGWASH”

Now, Skeletor is the Overlord of Evil, Dick Dastardly is dabble-dealing do-badder, Captain Bugwash is the bravest buccaneer and Count Duckula is a cunt.
I’m not sure who Tom Cat is, perhaps the mischievous cat from Tom & Jerry.

The women wearing nude colour underwear suggest:

Yves Klein - Anthropometry. Klein, French artist (28 April 1928 - 6 June 1962), Neo-dadaist or Post-modernist, used "living brushes" nude women in his art. He also patented his own colour blue International Klein Blue. If Yves Klein were a contemporary of ours, he would have probably ventured into making rap videos. Take a look for yourself. Nudity involved, but the ladies sure are pretty.



A band member clutching a magnifying glass attached to the wall and reading the small print of a note pinned onto the wall “Do you want to“ is a play on Yoko Ono's Ceiling Painting, an interactive piece where a magnifying glass hangs from a chain above a ladder and attached to the ceiling is a piece of paper with the word “YES”. Allegedly it was through this work Yoko met John.


Your famous friend, well I blew him before you, oh yeah.

The camera cuts to a man on fire shaking hands with a another man - Here's Pink Floyd's album cover, the Wish You Were Here LP:
















Another band member making use of an urinal. This one is too obvious:

With love,
R. Mutt.


















There are bicycles hanging from the ceiling:

Might be another Duchamp reference. His first ready made (a piece he decided to call ready made only after the exhibition of La Fontaine five years later, and not to mention managed to destroy and then had to remake) was called Roue de bicyclette and consisted of a bicycle wheel on a kitchen stool.

Then again, apparently Franz Ferdinand boys always take their bikes to tour so they can cycle off to local galleries. So maybe the bikes are there as an inside joke.

Andy Warhol behind the mixing table with a mixer in front of him, might be a simple pun.
The blender also reminds me of Henrik Jakobsen’s White Love, sperm, urine and blood in blenders.

Brian Donnelly's aka KAWS Michelin man-inspired creation Chums is featured.

A lot of details are still missing. The man in the sun recliner holding an umbrella and the bathroom shelf piece on the wall. Some of the paintings on the wall are Yves Klein pastiches, but in front of most of them I'm clueless. The inflatable giant robot? The scene in the beginning, with the band members in one bed - a performance art piece, but which one?

I do understand not all of them needn’t be direct references to pieces of art, they might be references to categories of art. Nonetheless, I think I’m missing something.

As a prize to anyone who can help, I offer a picture (by email) of a ceramic rabbit wearing a sweater.

To Veil or Not To Veil - Err, Wrong Question!

Unarticulated ranting of the day, written by an evil feminist, inhabitant of a Western country:

I worry that the feminist movement of Muslim women (and the odd men) everywhere is slowly dying down. It’s understandable - in these times of clash over religion, Muslims crave unity and don’t wish to rock their own boat any further. Fundamentalism is growing as a backlash to US policy in the Middle East and in many places, for example in Turkey, to the westernization of culture at large. And where fundamentalists rise to power, the life circle of Muslim women narrows down.

I had a Muslim friend in High School. She wore jeans and her hair down, with no veil. She was also a devout Muslim. My friend had modesty and therefore there was no need to add a veil to the mix. In the Quran the word “Hijab” refers to modesty, not to any specific piece of garment.

“And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear there of; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, or their brothers' sons or their sisters' sons, or their women or the servants whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex, and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O you Believers, turn you all together towards Allah, that you may attain Bliss.” (Quran 24:31).

I lost touch with my girlfriend. She excelled in math and wanted to study pharmaceutics, or go to beauty school, but I have no idea what became of her. Or what she might be thinking nowadays.

But I don’t want to make this into a post about the Hijab. I’m not against the veil. I’ll go as far as to say I’m not completely against the Nibaq or Burqa. If you’re a Muslim woman reading this and thinking the veil (Hijab, Burqa, full Chadri or what ever) is your personal choice, I have no beef with you. Go ahead and make your choices. What I’m against, is the narrowing of your choices as a woman. I don’t believe your government or religious society has the right to control your choice of dress. I believe you should stand up against it and urge also your husband to speak on your behalf. Do it clad in full Afghan Chadri, if you wish. (And blame old naïve me, if you get death threats)

I’ve done it again, changed my target audience in a flick. I started this post talking to other westerners and then switched demographic and addressed Muslim women. And probably not very many Muslim women read my blog…Oh well.

This post was inspired by Youtube propaganda. I hate Youtube, especially the comments posted there, and yet I can’t stop reading. They offer me a window to some of the darkest thinking patterns and intellectual dishonesty of people all over. No one there really bothers to be politically correct and some of the comments simply reek hate. You don’t get that kind emotion in the mass media.