I Said No Motherfvcking Backsies

The US government told people it would give them a thing, then it said psych!  jk lol.  OK, this has happened many times, but the one I’m thinking of most recently is student loan forgiveness.  This is backsies, and I say, no motherfucking backsies.  Now some might say that about us loser ass chumps who didn’t caveat our emptors before agreeing to the loans in the first place, but no, we signed those agreements based on the fabulous careers the education was supposed to provide us.  That shit ain’t real, therefore the education was never worth the asking price.  It was, as so many things in the United Snakes are, fraud.

So when we were told forgiveness was on the horizon, just do this and that, pay what you can in the meantime, we’ll work this out, and then… hard no.  Because fuck us for being poor, that’s why.  cool, cool, cool.  I’m just gonna be over in the corner sharpening this big piece of metal to hang in that wooden frame over there, hang it on a string.  It’s modern art, don’t worry about it.  After all, I have a bachelor’s degree in fine art.  You told me it was worth a lifetime of debt, so it must be legit.

Supposedly, the type of forgiveness I’m in line for was not one that has been kiboshed.  It was part of a court ordered thing, the government telling a slew of sheisty business schools to eat shit.  So perhaps it will come to pass.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps they’ll slap the irons on me when debtor’s prisons return in force.

The way federal employee pensions are calculated includes an average of your highest three years of earnings, and at some point the Big Beautiful Bullshit included a change in that math that would result in federal employees getting less money when they retire.  You’re promised one thing, you pay in, you get arbitrarily told psych, jk lol, no.  This is backsies.

Poor children dying of easily prevented causes was making states look bad, and they got a lil federal money to reduce the body count thru a program you may have heard of called Medicaid.  Thanks says the state, collecting funds to save poor people’s lives.  Psych jk lol, no.  They can eat shit and die now.  Backsies.

Anyway, don’t tell me you’ve got something for me and then take it away.  No motherfucking backsies.  Thanks.

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Brainjackin: The Normal

There are some things in life I only know about because of my husband’s evil influence.  Once upon a time he got on a jag of listening to a musician known as Fad Gadget, aka Frank Tovey.  Good lookin’ guy, passed too young due to a congenital heart defect, made wacky art-influenced electronic music.  While he was digging that guy, he told me all sorts of other adjacent things.

It starts with a guy named Daniel Miller in 1978 releasing an indie electronic track called “Warm Leatherette,” for his solo project The Normal.  That song did well for the indies, inspiring Grace Jones to do a more successful cover of it in 1980.  “Warm Leatherette” is very basic, even crude, and has lyrics that are just basic bitch fanboying about J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash.  You know, the one that was portrayed in cinema some years later, with James Spader and Holly Hunter getting their rocks off by experiencing car crashes.

Meanwhile, Miller established the soon to be ultra-successful Mute Records.  One of his other projects there was a silly little album of classic rock and roll covers as The Silicon Teens.  According to wikipedia Miller provided the vocals, but they do sound rather like his friend Frank Tovey, who posed as the band’s singer.  Who actually sang?  Dunno.  But Mute Records had all sorts of interesting artists.

Of primary interest to my man, Frank Tovey’s Fad Gadget, who had several cool songs, most famously “Ricky’s Hand,” “Collapsing New People,” and “Lady Shave.”  Did Collapsing New People make you think of Einstürzende Neubaten, whose name means Collapsing New Buildings?  No coincidence, that band was also on Mute, and the song was about them.

That’s not what made Mute a gazillion dollars.  That would be Depeche Mode.  I love those guys.  Once upon a time they were young men, and there’s a picture of lil’ Dave wearing a Fad Gadget T-shirt.  At least, I remember seeing that somewhere.  Might be misremembering it.  Anyway, the world wouldn’t have all that great Depeche Mode music if it wasn’t for these weirdos, and if it wasn’t for The Normal, and if it wasn’t for Warm Leatherette.

Join… the car crash set.

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