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.

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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.

---

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.

 

 

What? I’ve seen worse.

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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.

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.

---

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.

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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.

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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!

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Merry/Happy (insert religious/commercial festival of your choice here) to all, and to all a good night

I'm taking a break (ahahahahahahahahaha...as if that's not what I've been doing all this time) and returning after the New Year with a minor site redesign, a resolution to get up orf my arse and actually DO stuff here more regularly, and The Killer Spoon To Beat All Killer Spoons. La Cuillère De La Mort Royale.

Ooooooh.

Oh, and I'm going to Hell. Literally, probably, when my liff is over, but also in this story arc - which is now less like trying to pass a bus tyre through a knotted urethra and more like trying to shit a breeze block past a handful of engorged haemorrhoids. I think that's an improvement. If not, you'll be able to hear the screams from nearby countries.

Be well. Have a good religious observance/buyfest. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Don't do anything I would do either. Just don't do anything, okay?

[M]