In my home town there are at least 25,000 people, many of whom all share the surname Cargill. There’s Bill Cargill who runs the ice-cream parlour; he only sells vanilla ice-cream and thinks that white people are just all-right! Johnson Cargill is our local policeman and he has a zero tolerance policy on crime. Only last week he beat an elderly woman to death with a salmon because she drank bacon juice from an old boot on a Sunday.
Okay, I’m kind of paraphrasing from the Blazing Saddles-esque train of thought coursing through my mind. But as we delve back inside the pages of Arbroath’s local paper, you’ll maybe notice that my town is quite close to being my own little Rock Ridge.
Even though the town of Arbroath is still anxiously behind in the pursuit of scientific and social enlightenment – just the four ‘witches’ executed this week by the by – let it not be said that the good people at the local paper are bereft of a sense of humour. Embedded into an article on a local couple’s 54 hour alternative journey following the grounding of all planes due to the ash cloud of sensationalism; an advertisement for luxury coach travel. Brilliant!
In more pressing news, an apparently effective solution has finally been found for the enduring seagull problem in the town. This is great news as reports from home suggest that the previous tactic of engaging in constant man-seagull circle of deaths was proving to be time consuming and utterly insane.
Apparently, the method of choice is to scare the birds away. This of course will not involve the kind of abusive, racist and unacceptable social behaviour employed by the locals to scare away unwanted (i.e. foreign) people. Instead, the town council have employed the services of a team of hawks to drive away the birds.
Ultimately, the aim is to stop the birds from breeding, thus reducing the population dramatically over the next five years. Previous attempts involved getting the seagulls when they were young and telling them how having children early would ruin their lives. The town elders also insisted that welfare officials arranged weekly sexual awareness appointments for all seagulls.
The plans initially fell by the wayside when it was determined that the seagulls spoke worse English than ‘the Polish’ and were fully abandoned when the gymslips complained about the shameless seagull shagging sessions that had begun to characterise a trip to the family planning clinic.
For those of you who wish to support local opine, the paper’s website carries a poll asking whether employing falcons and hawks can help reduce the gull population in the town. Options include the traditional ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘let’s just put our faith in God and have a good old pray’.
The adjoining comment box also offers the opportunity to really sink your teeth into this issue. At present, the dominating comments on the issue are ‘Jimbo Cargill…whaur’s ma fuckin’ maintnins munny’ and ‘Britney Cargill hiz nae tits!’
Finally, and I feel I should tread carefully here if you pardon the pun, Johnston Ralston (really…) writes that there have been further developments in the sewage leak story carried by the newspaper in recent weeks. My favourite thing about Ralston’s story is his potentially accidental revelation that all is not harmonious amongst the staff at Herald Towers…
Hoping to uncover some ‘straight from the horses mouth’ journalistic gold from the visiting inspectors of Scottish Water, Ralston bitterly states that ‘unfortunately, by the time our reporter got to the scene the Scottish Water workmen had already left’. Sadly, the paparazzi potential of our local hacks is massively hindered by the fact that almost all of them are either clinically dead or have long since forgotten that they are in fact journalists.
Like most people, I don’t want to detect bitter undercurrents of staff tension in my local leader. I want to read about damaged farming equipment crushing a cow or Maureen and Alec celebrating 60 years of wedded bliss (read… misery). You missed the scoop Ralston… Take it like a man…
You missed the scoop.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
"Dawkins May Well Be Supremely Fucked" say Cardinals
In the week that Richard Dawkins mooted the arrest and probably the execution of Pope Benedict XVI, does anyone now find it somewhat alarming that the United Kingdom is presently burdened under a static plague of volcanic ash?
‘No… Too Jewish!...’ I hear you say…
Perhaps it is, but in these days of irreligious headlines like ‘Anarchic Kids Knife Blind Priest’ (Daily Telegraph), ‘Blind Priest Defending Orphaned Puppies Killed by Immigrants’ (Daily Mail) and ‘Massive Tits!’ (The Sun), do increasing incidences of superbugs (Daily Mail), immigrant crime (Daily Mail), teenage anarchy (Daily Mail) and ‘Leaking Plastic Tits!’ (The Sun) suggest a need to re-evaluate whether we’ve backed the right horse God-wise?
Many people would argue that we should get in with God whilst we still have the chance. As allies go, he’s second only to the Chinese in terms of power and resources. However, Tony Blair did of course employ God as a consultant on the war on/in/with Iraq and he was ultimately guided down some pretty dark avenues.
I’m personally not much of a gambler but even I know that the likelihood of God lining my own path to Heaven with gold is pretty slim. Therefore, I like the odds attached to a life of secular agnosticism. If he drops by for a cup of Hong Kong’s finest tea (aka the world’s worst) and some judgement of course, I’ll rue omnipotence and my lack of haste in removing this post from the web.
For now though, I’m pretty willing to give Dawkins idea some cautious backing. Having lived of late in a society where the mobile phone is God and its contract His commandment, I’d be intrigued to see what the consequences of Papal imprisonment might be.
Although our media are persistent in approaching the RC Church for their view on even the slightest of social quandaries as they arise, something tells me that there will be no anti-cartoonist style euphoria directed at the sentencing official and that incidences of leaking breast implants will increase no further than present risk estimation would suggest.
However, just to be on the safe side, I thought it was important to research which prison would be best suited to Papal porridge in case we need him to put a good word in should God protest our treatment of His man on the ground.
For food, nothing can beat Peterhead prison which is located in a town famous for landing most of the fish (that hasn’t been ‘stolen’ by the Spanish of course) in the North Sea. However, the prison is also famous for its population of paedophiles who are something of a societal subset that he may be looking to distance himself from...
Peterhead is out…
A little further down the road, he may find Craiginches prison in Aberdeen a little more accommodating. This prison is famously despised amongst locals for possessing more PlayStation’s than the homes of most of those it incarcerates and for its wonderful penthouse cityscape views. However, in his advancing asthmatic years I’d imagine he’d want something a little less archaic; Craiginches is dustier than the Queen’s cludge.
Craiginches is out…
But to be brutally honest, if the Pope was to be sent down he’d probably end up in Goodfellas style prison with only the finest foods served to him in the company of the great and good of the convicted Catholic community. “Hey! Cawdinal Moyfy! Don’ you go puttin’ too much towmaytos in de sawce see!” he’d insist. The only drawback of course being that his cocaine-addled wife would have to survive on the outside with no money from Big Paulie until he’s released.
“He’s what?.... Oh great!... Nothing to lose!...”
So go for it Richard Dawkins you mad bastard. If anything, it would act as a barometer on the reactionary state of our wonderfully skewed society. And if all else fails, the rest of us can blame everything from the impending demise of the global aeronautical industry to the leakiest of bursting boobies squarely on you!
謝謝
Friday, April 16, 2010
How Do You Turn A Duck Into A Soul Singer?...
How do you turn a duck into a soul singer? Oh wait… Hang on… A general election has just been called. Not a column inch can be spared for big tits and wheelchair bound blind babies. It’s time for the hacks to scythe apart the souls of the damned as the latest lunatics attempt to seize control of the asylum.
Normally in the UK, people don’t really give a shit about politics or politicians unless the Mirror and the Sun decide that they need to. To illustrate, a recent by-election in Glasgow East was decided by a naked swimathon after the four people who were registered to vote were found to be either clinically dead or making love for the right price at the pleasure of Her Majesty.
For those who do legitimately exist and opt to vote, this sacred right is often seen as something of a pointless lark. My friend Jodie once voted off the back of a Keith Richards-esque bender for the Pensioners Alliance despite being only 20 years old. I myself voted for the Scottish Conservatives when I first became eligible to vote; tantamount to trying to get a bomb-toting Asian paedophile a job in the crèche at the head office of the Daily Mail.
To address this pitiful apathy towards British politics, the fair, reasoned and loveable rogues at ITV finally managed to convince the major parties of the validity of an American style policy debate; much to the chagrin of the hundreds of other small to medium sized parties in our pluralist system all pissing in the wind this election at great cost to themselves and others.
The tens of tens of UKIP voters had to be restrained; nothing to do with the matter in hand they were just inconsolable upon finding out that the debate was being presented by Alastair Stewart and not his affable former 15 to 1 host namesake William. Fourteen catheters and three of their hard-working, low paid and undervalued legally migrant companion carers were injured in the ensuing carnage.
Clegg, Brown and Blair (nee Cameron) fielded a selection of questions from an apparently representative audience under the guidance of serially convicted drink driver (take that Mail on Sunday) Stewart. All three successfully managed to encourage us of the incompetency of the opposing parties with Clegg making particularly masterful use of his trump card; that of simply not as yet being remotely associated with the Conservative or Labour Party.
I was far from impressed with Clegg to be brutally frank. To be fair, when he talked policy he was in the zone. He was forcing home his well versed manifesto with greater gusto than any recent Lib Dem leader in memory; sorry Charlie.
This was a man aware that he had little to lose in settling at potentially worst for a pivotal role in a coalition government. Nonetheless, I found his overly trained demeanour quite disturbing and his insistence on playing the ‘rational alternative’ card throughout deeply unsettling. The last time I opted to engage something because it was the lesser of alternative evils I ended up working in Hong Kong for a warm and attractive little company called Chatteris.
For me, the ‘Faux-Pas of the Evening Award’ definitely goes to Blair (nee Cameron). Apparently, he knows a black person from ‘Daahn Saahf’ who has not always lived in the UK but supports his hardline approach to immigration. Nice one Tony (sorry, Dave) but I believe that is like saying your mother was once a barrister and her experience alone should be aired to justify your hardline approach on crime. Oh wait… You said that too…
Surprisingly, not least to myself, I found I was most impressed by the performance of Gordon Brown. When you look through his Yeltsin-like tendency to suggest he may not survive another part-term of office, he gave a pretty assured performance.
Brown comfortably portrayed Cameron’s party as impulsive renegades in painting their policies as reactionary, ill-thought and untenable whilst caressing Clegg’s ego and agenda in the face of an ever plausibly hung parliament. I thought it was also either exceptionally foolish or extremely clever of him to paint a pretty grim picture of the coming years regardless of who is in charge.
As far as who I actually want to vote for in the election? Well that is something of a redundant point as I will not actually exercise the sacred right on May 6th. The last person I was even remotely tempted to vote for was that great debater William Hague. I am sure Hague contributed greatly to the remarkably accelerated greying of Blair’s temples and I think it’s a shame he has never yet had the opportunity to prove himself in the top role. Oh well…
There’s always Boris…
Normally in the UK, people don’t really give a shit about politics or politicians unless the Mirror and the Sun decide that they need to. To illustrate, a recent by-election in Glasgow East was decided by a naked swimathon after the four people who were registered to vote were found to be either clinically dead or making love for the right price at the pleasure of Her Majesty.
For those who do legitimately exist and opt to vote, this sacred right is often seen as something of a pointless lark. My friend Jodie once voted off the back of a Keith Richards-esque bender for the Pensioners Alliance despite being only 20 years old. I myself voted for the Scottish Conservatives when I first became eligible to vote; tantamount to trying to get a bomb-toting Asian paedophile a job in the crèche at the head office of the Daily Mail.
To address this pitiful apathy towards British politics, the fair, reasoned and loveable rogues at ITV finally managed to convince the major parties of the validity of an American style policy debate; much to the chagrin of the hundreds of other small to medium sized parties in our pluralist system all pissing in the wind this election at great cost to themselves and others.
The tens of tens of UKIP voters had to be restrained; nothing to do with the matter in hand they were just inconsolable upon finding out that the debate was being presented by Alastair Stewart and not his affable former 15 to 1 host namesake William. Fourteen catheters and three of their hard-working, low paid and undervalued legally migrant companion carers were injured in the ensuing carnage.
Clegg, Brown and Blair (nee Cameron) fielded a selection of questions from an apparently representative audience under the guidance of serially convicted drink driver (take that Mail on Sunday) Stewart. All three successfully managed to encourage us of the incompetency of the opposing parties with Clegg making particularly masterful use of his trump card; that of simply not as yet being remotely associated with the Conservative or Labour Party.
I was far from impressed with Clegg to be brutally frank. To be fair, when he talked policy he was in the zone. He was forcing home his well versed manifesto with greater gusto than any recent Lib Dem leader in memory; sorry Charlie.
This was a man aware that he had little to lose in settling at potentially worst for a pivotal role in a coalition government. Nonetheless, I found his overly trained demeanour quite disturbing and his insistence on playing the ‘rational alternative’ card throughout deeply unsettling. The last time I opted to engage something because it was the lesser of alternative evils I ended up working in Hong Kong for a warm and attractive little company called Chatteris.
For me, the ‘Faux-Pas of the Evening Award’ definitely goes to Blair (nee Cameron). Apparently, he knows a black person from ‘Daahn Saahf’ who has not always lived in the UK but supports his hardline approach to immigration. Nice one Tony (sorry, Dave) but I believe that is like saying your mother was once a barrister and her experience alone should be aired to justify your hardline approach on crime. Oh wait… You said that too…
Surprisingly, not least to myself, I found I was most impressed by the performance of Gordon Brown. When you look through his Yeltsin-like tendency to suggest he may not survive another part-term of office, he gave a pretty assured performance.
Brown comfortably portrayed Cameron’s party as impulsive renegades in painting their policies as reactionary, ill-thought and untenable whilst caressing Clegg’s ego and agenda in the face of an ever plausibly hung parliament. I thought it was also either exceptionally foolish or extremely clever of him to paint a pretty grim picture of the coming years regardless of who is in charge.
As far as who I actually want to vote for in the election? Well that is something of a redundant point as I will not actually exercise the sacred right on May 6th. The last person I was even remotely tempted to vote for was that great debater William Hague. I am sure Hague contributed greatly to the remarkably accelerated greying of Blair’s temples and I think it’s a shame he has never yet had the opportunity to prove himself in the top role. Oh well…
There’s always Boris…
Monday, April 12, 2010
I Wipe My Own Ass! (A Long Overdue Defence Of The Hong Kong Dog!)
Nothing tells me I’m going to have a good day today more than the sight of a Hong Kong person wiping shit from a dog’s arsehole. The smile it puts on my face will invariably last for the whole day and into the following morning when it happens all over again.
Such an act is of course only a small part of a much rehearsed ritual which involves laying newspaper so the discerning doggie doesn’t endure the disgrace of dropping blocks directly onto the pavement. Oh the humanity!
As in cities like Milan and (even more grotesquely so) Paris, most dogs in Hong Kong are simply humanized fashion accessories at best. Sai Kung, an area of outstanding natural beauty in Hong Kong, is transformed on Sundays into an area of outstanding human stupidity as carry-bag canines are paraded by their a la mode masters.
Whilst there, I witnessed one woman screaming at her dog in Cantonese for laying its scent on a bollard and then sniffing around it. I got the feeling if her human child was chewing on its own shit she wouldn’t have cared but for her prize poodle it was a different story.
The dog – obviously still working through the finer points of Cantonese intonations – assumed this to be an invitation to have a quick nibble at his non-existent long-chastised balls; I thought she was going to have an aneurysm.
If you ask me, taking your dog to a place which has been visited by around 1000 others of its species that day is like taking a mainland Chinese person to a property sale; it doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind!
I am of course aware that speaking to dogs in native human tongue and discouraging the ‘instinctive’ behaviours of our pets is typical in the United Kingdom as well. However, there are some cases here where things go too far. One day, I expect to see a Hong Kong dog being wheeled along apace in a pram cackling naively under a jangling mobile whilst the limp and bloodied remains of a three year old toddler tosses and tumbles along behind it strangled on a lead.
And you have to wonder whether the dog really aspires to that kind of ‘luxury’. It’s very hard to lick your itchy arsehole or pant for mere survival when you’re wrapped in 13.5 tog of stifling quilted misery. Then of course, if the cooking canine should overheat to the point of death, it suffers the embarrassment of showing up at doggie heaven in little pink booties and a pink Mohican. Hardly the best way to enter the afterlife now is it?
Now my grandmother’s dog Bart, a Heinz 57 varieties throwback to days when Dr. Moreau had it all together, would never put up with that shit. That pensionable pooch will celebrate its seventeenth birthday in October having battled the odds of the underdog since taking his very first breath.
Bart, who suffered the unfortunate fate of being born about a month after our parents had Sky One installed in the house, was most definitely the runt of a litter born to a lazy bitch. However, he battles on to this day in his dotage despite having all the bite of Ben Elton’s books, more crumbled bones than time team, the fluid retention skills of a drunken diabetic child and also despite trying to have sex with his own mother on three recorded occasions during his lifetime.
Bart outranks his Hong Kong brethren in being the undisputed master of his own shit. Even in lesser years, many dogs are already curling up in their baskets at night and wake to find an unexpected and equally curled up shit lying next to them. He’s an old pro though and by hook or by crook (usually by skitting his arsehole across the carpet to be honest) he retains his doggie dignity by cleaning his own derriere.
I reckon if you put a pair of booties on that grumpy little bastard he’d take his one remaining tooth and stick it in your fucking ankle!
Such an act is of course only a small part of a much rehearsed ritual which involves laying newspaper so the discerning doggie doesn’t endure the disgrace of dropping blocks directly onto the pavement. Oh the humanity!
As in cities like Milan and (even more grotesquely so) Paris, most dogs in Hong Kong are simply humanized fashion accessories at best. Sai Kung, an area of outstanding natural beauty in Hong Kong, is transformed on Sundays into an area of outstanding human stupidity as carry-bag canines are paraded by their a la mode masters.
Whilst there, I witnessed one woman screaming at her dog in Cantonese for laying its scent on a bollard and then sniffing around it. I got the feeling if her human child was chewing on its own shit she wouldn’t have cared but for her prize poodle it was a different story.
The dog – obviously still working through the finer points of Cantonese intonations – assumed this to be an invitation to have a quick nibble at his non-existent long-chastised balls; I thought she was going to have an aneurysm.
If you ask me, taking your dog to a place which has been visited by around 1000 others of its species that day is like taking a mainland Chinese person to a property sale; it doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind!
I am of course aware that speaking to dogs in native human tongue and discouraging the ‘instinctive’ behaviours of our pets is typical in the United Kingdom as well. However, there are some cases here where things go too far. One day, I expect to see a Hong Kong dog being wheeled along apace in a pram cackling naively under a jangling mobile whilst the limp and bloodied remains of a three year old toddler tosses and tumbles along behind it strangled on a lead.
And you have to wonder whether the dog really aspires to that kind of ‘luxury’. It’s very hard to lick your itchy arsehole or pant for mere survival when you’re wrapped in 13.5 tog of stifling quilted misery. Then of course, if the cooking canine should overheat to the point of death, it suffers the embarrassment of showing up at doggie heaven in little pink booties and a pink Mohican. Hardly the best way to enter the afterlife now is it?
Now my grandmother’s dog Bart, a Heinz 57 varieties throwback to days when Dr. Moreau had it all together, would never put up with that shit. That pensionable pooch will celebrate its seventeenth birthday in October having battled the odds of the underdog since taking his very first breath.
Bart, who suffered the unfortunate fate of being born about a month after our parents had Sky One installed in the house, was most definitely the runt of a litter born to a lazy bitch. However, he battles on to this day in his dotage despite having all the bite of Ben Elton’s books, more crumbled bones than time team, the fluid retention skills of a drunken diabetic child and also despite trying to have sex with his own mother on three recorded occasions during his lifetime.
Bart outranks his Hong Kong brethren in being the undisputed master of his own shit. Even in lesser years, many dogs are already curling up in their baskets at night and wake to find an unexpected and equally curled up shit lying next to them. He’s an old pro though and by hook or by crook (usually by skitting his arsehole across the carpet to be honest) he retains his doggie dignity by cleaning his own derriere.
I reckon if you put a pair of booties on that grumpy little bastard he’d take his one remaining tooth and stick it in your fucking ankle!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
On The Fifth Day... God Distributed The Arbroath Herald!
I come from a small town called Arbroath. In my 18th year, I had the good fortune to leave the town and experience the slightly less (only slightly mind) backward and introverted city life of Aberdeen. From there, I feel I’ve moved on to experience quite a lot of the world and open my mind to lots of new experiences and challenges. I don’t want a medal for this; I just want to distance myself from my own personal Salem.
Nonetheless, my one weakness on the path to psychological and sociological rehabilitation is a fondness for keeping up to date with events in the town as illustrated by our local newspaper; The Arbroath Herald, Guide and Gazette. In my longest and most enthusiastic post yet, follow me as I take you on a hard-on inducing voyage of discovery…
In trivial pish news, buses are not running efficiently due to roadworks and sufficient numbers are pissed off to make this front page leader for the week! The council opted against altering the route and frequency of buses despite this causing widespread…oh for fuck sake! I can imagine the scene now. Some piss strewn old fart moaning because the buses just don’t run like they used to and demanding more from their free bus service!
It’s always the same where I’m from! As the only people who bother to vote, pensioners are solely responsible for whatever administration is in charge in the town! However, they only vote for people who pretend to give a shit about their dreary existence and so when the shit hits the fan nobody has any idea how to clean it up!
The poor drivers will be taking a world of said shit too! Apparently, his role in all of this is to physically lift his sprawling Dennis over the delayed traffic and drop it seamlessly at the bus stop. Again, what less would one expect from a free bus service?
Said driver will also be expected to take the entire brunt of peoples frustration that their problem free existence is being disturbed by something so phenomenally massive as roadworks. That poor guy will even be dealing with miserable twats who don’t normally use the bus but have taken it this week just for the drama. Some people actually quite liked Harold Shipman you know?
Before I suffer myocardial implosion, I must report on the weeks other news and it seems that the poor residents of Ladyloan are suffering from a double whammy of yob attacks and overflowing bins. Will their hardship and misery ever end?
Apparently, the yobbish attacks were confined to some flower pots which were lifted from the roadside and mercilessly dumped in the middle of the road. The nosey bastard who clearly liaised with the venerable publication to hammer out the finer points of the crisis noted that the police ‘arrived very quickly’ but the perpetrators had disappeared. I imagine somewhere in the dark recesses of publishing house, they are scraping the brains and mortar of a disillusioned young journalism apprentice from the walls and detaching the shotgun of liberty from the prayerful grasp of her rigormortic hands.
Especially if said individual has had to take the lead on the overflowing bins expose also. Apparently, the refuse disposal skills of some residents in the area are being called into question and the street is a veritable shithole of filthiness. I personally feel the bins add character and a certain cultural depth to the area but in the interests of journalistic naivety will keep that opinion to myself.
The article carries a tone of acceptability until we hit the unconscious root of the problem. Apparently, the residents with responsibility for said bins ‘do not speak much in the way of English’. Ever since our Eastern European friends came over to improve the town’s character, appeal and employment rate people have had their backs up. The ‘they come over here stealing our jobs’ brigade have been up in arms. Well, when I say up in arms I mean sitting pissed in their armchairs on unmerited disability allowance under a pretence that they’d work if they could. Indeed they do work; mainly on the side.
Our final sortie into the local life of that dreary shite pocket focuses on the grim news that at least two village libraries are to be sacrificed in the pursuit of reduced expenditure by the town council. Apparently, the council received only two written complaints about the issue from the librarians themselves. One librarian had written ‘fuk u’ whilst the other had clearly written a rather more together ‘fuk u and them’; a clear threat to both the council and those in neighbouring villages with an interest in empiricism.
Nonetheless, over fifty hand delivered potato print swastikas were delivered to the newspaper’s offices stamped on the back of spent packets of Lambert & Butler. Our friends at the Herald have taken this to represent a large-scale protest about the closure of the libraries and relegated ‘Bus station upgrade now underway’ to a mere three quarters of coverage on page two.
Sadly, this is a problem for outlying villages in most remote Scottish towns. Under-resourced libraries struggle to promote reading as a viable alternative to engaging in depraved acts with your one-legged cousins. This is coupled with the increasing popularity of the hideously painted mobile library; to get the image exactly imagine if Salvador Dali painted a giant version of your local Sunshine Bus. It is of course only popular as a target for local hooligans bored of toying with the immigrants, but in Arbroath that counts for something.
That’s all for this week folks. A quick check on the ‘family announcements’ – a new anti-complaint mechanism for those whose feelings get hurt when their dearly departed are mentioned in the births, marriages and deaths section – reveals that no former schoolmates have overdosed and died this week. I won’t pretend actually, like anyone who enthusiastically reads their local paper, that was the first thing I checked.
(There will be more from the Arbroath Herald in the coming weeks…)
Nonetheless, my one weakness on the path to psychological and sociological rehabilitation is a fondness for keeping up to date with events in the town as illustrated by our local newspaper; The Arbroath Herald, Guide and Gazette. In my longest and most enthusiastic post yet, follow me as I take you on a hard-on inducing voyage of discovery…
In trivial pish news, buses are not running efficiently due to roadworks and sufficient numbers are pissed off to make this front page leader for the week! The council opted against altering the route and frequency of buses despite this causing widespread…oh for fuck sake! I can imagine the scene now. Some piss strewn old fart moaning because the buses just don’t run like they used to and demanding more from their free bus service!
It’s always the same where I’m from! As the only people who bother to vote, pensioners are solely responsible for whatever administration is in charge in the town! However, they only vote for people who pretend to give a shit about their dreary existence and so when the shit hits the fan nobody has any idea how to clean it up!
The poor drivers will be taking a world of said shit too! Apparently, his role in all of this is to physically lift his sprawling Dennis over the delayed traffic and drop it seamlessly at the bus stop. Again, what less would one expect from a free bus service?
Said driver will also be expected to take the entire brunt of peoples frustration that their problem free existence is being disturbed by something so phenomenally massive as roadworks. That poor guy will even be dealing with miserable twats who don’t normally use the bus but have taken it this week just for the drama. Some people actually quite liked Harold Shipman you know?
Before I suffer myocardial implosion, I must report on the weeks other news and it seems that the poor residents of Ladyloan are suffering from a double whammy of yob attacks and overflowing bins. Will their hardship and misery ever end?
Apparently, the yobbish attacks were confined to some flower pots which were lifted from the roadside and mercilessly dumped in the middle of the road. The nosey bastard who clearly liaised with the venerable publication to hammer out the finer points of the crisis noted that the police ‘arrived very quickly’ but the perpetrators had disappeared. I imagine somewhere in the dark recesses of publishing house, they are scraping the brains and mortar of a disillusioned young journalism apprentice from the walls and detaching the shotgun of liberty from the prayerful grasp of her rigormortic hands.
Especially if said individual has had to take the lead on the overflowing bins expose also. Apparently, the refuse disposal skills of some residents in the area are being called into question and the street is a veritable shithole of filthiness. I personally feel the bins add character and a certain cultural depth to the area but in the interests of journalistic naivety will keep that opinion to myself.
The article carries a tone of acceptability until we hit the unconscious root of the problem. Apparently, the residents with responsibility for said bins ‘do not speak much in the way of English’. Ever since our Eastern European friends came over to improve the town’s character, appeal and employment rate people have had their backs up. The ‘they come over here stealing our jobs’ brigade have been up in arms. Well, when I say up in arms I mean sitting pissed in their armchairs on unmerited disability allowance under a pretence that they’d work if they could. Indeed they do work; mainly on the side.
Our final sortie into the local life of that dreary shite pocket focuses on the grim news that at least two village libraries are to be sacrificed in the pursuit of reduced expenditure by the town council. Apparently, the council received only two written complaints about the issue from the librarians themselves. One librarian had written ‘fuk u’ whilst the other had clearly written a rather more together ‘fuk u and them’; a clear threat to both the council and those in neighbouring villages with an interest in empiricism.
Nonetheless, over fifty hand delivered potato print swastikas were delivered to the newspaper’s offices stamped on the back of spent packets of Lambert & Butler. Our friends at the Herald have taken this to represent a large-scale protest about the closure of the libraries and relegated ‘Bus station upgrade now underway’ to a mere three quarters of coverage on page two.
Sadly, this is a problem for outlying villages in most remote Scottish towns. Under-resourced libraries struggle to promote reading as a viable alternative to engaging in depraved acts with your one-legged cousins. This is coupled with the increasing popularity of the hideously painted mobile library; to get the image exactly imagine if Salvador Dali painted a giant version of your local Sunshine Bus. It is of course only popular as a target for local hooligans bored of toying with the immigrants, but in Arbroath that counts for something.
That’s all for this week folks. A quick check on the ‘family announcements’ – a new anti-complaint mechanism for those whose feelings get hurt when their dearly departed are mentioned in the births, marriages and deaths section – reveals that no former schoolmates have overdosed and died this week. I won’t pretend actually, like anyone who enthusiastically reads their local paper, that was the first thing I checked.
(There will be more from the Arbroath Herald in the coming weeks…)
I Won! I Won! Now Where's The Fucking Bar?!
Keith Gough (58), a man with a name almost impossible to say correctly five times at pace, died of a heart attack last week. Five years ago Mr. Gough won £9million (HK$106m) on the UK National Lottery and happily toasted his new life in the national press with champagne and ceremony. However, that was where Mr. Gough’s troubles began.
Confronted with his massive windfall, Mr. Gough developed a fondness for purchasing racehorses, sportscars and also purchased a directors box at Villa Park – home of his beloved Aston Villa. Unfortunately, Mr. Gough also developed a greater fondness for the drink and his wife left him shortly after his lottery windfall.
Mr. Gough – by all accounts – descended into a life of depression and disillusionment which culminated in a tendency to actively discourage people entering the newsagents from purchasing a lottery ticket. As noble as Mr. Gough’s intentions were and as poignant as his story is, people like me still fancy winning the lottery as the solutions to all of life’s little problems. So how does one survive the life of a lottery winner?
City analysts suggest that the average lottery winner, because they remain just normal people after all, should devote at least a third of their newfound fortune to philanthropic whims. Perhaps give that old arsehole Mr. Selby down the road there the £2000 he needs to murder his wife in Switzerland? Or give those Henderson boys that last chance trip to Disneyland if you can’t find the cheaper option of black market kidneys on eBay?
Further advice from those crazy analysts is to live day to day using the interest garnered from your remaining fortune. I don’t know about you but that seems a little boring to me. It’s like being given God-like guitar skills and restricting their use to playing Sunday afternoon park jazz for geriatric dinosaurs who only get excited when someone passes by who looks like they might know where to get a cheap flight to Switzerland.
The final, and probably the most logical advice from our analytical friends of trends, is to invest vast swathes of your fortune in real estate and profitable stocks and bonds. That way, you can really consolidate your living fund and allow yourself the odd whimsical business enterprise. And my business enterprise of choice will be; A Very Silly Company Indeed (AVSCI™).
The business idea itself is one long mooted by my dear friend Colin (Cola-Bottle) Robison. After a failed business trip to Switzerland, he came back renewed and determined never to return to that murderous mound ever again. No, Cola Bottle had a plan that would turn his life around.
Cola Bottle lamented the constant human insistence upon finding purpose in life and still hates the need to establish meaning in every situation we face as human beings. Therefore, we decided to set up an operation with no definable purpose and a completely illogical existence; AVSCI™.
From the outset, we agreed that no matter how big we got as a group, we’d never deal with the Swiss. Truth be told, the first 17 hours of minuted dialogue regarding AVSCI™ pretty much amounted to promising one another we’d never deal with those bureaucratic bemused-biddy butchers. Even in business, a man has to have his principles.
Staffing was the next major concern. We deduced that, in order to achieve our aims, we needed around seven managerial staff to every regular employee. To fully embellish the curse of confusion, roles were also to be awarded ambiguous titles themed around failed BBC docusoap El Dorado as opposed to obvious titles like Regional Director.
In terms of day to day running, we opted for a very relaxed approach to our workload. In fact, we opted for the most relaxed approach possible by removing all deadlines and expectations from our mainline employees. In order to help our employees feel challenged, we decided to implement a musical mode of communication where one’s opinions could only be legitimate if sung in rhyme and in the chosen key of the day.
Of course, we acknowledged that modernity man needs to feel some degree of worth in his product. Therefore, we decided to smear the words ‘well done’ and ‘good job’ in our own faeces across the toilet walls of AVSCI™; clearly a company with a sense of humour.
In order to satisfy the criteria for achieving charitable status, we were required to find roles for seven and a quarter apprentices. We decided to form a bat and ball division and have it spearheaded and run entirely by these young protégés. If they bounced the ball on the bat six hundred times we’d say ‘well done and ‘good job’ and then their challenge would be to beat their previous record. We decided to have a smaller bat custom made for the quarter person in the event that they have functional hands and arms.
Every good company excels in research and development of their product and, since we had no discernable product, we decided that our research and development department would be responsible for finding ways of making the company ever more pointless and insignificant. This department was to be staffed in the future years by our brightest and best ball bouncers.
So if I do win the lottery, a very silly branch of AVSCI™ may open up near you. So be happy in your life for now and hold off on that trip to Geneva those Toblerone toting tyrants keep encouraging you to make. You could be the next Futures and Actuaries Geraldo of our great and promising organisation and be told things like 'well done' and 'good job'; or you can spend your whole life wanking away your days until those mountain loving morbidites come calling…
Confronted with his massive windfall, Mr. Gough developed a fondness for purchasing racehorses, sportscars and also purchased a directors box at Villa Park – home of his beloved Aston Villa. Unfortunately, Mr. Gough also developed a greater fondness for the drink and his wife left him shortly after his lottery windfall.
Mr. Gough – by all accounts – descended into a life of depression and disillusionment which culminated in a tendency to actively discourage people entering the newsagents from purchasing a lottery ticket. As noble as Mr. Gough’s intentions were and as poignant as his story is, people like me still fancy winning the lottery as the solutions to all of life’s little problems. So how does one survive the life of a lottery winner?
City analysts suggest that the average lottery winner, because they remain just normal people after all, should devote at least a third of their newfound fortune to philanthropic whims. Perhaps give that old arsehole Mr. Selby down the road there the £2000 he needs to murder his wife in Switzerland? Or give those Henderson boys that last chance trip to Disneyland if you can’t find the cheaper option of black market kidneys on eBay?
Further advice from those crazy analysts is to live day to day using the interest garnered from your remaining fortune. I don’t know about you but that seems a little boring to me. It’s like being given God-like guitar skills and restricting their use to playing Sunday afternoon park jazz for geriatric dinosaurs who only get excited when someone passes by who looks like they might know where to get a cheap flight to Switzerland.
The final, and probably the most logical advice from our analytical friends of trends, is to invest vast swathes of your fortune in real estate and profitable stocks and bonds. That way, you can really consolidate your living fund and allow yourself the odd whimsical business enterprise. And my business enterprise of choice will be; A Very Silly Company Indeed (AVSCI™).
The business idea itself is one long mooted by my dear friend Colin (Cola-Bottle) Robison. After a failed business trip to Switzerland, he came back renewed and determined never to return to that murderous mound ever again. No, Cola Bottle had a plan that would turn his life around.
Cola Bottle lamented the constant human insistence upon finding purpose in life and still hates the need to establish meaning in every situation we face as human beings. Therefore, we decided to set up an operation with no definable purpose and a completely illogical existence; AVSCI™.
From the outset, we agreed that no matter how big we got as a group, we’d never deal with the Swiss. Truth be told, the first 17 hours of minuted dialogue regarding AVSCI™ pretty much amounted to promising one another we’d never deal with those bureaucratic bemused-biddy butchers. Even in business, a man has to have his principles.
Staffing was the next major concern. We deduced that, in order to achieve our aims, we needed around seven managerial staff to every regular employee. To fully embellish the curse of confusion, roles were also to be awarded ambiguous titles themed around failed BBC docusoap El Dorado as opposed to obvious titles like Regional Director.
In terms of day to day running, we opted for a very relaxed approach to our workload. In fact, we opted for the most relaxed approach possible by removing all deadlines and expectations from our mainline employees. In order to help our employees feel challenged, we decided to implement a musical mode of communication where one’s opinions could only be legitimate if sung in rhyme and in the chosen key of the day.
Of course, we acknowledged that modernity man needs to feel some degree of worth in his product. Therefore, we decided to smear the words ‘well done’ and ‘good job’ in our own faeces across the toilet walls of AVSCI™; clearly a company with a sense of humour.
In order to satisfy the criteria for achieving charitable status, we were required to find roles for seven and a quarter apprentices. We decided to form a bat and ball division and have it spearheaded and run entirely by these young protégés. If they bounced the ball on the bat six hundred times we’d say ‘well done and ‘good job’ and then their challenge would be to beat their previous record. We decided to have a smaller bat custom made for the quarter person in the event that they have functional hands and arms.
Every good company excels in research and development of their product and, since we had no discernable product, we decided that our research and development department would be responsible for finding ways of making the company ever more pointless and insignificant. This department was to be staffed in the future years by our brightest and best ball bouncers.
So if I do win the lottery, a very silly branch of AVSCI™ may open up near you. So be happy in your life for now and hold off on that trip to Geneva those Toblerone toting tyrants keep encouraging you to make. You could be the next Futures and Actuaries Geraldo of our great and promising organisation and be told things like 'well done' and 'good job'; or you can spend your whole life wanking away your days until those mountain loving morbidites come calling…
Lonely Planet Guide To: Gavin & Donna
This evening, my parents will embark upon their longest ever voyage across air, sea and continents towards Hong Kong. This is despite many people in our home town trying to warn them against the trip in case they fall off the edge of the Earth. Mercifully, the townsfolks ardent dissuasion was short-lived as they had to execute an ‘outsider’ so I thought I should give any unsuspecting Hong Kong people the lowdown before they arrive.
My parents are simple folks. My dad, a reformed former software piracy magnate, was dismissed from his position as an oil appliance engineer for running around his work bollock-naked, brandishing a spanner and screaming ‘I’m not the messiah I’m a very naughty boy’. Indeed, their very ability to finance the visit came from the compensation awarded to him by his work for their part in creating what they called ‘a shadow of his former self’.
My dad is famed for his belief that Queen’s drummer Roger Taylor was ‘pretty fucking bonnie’ when made up like a young schoolgirl in the video for ‘I Want To Break Free’. He also has an interesting Concorde like tendency to alter physically depending on what speed he is going at, as evidenced by his errant off-angled stance on those rare occasions he is required to operate at more than a gallop.
My mother, a reformed cocaine addict, somehow managed to escape the clutches of the federalés in all her years of trafficking and drug-running and has worked her way up the career ladder in that great refuge for recovering addicts; primary school teaching. However, after the great fire of 2009 in her place of work, she has mysteriously been placed on gardening leave and is banned from going within two hundred meters of the school. She has advised us that this is because she is ‘too fucking gorgeous for that bastard headmaster Mr. Fergus’.
Mum is famed for almost getting us all killed one time when we were cliff-walking in Arbroath. Rather than climb up the cliff side with its harmless gradient easily manageable even to me as a five year old, she cried until we agreed to run against the incoming tide around to the close-shave safety of the pier. We were about two minutes from being a five man accident statistic.
Please do not fear though, you are all pretty likely to be quite safe. I believe I am the only human being who has suffered the psychological and physical wrath of either of them. Once when I was five, I was battered senseless by my mother after the brakes failed on my BMX and I was almost run over by a shocked and stunned moped driver; who was riding the moped at the time of course. Momentarily convinced of my invincibility after tangling with such an awful machine, you could imagine my surprise when blows began reigning down on my innocent little head. I don’t remember much of the day after my head became one with a protruding door handle.
Then there was the time when, after finishing my dinner and heading through to the lounge, my mother senselessly and brutally drove a plate into my unsuspecting cranium. Despite the fact blood was pouring down into my young eyes, I was told we couldn’t go to the hospital and that I shouldn’t tell anyone or we would all die! I couldn’t believe my infant ears but Santa came twice that year so it was all good!
So yeah, if you see us coming towards you in the street don’t run or let them smell your fear. Instead, say hello and befriend them. Maybe give them a sweet or two but not chocolate… as chocolate is poisonous for their sort. Perhaps also, if you need any Playstation 2 games copied you could put your orders in?…
My parents are simple folks. My dad, a reformed former software piracy magnate, was dismissed from his position as an oil appliance engineer for running around his work bollock-naked, brandishing a spanner and screaming ‘I’m not the messiah I’m a very naughty boy’. Indeed, their very ability to finance the visit came from the compensation awarded to him by his work for their part in creating what they called ‘a shadow of his former self’.
My dad is famed for his belief that Queen’s drummer Roger Taylor was ‘pretty fucking bonnie’ when made up like a young schoolgirl in the video for ‘I Want To Break Free’. He also has an interesting Concorde like tendency to alter physically depending on what speed he is going at, as evidenced by his errant off-angled stance on those rare occasions he is required to operate at more than a gallop.
My mother, a reformed cocaine addict, somehow managed to escape the clutches of the federalés in all her years of trafficking and drug-running and has worked her way up the career ladder in that great refuge for recovering addicts; primary school teaching. However, after the great fire of 2009 in her place of work, she has mysteriously been placed on gardening leave and is banned from going within two hundred meters of the school. She has advised us that this is because she is ‘too fucking gorgeous for that bastard headmaster Mr. Fergus’.
Mum is famed for almost getting us all killed one time when we were cliff-walking in Arbroath. Rather than climb up the cliff side with its harmless gradient easily manageable even to me as a five year old, she cried until we agreed to run against the incoming tide around to the close-shave safety of the pier. We were about two minutes from being a five man accident statistic.
Please do not fear though, you are all pretty likely to be quite safe. I believe I am the only human being who has suffered the psychological and physical wrath of either of them. Once when I was five, I was battered senseless by my mother after the brakes failed on my BMX and I was almost run over by a shocked and stunned moped driver; who was riding the moped at the time of course. Momentarily convinced of my invincibility after tangling with such an awful machine, you could imagine my surprise when blows began reigning down on my innocent little head. I don’t remember much of the day after my head became one with a protruding door handle.
Then there was the time when, after finishing my dinner and heading through to the lounge, my mother senselessly and brutally drove a plate into my unsuspecting cranium. Despite the fact blood was pouring down into my young eyes, I was told we couldn’t go to the hospital and that I shouldn’t tell anyone or we would all die! I couldn’t believe my infant ears but Santa came twice that year so it was all good!
So yeah, if you see us coming towards you in the street don’t run or let them smell your fear. Instead, say hello and befriend them. Maybe give them a sweet or two but not chocolate… as chocolate is poisonous for their sort. Perhaps also, if you need any Playstation 2 games copied you could put your orders in?…
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Hang On! There's Something I Gotta Do First...
Condoms really are funny things aren’t they? They’re controversial little buggers too! The Roman Catholic Church has spent a fortune trying to convince the people of Africa of the fact that they are utterly useless in both preventing AIDS and the birth of more children to feed, clothe and nurture. In Dundee, condoms are seen as a massive social issue. There is of course no religious influence upon this belief. It’s just that in Dundee if you smell an intense perfume of rubber it usually means your car is being stolen.
A few years back, the government released an advertising campaign which showed an evening of romance developing from a wee grope in a taxi to getting down to it in an unspecified domicile. The tagline; when is the right time to put on a condom? A mixed message when, at the same time, they were doling out £250 cheques for couples who produced anything amounting to a litter.
The true answer to that question of course is probably never. Nothing kills the buzz like desperately trying to open the wrapper with your one free hand, the aroma of spermicide filling the air, capping your penis so it looks like some kind of circus snake and then making sweet love to a plastic bag. Then, when it’s all over you brazenly tug it off before casually slugging it across the room as it slaps against the side of the bin. Who says romance is dead?
Our friends in Dundee again provide us with one possible remedy to this problem. There are more than enough references made to people shagging up on the Law Hill using crisp packets as contraception to ensure it is not a fallacy. They’ve overcome the need to remove anything from its packaging, the negative nausea of the spermicide and the issue of disposal; once you’re done, post-coital crisps! The added bonus for Dundonians too is that even Quavers packets are okay for the job as to have a penis in Dundee that ONLY smells of cheese is something of an achievement.
There are of course downsides to this method. For one thing, making love to a crisp packet can only amount to the depths of pain for the lucky Dundonian’s significant other. However, help is at hand thanks to that other wonderful ideological perpetuation by the Roman Catholic Church; a woman’s complete and utter subservience to her man.
But on a serious note, it seems crazy to me that advertisements such as these are being aimed at kids but we continue to serve up the message that sexual intercourse is dangerous and best avoided. In the science museum in Amsterdam, there is an exhibit of the various yogic sexual positions one can indulge which is proudly aimed at ten year olds. At a similar facility in Aberdeen, a man called John sits with his cock out on the steps castigating would be entrants and proclaims that ‘creation required only one element!’. Guess which city has the highest incidence of sexual injury and disease?
The British government and spokespeople for the collective consciousness of parents (Daily Mail and The Sun) refuse to acknowledge this of course. It seems that, in the face of irrefutable evidence supporting the values of a liberal attitude towards sex, the unflinching belief that our children need to be frightened off prevails.
Perhaps it is a coincidence but recently our government has started an advertising campaign warning children about the dangers of crisps.
A few years back, the government released an advertising campaign which showed an evening of romance developing from a wee grope in a taxi to getting down to it in an unspecified domicile. The tagline; when is the right time to put on a condom? A mixed message when, at the same time, they were doling out £250 cheques for couples who produced anything amounting to a litter.
The true answer to that question of course is probably never. Nothing kills the buzz like desperately trying to open the wrapper with your one free hand, the aroma of spermicide filling the air, capping your penis so it looks like some kind of circus snake and then making sweet love to a plastic bag. Then, when it’s all over you brazenly tug it off before casually slugging it across the room as it slaps against the side of the bin. Who says romance is dead?
Our friends in Dundee again provide us with one possible remedy to this problem. There are more than enough references made to people shagging up on the Law Hill using crisp packets as contraception to ensure it is not a fallacy. They’ve overcome the need to remove anything from its packaging, the negative nausea of the spermicide and the issue of disposal; once you’re done, post-coital crisps! The added bonus for Dundonians too is that even Quavers packets are okay for the job as to have a penis in Dundee that ONLY smells of cheese is something of an achievement.
There are of course downsides to this method. For one thing, making love to a crisp packet can only amount to the depths of pain for the lucky Dundonian’s significant other. However, help is at hand thanks to that other wonderful ideological perpetuation by the Roman Catholic Church; a woman’s complete and utter subservience to her man.
But on a serious note, it seems crazy to me that advertisements such as these are being aimed at kids but we continue to serve up the message that sexual intercourse is dangerous and best avoided. In the science museum in Amsterdam, there is an exhibit of the various yogic sexual positions one can indulge which is proudly aimed at ten year olds. At a similar facility in Aberdeen, a man called John sits with his cock out on the steps castigating would be entrants and proclaims that ‘creation required only one element!’. Guess which city has the highest incidence of sexual injury and disease?
The British government and spokespeople for the collective consciousness of parents (Daily Mail and The Sun) refuse to acknowledge this of course. It seems that, in the face of irrefutable evidence supporting the values of a liberal attitude towards sex, the unflinching belief that our children need to be frightened off prevails.
Perhaps it is a coincidence but recently our government has started an advertising campaign warning children about the dangers of crisps.
VTC Field Trip To East Island Waste Treatment Facility (SOLD OUT)
Given the general apathy in Hong Kong towards most forms of extra-curricular indulgence, I was stunned to learn that an Institute Of Vocational Education (IVE) wide trip to the East Island waste recycling plant had sold out within a matter of fourteen hours. We had a shit factory in Arbroath also. It was right next to and often mistaken for our local team’s football ground.
Asides from the culture of apathy, the general disgust towards all things unhygienic here should surely have rendered this trip unsellable; but that does not seem to be the case. I guess to an extent I can understand it. I for one am not entirely ashamed of my shit. On average, during any one visit to the toilet I’ll spend around twenty minutes hovering over my latest excretions digesting a good book or ruminating over the day’s news. I also have the Germanic propensity to have a wee check on my daily log before sending it to ‘shit-nirvana’ down by the seaside.
That is however, where I believe my association with and ownership of my product ends. I am satisfied with my role in the creation of the object and, with Marxian obedience, content to see it move along the processing line. I don’t think I want to be reunited a couple of days later when I see those last bites of corn being hammered mercilessly into an unbreakable container without thought for the care and attention that went into its production. To see it then heartlessly trucked over to the gargantuan landfill in which it will be forever hidden from the eyes and consciousness of all humanity might just be too much to bear.
Now you may think this is some Freudian backlash but I never played with my shit as a child and was potty trained to the strictest and most oppressive of standards. The high level of cleanliness I adhere to is in no way connected to the fact I still wet the bed at night or struggle to make new friends. Who believes in Freud anyway? He wanted to have sex with his mother.
Anyway, so intrigued was I by the fervency accorded to the trip to the shit factory that I emailed the VTC pleading and begging for the opportunity to attend the trip. After seventeen rejections and a similar number of responsive pleas citing journalistic intrigue, they finally reneged. They seemed content after I indicated my willingness to make my own way there; frankly those bus seats are just too dirty for my liking.
So in a couple of days time I will be going to the shit factory down on the island. I sure hope there is a gift shop! I’ve been eating a combination of fresh roasted beetroot and orange juice in the hope that my unique specimens will be easily identifiable during my visit! I have photographed a few of them for reference in case there are any doubters amongst my colleagues.
I must confess to one slight thing of course. I decided to keep one back from the shit factory. A little known fact about post-beetroot faeces is that it is an exceptionally pliable medium! In my enthusiasm at this finding I moulded one specimen into a pretzel; the majority of which remains edible.
So I shall report back on my trip to the shit factory. For now, I am going to observe my neighbour in the opposite block. She is dangling precariously from a 12th floor window attempting to clean its external façade. Am sure that crank Freud would have a field day with that too!
Asides from the culture of apathy, the general disgust towards all things unhygienic here should surely have rendered this trip unsellable; but that does not seem to be the case. I guess to an extent I can understand it. I for one am not entirely ashamed of my shit. On average, during any one visit to the toilet I’ll spend around twenty minutes hovering over my latest excretions digesting a good book or ruminating over the day’s news. I also have the Germanic propensity to have a wee check on my daily log before sending it to ‘shit-nirvana’ down by the seaside.
That is however, where I believe my association with and ownership of my product ends. I am satisfied with my role in the creation of the object and, with Marxian obedience, content to see it move along the processing line. I don’t think I want to be reunited a couple of days later when I see those last bites of corn being hammered mercilessly into an unbreakable container without thought for the care and attention that went into its production. To see it then heartlessly trucked over to the gargantuan landfill in which it will be forever hidden from the eyes and consciousness of all humanity might just be too much to bear.
Now you may think this is some Freudian backlash but I never played with my shit as a child and was potty trained to the strictest and most oppressive of standards. The high level of cleanliness I adhere to is in no way connected to the fact I still wet the bed at night or struggle to make new friends. Who believes in Freud anyway? He wanted to have sex with his mother.
Anyway, so intrigued was I by the fervency accorded to the trip to the shit factory that I emailed the VTC pleading and begging for the opportunity to attend the trip. After seventeen rejections and a similar number of responsive pleas citing journalistic intrigue, they finally reneged. They seemed content after I indicated my willingness to make my own way there; frankly those bus seats are just too dirty for my liking.
So in a couple of days time I will be going to the shit factory down on the island. I sure hope there is a gift shop! I’ve been eating a combination of fresh roasted beetroot and orange juice in the hope that my unique specimens will be easily identifiable during my visit! I have photographed a few of them for reference in case there are any doubters amongst my colleagues.
I must confess to one slight thing of course. I decided to keep one back from the shit factory. A little known fact about post-beetroot faeces is that it is an exceptionally pliable medium! In my enthusiasm at this finding I moulded one specimen into a pretzel; the majority of which remains edible.
So I shall report back on my trip to the shit factory. For now, I am going to observe my neighbour in the opposite block. She is dangling precariously from a 12th floor window attempting to clean its external façade. Am sure that crank Freud would have a field day with that too!
Government In The Brown for Taxing eBay Users...
Judy Sills and her husband Tommy must’ve been highly perturbed the other day when their peculiar hobby made it onto the front page of a respected and lauded (by itself of course) tabloid newspaper. It seems the Sills have become Britain’s first ‘eBay Millionaires’ much to the chagrin of the benefits office and the taxman – both of whom have endured at least two years of radio silence and mixed messages from our entrepreneurial heroes. Now however, it looks like things could be getting messy.
Gordon Brown, so often a man to hop on the electioneering bandwagon of short-sighted public opinion, responded immediately to the news by signalling his intention to act erratically. His plan is to implement a specific taxation stream for items sold on eBay. At the time of print, an x-ray of geriatric cerebral atrophy will set you back £3.12 and the new measures would see this rise to £3.28.
The news has met with choral approval from one John Yeats (47) from Arbroath, whose child Jay-Zee (listed as a prank by his sister Lil’ Kim) was unwittingly bought for around £27.50 through the website by his dim wife Adidas:
‘Thon doft shite seen the bairn oan eBay an’ it wiz jist a pishtake ken? Bit thon dauf coo puanicked an’ pyed oot! Bit aye, we hivenna pyed tuax oan onythin in aboot fower year ken? She’d no hae been such a twuat if she’d kent she wiz pittin onythin’ tae thae snooty Engilsh buastarts in th’ tuax oaffis ken?’
Further research into Mr. Smith’s case revealed, through a wall of lexical confusion, that his wife had indeed been stupid enough to purchase her own child. What a twat!
Confused and rambling musings on Brown’s reforms came from one Sara Craw (28); an unemployable sexual predator from Dundee who did not wish to be named…shit:
‘Ah fuckin’ luve Cosh In The Ottic ken? Bit if abody’s sellin’ their shite oan eBay than there’ll be nae shite left in thur ottics! Ye cannae ca’ it cosh in the fuppin ottic if thurs shite all in the ottic! Mind ma man’s right intae his eBay tae an’ it’s pying fir ma fuppin waidin’ in Vegas ken? MAW!... DA’!... SHUT THE FUP UP THROO THERE YE PAIR O’ DICKS! AM OAN THE FUPPIN NEWS KEN?’
Miss Craw’s outlandish and predictably slurred outpourings of course raised a very important point. In this age of economic strife, moral degradation and shotgun weddings in Vegas, does eBay represent the last untouched vestige of freedom and catharsis form an oppressive state; the last bastion of placation in a society on the verge of explosion?
Most people buying and selling on eBay live out a harmless hermit’s existence. Their use of eBay allows them an outlet for the kind of eccentricity that things like employment and sanity keep under control in others. Surely then, eBay is a harmless and helpful tool?
The Sills for their part achieved almost magnate status as retailers in seconded concert tickets. Mr. Sills, who suffers from congenital deafness, has no idea what ‘Californication’ sounds like (or what it is) but is a huge fan of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers for setting him on his way to financial nirvana:
‘Jude and I are shit-feared o’ the ootside world really. We live oot oor days indoors and only communicate with the ootside world when Tesco deliver the messages. I mean shit me (chuckles to himself) when our Joanne was born I delivered her myself using an auld towel and an adjustable spanner… I got £4.50 for that spanner on eBay. It was a beautiful moment’.
Mr. Sills admitted his worries about eBay taxation, retrospective taxation of his wealth, benefit reappraisal and the fragility of Joanne’s arranged marriage to her cousin Wendell:
‘Ach she’s got a puss that looks like a deid dug that yin. We all know that wee gobshite’s only after the money but naebody else’ll take ‘er. If that goes, we’re bloody stuck with THAT in the hoose for the rest of oor days’
A government spokesperson was literially caked in their own piss when asked for comment:
‘Haw fuck youz ye cunts! Get yer fuckin’ hands aff ma wife or ah’ll fuckin’ smash yer heid in ye set o’ pricks!
Although we’d clearly dialled the wrong number and it was later proved that the respondent in fact had no wife, the message was clear. If you attempt to fuck with the government, they’ll fuck you right up…
(Names, ages and locations in this article have been utilised purely for the satisfaction of its author).
Gordon Brown, so often a man to hop on the electioneering bandwagon of short-sighted public opinion, responded immediately to the news by signalling his intention to act erratically. His plan is to implement a specific taxation stream for items sold on eBay. At the time of print, an x-ray of geriatric cerebral atrophy will set you back £3.12 and the new measures would see this rise to £3.28.
The news has met with choral approval from one John Yeats (47) from Arbroath, whose child Jay-Zee (listed as a prank by his sister Lil’ Kim) was unwittingly bought for around £27.50 through the website by his dim wife Adidas:
‘Thon doft shite seen the bairn oan eBay an’ it wiz jist a pishtake ken? Bit thon dauf coo puanicked an’ pyed oot! Bit aye, we hivenna pyed tuax oan onythin in aboot fower year ken? She’d no hae been such a twuat if she’d kent she wiz pittin onythin’ tae thae snooty Engilsh buastarts in th’ tuax oaffis ken?’
Further research into Mr. Smith’s case revealed, through a wall of lexical confusion, that his wife had indeed been stupid enough to purchase her own child. What a twat!
Confused and rambling musings on Brown’s reforms came from one Sara Craw (28); an unemployable sexual predator from Dundee who did not wish to be named…shit:
‘Ah fuckin’ luve Cosh In The Ottic ken? Bit if abody’s sellin’ their shite oan eBay than there’ll be nae shite left in thur ottics! Ye cannae ca’ it cosh in the fuppin ottic if thurs shite all in the ottic! Mind ma man’s right intae his eBay tae an’ it’s pying fir ma fuppin waidin’ in Vegas ken? MAW!... DA’!... SHUT THE FUP UP THROO THERE YE PAIR O’ DICKS! AM OAN THE FUPPIN NEWS KEN?’
Miss Craw’s outlandish and predictably slurred outpourings of course raised a very important point. In this age of economic strife, moral degradation and shotgun weddings in Vegas, does eBay represent the last untouched vestige of freedom and catharsis form an oppressive state; the last bastion of placation in a society on the verge of explosion?
Most people buying and selling on eBay live out a harmless hermit’s existence. Their use of eBay allows them an outlet for the kind of eccentricity that things like employment and sanity keep under control in others. Surely then, eBay is a harmless and helpful tool?
The Sills for their part achieved almost magnate status as retailers in seconded concert tickets. Mr. Sills, who suffers from congenital deafness, has no idea what ‘Californication’ sounds like (or what it is) but is a huge fan of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers for setting him on his way to financial nirvana:
‘Jude and I are shit-feared o’ the ootside world really. We live oot oor days indoors and only communicate with the ootside world when Tesco deliver the messages. I mean shit me (chuckles to himself) when our Joanne was born I delivered her myself using an auld towel and an adjustable spanner… I got £4.50 for that spanner on eBay. It was a beautiful moment’.
Mr. Sills admitted his worries about eBay taxation, retrospective taxation of his wealth, benefit reappraisal and the fragility of Joanne’s arranged marriage to her cousin Wendell:
‘Ach she’s got a puss that looks like a deid dug that yin. We all know that wee gobshite’s only after the money but naebody else’ll take ‘er. If that goes, we’re bloody stuck with THAT in the hoose for the rest of oor days’
A government spokesperson was literially caked in their own piss when asked for comment:
‘Haw fuck youz ye cunts! Get yer fuckin’ hands aff ma wife or ah’ll fuckin’ smash yer heid in ye set o’ pricks!
Although we’d clearly dialled the wrong number and it was later proved that the respondent in fact had no wife, the message was clear. If you attempt to fuck with the government, they’ll fuck you right up…
(Names, ages and locations in this article have been utilised purely for the satisfaction of its author).
A Brief & Sinful (at Times Factual) Experiment Against The Wrath of the Roman Catholic Church
Recent research claims that there are approximately seven hundred thousand four hundred and sixty seven and a half different ways to piss off the Roman Catholic Church in the living realm alone. In the interests of My Name Is Earl style investigation, I decided to work my way through the list and see what happened. Needless to stay, I was more than anticipating thirteenth century style revenge attacks upon both my village and my wimmins, but the first day of the holidays is always something of an experimental and indulgent time.
Naturally, the first thing I did was shamelessly play with myself. Mid-event, there was something of a minor shudder in the apartment but that was merely the conditioning fan in the bathroom knocking over a long redundant shampoo bottle into the bath. Despite the piety of the moment, I was hardly knocked off my stride. I was however feeling the strain of those potential revenge attacks quite strongly and so the whole experiment was taking rather longer than I had hoped. Nonetheless, after a few seconds of soulless searching, the deed was done. Six million reasons for me to be castigated at the gates of hell and beforehand burst into the world; confused and disoriented by the absence of their eternal goal. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say I jumped upon hearing an almost immediate ethereal hammering on the door. Was this it? Had they found out about it? No… I’d left my keys in the door last night. Goodness me, I wiped my hand on my shirt and grabbed them in. Holy shit!
I’d inadvertently indulged the second sin on my list upon uttering those two words and spent a moment pondering the lunacy of the last few moments. If the door was smashed in right now by the militant arm of the RC because I unconsciously uttered holy shit, what would I say? I for one would be most pissed off if they damned me to hell and then committed the sin of murder upon my flesh! Arguably, my unconscious expression of the phrase in question is by definition not my fault. It is merely the work of a brain that I have done my best to reign in from expressing such thoughts implanted by other sinners. And let’s face it, we do work pretty hard keeping these kind of things under control in our brains. That’s right brain, you can imagine all kinds of depraved intercourses with Susan Boyle but I’ll never fully accept that I actually want to do it…
The front door was still intact in any case. Maybe Mr. Happy on the concierge desk downstairs was in one of his moods and had told the swarming armies of the RC church (in Cantonese of course) to get the fuck oot!
This of course presented me with something of a problem. If I continued along this path, I’d be presented with the very real problem of discerning which of my sins actually incurred the visit of the RC fuzz! Nonetheless, I was enjoying myself and totally enthralled by the spirit of rebellion. What next?
I stood before the mirror. I’m not really one for engaging in protracted self-maintenance as is evidenced by my invariably unkempt appearance and general tendency towards looking like I work on the scaffies. However, in the spirit of spiritual realisation and incurrence of wrath I had a duty to attend to. I brushed my hair to one side and then to the other, ran a nasal hair trimmer with Freudian precision into my nostril – chuckling somewhat as I heard the rustling destruction of some pulmonary excretions - and then set to work mowing the expansive tangled lawn strangling my pubic regions. Now if anything was going to piss of the federalés of the RCC then this would be it. However, nothing happened…
It suddenly struck me that pride and the sin of self-maintenance in which I was partaking may have been struck off the list of punishable sins down at the RCC. Probably due to a shortage of talent and populous up there in the clouds. After all, surely all those people monitoring their behaviour so stringently down here on Earth in worship are guilty of that very sin and therefore actively deny themselves a route to heaven along with all the sinners and Protestants? I began to realise this was something of a frugal exercise given the tangled up maze of variables under consideration; I’d got a wee wank out of it though which was nice.
This is the problem with religion, you never know when you’re actually doing the right thing. Can I really kick the shit out of my kids six days a week and then say a couple of penances to absolve my sins? Would my record be completely clean or would I be earmarked as one to keep an eye on? Who deserves a place in the big house – a part-time Catholic who shops and shags all week but says they believe in God or a devout attendee whose attendance is motivated solely by a fear of what will happen to them if they don’t go? It seems weird to me that an all-seeing figure could overlook his omnipotent observation of such indiscretions so long as we have a minor flirt with one of His mates.
Oh well, even if the RCC polis don't drop by, at least there's a possibility I’ve got six million and three reasons not to worry about what they think anyway…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
