Tied To The 90s

Indulging in nostalgia again. Yes, yes, you with the smart mouth at the back, that is what this blog has mostly devolved into. But! This time, not the nostalgia of a forgotten Britain that I never knew, but the 90s!

(I have probably done this before. BUT!)

If you are ever looking for a decoder ring to my psyche, then you should look at Kenickie, The Invisibles, TMWRNJ1, and a random copy of Amiga Power. Which, just to be more iconoclastic, I never actually read, not having an Amiga (obv.). BUT THAT ISN’T THE POINT.

The point is that I re-read The Invisibles last weekend whilst still high on jetlag tiredness and got into all sorts of bizarre thoughts about where we are now and where we were then. Key 23, the Memes of the Technocult, and of course, the greatest self-critique ever seen in comic form:

MY TITS SPELL ANARCHY

By the end of the night (around 1am), I was writing down crazy things about altering vectors of neural networks and pulling out new words from the word2vec models that they create. Spilling new realities from the chaos of higher-dimensional mathematics.

Yes, for about two days after every re-read of The Invisibles, I talk like that all the time and start thinking about dressing up in some combination of King Mob and Paul Morley, plastering slogans from obscure British films and Italian Futurist manifestos across the house. It…normally subsides. I am totally going to be trying that neural network Key 23 translation, mind you.

Of course, this week was also a special week in 90s nostalgia, at least for us people of a British persuasion. For this was the week twenty years ago where we stared at a TV screen as polls closed, as Dimbleby, Snow, and Paxman ruthlessly tore apart Tory MPs in interviews, and Things Were Going To Be Better. As The Election Night Armistice put it, 18 Years of Tory Arse had finally come to a close. It was the dawn of a new future.

you may pause here for a bitter laugh at yourself at eighteen years old while showing him a video feed of Neil Hamilton in the Welsh Assembly

Meanwhile, back in the present day, Britain has gone insane, America is…I don’t have the words, and we’re all praying that somehow France doesn’t elect a fascist tomorrow. Meanwhile, memes swarm around the Internet from a messageboard that heralds a new white supremacist order on the back of hentai and lols.

I’m Ragged Robin. I’m nuts.

So sometimes you just want to step aside and remember when the future didn’t seem quite so terrifying. Enter The Net, a BBC series about…The Net, the first series of which has recently been uploaded to…The Net (stop that — Ed.). And it’s amazing in its own way. The games reviews made me fall for Jules all over again with their delightful anti-gamer viewpoint, the hilarious critique of EDS filmed as a The Prisoner spoof, and of course, the prescient “OMG, Nazis can use the Internet too!” section.

I did have to laugh at the ten-minute Apple Advanced Technology Group segment whereupon the ATG essentially invents the iPhone and Siri, with none of them realizing that Steve Jobs would turn up in three years’ time and kill them all2. One of them picks up a Newton and says ‘wouldn’t it be nice if it could just give you directions while driving?’ YES, IT MIGHT. But you came too soon for our world, ATG, too soon.

Then! Just as the nostalgia was starting to peak (look, this is a week where I have to recognize that my psoriasis may go beyond being an annoyance and may actually deny me healthcare in the future due to our dark future that we created because a woman had the temerity to be competent and store her emails on a separate server, so I feel like I can be cut a little slack for wanting to retreat into a happier time), Radiohead dropped a bombshell. The 20th Anniversary of The Album That’s Not Quite As Good As Ladies And Gentleman We Are Floating In Space But Still Pretty Good. WITH LIFT ON IT. LIFT. The 20-year-old MP33 recording from Pinkpop can finally be retired this June! REJOICE! REJOICE!

Thus the week of 90s nostalgia came to a close, and the local election results confirmed that: Yes, this is really happening.

#nofuture

Happy weekend, everybody!


  1. The sigil-like properties of TMWRNJ next to The Invisibles is not a coincidence. But less messy. [return]
  2. It’s possible that he just fired them. BUT THIS IS STEVE JOBS. I wouldn’t have put it past him. [return]
  3. Yes, even typing that out made me wince. I have MP3s that will soon be able to drink in the US. But! At least the patents have expired. We are all so old. [return]