Mark Zuckerberg Fan Mail #31,499,075

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

I was introduced to 'Facebook' in October 2006, reluctantly, as I was already on Myspace, which could play music. However some of my friends refused to join Myspace, and as I was away travelling, I signed up to stay in touch. It turns out many people had this same experience, and by 2008, myspace was dead, its users all went to your site.Mr Zuckerberg I am writing in Congratuulations for your tireless improvements to Facebook's user-friendlinesss.
By autumn 2008 Facebook had already developed into the most user-friendly website yet. By this stage I was was friends with a complete stranger that I had met playing scrabble on Facebook. Facebookmania had taken the world by storm, thanks to your hard work!

2009 - Facebook now had online chat - no longer would I have to leave messages for friends - I could chat live whenever a friend was online, which was all the time thanks to how user-frriendly it was. Well done Mark! It was around this time you launched Facebook for phones, along with a string of new featues to improve user friendliness. You could see where your friends were, ask your friends questionarres, and every week the page layout would be tinkered with some tiny way. Sometimes I actually thought -wow, Facebook is trying too hard - but I now know that was just your endless striving for user friendly perfection Mark. What a guy.

Lets skip forward another year Mark. Its 2010 now and I've caved in and got a phone that supports Facebook. Peer pressure is a bitch. I dont smoke Mark but I spend a total of 2 hours every working day outside the pub I work in, or in its toilets, poking my friends on FB. I get away with it too, because I've told my boss I smoke and would need smoke breaks outside. Even though he caught me early on, it didnt matter because he too, like all the staff here, have given up smoking but kept the breaks to check his notifications regularly.

2011: More user friendly updates! It is faster than ever. Thank god for timeline. Thank god for Marky Z. Cool companies now suggest sweet products to me using the most sophisticated market aggrigating technology ever letting me know about stuff i didnt realise I needed. I had never thought about ordering a Russian Bride - until now. Big up yourself M dog! - Facebook is the most user friendly thing to have ever been created by humans - I now check my status once every three minutes on average, 24/7 no matter what I am doing. I had to buy a second phone, and can now check my status when I am on facebook - no matter where i am.

2012 - You launched Video messaging - its like I'm the same room as that manic depressive fellow I couldnt shrug off at the Christmas office party and its amazing. A personal gripe is that I no longer have the confidence in my looks since I shattered my front teeth cycling into a lampost while trying to like a Nick Clegg joke. Can you please add a tool to photoshop teeth onto the live feed?

2013 is here and Facebook is now superfast. There is a page for everything. I now no-longer need a job, an education, a dentist or GP, as I have facebook. Your journey to perfect user-friendly technology has come into maturity at the perfect time for me. I am so lucky. You see MZ, Im approaching 30. Its an important time of life for me to document. My best friends are expecting a baby any time now, and I am set to be the godfather; but I needent bug them at all about it until I get an add request from the little fella (we know its a boy, thanks to facebook's gender determination app). I keep checking though, but mainly as I have begun to get panic attacks when I don't have my phone in my hand.


So Congratulations on your success, Mark, You have made Facebook so User Friendly, I can no longer use life without it! 

Love,
Hashtag Johnson. XXXXXXxxxxxxXXXX
Age 24, Oiwa

E2, Friday night, 3am

Footsteps,
Contemplative
Hollow.
Striking at the hungry night amid shattered bottles,
its no wonder they call it Shore DITCH,
but no jewels wash up on this abismal tide,
Just CRABS.

And so sideways we walk,
onward. downward, inward
to the neon yards,
the hot belched curry houses,
of 'Brick Lane'
to be filled with shit,
the prefered condition
of 2013.

Past shrugging cliques of displaced yutes
Who chew their faces old,
before retiring to their hovels
dubstep
Grime
Towie
Death

Big Brother is watching them
and they are watching it.

It's Summer, 1962. In France students were claiming themselves Marxists and anti-imperialists and setting fire to the streets. Meanwhile the cats in down town New York were Snorting pretty patterns into impact clouds of speed off cheap plastic table cloths and fucking each other stupid to a soundtrack of empathy. And that's what I had heard from my domestic cradle in Kansas, so I had quit that scene and travelled half the country on various boxcars with shamanistic hobo dropouts for company. Dropouts who would tear away the normality of the quotidian night with the beautiful freak ballads of their wild lives whilst burning beans on their tincan fires. And I had ended up here. It was 7.15pm on the 3rd of June. I had arrived an hour ago and sat down int he first dump I could find that would sell me a cheap hot drink. Now I was a stranger from a small country town stuck on the wrong side of a big city where I didn't belong. I had a buck fifty in my pockets and nowhere to sleep.

I hadn't eaten all day and the moonshine I had bummed of a bum tasted like bum. My hands were clammy and my mouth was full of cotton balls. And perhaps I could've just sucked the sweat off my knuckles - quenching my thirst and drying my hands all at once, but I cared far too less to give a shit. Plus I would've probably got thrown out and it wasn't exactly warm outside. All I had left to live for was sex. And rock and roll. And drugs. And Cars. And Dr Pepper. And playing it like a true free spirit on the edge of society with no respect for the man and a pocket full of burnt out tooth-picks. I stared at the plain dumb face of the waitress in the two bit café that I had would up in and I told her to bring me some more of her filthy coffee. The bitch turned face into her scumbag kitchen and as she did I took the hip flask from my slacks, drained the acrid chemicals clean and dropped the bottle onto the chess tiled floor. They burnt like the reality of being a tortured artist deadbeat poet anti-hero hobo rebel in a classic American counter culture beatnik novel who was full of rage. And it tasted good.

She returned from behind the curtain. The coffee cost 80 cents, leaving me with a meagre 70 cents to go on with. As she went back across the chess board to her till I figured that I could probably find a downtown shop front to collapse in for a couple of hours before I went to find Ernie and the boys to lend me some bread. Man. So thats what I did. And If you don't like it you can get in the cue with the rest of the sad sack square asshole despots that make life the uphill mass produced escalator that it is. And no I won't write back to your stiffly worded letter, cos I'm too busy living.


ANON "Letter to no-one" Written onto the wall of the men's toilet in a cafe in Greenwich Village. 1962.

No Fun

As over 175,000 people try to convince themselves that risking pneumonia in the torrent, brushing their teeth in their neighbours shit and slipping repeatedly face first into a mud-cake iced with modern age detritus to a sound track of “in the name of love”; many of us are glad that this years weather at Glastonbury is as shit as the line-up.

But year-by-year as the Eavis’s journey further toward the middle of the road, there is also a growing number of hipsters that slag Glastonbury off simply as a way of pledging allegiance to ‘their’ chosen festival, with the competitiveness of a tattooed Millwall FC fan. This weekend especially they’ve felt the need to make the entire web aware that ‘their’ festival is ‘more underground’ and ‘more wild’ than Glasto.

But in order to appear to be a true member, you need the look - usually of strenuously organised, pretentiously executed dressing up. This literal fabrication of spontaneous fun is at the centre of what is becoming wrong with festivals. I already know what several (one is too many) of these people are ‘going as’, to a festival that doesn’t begin for six weeks (“mines a sort of burlesque wench/ rococo harlot, with an aborted gin baby strapped to my stockings”).

Nowadays all the mirth is programmed down onto timetables: Welly Throwing Contest at 3pm, Mud-pack Disco Poetry Slam at noon, Build Your Own Twiglet Dildo Race at 9:15am. And it is compulsory you take part, because often the festivals’ rep of carefully planned ‘wild fun’ is policed by bullying, shaming and naming those that don’t. At one such festival I saw a man scorn a young girl for declining his offer that she join in with his naked flash mob party. When she politely declined, he talked down to her (the repressed cancer of society that she clearly was) saying something along the lines of “Why not? Why can’t you just be free!?”

This man probably goes back to London and spends the next year in a suit reminding his bored office colleagues about the time when he dropped aciiid and got his kit off; when in reality he got ripped off and spent sixteen hours freaking out in his tent, while across the field a dreadlocked white band from Bristol rap about how “Jah don’t take coke”, while a tent packed full of rich kids agree wholeheartedly with cocaine induced enthusiasm.

 With all this over-planning, mass pretention, and festival pariah bashing in mind: has something gone wrong with our idea of fun? Are we that centred on popularity and cliques that fun has to be controlled and policed until there are winners and losers? Are we that lost to ourselves that we don’t have a good time unless our Victorian trapeze act garter and fascinator combo looks genuine? Are we so over the welly line in capitalism that all this ‘fun’ needs to be documented and posted onto Facebook from our smartphones as it happens?

Yes to all of the above. I feel sick. But maybe that’s the smell from the Porta-loos? Or maybe that hash-cake magic Dave sold me at the Dubstep tent has just kicked in. Anyway I better dash because if I don’t see twenty bands this weekend then I havent had a good time.

Moaty, It's Gazza

Last night Soccer legend Paul Gascoigne sped south from his newcastle home in a hire car to talk his friend Raol Moat from a armed police stand off.

Speaking to Radio Rothbury in a mobile phone interview whilst speeding to the scene in a minicab, Gazza said:

" Look he's killed one and killed two right? Now the drugs have worn off. Two or three it doesn't matter. It's not all that nice. But he's a lovely bloke really - I've come all the way from Newcastle in a taxi man, It cost me £40 right? I came all the way in a taxi.. I know the guy. He's killed 3, man. It's not nice.. I've got Chicken, and I know you'll laugh, but beer, and a flip-flops. I was in a car crash once, I hit a wall at ninety miles an hour. I've got a jacket, I've got a dressing gown, I've got Chicken, I've got bread. I was in a car once. I've got lager. I've got; got a fishing rod, I've got my fishing rod, I've got his fishing rod. I've got lager. I was in a train crash once. Two friends on the river and just two friends and; "look it Moaty: worst of the worst you're gonna get 20 years right? Maybe 30. Piece of piss man" I was a car once. He's come calm down now man so I know he'll be alright. Theres nothing wrong with him. He's a gentlemen. I was in a plane once.. He's lovely bloke but it's not very nice when you .. His girlfriend slept with another bloke. Don't talk to me right - I'm coming in this taxi man and I've forgot the chicken but the lager. I forgot that. I'll know you'll laugh. Thanks alot. Send us a cheque through the post man".

-with this Gazza hung up.

Witnesses say they saw a minicab pull up to the police controlled border of the seige and a disheveled Gazza unloading a toby magnetic fishing toy and a lettuce wearing only hotel slippers and a hotel gown filled with what seemed to be over thirty miniature wine bottles. Although the police would not let Gascoigne pass through the line they did pass on a message from him to Raol.

Sources say the last thing they heard before the sound of the gunshot with which Moat ended his life was a negotiator shout:

"Raol! That visitor has arrived. It's your mate Gazza".

Hollywood remakes for 2011

Tinsletown is buzzing with the recent revelation of coming MAJOR BLOCKBUSTER remakes:

SPZMG is looking forward to these two features in particular:

Rocky VII

The italian stallion is back to face his most deadly nemesis ever - Alzheimers. Will he prevail?

Saw XII

Jigsaw's rotting remains are dug up and sewn back together in graphic HD 3-D by his demented son, then re-animated via spinal grafted animatron robotics so that his unconscious cadaver can go around slowly jabbing flesh eating virus carrying fetuses down the orapheses of innocent teenage grils in this 5 hour epic. The Daily Star calls it "Spine Tingling".

Extracts from AVATAR treatment document

No.53 =

Names for the expensive mineral:

Hardtogetium

Unobtainium

Outofreachium

Unexplainium

Digindeepium

Plotdevicium

Hiddengen

Futilium

Gold

Note:

Let's go with Unexplainium: Ive been here for eight years.

eg:

a) "Why are those mountains floating?"

b) "This whole region is covered in Unexplainium"

(..Also good = James' idea to just leave any explanation of the floating mountains from script)

Election Special pt.1: Ikarus

This election has been a special one, and voting day was no different:

At 8:45am Former UKIP party leader and lisping Nazi Kermit-alike Nigel Farage got into an aircraft he borrowed from Mel Gibson to pull a banner reading "Don't like Polacks? Vote UKIP", over the constituency of somewhere racist.

As he was buckling up he bravely and wryly taunted Jesus with the following flippant joke to the press:

"I hope I don't nosedive at 70mph into a crumpled pile of prejudice and have to emerge flapping about in the grass like a jew at a poofter march, ha ha ha".

The flight was in the air for exactly 88 seconds. One theory about the cause of the crash is that the banner was too long and snagged the right wing of the craft. A senior representative of UKIP agreed "if we'd gone with 'Gook' instead it would have been a completely different story".

Farage is currently being treated at nearby St. Georges Hospital, where a source has said: "Nigel was unconscious but can talk". adding further momentum to major scientific research funded by Oxford University ongoing since Farage's first ever commons address in June 2008.

A local Police inquiry launched after a witness saw four Polish men apparently seen tampering with the PZL-104 was dropped after one of the males came forward to explain themselves as "sky plumbers performing a routine check-up".

Police are still investigating the cause of the act of God.

Gordon Ramsay's face.

"Baking a turd."

Gordon Ramsay has shocked the world by being the first man alive to employ builders to perform cosmetic surgery on his weathered face.

After taking advice from Simon Cowell, whose face was once described as looking like a sack full of badly chosen vegetables, Ramsay said he decided to take action to level off his sweary, scowl worn mug because he was sick of looking "like a pin art imprint of a scrotum".

According to friends, the last straw came when he spotted David Cameron's leering poster campaign. "It was the smoothest balloon he'd ever seen. That's when he decided". However after months of trans-Atlantic attempts Ramsay couldn't find a surgeon willing to promise results, his features being too far damaged for normal surgery.

But in the end Mr. Ramsey secured 'Regional Foundation Contracts' (Essex), a reputable building company that had extended his kitchen in 2006, who signed for the job in February. Dany Gilburn, joint owner of the firm has said:

''There wasn't any planning permission needed, ‘cos it was his own face. We basically got two kilos of grout and went round to his, and he whipped up some sort of soufflé thing laced with gin. Problem was it didn't knock him out cold. If anything, the Gin was a bad

idea. During the procedure he started shouting that we were 'b****ck fairys' and that he needed a new face in the next two minutes otherwise the whole procedure was 'f***ked'. Then he reached in his pocket and took some French dough and started rubbing it in the cracks in his face instead of the grout. When we asked him to stop he said 'HE was Chef' and called us a 'batch of c**tblankets' and said this dough was 'the loveliest, smoothest raising dough in the sh***ing continent' and that once he went down the tanning salon his face would look like 'Mickey Mouse's balls'.''

A statement issued by a legal spokesperson for the firm reads:

"Even though Mr. Ramsay's face just looks a bit puffier and just as weird, like rotted Playdo that’s been sanded down, R.F Inc. takes no responsibility for the result of the procedure. We could do it again but we'll have to wait for the right bonding agent to come in from Croatia and that will be three times as expensive and were not even sure its worth our time given the bad weather".

Change we can hop on and off of

Boris Johnson has released his Policy plans for London in 2010

They include:

* The Speed on Speed cameras to be dramatically increased.
* Roads at all Cross junctions to be painted red to form st. Georges cross. (Signs erected to explain this is not racist).
* Routemaster Buses are finally to be re-instated after adding "360degree hop-on-potential technology".
* Pubs lawfully obliged to serve English roast Beef.
* Pubs opening hour to be constricted to "work closing hour".
* All Tubes to have gyms installed.
* The design team of the bendy bus to be tried at the tower of London for murder of large number of cyclists (figure pending but immense).
* Hansom Cabs to be re-instated using ex show royal carraigehorses and unemployed Beefeaters as chauffeurs:
* Deficit created by the hansom budget to be covered by scrapping illness, which will unburden the NHS.
* More youths to be arrested.
* Arts and Culture's output to be increased and diversity by handing over the control and budget responsibility to the general public (buskers to be arrested if not licenced by telephone vote in).

"Cutting edge traditional bus and pub technology, philosophy and ethics for a 21st Century of strident excellence".

Blag off..

When did blagging become a British pastime? Every cockney Zoo reading arsehole who thinks Human Traffic was a seminal 90s guide to life seems to be in on it. This is a quick list of the worst and most pathetic ‘blagging’ techniques used at my events‘. Nice one brother. I said nice one, brother!’. Wankers.

“I know the band mate, I’m on the list!”
If you’ve seen the band more than 5 times, this does not mean you know them. If they once waved back at you after your frantic and rather pathetic attempts to get their attention at a gig, you don’t know the band. If the band spat on you last time you saw them play, this doesn’t mean they care about you. You are a loser, and the band never wants to meet you, ever. So now pay me 8 quid, thanks, i'm never getting these moments back. Good day.

“I’m reviewing your gig for our magazine”
I don’t care what shitty student rag you work for, pieces of black and white A4 paper stapled together is NOT a magazine. You and your mates writing about what’s ‘cool’ in Brighton and some boring story about what happened to someone on their gap year is NOT a magazine. Distributing it to friends and family to try and show your parents your doing something with your life does NOT make it a magazine. So now pay me 8 quid, Thank…

“ Its my birthday mate, all my mates are in there!”
Ah! Two blags in one. If it’s your ‘birthday’ and all your mates are ‘in there’. Your telling me, that all your mates left you on your birthday to go to a club and you’ve been left outside with no money? Either, everyone hates you, your friends are cunts or you’re a lying toe rag. All three perhaps?. If by the off chance, all of his mates are in there, you’ll see a full grown man pull a face that looks likes he’s straining for a shit. “Auw, please mate, everyone’s in there, please”, there is nothing more unattractive or low I wish he’d left.

“Oooo, that’s a bit pricey mate, what’s on tonight anyway?’
You’ve been in a queue for half an hour and you don’t even know what’s on? What kind of a reprobate goes somewhere, queues up, complains hey've been waiting too long, then asks whats on? And now I have to sell it to you? Should these people even be allowed out to a social venue with members of the public or should they be culled? It’s a fair debate.
“

“There’s like 10 people with me, can we get a discount?”
I quite like the idea of these people selling themselves like low grade supermarket meat, but although this ‘bargain’ is hard to refuse, I think ill take my chances that like everyone else, you’ll end up paying. Now that’s 8 quid….fuck it, I hate you!!

I have more, but I'm annoyed even writting about it. Lesson of the day from your friendly local promoter, we have bouncers, and I hate your face, so just pay, and of course, have a lovely time sir...

pierre is back

After a long yet well required holiday I am back - What did I learn I hear your all asking - well you are gonna have to wait...

Toffshop

New line "Twattish and pointless"


Mayor of London Boris Johnson has announced he is to release a fashion line. The range, entitled simply 'Boris' is set to hit UK stores in time for the Christmas spending boom of this year.
Speaking exclusively to Spastique in an industry press conference yesterday, Johnson announced he was "fresh out of plans for London" and that he wanted to revamp "London" as the centre for fashion in "Europe" to help reverse the current "economic crisis", having gotten the idea from his favorite rap star "Jay Zed".
The Menswear range has been hand designed by Boris himself in Crayon and will feature Blond bowl-cut style horsehair cycle helmets, ties that have been designed to appear skewed, nervous sweat scented aftershave and a face cream that promotes blotchy pigskin and cold sores.
The look has been declared by the man himself to be inspired by his idols, and is said to give the consumer "the endearing appearance of aesthetic imperfection making them seem focused on more pressing issues than their own dress sense" even if they're really just full of shit.



Boris is said to be "chuffed as a button" with the line, and hopes it to be as warmly received as the runaway success of his recent record label 'Boris Beats' which featured signing 'Shmelvis' aka Hull born Trevor Duntup (pictured above).
London Post graduate Adrian Hall said yesterday he would "rather catch a terminal sex virus from a violent bumrapist" than wear it.

Hard Time

WK: "Damaged"

Andrew WK was arrested in the early hours of this morning following a Police stand off at his Travel lodge Hotel room in Londons King's Cross.Police were called to the scene at around 3.30am this morning after several complaints from hotel guests and staff that WK was "partying too hard".
         On first inspection the claims seemed unreasonable; a collection of older male guests collected on a sofa watched sports on television whilst sharing light refreshments such as Hob nobs, a large jar of pickles and some soft drinks. But on closer inspection Senior Police officer David Smith discovered the Hob nobs to be laced with GHB. WK was immediatley detained under suspscion of supplying the drugs to the senior guests, who were later revealed to be female prostitutes aged just 17 - 20 years of age engaged in fastasy play. After securing the room for inspection, the police then found the pickles were really severed human fingers of an unknown origin, and the television was hiding the entrance to small a balcony crammed with a 30 thousand watt sound system and a DJ playing old school rave-metal music whilst over a hundred party go-ers incoherently intoxicaterd on GHB, crack cocaine and heroin discharged various bodily fluids onto the streets below.

This is Mr. WK's eighteenth recreation related arrest since his 2001 chart hit "party hard" and its subsequent "party across the globe tour" saw the star depart on a decade long bender of constant narcotic induced mayhem including convictions for kidnapping a road safety man dressed as a traffic cone in Paris, launching foodstuffs at the former pope in Rome and the 'prank' arson attack of a Texan chapel in 2004. WK, pictured above having just eaten a friends pet dog as a party trick, has been granted bail by the London Met ahead of his impending trial in the understanding that he will commit himself to Dr. Anthony Bohm's radical new rehabilitation centre for Party Addicts 'Sunrise' in LA, and appear on Channel 4's TV counsilling programme 'Come Down with Me', donating his fee to Travel Lodge by way of damages.

A senior police office has said: "The man is unstable. He honestly cannot stop partying. Its very sad."

WK's trial for 59 counts of noise polluion, criminal damages, supplying drugs, fraud, human trafficking and murder goes to the Old Bailey in November.

Cold War - So Hot Right Now!!!

The potential Cold War with Russia is the biggest thing to hit the catwalks since SARS.

Spastique Caught up with fashion forecaster and general communist bastard Vladislav Solovyov in Moscow to interrogate him fully.

SM: So Vladi, what's this Cold War trend your predicting all about then?

VV: Well all the club kids in Moscow have started taking polonium 210 in order to fuck themselves up.

SM: Can't that kill you or something?

VV: Nah, you western pussy! - I eat depleted uranium for breakfast.

SM: What?

VV: Yeah, Chernobyl Crunch it's a Russian breakfast favorite.

SM: So what does Polonium 210 do then?

VV: It just helps you to look cool - Like a punk - Like a cracked out bald punk with radiation poisoning.

SM: Sounds good, you know that cracked out punks is an up and coming look for SS 09?

VV: Yes, That's what I've just told you.

Pixelate

New JPOP accessories collection 'Pixelate' released.

Famous Swedish milliner and accessories designer JPOP has released an amazing new range of hats and face masks that pixelate your face so that you can look like that dirty binge drinking pikey on the latest episode of Booze Britain.

Spastique tracked down JPOP during his busy Paris schedule to ask about the new collection.

"Well it's a statement on the increasing use of surveillance in modern cities and it debilitating effect on creativity, spontaneity and freedom" he went on to say "that and an old episode of police, camera, action I watched the other day... my friend had it on an old VHS he found...Ha Ha Alister Stewart was such a dick...Ha Ha... London tonight what a loser."

Whist a few press samples went out to magazines and boutiques a spokesperson for JPOP's PR company who cannot be named for legal reasons has informed us the collection will not be in the shops until late 2009.  

EXCLAMATION MARKS! - the new question marks?

Do you remember a time when every thing was like wham!, new!, smash hits!. For to long now it's all been Credit crunch?, date rape?, Surgery? well it's good news question marks are officially out and exclamation marks are officially back! 

How do I use the exclamation mark? the answer ACCESSORISE!! the exclamation mark! will fit in with most of your S/S sentences and will still work going through to your A/W statements and propositions wardrobe. Ex question mark wearer and general club-kid Que! says, "It's ALL! about using them where PEOPLE! don't EXPECT!, I mean they're SO! right NOW! that you CAN'T! really go wrong JA!" 

As if to illustrate the extent of the trend Vice! and Dazed! and Confused! magazine have recently announced that they have added an exclamation mark to their titles however nothing compares to the feverish debate happening at all the parties about whether Vogue is going to become VOGUE!! just keep it ssh! OK!

The Weather 29/8/08

Its Shit. 

And..?  

Stop rocking Ski

We're done with this shit Ski wear thing. Yeah Winter's coming but how many Ski helmet / New Era modifications does Shoreditch really need?

Gash Crew UK Aug 08

                                        GASHBACK

Here's another pic showing the Gash crew's sociopolitical art around the UK (this time in Cornwall). Kudos. Keep them coming..