Kick my Conscience

Blur, 1993, Modern Life is Rubbish
Now: Listen to the single nag nag nag from Cabaret Voltaire (1979). Sure, it's on YouTube.

I'm shocked. Again. Radio 1 in Flanders might sponsor the culture of nagging with taxpayers money... Can you believe that? Last monday I wrote about complaining as a national sport, the next day I read about the plan of Pat Donnez. The excellent radiopresenter and -producer is planning a tryout for a new show. He wants to put Grumpy Old Men on the radio. He calls it Gromberen (growling bears). A show for the discontent in Flanders, so that's for almost everybody. He wants to create a forum and an opportunity for the dissatisfied to throw it all on the airwaves.

Than there's Steve Michiels, a painter and a cartoonist. He says he started publishing his cartoons when he was sixteen. At least once a week he wants to tell us what he thinks about this world going to pieces. Very loud and over-simplified: there is no way out, we are on this boat together and we are sinking. Michiels calls it a case of mental hygiene, putting the garbage outside. Now, other peoples' garbage makes me sick. So, stop that. When the cat crawls your garbagebag to pieces, I do'nt care and I don't want to know. Take care of it yourself. Clean it up and shut up.

I see no problem when Pat & Steve keep knocking on my door to bother me about hunger in Africa, people dying in the streets of Brussels because of deprivation or the hole in the ozon layer. That's about kicking me a conscience and in the end I've got one. It is the popular theory of the famous writer Louis Paul Boon. But nobody can convince me that the world should know or understand his big problem with (a) the cashier in the supermarket with the fake nails, (b) the world famous chef who puts his name on instant meals, (c) the total collapse of civilisation or (d) the lack of parkingspace in your street.
Get a life and have the guts to show the world that you are happy and a very lucky bastard. If you have AIDS, your wife has got cancer or your 3 year old dissapeared when on holiday in the Algarve: point taken. In that case I was not talking about you. Of course I was not.

PS When nuissance becomes government...
Delcambre, Louisiana, US. It's forbidden to wear baggy trousers showing your underpants. If you do you risk a maximum of 6 months in prison and a penalty of 500 $.
Will my country, with a little help of our national naggers, be the first to tackle this problem:
(1) whale-tail and
(2) celebrity whale-tail?

(1) Campus whale-tail

(2) Gillian Anderson, Celebrity whale-tail

Homeless, London_2002

Black & Blue

Of course, it’s the Stones Album from 1976, the first without Mick Taylor and introducing Ron Wood. Keith & Mick tried Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, Harvey Mandel, Wayne Perkins and Ron Wood who was a free agent after the split of The Faces in 1975. And Ronnie got it! Not his guitar but the influence of black music gives the album it’s name and it’s the talent of the late great Billie Preston that adds an enormous extra to the familiar Stones recipe. Black and Blue might be an underrated album but nobody can overlook Melody because of Billie’s piano. And because of an anecdote that you can find in a lot of Violence Against Women studies. In June 1976, Atlantic Records put up a billboard on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles to promote the new record. It showed a bruised and bound woman saying, "I'm 'Black and Blue' from the Rolling Stones —and I love it!" A new organization, called Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), protested to Atlantic. And… the company took down the billboard.

Now this entry is not entirely about the Stones. It’s about yesterday’s election in Belgium. The government got beaten. They are liberals (blue) and socialists (red) and they are known as Paars (purple). Since 1999 this is the coalition that governs the country. Today, I’m sure, they are analyzing in depth but in a few quotes I’ll try to synthesize what they told yesterday in a first reply to defeat.
- There is no progression by left side parties anywhere in Europe.
- We lacked enthusiasm.
- There is a lot we did the wrong way.
- We were too modest about everything this government did in the past.
- There’s nothing wrong with the way we tried to explain things.
- There’s nothing wrong with our program…
Most votes in the Flemish part of Belgium went to the centre party (CD&V) and to everyone else right of centre. ‘Good management’ and ‘Credibility’ were CD&V’s slogans to take more than 30%. They made a profit out of the failures of Verhofstadt’s government. Like Purple did 8 years ago when CD&V and it’s partners made the same mistakes. The majority of the voters went for it and so now it’s time for something else. But it will not be something completely different.
And what about Black and Blue? It was the old left wing crocodile, Louis Tobback, who predicted years ago that Purple was going to be Black and Blue in the end. That's what I call vision.

Smart crocodile!
Mind you: this is not about what happened in Wallonia. We are two countries. I knew it and yesterday’s result proved it to be right. The majority in Flanders wants to change the foundation of the country, that’s what CD&V’s 30% is telling us. But on the other side of the language border nobody is interested.
Good luck, Mister Prime Minister, Belgium is yours.
What do I think? I’m shocked. People cannot stop nagging. They keep on going. Even when there is almost nothing left to nag about. There is no new government yet but, come on, let’s start complaining right here, right now.

World's End 'by the river,' London_2007