Signs of successful industrialisation

[Signs of successful industrialisation]

* People cross the street to avoid you when they see you coming. Into heavy traffic. Even elderly people who can't walk without the aid of 2 walking sticks and just spent 10 minutes already crossing from the other side.

* You shop for jewellery in the dog accessories section of the pet store, without being bothered about the shop assistant figuring out that you're planning to wear the choke chains and studded collar yourself.

* You have no friends, because you are so elitist (no, it's not because you count your computer as your best friend)

* When surfing through channels on the radio for something to listen to, you skip through everything until you get to white noise.

* People call you goth freak and Dracula/Bride of Dracula, and then run away screaming when instead of you bursting into tears and whining about how much people suck, you run towards them brandishing an iron bar and a length of heavy chain.

* You can fall asleep whilst listening to powernoise, because you consider it to be so mellow

* You finally discovered the reason you bothered to attend the incredibly boring classes at school/college/university week after week: you had actually been waiting for the day when, totally out of the blue, the lecturer suddenly mentioned Throbbing Gristle, even though everyone laughed at their name, but the fact that you knew who the hell they were gave you a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling of superiority.
(In case anyone is wondering, this actually happened to me. It was a lecture on Alternative Cinema where the lecturer played a clip of a film called TG: Psychic rally in Heaven and informed us that TG referred to a band called, yes you've guessed it, Throbbing Gristle. That was probably the coolest thing that ever happened at university)

* At least 90% of your favourite bands do not originate from the U.S.

* When you were a baby, you only stopped crying when you were placed next to a washing machine on spin cycle or in a really noisy car (no, it wasn't because the movement of the car soothed you to sleep, it just sounded cool)

* You haven't paid any attention to the popular music charts for the past (insert your age here) years

* You haven't been inside a popular music store for the past decade, except to buy a CD as a present, when you looked so suspicious as you tried to hide the embarassing item under your coat that all the security guards followed you around the store until you paid for it.

* When you did go inside the popular music store, you were so disgusted with the crap they were playing over the speakers you walked straight out again, and it took you 4 attempts to steel your nerves to go in again.

* As you were looking for the CD for a present, you happened to notice a lone Cabaret Voltaire album sitting on a shelf amongst all the crap, and nearly passed out from the shock.

* You have a love-hate relationship with Nine Inch Nails. You know how popular they are, and how they only got that way by copying lots of other bands, and how many stupid teenyboppers buy their albums, but you still like them, if only in secret.

* You thought popular electronic music from the 80s was terrible, until you heard popular music from today. Suddenly all that cheesy synthpop doesn't seem so bad after all.

* You don't see anything wrong in going to a job interview dressed in black combat trousers, a T shirt with a slogan such as "I want to f*** you like an animal", army boots and a metre of rusty chain round your neck. If they can't accept you for who you are, you don't want to work there anyway.

* If your house caught on fire (possibly from the blast furnace you installed in your bedroom for that industrial factory feel), you'd save all your industrial albums first, before finally considering saving your baby brother (you can make a new baby in 9 months, but it took you 10 years to track down all your import vinyl).

* When other little kids were stomping in puddles wearing their wellington boots, you were stomping in pools of raver's blood wearing combat boots

* You can give full biographical information for the members of an obscure early 80s Czechoslovakian noise band, but you don't know even the names of the people who are currently running the country you live in.

* You wear big scary boots so much of the time that you're amazed to find out you're a foot shorter than you thought you were when you actually take them off

* In school/college/university you can/did work references to industrial bands into every assignment (I managed 2 - 1/ in a Creative Writing assignment I wrote about how Skinny Puppy/Genesis P Orridge were influential on my writing and Puppy Gristle inspired me to create a completely unplanned stream-of-consciousness novel and 2/ in an essay on mass culture and the "culture industry" I wrote about how big business corrupts and assimilates spontaneously occurring art into its bland mix of pop culture, including by labelling Marilyn Manson and Orgy doing formulaic covers of 80s pop hits as industrial and re-releasing Throbbing Gristle CDs through Time Warner).

* You deny that any band/artist is industrial, whether this be the commercial stuff like NIN and Ministry, pioneers like Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten or some obscure war-fixated nihilistic Eastern European noize act whose members outnumber the fans. Refusing to accept that any artist fits into the style of music you love is the ultimate sign of elitism and therefore totally industrial.

* You can use all of the following statements to complete the phrase "I am so industrial..."

- I bathe in motor oil (it's good for my complexion)

- I drink motor oil

- I also piss oil

- I did my own piercings, using rusty nails and a hammer

- Slipknot fans are scared of me

- "Punk kids" are scared of me (you know, the skateboarding pop-punksters who listen to "punk" music for people who don't like punk and who think Avril Lavigne is hardcore. They think they're tough but you stare at them long enough and they'll leg it)

- If I go out in the rain, I rust

- I've worn my goggles for so long they're now fused into my face

- I don't know what a guitar is

- The first instrument I learnt to play was the chainsaw

- After mastering the chainsaw, I worked up to angle grinder

- I can recite hours worth of German industrial lyrics, without understanding a single word of them

- I made dreadlocks out of metal cables, then bolted them into my skull

- I dream of electric sheep

- I have to use nail clippers to trim my facial hair/underarm hair/whatever else hair (there was an X Files episode like this...a guy turning into metal who had to use nail clippers to trim his stubble...totally rivet)

- I would masturbate to the sound of a car alarm if it was remixed by a German (this one is courtesy of NME.com's lovely openminded totally non-stereotypical view of Autechre fans; they also said all Autechre fans are balding old men in anoraks (Autechre, though not strictly industrial, now are way more industrial than most music claiming to be industrial) No, despite me loving Autechre, I am not balding, old or male and I don't wear anoraks which, even if I were the only exception (which I'm not), still proves them wrong. And for NME.com's information, Autechre aren't German. NME.com also slagged off Skinny Puppy. Come say Puppy are shit to my face you narrowminded mainstream-obsessed crap-peddling 'we don't like anything that isn't guaranteed to sell six billion copies' mother-f(expletive deleted)s. I hate NME.com)

- In school, when the other children played with plasticine I made models out of concrete

- I can say Throbbing Gristle without sniggering

- I can say Nocturnal Emissions without sniggering

- I can't walk past an electrical goods store without being strangely drawn inside by the washing machine and vacuum cleaner in the window display

- My clothes are made out of wire mesh

- When the family washing machine packed in, I held a funeral for it

- I can hum the tunes of songs by Japanese noise artists

- I've never heard of my favourite band

- I wear so much army gear my parents think I'm a terrorist

- I wasn't born, I was manufactured on a production line. By robots.

- If you look up the word "industrial" in a dictionary, you'll find a picture of me

- I can double my bodyweight just by putting on my boots and jewellery

- Instead of a teddy bear, I took a power drill to bed with me

- I don't sleep, I recharge

- Christians think I'm an enemy of the church, but are afraid to approach me to try to do anything about it

- My hobby is hunting down and killing people who think they're rivetheads because they like Gravity Kills/Static-X/Filter

- I am so minimalist, I don't exist

- I was stomping inside the womb

- My parents/housemates/whoever keep asking where their electrical appliances have gone, because I keep stealing them to make music with

- I'm hardwired into my computer

- I am a computer

- I get excited when people start talking about the industrialisation of society

- I think the industrial revolution was what happened when Throbbing Gristle got together

- I dance to the sound of a modem dialing up

- I jangle when I move (there are two variations on this - one because you wear so many chains, piercings, etc; two - because you're actually a robot)

- I know that Pitchshifter's "Industrial" isn't industrial

- I talk in binary code

- I've never heard of Sony, Time Warner (Time who?) and any of the other major labels

- My idea of a major label is one run out of some guy's back room which has managed to sell a grand total of 12 albums in its 5 year history

- I would consider a band selling more than 3 copies of its album to be highly successful

- I would consider a band selling more than 10 copies of its album to be selling out

- Any journey that takes me past roadworks/demolition sites/building sites takes four times as long as normal because the "music" they make calls out to me and makes me start stomping on the spot

- I get aroused looking through a computer supplies catalogue

- I can tell the difference between how Winterkalte is supposed to sound and how they sounded in a corrupt mp3 (this is kind of a private joke based on a real-life anecdote no one cares about)

- I can spend five hours talking to an online chatterbot yet I can't speak five words to real people

- I stomp to the sound of data being saved onto a floppy disc

- Apoptygma Berzerk (I probably spelled that wrong, so sue me) makes me nauseous

- After hearing Apoptygma Berzerk I had to scour my eardrums with wire wool

- My goldfish changed colour from gold to silver just so it could be an industrial pet (true, if anyone knows how this happened, please tell me; I am confused)

- I think it's funny to go up to buskers/street musicians, ask them if they do requests and then say "Do you know Tentack One?"

If you meet these criteria, congratulations: you are completely industrialised and you get this lovely award plaque:

The industrial award plaque

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