Posts Tagged ‘christmas

11
Feb
11

What If Kurt Cobain Was Still Alive?

I was a good kid until I was 11 years old. I did what I was told and didn’t give my parents too much shit, I worked hard at school, played sports (badly), climbed trees and kept myself out of trouble.

But even from an early age, there was something else about me, the hint of something darker. I loved reading and burned through a lot of books as a kid which meant I quickly got bored of the standard Enid Blighton / Roald Dahl fair.

When that happened I went straight for the jugular and started reading Stephen King and Dean R Koontz and a whole host of other very, very twisted literature that children probably shouldn’t go anywhere near and those words took root in my brain and sprouted a thick, dense jungle of thoughts and ideas that is expanding exponentially as I get older.

 

 

I grew up an only child and as is the case with all only children, I spent a lot of time hanging out with grown ups. My life in many ways was an endless procession of well-mannered dinner affairs with my parents and their friends where I was told to sit up straight, finish my food and behave, which I did.

Fast forward to Christmas in 1994 – my parents and I are staying at a place called Highlands Run, a trout farm near Dullstroom, it’s about 6 in the morning and I’m tearing through my Christmas presents like only an 11 year old kid can.

A friend at school had said to me that his older brother was listening to this band and it was the best album of all time which piqued my curiosity and prompted me to ask my mom for the album for Christmas.

At the time I was big into really, really crap music like 2Unlimited, Midi, Maxi and Efti, Haddaway, 12 Inches Of Snow, that kind of shit, so you can only imagine what happened when I opened my Christmas present, put the cassette tape into my walkman, put my headphones on and pressed play.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” tore like machine-gun fire through my mind and I loved every second of it. Here was this guy screaming his fucking head off, banging out these loud, angry three and four chord riffs that hooked me instantly and to this day, have not let go.

 

 

Everything changed after that day. The flood gates were opened and in poured an ocean of noise which quickly became the soundtrack to many a wasted night and day spent getting fucked up with my friends when I was way too young to have any idea what I was doing to myself.

Anyway, the point of all this is Kurt Cobain changed a lot of people’s lives the way he changed mine. He was the sole reason my entire generation started playing guitar and dressing like they’d stolen their clothes from a Salvation Army donation bin (they probably had).

I’ve heard so many people over the years say he was murdered by Courtney Love and spent countless hours arguing with those people because I refuse to believe that. The man was a mess! The drugs, the fame, the overwhelming commercial success of his music, the legions of screaming fans, he couldn’t handle it, it made him miserable as sin because he’d all of a sudden become the poster-boy for an entire generation, some kind of over-inflated grunge hero and he hated the pressure and the pretence of it all.

 

 

He’d lost his will to play and with it, his will to live. The same way he exploded onto the scene, he exploded off it, and I know it’s not really the popular opinion, but I think eating a shotgun is a seriously badass way of offing yourself because it sends a very clear message that what you did sure as hell wasn’t a cry for help.

A lot of people have speculated what it would be like if he hadn’t painted the ceiling with his brains, some saying he would have eventually come right and possibly gone on to write material that would be even better than his previous stuff and become an even more influential force in rock music, but I’m sceptical.

This piece that Chuck Klosterman wrote for Spin Magazine is probably the best prediction of what would have happened if Kurt Cobain were still alive http://www.spin.com/articles/what-if-kurt-cobain-didnt-die.

 

 

It’s a pretty hilarious read because in Chuck’s version of events, Cobain fizzles into obscurity and despite his half-hearted efforts, never quite manages to top the successes of his early career.

The universe has this funny way of working out sometimes. Can you imagine a 44 year-old Kurt Cobain? Some doddering, irrelevant middle-aged junkie, stinking up awards ceremonies and becoming the butt of the Justin Bieber-era entertainment industry’s jokes?

To be quite frank, I’m glad Cobain isn’t around to see what became of the industry because it’s the fucking Mickey Mouse club out there!

There are things in this life that are worse than death and Cobain still being alive to see how ridiculously over-commercial, overly-sexed and painfully shallow mainstream music has become over the last twenty years would definitely be one of them.

-ST

10
Jan
11

The Party

Guitar Jon called me up the other day, asked me about the site and I told him that it had been over a month since I posted last.

“Blogging,” I said to him, “is like ice skating up a fucking hill. It’s hard fucking work. You’ve got to post and keep posting, as often as possible and be topical and relevant and all that crap or people just wander off to play somewhere else on the interwebs.”

“Sure,” he replied, “nobody really gives a shit whether you do it or not. It’s like a party – if you don’t show up, nobody’s going to stop the party, it just carries on whether you’re there or not.”

Which really got me thinking, because what the fuck? I like parties…

It’s about time I got back in the cockpit of this rusted old junkyard spaceship and started piloting it through the ether once more because if not me, then who?

And so, no fucking around, I hereby declare Them’s Fightin’ Words back up and running for 2011 – BOOYA!

God DAMN that felt good! Winking smile

Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all that stuffs.

Hug? Hug.

 

 

Your Tiger pal,

-ST

26
Dec
09

White Christmas

I thought about painting yesterday red, but decided not to, even though that’s the goal I set myself for the month of December.

Red December I called it. Red because I was going to post everyday so that by the time we get to the end of December, every day on my blog calendar would be red with an entry.

 

 

Well, every day except Christmas cause c’mon! I’m only human, and besides no one uses the interwebs on Christmas to read someone’s crazy-ass blog right?

‘Zackly!

But yeah, I have no idea where the hell to start writing about the last two days. The Christmas Eve party was quaint, but sadly there weren’t anywhere near as many young people there as I’d hoped, but the food was excellent and the wine was delicious.

J-Rab had to work for an hour yesterday, on Christmas morning which wasn’t ideal, but gave me just enough time to straighten the flat out, get some food and fry up a really killer Christmas breakfast of bacon, toast, fried eggs, fried tomatoes and basil and champagne and orange juice. J-Rab was suitably impressed but more than anything just wanted to open presents.

 

 

She spoilt the hell out of me, three new T-shirts, an electric toothbrush (my last one was possessed by a demonic spirit and would just switch itself on at 3 in the morning and not go off until the battery was completely flat, no shit) and most importantly, the 2GB iPod shuffle so I don’t have to listen to the techno remixes of ‘Castles in the sky’, ‘Like the Deserts Miss The Rain’ and ‘What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me)’ the next time I’m at gym.

I got her a garnet necklace and earrings that go well with her fiery auburn hair and I chose all my mom’s presents for J-Rab, so two new tops and the sexiest bikini you ever did see, hoo-wee!

After opening all our presents we headed to my dad’s house, opened more presents, swam and stuffed our faces with more delicious ham, potato bake, salad and Christmas pudding. And then! We napped, and it was good.

After we woke up, we headed over to War’s apartment in the early evening where his brothers Peggles, Wopna and Skatter and their significant others were rocking out with a cooler-box full of drinks and Guitar Hero Metallica.

 

 

It was an evening of much revelry. There were shots of Jagermeister, there were conversations had and clean forgotten and the opposite, a few conversations we wish we could forget. A tiny toy pom involved and stepped on once, and all the time, Metallica melted our faces off from a TV that was emitting enough heat to fry an egg on.

Also, you’ll be happy to know that I destroyed EVERYONE at Guitar Hero.

‘Fuck you!’ people said, ‘it’s only cause you play guitar in real life.’

‘Well, there’s the secret to it right there then, isn’t it?’ Haha, dumbasses.

What a fucking amazing game. I think I dreamed in Guitar Hero fret boards with coloured circles floating down them and me nailing them! Every one of them!

And it all started when the Japs (I think it was?) invented this massively overhyped coin-op game they called Dance Dance Revolution, who would have thunk it? All these years down the line it’s spawned Guitar Hero, possibly the most badass game ever created.

My crowning achievement was nailing the Metallica classic ‘One’ on medium with a tidy 71%. Sure, there are thousands of people out there who could kill a score like that without even breaking a sweat, but they’d need at least 4 or 5 practice runs – I did that by literally just picking up the guitar and playing the song.

All I can say is that when the solo for ‘One’ breaks, it really does feel like you’re at war. My nerves were shot to shit when I put the guitar down, it was the best gaming experience I’ve had in years, fuck yeah!

 

 

Today has been really chilled so far, poor J-Rab is back at work for an hour (for the emergency animals that need to be admitted), but before that we had lunch in Greenside at Mama Themba’s with the unwashed masses and as usual we weren’t blown away by the food, but hey, it was edible at least.

All I know for sure is that I’ve got a craving for sushi that is driving me nuts and I really wouldn’t mind curling up with a few DVDs tonight.

BUT… a man makes his way here as I write this. He’s crossed many miles of ocean to reach us and return a hero. Today he was supposed to make contact…

Excitin’ times 😉

-ST

19
Dec
09

The Saturday Post (Brought to you by SlickTiger)

Thunder is grumbling as I write this and a steady fall of lazy summer rain is drenching the world outside. But here inside there is only quiet and calm as I lie like a big lazy lizard on my girlfriend and she dozes peaceful and warm underneath me.

 

 

Today was a frenzy of Christmas shopping and I’m really happy we got a lot of it out the way. My family is small up here in Joeys so I really just have to worry about presents for the folks and something radass for J-Rab.

I already have it all planned out – what I’m gonna give her, how it’s all gonna pan out and I think it’s going to be the best Christmas ever 🙂

 

 

But I gotta run, Graumpot and M-Class just arrived and they’ll think I’m rude if I just lie here, blogging naked.

Later party people 🙂

-ST

17
Dec
09

My Top 5 Calvin & Hobbes Christmas Cartoons

There really isn’t much going on today. The office is totally dead and to be honest it’s pretty damn depressing, so I’ve been doing what I always do when I get depressed, reading Calvin & Hobbes!

In my opinion Calvin & Hobbes is the best comic strip that was ever written. Bill Watterson did mankind a huge favour by drawing and writing these stories about a kid genius and his imaginary tiger friend.

And so I thought I’d share my Top 5 Calvin & Hobbes Christmas Cartoons with you guys cause I’m your imaginary tiger friend and it seemed fitting 😉

Once you’ve read these, you have to visit this site:

http://progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinhobbes.htm 

It’s the 25 best Calvin & Hobbes strips all collected and annotated, but it’s the annotations that really struck a chord in me. Take the following excerpt for example, it perfectly sums up why I love Calvin and have always identified 100% with him:

“If you think about it, Calvin was really quite an anomaly in popular entertainment — not just in comics, but in anything, be it movies, TV, etc. He has no friends, and no extracurricular activities; the only people he ever sees are his parents, who he has a strained relationship with, and Moe, Susie, Rosalyn, and Miss Wormwood, all of whom he detests and all of whom detest him. The only person he ever has any real interaction with exists only in his head. He is, for all intents and purposes, completely alone. And he’s fine with that. The kind of kid most people would entirely ignore all through school is not generally the kind you make the star of your show, and yet the strip became hugely successful.

I know that people of all ages enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes, but I have to think that it meant even more to those of us who grew up with him. Going to school every day and seeing all the ways we didn’t fit in, it was nice to see someone like us, who was intelligent and independent, and didn’t need to be a smile-plastered Mouseketeer to enjoy life. Though numerous motivational posters and guidance councelors and after-school specials had said it again and again, it was Calvin who managed to truly express the idea—without being preachy, without being sappy, perhaps even without trying—that it was okay to be different.”

Enough preamble! Here are my five favourite Calvin & Hobbes Christmas cartoons, enjoy 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And my all-time favourite Calvin & Hobbes Christmas cartoon:

 

 

-ST