Michael Jackson, Fahrah Fawcett and Stephen Wells - only one of them matters to me.

Fahrah Fawcett died yesterday. As always, a terrible shame, but not something that impacts upon me to much.

Then Michael Jackson goes and the entire uber-media erupts. Internet fails. Twitter explodes. And every news anchor is falling over themselves with effusive and adjective laden praise for Michael Jackson. A man who had a habit of paying children to keep quiet and not pursue their child abuse lawsuits. At best Jackson was a seriously mentally unstable individual who made some great pop songs. At worst? Far, far darker than anyone will be talking about tonight. I'm sure in the next few weeks we'll hear no end of stories about MJ.



But the worst news I found out yesterday? Warren Ellis put a blog post up about the death of Stephen Wells. You possibly knew him as Swells from when he wrote in the NME. He wrote beautifully scathing stuff, incredible, emotive pieces that were some of the best writing about music I've ever read.

His final piece is here. And his last words in this final piece:

I speak as someone whose greatest craving at this exact moment is not world peace and universal democracy or a rational and global redistribution of wealth, but a can of ice cold ginger ale.

And of course all this bollocks is written by an idiot who has polished his image as an existentialist, atheist hard-man and anti-mope, forever sneering at the tribes who wallow in self-pity -- the gothers, the emo kids, the Smiths fans -- the whole 900-block-wide marching band composed entirely of the white male urban middle classes who are convinced that (as the most affluent and pampered human beings who have ever walked the planet) theirs is a story worth hearing. Blissfully unaware that they are but a few generations away from regular visits to the doctor who would wind parasitic worms from their beer bloated assholes using sticks. (Check out the AMA logos, those smiling beasts are not snakes.)

You could blame this fallacy on poor education, cultural deterioration, or simple moral decline.

Me? I blame it on sunshine. I blame it on the moonlight. I blame it on the boogie.

The others I can do without. Swells? Him I'll miss.