The Planet

Ever hear the old maxim “The Planet is totally zeitguyst right now?” Of course not, because that’s not an “old” maxim it’s a new one. About a zillion years ago when The Planet was first marketed people might have thought that but they would never had said it because language hadn’t been invented yet. If they liked something they’d just grunt and rub their bits on in – like kids do at a My Chemical Romance concert. After the planet’s launch party everyone just got over it and started making other stuff zeitguyst, like war, famine and Sophia Coppola.

 

In the 18th Century (which to my mind is the 4th best century) The Planet was at its the furthest away from the inner circle of Zeit. Having been a bit like “the planet is alright, but whatever, I’ve got to go to the privy” people started inventing new zeitguyst stuff like factories and capitalism, the sole purpose of which was to DESTROY the planet, and because it was zeitguyst no one could stop it and it just took over.

 

There were some people who tried to stop the anti-planet zeitguyst. William Blakes, a mad poet, called them “Santa’s dark mills” but it wasn’t enough to say stuff was bad in writing because books weren’t really zeitguyst enough at that time, people were too busy working 18 hours a day in factories because it was so TOTALLY zeitguyst.

 

And it didn’t stop there. In the 20th century (2nd best century!) the governments of the world hired the most amazingly, brilliant, intelligent people ever invented and asked them to put their intelligences together and make a bomb that would be able to destroy The Planet in ONE GO! The American government was the best at it and they tried out a small one of these bombs on Japan. It destroyed a whole city, and the Americans were like “fuck, that was totally awesome – do it again!” So they did it again and destroyed another city. And then some people were like “but if we destroy everyone and the whole planet, what will be left to be zeitguyst?” And everyone thought about it for thirty years or so and then they were like “Fuck, we shouldn’t do that again. Where’s that guy who doesn’t like Mondays, he’ll know what to do.”

 

Then in the 1980s the world split into two vast opposing camps. On the one side there was the good guys, lead by Neil’s Kinnock, and on the other side was the baddies lead by Ronald McDonald. The goodies were all like “let’s just be cool,” and the baddies were like “yeah, that means blowing shit up.” And amongst the racket everyone forgot about The Planet again. Apart from Duran Duran who sang “This is planet earth you’re looking at planet earth / Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop this is planet earth,” but it wasn’t, it was just the first single from a truly great band.

 

Then in 1990s everyone forgot about war and got into Britpop and Ikea. Now, this was significant because Ikea made loads of stuff out of wood and it reminded people of how cool The Planet was, and then this Britpop guy called Thom Yorke was all like “hey, since we all love Ikea so much shall we check out how The Planet’s doing?” and everyone was all like, “yeah, yeah in a minute I’m at a Northern Uproar concert, my favourite song by them is Town, it’s a really good song.” And then Northern Uproar broke up and were replaced by Coldplay, who were marketed in a way that made people sick so they were like “alright Thom, let’s have a look then.” And then they were all like:

 

“FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

 

The Planet was minging. It looked liked Lily Allen. People had been so caught up in other zeitguysts like global hyper colour, swatch watches, and Murray Lachlan Young that they’d forgotten about The Planet totally and meanwhile the same guys who made the bombs that killed all those poor Japanese people had carried on making things that did the same damage as bombs, only without all the song and dance. It was dark! People held each other, wept quietly and said “Oh! For God’s sake let’s sit upon our beech lacquered floors and talk about Neil Young.” It was bad, worse than Diana’s funeral.

 

BUT …

 

Thankfully now some people have started to say “like, let’s try and save it anyway.” At first people were like “no, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” But after a while they realised it was exactly like when it rained at Wimbledon and now they all had the chance to be Cliff Richard.

 

So that’s where we are right now, and The Planet is so zeitguyst it’s almost unbearable to think above the noise. But the noise is important, they’re trying to get the attention of people like Tony Blair who are still sitting on their beech lacquered floors, stamping the word ‘approved’ onto plans for new runways, softly singing Harvest Moon with a tear in their eyes.

 

Let’s just be cool,

 

The Zeitguy