Further crepe to make you cackle when times is hard

Or rather, me.

I really don't care if laughing at the following extracts from the great Charlie Brooker makes me childish, silly or maladjusted.  All I know is that I fell about until my face went puce, tears streamed down my cheeks and I almost suffered an asthma attack.

"If reading these words sent you temporarily crazy, and you ran outside and stripped naked and pressed your bum cheeks against the nearest Starbucks window - really pushed them apart so everyone inside got a gruesome view up your rear aperture - and then started defecating against the glass to a backdrop of tumbling lattes and horrified screams ... if you did THAT, it might irrevocably alter your life, what with the ensuing court case and all, but it would make absolutely no difference to the trajectory of history.

"In summary: you're pointless."

(From: They're, like, totally ethnic, 14 June 2008)


"And how are we, the snickering public, supposed to refer to these recidivist saps when we spot them emptying the poop bins anyway?  Do we call them 'paybackers' or 'CPs', or what?  If you're going to label them, at least come up with something populist. Something we can use.  How about 'SCUM SLAVE'? Or 'CHAIN GANG BETTY'?  That last one would definitely catch on.  I might start shouting it at them in the street tomorrow.  So put that on the back of the jacket.

"And, bearing your stated aim of 'visibility' in mind, don't just stop at bold capital letters: the typeface should physically light up, like a Vegas casino hoarding.  Actually, the whole jacket should light up.  And it shouldn't be a jacket.  It should be a fluorescent green leotard with a transparent panel located over the testicles, so you can see them squashed up against the window like depressed balding commuters and, above it, a small flashing sign with the words 'HA HA LOOK AT MY HILARIOUS BALLS' accompanied by an arrow pointing at them, picked out in multicoloured LEDs visible from half a mile away.

"Blind pedestrians who wouldn't otherwise get to enjoy the spectacle should be catered for too, thanks to a looped iPod soundtrack consisting of assorted celebrities describing precisely how ridiculous the miscreant's balls look, backed with comedy tuba music blasting from a heavy iron tannoy mounted on the offender's head.

"That's a more effective deterrent than a little orange bib.  And perhaps Jack Straw could model one at the press launch, doing one of his trademark sober expressions.  He could probably even pull a serious face with his balls, so they looked suitably noble and statesmanlike even while flattened against the transparent pane, thereby underlining the scheme's commitment to visibility and aversion to humiliation.

"If anyone can do it, he can."

(From: Chain Gang Betties, 1 December 2008)

[Jack Straw is listed in the index of Charlie Brooker's collection 'The Hell Of It All' as: 'Straw, Jack; effectively told to fuck off, 279-81; effectively told to fuck off again, 343-5' - which tends to make you suspect that Charlie probably compiled the index to his book himself]


Perhaps I should offer to teach Charlie my patented protest song about Jack Straw some time?  It's fast, effective - and probably gets you straight onto the files of MI5 in no time (along with Jack himself, so you're in good company there).


"I'll never forget the Concrete Menagerie, for example.  Picture Madame Tussauds, but with the celebrity waxworks made out of concrete.  And instead of stunning likenesses of the rich and famous, imagine a group of misshapen figurines that were scarcely recognisable as human beings, painted by an especially hamfisted group of GCSE art students in a hurry.

"That was the Concrete Menagerie.

"It was housed in the back garden of a house in Northumberland.  A full-scale model of Jaws (the shark, not the Bond villain) which resembled a giant grey phlegm glob with eyes was one highlight.  Another was a figurine of Lawrence of Arabia sitting astride a camel.  Lawrence had a set of real false teeth stuck in his mouth, leaving him with an unsettling rictus grin.

(From: The day Santa died, 8 December 2008)


This particular article actually inspired me to look the place up online - but alas, I so far have not been able to track down pictures of either the Jaws statue or Lawrence of Arabia.  If anyone out there can help me with this endeavour, please send all communications to the usual address, where I shall open them and proceed to have yet another bloody good laugh.

Ode to Joy

Sing a song of joy and glory -
You must be taking the piss.
During the regime of the Iron Lady
Miss Selfridge named a lipstick after her
Dark maroon, if I recall.

Unionists voting on the slope of a hillside
Makes it easier to see
Who hasn't put their hand up.
Crisp pink and white striped blouses
Put me off banking for the rest of my natural.

The Elysian Fields live in Paris
Along with the rest of the French Revolution.
School inspector orders me not to faint
At the death of Robespierre
On pain of being shot as a crypto-Jacobin
Thus surplus to requirement
During a recession.

Labour isn't working.
What do you expect
When there's no jobs
And Greenham Common to surround
With a ring of peace?

I chose this dawn to be alive
Because it sounded like a good idea at the time.
All mankind are brothers-in-arms
Gotta install microwave oven
Custom kitchen, colour TV.

Unblessed with blow-dry hair
Fascination with blue Curucao must suffice.
When does the next flight leave for Mars?

Stuck for words

Think I'll copy Charlie Brooker and ask for your ideas on what I should write about next.

Please send all suggestions to the usual address.