Stickin' It To The Man.

Pictured above: a completely irrelevant photo. But still, I feel, worth posting.

I've remained fairly ambivalent about the whole Simon Cowell/RATM festive bitchfight that has trundled across the public consciousness over the last week or so. As has been pointed out, Cowell is a major shareholder in Sony - Rage's record label - so the original intention of pissing Cowell off and depriving him of cash money sort of fell apart. Not to worry; we'll sling some of the money to charity and hopefully distract attention away from the fact that this is one of the most ineffectual, teenage, paint-my-bedroom-black-and-strop-about-with-a-face-on pisspoor acts of rebellion ever conceived. And that is fine by me. Really, it is. I like RATM, the X-Factor song is complete jank (obviously), Shelter gets some money to help the less fortunate at a cold and snowy time of year. Everyone's a winner except Joe McElderry. That'll teach him to try and achieve a lifelong dream, the prick. But this letter, printed in this morning's Metro, tickled my anger glands and made me shouty. Here it is:

This was about showing that we are sick of the stale state of British music and demanding something spontaneous, exciting and real. I stood up and made a difference this Christmas, to the charts and to the lives of homeless people. What did you do?

Upon reading this, I stood up in the tube carriage. Then I sat down. Then I got up again and began to wander aimlessly about, opening and closing my mouth and making little 'buh-buh-buh' sounds. I may have spent some time making a strangled keening noise, like a fox caught in a gin trap. I think I blacked out for a while and when I came to I was lying a puddle of my own fluids, my shoes had disappeared and my underwear was on backwards. I mean, honestly: pleased with yourself much?

You may indeed be sick of the stale state of British music and you may well yearn for something spontaneous, exciting and real - but how does an eighteen (eighteen!) year old song by an American band even remotely qualify under those criteria? Maybe I'm becoming jaded and cynical in my old age but I'm starting to have serious doubts about the capacity of any musician to act as a catalyst for sweeping social change, or even low grade rebellion. Look at the way the sixties flower children morphed from naked, drug-addled free lovers into grasping, middle-aged baby-boomer fuckheads. Bob Dylan released an album through Starbuck's. Starbuck's, for Christ's sake! Or take Hip Hop; once the authentic voice of a disaffected minority, now largely a vehicle for Fifty Cent's line of personal aftershaves and testicle balms. And as for Rage who, God bless 'em, are really little more than a bunch of swearwords in T-shirts...don't make me laugh my own fucking spine out. Fair do's, they have done a lot of valuable work raising awareness of... stuff, like that thing with those Mexican rebels, the details of which escape me, but their single most famous naughty act to date remains the occasion when Bruno Brooks played the uncensored version of 'Killing In The Name' on Sunday teatime radio. And they weren't even there.

Mr Letter up there reckons he stood up and made a difference. I would respectfully suggest that, in fact, all he did was download a song off the internet. That's all. He clicked 'purchase' and downloaded a song. Not an enormous personal sacrifice. Not a strident act of cultural terrorism. I chucked 10p in a charity bucket the other day purely, I freely admit, because said bucket was being toted by three of the most atonal carol singers I have ever encountered. Three West Indian ladies dressed as Santa, singing off-key carols with the grinding relentlessness of the big lorry from Duel. They were great. But does that act qualify me to write snooty, back-patting letters to newspapers, spunking off about how damn fandabidosie I bloomin' well am?

I'll leave it up to you to decide. But really, if downloading a track by an aging metal band is your supreme act of unbridled defiance, and you're futhermore clueless enough to actually feel smug about it.... then you're probably a bit of a prick. Aren't you?

I bet that bloke hasn't even downloaded 'Killing In The Name' once. Fucking sheep.

A Problem Of Tone.

I'm probably lagging behind the rest of the internet here, as per usual, but has anyone else heard of a blog called Chase No Face? It's the heartwarming, life-affirming, deeply unsettling tale of Chase, a cat who (wait for it).... has no face. It did have one but it fell off due to a traumatic road accident. Chase now maintains a blog (inevitably written in the first person), has its own facebook page (3,642 fans and counting) and even tours round schools helping people come to terms with disfigurements. I am, I freely admit, struggling with this. I cannot get my head around it at all. I mean, here's a pic of Chase - you might want to brace yourself.

Feel free to take a moment to wipe that dribble of fear-piss off your inside thigh if you like.

It's OK to be scared. We're all scared. Chase's appearance is bizarre and upsetting and the natural reaction is to hit it between its googly, twisted eyes with a lump hammer before running off to find a table to cower under. As a contrast we must also consider the good work that Chase apparently does for charidee and public awareness and what have you; both blog and Facebook page are stuffed with testimonials from people who have used Chase's fine example to help them overcome prejudice in their own blah blah etc etc. So on the one hand: monster. On the other hand: community spirit and goodwill ambassador for the really fucking ugly. The tension between the two is unbearable, and compulsive in that car crash kind of way. I am bemused.

Actually, I know what the problem is. It's the fact that Chase's blog is written in the first person. It's the comments purportedly left by other cats, cats with facebook pages. It's the references to 'mommy'. It's the utterly shameless use of the word 'furmommy' to describe cat ownership. It's comments like this:

i always felt that cats were aliens/gods that were sent to earth to observe and snuggle humans. now i know what they look like under those adorable, fuzzy masks! i am in love with chase and i want to know all her secrets!

Yes, we do now know what they look like under their furry masks - like Seth Brundle's beef curtains. When I hit the comments I was expecting a hundred posts along the lines of 'Why has this animal not been put down, are you fucking mental?' Or: 'Whenever I close my eyes I will see your cat's misshapen wreck of a muzzle and I will never sleep soundly again. Thanks a bunch, shitbirds'. But no. The general feeling was one of support, positivity and sickly, overweening cutesiness. It seemed like I was the only person who was having difficulty. Perplexed? I was, somewhat.

People who treat their pets like surrogate children weird me out anyway but when the pet looks like it's escaped from one of David Lynch's cheese dreams the weirdness is increased a millionfold. It's a problem of tone. Chase ain't your average pussy, no matter how many halloween costumes you staple it in to, so the usual saccharine lolcat treatment is just going to come across as inappropriate and fucking odd. Does no one else notice the incongruity? Am I all alone out here?

Where's my little man? There he is! There's my little Lovecraftian fucking abomination!

Having said that: I still recommend a tour around the blog. It'll make your Christmas, it really will. Then, go to Google images, type in 'disfigured people' and meditate for a while on how many of them poor fuckers have their own Facebook pages. Then do what I'm going to do now: crack open your second bottle of wine and stare at the walls for an hour or two. Peace.