I don´t want to live in 2009

Recently, I belatedly got into the BBC drama series, Life on Mars. I´m spending six weeks in the homestead, my parents have it on DVD and I´ve got a lot of time of my hands. On top of that, I rather like John Simms (even if he had a significant hand in the film that launched this prick´s ridiculous career) and given that the show is on Spanish tv (even remaking it as La Chica de Ayer for Antena 3), thought I should get into it.

Anyway, it´s bloody good, cop gets hit by car, goes back to 1973, you don´t know if he´s dead, in a coma, insane or whatever. Lots of cool 70s cars and clothes, as well as one of the best TV characters of all time - Sam Tyler´s boss DCI Gene Hunt. It has an irritating tendency to moralise about 70s police work, as if modern policing was a fluffy politically correct fantasy world, but what can you do?

I really like their vision of 1973. Are people supposed to be nostalgic for times they never lived through? Maybe you can only truly idealise fiction. All I know is that 2009 is a terribly bland time to live through. For me, us naughtians are not only miserable but worse, fatalistic too. Not only to be expect things to be shit, we don´t even have any plan (or desire) to make them less shit. Our national culture is probably the worst off for repackaging whatever bollocks they happen to be selling over the water, or perhaps whatever Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell come up with to put on the telly. We drink mass-produced "Irish" cider with ice, because we saw it on an advert, even though we have a far tastier and authentic english one. There hasn´t been a good new band from these shores in about 10 years, so we just recycle mediocrities and pretend they´re good.

What important thing could really excite you about modern Britain? The coming Conservative government? The "radical reform" of our public services ? A great culture movement that will engage people in a way never seen before? Or maybe just more decades of being lorded over by glorified PR men...

Fuck '09

It's only late Afternoon on the 1st and I'm already in a foul fucking mood. So by way of catharsis I thought I'd put down my top 10, "shitty things that will probably happen in 2009" list. So here it is:

(1) Barack Obama will be a war-mongering right-wing shithead. Come on, admit it, he's most of the way there already. He spent his entire campaign shamelessly pandering to AIPAC and the like, as well as promising to invest more in propping up Hamid Karzai's arsehole government in Afghanistan and as we speak he's responding to the killing in Gaza with a giant shrug of his shoulders. Yes, I understand that he operates under the constraints of what is politically possible within the American system. But that's the point isn't it. Why on Earth did everyone get so excited about changing the man who gets to do as he's told by the richest lobbiests and the Washington establishment.

(2) Ipswich Town will continue to be mediocre, despite unprecedented transfer funds for the clueless muppet who manages the club.

(3) Unemployment will expand massively. Pretty safe prediction that one. Call it a hunch, but I don't think the associated misery will result in any upsurge in support for a different kind of society, more likely just produce a wide new variety of obnoxious symptoms, like a rise in crime, anti-social behaviour, racism and fascism.

(4) I will continue to waste my time mimbling about the internet, watching TV and otherwise fucking about rather than putting any of my talents toward any meaningful endeavour that might actually lead to achieving something with my life to be proud of.

(5) Despite the massive upsurge in unemployment, the government will continue with its plan to attack those on various types of benefits, treating people in the most difficult circumstances as thieving scroungers, even though they get by on a income that most politicians would regard as akin to torture if they had to be on it themselves.

(6) There won't be any revolution this year. In fact if this year is anything like the last, the forces of good will not achieve a single notable victory, and everything will continue to go inexorably down the toilet as we approach environmental armageddon and economic apocalypse.

(7) My Spanish will continue to remain so mediocre as to prevent me from expressing myself with any degree of wit, charm and intelligence. This will partially be a result of me not fucking practising enough, and being too cheap to pay for lessons.

(8) All of the world's bastards will continue being simultaneously obscenely rich and obnoxious bitter towards the rest of us who actually make their money.

(9) I will continue eating and drinking too much, whilst not getting enough exercise and will descend inevitably into morbid obesity as I'm getting to that age. I'll probably end up taking up smoking again.

(10) There will be no peace in the Middle East. Obviously.