What this blog isn't

It's not a Leeds-based exploration of the joys and challenges of shaping the mortar between house-bricks so that the rain runs off without undue damage.
Nor is it about looking at, achieving, or maintaining erections of the male variety. That's what the rest of the internet is for.
It's also not about drawing peoples' attention to the beauty of the Aurora Borealis by indicating it with an extended forefinger
It probably isn't SFW[Safe For Work] either (especially if you work in a church) thanks to the liberal sprinkling of profanities, heresies and blasphemies.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

oddbeautiful

I don’t usually cover that sad vale of tears we know and love as reality; indeed I do my best to avoid the bloody place/state like the plague. I love the abstract. One day I hope to retire there, to a fractured cluttered bungalow on Alzheimer’s Lane.

These following images, however, are of that realm…and some other place inside someone’s mind - conterminously. I took them on a mobile phone, so the quality is not great. I make absolutely no apologies for their size; in fact I wish that I’d had a better camera with more pixels. If you can’t see them properly, then click to view them on their own, or save them with a right click and zoom in with your chosen image viewer.

This was once the Havelock Hotel in sunny Sunderland. Passing through one day, I spotted its demolition-in-progress. I’m glad that I did. I made a cursory search on the net to see if anyone else had caught this moment, but it seems not. I ought not to keep these to myself. They are truly oddbeautiful.

Inside the Havelock1

 I don’t know whether it was a shabby B&B, or a bail hostel, or something worse before it closed, but whoever occupied these half-rooms above and below left his or her mark. It’s odd because it was an insane ranting jumble that hadn’t ever been painted or papered over. Beautiful because it was only revealed to the daylight (and my mobile’s camera sensor) for a short while. Fanciful, I know, but I saw parallels between the half-wrecked state of the building, and the psyche of the unknown author.

Inside the Havelock2

Like I said, these may only exist here, and in some demolition company's records. Probably not though. The chance image is almost universal in these days of the dea( r )th of the word. I just couldn’t keep them to myself any longer. I wonder what was on the walls already taken down, what it was like to stand in those rooms, and how it felt to write those words.

Friday, September 25, 2009

The Birds Eye Mystery Fish Fillet Adventure

My mam (not mum – I’m an unashamed barbarian, and I storm from the north) gives me food parcels regularly. I do not discourage this; she likes to look after her children, and I like to eat. Sometimes these care packages contain surprises. These are often pleasant - like the Cherry Bakewells that I foolishly wasted in the previous post; and sometimes not - salad cream (that I quietly use as tile grout) comes to mind.

It is not often, though, that she provides me with confounding mysteries that require investigation as well as scoffing down like a starved wolf. Until this week. When I found these lurking near the bottom of the carrier bag.

box_front

On the surface all looks well. She likes a bit of fish. It’s good for the brain. My curious (the bong one) eye was drawn, however, to the circled (alright. ellipsesed ellipsified ell-oh, fuck it, never mind – you know what I mean) areas.

i) Where the hell was the captain? Usually he gazes down upon the serving suggestion – either with the bearded sagacity of the older man, his kindly smile belying the tattooed hairiness of his unseen matelot’s arse; or with the handsomely chiselled mum-friendly features of the younger man, who you just know could choke the life out of you with one strong hand (if he knew that you only bought a fish product once a month) while simultaneously pleasuring your wife to a degree you never thought possible with the other…AND…

ii) What? What kind of fish? What kind of fish fillers fill this captainless rectangular unseaworthy vessel? Fugu? Angler fish? Those frightening fucking creatures that lurk on the Discovery channel at the bottom of some trench that hasn’t seen daylight since the first rains fell upon the infant Earth?

My curiosity, if not my appetite, was suddenly aroused. Perhaps I would find the answers on the back of this now slightly defrosted puzzle box? You would think so, wouldn’t you?

box_back

Oh, come on! It’s not as if I spend my days trying to track down Chinese sleeper agents or cracking codes for the military! All I want to do is find out what kind of fish is in here, Birds Eye. You occlude the path to the truth, sirs.

1) That’s twice you’ve told me about the cheese and herbs. Are you trying to hide something? And don’t go trying to jokingly tell me that they’ll be our nutritious secret from the family; I am neither amused nor deterred by your chummy familiarity.

2) Aha! Ingredients. Here’s where we get to the…oh, you have to be kidding me! An asterisk? Look, Birds Eye – it’s only the fact that all my wanksocks are in the wash that keeps me on this quest, and well you know it. Alright. I’ll play your little game, my frozen friends.

3) It took me twenty minutes to find my magnifying glass, you bastards. If it says ‘caught off Sellafield’ down here then I’m suing. [Here, dear imaginary reader, I will reproduce the tiny, tiny text that had me peering myopically under a rare and valuable 150 watt bulb for a donkey’s age]:

*Depending on season and catch area we use one of the following types of fish. For our fish dishes these are either; Alaska Pollock ( A ) from the North Pacific, Hoki ( C )  from the South-West Pacific, Hake ( D ) from the Pacific Ocean or Basa ( P ) farmed in Vietnam. Each of this whitefish species has an aromatic, mild taste  and a tender texture and is therefore an excellent choice for our Birds Eye Fish Fillers. You can identify which type of fish we used for this product by the letter printed  after the best before date (see side of package/side flap).

Jesus! This food container is turning into a Dan Brown novel – except the english is slightly better here. Like an Indiana Jones of the kitchen, I turned my prize over to reveal the final clue…

box_side

So! I finally get to the bottom of your little mystery, and fortunately I haven’t starved to death in the process. It was Pollock all along. Given that I’d spent this long on the damn things (and the dryer hadn’t finished yet) I decided to cook them, if only to justify the effort that I’d put in.

They were fucking horrible.

He’s got Cherry…(sorry Kim Carnes)

I had to lie down to do this. It took fourteen goes, and and a box of Mr. K’s finest (most of which were lost to the floor) – and I think one of my contact lenses is now round the back of my eye…

But it was worth it to lift me out of this foul Friday mood.

I give you my interpretation of the last line of Kim Carnes’ chorus most popular…

Thanks_Kim & Kipling

My next target today is the late Captain Birdseye. This time I won’t be so reverential.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The swansong that wasn’t

This, my argent tongue

 

This, my argent tongue, distilled

of rough mercuric thought;

acerb dagger tang instilled,

forge and foundry wrought

 

These, my agile wits, enclosed

steel facts and silver lies;

tributes paid to king reposed

above, behind these eyes

 

But oh, this argent tongue,

is bitten, swollen, stung;

and my, these agile wits,

are spun of starts and fits

 

The king is long deposed,

usurped by ague violent;

the forge is cold and closed,

the foundry fallen silent

 

Now this, my argent tongue,

is stilled; and I am done


My incalculable fortune lost in the crash, my loyal retainers dispersed to the wind, my teeth sold for pasties – it was the worst of times…but now I’m BACK. From Outsize space (please continue making up your own lyrics to disco classic ‘I will survive’ from this point while I try to get a broadband connection to this cave complex in the Maldives up and running. and WATCH PAY SCANT AND DILATORY ATTENTION TO…THIS SPACE.

I thank you.


Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Me, myself and I (really need a year on a good diet)

For once – once, mind you, in the last 20 years or so – I have a picachewer of me that almost makes me look human. Instead of the claw-handed sallow internet Morlock that I truly am. Look ye. Look ye.

Yes, I know that I still look like a crack addict/hillbilly Wendigo, but that’s what ten years of poor to no sleep does for you.

Why is it here? Why now? Is it vanity?

Well, I am terribly vain - but that’s my problem, not yours. Hopefully.

No, the reason is that I plan to go all multimedia on you. Only ten years behind the rest of the Interwebsphere, I’m going to try out a podcast. For starters.

(Maybe a Half-life 2 webcomic or two, to boot. I’ve got Garry’s Mod, and there are only so many times you can launch Professor Kleiner from a makeshift cannon at a wall before you have to justify the cost to yourself. That would leave me only about five years behind the rest of you, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? I’m trying to catch up, honestly.)

This isn'tme. It's Ken Clarke wearing a hat looking like Joss Ackland in the Always on my mind video

It’s actually so you’ll be able to put a face to the voice (which has been likened to an angel’s fart) when you hear my Northern twang in full flow. Which is coming next. Which is coming soon. Be aware. Or beware, if you prefer.

It’ll probably be about Britain’s Got Talent. Unless something else irritates me more in the meantime, which is unlikely.

p.s. For Sweet Hairy Jesus’ sake, don’t go upping the gamma on the image. Not only will you see the dark shadows and huge bags under my eyes – but you’ll be able to make out the ghostly imprint of Thanatos’ hand reaching for me in the background. Hey, I’m near the halfway mark in my four score years and ten. I’d be elderly a millennia ago. Just remember that.

p.p.s. Yes, I do live inside a featureless magnolia cube. It’s not as bad as you’d think.

p.p.p.s. My face and voice are not CC licensed. They’re mine, I tell you, mine - and you can’t have them. Even if for some bizarre reason you wanted to.

p.p.p.p.s. I can do the Roger Moore eyebrow on both sides. How’s that for fucking talent, Britain?

Monday, March 23, 2009

The dream that I awoke from this morning

No apologies for the lack of formatting, editing for readability, etc. It was a dream. They generally play out unformatted, unedited and stream of (sub) consciousness.

I had been taking to someone in the internets (a chap called Percy, a shroom blogger and excellent wit, but whom I have never met or seen, so in the dream he was about 35, tall and black – I don’t know if he really is) but we were actually lying down in the middle of a road in a ‘next instant’ kind of thing. As I got up a van ran over my companion, temporarily stunned he took a while to groggily get up while complaining that his legs tingled. We were both spattered with his blood.

When he felt better he insisted that we go to this nearby amphitheatre/coliseum/arena where he climbed down onto a rocky promontory and threw himself to his death in front of me. I went to a futuristic police station that was more like a bus concourse – with those sexy robots that certain Japanese artists draw all wandering about, up until the point more of them arrived by coach and then they all stood at the windows and watched them disembark.

In my questioning and forensic examination I noticed that I had been wearing surgical gloves and gave them to the investigating officer to inspect. He, a pretty policewoman (who may or may not have been one of my exes) went back to the amphitheatre to retrace my steps. To do so we had to walk over displays of live crocodiles which clacked their powerful jaws at our ankles - and boxes of snapping turtles, frogs and other amphibians set into the floor around the walls of the amphitheatre, and gingerly cross yawning crevasses (like climbing out of lofts onto loft ladders where you have to swing yourself onto them from a seated position) as the investigating officer helpfully put his boot in my back to hasten my movements.

When we got to the point that Percy had killed himself, his body was gone – as if it had never been there - someone from a Cirque du Soleil type performance rehearsing there gave me a flyer with a message to meet someone else on the floor of the pit. Accompanied by the policewoman who entered into banter with a friend waiting in a queue about their past exploits in their student days, the cirque du s employee balled up the flyer and threw it away. I was crestfallen at this as I wanted someone's autograph on it. Instead of being taken to meet a performer we were led a a booth of people sitting cross-legged swami-style with needles sticking out of their skins, one of those people was a complaining ninny from the suicide scene who had complained that watching my companion die had ruined the show for him.

He was sticking syringes into his neck and face in some sort of reverse smackheadery/drug addition. As he blustered at us that he should be left alone to enjoy himself the scene changed and the policewoman and I were in a stationery shop buying pens and paper for my statement. Outside she waited for a lift back to the station as I hugged her and told her I’d see her later. Then I realised that my dead companion had given me his ability/curse of seeing into the future. I had a vision of bank robbers in pink Mack trucks trailing pink containerised loads behind then(yeah, I know. Freud would have had a fucking field day with it) and a double-decker bendy-bus were driving en-masse into an intersection further into the now darkened/night-time town that we were in.

Running to the intersection I climbed aboard the back of the bendy bus and faced off a grim Teutonic female robber dressed as a bus conductor and her male friend who was dressed as a chef. I threw them both off the bus. moving down the  aisle - which was bordered by vol-au-vents individually set on small square metal platters, another robber came out of a glass-walled area near the front of what was a bus and now became more of an underground station. As he tried to escape through a door marked ‘recycle’ I threw (ninja-like) one tray at a button near his head which locked him in – then another at a switch that presumably mangled or crushed him from the screams. The driver himself, a driver no longer, but a passenger on the underground, I tussled with on the platform before he fell into the path of a train.

and that’s when my alarm went off.

Note to self – while cheese, peanut butter and baked bean toasties may be a delicious and rewarding experiment, they probably make you have really freaky dreams.

I wish that alarm hadn’t gone off though.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

The Conspirinterocitor #3 – Looking up at stuff turns you into a subservient zombie

Nobody has issued a takedown order for this piccie yet. Yay for me! Hey there. One of my hobbies is making up conspiracy theories. You know - just to see how wild you can get on the possibility that some swivel-eyed madman somewhere will cut-and-paste the bits in between the piss-takings and disseminate the information among a network of other swivel-eyed lunatics. Probably via the medium of tin-can telephones…because every other avenue of communication is being listened to by the government and lizard-aliens.

Anyway, here’s the latest faux fevered fanatical fulmination.

 

LOOKING UP AT STUFF TURNS YOU INTO A SUBSERVIENT ZOMBIE

Looking up at shit makes the blood flow to the brain change, thus affecting how the brain balances supply of blood, causing globally protective changes in neurotransmitter types and amounts that have a negative effect on our willpower while saving us from braindeath.

Throughout all walks of life we are encouraged by religion, design, architecture, our peers, etcetera to LOOK UP

Children look up to their parents

Congregations look up to the image of God

We all look up at Apollo, Ra, Helios (name him how you like, we all look up to feel the sun on our faces)

We are encouraged by our peers to keep our chin up when we are down

We look up at the screen in the cinema and now in our homes at wall-mounted televisions

We have to look up at road signs to save ourselves from accident

To look up is to OBEY!

To look up is to bare your throat.


I love making this shit up.


Previous Conspirinterocitor communications:-

The Conspirinterocitor #2 – Where’s your balls man?

The Conspirinterocitor #1 – I bet this comes back to bite me on the arse


 

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

My anti knife crime poster


Version 2. Version 1 had the word ‘use’. Carry sounds better.


Thursday, March 5, 2009

Spanglox Sally the call centre robot takes a call

Spanglox is always there to help you. That’s why we have a customer care line for all of our products.

Spanglox is constantly being sued for damages. That’s why you can’t have the number.

My profile page now has an audio clip that gives a brief glimpse into the hard work our call centre robots do to provide you with complete product information.

Below you will find any tenuous links to claptrap I already spouted and should have buried deep within my psyche alongside the memory of those terrifying days I spent wandering around Skegness that one time.

The ads they’d love to make – Spanglox dishwasher detergent


I tried to post this on my Posterous three bastard times. It doesn’t seem to understand that an outgoing Googlemail address is the same as an incoming Gmal address. Bah!


A troika of pictures that I’m lumbering you with

In the jetstream of data that is the internet we are constantly buffeted by forces that threaten to send our blogs plummeting downward into the sea of forgotten sites below. Today, my passengers, we are shaping our metaphorical airframe for a burst of speed and lift. it won’t help of course,…but I’ve got all these buttons and levers here and I’m damn well going to use them all. Even the one marked ‘DO NOT PRESS’.

All that has nothing to do with what you are going to see below, which is just stuff I scanned, our took photographs of. I just wanted to pull some levers I’ve never used before.

Snanned on an old scanner that I accepted from a friend for free solely so that I could scan my arse cheeks. AFTER this image of course

Tayto don’t seem to make these any more. I wonder why? Oh, wait…it might be because because they sound like they taste of sweaty workman’s scrotum. Their Flash games and stuff on their website ( http://www.tayto.com) are fun though if you have had a series of devastating head injuries or are blind drunk. Fortunately, both applied to me when I visited. Five fucking stars, Tayto.

It's the letter G that makes it for me. Oh, you hilarious Thorntons employee. I hope you didn't have a degenerative nerve disorder or something. 'Cause that would really suck the chuckles out of this image

I should bloody well think so. I won’t tell you which branch of Thorntons I saw this in. Zero stars, Thorntons.

You should have seen the toilets

The day when the inkling I had that my workmates in my old firm didn’t like me became a certainty. Not really. I actually had to move it outside while we cleaned up a chalk outline and some blood. We had a tontine-style pension plan, so it got a little bit competitive at times.


Hey, I could have given you a big block of text instead.


Saturday, February 28, 2009

I’d be the worlds worst bingo caller

I’m not very good at brevity. I also have a problem with preventing the mental artist who paints the mental pictures inside my head from embellishing them endlessly until what should be just a funny internal visualisation of an event, a tiny vignette perhaps, becomes a bloody trompe-l’oeil  triptych behind my eyes.

I’ve long suspected that this might hamper any real-world activities or professions that I might otherwise enjoy and excel at. So I tried to practice brevity and simplicity in the comfort of my own home using a time-honoured method.

I tried my hand at being a home-brew bingo caller.

Not wishing to lessen the experience any I made a bingo machine from a hairdryer (on cool) blowing into the bottom of a Rainy Day Cricket box with a straw sticking out of the top of it. With a disk pen and a magnifying glass I marked polystyrene bean-bag balls with numbers in accordance with the Gaming Act of 1968.

I wore a waistcoat. A spangly one I found in the attic. I did not fasten it however, as I have somehow put on weight in the twenty years since I wore it last.

Then I had to fashion a long tube for the bottom of the Rainy Day Cricket box (from a vacuum cleaner hose that I still own despite throwing out the machine years ago. No, I don’t know why) so that  the polystyrene balls would stop bouncing off the ceiling. Then I had to make a stand for the whole assembly from bent wire coat-hangers and blu-tack so that the hairdryer wouldn’t burn out or the box fall over. I considered giving up, but armed with the knowledge that my task was both onerous and completely fucking pointless I knuckled down. Magnifying glass at the ready, and thumb over the end of the straw I began.

Four seconds later (or thereabouts) the whole fucking shebang fell to bits. The Rainy Day Cricket box was seemingly unhappy with its new, dual role and flew apart at the seams - spewing my tiny balls everywhere.

So I emptied out (by which I mean ate) the contents of a box of miniature Coco Pops from a Kellogs Variety pack and tried again. Success! Hammering a lump of blu-tack flat on the desk as a bingo board that I could embed the balls in, I began to test my calling skills.

“Two identical positive pregnancy test pens that your youngest daughter has held up in front of her; at which she is looking back and forth in growing horror and panic – like a spectator at a tennis match being played by zombie strippers…eleven.”

Not good. I tried again.

“Sheila and Melanie over there by the bar – who between them have enough liquid grease surging through their veins to fry a thousand sausages and still have enough left over to lubricate all the moving parts of a fleet of ocean liners…eighty-eight.”

Hmmm. Okay, one more try.

“The act of coitus that involves you and your husbands lying top-to-tail and stimulating each others genitals orally…but lets face it ladies…they’re not getting any younger, so at some point you know you’re going to have to stick an unspecified number of fingers up their bums and stimulate the prostates within that have enlarged over the years - to the point where they now resemble a goat’s kneecap…sixty-nine.”

It was at this point that the realisation dawned that I wasn’t cut out for this line of work.


Next time: I’d be the world’s worst flotation device.


Hater – the word the internets loves

From shrieking teens to respected bloggers, the word ‘hater’ is all over the internet. Not with a qualifier before it. Just sitting there on its own.

Hater.

“You are a hater!!!!!!1”

“Its haters like you that make the internet a horrible place”

etcetera.

Take a look – in the comments of satire sites, in raging wars between fanboys of opposing gaming technology, everywhere.

At least lover means something (many things) on its own – but ‘hater’ is a lousy word.

Definition? Hater: Someone who hates.

Fuck that.

I loathe the word. It is pointless. It attempts to dismiss the opinions of those with whom  its user disagrees – without the need for a cogent argument against whatever the ‘hater’  is saying. It’s on my list of internet numbfuckery alongside ‘OMG’ and ‘WTF’.

So, for those who can’t stop using it, I’d like to consign you to ‘L’ over and over.

L       over

L     over

L    over

L   over

L  over

L over

Lover.


There. I feel much better now.


Thursday, February 26, 2009

Nostalgiorgasm: The Sup of the Gods – Half and Half

I was sixteen years old. It was the summer of 1985. Kate Bush was still do-able, even though she kept running up hills away from us. Prince and Michael Jackson fought the chart-fight among the scattered gaudy shreds of New Romanticism. I still had lots of hair on my noggin and lamentably fine ‘tash bristles that would make a Baleen whale’s teeth look like mammoth tusks.

I was in a Working Men’s Club. It’s gone now, but back then it was still a hub of excitement, activity, ridiculous dance moves from the middle-aged and SERIOUS DRINKING. It was a family do – and like at all family do’s I just tried to keep my head down. I’d found a corner to wait for my then girlfriend and sat with my pint, quietly sipping it as I watched my kin – close and distant- celebrating a wedding in the traditional noisy way. I wasn’t alone for long.

Parting the revellers on a bee-line for my quiet table was a wizened apparition clutching two pint glasses close to his chest. Two pints of the darkest liquid I had ever seen that wasn’t Guinness. He reverentially set the twin pints down on beermats on the table and squeezed in next to me. A deep, grumble grew in his chest as his gap-toothed maw worked slowly on an invisible blockage. Eventually the grumbles became words, and he spoke to me.

“Son….son…son…sunna…sunna, man…sunna.” he said, insistently trying to get my attention.

“I fear thee ancient man in here.” I mumbled back at him. (Yes, I was just as much of a pretentious fuck then. I was just cuter with it.)

“Wha’?” he replied, his confusion turning his entire face into a knot of pallid flesh.

“Never mind, mate.” I responded, hoping to get this encounter over with. “What can I do for you?”

“Whatcha drinkin’?” he asked, nodding down at my pint a few more times than was necessary for me to understand the gesture. I think his head was loose or something.

“Trophy.” I replied quickly. Trophy Bitter was my tipple then and I loved it as much as someone who has never tried more exotic things loves their egg and chips.

“Try this man.” he wheezed. As he held the untouched dark pint up for me I noticed that he was already half way through the other, even though he’d only just started supping a minute or two ago.

Slightly afraid of this octogenarian shambling creature I complied…and had my young mind blown in a way that drugs would struggle to better years later. A rich, delicious, nutty, oaky, hoppy flavour flooded over my taste buds. You know they say milk is a food? Well so was this. Not thick, or over-heavy – just satisfying and somehow filling and warming at the same time.

“My God! What is this stuff?” I gasped, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I licked the brew from my nanofilament tash hairs. They too were standing on end. If I’d taken the time to look at my pubes, I suspect that they – for an instant – would be poker straight. It was THAT good.

“It’s half and half.” he chuckled back, before succumbing to paroxysms of pleurisy-style coughing that would put an Elizabethan consumptive to shame. When he had recovered, he swigged down the rest of his pint and took the glass from me again. Still laughing, he took a deep draught. “Half Exhibition and half McEwans Best Scotch, sunna…and there’s nowt else like it.”

He was right. I’d tried Scotch on its own and liked it, but this was another thing altogether. This was fucking NECTAR. Somehow the Scotch had been transformed by the mix with Newcastle Exhibition Ale into a binary propellant that shot my senses into orbit. The shambler told me that it was a bit of an old man’s drink these days, but you could still ask for it in pubs and clubs and only the most clueless barman wouldn’t understand your desire.

“Trouble with it is,” he went on amiably “it either preserves yer forever or kills yer before yer fifty. There’s the wife now. I’m off to the bar. See yer later sunna.”

As he moved off into the crowd I shouted after him.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t remember who you are.” I explained sheepishly to this elderly gadgee who had opened my eyes to this amazing brew.

“I’m yer Uncle Bob’s first wife’s brother, Davey.” he informed me, not unkindly.

“But that would make you about…” I halted, unsure of my maths (and family tree too – I didn’t even know he had a first wife).

“Aye, sunna. I’m forty-six. See yer later.”

I sat there stunned. Just then my beautiful blonde beloved walked in and, after greeting my family, came over to me. Smooch greetings ensued and when we were done she asked me if I wanted anything from the bar seeing as she needed the loo.

“Yeah.” I said without hesitation. “Get me a pint of half and half. The barman’ll know what you mean.”

As she wandered back to me with the drinks, the Kershaws man came in the door behind her with his basket of cockles, mussels and assorted snacks.

My joy was complete and overwhelming.


They don’t make Exhibition any more….and yes, I wiped away a little tear when I finished this post


Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Reflections on the weaponisation of children

Pester power through your telly

Toys and games and foam bath jelly

Their idols shill for soft drink firms

Buy their crap on easy terms

 

The charities don’t think it funny

that doe-eyed kids beg for our money

Sad songs sung in monochrome

Battered, in a broken home

 

Adopt a puppy, horse or kitten

Look! They’re cute! Your kids are smitten

Open your wallet, sullen dad

The pets are actors, you’ve been had

 

“My dad smokes. I wish he’d stop”

“Mum buys gin from down the shop”

“The internet’s a dangerous place”

“Come on in and book my Face.”

 

Units. Cancer. Paedo fear

Legislate’s the way – it’s clear

CCTV in our schools

Comply! You must. These are the rules

 

Government. Charities. Companies. Stop using our fucking children against us. When they no longer listen to us, they will turn on you.


I’m reading Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man again. That’s what being cut out of the web 2.0 feedback loop will be like for some people: not being an Esper any more. Mind you, being completely immersed in it would be like demolition. Wiped of personality and uniqueness, but all your skills are left intact.


Sunday, February 22, 2009

I don’t sell T-shirts, but if I did…

I don’t sell T-shirts, but if I did…

This would be the first of them.

prolixshirt 

 

What? I’ve seen worse.


magnetite Industries recommend Spanglox laundry detergent for use on its line of imaginary clothing.

SPANGLOX – Don’t worry about the smell from the washing machine – and, yes, your skin is supposed to burn for a while after you don your clean clothes. That’s the acid working.


Playlist

I have Winamp – and I’ve just discovered that it keeps a list of most played songs. This, God help me, is the top 50 most played on my machine.

1. Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken
2. Mark Lanegan - Hit The City
3. Primal Scream - Come Together
4. stellastarr* - My Coco
5. Kate Nash - Foundations
6. Andrew Bird - Scythian Empires
7. Cyndi Lauper - I Drove All Night
8. Ed Harcourt - All Of Your Days Will Be Blessed
9. Massive Attack - Teardrop
10. Cocteau Twins - Bluebell Knoll
11. Elbow - Forget Myself
12. Mark Ronson - Stop Me
13. Cocteau Twins - Pitch The Baby
14. The Associates - Those First Impressions
15. The Sundays - Wild Horses
16. Swervedriver - Rave Down
17. stellastarr* - Somewhere Across Forever
18. Camera Obscura - Tears For Affairs
19. The Undertones - Julie Ocean
20. Pixies - There Goes My Gun
21. Camera Obscura - Come Back Margaret
22. Cocteau Twins - Lorelei
23. The Polyphonic Spree - Soldier Girl
24. The Motorettes - We Are Solution
25. Camera Obscura - I Don't Want to See You
26. Deftones - The Chauffeur
27. Dusty Springfield - I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
28. The Arcade Fire - Wake Up
29. Pink Floyd - Speak to me
30. Pixies - Debaser
31. Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear The Reaper
32. Fun Boy Three - The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)
33. Take That - Shine
34. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Rattlesnakes
35. Oasis - The Importance Of Being Idle
36. The Wonderstuff - Unbearable
37. Camera Obscura - Country Mile
38. Jamelia - Something about you
39. The Cranberries - Linger
40. David Bowie - Maid Of Bond Street
41. Aretha Franklin - It Hurts Like Hell
42. Pink Floyd - Any colour you like
43. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
44. Roxy Music - Virginia Plain
45. Japan - I Second That Emotion
46. The Stone Roses - She Bangs The Drums
47. The Beach Boys - God only knows
48. David Bowie - Heroes
49. Parliament Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
50. The Killers - All These Things That I've Done



The most obvious conclusion that I can come to based on this list is that I appear to be a girl.

A girl with deep psychological problems and FUNK in her heart.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

I just woke from a zombie nightmare. They're scary those things.

I know just what particular flavour of zombie is going to fuck us over. I mean ROYALLY. Really royally fuck us over. It's not going to be fast zombies (but thanks for making them seem soooo plausible Charlie Brooker). It's not going to be clever zombies, who can lead groups and work weaponry. They've got teeth and implacability - they don't need guns.

You know what it's going to be?

Zombie puppies and kittens.

Because you just KNOW you'd still stroke one if your mind wandered even for a second.


My nightmare featured no zombie puppies or kittens. I was overrun by normal (if you can say that) zombies because some idiot left the hospital outpatient doors open. If zombified versions of us keep any kind of horrific self-awareness, I'm going to hone it into revenge brain-eatin' plans just in case I'm back in the same nightmare when I drift off again. That won't be for at least two hours though, in the hopes of my next unconscious event being either a dream or a nocturnal emission. I'm not a fucking glutton for punishment.


Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Reflections on my television screen

There's a sort of barely visible shifting
of minutely lighter patterns
in the phosphor of my television set.
Only when its on one of the digital radio channels,
mind you.
Not when it's off.
I am not crazy.

An Aurora Televisualis, writhing smokily away.
Is it the faint patter of the universe?
Bombarding silent radiation on our noisy population,
while we shout back and wave our fist in the radio spectrum.
Loud and wide,
all day and all night,
like neighbours from hell.

It's nothing like the bright spiky sparks
Of RF from a car's engine, passing by unseen.
Granting teeth-sparkles and snowflakes
to the unsuspecting,
undeserving, unresisting
characters on the screen.

It can't be the odd visual component
of the mobile's call - that's just straight lines.
Bands microwave across and jump about
and, temporarily,
you're watching Casualty
through horizontal blinds.


It's not poetry. It's not prose. I'm not sure what it is, but for some reason I can't stop doing it. Perhaps there's a helpline I can call?

Anyway, it's part of a twofer deal with the last post for anyone who missed me. Can't think why.

And, yep, I do indeed still have a CRT TV. And I wipe my arse with tree bark. That's how old-fashioned poor cheap retro I am.


Barak Obama now 44th US president. Would-be assassins lurk. I have a solution

Now that he's been sworn in - and afeared as I am about the rise in gun sales in the US when he was elected - I'm concerned that the poor chap will be dodging bullets all the way up until his second term in office (yeah, I want him to have a second term. That's if he doesn't screw up, of course).

There are obviously going to be a lot of disgruntled Americans wanting to take a pot shot at the lad. Right-wingers disgusted that their team lost. Most of the old Confederacy. Sarah Palin. Also Dick Cheney's going to have a lot of spare time on his hands now and that, if at all possible, might be worse than him being actively occupied in destroying humanity.

So why don't we declare Obama's first year in office a free-fire but president-safe assassination period.

Would-be assassins! Under my guidelines (shortly to be submitted to the Senate and Congress) until the 21st January 2010:

1) You MAY be permitted to legally take one shot at the president. PROVIDING that you ONLY use NERF weaponry. President Obama will, in turn, play fair and not wear a helmet or cup of any sort. He IS allowed to run about yelling "Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner. You can't hit me!". You MAY NOT step up close and aim directly at his goolies. That's a no-no. NOR MAY you hold him down to administer pink-bellies. You MAY NOT administer Chinese burns or wedgies - atomic or otherwise.

2) You MAY knock on the door of the Whitehouse, then run behind a pillar to wait with your water-bombs ready to throw. You MAY NOT use fizzy mineral water in the aforementioned water-bombs - that stuff stings the eyes like a bugger. You MAY NOT use a non-standard balloon size - I'm looking at you over there with the Sodastream and the Space Hopper. If Mrs. Obama answers the door, you MUST immediately run away yelling "Oh, crap! She's seen us!" President Obama IS permitted to make an armoured suit from taped-together cereal boxes, OR wear a Sou'wester, mac and galoshes to answer the door. You ARE NOT permitted to mock him for doing so. It costs a lot of money to clean those clothes, and your mums will only have to chip in for washing powder if you take it too far anyway.

3) You MAY launch an attack upon the Whitehouse - but ONLY with toilet roll. You MAY NOT use that industrial-sized blue stuff that's always just standing on the window-sill above the sinks in the toilets at work. You MAY NOT use that kitchen roll with pictures of bunnies or characters from Disney cartoons on it. You ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT use those moist toilet wipes for people with piles. Those things leave a slimy film that just makes you feel like your arse-cheeks are mounted on gimbals. This film makes you feel like you're running when you are merely walking after using them - and that's just wrong. Besides, I think moist wipes have been banned for use as weaponry under the Geneva Convention.

4) You ARE permitted to call the president the following names. President Doody-head. Barry Kerblammo. Commander-in-Chuff. Any other names MUST be submitted to the Federal Name-Calling Committee for approval five weeks in advance of your teasing/NERFsassination attempt.

A year of that should get the resentment over a black man in the most powerful job in the world out of the systems of even the thickest rednecks.

America, you may thank me later.


As I have stated (and proved here) before, I am not an artist (unless it's the piss variety) so a long-overdue site redesign will have to wait for a bit. I am researching the next instalment of the Kingly Spoon of Death, but I'll probably slap more of stuff like the above up long before it is finished. All hail writer's block! It's saving you from my fecklustre, ham-handed attempts at prose for a little longer! Yay!