Election Time!

I got into a bit of rant over at Susie's and I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd post it here...

As an outsider what surprises me about the U.S. media (and also the electorate) is that they appear to have some measure of respect for the candidates, whereas here in the U.K. we recognise that politicians, particularly those seeking the highest office, are in fact vermin who should be hunted down, captured, tortured and then killed. If they have reproduced then their entire families should be sterilised. (Don't try and tell me that Michael Howard can't be accurately defined as a sexually transmitted disease)

Anyway, it may seem ludicrous that the only candidates for the job of Most Powerful Man in the World are a half-witted monkey and an empty suit, and laughable that the people entrusted with choosing between them are Americans, for fuck's sake, but that's, as they say, life.

Hey ho.

Horribly Wrong

My graphic designer (who also happens to be my Final Wife) says that the light-on dark template I'm using is difficult to read and that I should change it to something a bit more sensible. As I am monumentally stupid when it comes to this stuff there may be a terrible accident. If it all goes horribly wrong, please bear with me.

I fear from experience that even if it goes right I'll lose the any comments posted on here, which is a shame.

Maybe I'll leave things the way they are.

The Power Of The Bugbear

Guess what, chaps! A couple of days after my unkind words about him, Norman Wisdom has announced that he's retiring from showbiz. Okay, he's ninety years old, so he might have been considering it anyway, but you have to admit it looks like I managed to push him over the edge.

Apparently Norman was a big star in Albania, where he was known as "Pitkin". Films like "Pitkin Goes To The Workers' Collective Summer Picnic" were immensely popular under the regime of King Zog, where the only other permitted form of recreation was the fiercely competitive "Growing Root Vegetables Into Slightly Amusing Shapes" League.

According to the news reports Norman was famous for his catchphrase "Mr. Grimsdale.", which, let's be honest, is not that clever a catchphrase. I'm not a comedy writer, but I'd put money on being able to come up with something a little more witty and urbane than that.

Anyway, now that I've seen what the power of the Bugbear can accomplish I'm going off to concentrate on visiting a plague of pubic hornets on Giles Brandreth. I realise you Americans don't know who Giles Brandreth is, but trust me on this one, if you knew him you'd thank me.

Malnourished Goat-Faced Dikes #1

I'm not proud of this. In fact, frankly, there's a good deal of shame attached to it all. In hope of mitigation I have to put it to you that I was in Cornwall on holiday and it was raining quite a lot, but I did it. I watched a makeover programme on TV. I take a small degree of solace from the fact that I've never seen this particular programme before and would rather have my worst enemy take charge of tightening a razor-wire tourniquet round my scrotum than ever watch it again.

In this case it was hosted by a pair of visually interchangeable malnourished goat-faced dikes (hereinafter referred to as "GFD1" and "GFD2" because my lawyer advised me not to use their real names.) Believe me, no matter how civilised and even-tempered you believe yourself to be, if you had to spend more than half an hour in their company there would be no option but to pour a pint of beer over their expensively coiffured but noisily vacant heads.

The concept is that the GFDs, apparently famous for being Real Stylin' Bitches or something, take two Real Girls and do fashion stuff to them, which gives them greater confidence, total fulfilment, etc, etc. To start with of course there are more than two Real Girls, because on this kind of show the humilation can't start early enough and so to begin with the cannon fodder count is around ten. There are little cameos of all the RGs, giving them an opportunity to tell the camera why they should be chosen, and we pan back to the GFDs while they invent spurious reasons for their final selection (spurious becuse the only purpose of the selection process is to arrive at the RGs who are most likely to allow themselves to be humilated on national television without either slashing their wrists or punching one or other of the GFDs in the mouth.)

The entire group then stands in a room while the GFDs toy with them clumsily for a few minutes until the tension builds. The decision is announced, the Rejected Real Girls skulk off into the night to abuse their stunted children and get fat while the Chosen Real Girls do that winning thing which involves temporarily adopting the motor functions of a cerebral palsy victim at a Stevie Wonder gig while squealing "OhmyGod. OhmyGod. Oh. My. God. OhmyGod." The Almighty is unmoved by their supplication - after thirty seconds or so they're both still ugly. Hey ho.

The next phase is to visit the homes of the Chosen Real Girls, whose names escape me, thankfully, but Karen and Sharon will do. The GFDs examine the contents of the Girls' wardrobes, retching quietly as they use laundry tongs to drop the offending garments onto a blazing bonfire. Karen's stuff is boring but inoffensive, while Sharon's looks like it was chosen by her guide dog.

Then we meet the husbands. Karen's spouse is a colourless corporate git who is disappointed at what he perceives to be her lack of confidence at company picnics, or something like that. Now I don't even know the woman, but it's blindingly obvious to me that the poor hapless bitch's real problem at these events is the palpable wave of pity she feels coming off all the other wives when they realise that her husband is indeed the plum-faced robotic little twat standing beside her.

At first I think Sharon's husband is doing an impression of Norman Wisdom in one of those inexplicably revered but entirely fucking awful 1950s Ealing comedies where he has a speech problem, wears his cap sideways and gets hit on the head with a large shovel every five minutes. (For the benefit of young people or American visitors who don't know who Norman Wisdom is, think Jim Carrey at his most annoying and double it. Now stick a needle in your eye. There, you've got it.) Sharon's old man is for real, though - there's no mention of what he does for a living. I give it some thought, but apart from organ donor I just can't visualise a role for him.

It's quite apparent that a fashion makeover is completely futile. Call me sentimental if you like, but I begin to think that what would improve these girls' lives beyond recognition would be to take their husbands outside and put a bullet in the back of each pointed little head.

And we're still only halfway through the show! Boy am I having fun!

Do! Do! Do The Selfish Monkey!

It must be catching; Ed (The Selfish Monkey)packed in the blogthing a couple of months back.

I'm going to Cornwall on holiday for a week with no internet access and so won't be posting anything, nor will I be able to read and comment on anyone else's stuff, and anyway, to tell you the truth, I'm a little tired with the whole blogbusiness at the moment. There seem to be too many other things to worry about, and not nearly enough things to poke fun at, so I think I'm going to put what energy I have into other stuff, like getting fit and playing bass.

So...thanks to you all for dropping by over the months and giving support, advice and the benefit of your skewed sense(s) of humour. I'll still read your stuff and comment from time to time, but for the time being at least, the Bear's hanging up his, errrm, paws.

Batman and Robin - a response

Of all the U.K. news stories that make it through the U.S.A.'s "Not America Or Eye-Rack, So We Don't Care" filter, the one that Libertybob's asked me to comment on is "Batman and Robin Meet The Queen." I'm not an expert on either the disgusting Windsor family or the forces that drive people to dress up as super-heroes, but I'm prepared to give it a go, particularly as Bob is the only person who visits this site (apart from Susie Creamcheese, who disappointingly turns out to be a big Welsh bloke rather than the moist, pouting nymphet I had in mind).

Anyway, there are a number of different points raised by this news story, and I'll give it my best shot:

Dressing as superheroes; hmmm, tricky one. "I'm an estranged father being treated like shit and it's not fair because fathers are really uhhh, heroes. And super." Okay, got it. But the bloke who did Spiderman had more cred. Marvel beats DC any time.

I you're a protestor, dressing up in any kind of funny costume not only attracts attention from the media but is supposed to make it less likely that you'll be shot dead by the security forces. In this country that strategy still works pretty well. As a rule, if you're found in the grounds of Buckingham Place wearing a balaclava helmet, combats with side-arm-sized bulges and a sack marked "anthrax" there's a strong probability that even the Metropolitan Police will decide to take you out, although even then you're not necessarily a goner unless they can see that you're black.

As terrorists are quite smart these days it's only a matter of time before they're all dressing like Biffo the Bear and running round doing terrorist stuff unchallenged, so my own view is that just to be on the safe side anyone dressed in any kind of "humorous" costume should be shot dead, unless they can prove they're on their way to a fancy-dress party. Actually, due to the difficulty in telling the difference between a genuine fancy-dress party and a cell of merciless terrorist assassins we should probably target the partygoers as well. People involved in street theatre are most likely innocent of serious crime but let's face it, they need to be wiped out more than anybody.

I'd also like to draw the attention of the authorities to the people who run the fancy-dress shop in Merstham. They didn't laugh at my joke about the trucks that deliver helium canisters floating away.

Frances, Gaston, Hermine, Ivan...

The East coast of America, and Florida in particular, seems to get a lot of hurricanes. (We hear more about the storms that hit Florida than all the others partly because they're of greater severity than the others and partly because Florida is populated entirely by tiny dried-up husks of old people who weigh so little that they often get sucked up into the slipstreams of trucks and end up miles from home, so hundred-mile-an-hour winds are more of a problem for them than for the rest of us.)

It doesn't happen in England, or at least, not often. We certainly don't have to give them names to tell one from the other. When we talk about "The Hurricane", we mean the one we had back in 1987, which peaked at a relatively puny 94 miles per hour. At the time I was living in a part of rural Cambridgeshire where there were three houses, five trees and nothing else from one horizon to the other except fields full of brussel sprouts, so the storm damage was limited. (They can withstand a lot of damage, can sprouts, which is good, because it means that after World War Three the cockroaches will still have something to eat.) Anyway, back to hurricanes; if we're up to "Ivan" already that means there have been nine hurricanes this year already, and it's only September.

Bearing that in mind, what I don't understand is this: why do Floridians continue to build ordinary houses? There would seem to be only two sensible approaches:

1 - Dig a large hole. Turn it into a spacious and well-equipped cellar. Live in it. If you feel the need to live above ground during the summer months, make sure that the dwelling you construct is made out of the cheapest, flimsiest materials available, then when it blows away while you're hiding in the cellar, not only won't you care, but if it lands on somebody it won't squash them. Part of the roof of the cellar (or floor of the house, depending on whether you're up or down) would of course be a sort of electric trapdoor thing to allow you to quickly move televisions, stereo systems and stuff up and down as required.

2 - Rather than build a normal house, build a windowless (CCTV cameras could take the place of windows) reinforced concrete pyramid, with walls at least two metres thick and deep foundations. No hurricane's going to move that motherfucker. The pyramid concept could prove immensely popular in Florida, with most of the population looking like a triumph of the embalmer's art already. On the death of the occupant, no need for a costly funeral, merely seal the doors and walk away.

You know it makes sense.

NB: "The Flimsy", and "The Cheops" are registered trademarks of The Bugbear Construction Company Ltd.

Not realising his favourite "special"restaurant was wired for sound, Michael asked for "a roast child, about this big" 

"Why don't they trust me?" thought Michael. 

Michael Who? Oh, Him...

I've been away for a while, and I was going to post some stuff on here about my honeymoon (no, not that sort of stuff), but there are some wonderful things going on that I have to talk about.

You may already know how I feel about Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party. In a way I'm delighted that the Tories have once again chosen a leader who may well have it in him to grow to be genuinely deserving of the nation's hatred. Admittedly, compared with the deranged and malevolent Margaret Thatcher he's a minor player in the loathing stakes; a film clip of the Thatch can still bring on the adrenalin rush and the red mist, while with Mike it's a more subtle flesh-crawling thing, but it's a lot better than John Major (Grey, dull, nerdy voice), William Haig (Young, bald, looks like a baby), and Ian Duncan-Smith. (Who? Exactly.)

Michael has a decidedly scary smile, particularly when he's trying to fake sincerity. I wouldn't for one moment suggest that he might have a taste for human flesh, but you can never tell. He also has a weird speech impediment which renders him unable to pronounce words which end in "ble", so you get "possibill" "peopill" and, ultimately, "unelectabill".

Anyway, Mike's in trouble with the White House. Yay! As I understand it, it goes like this. As Leader of the Opposition, Mike's job is to try and embarrass Tony Blair and generally fuck up the Government of the day. (I have a niggling feeling that this might well be treason, for which he should be arrested and killed, but I might be wrong). It's difficult for Mike to attack Tony on domestic policy, because it's pretty much the same as Mike's policy. The most controversial policy issue in the U.K. is the Iraq war, (Tony lied to us, made errors of judgement, etc, etc). Mike has tried to use this to attack Tony.

George isn't too sure who the hell Mike is, but he knows that someone's being unkind about his bestest friend outside the U.S. and this makes him really cross. Mike wants to visit the U.S. and meet GWB. The White House says "We're not too sure who the hell you are, but you've made our friend Tony very sad. We don't want to talk to you. And we know where you live."

Fighting back tears, Mike pretends not to care, but in reality spends most of his waking moments trying to figure out how to get out of this one, because with an election in the U.K. next year he has enough to worry about without the prospect of being hunted down by the C.I.A.'s finest assassins.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

My heart soars like a hawk.

Even after months of intensive coaching, the Tub of Lard still had some way to go before fully mastering the "winning smile".  

Let Me Through, I'm A Tub Of Lard

There's been a flood in Boscastle, Cornwall. Two inches of rain in an hour and a steep and narrow river valley combined to produce a wall of water ten feet high travelling at forty miles an hour. The last I heard there were still fifteen people missing. That's not the kind of thing we're used to in England; our weather, like our wildlife, is rarely dangerous, and hardly ever lethal. (To humans, at any rate. I believe shrews are known to die of stress during thunderstorms, which is ridiculous and makes a shrew a pretty sorry excuse for a predator, if you ask me.)

I've been to Boscastle. Long ago a man must have said "Look, everybody! A steep and narrow valley with three rivers running through it! In a part of England where it rains a lot! Let's build our flimsy little primitive dwellings right here!" That man was probably the First High King of All Boscastle. Right up until the first time it rained heavily.

It's a pretty village in the slightly warty, scruffy way Cornish villages are pretty, a bit like a young witch. I remember standing on the cliff-top there and thinking that if I ever got depressed enough to Do It, this would be as good a place as any. Anyway, I've long since moved on from the urge to fling myself from high places, (although I did have slightly dodgy moment at the top of the Duomo in Florence a few years back) which is just as well because the residents of Boscastle have enough to worry about without fat dead Irishmen washing up on the beach every five minutes.

For a start they've had to put up with a visit from the appalling John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister. Nobody really knows what Prescott's for, being ugly, obese, Northern and too aggressive to be allowed out much in case he starts punching people. Why the hell anyone thought that the mood of the Boscastlians would be lightened by the arrival of the Tub o'Lard beats me.

I can see that it might been effective if he'd been lowered from a helicopter during the rainstorm so that his enormous buttocks wedged themselves into the river valley, thereby creating an effective dam and saving the village, but to arrive the morning after the tragedy is, frankly, a case of "too little, too late", which strangely enough is the kind of remark Michael Howard makes about almost any aspect of Labour policy, seeming inexplicably to believe that seven years is long enough for us to have forgotten what a repellent little fuck he was when he was Home Secretary. He may actually be quite tall, come to think of it. He looks small on my telly. But then Prescott looks HUGE on the same telly, so who's to know? But I digress.

Anyway, if anyone in the government reads this, from a purely personal perspective, if there's an unexpected natural disaster in my part of Surrey and you think I need to be cheered up, please don't send John. Send me Charlotte Rampling.

Debate

With an election due sometime next year, it's fun watching the party leaders circling each other. Now that Labour's stolen most of the Tories' clothes, it's become increasingly difficult for Blair and Howard to claim any policies as their own. As they want to do pretty much the same stuff they can only say "If they do it, we'll do it more.", unless it involves public spending, in which case they have to say "If they do it, we'll do it less." The latest area for skirmishing is the Civil Service. Goes a bit like this.

Tony Blair: We will cut back on wasteful expenditure in the Civil Service by sacking 1,500 civil servants!

Michael Howard: Pah! We will cut back on wasteful expenditure even further by sacking 4,000 civil servants!

T.B.: Pah! We will also kill the civil servants we've sacked so that we'll save on unemployment benefit!

M.H.: Pah! We will kill the civil servants to save on unemployment benefit and make them into pies to feed poor people!

T.B.: Hang on a minute! I've got a good one! (Clears throat) Under a Labour government there will be no poor people!

M.H.: Bastard! (Shouting hysterically) Tony Blair's got a Fender Stratocaster but he only knows two chords!

T.B.: (Shrilly) Michael Howard's a lizard from Outer Space!

M.H.: (Sobbing) You love George Bush! You want to kiss him on the lips! With tongues!

T.B.: Aaaargh! You used to snog Margaret Thatcher! And she's old! Eeeeew!

(They start to claw feebly at each other while a crowd of M.P.s form a circle, chanting "Fight! Fight! Fight!".)

As a footnote, it occurs to me that as the Civil Service is the organisation which actually runs the country while politicians spend their time shouting, jumping up and down and flicking spit at each other, it's probably safer not to piss them off too much, as I would imagine that they have the ability, information, infrastructure and potentially the motive to fuck up the government of the day in more ways than it's possible to imagine.

Just a thought, lads.

"My God, it's a pack of feral bridesmaids!" hissed Smedley. "I'll try to kill the leader and when the little ones start to eat me, run for the Jeep. You might just stand a chance."

With their preternaturally keen eyesight Emma and Robin were alone in finding the bridegroom's version of "Puppetry of the Penis" entertaining.
 

Last to recognise the ugly mood of the crowd, Robin turned to find himself alone on stage and in mortal danger.

The beer and drugs having kicked in, David was unaware that his bride had run off and he was now trying to tango with a Fender Jazz

Distracted by the proximity of his hand to Soo's left breast, David stabs a photographer in the head. 

Yay! (2)

So, what did you do at the weekend, Davy? Oh, the usual. Had a few beers. Played a bit of guitar. Got married. Again. Yay!

Blessing and BIG party on Saturday...more later.

In case I was a little hard on Northern Ireland, here's a nice picture of The Giant's Causeway.