The Gutter in the Stars

A Yorkshire Trilogy

2011-05-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

King Prawns

In a Yorkshire restaurant

Customer: Excuse me, on the menu it says 'King Prawns'.

Waiter: Sorry love, that's a typo it should say ''king Prawns'.

Cough

In a Doctor's surgery in yorkshire

Doctor: Good, now could you cough for me please?

Patient: There's no need for that.

Doctor: Sorry

Patient: Why don't you 'k'off?

Julius Caeser

Caesar: Ef you, Brute!

Rosemary's Baby, a kitchen sink drama

2011-01-25T07:38:00.000-08:00

At the launderette

Washer Woman: Ere, Rosie, how's that husband of yours?

Rosemary: [unloads machine] He's a rotter, [beat] you'll never guess what he gone and done now.

WW: What's it this time love?

Rosemary: He's only gone and whored me out to the bloomin' Devil.

WW: He never.

Rosemary: He bloomin' well has.

WW: Well I never.

Rosemary: Couldn't believe it meself.

WW: He ought to be ashamed of himself.

Rosemary: That's what I said.

Happy Court

2010-09-16T12:10:00.001-07:00

Yay! You're going to court, where everyone loves each other!

Sweet! It's like a frikkin Tim Burton animation

But beware of the Damocles punctuation

Yesterday

2010-09-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

A bouquet of unsettling scenes bound by a book, a chance glance out of the window, a man dying in the corner of the eye.

Invention of smiling

2010-09-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

When Adam glanced Eve's facsimile smile, did he flash it back verbatim?

Afterlife

2010-09-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

I like to think that when we die the cells in memory's prison open up, memories flood out in some ecstatic riot, and we live our whole lives, all at once.

Labour

2010-08-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

They imported him over from the 3rd or 4th world, maybe the 5th, stuck him with a robotic voicebox that said only one word, Stan-derd, Stan-derd, all metallical. He whispers nothing to his love by underlining the paper.

2010-05-31T12:04:00.002-07:00

Sexism
is
Sexi

Cosmopolitanism: a Trilogy

2010-05-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

1
A mother stands at a corner with her children, contemplating the street ahead

Mother: What do you want, McDonalds or Burger King?

2
Two guys walking down a street

Guy1: This Starbucks is pretty crowded, maybe we should go to the next one.

3
The Subway manager stands beneath a regulation banner written 'Under New Management'
Manager: Things aren't going to change around here.

Structured like a sandwich, two thin slices surrounding rancid filling

2010-03-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

3 Old ladies sit at a cafe table. Armed with wet wipes they scrub away at the contours of their withered white hands. Margaret begins to recount a dream:

In a corporate convention that smells like semen it is decreed by Tricky-dicky Nixon and Genghis Khan that from now on all monsters shall get along with other monsters. An economic boom orgy follows, refined petroleum is guzzled at dinner parties and everyone is fucking loaded on drugs and cash. Yet with no blessed wars, population spirals out of control, gas chambers appear on every corner, the proletariat are hit first, when only a few toilet cleaners remain the miserable middling classes get theirs too. But that it is the future. Back at the convention now and champagne flows, hand shakes turn in to hand jobs and the canopy squad hold silver trays of narcotics under eager noses. One man snorts a line of a thousand microscopic daggers painted white to look like cocaine. He takes the joke well, laughing as his freshly detached nose slides down his face. In another room the evening's performance has started. One girl screws the other with a plutonium strap on wrapped in a christ coloured condom. Men adhere to the unspoken no-wank policy, instead observing with loaded erections stretching the fabric of their trousers. Family men. Company men. Good people. the fucking continues until her radioactive orgasm goes off, sending out a signal for all shorts in the room to be sprayed. Erections pop and erupt, so begins our Tsunami of seminar, giving the beginning of the dream its odor, and bringing it to an end.

Oh dear Margaret, says one of the women, that sounds very disturbing.
Oh I rather liked it, says Margaret, it reminds me of when I was young.

Story of a Life

2010-03-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes everything seems so sad, beautiful and crafted that you could be forgiven for thinking in an infinite universe some being is writing us. Do they fill in all the details or do those playing their characters add such things as pissing and nose scratching? I do not know. I have only lived their work, not read it.

The Bastard Semiology

2010-02-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

The young monster sits and dreams of surpassing his signifiers. Poor little fool. He wants to be loved.

A dilema for the masses

2010-02-05T11:23:00.002-08:00

In one locked caravan there is Adolf Hitler, in the other a notorious pedophile. They unlock the first. They need some help tipping the nonce's caravan.

The Dolphin

2010-02-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Whilst doing philosophy on Cathy With a K from Seattle she leans in for a kiss, or a failed headbutt. Her head jolts back as one waking from a sleepwalk. Eyebrows arch fiercely. She leaves with a guy whose favourite book is the bible. His name is Twocolt. Our hero hopes that this used to happen to young Slavoj Zizek, before he was kneedeep in cooz.

The Booths

2010-02-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

somehow it happened, i like martin amis, like, really like amis, and im all for the booths. while murder remains an obscure crime for its lack of a direct victim, such things as slaughter and retribution mean little to the dead, and perhaps it is society that feels the sustained violence, reminded of the frailty of life, the imminence of death, so on, so forth. a much worse crime is to keep alive someone longs to die. this to me seems the cruelest thing you can do to a person.

scattered brains and pistol smoke are a young man's sport, at seventy you may wish for a more comfortable death.

Technology: a Novel

2010-01-29T03:49:00.000-08:00

Aghast and shaking, Mr. Jobs hovers over the open draw in confounded contemplation of the contraption therein. KFC had long since familiarised him with the spork and while he had appreciated it much, he had paid little mind to the potential of cutlery splicing. He had assumed its marathon had been run and it was lucky to get as far as it did.
He had never conceived the spife.
Electronic replacements and so forth, apps and other trivialities, the rush to turn man so dependant to technology he is, sparing the scatology, all but Cyborg, that seemed so dated now. This frail, fashioned piece of plastic in his hand. That was innovation.

2010-01-20T05:53:00.000-08:00

A Mantra

2009-12-16T17:10:00.000-08:00

Dispense dissidence when you get the chance

Epitath for a Living Person

2009-12-13T11:17:00.000-08:00

And though death is always imminent,
and life some rebellion against it.
It's probably worth it

Unaddressed Theological Quandries Vol. 1

2009-12-03T05:52:00.000-08:00

In between drags Father Mcallister would often consider the dichotomy 'Do I Cain the spliff or does the spliff Cain me?'.

The morning after he always felt like Abel.

Irreverance of Youth

2009-11-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

A girl on rollerskates was singing that song that goes 'I've got soul but I'm not a soldier'. She started singing a better song which went 'I've got ham but I'm not a hamster'

2 5 word stories

2009-11-04T17:58:00.000-08:00

Look at Mother's withered flowers

She died alone, with me

Takeaway Metaphor for life

2009-05-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

A dog tied by its leash to a post outside a fast food restaraunt.
Tugging away at its constraints and strangling itself.

An adult's observation on childhood

2009-03-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Innocence
Is ignorance
In a sense

A child's observation on growing up

2009-03-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

Cutlery is a form of Cruelty

Alternate Reality in Stamford Hill

2009-03-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

When you enter Stamford Hill all colour disappears into Sepia tones. The sounds of the bus are replaced by non-diagetic sounds of comic rag time and Stock Jewish SFX vol.1: Ey! Oh! [Grumble Grumble]

When you leave Stamford Hill colour gradually dilutes the Sepia until normality is restored, a robot voice is announcing the next stop and the school kids are screaming.

New Friends

2009-03-06T14:36:00.000-08:00

I moved in to a new place and I have already made a new friend. He slid in through my window and began gracelously inspecting the place. He knows I am watching him and I suspect he is encouraging me to do so. He then made his way onto my bed, lay down on it and fell asleep; no doubt an unspoken signifier of the kind of guy he is. His sister had also entered my room but she is subtler than her brother, she must have been inspecting a corner nook for at least 10 minutes before I even noticed her. It was the commotion of a prodded bag that alerted my attention. She instantly checks to see if she has been rumbled and is clearly perturbed to find out she has.

He is Buster she is Lisa. Buster is particularly forward, of course you have realised this, one doesn't fall asleep on someone's bed without so much as a hello if they are not particularly forward or drunk. Buster doesn't strike me as the juicing kind. I sat on the bed next to him and placed a hand on his neck, he turned over in the hope I may tickle his chest. See how forward he is? We don't even know each other. He is naively forward but I find it slightly endearing.

Despite being the type that invades a stranger's room Lisa is much more reserved and retiring. She is mysterious and this is enticing. She is even more callous than her kin in her inspection of my room and she sniffs my furniture, gazes my bookshelf, she rubs herself up against my wardrobe. She is interested in me but does not want her attention reciprocated; and in this desire she grows vaster in her appeal and mystery. I try to hear what she is thinking as she peers straight through my eyes to my very core. alas she is impossible to figure out but I am certain she has sussed me.

I have a very strong suspicion that Buster will be back tomorrow, yet I shan't hold my breath for Lisa. Though I do hope she does, I would like to unwrap some of her enigma

Detective Story

2009-03-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

Every day I wake up and I am a new person. I can be a million people over the proceeding day, most of the time I do not even realise I have changed, metamorphosis can be subtle. This morning I am an ugly man. I make a few adjustments (I am malleable) and I am a handsome man.

When I get to the train I see a reflection in the glass, in the glass is an ugly man and now I am a confused man. Is the man in the glass me? Have I changed again? Or is the man in the glass another person entirely? I give the man in the glass the finger, he gives me the finger back and now we are enemies.

The man in the glass catches the train with me and sits opposite. Every now and then I catch him glancing me.

On the train I am a Private I, I am a good Private I because no one knows the nature of my being and if they ever do suspect I can always change.

I suspect the man in the glass may know but I let him know I know he knows. In doing so I am letting him know I don't care that he knows. He is no threat. He is stuck in the glass.

On this journey I have assigned myself a young couple. I can tell from their fresh skin they are young, I can tell they are a couple from the tender way she slips a hand through the parting of his jacket and kisses him on the cheek.

She is Canadian, she mentions a friend that visited her in Montreal, her friend is visiting London this week.

He has been for an interview, I suspect it was a commercial art gallery, he speaks of hypothetical strategies to get people to buy crap. He will greet as many customers as possible to create a broad diaspora of people with a basic knowledge of the crap. He likes football but there is no game that he's bothered to watch on tonight. They shall watch Dirty Harry instead.

They move down the carriage to vacated seats. I do not follow in order to preserve my cover, I have all the information I need.

To my right is a girl weraing glasses. The sides of the frames give away her current preoccupation as they point down to a book. What is she reading? I relocate my head, I am just giving it a scratch not positioning it for optimal snooping... She is reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. She is American.

Beyond the American is a man's neck. There is a square of red flesh surrounded by a thick moat of hair. It is a feeble disguise. He is a werewolf. I am Van Helsing. I check for the sorrow in his eyes (present) and I feel sorry for him. The violence within upsets him during the day, but one night a month he revels in it under the splendour of a full moon. He should consider having more outbursts in his human state as violence is now his main source of happiness. If he would beat people up on a day to day basis he may become au fait with the monster he is, and then he may not be a monster at all. A good psychiatrist would give him that advice, but presently I am not a good psychiatrist. I hope he manages to figure it out for himself. I am an empathetic man.

A voice announces a street name, doors open and I leave the train and leave the station. I am debris on the city streets

The Sad Tale of Eric Bristow

2009-02-26T05:31:00.000-08:00

In the mid nineties Eric Bristow hung up his crown and retired from professional darting because of an unshakable case of the yips. Most mornings I wake up feeling I have the yips.

Friendly Insanity

2009-02-22T13:18:00.000-08:00

Floating with the other bodies on a metal staircase. I look left and see Stephen Fry is literally the poster boy for mental illness.

Lee's face

2009-02-22T09:59:00.000-08:00

It is 12 o'clock on a Monday and I am nine tenths sure I have just seen Lee Vickers's distinctive face by the Saint James's park station. Now I have seen multiple recreations of other faces plastered on several people before, but Lee's face? Impossible. Lee's face was chiseled by God himself as some sort of practical joke.

But how would that face have escaped Leeds? Surely when it leaves the city's invisible borders a headache alerts Lee to return to the hub. Surely when he leaves Yorkshire the whole head explodes scanners style. That face could never have made it all the way down to London.

No, with that face it must be him. It has to be Vickers, it can only be Vickers. He actually got himself out of Leeds. I should go over and say 'hi' really, but I can't, it might be him.

Wetherspoons

2009-02-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

The old man took a gulp of his drink, backwash now, as a stream of piss ran down his thigh diluting fresh diarrhea. He looked at the price board and exhaled a solitary word. 'Babylon'

The Last Time I saw Andrei

2009-02-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

The last time I saw Andrei he was in a bad way. He was drunk and disturbed having seen his kid sister for the first time in 15 years, 'And she was fucking hot man!'

5 year old wisdom

2009-02-11T04:28:00.000-08:00

I like it when I am in the supermarket and I hear the strange little voice of a child saying this "I hate you. I'm not your friend". In garnishing the phrase 'I hate you' with 'I'm not your friend', the child has cottoned onto something quite pertinent. You see the two are not neccesarily mutually complicit and many adults probably hate a quarter of their friends. Some adults hate them all.

The Triumph Over the Bottle

2009-02-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful little park in the middle of the town and when the blossoms danced down from the trees it looked like a scene orchestrated for a film.

Yet it wasn't Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp sat on the bench wearing Silk under Cashmere. It was Barry and Paul wearing dry Piss in Polyester.

At their feet the hollow membrane of a cigarette packet caught a Zephyr and pirouetted up to dance with the blossoms. Barry watched the performance as he snorted and coughed up the last of the morning's phlegm.

Paul focused on his hands as he fiddled with the cap of a blue plastic bottle.

Barry didn't bother to tell Paul about the show as he knew he would not be interested. They didn't have much in common outside bottles apart from that prevailing melancholy and the fatal desire to drink themselves through it. Though Paul had drank before the prevailing melancholy started.

The mention of a mutual friend eventually broke the silence as Barry asked Paul if he had seen anything of Steve.

'No. Have you?'

'No.'

'Dead probably.'

'Probably.'

The crackle of thin plastic splitting announced Paul's triumph over the bottle. 'To Steve' he said before taking a hearty chug and passing it on.

'To Steve' Barry said and took a swig for himself.

In the seconds before the chorus

2009-02-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

Earth had stopped. Its axis was not rotating and the entire population was completely motionless, as inanimate as dried concrete.

Then the voice in the tannoy announced it was Hammer time.

George and Georges

2009-01-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

After dimming the lights, and turning on the Marvin, George picked up his well worn Story of the Eye and unzipped his trousers

Jonathan's Girl

2009-01-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

According to rumour if you got close enough to Jonathan Stoke he'd introduce to the girl he loves. On and off I had been Johnny's friend since we were 5 and I had always been a little upset that I had never seen her. So you can imagine my excitement when he told me to meet him at the park. 'I have something to show you', he'd said on the phone.

I was waiting there as planned when I spotted a distinctly Stoke-esque figure approaching from the horizon. Dangling outside his pocket was Sylvia Plath's body covered in a yellow bathing costume. Inside his pocket her smiling face nestled snugly. For a second I thought this may be The Girl but that conflicted with information I had received. Johnny shook my hand and we made our way to the museum. It was reported that when he took Kyle and Jenny to meet her he had taken them there. They had said she 'sort of works there'.

We entered the great hall where we were surrounded by screaming Children and the words of Teddy Roosevelt. 'Do you know why I've brought you here?', Johnny asked me. 'I think so' I replied.

We gave the girl at the counter a buck and she gave us the frown she gives all the cheap bastards who pay below the suggested donation. I made a contrite expression with my eyebrows and Johnny beckoned me to accompany him to the anthropology section.

We had barely walked through the threshold when he started making his introductions. She was behind a layer of glass with a man who I suppose Kyle and Jenny would have called her 'sort of coworker'. She was fairly short but clearly tough as hell. Pretty old, older than me and Johnny by a long shot and if my sources are correct she was older than our parents. Didn't look it though and if she was pushed to it she could still easily provide for a large family and probably kick that other dude's wussy ass into shape.

'So what do you think?' Johnny started 'quite something right?'. I made a face involuntarily. A funny face that I can't really describe. I don't think Johnny much cared for my face.

'You do know she's a mannequin?' I inquired and the room went white and a fist flew into a face.

It was his fist and it was my face folding into it like a Picasso.

For a while I sat there on the National History floor letting my tongue wobble a loosened tooth, the taste of Iron alerted me that the gums were bleeding. As I sampled my blood savouring its stark tang I looked over at the Diorama and thought for a minute. Did Johnny punch me to defend this lady's honour? Or was he still pissed at me after all these years?

The burdens of fame

2009-01-11T14:21:00.000-08:00

The other day I was in town where I saw Mark Charnock wearing thick sun glasses on a grey winter's day. They must have been working because the hordes of screaming girls were successfully at bay.

If Clarkson be the food of love

2009-01-11T12:56:00.000-08:00

There was the public and there was her, so gracefully withdrawn as she perched behind her barrier.

I was in awe as I admired the way she snatched their wares, nonchalantly scanned them through and disdainfully stuck out a palm for them to line with quids.

I imagined myself reading her Clarkson over Vivaldi, finest Lambrusco and scented candlelight. Then we would make love for hours, days, maybe weeks. And when our bodies were exhausted and in need of reinvigorating she would plead with me 'read that one about Jordan's tits again', I would comply and we would go at it again.

I reached her iron cage and passed her the book in question, a supermarket bargain at £2.97. She looked at it, smiled and quoted a sum which she expected me to pay.

As I handed her a sheet with the Queen's face on I began to lay the groundwork,'You like Jeremy?', I inquired penetrating her with my eyes.

'God no!' she replied throwing the book back into my hands 'he's so banal'. And in that suspended moment when her crooked smirk burnt its way into my memory as she handed me my change, I saw her for what she really was: Checkout Scum.

The case for nicer bus drivers

2009-01-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

Today I got on the bus to be greeted warmly by the bus driver before attempting to pay for a £4 ticket with a £10 note. He asked if I had anything smaller and I ummmed then he ummmed and for a second we ummed together. Our ummms subsided and he said "come back to me later".

As I left the bus I reminded him I hadn't paid for a ticket and he replied "Its OK, have a drink on me."

You get these people at 6am in the morning, in the street almost everyone smiles at you. Let it no longer be a secret that the people that are up at 6am are members of a special club called the '6am club' where everyone is lovely to each other.

This is before the day has broken them and they are miserable bastards again. Yet if there were more Bus Drivers like this guy perhaps the day would not break them so quickly

Bodily fluids of the Elegant

2008-12-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

Materials: Gold ink, Black ink, back page of national geographic appropriated from Dr's surgery by Mother

Batteries not included

2008-11-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

Next to Toys R Us is a store named 'Babies R Us'. If Toys R Us sells toys what does Babies R Us sell?

Cooking for One

2008-11-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

It is Friday night and a thousand single men walk home from the supermarket. Hand One nestles in a jacket pocket as Two swings the 2 for 1 pizza.

Friday night and nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine single men arrive home to put frozen pizza in the oven, grimace and sip beer as they pine over whichever homely sweety is presenting whatever sedative show.

Still Friday and one single man arrives home to see bitterness, loneliness, hate and despair reflected in four equal slices.

Almost midnight and one single man puts their head in the oven.

And what is he thinking this doomed slumberer, as he drifts out of consciousness and forgets what he's doing?

"Thank God I don't have work tomorrow"

Everything that you read

2008-10-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

The setting to this piece's opening scene is a Californian train. The time is midday. And the cast is two guys that work for the train company who pass the time by saying any old bullshit that comes into their heads. It may not keep them entertained but it keeps them sedate.

One of the guys is on about his delinquent-lite daughter who from what I understand never does her homework, has a messy room, yells at her moms and all that kind of stuff.

Recently there had been 'an incident'. She was confronted by some teacher and when the bitch's back was turned she had made some gesture. Some other kid then told the teacher that this guy's daughter had been making gang signals and the daughter was put in detention for it.

So the guy was quite worried about this because 'you know when the gang kids get word of this she's gonna be in trouble', as he said with passable solemnity. And this braindead conclusion can only be of a man who had read one too many articles with headlines like: 'Girl beaten for flashing gang signal', 'Three fingered Boy stabbed for waving at friends' or 'Baby shot in pram for making East-Sider-BOYZ signal in West-Side-Gz territory'. I think the same stimulus probably motivated the detention. Poor saps believe everything they read.

And in some penthouse appartment somewhere there is a tabloid editor laughing at the wonderful irony they have birhted: people read the paper hoping it will make them smart and informed, but instead they end up dumb and fearful.

How great for a newspaper to have a dumb, fearful readership. When it comes to selling ad-space and the prospective buyer inquires 'what is your audience?' to which they reply 'fearful idiots', I suppose the buyer probably jizzes himself.

Piece of piss to sell crap to the fearful idiots and a piece of piss to sell them your lies so they can continue to feel informed.

There's a good Melville story about this kind of process (selling guff to scared people) in which a guy goes around during lightning storms, telling people about how dangerous these storms were and so on, before trying to sell them some piece of crap designed to deflect lightning from their houses. In the story the writer lamps the little man and tells him to fuck along. In spite of this he says the man continues to lurk round his way 'driv[ing] a brave trade with the fears of man'

And Melville's treatment of his fear-monger is one that I widely advocate as I suggest that anyone who has found themselves misfortunately flicking through a copy of the Sun left in a work cafeteria should form a civilised que outside Mr Murdoch's door. Then one by one punch him in the face as part of a lampathon that lasts for the rest of his days.

It's not just the fear mongering that he deserves a good lamping for, his papers print stuff that is far more repugnant. For instance the Sun's sunday edition The News of the World runs stories with headlines 'quoting' supposed immigrants saying things like 'I claim a million a week in benefits and wipe my arse on the Union Jack' and next to it a brown skinned-man grins ear-to-ear, surrounded by his hundreds of children who the paper claim go to the most expensive school in the city yada, yada. Clearly people need these kinds of stories.

And I imagine the reader: swigging at his special brew, belching, scratching his balls and yelling back to his wife in the other room. 'Hey Sheila, you read this? Some bleeding jamracky scrounger comes over here, gets free ouse in Cotswalds and million a week and goes on to say he doesn't like England. It's not on is it love?'. And a tear drops from Sheila and sizzles in the frying pan next to the sausages. Spends her whole days cooking sausages now Sheila does. Only way to avoid him and all the bullshit he quotes from the paper. Wasn't meant to be like this, she was happy once. High school sweethearts they were, love's young dream. He was handsome, refined and believe-it-or-not he was smart. Not Einstein or owt but he was canny. Then he started buying the paper. She tried reasoning with him, she explained it's all bullshit but he just won't hear it. she's given up. 'No,' says Sheila as another tear drops and sizzles in the pan 'it's not on.'

So for the Xenophobic, cretinous crap the papers sell (and for Sheila) burn down your local newstand, shun your media-studying friend and join in on the great Murdoch lampathon of 2008

Daily News: the novel

2008-09-11T18:52:00.000-07:00

So the Scientists were conducting some experiment to find out about black-holes or the big bang or some other bullshit and the Daily Crud ran a story about it on page 5 saying it was the 'end of the world'.

Then there was this big press conference and the Scientists called the Daily Crud 'Chicken Licken' and laughed at their own suggestion: that the Crud probably still had 'THE SKY IS FALLING' written on their front page.

So the Crud told the scientists they would not be laughing when the sky does fall, and then called them 'mass-murderers'.

'Puh-lease' the scientists retorted, and suggested the chance of the experiment going wrong was lower than winning the lottery.

'And if that should happen?' the Crud pondered.

'Then I suppose we all win' The Scientists concluded.

If everybody looked the same we'd get tired of looking at each othe

2008-08-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

I'm down the old Hemmy chugging away at us pint, thinking about cigarettes and fucking when the ex-Parra at the bar turns to us
“You wanna know what I'd do if i was running this country?” He says
“Did them Galileans wanna hear the Sermon on the Mount?” I reply
“Don't get sarccy with” he demands and then calls us 'College'
“I wasn't bein sarccy." I tell him "They did wanna hear the Sermon on the mount. That was a 'yes'”
“Right”, he says with a look that means 'if i find out you were bein sarccy I'll bite your cock off', “Good.
“If I were prime minister.” he continues “First thing I'd do when I get into number 10. Before even shaggin the missus on the number 10 bed. Before even taking a dump in the number 10 toilet. I'd start by bringin back national service. Too many little shits running about these days”
“You're right there!” I say, “Look at me, I'm a right fucking toe-rag. Beatin up old grannies, knifing babies. National service'd do me the world of good”.
“That's right! You go over there, have a bit of a holiday, shoot a few Pakis. You'd get it all out your system”, he assures me.
“He's not wrong” the old bastard in the corner agrees.
“I'm a clever man me”, the Parra informs me and we smash our glasses together. Mine shatters and Fosters drips all down us hand. Beer may taste good goin down the throat but that's got nothing on the glory of the celebratory spillage for words of wisdom. I feel proud as fuck looking at me soaked hand.
“Don't let it go to waste!” Parra yells before ordering us a new one.
I mop up the nectar with me mouth and Parra tells the barman to “put it in a Man glass this time”. I get me drink and the bar falls quiet in anticipation of Parra's next words.
“So I've brought back national service, I've shagged me missus on the number 10 bed. You wanna know what I do after I've taken a dump and told the missus to take her fucking pill this time?” He doesn't need to wait for a response, he knows we need this like we need oxygen. “Next thing I do is bring back hanging. And -”, Parra's flow is interrupte by the socialist bastard behind the bar sticking his ugly beak in.
“-You'd really bring back hanging?” he inquires.
“Absolutely. Eye for an eye mate.”, Parra replies and the bar man's lucky he hasn't got a braying.
“But what about Evans?” the Barman tries.
I falter by starting to think about this problem. But a man like Parra doesn't fall into the barman's trap, instead he comes out with a blinder. “Shit 'Appens!” he barks, quick as a flash and the entire pub erupts in applause.
“WHHAAAAAAAAAAAY” they roar.
“'SHIT APPENS'” They quote
“YES IT FUCKING DOES” They reassure.
“STICK THAT ON A FUCKING BUMPER STICKER” The old bastard in the corner suggests.
The Parra's soaking it up, playing to his audience: “And I don't fucking stop there!” He says 100mph, “If you're caught stealing, you get your hand cut off!” 200 mph, “and if you bloody rape someone, WE CUT YOUR BLOODY BOLLOCKS OFF MATE. BAM”, and he breaks the sound barrier by slamming the edge of his right hand down into the palm of his left as if it were a bollock guillotine.
I flinch, but the Parra doen't judge me for it and shakes us shoulder supportively.
Elated and cocky from the shoulder shake I attempt to put forward a suggestion. “You know what I'd do if I were prime minister?”, I step-up and there's no going back now.
The bar goes quiet and Parra nods at us. His body language is clear: 'this is your chance kid. Don't blow it'.
“If I were prime minister” I start, I pause I take in a breath and proceed “If I were Prime Minister I would castrate all the bastards that make music for eunuchs and use politically correct slogans for lyrics”, and it's out there.
Parra looks at us dead quiet, and seems dead mythed. I've blown it, I fucking knew it, fucking hubris. What a fucking numpty! Who the fuck am I to be thinking about what I'd do if I were Prime Minister?
I pick up me phone, me wallet and me change quickly stuffing them into us pockets whilst planning to get out sharpish. As I open my mouth to say me quick goodbyes before making a prompt exit Parra stops me.
He hands me a beer. I am sure it is the last beer I shall ever drink with him before he tells me to fuck off forever. I better not cry, if I cry hopefully he'll kill me before I have to kill myself.
“TOOOOOOOO FUCKIN RIGHT!” he booms and we smash our glasses together again and his shatters and I down the rest of my beer and Parra rocks us head violently and I am accepted! Protege and master, Socrates and Plato. Beering it up, getting fucking twatted and making plans for when we run the country as we bask in the praise of our fellow patrons.

So you better watch out Groove Armada. Me, Parra and the old bastard in the corner are coming for your bollocks.

Just an Oxfam conversation

2008-08-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a transcript of a conversation I listened into at an Oxfam charity shop:

Speccy Girl: I went to a great talk by that one, Errrr, you'd know her name straight away
Short Girl: What did she write?
Speccy: Umm, about the lesbians.
Shorty: Sarah Waters?
Speccy: Yes Sarah Waters.
Shorty: Good?
Speccy: Yes.
Shorty: What were they talking about?
Speccy: Um Y'know. Really errrrrrr... 'Interesting stuff'?.
Shorty: Well I read everyone of those lesbian books and hated them.
Speccy: Oh me too, but it's just interesting watching people talk. Y'know pretty interesting about the gays and the past and that.
Shorty: So they weren't talking about the books?
Speccy: Oh God no! I wouldn't have sat through that.

Meanwhile in a pub around the corner an old man dreams of the day two young girls voluntarily listen to him go on about the gays and the past.

The origin of aids discovered

2008-04-21T21:04:00.000-07:00

Charlton Heston: a real Ape's man.

As Dorothy Parker once said...

2008-02-01T09:41:00.000-08:00

Let it be known that Dorothy Parker is my favourite literary Heroine. I read her poems to my local vagrant and he said "Cor blimey she's almost as good as heroin".

you were born alone...

2007-12-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

Here is a cliche:
'You were born alone and you will die alone', or words to that effect, something many idiots say in an attempt to sound poetic.
I don't know about you but i was born anything but alone. i was born coming out of my mother's vagina into a room full of people. after that awkwardness i'll be happy to die alone

prisoners of facebook

2007-10-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

So Ian Huntley's presence on Facebook has got many a disgruntled social networker vitriolically typing away, and for the first time in Facebook history there is not a lol to be seen. Why do they care? Is facebook such a magical kingdom that the site's very own St. Peter should refuse him at the gates and banish him to Myspace hell?

He's hardly the first pedophile to use a social networking site and he certainly isn't going to be getting any dates from it. In fact all he'll be getting is an inbox full of abuse: “oi nonceface get off this site”, “I had to remove my baby pictures from this site thanks to you! (not that you would have been able to see them if i hadn't sent you this message)”, “Oh so you're the paedophile Huntley, I was after my mate also called Ian Huntley, sorry for the confusion”. The fact of the matter is that he's only got a page on some silly site, not got a job in a primary school, it could be much worse.

Facebook isn't the glimpse of freedom some may suggest, as many of the addicts can attest it's more like a prison. We need to remember that Facebook isn't the real world it's a site full of bars and visiting hours and solitary confinement if nobody's posted on your wall, you can't live on the damn thing. There is a real world outside that window behind your monitor; it has trees (remember them?) and real stuff in it, you can buy someone a proper gift rather than spending a dollar on some pixelated image. And prolonged exposure to this real world may help sort out that green skin you developed since you hung up your trainers to retire to slippers and night robes whilst you live your life behind a computer screen.

Then again Huntley might have found Madeline McCann on one of those 'Find Maddie' groups (because obviously she was on Facebook), get him out!

I think the real reason for the uproar is that the students want to keep Facebook for themselves, and he's too old to be a member. Perhaps the site should run police check on everybody over 23, The lousy nonce bastards. Maybe there should be a facebook correctional facility full of all the facebook scum where they can fight each other and get raped in the shower with the 'X-me' application.

If it's so offensive then maybe those that are so upset by his presence should leave, or are Facebook groups the only form of protest nowadays?

birds of pavement

2007-06-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

The Pigeons in Manchester are unkempt. I observed this as i sat on a park bench whilst they congregated around my flapjack crumbs as if i were the pigeon messiah.

When i was younger i had a romanticised perception of pigeons. They soared elegantly through the smog and perched nobly on the gargoyles of my six-year-old imagined city-scape. If someone had called them a winged rat in my presence I'd have probably sworn at them, by five I could comfortably call someone a shit head

Nowadays pigeons look more like pirates. They hobble on peg-like stump legs, and leer at each other aggressively, hoping to rid their opponent of some of their greasy feathers.
Despite their chivalrous appearance, the birds added a tranquility to the setting, previously absent due to the sounds of car engines and horns coming from the road metres away. That is until a vagabond came and cleared them off with an almighty groan.

"You don't like them do you?", he inquired, in between gulps of cheap cider.

"They're alright", I shrugged
"Bloody scroungers! The lot of 'em!"

Last Night

2007-06-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

I got a few beers in and watched 'The Goonies'. I got so drunk I ended up blowing Chunk

Coke Zero Brainrot

2007-06-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

"why can't good things come without downsides?" wonders the Aryan in the Coke Zero advert. A character so pristine, so free of any defining qualities (other than his insipid smugness) that it's a wonder he isn't straight out of plastic packaging.

He's one of consumerism's morons, someone who should put some serious thought into suing topshop. At the staggering age of 23 he thinks he knows it all, and is ready to share his musings (composed in the half-time break of the big match) with the world.

Kudos to him, in his infintie wisdom, he has managed to make the staggeringly shallow observation that good things 'like bras, yeah', are all to frequently accompanied by horrific darksides 'like fiddly strap,man'. 'Why can't we have mobile phones without the annoyin ringtones?' he ponders, an acute observation penetrating all that ails contemporary society, he's ever so subversive y'know? Coke may have found the spokesman of a generation in this one. Here's one question he neglects to ask though: 'why can't we have TV without the inane adverts?'.

However, we no longer need despair, he has discovered the perfect entity in Coke Zero 'Coke, yeah, without that evil sugar stuff'.

This is the obnoxious bastard generation that the yuppies have burdened us with. Children raised on adverts and now content to know everything about the high street but nothing important. They go university but only manage to acquire a damaged liver and a database of Lynx slogans each one seemingly weaker than the last but recieved with an even warmer reception regardless.

I don't mean to knock bruised livers, learning how to drink like a grown-up is one of the most vital lessons university has to teach aspiring adults. Yet it's approached with the same 'gimme gimme 'ethos these consumerist machines approach everything with, and now alcohol has its own fashionable labels to boot.

"too much drink is sometimes barely enough", a wiser man than me once suggested. Yet if Mark Twain was doing the rounds in the present day's education system he may have quipped a much less eloquent epigram 'too much WKD turns your vomit blue', such is the intellectual capacity of today's burgeoning academics.

Maybe it's partially the education system's fault. The emphasis shifts from learning things and on to learning exams. It is not until we abolish grading systems that students will start to get an education Robert Pirsig once suggested. Learning becomes staggered, goal orientated, directed to specific learning objectives (as my Maths teacher used to write on the board). The idea is not that the student is gaining knowledge, but studying to pass a test or write a pleasing paper.

Education then becomes learning what you have to, the knowledge almost rhetorical, it's there to write in a paper and is devoid of meaning out of this context. If knowledge were to help expands the sudent's mind perhaps they might be able to make something out of their looming debt, help validate their presence at university. Instead university becomes a product, they are effectively buying a grade Knowledge is useless if it dosen't equate to a number that helps employers pick them for an interview based on glancing the first page of their CV. It becomes commodity rather than a quality.

But perhaps these kids are too far gone to be affected by a change in educational priorities, by now corporate execs have hammered into them the incentive that all that matters is what you own, personal worth is related to how 'in' one's clothes are, not what one knows. And a degree is just one more thing to own, a bit like a credit card almost, a means to a job enabling you to purchase more crap. Maybe if there were courses on high-street studies, we would have a nation of first class degree students. Maybe there is high-street studies, maybe its really hard in order to justify its Mickey Mouse existence.

The biggest problem (if taking the Coke Zero prick to be emblematic of the generation) is they're just not as smart as they think they are.

They are a generation of inflated egos due to Kid's TV. When Postman Pat was telling them they could achieve anything they wanted, perhaps he was being cruel rather than inspirational. Such lies have made them the Satres of the student's union they impost as, wondering what their peanuts are made out of 'is it potato or maize? It must be maize so they've got less carbs.'

'But being clever was so easy Postman Pat said. You just had to sit in front of the TV and absorb the boring shows and accompanying commercials. I did this, therefore I big clever like', they might assume..

They have indeed learnt a lot from these commercials, they have based there whole lifestyle on them. They have also left them wondering "why can't credit cards come without massive bills"