A Unique Experiment (II)

In December, my reader might recall, I was asked to partake of a truly bizarre experiment - ie to drink an increasing number of "Stella"s - a little known concotion from Belgium, thought to contain alcohol (to a percentage of roughly 5.1). This experiment having gone exceptionally well, and having been successfully repeated many times - thus proving its results beyond doubt, except to the dwindling band of "Stella deniers" who insist that it does nothing for them), I have been asked to undertake a second, dangerous task.

This time I have been asked to "go to work".

I shall try to describe this disturbing experience as best I can - but be warned, it was deeply unpleasant, and readers of a more sensitive disposition might prefer to go to DK or Dizzy now.

Well, it started by my having to "get up" at 7am. My mouth was dry, my head was pounding. No-one told me that Stella-experiments and Work-experiments might not mix! If anyone wants my advice, may I suggest you don't try to partake of "work" if you have been "on the Stella" (as aficianados say, I am told!) the night before. Goodness me, this was painful. I levered myself out of bed and undertook breakfast - a meagre repast of Weetabix and tea. Ugh. It was unutterably ghastly. I tried to shower but I found myself falling asleep under the lukewarm water.

I drove to work. This was interesting, as it provided a chance for me to test my use of language, especially words we often call "inappropriate", when I was stuck behind slow lorries! I did enjoy doing that, although I even surprised myself at times!

Some time later I arrived at work. Upon arriving there I immediately engaged myself in "tasks". These are activities, not freely chosen, but attributed to an individual by another individual, which the former needs to undertake for, I believe, a largely indeterminate length of time. The latter is generally spoken to with respect, as I learned the hard way, when I accidentally told them to "fuck off"!

On occasion I was called upon to deal with "problems". These are events which are not controlled by an individual but which the individual is nonetheless called to resolve. I found this logic strange, but managed to undertake a few of these anyway. I think my "boss" was impressed - at least, that's how I interpreted their telling me to "get out of my sight" - I guessed I was no longer needed to solve problems!

I was struck by the logic of "breaks". These are moments of non-work: but, while my "boss" was largely able to identify and isolate such moments for herself, I was repeatedly told that I was unable to avail myself of these until I had completed whatever it was that anybody else had given me to do. Often another "task" appeared at just the moment I was to take a "break". Just my luck! Strangely, though, the person who had given me the task was often to be seen smoking or on Facebook while I was performing this duty. I wondered what appalling tasks they had been set that required them to inhale noxious gases!

Later it was time to go home. How can I sum up my impressions of this wholly bizarre activity? Well, I was very tired, quite angry, rather annoyed, somewhat disheartened and completely disillusioned. I was hungry, physically aching, and looking forward to tonight's "Stella" experiment. But I was missing something. I had been told that one received renumeration in return for work: ie, money. Coins. Notes. The things, which, I believe, one uses to pay for Stella. But I was told as my boss helpfully handed me my briefcase - although rather too rapidly for my liking! - that such compensation would not appear for over six weeks. Apparently, as well as being "at work", it was also called "being on supply" for " a bunch of cynical and money grabbing bastards in an old Cathedral city which also happens to have ancient docks and is not that far from Wales" -and so you don't get your "money" for weeks!

What a day!!

But I don't think I'll be "working" again any time soon!

A Child Can Cry/To Anything You Say

Late news: Child Cries During Drummer Drama Lesson

A child today burst into tears during a Friday afternoon drama lesson taught by a balding individual known only as "the tin drummer". The child was reported as saying "it's really scary, I'm scared," to which the "tin drummer" responded by giving the child a cuddle and telling them "it's only a bit of make-believe". The child was, however, dissatisfied by this response and immediately called for a report from OFDRAM, the regulatory company in charge of drama lessons. The report, we think, will not be published until 2042, by which time it is thought that the teacher might be dead. The child also said, "His response was laughable. Of course it was "make believe" - hence, I was made to believe. This is wholly unacceptable. I was forced through a traumatising experience - ie I was made to pretend that a wizard had prevented the sun from setting. This teacher wholly neglected his responsbilities in attempting to make an engaging lesson, and he should be made to pay." A spokesarse from the group FART (families against real teaching) said: "We deplore this latest example of a teacher overstepping the mark and terrifying children. It shows how out of touch these people are. The teacher should come to our re-training classes, which we'll provide for him at minimal cost." The "tin drummer" has so far refused to comment, telling our reporter to four letter shocker off, he was "going down the inapppropriate leisure activity centre for an unacceptable number of outdated imperialistically measured alcoholic beverages."

The tin drummer is pissed.

President Sar-Cosy

Well, helloooo. Is that La Marseillaise in your pocket or are you just frankly totally uninspired by seeing me?

According to Yahoo news:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has addressed both Houses of Parliament and hailed Westminster as a "touchstone" for democracies around the world.

Damn straight. Life peers, hereditary peers, the whip system, a dual party system of left and a bit less left parties, fudged votes, whips on matters of personal conscience, attempts to stop bastard taxpayers finding anything out about the parasites' expenses in courts of law, a long and sorry history of doing fuck all except feathering their own stinking nests: damn right it's a "touchstone" - the sort of stone I wouldn't touch with a ten foot bargepole that's been sterilised in a mixture of boiling water, hydrochloric acid and piss. In fact it's a stone I wouldn't even take a shit on, if I were utterly desperate. I'd probably go by the roadside and have motorists give me the v signs and everything instead.

Speaking in French, Mr Sarkozy said: "For the President of the French Republic, it is a signal honour indeed to address both Houses of the British Parliament.

Well, yes, but not enough of an honour to speak to it in its native language, eh? But then again it's a barbarous tongue, the bastard offspring of some northern abomination and a hick dialect of Old French so who gives a toss anyway.

"It is indeed in these walls which house your chambers that modern political life was born. Without your Parliament, parliamentary democracy would never have existed in this shape anywhere in the world."

ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho. I love it (wipes tears from eyes)! Yes: we'd never have speakers lining up with governments, governments defending speakers as one of their own, we'd never have empty chambers for 90% of the time debating issues no-one gives a toss about in ways no-one gives a toss about, we'd never have laws passed by foreign secret chambers that our own parliament has to approve, we'd never have hundreds of laws passed every year, every one restricting our range of thought, opinion and action.

Mr Sarkozy called for a new "Franco-British brotherhood for the 21st century" in which the two countries can take a lead in shaping the forces of globalisation.

Fuck me it sounds like a ghastly late 70s pop group. One whose top hit was a No.34.


Mr Sarkozy emphasised that while Europe needed Britain, Britain was stronger for being in Europe. "We cannot build a prosperous, democratic, effective, efficient Europe without the the United Kingdom," he said.

Look, Sarko, Britain is in the continent of Europe whether or not it wants to drink the piss of your stupid federalist ideas. We all know the EU will be shit without Britain but Britain will not be shit without the EU, despite your old chum keeping us out with his paranoid delusions for twenty years. Britain has global trading interests, right? It wants global trading interests, yes? It doesn't want you telling us, "er, actually, you need to pay for our farmers, despite the fact that we're more or less the same size economy as you". It wants you all to piss off and enact your little ruling fantasies elsewhere, while the rest of us get on with making and losing money as God himself intended. Now its rulers may for the last 50 years have wanted to sneak us in, all the while lying to us about what it entails, but that only goes to prove that we don't actually want it:

we want money.

That's what we want.


Money is, after all, tremendously stylish.


Anyway, back to work. Any change, guv? Price of a cup of tea, sire? Oi, I can hear the stuff rattling in your pocket you lying git. No need for that attitude, sir. Change, guv? Cup of tea?

National Union of Twats

Right. They can just fuck off. Fortunately I am not a member of this not-so-august institution, but for what it's worth, they can have my little resolutions and they can stick them up their own arses:

1. I will never, ever, allow a representative of Respect, the SWP, the RCP, or any other type of nutjob leftism into my classroom.
2. I will never, ever, allow any appeal for Cuba to be made in any school I teach in.
3. I will never, ever, teach that socialism is anything other than a crock of shit.
4. I will never, ever, allow any green groups to promote their hate-filled envy driven alarmism in my classroom.
5. I will always believe of the NUT that they want their own ideologies, rigorously enforced, in all classrooms.
6. I will never, ever, join the NUT nor support anyone who does.
7. I will leave my own union if it takes up this bullshit.


A quick question for NUTjobs: who the fuck gave you this free, democratic society? I suppose you think it was the fucking socialist workers' party, don't you, you dickheads.


And a quick point for the not at all biased BBC, who give some Respect twat a very long quote but never identify him as such - the NUT conference is NOT "teachers", you ARSEHOLES, it is the conference of a bunch of old lefty nobheads, who should all fuck right off. Hannah Goff doesn't seem to know much about the Respect/SWP people at the conference - luckily Biased BBC does. Or their commenters do.

Politic Drumming

I thought I would update my reader on the essenses of my political views, since I have been hanging out and reading (though not really commenting) on the Libertarian Party's forums. I agree with a lot of their policies, as I mentioned before, though not with all of their philosophies: I do think government should let people live their lives and, wherever possible, not attempt to dictate what they should think or say (and I would include hate crime legislation in that - I wouldn't want to say to an old lady who's been mugged "you see it's not that bad, it was just an attack on you, personally, and not an attack on all old ladies, so it's not as serious as hate crimes..."), and while I don't myself have any possessions except for an old Fiesta and a few books, and very little money, I applaud cash and its pursual. I particularly respect people who create work and trade, and do not respect those who claim that this is based on "exploitation", while demanding higher taxes at the point of a prison cell. I do think that quangos, commissions and committees, foundations, trusts and political charities, have too much influence over government (especially this one) and I think we've moved away from democracy and towards a sort of technocracy. The people are further removed from the makers of laws than since about 1800 and have only limited ability to change the people who make them. I'd like Britain to exist, or, if not, then England, and I don't think that those who've recently invented the concept of Europe as a single political and cultural entity have any superior claim on right, whatever they say, however much they accuse their opponents of bigotry. I don't see any better government than one elected by a people with some kind of coherence - history, language, society - a demos, if you like - just as we have at Westminster. It needs change (ho ho) obviously, but bypassing it for 27 old men in a secret smoke filled chamber isn't the way. Claiming that "Europe" is exactly the same sort of society as Britain isn't it. Giving the people no right to repeal or amend or reject laws not made or initiated by anyone representing them is not the way either.

I do have more authoritarian views but I'm happy to not have them enforced on everyone else, if that makes any kind of sense at all: unlike many I don't see the need for everyone to agree with me on x issue or for my moral panics to inform legislation on, say, smoking, computer games, alcohol, sex, or anything else. I do see how everyone's behaviour affects us all, blah blah but that is an appeal for responsibility, not a justification to legislate or regulate everything that could affect other people. In a complex, somewhat dislocated world, we need to find other people as individuals, not be told how to approach them by law (outside of a few laws on assault, etc). I think it is corrosive to assume that half the country (more or less) is seething with hate and will destroy, hurt, discriminate and terrorise others unless controlled by ever more repressive laws. I am not saying that all equalities legislation is bad, but that some of it works on the basis of mistrust and, even, a kind of hatred itself.

I don't really care whether the police want me to make their lives easier: I do not exist for their comfort and I am not a suspect in a crime unless there is reason to treat me as such - hence: no DNA database, no ID cards providing pretexts for agents of the state to demand you to account for yourself; many fewer CCTV and speed cameras; some of the 300 odd reasons for state agents to enter your home must be abolished; habeas corpus and the right to silence should exist: the police must be made accountable to the people, especially if they are going to use the media to promote their views, as they seem to do more and more. I am not a "male", nor a "suspect", nor an "offender". I am a citizen and I would thank the state to treat me as such.

The above isn't a manifesto or a thesis, just a ramble, intended to provoke thought - thought in myself, of course. I am well aware of the gaps and inconsistencies in my views, and the above, as well as feeding my narcissism is supposed to help me think some of it through.

Cool

Browsing for children's books yesterday I find that I am in Iain Dale's guide to political blogging 2007-8. How cool is that. I remember in 2006 I was No 99 on his list of top 100 tory blogs! considering I have almost no readers these days it's quite impressive.

Well done to me.

Change, Pt II

I've just gone and done it, changed the blog. For a couple of days it was immutable and perfect, in the sense of being unchanged or not requiring change, now it is mutating again. Nothing ever stays the same, except for damnfool controlling governments.

I thought I'd pick up on one or two things my wonderful commenters have said but I wanted to write a new post because I wanted to blah and meander and stuff about it.

Regardless of whether any of my atoms from 1981 (say) are extant today (unlikely), I am a continuous being, of some coherence. If I am physically, objectively (ie as an object) something else, something different, the memories and the personality and the construction are the same. I am like a cathedral (though a crap one, with really rubbish stained glass and a wonky spire) with its stones replaced one by one. Same design, same object: actually the analogy breaks down a little because such cathedral is only the same space as the one which saw (say) the murder of a saint, or the crowing of monarchs. But I am the same person and I feel twinges when I hear the music of my childhood (like now -I've put Tears for Fears back on!) because of what I experienced then. Because I am I, despite being something, or some-things, else. My coherence is both a consequence of change, a process of becoming, and a state of order that has obtained despite all the possible breakings-down or victories of entropy that could have happened in the last 31 years.

Things sometimes only need to change because people in power want them to: to demonstrate their power, or their competence (funny how competence so often seems, especially in management to be defined by one's willingness change stuff); things sometimes change because they don't want you to get too comfortable. Also things change because of entropy. Bastard tendency to equilibrium. I wonder if the ethic of Logopolis is visiting itself upon our society (more power would simply speed the collapse). More money, more energy, more determination, more "vision" - more fuck ups, more laws, more enforcement, more atomisation.

As I pointed out before, entropy is winning its battle over my hair, if not my muscles, which, owing to substantial gym use, are now loci of construction, design and order. Design in the sense that I am ordering them out of flesh through my use of weights. I suppose you could argue that entropy is increasing anyway but until I "buy the farm" then I remain a source of order, even increasing order. Yes it's change, but it's also change to stay the same. To increase the order in response to decay to maintain a single existence.

fake consultant wrote apropos of my last post:

change happens, like it or not.

Yes. I did kind of deny that, but only for effect. I don't _really_ believe it. I _do_ think people use that fact in order to change stuff for their own purposes, and to destabilise and dislocate others.

CBI wrote:

In fact, the child who saw those streets WASN'T you...

You've changed.


Yes, frightening isn't it. On the other hand I still exist. Kind of. TD doesn't of course. I liked your post CBI about the identity of yourself and of Crushed. I wonder how much if at all TD has changed me, or my style of writing, or my thinking. Or how much those things have changed TD. Not much probably. I think TD, for all of his drunken sweary bloggertarianism is really still the same as me, because he will always back away from a fight. His mouth is bigger than it should be, really.

Duh.

Too Many Short Sentences - Straw says the BBC today.

I couldn't agree more. They're one of our greatest problems right now and it all comes from crap use of commas.

Oh, I see.

Change

Funny old thing, change.

It's a good song by Tears for Fears (there aren't any bad ones); although my mis-hearing of the lyrics inadvertently make it more interesting than it actually is. I thought the refrain was "you can't change", which gives it a refreshing negativist spin, but it's actually "you can change" (zzzzz). Also I thought they had been incredibly clever and written "and something on your mind/became a part of you" whereas it only says "became a point of view" - much less intruiging.


I'm not saying change is impossible or bad but I think that the progressive view that it is always a good thing should be challenged: as if progressives themselves didn't object to change anyway, wanting the clock to remain at 1974 in perpetuity. Change is primarily the means by which rulers, especially the progressive type, keep people on their toes: you prevent anyone becoming too familiar or comfortable with the law/ethics/their local street/the price of a pint - you keep them dependent on you to help them navigate the morass of increasing difference. When the means of running your life keep updating themselves you never feel as though you truly know what's going on. When the buildings of your childhood, the streets and yes, even the trees are gone, it's like a part of you has already been consigned to the grave -what made you no longer exists, some of you is hanging by a thread from the scarce reel of memory. Then doubt seeps in; disagreement and forgetting and anyone could tell you anything about your own past. So you shrug and try not to think too much about the destruction of your own history. No-one's history can keep useless buildings up of course: I mention it not for public policy reasons but rather to suggest that a shifting built environment is not always good for psychic health. I know I risk sounding like an ignorant mix of Oliver Sacks and some twat in a tent with a ouija board but we are part of where we are as much as we are discrete entities. Melting away the ground we walk on creates problems for every opportunity it brings.

I am a mere 31: yet I feel very, very old sometimes. Many of the places I once knew no longer exist: I cannot buy my favourite music in shops and the space in shops for my favourite books is now small as to say, effectively, "we don't want your sort here, so fuck off". So many laws are different from even 10 years ago that things I used to enjoy (an occasional cigar over a few jars in the local, say) are illegal. I literally do not understand quite a lot of what the children I teach say.

And my bald patch is absolutely fucking massive. Jeeezus.

I remember reading a lot in the 90s and you still see it today in some lefty novels (Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman springs to mind) about the "true" motivations of the opponents of change: that they were in power, they were the establishment, they were privileged, they were always wrong. But of course reformers of all kinds want to change the stuff they don't like and preserve the stuff they do in amber. No-one actually likes the idea of change. Ask Ken Livingstone if he wants change in London right now. I'm sure he'll say "Yes, but only through keeping things the same - ie me in power."


Hey ho. Time for a change, eh? Oh how I laughed.

The Famous Mr Major Tom

This is a *genuine* Alan Freeman line, circa September 1990. I still have it on tape: the magnificent "30 Years of Number Ones" radio 1 programme that lifted me out of the desert of early 90s pop-shit and in one hour gave me The Jam, David Bowie and the Police and told me that 3 minute tracks could be amazing. Fuck me I was never the same again. Thank fuck.

*and it goes like this, very hauntingly* is how the great man introduced "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by the Police. Amen, brother, amen to that.

The line quoted in the title of this post refers, of course, to AshestoAshes,and is how Freeman concluded his airing of the song on that show. The tv show of the same name I have _not_ seen, out of aesthetic purity; nonetheless: the tin drummer's personality is expressed perfectly by the synth wailings from 3:04 to 3:34 of that track. In case you were interested.

Surfing the Libertarian Tide

My regular reader will probably know that I am a sort of "bloggertarian": a ranter and raver at government excesses (not that there's anything wrong with this, of course) but someone who's happy enough to endorse authoritarian regimes when it suits him (ie Rome).

Actually, now I come to think of it, this government's attempts to nationalise everything from opinions on human reproduction to crappy banks are _worth_ getting fucking angry about.

Ahem.

Anyhow, I have just joined the Libertarian Party's _website_ though not the LP itself. I don't think I can, in all honesty: but for the record, I agree with them 100% on lauranorder, education (especially), the constitution (and the EU - not Europe) and welfare. Their forum is interesting but could probably do with a few socialists to liven up the debate: I hope it becomes a real centre for debate on these key issues, while the main parties carve it all up between their smug snouts in the trough fat faces.

If that makes me a right wing bigot then so what*, fuck you.


If it makes me a hypocrite, then fair enough.


*Sorry, sorry. I meant "so weak".**

**in fact that is what I _did_ say, and anyone who says otherwise is a cunt.***


***if you don't get the reference, google it under "Ed Balls" + "twat" + "arrogant cunt" + "faux class warrior" + "dickhead" + " oh fuck I've been fucked better change Hansard before anyone gets hold of the video oh fuck Guido already did".

Budget Fails to Curb Binge Drinking

The Tin Drummer today had 4 pints of Stella.

He did not buy them, cheaply, off a supermarket, but opted to pay the vastly marked up prices at a no-way-suffering-from-the-positive-smoking-ban-pub.

It was alright. A bit dear, mind.

Mortal Sins

According the blogosphere, The Pope should of said : "1. Being a Catholic" and then anything else would have come as a bonus. I find it a bit odd that the church has such immense influence in countries where hardly anyone is Catholic but anyhow. Plus that people listen to the pope on condoms but _not_ on the rest of sexual doctrine (ie keep it in your pants unless you're married), which in my not inconsiderable experience of being one of these cunts, weighs rather more heavily on the individual, seems a bit strange. Plus also the church must be actively stopping deliveries of condoms, like by hijacking vans and torching them or summat. I guess it's all true though, because unbiased commentators like St Polly of Toynbee and St George of Moonbat have frequently asserted it as fact. Ergo it must obtain.

Still, I can reassure my readers that on absolutely no account will I be immensely rich any time soon: nor, indeed, am I about to perform fiendish experiments on embryos, nor defile the environment (oh no actually I tell a lie: my little Fiesta was caning the A420 and A34 this evening in 2nd and 3rd. How much emissions is that). Nor will I be acting against fundamental human dignity, unless you count having my pants sticking out a bit.

Also as a pisshead I will be contributing far more to schoolsnospitals than any of those NewLabour twats: the fuckers are putting my taxes up again. So you can fuck off if you are one of those puritans who think that you're not puritans because it's a made up rightwing concept and all you're doing is trying to make people more respectful/better citizens/think the right thoughts - I'm making the schoolsnosptials even better with every Stella I buy. Plus I've never gone to A&E or owt like that.


Oi! Pint of Stella! and a packet of cheese&onion! Come on John, I'm thirsty!

It's Always The Same/ It's Just A Shame That's All

Can't remember who did this - Genesis probably, in fact I think it was them.

I drew a picture of it for my dad, so much did I like it in 1982 or 1983 or whenever.

He was, like, not getting out of bed until 12.15 for Grandstand and I was like watching Saturday Superstore or something and listening to this somehow, somewhere, and so I drew this cartoon strip with me listening to this track and trying to get him up or whatever. Don't really recall. Don't suppose it matters. Long time ago. Now I'm a long way grown up and it clearly has no relevance to my life....


Still. It's got a point, though, hasn't it?

Fed Up With Your Indigestion

That track makes me laugh, it's by "the fuckwits" or something. Can't remember their proper name but it ain't dissimilar.*

Anyhoo. Today's Times carries an interview with Sir Bernard Lovell, unbelievably still alive at the real and not piss-taken age of 94. Unfortunately, all I could think of was how Telly Twatteron out of the National Secular Society will respond in Monday's Times:

Dear Sir,

The interview with "Sir" Bernard Lovell was nothing short of a disgrace. It is, surely, an anomaly that in this pluralistic, multicultural, secular society, an important figure in the public sphere - and a scientist to boot - should admit to not being an atheist. My taxes - the taxes of a rational man - have supported this charlatan for fifty years, which is an affront to all right thinking atheists (although, clearly, the term "bright" is more appropriate and any other term is, in fact, an insult - and recent research shows that atheists are the most discriminated against group in the USA).
More than that, his disclosure that he has - appallingly- played the organ in his local church all this time shows that his scientific judgement has to be called into question. If such an apparently rational man could believe in the the "flying spaghetti monster" (a most amusing and very clever satire, on religion, published against the machinations of the all powerful religious conspiracy thingy) then surely all of his theories and thoughts must be discounted. This is a man who believes in other stuff. Stuff I have never seen. This means that when he talks about other stuff I have never seen, but that I am usually happy to take on trust from experts, he cannot be believed.
Accordingly, the 50 year history of Jodrell Bank must be called into immediate question. I mean - since his mindset is so clearly askew, any views he takes must, logically, be ignored. I ask readers of this newspaper a simple question: if you were in a car driven by someone who told you he was an excellent driver, but who also said that a lovely fluffy bunny would meet you at the end of the journey, wouldn't you jump out, regardless of the speed of the car? I am not saying I disbelieve Jodrell Bank on pulsars, just that..well, you know.
And I _keep_ coming back to the central point: how dare my taxes be spent on anything that does not reflect my worldview?

Yours, Tervy Narcisseron


ps Do not attempt to reply to my letter: I have gone into hiding because I will surely be targeted by religious extremists following my exceptionally brave letter, and also interview in the Catholic Herald a couple of weeks ago aren't I brave after all it was a right hatchet job ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (ad infinitum, or rather ad finitum ha ha ha ha)




Indeed.


Besides of this crap, life goes on. Or rather it doesn't for a number of people, whose names I do not intend to list here. It came as something of a surprise to me to wake up this morning, although I had not drunk anything except mathematics last night. Perhaps that was the reason. I still thought: "fuck me, what do you know?"

Any Catholic readers I still have (and I have reason to believe that Crushed By Ingsoc still reads me) will understand this: when I was 12, I had no-one, literally no-one, to pray for during Eucharistic Prayer 1 when the priest says "Now we pray for those who have died...". Now-a-days my list goes on almost until the end of the prayer. Fuck me: friends, chums, aquaintances, favourite pop stars, family, teachers, tutors, not lovers yet thank fuck - it just pours out like a stream of mortal diarrhoea. I estimate it finishes around "on earth as it is on heaven".

for any well read atheist readers, yes I know it goes on to say "..marked with the sign of faith". So what. We're all fucking dead in the long run. All fucking dead.

For any bastard tenacious atheist readers yes I know I don't sound very positive for a Catholic. So the fuck what. Christ came for the tossers, the wankers and the fuckwits. Not for the people who had it all sorted. Hence Nietzsche calls it a slave religion, and hence now we've told him to fuck off we're still obsessed with victimhood. Nietsche would laugh then he'd fuck off down the pub. For a quick flirt with the Swedish barmaid and a boast about how when he's not in the pub he's really something quite important. Then he'd get into a fight with some twat who thought he was mad and he'd say "Oi who are you calling mad you ignorant cunt" and he'd glass the twat then he'd say "had enough have you you fuckwitted arsehole, had enough eh, you fucking cunt" and he'd kick the tosser in the bollocks when he was down then he'd say "think god isn't dead do you you fucking twat, you cocksucker, think the will to power means nothing do you you stupid fucker" then he'd punch the semi-conscious face of his opponent and say "jesus fucking christ a weak thing would fucking hide itself in a sturdy fucking barrel" and then he'd tell the fucker to get up then he'd say "fuck me you dickhead you English are all the fucking same; you lose the religion but you don't lose the fucking ethic".

Or something. [breathes in and out like Harry Enfield character c.1991]


the drums...the drums...the drums...the drums...the drums....



*=They are "The TingTings", or so I am told.

T

I have received some correspondence (yes, despite losing all of my hits I still have a regular reader) on the subject of my name. They write that they are happy to refer to me as "T". This is in return for my official permission, certified by strict guidelines handed to all local authorities by the regulatory company OFTD.

In today's Times you can see the desecration wreaked upon my given name, the appalling degredation of a once pleasant appellation. Imagine it given its own adjective, circa 1989: "oh my god, that's so T"; "you didn't, that is SO T"; "ho ho you are such a T". In case anyone is interested, all I will say is that appears in a picture on one of the news pages and it really is not funny, at all, really. It meant that a typical encounter circa 1990 went like this:

TD: Hello, my name's T.
Beautiful girl: fnarr fnarr, snurk snurk, yuk yuk! [walks off and points at TD at which loads of other tossers laugh].

Did the Earth Move, Darling?

Yes, yes, alright. As a matter of fact I tried out this sexist gag on 3 female staff members today and I received: 2 blank looks, and 1 "actually no it didn't". So much for my attempts at flirting.

The earth _did_ move for me, owing to being somewhere not very far north of Reading (ie Caversham) and lying, alone* and asleep in bed. What happened was this. I was having a rubbish dream and I woke up with my bed shaking and my door rattling. As I am a twat, I assumed my bed was being shaken by a ghost and thought nothing more of it, while I was genuinely worried by the rattling of my door, as I _knew_ I had closed all my windows, which I rarely do because I like the fresh air.

Then I remembered that I did not like ghosts.

Then it stopped.

Then I looked at my clock: 12.57.

Then I thought it must of been an earthquake but it couldn't of been because no-one was awake even the ill 7 year old in the house and no alarms were going off, as I mistakenly assumed would happen in the aftermath of the world going wobbly.

Then** I thought the following, which is a disgrace to all rational creatures in all universes: I know for certain I have experienced something real and not a dream. And yet it was a damnfool thing and no other bugger has felt anything. All is silence and nothingness. I am mistaken. Ergo I am going to relegate the experience from "real" to "dream". This means that, still odd, the experience can be easily explained by reference to my defective psyche.

And thought nowt else until I heard Nicky Campbell's excitable screeching at circa 6.30am.

what a world, eh? Cah.


*= there is an equation for this, believe it or not. It is this. (TD)(being an arse) + (other people) = disregard/indifference. I cannot be bothered to reduce it further. It's too depressing.

**=Whatever. I'm using "then" deliberately, pointedly, even - ironically.

The Moon is Over the Aerials

..and the night looks impressive.

I love politicans

Yes, I do. Who else, apart from drunken conservative bloggers, would mangle language, sense, thought and integrity, like this:

And Labour's former Europe minister Denis MacShane accused the Conservatives of having "the most rejectionist, isolationist position on partnership in Europe ever seen by any party in the history of this country".

Despite the almost palpable hysteria, it nearly sounds rational, and then you think: "What, you mean, apart from the many years when Labour wanted Britain out of the EEC altogether and was pretty open about it?" I just love the way we get two "ist" adjectives in the same phrase, which makes the poor thing sound less like a responsible member of the world's somthing biggest economy's government and more like a furious academic having just seen someone with a copy of The Daily Mail.

We also get this in the same article:

But Edward Davey, for the Liberal Democrats, said his party broadly welcomed the provisions.

He added: "Despite the hysteria being whipped up by some, the changes wrought by the treaty involve no new powers for Brussels but a simple and sensible reallocation of powers between those responsible for this area of policy.

"Foreign and security policy remains, as it always has been, in the control of member states. Britain controls its veto on all key decisions."

I have not read the Treaty but I do know a little bit about the meaning of the word "reallocation", and it usually involves moving something from somewhere to somewhere else. If it meant merely, reallocating powers within the UK government (ie from everyone else to Gordon Brown) there'd be no need for a treaty on it (duh!). So where are the powers being reallocated to, if not Brussels? And the "simple and sensible" is just great, lovely use of alliteration there to make it quite clear that anyone who doesn't agree is really an idiot. Despite all of this, there is very little actual content to this quotation, despite the final paragraph asserting something quite boldly. You would have thought that if the LibDems loved the EU that much they wouldn't try to be reassuring like that. Oh well.

you could call me a reactionary and a hypocrite for not slagging off the Tories here but, well, I didn't fancy it.

Yet Another Investigation

The government yesterday launched its several millionth inquiry, this time into why a disk containing the details of 15 foreign criminals was apparently _not_ stolen, but stayed, untouched on a civil servant's desk for over a year. Well, that's where I keep all my crap, anyway. In the long hours of deathly dull radio coverage I didn't hear anyone ask "why did we let these bastards in in the first place?" but I guess I already know the answer to that. Keith Vaz, now apparently rehabilitated and trying but just failing to sound like a statesman, defended the government's announcement on Radio Bloke by saying "Well you'd be angry if the government wasn't doing something...it's just unfortunate that all these things have gone missing lately" (slight paraphrase). Yes, Keith, is it unfortunate, and, clearly, nobody's fault: well, no-one who won't be paid off at vast expense anyway. I just love the way that Brown and his puppets actually think people are reassured by this guff. Or maybe, more likely, they don't care and it's just content-free noise to fill the spaces between our increasingly untended ears. Either way, looks like Vaz has achieved the feat of talking with only the larynx and without involving the higher brain centres at all, or duckspeaking.

Oh bloody hell, then, alright I'll say something really positive

It's Saturday tomorrow, bringing with it the infinite possibility of getting pissed. Yes! Get the fuck in!

Er...it's getting a bit lighter, sort of, day by day, sort of thing?

um...I might do a bit of reading or some maths...


ah...the EU might _not_ announce a new law, to be implemented across Europe, without possibility of repeal or lengthy debate in national "parliaments".

That's it, that's the one. Let's paaaartaaaaay! No new laws tomorrow! Get in!!!! wooooow!!! No new criminals, no additional regulation, no further control of day-to-day dealings between intelligent consenting adults (whatever progressives think of humans), no law which encourages the bastard British government to be even more assiduous watching us or for Guardian columnists to call all dissenters xenophobes (which happened around 1988 - about when Jacques Delors addressed the Labour Conference - before that the Common Market was the refuge of capitalist bastards and cunts of all kinds ) and accuse them of falsely claiming victimhood, ably supported by Viz (now a NuLab inhouse journal I am deeply and eternally sorry to say); no new excuse for the BBC to lament the currently "too-lightly regulated" x-sector(insert as applicable); no new excuse for socialists to crow about how the population are really cunts so this new law is utterly and totally essential and won't affect reasonable people at all and when it comes in scream that of course it affects x, how could it not?; no further opportunity for Lord "fuckwitted twat" Falconer to appear on all radio and tv channels, blocking the reception with his fat arrogant bastard fucking smug face - fuck me this really is cause for celebration. Break out the Stella and fast.

Or perhaps there is a new law tomorrow. I haven't checked.

Come on, TD, be positive.

TD Writes In a Positive Style About Positive Things

"












".

On The Negativism of Things

This phenomenon, known as "the tin drummer is depressed about various piss-awful events in his ghastly, insignificant life"-syndrome, was documented in 1981 by the noted drummerologist "Miss Rochford", sometimes known as "the drummer's Reception teacher". It first appeared in his disgust at seeing the blue-jacketed back of his father walk away through the vast windows of his ancient HORSA classroom, back to the Hillman Hunter, and away from the screaming drummer, by now weeping in Miss Rochford's lap (and very comfy it was too). It subsequently appeared at various intervals: namely, 1986, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1998 and most years after.

It is barely an elusive phenomenon; the drummerologist "Hugh of Lincoln" noted its appearance at sporadic intervals and tied these together under the name "winter & alcohol", but failed, in the opinion of many critics, successfully to map the drummer's negativism onto real world events. The philosopher Phred Tap reckons that 2001 was a turning point. He writes: "the authoritarian victory of New Labour, versus the complete descent into populist incompetence of conservatism, wrecked the drummer's political mind for ever." (The Tin Drummer: A Political Reckoning) In Don't Stand So Close to Me (1999), the critic and historian Kymant Carshalton writes: "TD was a failed enterprise from the beginning: but this being the case, his efforts to carve a niche in the world were half-hearted to say the very least. Trying to get himself arrested by writing secretive libels of Tony Blair was, to put it generously, ignoble: to put it uncharitably, it was the act of a fool. And a twat."

Nonetheless, it seems that 2008 marked a descent into rabid rubbish negativism for the damn sake of it. The archivist Primus Eliot wrote in his monologue The Tin Drummer is All Measure of Value (2010) that: "...in this year [2008] the twat become heroically self-absorbed. Indeed, he was so obsessed with his personal problems he forgot to shit. This caused legendary problems at work, when he failed to turn up for a lesson for 42 minutes because he was trying to evacuate six weeks of garbage from his colon and in doing so bankrupted his school because the bog pipes were blocked for eight miles from the u-bend." Historian Nigel Ob wrote in his book Calling All the Hero (2009) that "the tin drummer became a crashing bore, clogging up the blogosphere with his bizarre, drunken, self-lacerating rantings. It was only later that he realised, to his eternal credit, that no-one gave a toss, and wanted him to shut the fuck up".

The contradictory nature of the last quote will not be lost on the reader.

However: the lesson was learned; the tin drummer continued to write - but he focused more on subjects he could be more positive about.

Another Damn Valentine

Piss off, you damnfool twats, with your pseudo-romantic moneymaking gestures, your slighting of commitment for the one off splash, your fuck-awful pictures of rotting personalities behind beautiful bodies, your ghastly insistence on appearances, your fuckwitted obeisance to the god of sexual attraction, whoever it may be, that idiot deity who really ought to be shot and buried in a shallow grave.

Fuck me: once, loving someone meant attaching yourself, stitching your bodies and souls together so that you made a stronger defence against the storm tides of chance and bastard time. Now, it means: is his cock better than the other guy's? Are her tits a bit saggy? How good is the pussy I'm getting? How long does the cock last? A broken heart means an empty snatch or a pair of balls like two tins of fussell's milk (copyright Viz).

No-one gives a toss, no-one cares a single fuck for the idea that two people can, or even ought to, find themselves in each other, share a mystical or inexplicable attraction that solidifies until there is no telling between the two: once it gets tough, once you stop being basically fuck-buddies and something higher or more permanent threatens the lightly stained glass of your lives; once some prick turns up in a BMW or with some fuckawful job that makes him boss all the other cunts around, that's it - the "love" is gone and the relationship is over. So what? It wasn't fun anymore, it wasn't going anywhere, you stopped satisfying me, we stopped making sense, I wasn't feeling the vibes, we just weren't right, you turned out to be someone else.

So what? Who gives an arse? We're not monogamous anyway and any attempts to prove otherwise are doomed to failure once you've seen Milf Sluts Go Nuts Vol 42, not that I have. Jeesus, she comes like a train! He can go all night and look how hard he comes! Pornstars are the modern gods, except that they're largely unspoken leaders of our aims and ideologies (although apparently Jenna Jameson declared her support for Hillary C: fucking hell if I were a Yank I wouldn't be able to vote for Mike Huckabee fast enough). We're all too ashamed to admit that porn drives our images of male and female and that anyone who doesn't match up can fuck right off. I'm not saying that I don't, or that I'm shit in bed: whatever - who gives a flying fuck anyway?

Valentine's Day? Go fuck yourself, sonny, like a whole load of us have to.

So what if I'm bitter? It's hardly a valid criticism of a lemon, now is it?

The Valentine's Day Post

Bollocks to it. Bollocks to everything.


Come on, you didn't seriously expect me to say anything else, did you?

Criminy (again)

Cop this.

Well fuck me (if you like, I can always give you my mobile number). Another study by taxpaid academics telling us we're all going to die. Listen you twats. We know this already. It's what happens to organic creatures. This time, "health experts" (the modern bishops) are telling us that "loads of us are going to die" when "it gets hot", as if loads of people didn't die when the climate was more to their liking, ie 1946-7 and 1962-3, to give two examples of what we are now supposed to believe is natural and good (you can have 1981-2 and others too if you like).

Question: how many fully paid up climatologists work for the Department of Health? My guess: somewhat fewer than the number of functional hair follicles on my head.

Still, I'd be happily proved wrong. Again.

Anyhoo, I have a solution. Reach for a cold one. Now. I've just done it - it works, I feel quite cool, in fact, although I am conflating different meanings of cool, obviously. But if the government took responsibility for ensuring that every household had, say, 10 tins of Stella in a fully functional fridge, these appalling projected deaths could be reduced. It could be called the "Sure Stella" project, and, needless to say, would need to be carefully aimed at the most vulnerable people, to stop those middle-class bastards muscling in yet again, cunts that they are. In fact each adult could have a Stella allowance, depending on their parentage and education. If you had a degree, say, you'd be expected to find your own source, whereas if you spent your teenage years drinking, you'd get it given to you by the government. Neat, huh? Some people may argue that drinking Stella causes dehydration. So what? you can line your stomach with water as much as you like; it's the fact of the Stella's coldness that counts.

My Neem - My Name's Tegan Jovanka

The title of this post refers to a legendarily fluffed line from Janet Fielding in Doctor Who's 1981 epic Logopolis. To this day I have no idea why the BBC allowed such a blatantly fucked line to be recorded; perhaps they were running out of time or something.

Anyway. Giving your name to someone is a big deal and to me it's always been a doubly difficult ordeal, because I have a totally embarrassing name, at least if you were a child of the 80s and early 90s.

A typical conversation would go a bit like this:

"Hello, my name's Phil."
"Er, hi, I'm TD."
"TD, [sniggers], hey - I've got loadsamoney, loadsamoney, hey have you heard this - "oooow, god, you never let me do anything, tsk, god, tsk, tchoh..."

and so on. Obviously my name isn't TD, but it stands for [substitute name you couldn't hear without sniggering between 1986 and 1996].

Even though this phase of history seems to have passed I still loathe telling people my name, and prefer to take the age old route of anonymity. By a staggering coincidence, most of the people I meet are not interested in knowing my name, despite telling me everything from their favourite cereal to the sexual position that causes them most difficulty. I like such people. They cause me no trouble and I learn a lot from them, such as their work problems, their relationship "issues", their troubled childhood and their fears about death (I've heard it all before, honestly. You could have no fear of death that I haven't heard, indeed shared). Given that people have been anonymous or pseudonymous since we were scrawling damnfool images on caves, it seems a bit odd for certain bloggers to demand to know the identity of everyone who posts, but that is by the bye. I can just imagine a conversation between my tutor and me circa 1997:

"so, TD, what do you think of the Owl and the Nightingale?"
"Well, it needs to be discounted on the basis that the author omitted their name. I mean, for all we know it could of been the Pearl poet sock-puppeting."
"But-but that's outrageous. Sock-puppetry is-"

etc.

So I try not to give my name unless absolutely necessary. At least if people do know it then they don't call me "mate", "pal" or "bro" (not that I get called bro very often). Instead they call me "T" (which stands for "even more embarrassing shortened form of embarrassing name"); which is totally unacceptable unless I have clearly given them permission to do so. At time of counting only 2 people have the right to call me this, not counting my parents, who do not, and never will have, permission, but who call me this anyway.

Why have I set upon this diversion? Because I am bored, and a little tipsy, and not working, and I cannot be bothered to indulge a long rant about the government's latest folly against civil liberties, whatever it is (let me guess - it's an entitlement, or right of some kind).

"My neem - my name's Tegan Jovanka. I'd like to speak to the pilot."

So would I, my dear, so would I.

Half Term

Hence the dehydrated piss-trickle of posts.

Can't be arsed to do owt else.

We Have To Shout Above The Din Of Our Rice Krispies

Mornings are an arse. The best morning I can think of is Mornington Crescent. Mornings are even worse when, emerging from an amazing dream (see posts passim on the subject of sub-Freudian lucid dreams), one is immediately faced with the appalling prospect of work. I hate nothing more than the individual who defines themselves by their work. Whose purpose in life consists entirely of proving to others that they are more than capable of bossing them around in the service either of some ghastly abstract ideal which inevitably involves treating individuals like shit; or, of subsuming everything they have into some project or construction: with the results that when one deals with the actual, living offshoots of a "life's work" they are fucked up, selfish, weird personalities. I understand that people need a purpose to survive; and also that people have vocations of one kind or another; but that one should die with "I wish I'd spend more time in the office" on one's lips is a betrayal of all that humanity can do, of all that a human being could achieve if they looked outside their fucking paperclips for five short, lonely, life-changing minutes.

300th post

Yay.

Break out the Stella.

Learning a New Vocabulary

The vocabulary of being single has always fascinated me: from a distance of course. I have always enjoyed watching people flirt, snog and pair off (I'm _not_ saying that i am obsessed with porn, by the way) - but I have never had a clue how to do it myself. Now I find myself again at the point at which I need to understand this grammar, this linguistics - but haven't a clue.

For example.

Today on a course I meet a very nice woman, who wears no jewellery. In my pisspoor vocab banks I assume this means something. Accordingly I flirt with her, laugh and enjoy her company: she seems to like me, and asks about other stuff about me. Later our eyes meet across the crowded room, three times (c. star struck lovers of various kinds) - and afterwards, her first two words?

"My" and, appallingly, shockingly, "boyfriend."

Fucking hell. I see no way I could have predicted this, unless I was reading the grammar entirely mistakenly; unless I was giving wholly wrong values for x. So what was the problem? Was the equation quadratic, instead of linear? Did I screw up the manipulation of negative numbers?

What had she been saying, and how? Had she, indeed, been saying anything at all?

I vaguely remember all this from the 24 years before - and now I find myself exactly where I was then. What are people saying and what does it mean when they touch you, or doesn't mean, or would mean if you wanted it to mean, or might mean if you were also thinking that it meant, or could mean if you made it mean that?

I am told, by certain of my friends, that "men" apparently do, regularly, seduce "women" (I am told that there are various other permutations but I have no idea about these at all): how do they do it? What do they have to be to do it?

If we took x as being "a man, of variously unattractive appearance" and y as being "a woman, of uncertain, even irrelevant appearance" then how do we make x=y?

As I see it, it works something like this:

(x+k)(x+m)=y

where k=appropriate conversation
and m=appropriate twinkles in eyes.

But if I reckon it correctly, this gives

x2 + kx + xm + km = y

which is fair enough, except that I simply cannot provide km. And as for x2, that is just bloody awful.

If you suggested that the equation needed a further variable, ie p, where p="looks"*, then it might look something like this:

p(x+k)(x+m) =y

which I simply cannot provide at all, I am afraid. Ie - the equation holds true for x=0 and only x=0.


*=and where "looks" are defined as: not being a slob, not being bald, not being short, not being a bit boss-eyed, not having sloping shoulders and not walking funny.

I started this pile of old horseshit by talking about grammar and ended with equations. This reflects my utter disenchantment with the eternally ambivalent world of the humanities, and my wish that I was good at something real, something either true or not true, ie maths.

Fuck me I need a drink. But it's late and I've got work tomorrow. Damn. Piss and wind. Bollocks.

A Close Shave

Ow. For fuck's sake that hurts, fuck me I have a face looking like a key stage two exam paper. jeesus.

Erk.

God the end of that last post was mawkish, selfish, sentimental and awful, but rather than edit it out of existence I'll leave as evidence of my hamfisted attempts to write something sincere. Of course we're glad of Sir Bobby's survival. For fuck's sake what a shitheaded thing to write. What I mean is - oh, forget it. You know what I mean but I can't write it.

A Beauty Scored by Bobby Charlton

Alas your humble drummer is, as predicted, _working_. This ghastly state of affairs, nearly as awful as sobriety, means that I am unable to post with the vigour and intelligence my readers have not come to expect.

So, today, given our nearness to the Munich disaster, and football's sudden discovery of history (a close companion to cricket fans), a quotation from the great man, courtesy of the Daily Getsworse:

Even now, 50 years later, it reaches down and touches me every day. Sometimes I feel it quite lightly, a mere brush stroke across an otherwise happy mood. Sometimes it engulfs me with terrible regret and sadness - and guilt that I walked away and achieved so much. Everything I have been able to achieve since that day has been accompanied by a simple question - why me?


We've heard, read, about this phenomenon, but to hear it from one of our footballing greats (our only surviving one, maybe?) is stalling and frightening. Like Harry Patch, 109, who lived for 80 years without talking about the Western Front (until his family were dying and there was no longer any reason to bury the memories),Sir Bobby has kept a lot of this to himself until very recently. Could it be - just possibly - that you _need_ to suppress, if not repress, awful memories in order to survive, because they will come and bite you on the arse anyway, so why would you want to give them free rein on your rotund and peachy buttocks?

Er..where was I...well, anyway, you get the point. As I've said before, and as Will Self wrote in _Grey Area_, the talking cure may well in fact be the talking curse.

And if you want TD to open up about his problems you can fuck right off.

Tsk. Typical of me to turn a post about Sir Bobby Charlton into a post about myself. I need to talk less and think more, since the two are mutually exclusive. My talk is a series of lies, designed for an audience, a script and a load of bullshit.

And as for my blogging....

Sir Bobby, we have no idea how you feel, and to pretend otherwise is impertinent, arrogant and ghastly. Nonetheless. We are glad for your survival. More, probably, than you will ever know.

Get In x2

I make a point of only writing about my personal life in the most guarded, drunken, metaphorical ways (see previous post, although I wasn't drunk as it was posted at 10am or something and even I have only had four or five Stellas by then), unless it concerns Doctor Who but today I am going to bust those rules. This is why:

1) I am being taught in a European University - namely, my poetry is being studied by a student in Vienna, who has been assigned some of my work to look at. Considering that I am not worth one of Ted Hughes's bollocks, this is soooo cool.

2) The final viewing figure for the Doctor Who Xmas special goes as follows:

13.31million.

I'll just repeat that, in case you missed it:

13.31million.


This means that in my local cemetery there is a moss covered stone with "Doctor Who: 1989" inscribed at the top, and a load of "3.1m, 3.6m, 3.9m, 4.0m" figures carved underneath. This stone has now fallen below the surface and is no longer readable.

The Voyage of the Damned is the 8th most watched Who EVER, beaten by one Hartnell and six T Baker episodes.

13.31million. Wow.

The second most viewed programme of any kind (and that includes all the pornography) of 2007.

Top Banana.

New Labour, New Year, New TD

Owing to my failure to be consistently re-elected over a substantial period of time, it is clear that I have become out of touch with my electorate; accordingly I have decided to embark on a sustained series of reforms and modernising initiatives. The resolutions I set myself at New Year itself should be regarded more in the line of aspirations than targets; as we know, reality is dynamic and an individual needs to be just as fluid in dealing with changes to it. In my case this has meant a radical re-appraisal of outdated methods of living and a dramatic readjustment to modern challenges. Indeed, I have decided to grasp these challenges with both hands in a positive and forward looking manner.


There is a meaning to this (ie content, you know, when words do refer to real world events or objects), but I'm darned if I'm going to explain it. Writing in jargon, despite my Resolution, does give me a tingle of authority and professionalism, two things I normally run a mile from. Yes I'm being ironic, but there's a grain of truth in that the opaque language of modern life, drenched with the sentiment of positivity and control, does give me a sense of worth - for a few nanoseconds. Judging by the amount of government garbage I read in my job, I can't be the only one. By contrast, the bluntness and lack of ambiguity inherent in swearing makes it difficult to do except when there are no visible consequences. Imagine the chaos if the government sent a circular to schools saying "Just teach them to fucking read, for fuck's sake."

I mean, someone would have to do it. After spluttering in outrage for a bit, of course.

Warning

Just in case anyone is interested, the current flood of posts is to dry up, owing to the resumption of work soonish. I will try to post a bit more often than before,but I can't guarantee that I can be bothered.

I Was Pissed

Well so much for the resolution to drink more in accordance with government targets. An outbreak of outrageous, and indeed, inappropriate rebelliousness (in felicitous concert with the onset of early middle age) conjoined with an episode of good physical health (for the first time in ages) met to produce a substantial amount of drinking tonight. Or rather, "this afternoon". You see, my type of sub-middle class rebellion (more properly entitled "contrarianism" - as it is de facto the case that lefty stereotypes are true)is against government targets and the core principles of govt agencies. Yes I know it seems ridiculous to the point of being literally fantastic, but there we are. That's my life. I don't have masses of unprotected sex, unfortunately, which means I miss out on unlimited government support, and the moral support of people who think adults cannot be expected to look after themselves sexually, but I am: overweight, a drinker, not an atheist (wow, this should have those who refuse to capitalise God and who write letters to the Torygraph from the National Secular Society in a state of apoplexy: "Sir, In these pluraristic times, it is unacceptable that a non-atheist should occupy any post in civil society..."etc etc), a lover of poetry. All these things put me outside the realm of acceptability; I am well aware of this. Alas I am not a smoker, now-a-days. In the old days, I'm thinking around 1999 here, one would drink ale, eat crisps and smoke cigars, and discuss non-atheist topics (fairies, elves, dimensional transference, God, Christ and so on) until late at night or whenever the lock-in ended. All people do these days is drink orange juice, mutter about what a good idea the smoking ban was, and how much they're in favour of equality, and how awful it is that in this day and age not everyone is an atheist. Jesus this is the age of the grey person in a power-suit going on and on about following guidelines and how anyone who doesn't agree with one is bigoted/xenophobic/homophobic/racist/full of any other kind of hate. I mean, what other reason could there be? Why don't they all fuck off and become diversity outreach co-ordinators; we pay enough tax to fund endless of these non-jobs. Even fucking poetry is stuffed full of all this crap, little grey verse telling us how evil bigotry is and how much they've suffered from not everyone telling them they're wonderful all the fucking days of their stupid little lives. Oddly enough, a lot of it appears in magazines with "Funded by the Arts Council" stamped obscenely on the inside cover. It goes a little bit like this:

I came to England in 1981
and you called me a twat
and I carried this like a ball of cold cheese
in my poor suffering gut

and you never loved my views
or agreed about Mrs Thatcher
and you're a bastard,
a fucking old Tory tosser.

or something.

Surely it's obvious that I'm a fascist, and that if you put a bomb underneath my Ford Fiesta you'd eradicate fascism for a generation, or some such bullshit. Given that I teach one day a week in a state school, I guess I'm a subsidy junkie too, but I do whatever I can to subvert it, by asking questions of Al Gore, by questioning socialism, by reading non-socialist poetry (ie not Adrian Mitchell and such crap) wherever possible, but it never works.

Bugger, I'm sobering up. Arse. I want to spend as little of 2008 as possible sober. What a ghastly state, wherein the mind is forced to locate stability and purpose in philosophy or religion, or something equally appalling. I saw on tv once that elephants dart for the trees full of fermenting oranges, or something: even animals want to get pissed, so why should it be denied us? Ah, bollocks to it all. Not even alcohol is enough - mini cheddars, now that is where life really is at.

The Year So Far...

Well I haven't achieved any of my resolutions yet, unless "not having sex" was one of them, which it wasn't, but then it scarcely needed to be. I certainly _have_ cut down on the booze, if not the one night stands, but then that too is circumstantial. As far as resolutions of substance are concerned - pshaw. The clouds are slinking over the valley, as if they have hangovers, and we are just where we always are - in the depths of boredom.

This being the case, here are a few heroes I'd like to enlist in 2008 to liven things up a bit:

1. Doctor Who (hopefully he'll be along anyway)
2. Ted Hughes (no chance - dead)
3. The Iron Man (see above)
4. Mrs Thatcher (chances of that are slim)
5. Ian Curtis (see no2)
6. Andy Partridge (hmm, it's not 1981 anymore)
7. Iris Murdoch (see no2)
8. Graham Thorpe (hmm, it's not 1994 anymore)
9. Sylvia Plath (see no2)
10. God (well, I guess we'll see with this one).


Although I've stuck Sylvia Plath on the list I don't really read her these days, though she was a big hero of mine many years ago, when I thought poor old Ted was just a rutter of wild animals. I suppose she could be replaced with Tanya out of EastEnders, but that's hardly a like for like swap.

Happy New Year

Again. Well I hope you get what you want and not what you deserve in 2008; here are my wishes for the year:

1. See 2009.

2. er...

3. That's it.

actually that's not quite it. I'd like to resolve the mess that is my professional, personal, artistic and spiritual life once and for all. But that brings me back to No1 so I guess I'll just bumble on.

My New Year's Resolutions:

1. Stop giving New Labour the benefit of any doubt over any aspect of legislation or ethics. I'm still saying to myself "oh well, perhaps x law won't diminish freedoms of speech, assembly, movement or the right to a fair trial or the right to know when one is breaking the law..." and I'm always wrong. Any system where you can be fined, not for smoking in defiance of a law, but for not displaying government propaganda on behalf of that law, needs to be smashed and smashed quickly.

2. Finish The Brothers Karamazov. Three times I've started this and three times I've got to page 500.

3. Stop swearing in blog posts. And "bugger", "bollocks", "crap" and "bloody" don't count as swearing.

4. Publish some decent poetry instead of the shite I have been turning out, the toe-curlingly crap stuff I've written this year.

5. Find somewhere to live.

6. Finish the Paradiso. I can't help it but on every re-reading of The Divine Comedy I get stuck mid way through the Paradiso. It's just dull.

7. Get a hair transplant. Yes, laugh. But the fact is, without hair you are nothing. And what the hell has happened to mine I don't know. It's fucked off, probably bored to tears.

8. Stop being a ****. And I don't just mean ****, oh no, I mean stop being a ****.

9. Read Hegel.

10. Consume Stella in quantities that more accurately meet government targets and sustainability requirements with regard to the diversity of relationships within my bodily community, going forward.

11. Never, ever, write in jargon. Even for work policies.

The Not So Iron Man

Currently reading Letters of Ted Hughes and very good they are too; though you have to read extremely carefully between the lines a lot of the time, especially the 1961 and 1962 letters, and there is disappointingly little about his own methods of writing, (a lot about Crow, though, which is fair enough).

Of The Iron Man he writes:

I intended it as a blueprint imaginative strategy for dealing with a neurosis. That is, ideally anybody familiar with that story will have a plan of action for dealing with neurosis in themselves. It is a story intended to cure the mentally sick, and to put people in contact with their real nature.

(p284)

I don't think he was taking the piss, but I have to admit this had never occurred to me. Assuming it is the space-bat-angel-dragon suffering the neurosis, I suppose he means you need someone to challenge you, and to force yourself into change by agony and defeat. But the dragon thingy is not changed, as much as trapped by the terms of its defeat by the IM. It might have got out of its neurosis through its defeat and collapse but it had no choice. Maybe that's the point. A more interesting concept is that the IM himself is not quite himself: he falls to bits and puts himself together at the beginning (which strongly reeks to me of a shamanic experience), is hidden underground for months and eats every bit of metal in sight. He only agrees to take on the dragon when the child offers him limitless metal for life - he's a surprisingly unaltruistic hero. And he goes into the fire three times. but he spends the rest of his life aimlessly chewing metal (until the events of the not-as-good but still cool Iron Woman, at least). The Iron Man seems to me the one with the problems, although admittedly he's not trying to destroy earth.

But this brings me to my next point. It's a lazy and dull idea, sure, but I think The Iron Man is an allegory. The Iron Man=Ted. Metal=poetry. Farmers=critics. Space-bat-angel-dragon (controversial, this)= Sylvia. The reason is this. The sbad is originally a star spirit meant to sing beautiful songs to the universe (ie to write lovely poetry). Through the ghastliness of earth it ends up with a mass of serious problems (somewhere in the letters he refers to the damage she would do to people who loved her); and the Iron Man defeats it ("...the way I caused Sylvia to suffer..."p218) by fire, making it his slave but freeing it to resume its original function (ie in death she becomes the poet she was going to be). I guess the allegory breaks down here...

I can hear my dear readers ask why I am spending my life thinking about this crap. The main reason is that I have taught the damn book about a million times to primary children so it's kind of stuck in my head.

Anyhow, as a parting shot: I still think Ted Hughes is an underrated poet, whose reputation will grow as time goes on. He really was one in a million. As was Sylvia Plath. No doubt the controversial Graham Hancock would claim Ted Hughes as one of the 2% of the population who can experience shamanic-type visions without the aid of fasting or drugs...perhaps he was. It says a lot that when he died I remember the Torygraph writing, "at the tragically early age of 68". With someone like him, only a lifespan of 150+ would have seemed enough.

Happier Christmas?

I hope, dear reader, you have had (are having) are finer Christmas than your drummer. I've spent 48 hours in bed as a result of some kind of ghastly vomiting bug and am only just feeling better today. Reading about DK's Xmas breakfasts and copious dinner only makes me feel even more annoyed.

Consequently I haven't seen Doctor Who yet, but I gather it was viewed by 12.2million. That's the highest individual rating since 1979 (City of Death part 4 I think) and it's still only the overnights. We can expect the final figure (ie once the likes of me have watched it) to top 13 million. For someone who remembers 1989's parade of 3 and 4 million figures, this is just bliss.

Actually, apropos my illness, I wonder if I haven't been reading too much Susan Howatch and have come down with a terrible spiritual crisis for which I have been leaving hints and guesses for any budding spiritual director to ride to my assistance with...maybe not. Red cabbage it was, then.

Lord of the Files

Arsey stood before the desk, and saw the late afternoon winter sun strike off its polished exterior like a revelation, as if he were a religious figure of importance.

"Come on, Phil," he said nervously, twitching his water-resistant watch, "you know who did the work on the Health and Safety Policy, you know I went to the H&S: Towards a Happier, Safer Future courses."

Phil was unmoved and remained behind the desk, his face impassive as he looked at his monitor. It seemed to be tanning him.

"Phil," implored Arsey.

"Shut up, Arsey and fuck off out of my office."

"But I've made the appointment, I've been through HR, I've had it in the diary for weeks-"

"Fuck off."

"I wrote the policy, Phil, and now you're just going to present it to the board like it was yours." Arsey's sweat was becoming intolerable. He rose from his chair leaving a thong-shaped streak of arse-sweat on the leather seat. He tried to wipe it with one of Phil's tissues, but Phil just laughed, still encased by the document he was adapting.

"I said, fuck off. I've got the lever arch file," and he tapped the buff coloured folder on the desk. "Besides, the board elected me CEO and I write the policies and I take responsibility and I take the fucking credit. Now get out and write me that policy on diversity that was due last week."

"Come on, Phil, you know I haven't had time. I've been at the diversity seminars and I spent three days last week at the Appropriate Language course. By the way you can't tell a subordinate to fuck off. It's-"

"Fuck off." Phil stood up, and took the lever arch file off the desk.

"It's not right, it's harassment and it references hundreds of years of oppression by the dominant hierarchy and-"

"Fuck off, Arsey, and get the policy written before I fire you for being a twat."

Arsey's perspiration dripped down his face and he felt the late, global-warming flies inch towards his bounty of stale and salt-heavy sweat.

"Actually, twat is an offensive term of-" he felt the kick of Phil's Doc Marten's in his luxuriantly padded arse, "unless you were using it to reclaim it for-" bang went another kick, on another cheek, like an atom bomb. "And if you weren't, I could sue you for-"

And the door closed, and another policy was done; and all Phil could think as he slunk back into his leather chair was: Jesus these guys are wankers.

A Unique Experiment

As an expert in mind altering substances, as is the birthright of all human beings (c Graham Hancock), I was tonight privileged to be asked to test a little known narcotic, which, as I am told, goes by the name of "Stella Artois". I was asked, by a Mr C Smith*, if I could report my experiences to the world of my intake of this substance.

The first effect I noticed was upon my wallet. It immediately began to feel lighter on the pronounciation of the sacred words: "Pint of Stella, please". I believe that sometimes Stella-shamans are known simply to point to the appopriate "pump" (clearly this term derives from long forgotten methods of deriving alcohol) to obtain their Stella. I left the "bar" with my wallet lighter by the sacred "two-ninety"; I have been assured that this may be, as appropriate, "two-ninety-five" or, in certain areas, "three-ten".

Having had my wallet lightened by such an amount I sat down to taste it. It was cold, light, honey-ish (from inferior bees, perhaps) and of a golden, rich-piss colour.

Immediately upon drinking my tensions evaporated and I was enabled to read the ancient document known as "The Times" (I have on previous occasions sampled "The Daily Telegraph", but I have never dared to approach either "The Guardian" or "The Daily Mail" - I have been told that this latter can have a serious, even permanent effect upon the unwary experimenter).

I soon began to notice that the piss-poor music I had ignored upon my entry assumed a more powerful aspect: "Rihanna" and "The Hoosiers" sounded, not like cheap-standard EMI toss, but like fellow shamans, on their own, private journeys into the recesses of the human psyche. "Stop The Cavalry" by Jona Lewie, as referenced previously by this blog, occasioned a tear after a mere 1 pint of Stella.

The pint, incidentally, is a long held measure of this drug. It is thought by some that it is "just right". My own researches suggest that it may have been designed by our ancient ancestors to facilitate a key marking of psycho-active quantities AND bladder concentration. Could the human bladder have emerged into full evolutionary form at the same time as the brain AND tongue, around 40 000 years ago? As I sipped the amber liquid, I doubted it. More on this later.

After one pint, I enjoyed "The Times", though I found myself "tutting" at what are known as "PC gone mad" stories. I had heard that reactionary tendencies are a frequent side effect of Stella, but I was unprepared for that fact that these are surely not just the manufactured effects of a drug, but are windows into truth. What I experienced here, of authoritarian bastards masking their controlling impulses with a veneer of "respect", "fairness", or "tolerance", is, I believe, a portal into humanity's ancient origins.

After two pints, nothing more had occurred, though I needed more of what are known as "crisps". These curious beings jump and dance around one's mouth, releasing the inhibitions against one's desire for more Stella, and so they are a crucial part of the experience. Stella-shamans are known to match each pint of Stella to a packet of crisps. Needless to say, I tried to keep up!

After three, something curious occurred. The world began, not to spin, but to dance: a slow, ethereal, lovely dance. My pasts began to swim into view with every sound I heard; my every utterance bathed in genius and my own prejudices assumed the status of unimpeachable fact. It was quite extraordinary. I can only compare this state to a vicarious life, such as those who live through celebrity.

At the same time, I should report, I noticed an upswing in aggression: towards leftwingers, bastards, tossers, fuckwits and arseholes. Twats also. Dickheads, perhaps not so. My inclination was not to kill or maim them, but merely, should I come into contact with any of these groups, to confront them and perhaps disabuse them of their peremptory notions of human existence.

Finally, I ended my session after four pints, owing to an absence of "money" and an increase of shame at the concept of attempting to pay for booze by "card".

At this point, when my body was well enough to walk, and my mind well enough for me to consider all of my most shameful episodes without fear of a panic attack, it was time to go.

And, by a staggering coincidence, it was time for a piss.

Could this be chance? I don't think so. Stella taps into the recesses of the human mind, gives us access to areas of our life we had forgotten, and brings us towards harmony with painful or difficult pasts. Such, as I have said, is our birthright as human beings. Just like those pioneers, a mere 25 years ago who walked into pubs and had the courage, the sheer audacity, to ask for "a pint of Stella, please". Well done to them. We all raise our glasses. We are all Stella drinkers now.

ps. I had heard of the "hangover" -luckily, it seems, I have avoided this! By another staggering coincidence of nature, 4 or 5 pints of Stella necessitate only one piss and no hangover! More evidence of the infinite bounty of this psychoactive compound.


* Mr C Smith: name invented, to protect the guilty.

Bastards

There is less daylight today than ever before; or so I am told.

So what do the bastard birds do?

The fuckwits start up at 5am, as if they're chanting to Thor or whatever damnfool deity they worship at this time of year (er...). total buggers. There's fuck all light, so they start singing like it's May.

Nice one, twats.

What's Christmas good for then?

Only one thing excites me about Christmas-the-secular-festival and it is this.

dum-de-dum-dum-de-dum-dum-de-dum-woooo--eeeeeeeee-ooooww

Can you guess what it is?

Ever Fallen in Love with Someone You Shouldn't Have?

No. Nor have I, obviously. Ca va sans dire.

Actually it used to happen distressingly frequently, back in the mists of time; I eventually figured out (when I fell in love properly, and could distinguish the difference) that it was a kind of coping mechanism: faced with situations or problems I was not keen to dwell on my brain seemed to trip a switch and start obsessing about someone, always wonderful and always inaccessible, instead of focusing on the issues at hand and dealing with them. So I learned that my pysche is essentially cowardly, sneaky, and romantic. I mean was. What a ghastly mixture. At 23 I worked out that this facility for love was also a brilliant way of achieving regression hypnosis: I could live as a 13 year old again (I mean 13 year olds of my shy disposition and slightly more restrained generation): not eating, not sleeping, not concentrating on anything except her. Incidentally as a genuine 13 year old when I did this many of my classmates took this her to be Mrs Thatcher, but this was not the case (my dad, on the other hand...). I always chose the most horrendously inappropriate people for the objects of desire, which continued into my twenties, although then it was the same person for a couple of years. But they would be all, for however long it took...for whatever was really bothering me to die down or be properly repressed. Only once did I confess my neurotic-love to its object, and the stakes were not high so it didn't matter: later on the stakes were infinitely high and I derived even more delicious, self-flagellating lovesickness from them.

Now that I come to write this stuff down it makes me think more of the idea of inaccessible women, and their pivotal roles in art and literature (Beatrice?)...but it's probably best not to dwell on that for too long, if at all. It also makes me think more about that awful, slimy creature, myself, but not for too long.

I don't write any of this thinking it's unique or unusual, btw. Just because it came to me in a dream, one of those odd ones that leave you slightly out of kilter for the whole day.

And I had been reading about fairy circles, alternate dimensions and psychoactive drugs that evening.

Lucid Dreaming

Disturbed night, strong winds blowing against loose lead flashing and through suburban Lleylandii. Drifting in and out of sleep. Falling down into a vortex of dull colours - "Hey, I'm dreaming, I know I'm dreaming! That means I can have sex with-". vortex disappears down a plughole, as awake as possible in the darkness.

Proof, not only of the existence of God, but specifically of a Catholic God of the old school.

Appearance at Norm's

Norm has added a cricket memory of mine to his excellent series and if you so choose, you can read it here.

Tone-Deaf

God my last post was wishy washy and dull and boring. It's bloody hard to get the tone of this blogging thing right. You might have noticed that I am trying to tone down the swearing but all that comes out is fucking pathetic slightly old and wilted petal type writing.

Fuck the government and fuck their stupid arse-aching attempts to control our lives with piss-easy targets that all their chums in the lefty bloody academies and animal rights arsehole groups and socialist working-class-people-are-too-thick-to-eat-properly brigades applaud with media-hugging thunderous-fart talk. Fuck them.


Well, it feels better, but has it achieved anything?

And I'm not drunk, by the way, check the times on the posts. I'm not such a lightweight that I can go to the pub AND lose all sense of reason in just 10 minutes. I need to be sober to lose my reason.

End Bacon Now

Well, this is the message of the experts as any fule no by now. And, as Anita Anand said to a guest on last night's Drive show on Radio 5, "who are you to argue with peer reviewed science?". I presume the words "Sokal" and "hoax" mean little to her, but I'll defer to her point nonetheless.

The question is, apart from the simple "ok then" or "fuck off", what does one do? When I heard the news I did experience a moment of genuine panic and I can't help but think that this is partly the aim of such studies, however much they bleat about it actually being a good thing "because it helps us control our lives" or whatever. But while some people will, others, like myself, will continue to manage the risks and try to be careful with our diet.

The facts being "known" however, and I know DK has done a fine job of casting doubt on them, the _other_ question is - do I deserve medical treatment, should it become necessary, for refusing to follow the peer reviewed advice? Should I be regarded as a fool? I can't help thinking that this will happen, sooner or later, but, more, (oddly enough), food and drink we will expect people to control thoroughly but their sex lives we will not. No one, as far as I know, has suggested that people have less sex due to the risks, or that people should not receive treatment for sex-related conditions.

Why are we becoming collectively neurotic about food, obsessed with finger-pointing and threats of losing basic civil rights through it; but seem not to think that people can control what happens to them by having less sex?

I'm going down the pub, despite being exhorted to drink little or no alcohol. I won't be causing any fights, but I suppose I might fall over or something.

I probably won't come up with answers to my questions, but I might think about them a bit more.

Guilty

Back from my school trip. Normandy is one of my favourite places and the weather was stunning: cold and bright with the mist trotting over the gentle valleys each morning. It was, as usual, a fairly exhausting process but I find the Bayeux Tapestry gets more stunning each time I see it, with more ambiguities, more political comment, and more breathtaking action sequences. It helped that the place was empty so for once we could see from a distance, where the cavalry charge sequences look almost cinematic. Some of my charges found pictures of men with their knobs out which I hadn't noticed and was unable to explain unless it was Adam.

I feel as though I need to apologise again to my blogpals for non-appearance at their sites recently. It really is difficult to visit them as often as I'd like because of my dial up and also I'm online a lot less than before, owing to work and a slightly confused home situation (ie I'm in a couple of places). However, I am going to try more to get round.

The title of the post refers really to Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which I've just finished and which I found less satisfying than his other novels. At times it cannot decide whether it is a murder mystery, a satire or an exploration of consciousness and it ends up being not quite any of them. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it: there is the detail which is characteristic of his work, though it's toned down a bit; there is the Adrian Mole like narrator and the enjoyable hints that the entire thing is made up from much later on (the anachronisms which occasionally creep in, usually from the mouths of other characters). You also sense an author having a lot of fun and letting himself go, whereas his other books feel tightly controlled (especially Human Traces). It's worth a read but you might finish it with a "meh".

Literary Joke

Apologies for the light posting, the return to work has taken me by surprise somewhat, and I'm increasingly finding my antediluvian dial up connection simply gives up on many fellow BP blogs, especially, darn it, James's.

It'll continue to be light for the forseeable as I'm off to Normandy on a school trip.

So here's a quick gag I saw in the Torygraph last weekend: a letter, dated April 1959, from Ted Hughes to TS Eliot: "Dear Mr Eliot...I hope you are well and enjoying April."

How I laughed.

The Origin of Laws

Interesting 5 Live debate on the Eu Constitution/Treaty today, the usual Eu-philes calling everyone else "bigoted/xenophobes/little Englanders" and Mark Mardell intervening only to make pro-EU points, but what interested me was this. One caller pointed out that EU law is framed by the Commission,after secret or hidden negotiations and reviewed by the parliament, but ultimate authority rests with the commission, unelected. Recently of course an EU commissioner graciously decided to allow Britain to continue to use imperial units without threat of crminial prosecution. I'm not commenting on the truth of all this, by the way.

Victoria Derbyshire challenged the caller by saying: "If it's a good law, does it matter where it comes from?" and the caller did answer her, but it struck me that for the first time to my knowledge someone openly questioned whether or not law makers should be elected, accountable, removable, and their laws open to repeal. Her argument rested on the philosophy of a given law - is it right? Do I agree with it? Does it satisfy my sense of justice or ethics - and the concept of a lawmaker deriving their legitimacy from the consent of the governed was not mentioned.

It's seemed clear to me for a while that we're moving towards a kind of technocracy, where "experts" really do know better than everyone else because the modern world is so complex; but it's rare for someone so openly to challenge the basic tenet of democracy and then to replace it with something resembling this: If the modern world really is unfathomably complex, and if some people really do understand it better than us, then they do have a greater right to frame it than we do. Our view, or vote, is largely irrelevant. Moreover, if a principle is right, or "good", then it should be enacted, regardless of the wishes of the people.

Am I then an old reactionary in thinking that laws which affect my day to day life: which measurements I am to use; how long I can work; what I should think about certain events or people; should be enacted, if at all, by a government elected by the people with a mandate for that, and that they should be able to be repealed when they fall out of favour or outlive their usefulness and the lawmakers removed?

I'm not saying that our current system does this well, but it is at least supposed to, and we can scrutinise it and hold it to account. I don't see the EU commission held to account much at all, and it depresses me that intelligent people want less public involvement in law-making rather than more.

Then again, everything depresses me so that's largely irrelevant.

Animals are Panicking

I can't readily explain what it was that brought me back to blogging, unless it were boredom: it certainly was not a desire to explain or expand upon my political obsessions, though I intend to do that too. My assumptions are of a simple class, obtained through Freudian simplicities and back pedalled reasoning.

Did I ever discuss my favourite types of pornography?


Well, time and place my friends, time and place.

My political views are easy and reactionary: I don't see why government deigns to give me rights and why I should be grateful. I _do_ see why there is no other source of rights, though we've transmuted a post-holocaust set of aspirations via Ernest Bevin into a Platonic reality of some faintly sinister kind.

Nathelees, blogging is no reason for expounding on these ignorances, nor are ignorances reasons for blogging. No. The bloghaters, whisper if you dare, are right. We blog because we are frustrated and because we want to hear what we want to hear. Yes, alright, sometimes I read the Intelligent Person's Guardian (Matt, Stumbling &c) but mostly I read the nearest equivalents to the Mail, the Torygraph and the Times (though it's dispiritingly socially liberal these days, even unto its tv reviews helpfully pointing out which tv shows show homophobia and which don't, as if anyone reads a tv review to be told what to think about human sexuality).

By the way can I just take this opportunity to tell ALL tv reviewers the following:

I don't give a fuck for your views on abortion, Mrs Thatcher, Eisenhower, President Reagan, gay rights, religion, atheism, stem cell research, the internet, blogging, corruption, sex or murder.

You are hired to discuss whether x programme is good or not. Kindly stick to this remit or fuck off. We are not so utterly ignorant that we need political point scoring in the middle of so-called professional media criticism. So fuck off. Or give me your job.


Then again, if they did, you'd get stuff like this:

Castrovalva is a pointed satire on Thatcher's Britain (c all newspapers): the characters (who, interestingly, barely seem to know who they are in this nightmarescape) stumble over invented traditions, which appear to give a conservative gloss to reality but which in fact expose the hollow and false nature of conservative fantasies....


Er...no, actually, hang on. More like this:

Logopolis suggests that technology and "progress" (c Greenpeace) is but a fig leaf for universe threatening desires. It is wholly ironic that Logopolis, the mental maths paradise, resorts to flawed and, if you observe closely, cobwebbed technology to save the universe. The implication is clear. Only the natural mind is acceptable. Technology (ie carbon footprinted wasteage) is harmful.

Erm..no that's still not right. Wait a minute...er....


Um. Anyway.

By the way, academic twats, research does not "show" anything. It might "suggest" conclusions, but it does not "show" them. I learned that in GCSE History. Shame that graduate teachers are bedazzled by self interested twats waving bits of paper and telling them that x study of 4 children in Luton "shows" that y obtains when it might well do, but we just don't, actually, know for certain.

Huh. So much for blogging as a way of expanding the mind.

Another Industrial Ugly Morning

...but on the other hand, as Matt has recently revealed, Doctor Who's short term future is safe after a fair amount of speculation about RTD and David Tennant.

We get series 4 in Spring 08, 3 feature length specials during 09 (IMO to allow David Tennant to mourn Yorick) and series 5 in spring 10. Over at Outpost Gallifrey a lot of people do seem to think that DT will return for series 5 having committed to the 3 specials.

However, RTD is apparently quoted in The Sun as saying series 3 was "too dark" - whereas I thought its tone was mostly perfect.

Hooray for Doctor Who and its infinite variety and adaptability.

That Book By Nabokov

I knew that would get your attention.

Yes, alright, TD is not dead. What happened was this: after reading yet another Guradian editorial about how all is well in our glorious isle, and how being appalled at murder is moral panic and hence a bad thing; and one in the North London Daily Mail* about how climate change will take our children from their playgrounds, the tin drummer fell as dead, on the ground: he was then buried but was not in fact dead. Owing to a clause in his will stating that an emergency button had to be put into his coffin he was rescued after only 30 days of eating wood and maggots. And breathing...well, we'll leave that for now.

However.

His health is poor, so he advises his readers not to expect too much (ie regular, well written, knowledgeable posts).

For now I will say only this.

The TOTP2 retrospective on The Police this week was fucking brilliant. As were they. The pop group I mean. I know the real police also need a retrospective, but we're not going to see that any time soon. I mourn, as does everyone else, the death of Tony Wilson (pbuh) but I disagree with him about The Police. They did not piggyback New Wave: they were clever, stylish, intelligent and cool.

And they referenced Nabokov.

Evidence of dumbing down can be seen by the fact that the 1980 original release had the above quoted line; whereas the 1986 re-recording said: "that famous book by Nabokov" as if it needed some explanation.

Anyhoo. I love music with hinterland; and the lyrics of The Police have hinterland. As the retrospective showed, Sting's solo stuff verges too much into the lick-my-own-ass territory: I wonder if Stewart Copeland brought him down to earth occasionally.

Hey ho. Look, I'm working near as dammit full time now so don't expect anything good. This country is, though, more of a shit hole than it was when I "died", complete with even more arrogant lefties telling us that everything is fine and that to believe that murder cannot be tolerated in a civilised society is "right wing". Hooray. Some of my best friends are right wingers. Andrei Kanchelskis for one.** [rest of paragraph edited to remove drivel]

anyway. Some of you might be under the impression that I outed myself as "[edited and obscured on legal advice]". Au contraire. He was my ghost, and himself died unexpectedly after a lethal cocktail of The Daily Mail, eight pints of Stella, four packets of plain crisps, and the sight of a local youth spitting into the street. Tragic, really.

*The Independent. In case you didn't know.

**I'm guessing at this. I liked him anyway.

Update:It seems the break has not stopped my rubbish writing! Never mind. It's too late to do anything about that anyway. Still, it's not an inevitable condition for everyone. If you don't want rubbish writing, consider an online degree in English composition. Also, ditch the Stellas. They do for your writing what they do for your driving.