Today is 1 September.
This means that it is autumn.
In the autumn, the leaves fall off the trees. Our dads rake them into big piles in the middle of the back lawn and set them alight, thus barbecuing the poor hedgehogs who thought they'd found a nice cosy place to hibernate until spring. My dad then goes back out into the garden at night with a torch. He tears the cowering slugs off the leaves of the plants, shouting: "Eat my f***ing hostia, would you, you bastards!" and chucks them over the fence into next door's garden.
When I was a kid, I genuinely used to believe that the seasons had to start on precise dates decided by the government. Never mind that the administrations of the Seventies couldn't even organise a piss-up in a brewery, hence all the mayhem of the three-day week and the miners' and dustmen's strikes, these bunches of incompetents could still somehow manage to keep Britain's ecosystem running.
Mind you, I was also convinced that traffic lights were operated by teams of people crammed into an underground bunker turning a gigantic handle to change the colours over. Most of the time they lounged about on old sofas, eating bourbon biscuits and Tunnocks caramel wafers, slurping from sturdy mugs of tea and coffee, while watching endless repeats of Diana Dors in Queenie's Castle and Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon on a television set hanging from the ceiling like the ones you see in takeaways.
The head of the team was a cantankerous old git who modelled himself very closely on James Robertson Justice, via Captain Birdseye. He kept peering through a periscope hidden in the middle of the traffic light itself. When a suitably large backlog of traffic had built up behind the lights, he bellowed: "All change!" through a loudhailer.
Then all the lazy ginks would have to rush over to the handle and change the lights.
Rooms like this existed under every single set of traffic lights in the country.
During their vacations, students often worked on the traffic lights to earn some extra cash. As with every type of manual job during the Seventies, the wages were really generous.
Oh, and the ceilings of the bunkers were always covered with empty cardboard egg boxes, possibly to act as soundproofing in the rush hour.
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Monday, 29 August 2011
Guaranteed cure for writer's block
http://www.the-folly.com/2009/09/writers-block/
According to Robert Sheckley and Ben Aaronovitch, anyway.
Think I am going to have to try it, otherwise I will be stuck till kingdom come laughing my socks off at Charlie Brooker's account of his visit to the Concrete Menagerie in Northumberland and sipping lukewarm, nose-curling coffee of the day in Starbucks whilst listening to Nathan Barley dingwad lookalikes and their adorable totty-bint girlfriends burble on and on at great length and considerable tedium about Beyonce being up the duff.
Bloody hell words, why won't you come? You bastards know I have a deadline looming, so naturally you do a runner. While I rummage round for you under the sofa, you're hanging out with the odd socks down the bottom of the laundry basket. Just wait till I get my hands on you! You lazy shiftless buggers have a lot of catching up to do etc etc amen (cont. on p. 94).
According to Robert Sheckley and Ben Aaronovitch, anyway.
Think I am going to have to try it, otherwise I will be stuck till kingdom come laughing my socks off at Charlie Brooker's account of his visit to the Concrete Menagerie in Northumberland and sipping lukewarm, nose-curling coffee of the day in Starbucks whilst listening to Nathan Barley dingwad lookalikes and their adorable totty-bint girlfriends burble on and on at great length and considerable tedium about Beyonce being up the duff.
Bloody hell words, why won't you come? You bastards know I have a deadline looming, so naturally you do a runner. While I rummage round for you under the sofa, you're hanging out with the odd socks down the bottom of the laundry basket. Just wait till I get my hands on you! You lazy shiftless buggers have a lot of catching up to do etc etc amen (cont. on p. 94).
Friday, 19 August 2011
The horror, the horror continues
Well, I did warn you.
A quick trawl of Google under 'Anders Behring Breivik' proves that we probably won't be forgetting about Norway's notorious spree killer any time in the near future.
This article from the Guardian includes brief excerpts from his diary:
It is seriously chilling to read of his preparations for the atrocities, whilst all the rest of us around the world had no idea of his existence, let alone his plans, so were helpless to intervene.
What was I doing at 12.51 pm on Friday 22 July 2011, just as Anders completed his manifesto and e-mailed 1,000 copies of it to his contact list before setting off on his fateful self-styled ‘mission’?
Drinking a mug of coffee whilst watching excerpts from Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, if I remember correctly.
On the other hand, it is definitely well-established fact that many medieval knights did indeed abstain from sexual and romantic relationships while preparing for and engaging in their campaigns and quests. Even today, many sports players follow the same practice to enable them to focus their minds and energy before a big match.
And these silly nongs seem to forget that a great many medieval knights and modern sports players are what they would glorify as ‘Alpha males’, who would doubtless be wading up to their plums in prime pussy once they have finally won their great victories. So if Alpha males don’t mind going without poontang occasionally and it doesn’t seem to end up harming them or inhibiting their efficiency in other areas of their lives, stop bloody whingeing on, you Betas!
I love the detailed description of the sort of humdrum, depressing sex-life a Beta male can look forward to with his girlfriend/wife. Makes you wonder whether the author of this particular comment is basing it upon personal experience.
I also cannot get over the hideous way in which all these men (that’s what they seem to be, from the tone of all these comments here) never fail to denigrate and despise the very women whose vaginas they are all longing so desperately for improved access to. So you disapprove of Anders for committing the most unspeakable violence simply to impress women? Okay, fair enough – but do you really think the best way to boost your own attractiveness to the opposite sex is to slag us off in writing?
Well, obviously! No woman wants a pathetic, wimpy Kitchen Bitch who can’t get it up for toffee. All the ladies go gaga for vampire-werewolf-neo Nazi spree murderer psychopaths who slap them around for not serving the dinner on time. None of these sad losers has apparently bothered asking a real live woman what exactly she does and doesn’t find attractive in a man. No woman in her right mind would go within five hundred thousand miles of Spike and Angel from Buffy, Dexter – or Anders Behring Breivik.
I agree wholeheartedly with Pharyngula that Breivik’s so-called ‘manifesto’ does sound very much like ‘an obsessively fussed-over set of rules for a nerdy fantasy role-playing game’, only Breivik was convinced that it was all for real and so ‘charged off to murder people’ – with two vital caveats.
Firstly, I am convinced that Brian Masters is right when he describes Breivik as a committed ideologue. The main reason he spent so much time and effort in researching and writing this 1500-odd page monstrosity is because he sees it as an extremely serious endeavour. In Breivik’s mind, what he has written is an urgently needed plan.
No way can Breivik either recognise or admit that his views might strike most people as, at best, seriously worrying extremism, and, at worst, what Pharyngula calls ‘outrageous crackpottery’. He himself probably believes that he is a brilliant intellectual theoretician, perhaps the only person currently alive in Europe possessed of the necessary courage and vision to devise the radical ‘solutions’ ‘needed’ to solve the continent’s ‘problems’. (Though Pharyngula is right to pull him up for some particularly ropey scholarship, as per his discussion of Richard Dawkins.)
Like Masters has pointed out, if anyone has already told Breivik that the vast majority of people across the world do not regard him as the Great White Hope of Europe like he had been hoping – indeed, the exact opposite – I imagine he probably would be totally mystified and bewildered by such a violently antipathetic response. In his own mind, his ‘theories’ are so obviously ‘right’ in every respect that it is we who have the problem, not him. If we cannot see his ‘great achievement’ for the ‘monumental breakthrough’ he ‘knows’ it is, then we are all a load of ungrateful clunts who’ll be first against the wall when his version of the revolution comes.
According to this recent report from the Daily Telegraph, the prison staff and shrinks have lost no time in confronting Breivik with the brutal facts.
Secondly, it is a tragic fact that not everybody in the world regards the man as evil/mad/sad. Quite possibly most, if not all, these supposed colleagues of his will turn out to be nothing more than figments of his imagination. Indeed, I bloody well hope so. However, in the final analysis it won’t matter a jot whether they are or not - because there are plenty of vicious-minded extremist thugs out there (plus a few nutters with serious delusions of ‘grandeur’ and the odd inadequate who’s just about ready to go postal) who are now ready to become his ‘followers’.
Breivik may claim that he hates Hitler for letting Europe down through his ill-conceived and ineptly executed policies (no mention whatever of marmolising over 6 million people as a direct result of them, you note), but he wouldn’t exactly go round complaining if his own manifesto ends up gaining even a tenth of the following of der Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf.
He wants us to come and join him in his ghastly game. Before we do that, we need to know what the game is, how to play it – and why it’s so important to support him. So he’s very kindly written us the manual, just like a good Dungeonmaster would do.
And if we follow Breivik’s own method of ‘reasoning’ further, he would no doubt tell his potential followers that it’s really handy if both experts and the public dismiss your writings as the ravings of an unabashed fruitcake – because then you can easily persuade them not to take you seriously. This will cause them all to massively under-estimate the threat that you and your plans truly pose. While they leave you in peace to talk to the trees, you can quietly get on pursuing your various nefarious objectives.
See, this is just the sort of stuff he wants:
Thursday, 11 August 2011
And now for something completely different
After all the ghastly and depressing news of the past few weeks, we probably all need to pause for a moment to get our breath back with a bit of light relief.
In her masterwork Eating India, Chitrita Banerji explains how to cook what she refers to as 'the most incongruous combination' of ingredients in Parsi cuisine.
The recipe is called wafer per eeda - which roughly translates as 'potato crisps with egg.'
Here's how you make it:
1.) Saute a load of onions and green chillis in some oil in a large frying pan.
2.) Open a bag of potato crisps.
3.) Chuck the potato crisps over the top of the onions and chillis.
4.) Make a few holes amongst the pile of crisps.
5.) Crack eggs into each hole.
6.) Keep cooking until the eggs are properly set.
7.) Serve.
Apparently the Parsis are such fans of eggs that they love to eat them with absolutely anything and everything they can lay their hands on. When Chitrita learnt about this dish, it sounded so bizarre that she couldn't wait to try it for herself.
She describes it as 'an eye-popping experience, reminding me once again that texture is the dominant element in any cuisine originating in Gujurat'.
For my part, I would far rather use my spare time to test out wafer per eeda than writing a barking mad manifesto.
In her masterwork Eating India, Chitrita Banerji explains how to cook what she refers to as 'the most incongruous combination' of ingredients in Parsi cuisine.
The recipe is called wafer per eeda - which roughly translates as 'potato crisps with egg.'
Here's how you make it:
1.) Saute a load of onions and green chillis in some oil in a large frying pan.
2.) Open a bag of potato crisps.
3.) Chuck the potato crisps over the top of the onions and chillis.
4.) Make a few holes amongst the pile of crisps.
5.) Crack eggs into each hole.
6.) Keep cooking until the eggs are properly set.
7.) Serve.
Apparently the Parsis are such fans of eggs that they love to eat them with absolutely anything and everything they can lay their hands on. When Chitrita learnt about this dish, it sounded so bizarre that she couldn't wait to try it for herself.
She describes it as 'an eye-popping experience, reminding me once again that texture is the dominant element in any cuisine originating in Gujurat'.
For my part, I would far rather use my spare time to test out wafer per eeda than writing a barking mad manifesto.
Sunday, 31 July 2011
The horror, the horror
This is something I really would prefer not to write, but sadly world events have made it unavoidable.
Puzzled by media stories over the last day or two claiming that Anders Behring Breivik has apparently admitted that he most definitely did kill all the people that he variously shot and bombed into oblivion, yet he insists he is not guilty of any offence, I started wondering what the likelihood is that he could be insane.
The impression given in some quarters is that it would be a relief to many should this in fact turn out to be the case. Pretty cold comfort for most in the circumstances, you would have thought, but at least it might be very slightly easier to come to terms with the enormity of what he has done.
Madness is nice, easy and convenient. If someone is crackers, you can summarily dismiss them as an unfortunate aberration. You can lock the looney up in a padded cell for the rest of their natural - and make sure you throw away the key right into the middle of a massive great hole situated in the arse-end of the Crab Nebula at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
And then you can forget about them. (Unless Dr Who +/the Daleks manage to retrieve the key, but that's the start of a whole different story … )
No point in going back after fifteen years and asking the bugger why they committed whatever ghastly atrocity it was that got them banged away in the slammer in the first place. They're a nutter, nutters don't make any sense, you won't discover anything helpful or useful from them, don't waste your time and effort, case closed. Over, done with, finished, as my father is so fond of saying.
Anders Behring Breivik, on the other hand, seems quite determined that this won't be happening to him.
It has been reported that he may well have written a manifesto. This document, it is claimed, is no less than 1,500 pages long, took him three years to research and write - and he has posted it online so that everyone who wishes can take a damn good look.
I'm afraid that I did.
My only excuse is that I wanted to find out if he was mad or not, in his own words rather than anybody else's. And whether he was or wasn't, what type of rationale he could possibly use to explain (and even attempt to justify) his appalling actions.
So I spent 10 minutes on Saturday afternoon reading this production of his. This is where I found it, if you must insist on having a ghoulish rummage around his mind for yourself:
Now presumably Norwegian police are currently poring through it in painstaking detail, in an attempt to establish whether or not it is in fact his own work.
Should it turn out that he has truly written the invidious thing and posted it online, then the implication must surely be that he wanted the world to find and read it. That would strongly suggest that he could have planned his actions well in advance. So he's going to be pretty well stuffed if he (or, more likely, his lawyer) tries to argue that the attacks weren't premeditated in any sense.
You'll see that one of the people who commented on the Zero Hedge discussion board attempts to dismiss Breivik with the curt observation that he 'drones on' for 1500 pages. Besides which, what on earth could the man have found to chunter on about for so long?
Er, plenty, it turns out.
According to the table of contents, the first part of the book describes the historical and social background to what he presents as 'the problem'. He then goes on to put forward various plans of action that can be taken to 'solve' the said 'problem'. And his suggestions are extremely radical, yet at the same time postulated with a cool, clear 'logic'.
Take his views on women.
The relevant section in the manifesto declares that men of the far right tend to be far more 'chivalrous' in their attitudes towards women, because women are the mothers, daughters and sisters of the world who bear and bring up the babies required to create the next generation. Anyone who supports feminism must automatically qualify as a 'Marxist' - particularly if they happen to be of the female persuasion. The 'rationale' for this conclusion is the old suspect - nature has fitted women to be the 'weaker', 'subservient' sex, so anyone who attempts to argue with it is flying in the face of human evolutionary 'efficiency'.
Breivik admits that this could mean a Justiciar Knight is inclined by nature to treat women with great tenderness and respect. However, the central mission of the Justiciar Knight requires him to act as judge, jury and executioner combined. He cannot fulfill this function properly if he lets any 'guilty' person off the hook. Inevitably, this will include women who hold 'unfortunate' views.
It doesn't matter how 'attractive' they might be - and he readily admits that some women are 'very' attractive. If they've got to go, they've got to go. A Justiciar Knight is never less than scrupulously fair-minded and impartial.
Nobody should sign up to become a Justiciar Knight if they lack the requisite toughness of mind and character. Instead, they should content themselves with writing yet another far right wing blog.
Understandably, flatmate got rather worried when I told him about all this and roundly condemned me for going to the lengths of reading such disturbing material.
"If it's upsetting you so much to see what this fruitcake keeps raving on about, then don't bloody read it!" he yelled. "This sick fuckwit is just clamouring for the world's attention. If you refuse to read what he has to say, then you are doing your bit to deprive him of it."
That statement sent me utterly spare.
"After his actions the other week, I think it is a bit bloody late to ignore him or dismiss him by describing him as 'unimportant'!" I screamed.
Judging by the enormous amount and range of comment that he and his views have already prompted on the Internet in the short time since he carried out his awful attacks, he himself would no doubt feel that he is doing really well in spreading his message across the world/. I bet the bugger is delighted that so many people from so many countries and faiths have been logging on to read his manifesto. No doubt he revels in the thought that just a month ago, hardly anyone had ever heard of him. Now everyone, his dog and a packet of crisps is discussing him and his extremist opinions.
Despite Breivik's claims both in the alleged manifesto and his initial interviews with police that he has been working as part of a cell, experts believe that he could well be a lone fanatic.
If he isn't, then obviously the Norwegian police and other forces across the world will need to catch up with his colleagues and take them out of circulation pronto, before more people are killed or hurt. They cannot afford to dismiss even the slightest possibility that he might have colleagues and sympathisers.
Even if it does turn out to be true that he acted alone, that is no reason to downplay the immense danger he continues to pose to society. The fact that he went to all that time and trouble to research and write the manifesto tends to suggest pretty strongly that he would like to inspire others to follow his example. I presume this would explain why he wrote the damn thing in English. Unlike Norwegian, English is currently one of the global languages of choice. Therefore the document will prove of interest to far more people - and it can be disseminated much quicker and easier than a Norwegian version. (Why did he refer to himself by the Anglicized version of his name, though? Does he think that potential supporters might not believe he is a proper 'Aryan' if he signs himself with a non-English name? Or is it to claim kinship with English-speaking 'Aryans'?)
Sadly, there are probably some people out there who would take his virulent 'arguments' extremely seriously. That's why I can't for the life of me understand why the manifesto hasn't been removed from the Internet yet. (Unless of course, the world's various governments, law enforcement agencies and Internet providers all reckon that enough interested individuals must have downloaded the damn thing already for it to be circulated on the quiet via e-mail? Hang on, it appears that shortly before he set off to wire up the bomb in Oslo, he e-mailed copies of it to over 1,000 people … )
Breivik also points out in his manifesto that he thinks he may need to 'fortify' his 'courage' before setting out to carry out his 'mission'. He reckons he will do this by securing the services of a prostitute.
If he really did go ahead and book an appointment with a sex worker, the poor bloody woman must be mortified now she knows who her strapping blond client was. Like the rest of Breivik's family, I bet she'll be keeping her head firmly pressed to the ground for a long while.
Even if the world's media haven't beaten a path to her door yet, who is to say that the Norwegian police and secret services haven't managed to smoke her out? Can you imagine what that interview must be like?
"So, what did Mr Breivik say to you … ?"
"Er, um, how much do you charge for a topless hand-shandy?" (Wonder how you say that in Norwegian?)
Saturday, 30 July 2011
Something else
Quite possibly about Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Jay-Z and the Illuminati.
Apologies for being so behind schedule, only 'Elvis A-Sodding-Live' is proving remarkably intransigent at present.
Apologies for being so behind schedule, only 'Elvis A-Sodding-Live' is proving remarkably intransigent at present.
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Attack of the braindead Internets
If you're looking for a great way to waste your valuable time farting around on YouTube, there's really nothing quite like Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes.
The opening sequence from the original film is probably the best way to kick off your stint in suitable style. The theme tune pays homage to countless bygone schlockfests from the golden age of B movies - and includes the priceless line: 'I'm really gonna miss her/A tomato ate my sister'.
There also seems to be a cartoon from the Nineties, allegedly 'inspired' by the film.
In the latter, some of the mutant tomatoes develop individual minds and personalities. Then they run off and form a gang. This gang is led by the Head Tomato, a tough customer from the Bronx.
While the human inhabitants of the city kick off in a massive urban riot, the matoes take advantage of the mayhem to break into a store. They drag out a huge sack of something, throw it onto the back of a skateboard and make off with it. Believing that the sack contains concentrated fertilizer, they rip it open and start tearing into the contents. Naturally it turns out to be kitty litter, so instead of ballooning into giants, they all spit it out on the floor in disgust and get roundly bollocked for their stupidity by the Head Tomato.
To enable the target audience to identify with the programme more closely, the heroes of the piece are of course a teenage human boy and girl. These two both have part-time jobs in the local pizza parlour. And yes, they really have made friends with yet another one of the mutant tomatoes - a small, friendly creature that seems to be convinced it's a dog.
The particular episode I watched was called Attack Of The Mutant Pimentoes. This began with the boy and girl hard at work in the pizza parlour, making up the next batch of pizzas and cooking them. Guess what - the boy does not know that the pile of pizzas he and his colleague have prepared so diligently have been infiltrated by the aforesaid gang of mutant pimentoes. Give the poor bugger a chance - the horrible pimentoes are fiendishly averting suspicion by pretending to be inert while the kids place them on top of the pizzas and bake them in the oven.
Next the boy jumps on his moped to deliver the first order of the evening to a middle-aged couple living out in the suburbs. The wife turns out to be a bedraggled old ratbag in curlers. She opens the door, takes the pizzas from the boy, and throws the money at him.
Because her husband refuses to come for his dinner right away, she shoves the pizzas straight in the fridge. Meanwhile, the pimentoes ready themselves to strike ...
Who the hell wrote all this stuff? That's what I want to know!
It's a damn sight more inventive than Scooby-bloody-Doo!
No wonder my brother used to love vegging out to it with his cereal of a Saturday morning.
The opening sequence from the original film is probably the best way to kick off your stint in suitable style. The theme tune pays homage to countless bygone schlockfests from the golden age of B movies - and includes the priceless line: 'I'm really gonna miss her/A tomato ate my sister'.
There also seems to be a cartoon from the Nineties, allegedly 'inspired' by the film.
In the latter, some of the mutant tomatoes develop individual minds and personalities. Then they run off and form a gang. This gang is led by the Head Tomato, a tough customer from the Bronx.
While the human inhabitants of the city kick off in a massive urban riot, the matoes take advantage of the mayhem to break into a store. They drag out a huge sack of something, throw it onto the back of a skateboard and make off with it. Believing that the sack contains concentrated fertilizer, they rip it open and start tearing into the contents. Naturally it turns out to be kitty litter, so instead of ballooning into giants, they all spit it out on the floor in disgust and get roundly bollocked for their stupidity by the Head Tomato.
To enable the target audience to identify with the programme more closely, the heroes of the piece are of course a teenage human boy and girl. These two both have part-time jobs in the local pizza parlour. And yes, they really have made friends with yet another one of the mutant tomatoes - a small, friendly creature that seems to be convinced it's a dog.
The particular episode I watched was called Attack Of The Mutant Pimentoes. This began with the boy and girl hard at work in the pizza parlour, making up the next batch of pizzas and cooking them. Guess what - the boy does not know that the pile of pizzas he and his colleague have prepared so diligently have been infiltrated by the aforesaid gang of mutant pimentoes. Give the poor bugger a chance - the horrible pimentoes are fiendishly averting suspicion by pretending to be inert while the kids place them on top of the pizzas and bake them in the oven.
Next the boy jumps on his moped to deliver the first order of the evening to a middle-aged couple living out in the suburbs. The wife turns out to be a bedraggled old ratbag in curlers. She opens the door, takes the pizzas from the boy, and throws the money at him.
Because her husband refuses to come for his dinner right away, she shoves the pizzas straight in the fridge. Meanwhile, the pimentoes ready themselves to strike ...
Who the hell wrote all this stuff? That's what I want to know!
It's a damn sight more inventive than Scooby-bloody-Doo!
No wonder my brother used to love vegging out to it with his cereal of a Saturday morning.
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