OUT TO LUNCH: The World Is Full of Crashing Bores

From the oracle of TTY:

Paul Joseph Watson:
"While Morrissey and Johnny Marr once fused poetry and melodic genius to venerate Oscar Wilde. Now Nickki Minaj and Fergie fuse putrid nihilism and vacuous verbal diahhrea to venerate their asses."

Tell me I'm wrong. Get upset. Smoke and explode. Go post another countdown. But, I'm telling you, Our Mozzer is into this stuff. It is part of his world view and outsider identity and it's in his lyrics.

That, or he's just messing with our minds.

Or someone else is.

Lots of folk, actually, but I typically digress.

So, Morrissey posts a video on TTY that examines and decries the totalitarian blandness of contemporary popular music. It's an Orwellian vision. Indeed, to quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four:

But by degrees the flood of music drove all speculations out of his mind. It was as though it were a kind of liquid stuff that poured all over him and got mixed up with the sunlight that filtered through the leaves. He stopped thinking and merely felt.

and

The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as versificator.

Or, to put t another way:

and there's a song I can't stand
and it's stuck in my head
there's a song I can't stand
and it's stuck in my head

and

What really lies beyond the constraints of my mind?
could it be the sea?
with Fate mooning back at me?
no, it's just more lock-jawed pop-stars thicker than pig-shit
nothing to convey
so scared to show intelligence 
it might smear their lovely career

or

hang the DJ

Ok, enough quoting. Who is this Paul Joseph Watson? Well, until a few minutes ago I'd never heard of him. Obviously a Smiths fan. But what else?

Clue one comes at the end of the video:

Infowars.com is a alternative news site run by Alex Jones. Jones is louder than bombs and alarmingly alarmist on stuff like GMOs, gun control, vaccination and Syrian refugees. Mr Watson is an editor and writer for Inforwars and the related PrisonPlanet.TV. He even has an article in the Uncyclopedia.

Watson appears to have a particular specialty with anti-feminist rants and claiming to be censored (although he's across Infowars, PrisonPlanetTV, Twitter and Facebook - everything but a major record label).

The narratives of Infowars/PrisonPlanet are in many ways related to the kind of conspiracies we saw from Our Mozzer's MW phenomon and fits well with TTY's infamous Monachy is Anarchy videos and some of Morrissey's more perplexing political public statements, like "I nearly voted for UKIP". Like Watson, Our Mozzer could be said to be about "Culture, controversy, contrarianism."

Oh no, I'm about to make a Maladjusted reference!

List Of The Lost Comments

Apologies for that incredibely creative blog title. As you know, our blog shrank a bit recently, and hopefully the articles will one day be republished elsewhere, but of course the comment sections are lost. Well, not really, the comments are still visible in the admin part of the blog and in the associated email inbox, and Monsieur El Rat had asked me to go through them and collect the few lost anon gems, which was a great idea, some of those are wonderfully written. So after having successfully beaten my laziness, I compiled them this morning. They're a bit out of context, but it's questionable if there ever was much context anyway... So here is the (hopefully complete) collection.

The first set of comments was published around the time when we did our Q/A session with Morrissey; they all refer to questions that were left on that article, however the answers were distributed across the blog:


Published on "Poem Left on Following the Pessoas" (12/8/2015)

In The Decay of Lying, Wilde said, “Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.” Do you believe thinking (or overthinking) can possibly be an unhealthy tendency?

Oscar always speaks sense and it is to Oscar I find myself returning to time after time. Although one must disagree with him on one point; “thought it not catching” is quite clearly a ridiculous statement in regards to England as in England nobody ever thinks so there can be no data on whether it is catching or not. The same opinions are repeated in newspapers, on television, on radio but with different words or perhaps a different style of speaking. The window of discussion in England has become so narrow, opaque, and dull that soon only one opinion will be able to be viewed, much like staring at the same view every day for the rest of your life. Anyone with a difference of opinion will be viewed as a crank, an idiot, or even worse, mental. Indeed if anyone ever managed to conjure a unique thought then they would become so shocked they would decompose into mush in the very spot in which they were standing.

I find that thinking or overthinking is an overtly personal affair. How many bedsit poets are there? How many box-room philosophers? We will, of course, never know. Those who are capable of thinking will never voice the true thoughts in their heads. They will suffer and probably plunge into a deep depression in the belief that they are outsiders and that the world doesn’t want or indeed need them. They don’t know, for how could they?, that it is the outsiders who make the world. I should know. Back in 1981, before the internet and before Tony Blair, I was an unknown freak. Today I am an icon. Why? Because I dared to say something different. In a world of grey, I was a spec of orange.

Thinking can be totally and incongruously ruin-able. A disease if you would. For to sit for days, weeks, months, and possibly years with your own thoughts, never to be able to articulate them is ruinous. That can kill the spirit. But we must plough on. It’s either isolation and our thoughts or the dumbing down of our minds thanks to television or the internet.




Published on "How old is Morrissey?" (14/08/2015)

You published your autobiography in 2013, and recently stated that you've finished your novel. When it comes to your literary choices regarding genre, do you prefer fictional or non-fictional books? Is a story more touching and relevant when/because it really happened, or are these unrelated subjects?

Sometimes the fiction of a story is actually the author’s true thoughts and experiences so should not be labelled fiction at all. Most non-fiction can bore the knickers off of a nun. We are told not to judge books by their covers although you are allowed to do so with musicians! How many more records would I have sold if people would dare scrape behind the public image?

I find that most non-fiction authors are emotionally detached from their subject matter; one could read a book about the genocide in Rwanda and feel absolutely nothing. Then there are books such as The diaries of Kenneth Williams which produce tears from the very first passage, a shovel to the head. ‘Britishness’ died when he snuffed it.




Published on "Demos, Demos, Demos" (14/08/2015)

Would you consider marrying me in an ancient occult blood sharing ritual in a graveyard at midnight during a full moon?

It’s already happened. Can you not remember? I shall not expect an anniversary gift then. Unloveable forever.



In case you're interested, other answers referring to our Q/A that are still available can be found in the comment sections of these articles:


http://theworldofmoz.blogspot.com/2015/07/beautiful-blue-roses-that-i-saw-in.html

http://theworldofmoz.blogspot.com/2015/08/love-in-morrisseys-songs.html

http://theworldofmoz.blogspot.com/2015/08/larry-king-tty-post.html



And here's the rest of the comments, in chronological order:


Published on "Astraea's comment on the FTP Blob" (20/07/2015)

I am the patron saint of lost causes. The purveyor of maladies. The conflicted court marshal of hope. Moving between different states appears to be a talent many humans possess however only a select few of them can achieve the required results. Well, what are the required results? Can you acquire the mental faculties to summon the answers for yourself or must I spell everything out? Liquid becomes slabs of concrete in the presence of the suffering masses. Nourishment of mental thought is lacking throughout the human condition. The ability to present oneself in many different guises is the only way you can hope to survive in the world. If you scrape beneath the mud, dirt and grime of the Id, ego, and superego you find only a shell on a man. This shell must, in whatever way possible, build up a front of character to bypass the hazards and suffering of existence. Traits from characters in literature, cinema, music, and even friends if you burden yourself with such commitment ,must be taken, consumed, and adapted to provide an ‘original’.

Of course such images are everywhere and there is much to choose from. Mobile’s bring us closer together but also further apart. Whereas before you had the excitement of the written word on paper in the form of a letter, now you have impersonal type fonts and instant messaging. Send a message and you can immediately see if it has been read and ignored. With the letter you could potentially wait weeks for a response, baited breath and tightened trousers. The world of instant communication is a distraction, it tricks us into thinking that we have ‘friends’ but really we only have screens. Whilst one message is sent on one platform, another is soon sent on another. The time where discoveries of art could be made is now taken up with messaging and television. We live in hope of a technological disaster. The primitive state has never and will never be bettered.




Published on "Boozey's Hammersmith review (2nd night)" (23/9/2015)

Hammersmith was not the end.


Published on "Boozey's Hammersmith review (2nd night)" (23/9/2015)

Beauty masks the ugly and ugly masks the beauty. Who has it in them to be unmasked? Starts feel like endings and endings feel like starts. Who has it in them to end a start? Art becomes distasteful but then distasteful itself becomes art. Who finds art distasteful? Life is death and death is life. Each second matters to no-one but ourselves. Selfishness accelerates at such a speed that whiplash is to be expected if the speed is to slow. My life has been given to art and yet art wants nothing to do with my life. Managers manage nothing but self-loathing. Artists must manage themselves but self-loathing in artists happens long before the management process. We spend each day processing smells, processing sights, processing faces but we do not process feelings. True feelings do not exist in real life. The only true feeling we have is the emotion that is a response to the singing voice. The singing voice can produce feelings of sadness, happiness, nothingness, loneliness etc.
The singing voice is all we have. The singing voice is all I have.

Yours unretired,
Nobody’s nothing



Published on "Walk of Sheame" (22/10/2015)

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: For crimes against animals, transgressions against anyone with a brain, and the shuddering, vomit inducing atrocity of cankles - not to even begin to mention the much, MUCH else (our lives wouldn’t even be long enough) that will NEVER be saved - It is hereby announced that Gail Shea has been FINED. Rest easy. Go in peace. And never, ever be afraid to send back a cocktail that isn’t precisely to your liking. Signed, The LEGSINSPECTOR



Published on "Intermission Blob - Morrissey's Christmas Photo" (9/12/2015)

As a street urchin lurches into song, my heart skips no beats. As cute as the soil and just as dirty he riddles with the fiddle and makes a flute out of foil. Carving crowns on the backs of necks to show loyalty to tryanny posing as royalty. The royal we, the royal she, the royal he, collapsing into their own history. The moments has passed, as the street urchin knows, to change anything. So the music plays. He is free and a libertine with no time for fairytales and kings. He removed the king from the thone and to the gulliotine he was shown. Madness elopes and disproves. Trousers sticking to legs in afternoon heat. A shirt untucked and buttons carassing the air. No care as he teases the passers by with a glimpse of his underwear. He knows no other life than the street. Stylishly unfasionable with hair from nowhere down to everywhere. Life begins when death is no longer feared.


Published on "Eboozer Scrooge in the USA - San Francisco LEG" (28/12/2015)

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Supreme signs

Of course there are signs, including signs on posters.

Or not (with Pagan logo).

The most recent sign that has Mozophiles, Deluded or not, a-buzz, is Supreme. You know the story and how Our Mozzer broke the news to a select few back in September (before the pictures were taken by TR in October).

Clearly not being into fashion or design, I've had to educate myself on what Supreme is (their own About page is a little scant on details) and what the Supreme X campaigns are about. T-shirts, apparently. To skate boarders. Being a remote and ignorant Antipodean, I had to ask in The Wrong Arms what White Castle is. Let's just say, I'm not the target audience of either company.

My first thought, though, was that Morrissey had sold out. Then came the dispute and I thought not. Then the fluffy rodent suggested that it was all a rouse and I was confused. A modicum of web searching and I found that the Supreme X campaigns are meant to be edgy, which only supports the cute gnawing one's theory. How edgy is a public spat with Morrissey to launch a promotion? They do appear to go out of their way to court cease and desist orders. They even have a history with... the occult.

El Supremo X 2012 Kate Moss being edgy.

Anyway, all that is mere digression. Of course, I want to be flimsy. Can Morrissey's pose tell us something; even if he claims not to have selected it? I mean, all statements on TTY are factually true, aren't they?

lOOk:

WebMD has a scary new entry: THREE + THREE = 6

Two eyes. Two arms. A neck. An ear or both. Maybe some prayer beads (always liked his beads, did Morrissey). Not even one watch. Fairly normal so far.

Grey hair. I've got that, so no big deal.

Some kind of ring. 

Right hand making a 6 symbol, with one horny finger pointing upwards to the heavens.

Left hidden hand.

Supreme say that " Morrissey was free to do, and pose as he wished."

Nothing to see here. Although, it will probably get whoever runs this website making an update.

It'll be bigger than Elmo.

Apparently this bloke made a skate ramp for Supreme's NYC staff.

Trigger warnings

I feel like a bystander to my own blob posts. Some innocent research, discovery and sharing have touched off a comments flame war. Actually, I think my blob post just happened to be a convenient place to troll the fluffy rodent.

Maladjusted's "unpopular themes" are disturbing. For years I rarely played the album because it left me bereft. It's bold rawness and disclosure would leave depressed. I can only listening to it now and appreciate it at other levels without despair thanks to a daily dose of little white lies.

I don't want to upset people or ruin their experience of the songs. The magic of songs and their lyrics is that we can all have our own interpretations. They are cherished as part of our own identity.

I remember what happened when my first and almost final girlfriend and I discussed the meaning of Peter Gabriel's Red Rain. She thought it was about a drought in Africa. I thought it was a metaphor for being an activist witness to a reign of terror by death squads; it was, after all, the '80s and Gabriel was doing the Conspiracy of Hope tour for Amnesty.

Well, she didn't like that. Her interpretation was final. So, she rolled her eyes and closed her legs.

Turns out, the song was inspired by a rather surreal recurring dream.

Peter Gabriel: not a member of the Illuminati

Morrissey, as a master lyricist, can weave many influences in to his song poems. Some are obvious and some are not. Some are sourced from poets, novelists, playwrights or other lyricists. Some influences are selected from direct personal experience and others may not be conscious. Lyrics can be crafted for meaning and effect, be from spur-of-the-moment inspiration or from moments of daydreaming and dissociation.

Sometimes, the lyrics that work the best don't really mean a thing. You feel them.

I can't claim any certainty with my analysis or interpretations. I'm probably totally off the beam. But, this is meant to be not just potentially enlightening, but also fun. I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment of any Morrissey song. Ever.

However, I shall complete my self-assigned task of looking for possible hidden meanings, references and loopy stuff in the lyrics of Maladjusted. I started something that I intend to finish.

Thus, I have decided to complete my wacky analysis of Morrissey's Maladjusted-era songs by taking a double-pronged approach.

For those sufficiently brave, foolish or robust to want to continue reading the odd gear, please read any blob post prefixed with OUT TO LUNCH.

For those who want a less challenging experience, please feel free to read any blob post with a title beginning thus: MORE BREAKFAST IN BED.

Stay tuned. Or not.

Satan rejected his soul pt.2

Welcome to more (possibly) flimsy interpretations of Morrissey's Maladusted album.

In our previous and initial blob part, we left off after Alma Matters, but first I want to pick-up on some additional thoughts that my final brain cells had on some of songs already addressed.

Ambitious Outsiders - updated
I was thinking about the Jimmy Savile connection and listening to the song when it struck that I heard additional "evidence" to back-up my claim concerning Savile and Top Of The Pops. What's that short, sharp sound at the start? Static! White noise, actually, I think. Like that heard on a radio or analogue TV.

A reference to the mass electronic media, which provided Savile his day job and which brought him and the dreaded Devil's music beyond the bolt-locked doors of otherwise safe and secure Lancashire homes.

And another thing:

when you are
giving, giving, giving
and we're receiving-
No, no, we're taking

But you were probably there already. Yes, giving over kiddies, but part of his scheme was to do charitable work in return for access. He was a great fundraiser. You know where I'm going with this.

Sir Jimmy with Dame Margaret, giving.

Trouble Loves Me - update
Is there a Jimmy reference or few here?

See the fool I'll be
still running 'round
on the flesh rampage
still running 'round
Ready with ready-wit
still running 'round
on the flesh rampage
-at your age!
go to Soho, oh
go to waste in
the wrong arms
still running 'round
Trouble loves me
seeks and finds me
to charlatanize me
which is only
as it should be

Sir Savile certainly was on some kind of flesh rampage  in the wrong arms and he would have been over 70 (Morrissey only 39) at the time of the song's release - at your age. Savile frequented London's Soho for trade and was a kind of court jester (aka, a Royal's professional fool). Indeed, like that song from The Court Jester, you could say that he was the Maladjusted Jester. And what does the Royal fellow in the clip below say about the lovely little wench?

Come here my child...


How could you be so ugly and as popular as Jimmy? Not just the hair, but bulgy eyes that look like their filled with that alien black oil infection from the X-Files,

Not the last to wear a Union Jack.

Wizardry? Maybe.

But what about ready wit? To quote from an article on a play about Savile:

His easy wit and rough-diamond charm made him not merely appealing but also irresistible.

As explained in the Maladjusted Jester:

Your majesty I have a confession my secret I must now betray 
I was not a born fool it took work to get this way...
She took one look at me and cried hehehehehe, he?
What else could he be but a jester...

Beyond being a jester, he was a charlatan for sure.

Just I thought I'd share.

And no, I don't think these songs are about Saint John Peel.

Damn, I should have called this series of posts the Maladjusted Jester Code.

Anyway, I'll get to part 3 and the other songs soonish.

But have I forgiven the Illuminati?

I feel like Mulder, who's just been given a tip-off by some mysterious figure whose knowledge goes deeper.

Someone calling themselves piluleli has left some interesting comments on my recent Satan rejected his soul pt.1 blob post. So, while I take a break from Maladjusted to get some sleep, get over a cold and get my research going, I'll follow up on something that piluleli mentioned.

A while back we were all-a-twitter when Our Mozzer pointed us towards some "ping pong" moments between himself and The Guitar. The I Have Forgiven Jesus video was cited in one of those discussions, where Morrissey's walk in front of a large wall was mirrored in a video by The Guitar.

But here's what piluleli had to say about the I Have Forgiven Jesus video that's prompted this post:

Also check the official video clip for "I have forgiven Jesus" at 1:34...." Do you understand ?"

And I think I do.

In fact, a lot more than just at 1.34. I have written before about hand gestures; well, watch the video and in particular, watch Morrissey's hands and you'll see for yourself.

Some of it's quite quick, so here's some screen grabs:

Left top and bottom: Morrissey is wearing two chains, each with jewelry, one a ring of some kind and the other a cross. A circle and cross together form an ankh, which is an ancient Egyptian symbol for internal life, but it can also refer to strength, power and sexual energy. It's interpretations appear to vary widely, but many websites and books list it as a Satanic symbol and it can therefore be linked to the Illuminati.

Also note that in the top left image, Morrissey is walking with a Hidden Hand.

Top and middle right: Morrissey's two outstretched fingers are forming the common The El Diablo or Sign of the Horns.

Bottom right: Here we have an OK with El Diablo, the OK circle fingers forming a 6, being a reference to the supposed Devil's number of 666.

At the end of the video, Morrissey does the Sign of The Cross. As we know, sometimes gestures have two meanings.

I think what piluleli is suggesting (and I hereby invite him to elaborate in the comments if I'm getting this wrong) is that here Morrissey is alerting us not just to child abuse by the Catholic clergy, but to deeper, secret, Satanic, Freemason and Illuminati connections. As we know from recent exposures in Australia, Ireland, Britain, America, Canada and elsewhere, there have been massive cover-ups of the children in pieces from sexual abuse by Catholic priests. This, I suggest, is what Morrissey is alluding to by his choice of hand gestures and jewelry in the I Have Forgiven Jesus video.

Satan rejected his soul pt.1

Maladjusted can be read many ways. If you know enough nonsense, interpretation can be open to all sorts of possibilities. Fortunately, I've immersed myself into the world of conspiracy theories and maintained both my sanity and (hopefully) my critical capabilities, so I am aware that what I suggest here is nothing certain.

The Hidden Hand gesture on the cover of Alma Matters is well documented. The, perhaps inadvertent, Freemason-related triangle and circle that can be seen on the Roy's Keen cover has already been mentioned in a previous blob post. But, these are all visual references. Morrissey's key trade is lyricism, so here I'm going to explore some outlandishly flimsy interpretations of his Maladjusted-era lyrics.

Recorded in the immediate aftermath of Judge Weeks' Goat-affirming judgement and his devious character assassination of Morrissey, it's quite clear that Morrissey has deeply hurt, angry and traumatized. Much of the album can be seen in this context. But the writing process is open to many influences and, thanks to the MW phenomenon, we know that Morrissey is into conspiracy theories (and, much to the bemusement of the uninitiated masses, confirmed recently on TTY). So, if his knowledge of such matters influenced his cover art of Maladjusted's singles, so it might have been a factor in his choice of words, consciously or otherwise. Let's take a lOOk.

But first, we have to start before the beginning

The Hidden Eye gestures in Morrissey's cover art go back to his second solo single, so such influences predate Maladjusted. Then there's that two-handed 6 gesture from Smiths days. This esoteric knowledge may have been the result of deep and vulgar conversations and of his intense study of popular music culture. Maybe, he'd been introduced or approached.

How do pop stars become involved? I don't know if it's even real or a just a mythic pop music trope, but it's often been said that pop stars have to sell their souls the Devil to gain success

When pop stars say they've sold their soul to the Devil, are they speaking literally or figuratively? Are singers simply saying that they give their all for success and wealth in a mutually nihilistic deal with capitalist corporations? For all those Hidden Eye pop stars to be in on some secret knowledge or secret society, to be part of a Satanic or Illuminati or MKUltra conspiracy, they must at some stage be introduced, seduced or blackmailed and inducted to be controlled, brainwashed, appropriated or co-opted. Fortunately, Morrissey's Irish blood, English heart is maladjusted to selling his soul to Satan for fatal fame. As we know, Satan rejected his soul. But, he may be been tempted or involved before the rejection, like going from indie label Rough Trade to Big Four label EMI.

For our purposes here it doesn't matter if the claimed conspiracy is real or not. This is about Morrissey's experiences and understanding of the world, real or imagined, or merely played with as an artistic influence.

I'm sitting at my rinky dinky computer thingy (over several days and nights) about to spin you an improbable yarn about one of Maladjusted's "collection of unpopular themes": Morrissey's brush with the music industry's Satanic conspiracy.

Are you ready? Get the sound of the Redux version into your ears:

Maladjusted
However much I love the title track, I can't really see any hidden messages in it (other than SW6, a post code with the number of the Devil, but that's pretty flimsy, so please ignore this aside). So, I'll let this pass on to the Redux version's second track,

Ambitious Outsiders
Morrissey lists this song as one of those from the album that makes him "swell with pride" (the others being Trouble Loves Me, Alma Matters and Wide to Receive - see Autobiography, pg 342). Here's where things get spooky.

Bolt-lock your doors
alarm your cars
and still we move in closer
every day
top of the list
is your smiling kids
but we'll be smiling too
so that's OK

I always through that this song was about pedophiles, but I'm about to argue that it goes deeper than that. The threat to safe and stable homes here isn't entirely physical, as it can penetrate past your locked doors and target your kids. How? "Top of the list" gives a hint. Britain's most watched and influential pop music show from 1964 to 2006 was Top of The Pops (TOTP). There's two associations with TOTP that come to mind. The most obvious is that its was often presented by notorious pedophile Sir Jimmy Savile, who broke through the domestic barriers by way of several radio and television programs. People have already linked Panic with Savile (and by extension, the British monarchy), but I'm reading a similar interpretation into Ambitious Outsiders.

Although his nefarious activities only became public knowledge well after this song was recorded, they were an "open secret" in his lifetime, as witnessed by Half Man, Half Biscuit's I Left My Heart In Papworth General from 1985. Yet, he was awarded an OBE the Queen in 1971 and was knighted by her in 1990. He had friends in high places, including the hated Margaret Thatcher, who recommended him for the knighthood and who covered-up a pedophile ring of the British elite with the assistance of senior UK police and security officers: Your taxes paid, but police waylaid.

That certainly fits with a theme of the lyrics, but let's go deeper. As a music program, TOTP brought more than Jimmy Savile beyond your bolted doors. It played the Devil's music and introduced everyone from Adam Faith to The Zutons to a young and impressionable audience. TOTPs was where you could go each week to watch and hear it in your living room with the family. Enriched with visuals, it would often be a more compelling experience than hearing the same songs on the radio. Was it an in-joke referring to Savile's reputation as a witch that the TOTP theme tune between 1986 and 1991 as Paul Hardcastle's horrible The Wizard? Sometimes words have two meanings, or more, and so these lines could be a double reference to TOTP's seduction.

Intermission: here's a typical moment of moral peril from TOTP.


we're taking keeping the population down

Killing kiddies, like in List of the Lost? But that's one at a time, with even the alleged Royal Satanic pedophile ring that included Savile having little real impact on capping population growth. I always thought it was an odd line, but it's even how the song ends: We're just keeping the population down. The other related population conspiracy is that the British Royal family is attempting to depopulate the Earth through the World Wildlife Fund (but apparently doing a really bad job at it). This ties in with Morrissey's hatred of the Royals and the later, infamous Monarchy is Anarchy TTY post and Prince Philip's 1986 extinction level event virus quote.

We're on your street, 
but you don't see us
or, if you do you smile and say Hello

This is Evil hidden in plain sight (a common conspiracy theory trope) and cloaked in the banal respectability of the British Establishment.

The irony is, of course, is that the ambitious outsiders are actually the ultimate insiders.

Trouble Loves Me
To the Blue Rose Society, this is "our song" when sung live. It was one of the four pointed to with pride in Autobiography.The narrative of internal struggle reminds me of the Faust legend, where Faust sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and earthly pleasures (on the flesh rampage... go to waste in the wrong arms). It's a story of a deal with the Devil, the kind that is referred to by a figure of speech or a description of an occult reality by many pop stars in order to gain success (see above).

Although it strikes me more as a personal reflection than a jibe at anyone or anything else, it is addressed to his (passive) better companion. Good and Evil. I am two people. Life is a pigsty: and once again I turn to you... I can't reach you anymore. Removed from God's help, but still subjected to Satan's or Mephistopheles' attention, who seeks and finds me. A metaphor, of course. Or, so my rationalist skeptical nature assumes, but Morrissey does believe in ghosts and I don't, so what would I know?

While the deal may not have been sealed, Morrissey is lost in his own purgatory between Heaven and Hell.

Here's a quote from Goethe's Faust to ponder and align with the lyrics of Trouble Loves Me and other songs from the Maladjusted Redux:

You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.
Unto the world in grossly loving zest,
With clinging tendrils, one adheres;
The other rises forcibly in quest
Of rarefied ancestral spheres.
If there be spirits in the air
That hold their sway between the earth and sky,
Descend out of the golden vapors there
And sweep me into iridescent life.
Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands
To carry me to distant lands,
I should not trade it for the choicest gown,Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.
And:

You’ll ne’er attain it, save you know the feeling,
Save from the soul it rises clear,
Serene in primal strength, compelling
The hearts and minds of all who hear.
You sit forever gluing, patching;
You cook the scraps from others’ fare;
And from your heap of ashes hatching
A starveling flame, ye blow it bare!
Take children’s, monkeys’ gaze admiring,
If such your taste, and be content;
But ne’er from heart to heart you’ll speak inspiring,
Save your own heart is eloquent!

Lost
Wasted as a B-side, this grand ballad is rightfully elevated to the album in the Redux.

Jet trails in the sky
leave one word behind
a hand bangs into sand
a name
and we all understand
everybody's lost
but they're pretending they're not lost

Beautiful imagery, but what does it mean? The jet trails is often taken as a reference to Joni Mitchell's equally wondrous Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, which uses the phrase (and also references the occult with the lines like the serpent cannot be denied). In Autobiography, Morrissey notes that jet trails can be seen from Hook End Manor, where Maladjusted was recorded. An unusual point to mention. And, why get upset and name at floating condensation? And whose name, anyway? 

Let's see a bigger quote from Joni's song:

Over virgin wilderness
It prowls like hookers and thieves
Through bolt locked tenements
Behind my bolt locked door
The eagle and the serpent are at war in me
The serpent fighting for blind desire
The eagle for clarity

Recognize some familiar words and themes here? Maladjusted's thieves hours and working girls like me, Ambitious Outsider's bolt-lock your doors, the inner tussle of Trouble Loves Me? If nothing else, Moz owes Joni a fair bit on Maladjusted. Joni might owe something to Goethe, too.

But back to Lost and those jet trails,

To quote from Goethe's Faust again:

Once I blazed across the sky,
Leaving trails of flame;
I fell to earth, and here I lie -

Ah, the glories of the past. It's a theme that permeates Maladjusted-era songs. So, another possible reference point, but let's get wackier.

The chemtrail conspiracy came to note about a year or two before Maladjusted was recorded. Chemtrail conspiracy theorists claim (usually with hysterical alarm) that They are using airliners to disperse bad chemicals, which we see as persistent contrails. There's some disagreement about which chemicals and to what ends, which vary from geo-engineering, mind control and our new acquaintance, depopulation. Curiously, there's even a theory that connects chemtrails with Morgellons, a controversial skin disease that Joni Mitchell experiences. Jigsaw, jigsaw, jigsaw.

Could Lost be, in part, a response to concerns about the alleged chemtail conspiracy, which was being spread through the new alternative media of the World Wide Web? Of course, Morrissey would never do something as vulgar as be an early adopter of the WWW, but he gives us the most minuscule wink that he might have been in the Maladjusted album track, Wide To Receive.

Flimsy I know, just like the chemtrail theory itself, but we like that around here.

He Cried
Ride our minds
if you must

Simple words, but could these lines be flimsily be seen as a mention of the MKUltra/Monarch music industry mind control conspiracy that brainwashes a pop stars when they sell their soul to the Wicked One for fatal fame?

oh you don't know the power
in what you're saying

If we are to accept the occult, then we must accept that the words used to recite spells and ritually summons forth demons and whatnot are powerful.

From Mr G's Faust:
Dear me! how long is art!
And short is our life!


From Mr M's He Cried:
time is short
don't be cruel


Alma Matters
Yes, I am suggesting a narrative where Morrissey was maladjusted to the conspirator's cause, be They be the Elite, the Establishment, the Illuminati, Satan, whatever. Just as there is a sense of lost glories, so there is a feeling of impeding doom throughout the maladjusted-era songs. These are things that are difficult (and dangerous) to publicly express, even for big mouth Morrissey, requiring allusions in lyrics, hints on cover art, interview rants about radio airplay and so on. It's that or be dismissed by all and sundry (excepting a few nutty conspiracy theorists) as touched.

So, the choice I have made
may seem strange to you
but who asked you anyway?
it's my life
to wreck
my own way

What choice? May I suggest that it was Morrissey's choice not to enter into a pact with the Devil to further his career; or, was it his decision to leave it and struggle on alone? Was he thrown out? I dunno, I'm just a librarian from Frankston. Either way, his choice spells ruin.

Because to someone somewhere
Oh yeah
Alma matters
in mind body and soul
in part and in hole

Clearly a play on the phrase alma mater, a reference to the a school you graduated from and its community students. This could easily be a reference to the Joyce Goat's determination to be counted as a full, true Smith. Or just the importance of being from Stretford.

It may also be a reference to alumni networks such those formed around the old school tie and reflected in Freemasonry and supposed Illuminati-linked organisations, such as the Skull and Crossbones fraternity and Bohemian Lodge. Then there's the Helen Earth Drag and Supper Club that protects List of the Lost's child murderer, Dean Isaac.

Or the networks of kinship and shared interests that form around the minds, bodies, souls and bloodlines of the 13 Illuminati families?

I leave what the hole might be to your imagination.

Enough already!  
Digest this lot, leave a gracious comment about my loss of critical thinking capabilities and come back for part two at a later date.

Why couldn't I have done this with Southpaw Gramma? Less songs, you see.