When dealing with the political Right one should always remember that Conservatives don’t regard hypocrisy as a vice.
Conservatism is based on inherent hierarchies – the idea that some people, ideas and things are intrinsically and unchangeably better than other people, ideas and things. As such it’s only natural and correct that different standards and different rules should apply to different objects in the hierarchy.
The result is that criticising the Right for inconsistent principals and special exceptions simply doesn’t work. What we on the Left consider appalling hypocrisy, they consider simple and obvious common sense. Complaining and protesting about it is – to them – as ridiculous as complaining and protesting about the sky being blue. It does nothing to shame them or convince them to change their ways – rather it makes us look like idiots.
So fight against the hypocrisy of the Right (and the Left when it occurs – which it regularly does) with everything you have, but don’t waste your energy trying to shame them into stopping it.
Being the kind of self-righteous snob who doesn’t consume a lot of commercial media it can sometimes happen that absolutely fantastic and hugely successful songs entirely pass me by, only for me to randomly stumble over them well after they’ve been moved into the realm of old.
For instance back in 2023 a YouTube playlist threw up Walk the Moon’s Shut Up and Dance. I’d somehow missed this absolute banger for almost a decade and had to resist the urge to run up to everyone I saw shouting “HAVE YOU HEARD THIS SONG!? YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS SONG!!” when they’d almost certainly heard the song so much back in 2014 that they’d be happy never to be reminded of it again.
Well it’s happened again this week, with a little ditty named Pompeii by a little known British group named Bastille…
Now I wasn’t completely unaware of this track thanks to the legendary Important Videos YouTube playlist which included this gem…
…but it’s still kind of remarkable that such an amazing song has passed me by for (in this case) over a decade!
Did you know that the chant that features throughout the song is actually Latin? And that the line and the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love is a reference to the earthquake of AD 62 that severely damaged Pompeii and Herculaneum 17 years before the eruption that destroyed them? Well I do now, and my life is unmeasurably improved by that fact!
There’s also a Latin version – although the singer (one Heleen Uytterhoeven) appears to have missed the memo about eheu meaning “oh no”, “alas” or “oh crap”. Nonetheless it’s a great cover!
I wonder what hit ancient songs I’ll stumble over next?
Andrew Eldritch pops up in the most unexpected places. From the Wikipedia article on Numbers Stations…
In the British television spy drama Spooks episode “Nuclear Strike”, a Russian sleeper agent is awoken by a numbers station broadcast to detonate a nuclear suitcase bomb in central London. The radio broadcast states in Russian, “2.5.0.0.2.5, Finland Red, Egypt White, It is twice blest, It is twice blest, rain from heaven, rain from heaven.”
After agonising over it for weeks I eventually decided to simply jump in and vote for the first 10 tracks I thought of for the Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs. This worked pretty well, except for the realisation a few days later than I’d left out Wide Open Road – a sin so grievous I expect to be asked to return my Western Australian citizenship at any moment.
In any case, here’s how I went…
Yes, it’s pretty old stuff but I am old and someone has to stand up for the classics.
Here is a clickable list for those who like that kind of thing
(As much as I love Long Loud Hours it probably would have been shuffled out to make room for the Triffids if I’d been thinking straight).
In addition to the Hottest 100 there are a few songs that have really caught my ear lately. First up, Shy Girl by Haute and Freddy. I have no idea who these people are, but they’ve come up with something incredibly 80s sounding in this, the Year of Our Lord 2025, and I’m 100% there for it.
Secondly is this effort by G Flip. I’ve always through G Flip is cool, but their music has never really done that much for me – Disco Cowgirl though grabbed me from the very first time I heard it. The acapella bit followed by the key change at 2:30 is clichéd as hell, but it works so well!!
And finally a surprising blast from the past. I’ve always been a Florence and the Machine fan (not least because Florence Welsh is clearly some kind of ethereal goddess from the realm of the Fae) and I’ve known of Shake it Out ever since it first came out back in 2011, but I’d only ever heard some kind of chopped down radio edit, and never heard it before through headphones. The full version happened to pop up on my playlist at work and it just about blew my eyes out my head! It was like a goddamn spiritual experience! Honestly, you could found a religion on that song! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO!! TAKE ME NOW FLORENCE!!
Ahem. Sorry about that. Suffice to say I quite enjoyed it.
So, it’ll be interesting to see if any of my choices end up in the countdown. Roll on the 26th!
(I’ve been avoiding blogging because I’m in the middle of hauling this antiquated pile of code across to a new server and adding content complicates matters, but what the hell. I refuse to be silenced! Even by my own common sense.)
When I was a kid something nasty happened to me. Not terribly nasty by world standards – in fact a normal person would have completely shrugged it off in a couple of days. But to a naive, overly sheltered, undiagnosed autistic kid it was devastating. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that it gave me PTSD. It broke me badly and left me with fears and insecurities that I’ve lived with for over 35 years.
Except I woke up on Monday last week, and they were gone. Vanished. Evaporated. Disintegrated. They’ve run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. They are an ex-terror.
Maybe years of therapy have actually worked? Or is it that getting older makes you more content with life thing?
For fifteen pennies and a box of matches, He’ll tell you about the things he catches, Up in the rafters, Down in the basement, Running to the window sill to open up the casement,
Leaping high above the daily drama, Only stopping for a Swedish Llama, Quick with a jab, Then with a cut, Slamming all the windows shut,
You can’t tell exactly what he’s going to do, Asking everybody for a light except for you, Fifteen pennies and some matches from Peru, If you doubt, call it out, with a shout!
So, Labor won the election in a total landslide, and Peter Dutton became the first opposition leader in Australian history to lose his seat. I would have much preferred the Greens to hold on to their seats, but this is an outcome I can live with.
I spent most of the day ignoring the election (having voted early on Friday) and turned over to the ABC just in time to see Antony Green call it for Labor. Then, maybe a half hour later, he declared that Peter was out and the panel turned to their Liberal representative (James McGrath I believe) for a comment on this “massive repudiation” of Dutton’s policies. He stared, frozen, at the camera with his mouth hanging open for what seemed like a full five seconds before stuttering to life. It was glorious! (Schadenfreude is undignified, but by god it’s delicious!)
It would be nice to imagine that the Libs will now realise that Australians don’t want nuclear power and don’t react well to American-style identity politics, but I won’t be holding my breath.
It also looks like Clive Palmer and his inane “Trumpet of Patriots” party won’t get a seat in either house, and not only has Clive stated that he would have got a better result if he’d stuck with the “Palmer United” name, he now claims to be too old for politics and won’t bother any more. This is fantastic news for every right thinking person. Personally I numbered all of the 50+ boxes on the Senate ballot paper simply so I could put Clive last, so this pleases me immensely. Piss off, Clive!
