Windows H8

Welcome to Windows 8: The OS that hates you as much as you hate it.

Don't get fooled by the poisonous colours and the user-friendly appearance: Windows 8 does hate you with every bit of its soul, and it's willing to go to any length to prove it. It hates you for the very fact you exist. It hates you for not thinking forward. And, especially, it hates you for buying a stationary PC instead of a tablet, because that's what this is all about, right? Selling motherfucking tablets.

I don't know if Microsoft has achieved its objectives in that field, but it definitely succeeded at pushing people away from buying stationary computers and into the arms of Apple. If that was what they wanted, congratulations - you really did a fantastic job, guys... just like Myspace did pushing away all the bands it had left with its brilliant revamp.

Windows 8, in fact, has a lot in common with the New Myspace.

With both, you find yourself struggling to navigate through an extremely unintuitive and confusing interface, trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Less than five minutes into any of the two, you'll be desperately talking to the computer screen, asking: 'Can I do anything, PLEASE?'

The answer is 'no, you can't'.

In both cases, all you're allowed to do is admire the flawless simplicity of the advanced interface design and feel grateful for living in this era of technological progress, all while allowing yourself to be spoon-fed with corporate-driven contents and generously sharing your personal data. Living in the future never felt so good, heh?

Now serioursly, it's phisically impossible for you to not enjoy Windows 8's sophisticated design: four of every five toddlers enquired stated that it was the best design they had ever seen; the fifth did not provide an answer because he was distracted sucking his thumb or taking a nap.

The statistics speak for themselves.

On the picture below, you can see the chief design officer at Microsoft immersed in the process of developing the intricate concept behind the groundbreaking Windows 8 interface:

Groundbreaking, indeed... in the most literal sense of the word, since it literaly breaks the ground you're used to standing on to pieces; to gigantic, flat, acid-coloured squares, in fact. It tears down the very idea of Windows (the really revolutionary design that both Microsoft and Apple bought from Xerox 1000 years ago and have been championing ever since); it shreds the multidimensional desktop space to unidimensional tiles; it shits on the very concept of multi-tasking; rules PCs out as obsolete.

Try to complain, they'll dismiss you as an analogic dinosaur and a desktop die-hard.

'You have to think forward' they'll tell you. 'Mobile devices are the future. You have to compromise.'

Well, mobile devices might be the future, but we are living in the goddamn present, where my PC still does stuff your tablets can't do. Babies are also the future, and yet that doesn't mean adults should start wearing diapers in order to advance.

Tablets and smartphones need optimitzed software precisely because of the limitations derived from their mobile condition. It makes sense for them to run simplified versions of programs and have a touch-friendly interface, but what's the sense of forcing that into a stationary computer that's potent enough to run NORMAL programs and doesn't even have a fucking touch screen in the first place? It's just as stupid as taking a guy from college and putting him back into kindergarten to play with blocks and learn the alphabet, because compromise. 

That's exactly the way the PC user is bound to feel when first introduced to Windows 8: like an adult sitting in a preschool classroom.

History books say that prisoners in concentration camps were forced to eat using their hands in order to strip them from their human condition. Well, as friviolous as this comparison might seem, one can't help feeling that Microsoft really thinks that, by making you click on gigantic multicoloured buttons and read texts written in humiliatingly orversized fonts, you too will end up believing you're too retarted to be treated like an adult.

If you've ever come across the Windows 8 calcultator app, you'll understand my point.

The visually impaired will most probably be thrilled about this new feature. For those of us who still have a 20/20 vision, however, clicking on numbers the size of a chihuahua head in a mandatory full-screen setting feels a bit humiliating.

But don't worry, PC user: you'll get used to this, just like you got used to everything else. Your indestructible faith in progress will help you adapt to the new world Miscrosoft has so lovingly crafted for you.

And, if you ever feel in doubt, you just have to look at your WWWD bracelet and ask yourself: 'What would will.i.am do?'

Probably, this:

It's obvious that will.i.am has been living inside the Windows 8 interface for quite some time. Very literaly. You can tell that from the design of his latest album cover:

That's most definitely what he would call 'Future Hunting'.

I, personally, still need therapy after trying to get along with the new OS for just one day. I have nightmares about it, and wake up from my dreams feeling raped by Microsoft.

Not funny.

Not funny at all.

So let will.i.am do the #FutureHunting;  I'm calling a computer tech in hopes he can return me to the comfort of Windows 7.

I can have no peace till I get this cancer out of my sistem.

Very literaly.

68 Jahre Rock & Roll

"I was born Ian Fraser Kilmister on Christmas Eve, 1945, some five weeks premature, with beautiful golden hair which, to the delight of my quirky mother, fell out five days later. No fingernails, no eyebrows, and I was bright red. My earliest memory is shouting: at what and for what reason, I don't know. Probably a tantrum, or I may have been rehearsing. I was always an early starter.

My father was not pleased. I suppose you could say me and my father didn't hit it off - he left three months later. Perhaps it was the hair falling out; perhaps he thought I was already taking after him.

My father had been a padre in the RAF during the war, and my mother was a very pretty young librarian with no idea of the duplicity of the clergy - I mean, you teach people that the Messiah was the offspring of a vagabond's wife (who is a virgin) and a ghost? And this is a basis for a worldwide religion? I'm not so sure. I figured if Joseph believed that one, he deserved to sleep in stables!"

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"Talking of two two-faced bastards - my band, Motörhead, got nominated for a Grammy in 1991. The music industry doing us yet another favour, you know. So I got on the plane in Los Angeles - New York's a long walk. I had a pint of Jack Daniels in my pocket: I always find it helps with the sobering up. As we taxied elegantly out on to the sun-drenched tarmac, I took a sip and mused pleasantly on this and that.

A voice: 'Give me taht bottle!'

I looked up; a stewardess with concrete hair and a mouth like an asshole repeated herself, as history will - 'Give me that bottle!'

Well, I don't know what you might have done, honoured reader, but the fucking thing was bought and paid for. No chance. I volunteered this information. The reply: 'If you don't give me that bottle, I shall put you off the plane!'

This was becoming interesting; we were about fifth in the queue for take-off, were already late, and this bonehead bitch was going to take us out of the line for one pint of Jack Daniels?

'Fair enough,' I said. 'Put my ass off this fucking plane right now,' or words to that effect. And can you believe it, the stupid cretin did it! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! She made all those people late and miss their connections in New York, all for a pint of the amber pick-me-up ...So what? Fuck her! And the horse she rode in on! Come to think of it, perhaps she was the horse she rode in on! I got another flight an hour and a half later.

It was an inauspicious start to the festivities, and it carried on like it began. When we got to the fabled Radio City (Home of the Stars!), everyone was dressed in hired penguin tuxedos, trying to look as much as possible like the motherfuckers who were stealing their money! I don't wear tuxes - I don't think it's really me, you know? And I don't think the ushers liked the Iron Cross.

Anyway, having been nominated for a Grammy for our first album for Sony, I had foolishly entertained the idea that the company might be pleased. I don't think they even noticed! I have still, to this day, not been lucky enough to gaze, enthralled, upon the splendour that is Tommy Mottola - that night he was probably too busy chasing Mariah Carey around her dressing room. I'm not an overly ambitious man: 'Hello' or just 'Glad to have you aboard' or even 'Hey, dude' would have sufficed. Nothing. Nada. Fuck all. So I went to Sire's party. Better. Got laid.

So fuck 'em. And the horse they rode in on!"

♠

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Lemmy Kilmister - 68 years of rock & roll and counting.

Happy birthday to the one and only God of Rock & Roll! :D

The Low End Of Low

How low can you sink? Never enough, apparently, whenever there are females envolved. That has been Marilyn Manson's life motto for quite a few years already, and it wasn't going to change for his recent collaboration with Avril Lavigne.

That's right: the image above is a piece of fan art (don't worry, I didn't do it myself - it was the internet), but it's not a joke. The collaboration does exist, and it's included in Avril Lavigne's *sigh* self-titled album, that came out about a month ago.

The song in question is called *sigh* Bad Girl *sigh* *sigh* *sigh*, and, right as its title indicates, it is an epic piece of shit. And I'm not saying this just because I'm not a fan of Avril Lavigne and everything she represents - there really is NOTHING you can say in this song's defense. Written by the Nickel-glorious (and Lavigne-husband) Chad Kroeger, among others, the whole thing is a triplet-feel mess, with some pseudo-heavy Beautiful-People-esque distorted guitars, and Avril shouting on top, drowned in a pool of retro reverb, like some especially bratty and unprofessional version of Suzi Quatro. This shit is so awful it makes Taylor Momsen sound like Black Sabbath. It even makes the duet between Ke$ha and Iggy Pop sound sort of decent.  

Marilyn Manson's contrubution is reduced to one single phrase that is mechanically repeated throughout the song, which makes it even worse: if you're going to disgrace your name by taking part in such a questionable project, at least make it worth it. But that was never the objective of this... thing. The only reason for this collaboration - the C-word uglier than cancer - was to include Manson's name in the album tracklist, in order to spark some morbid interest, as well as buying the girl some artistic cred. Judging by the sales and the repercussion of the record, they failed at both, and dropped Manson's credibility levels even lower in the process. But that's exactly what the Industry does. Always. And the most amazing thing is that he doesn't even seem to have learnt that yet... even after being mistreated, criminally underpromoted and kicked out of Interscope in the most unfriendly way.

He, who has the blessing of not having to dance to the beat of the Evil Industry anymore, doesn't quite seem to find his place in the outside world. He might be releasing his records (one record, to date) independently, but he seems extremely reluctant to quit the celebrity game... and he doesn't seem too keen on burning brigdes either. The fearless man who once terrorized America (and the world) with his uncompromising social critique doesn't seem to have the balls to say the truth about the industry, or about the real reasons why his High End Of Low tanked was tanked, or to call Martin Kierszenbaum - the man in charge of his The High End Of Low promo - and Jimmy Iovine the things they really are.

Of course, he must have found out, at some point, that his whole career was a marketing mirage created by Interscope, and that's not an easy pill to swallow. He was Interscope's favourite puppet during the years when alternative rock was cool and Uncle Jimmy was desperate to create controversy at any price, and then he was just left aside, mobbed, and mercilessly thrown into the trashbin. No 'thank you' for the past sales and buzz. No glory for a faded cultural icon, who was probably one of the most influential and memorable characters of the 90s, as well as the frontman of one of the most important bands of the decade, musically speaking. His marketing was a corporate construction. His music and values weren't.

He, who once yelled "I'm not a slave to a god that doesn't exist / I'm not a slave to a world that doesn't give a shit", is now a rapidly aging man who seems to have forgotten his own glory and his own strength. Instead of claming what is due to him, he just sits sadly in a corner, trying to prove to himself (and to the world) that he can still be young and edgy.

He, who once criticised the values of Hollywood, has now become one of the undead creatures that populate the streets of LA. The city has eaten him from the inside, like it does with everone, and he doesn't even seem to have noticed.

And don't get me wrong - the man is still capable of releasing some quality music, but it seems like all his energy and all his ambitions in life are completely gone, like he has already achieved everything... which he definitely hasn't. Even though his career as a whole can't be called a failure, it can't be called a complete success either. He never had the chance to achieve the iconic status that KISS, Black Sabbath, David Bowie or even Nirvana have, not because he doesn't deserve it, but simply because nobody ever has a chance to do that in the era of the Industry Consolidation. And that' a real shame.

In this era, musicians don't work to build their own glory. They work for the glory of the Corporation, and are not even allowed to put their belongings in a cardboard box and take them home, once their work is done. Their successes are expropiated; their failures are charged to their bill and remembered forever. And they still have to be thankful, for having once had the honour of serving the Evil Empire of Music (a.k.a. the Uni-Label), and never ever speak against it, in hopes that, one day, the Gods might, perhaps, find them useful for some of their evil purposes again.

And so, Jimmy Iovine walks free with the money, and delivers speeches to college students at the university he has just bought for himself as a playground to spend his time at during his golden days of glorious retirement, while Marilyn Manson has to live in a modest appartment, with his artistic credibility blown to dust, and with the stigma of the precoucious has-been.

Nothing more left for the 44-year-old Marilyn Manson. Just a glimpse at life in the Low End of Low.