Sprezzatura

There is a famous anecdote that during a Conservative Party policy meeting, Thatcher removed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared, “This is what we believe.” Oof, it's been a while. It's been over three years since I wrote an intro to the blog - technically my second post, but the first post where I thought about what the fuck I was doing on a long-term basis. I've gone on a lot of tangents since then, and taken a LOT of breaks, but since I'm going to try and get back into writing on a more consistent basis around here I thought I'd go back and check what still rings true and what's no longer important to me. Let's see how I did. I'm going to do things in a weird order, but hopefully it will be clear why once I have finished. 2. On Sprezzatura The key to this entire blog is not JUST Sprezzatura. That gets first billing because it's a particularly snazzy name. The key is what I'll...

I had used all the porn on the Internet, so I started torrenting 90 Day Fiancé, and as I watched it got me to thinking: this is exactly the kind of thing mid-period The Last Psychiatrist would've written about. You know, after the 'psychiatry inside baseball' posts from like 2006 about drugs neither of us have ever heard of, let alone used, but before the knotty late-period posts where he tried to explain the entirety of society in the 2010s. I mean the bit where he was writing about, like,  random ads, or random music videos , or Hop. "Hop?"  Seriously . Mr Teach has, of course, moved onto writing actual books, and I promise I'll get around to reading Watch What You Hear  once 90 Day Fiancé is done, but in the mean time I need my meaningless nonsense fix. And I suppose, if you want something done properly, you do it yourself, so here goes. Grant me that reality TV is fake as hell, that I am not any sort of psychiatrist, let Alone the Last, et cetera et cete...

"And I ain't much to hear" - Shame, 'One Rizla' "Lay off the fucking post-punk, all of you" - a friend reviewing 'This Nation's Saving Grace' by The Fall I find the rehabilitation of Brutalism as an architectural form really strange. The current consensus seems to be that everyone is wrong to think massive brown buildings completely incongruous with the surrounding architecture are ugly - witness the invocation of Trump , the most famous idiot in the world, in this piece, for example - and that people simply don't understand how gorgeous they truly are. Brutalist buildings receive elegies on BBC Radio 3, the poshest channel, and we're subjected to headlines like  To Some, Boston City Hall Is An Eyesore. To These Artists, It's Inspiration.   All of this completely misses the point, though. Brutalism is bad because Broadwater Farm erupted in rioting and Ronan Point erupted in flames, because Brasilia rapidly became an overpopula...

" I 'ate Muslims . 'Ate 'em wiv a passion. More than I 'ate West 'am. And I 'ate them bastards." - Colin, 'Angry, White, And Proud' lol turns out they're both trash That quote up there sums it all up. To Colin, a centuries-long clash of civilisations, a disagreement on how you should act on this earth, what happens to your soul when you die, who created the entire universe, is only one step above which blokes you like to see run round after a ball. If you get it, you get it; if you don't, you don't.  In the before-times my friend Nathan told me his mum asked him why we watch football, and passed the question onto me. As we sat watching Lancaster City lose to - I think - Ashton United, I couldn't answer. I have a better idea now, having had a year to sit inside and think about it. The short is answer is that football is life in microcosm. The long answer is the rest of this post. It might not ring true for everyone but it's t...