Manmachine201's guide to redressing the balance.

Bliar (how fucking coutercultural am I?!) has announced that today all his profits from his book 'journey'- about a man who became prime minister, overspent, went to war 3 times and fucked it all up- will go to fixing up broken soldiers blown up in the war. This was met with a cynical reaction implicating him in a huge tax break. He swiftedly reacted by going one stage further and resurecting all the British soldiers who died in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan from the dead. He will no doubt perform this miraculous feat on top of Harrowdown hill where Dr David Kelly was found having commited suicide and not murdered.





Blairs gesture has recieved a mixed reaction among the victims of of the wars.




Blair doesn't give a shit because thanks to his charitable donation he saves 2.3 million a year from tax breaks, and has been given a formula made from dead Iraqi children's blood to make him young again forever, Dorian grey style.

Anyway, maybe its his own way of redressing the balance.



A way I will redress the balance is by retorting to a Tory Lobbyist who cut me down on twitter the night after the general election. I am shit at working Twitter so I only found out the other day. It was an insult so cutting that it took me 3 months to realize it had even happened. It was like the scene in kill Bill where Beat**ce cuts the top of Lucy Liu's head off. She almost didn't realize it happened because the sword was so sharp, and in a similar case I didn't realize that a Tory lobbyist had cut the top of my head off with the sharpness of her wit.



I got the above picture by typing 'door stable bolted horse' in a search engine.

When it became clear that the Conservatives were going to get back into power I tweeted...

manmachine201
#ukelection #libcon AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! MUMMMYY!!! ARRRRRRGH! ARRRRRRRRRRRgh! AAAAAARRRRGH!!!!

Which is fair enough seeing as the last time they were in power we were fucked. the UK manufacturing was reduced to a cottage industry, it was a government that supported South American dictators with a blatent disregard for human rights in Pinnochet, etc, lots of thing were wrong with the last Tory government. It was also the Conservatives who initially gave bankers such widespread powers which fucked our ecconomy.

TennConserv said: The only resistance a Labour supporter can offer is a belly ache noise.

This is wrong in several ways.

1) I am not a labour supporter. I proved that by misspelling Blair Bliar earlier in the blog.

2) That was not the noise of a belly ache but the noise of panic at the prospects of liars who will let the poor suffer at the expense of big business getting power.

3) It wasn't a noise, it was typing.

But facts have never been as important as spin to the tories so we can't really hold it against them.

So thats that cleared up. I'm obviously at the losing end because Cameron is still prime minister even though I don't recognise him as my nations leader, but at least I got to reply albeit 4 months late due to my lack of skill in utilizing my twitter account in a way that leaves me sharp and ready for war. A bit like the wars in Aghanistan and Iraq really. If the previous government used sharp wit on the Taliban and Saddam in twitter attacks with effective use of hashtags, then perhaps Dr David Kelly's inquest might not be happening now. Still if Bliar is giving away his fortune and raising all English people from the dead killed by the war, then all is forgiven.

Of course he shouldn't be expected to bring back any Iraqi's or Afghans because they are horrible Arabs and the enemy, the less of them the better.

But there is still a balance to be redressed. With Wyclef Jean running for presidency of Haiti, there is one more politician and one less Fugee. The only way to fix this is for Barrack to get in the Studio with Pras Michele and Lauren Hill. So what if Hill is in some mental cult and popping out Marleys faster than Rita ever could, So what if Pras's only notable success was Ghetto Superstar



How many times are you gonna run for President? 1 time... 2 times.

Anymore loose ends that need tapering?

Manmachine201's unseasy guide to Key Changes.

The key change in a song is a long established tool of the songwriters trade. Jim Steinman for example used them in pretty much every song he composed. Total Eclipse of the heart, Making love out of nothing at all, My Heart Will Go On, It's all Coming Back To Me Now, all contain the dreaded key change. If you are unsure of what a key change is, youtube any Backstreet Boys video where they are sitting on stools and the point that they stand up is generally the point where the key change occurs.



It brings out a mixed reaction to say the least Celine Dion fans never fail to be moved by the emotionally intensity and power of the switch between from the key from E to A, and no doubt it is a powerful thing, reducing grown men to tears. Todays generation find it somewhat of a gimmick. Is there a way these cynics can be won around or is the key change to be assigned to the depths of the bargain bins in your local record shops?



Fuck yeah, seriously.

Steinman is an obvious example for his excessive use of the keychange after the middle 8 at the end of the second verse, a rough equivalent of Spinal Tap's use of the 'one louder' tool where they use 11 to push that bit further.



There are times when it can be effective even in a powerballad, with john Farnham's the voice A poignant song about ending apartheid a song with an emotional push at the end of the middle 8 after the second verse. It is in the textbook place that a key change would occur according to the Steinman rulebook. But it works within the context of the song. The only problem is that the songs sentiment is ruined by the fact that Farnham looks like what all men would look like if Nazi Germany won the Second World War. This makes me thing that the whole song is being sung in a sarcastic tone and that he is in fact pro-apartheid. This might be in my head but I can't help but think that farnham is a racist.



The Aryan looking John Farnham.

Songwriters considered the masters of their craft McCartney & Lennon, Benny & Bjorn, Bacharach & David all tended to stay away from the key change fearing that their music might become far too powerful & kill the listener outright, or at the very least make the listener shit themselves. There are rumours that in a drunken rage Lennonhad to be physically restrained by George Martin from employing the use of a key change in an early version of A Day In The Life after having his mind infiltrated by an Islamic militant organisation.



He may be laughing but he could have killed us all.

The natural home of the key change resides within the power ballad at around 3 minutes 40 seconds after the middle 8 at the end of the second verse during the 3rd chorus. Although credited to humans recent studies of birdsong revealed that the magpies version of a key change pre dates humans by some 3000 years, although no magpie has successfully sued Steinman in a court of law.



Other more credible acts have taken on the key change and made it their own using it to spectacular effect. Kate Bush's Wuthering heights wrongfoots everyone with a suprising key change at the end of the first chorus, with no middle 8 to prepare us mentally for what is to come. It completely defies the 'steinman convention'.



Zapping key changery right between the centre of your face.

More recently MGMT brought the key change to the indie kids with youth from their debut album. they do it in at the end of the middle 8 after the 2nd verse but again defy the 'Steinman Convention' by dropping down a key. It is a technique they seem to have picked up from fellow American Indie acid munchers the flaming lips, who use it in their classis Do you realize? This particular varient on the 'Steinman Convention' has an effect on the brain akin to having ketamine blown up your arse by a dwarf hidden inside your underwear as you walk down a step. I would never employ a dwarf to do this to you but sometimes it does work a treat.



Fuckin with ya head yeah?

The Key Change can be overused Oasis All Around The World and Michael Jacksons Man In The Mirror and Earth Song, they destroy the songs cutting them into tiny pieces, overblowing them worse and worse until they are beyond shit.



Jacksons excessive key change usage threatened to unravel the very foundations of the fabric of the universe.

In spite of its bad reputation an effective usage of the key change can provide the kickstart a lagging track might need. It is for the best not to use it in too many songs, or in the same songs too many times. I'm not sure that I could actually convey the effect of a key change in writing but I WILL ATTEMPT TO BY USING THE CAPS LOCK FOR THE REMAINDER JUST TO GIVE IT THAT EXTRA PUSH SAFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IF THIS WAS A SONG AND IT WAS TOP OF THE POPS PEOPLE WOULD STAND UP AND CHEER!



All hail the Steinman convention!

Manmachine201's uneasy guide to storming off stage.

In the cut throuat world of rock, things don't always go to plan, in contrast, stand-up comedy usually goes hand in hand with the heckles and audience participation. Lets first look at the way Richard Herring skillfully deals with a hostile member of the audience at a comedy gig...



And the man was right, stabbing is no joke, even if someone gets stabbed in the cock it isn't funny, only after time has healed mental and physical wounds would someone be able to laugh about a situation like that. But Herring dealt with it well in spite of being riled.

Chad Poodleman Kroeger from amazing and emotive post grunge act Nickelback didn't fare so well against a portuguese crowd inexplicably bored by 'Rock Star' which is incidentally and unrelatedly used in a sofa advert for DFS. None of richard Herrings jokes are used in a DFS advert.



Rock stars have a lot more difficulty dealing with rowdy, unresponsive and downright hostile crowds. and it seems the bigger you get commercially the easier it gets to storm off stage.

However, lets take it one stage further World leaders have been known to fail even more substantially in dealing with hostile crowds and hecklers in the audience, lets look at this heckle on president JFK by Lee harvey Oswald...



Okay, you could say that there is a big difference between being heckled by words, than by missiles, and even from their being heckled by a man with a sniper rifle, but they are all intended to hurt, so really there is no difference at all. To be fair to Kennedy he didn't storm off stage but his head did pretty much explode, which isn't the best way to deal with a heckler.

Recently Kings of Leon stormed off stage after Pigeons shat all over them at a gig. Morrissey stormed off at a festival in california earlier in the year after smelling meat cooking at a hotdog stand. These are issues not even caused by the audience and yet stages get stormed off by these primadonas. Yes I have run out of sympathy for the Kings of Leon, I sometimes swim in birdshit for fun and I have never stormed out of my own living room because someone in the kitchen was cooking hotdogs. I have standards which I expect Morrissey and Kings of Leon to be up to. in short they can shape up or fuck the fuck off out of here.

on the other hand there is Justin Bieber, by leaping to the defence of pop rodent and pre-pubescant autotunesmith Justin Bieber, my street cred lies in tatters but partly I am doing this because I will ultimately have easier access to video footage of him getting a bottle bounced off his floppy haired head. This aside, Bieber finished the gig, not stomping off stage in a strop. Maybe he is young and inexperienced and will become jaded enough to do so one day... maybe he thinks too much of his fans to do so. Don't get me wrong I think he's shit and a cunt and I wish it was a buttlet instead of a bottle but fuck he handles it well... maybe he needs to work on his heckler putdowns, maybe he needs to become a standup where he only has to deal with drunk people throwing words instead of insane 14 year olds jacked up on teen hormones throwing bottles... but here you go.



People on any kind of stage whether a gig stage, a comedy club stage or even the world stage all have to deal with occupational hazards like hecklers. I got a papercut from some stationary today you don't see anyone writing blogs about that, mainly because its boring. whereas an argument, a physical assault and a murder are much more fun to read about.

sometimes I see things on the internet that scare me.

I don't understand it, I don't get it, what is it for?

Manmachine201's uneasy guide to Freedom

Today saw a momentous occaision in America's history. Today The actress Lindsay Lohan was released from prrison after 13 long and hard days, during these days she has continued to struggle against the oppression of the American constitution, in a twitter post just before her incarceration she cited... "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." (UN Declaration of Human Rights Article 5.)



Victim.

Obviously this event contains many similarities with the struggle of Nelson Mandela. Both are victims of a corrupt system and have been incarcerated before becoming figureheads of a movement of change. Both have suffered tragedy, Mandela has recently pulled out of many public appearances- including the World Cup- due to the death of his Great Granddaughter in a car accident, and Lohan got a bit sunburnt once because she is fair skinned.



Though not as bad as Kim Kardashian.

Both are considered figureheads of change and both of them have appeared in the hilarious comedy the Parent Trap... or maybe it was only one of them, I can't remember.

Yes there are differences, Mandela struggled against Apartheid and stood to unify and create equality in South Africa, and Lohan did lots of coke and drove into a lamp post. Mandela resorted to terrorism in the fight against a government which didn't represent a majority and Lohan got papped without underwear.



In the name of freedom, obviously.

Perhaps it would be natural for Lohan to make the move into politics and follow in Mandela's footsteps, it would be a natural choice for someone who can quote an article from the UN declaration of human rights on twitter or in deed any other social networking site. But would this be the right thing to do, as it stands the film Machete which she acts in might be affected by her entry into politics, perhaps even as the President of South Africa.



The only association I make mentally when people mention South Africa.



Okay there is one more association I make with South Africa.

Lohans release is set to have many ramifications, one of which is that I have learned what the word ramification actually means, a ramification is a consequence of an action or event.
There will probably be other ramifications to her release but until they occur we probably wont know what they are and even if they have already occured we will probably recognise them with clearer distinction with the benefit of hindsight.

Hindsight is an equally important tool because it may take some time for all the events connecting to this event to occur, after which a period of time may help make sense of the events in a clearer manner.



"Comprende sugartits?"

None of this can sum up the magnitude and importance of an occaision as momentous of Lohans release from jail.

Of Course Lohan has her detractors, Chella Cara said "Lindsay Lohan in rehab again? What does she have, a season pass?"Comediene Joan Rivers said "“Lindsay Lohan is so dumb. Her idea of being sworn in is cursing at the judge. I was just reading about the new Lindsay Lohan diet,
which is all liquid. 80 Proof.” and "Lindsay Lohan said she wouldn't mind being under oath because she thought Oath was a Norwegian ski instructor." But Mandela had his critics too. Fade to black said:
"He is supposedly a "champion of freedom and democracy", the "hero of oppressed people everywhere" but considers dictatorships like Cuba and Libya shining beacons of freedom and justice... "

PW Botha was also an outspoken critic of Mandela and fought against the changes he was trying to achieve. but it is also well known that Botha was a racist...

It stands to reason that if any critics of Mandela are racist, then by extention any of the critics of Lohan (Including Rivers and millions of Twitterers) are also, by association, racist and corrupt and looking to preserve the corrupt regime.

It remains to be seen whether she can do for the united states what Mandela did for South Africa, but judging by her performance in Mean Girls and I Know Who Killed Me it would be mad to put anything past her... except maybe for her career.



Peeling back the curtains of oppresion, even if she won't go topless in a film.