Joe Slavko's Journal

Proportional Representation

2010-05-07T13:55:00.001+01:00

Given today’s election results, I find myself – somewhat surprisingly, admittedly – in favour of proportional representation. Not, however, in the crude form as advocated by the Liberals. No, in my opinion, politicians should be prepared to go all the way for their principles.

To this end, I propose maintaining the current constituency-based “first past the post” system but with a few modifications.

Take, for example, a seat where three candidates are standing: Conservative, Liberal, and Labour. The man (or woman – though, frankly, I maintain graves doubts over the wisdom of having given them vote in the first place) getting a majority of the votes would, of course, then be elected. However - and here’s the brilliant bit - it would be administered slightly differently.

Instead of sending the winning candidate to the House of Commons, you’d send just a proportion of him, corresponding to the proportion of the actual vote he received. So if, say, he won with 55 per cent, that’s exactly how much of him you’d return to Westminster, having first removed the superfluous 45 per cent gained by his opponents.

In practice, this would mean lopping his legs off. Or, if he didn’t fancy that, maybe an arm and an arse cheek. Whatever, by implanting this system, you’d guarantee a much higher calibre of politician, because only those willing to sacrifice their limbs and other bits of their body would get in. Who could fail to trust such a an obviously committed person?

I suppose there’s a risk here that, in constituencies fielding large numbers of candidates where the vote is spread evenly, you could end up with a result where the politician in question gets so proportionalised that only his genitals are left. But there have been so many dicks in Parliament in the past, perhaps no-one would notice any qualitative difference.

Garage Attendant

2010-01-21T12:59:00.001Z

I do hope that, when Jesus eventually makes His second coming, He won’t come back as a garage attendant. If He did, I’m sure that the temptation to change water into Five Star Unleaded would be irresistible. In addition, He’d probably integrate baptism into the drive-through car washing service. Which would be fine if everyone in the car was of the same faith. But what would happen if a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian were travelling together? Bloody religious wars might break out on garage forecourts.

Thinking about it, Jesus’ work at a garage would lead to a whole new form of ministry. Today, if people have a shunt or accidentally scrape another car, they report the fact to an insurance company and have an assessor come along. However, with a Jesus-inspired garage, customers would take their damaged cars to a confessional staffed by a mechanic in overalls and a dog-collar. He would listen to their driving peccadilloes, all told in confidence, give them an estimate on how much absolution would cost - for example, a penance consisting of the recitation of five pages from the Highway Code - and then tell them to come back in three days. When they did come back, however, they’d be told that the penance was now actually 10 pages from the Highway Code, seeing as, in the interim, the mechanic had discovered that the front bumper was having impure thoughts re: a Toyota.

I imagine the concept of Holy Motor Oil would come about, too. People would bring their clapped-out, MOT failures along, hoping for a miracle. They would line up, each partake of the Holy Motor Oil, and recite in turn, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you service me. Only say the Word, and my vehicle shall be healed.”

Actually, this sort of thing would be a boon for dodgy second-hand car dealers. If, shortly after you’d bought your car, its suspension collapsed or a wheel fell off, the dealer could claim it was due to a lack of Faith on your part rather than poor maintenance or shoddy goods on his. He’d say you had it coming because you’d fucked your best friend’s wife, or coveted his ox, or something like that.
The sales of new cars would probably suffer, too. This is because Jesus would go around to breakers’ yards, seek out the compacted lumps of metal, and resurrect them into brand new BMWs and Volvos.

What a cheating cunt.

Caffeine Performance

2010-01-17T11:15:00.000Z

When a couple return from a first date together, typically, the man will ask the woman, "Do you want to come up for a coffee?" This, of course, is the traditional euphemism for "Do you want to come in for a shag?" There are usually only two possible responses: either (a) "Yes, I'd like to" (ie "I'm gagging for it.") or (b) "Thanks, but it's a bit late, and I'd better be getting back." (ie "I wouldn't let your dick within 50 miles of me.") In both instances, the need to maintain propriety severely restricts the information that can be conveyed, thus leading to possible confusion and/or offence.

In my opinion, therefore, men who buy coffee should first be required by law to declare how good they are in bed. Their points-out-of-ten rating would then determine exactly which variety they'd be allowed to purchase. Eight out of 10 or higher, for example, would give them carte blanche to choose from anything in the shop. Six or 7 out of 10, and they'd be allowed everything but the prestige beans. A score of 5, however, would restrict them to the milder Colombian and Kenyan blends. Anything lower, and they descend into decaffeinated territory and worse. One or 2 out of ten - the premature ejaculators and their ilk - would, appropriately, only be allowed to buy instant coffee.

When you think about it, the reasons behind this should be obvious.

If my policy were to be implemented, the usual to-shag-or-not-to-shag exchange would take on much greater significance, while still remaining within the boundaries of good taste and manners. For instance, the question, "Do you want to come up for a Kwik Save Economy powdered coffee drink?" could be answered with a polite, "No, thank you. I only drink freshly ground Jamaica Supreme." Similarly, someone asking, "Do you want to come up for some Kenko Original? It's indistinguishable from real coffee. I swear to God. I'm begging you to believe me. Please, please, please!", could be responded to with a friendly, "I'm sorry, but I wouldn't drink that WEAK, WISHY-WASHY PISS if you paid me. One gulp, and in a second, it's gone."

On the other hand, “Do you want to come up for a cup or two of Whittard’s Caribbean Mountain?” would undoubtedly bring forth the answer, “God, yes! Oh God! Yes, yes, yes ….. Yeesssssss!”

As you can see, the man is able to convey, not just the fact that he wants a shag, but the exactly quality of the shag that's on offer. For her part, the woman, should she so wish, is able to decline with good grace, explaining exactly why she isn't interested in that shag, yet without giving offence. It's the coffee that she's turning down, not the person.

I suppose in some circumstances, it's conceivable that the coffee could be so good as to surpass the actual sex itself. There are a couple of Jamaican and South American blends that come to mind. The only drawback here, though, would be if the woman accepted the man's invitation to go up for a coffee, drank a cup, had multiple orgasms as a result, and thereafter didn't want any sex. But this needn't be a bad thing. Indeed, a man who got a reputation for giving good coffee would soon be the envy of all others. It would probably push up the price of cafetières, though.

Transforming Transport

2010-01-14T22:09:00.001Z

During the 18th Century, as evidenced by tales such as Cinderella, people without their own form of transport could, if they had access to a Fairy Godmother, prevail upon her to turn an ordinary pumpkin into a carriage. In this way, they were able to travel inexpensively, and in comfort, to their destination. How fortunate we are that this isn’t the case today.

Why fortunate?

Because while, ideally, a 21st century pumpkin should turn into a Rolls Royce or a Bentley, in actual fact, what with intensive farming methods and the indiscriminate use of organo-phosphate fertilisers, pumpkins aren’t of the quality they once were. So if your Fairy Godmother were to cast a spell on one today, it would probably turn into a Skoda or a Hillman Imp.

Then there are other problems. Because pumpkins would now have the potential - if not in all cases the actual ability - to turn into cars, it would be necessary to MOT them and register each one with the DVLC. Garages wouldn’t be able to cope with the workload. Instead, greengrocers would have to set up their own pumpkin test and registration centres, thus adding enormously to the average family’s weekly shopping bill. (Of course, they could try to defray the cost by establishing second-hand pumpkin dealerships on their premises.)

But it’s the law and order issues that concern me in particular. Having had their pumpkins transformed into performance cars, lager-lout boy racers might drive them to the pub and get horrendously pissed. But what could the police do? If they breathalysed them at, say, 11.30pm and the miscreants tested positive, by the time the officer had got them down to the police station for a verifying blood test, it would be midnight, by which time the enchanted car would probably have turned back into a pumpkin, as they usually do. Result: No evidence, therefore no prosecution.

And what if a policeman pulls over an obviously drunk driver, intending to put the breathalyser bag on him, but that driver says, “Actually officer, this isn’t a car, it’s an enchanted pumpkin”? Yes, it might be a real car. On the other hand, there’s a good chance that the man could actually be telling the truth. And there is no such offence as Drunk In Charge of a Pumpkin.

Of course, this could inspire Gordon Brown and his bunch of control freak scum to table a bill to ensure that such an offence is on the statute books, in order to protect us from reckless, vegetable-driving inebriates. But the next thing you know, they’ll be introducing dozens of other laws, too: Drunk in Charge of a Cucumber, Drunk in Charge of a Cabbage, et cetera, et cetera. Where would it end?

We might end up with a situation where you'd be arrested for being pissed while eating a carrot and banned from eating vegetables for 12 months. The resultant vitamin deficiency would kill you.

Found in Translation

2010-01-13T11:54:00.001Z

This morning, while browsing the Internet, I came across the story of this innovative Japanese gadget that, apparently, can translate dog barks. Judging by the examples given, it seems to perform quite well. For example, it's now very easy to differentiate between the yelps for "I want to shit" and "I want to go walkies", amongst other things. The one downside is that the device will only translate into Japanese. One therefore requires the services of an interpreter to fully understand the dog.

This struck me as being rather impractical, though. For those of us in the US and Europe, anyway. Far better, surely, and more cost-effective, simply to buy a Japanese person. Then you can simultaneously teach him both English and the canine arts of, for instance, retrieving a stick and lying down and playing dead. Indeed, given that the Japanese are quite an adaptable, innovative people, I'd imagine that they'd also be able to quickly acquire the skills to bury bones and "heel." And they'd probably be house-trained much faster than a dog, too, and wouldn't be as inclined to attract fleas.

Thinking about it, a Japanese has many other advantages over a dog. Not many burglars are seriously deterred by "Beware of the Dog" warnings. However, a "Beware of the Samurai Warrior" would make them shit themselves, I'm sure. And if you had some serious issues with your neighbours in the adjoining office block, you could just pay for your Japanese to have flying lessons and then, as per his Bushido heritage, crash his aircraft into them. Whereas Al-Quaida had to cough up some $20 billion to achieve a similar effect, your house-trained Japanese would do it for a tin of Pedigree Chum.

Dentures

2010-01-12T10:13:00.000Z

Of late, doctors have begun to refuse medical treatment to smokers on the grounds that they’re deliberately damaging their own health. I applaud this move. In fact I believe dentists should do similar. After all, other than having had one's teeth accidentally knocked out, there’s absolutely no excuse for wearing dentures. They are simply an indication that the wearer has repeatedly neglected his or her daily oral hygiene duties.

In my opinion, therefore, false teeth should not be available on the National Health. The toothless amongst us should be exposed for the gummy slovens that they actually are and forced either to dine on soup for the rest of their days or pay an extortionate sum for a set of artificial teeth.

A tooth rental scheme is also a possibility, I suppose. It makes quite a bit of sense, actually. After all, teeth are only required for eating; an activity which should take place, at most, three times in a day. Why, then, do denture wearers insist on retaining their teeth for all their waking hours, when for the most part they’re redundant? It's sheer vanity, and I don't believe the State should be expected to subsidise it.

Far better, I think, to hire one's teeth as and when required from some sort of council-administered tooth library. Naturally, there would be a run on teeth round about midday and early evening, so denture renters would have to get used to staggering their meal times. Nevertheless, the benefits would outweigh the disadvantages. For example, it might be possible to choose a set of teeth designed specifically for a particular type of food. So no longer would it be necessary to chew away endlessly on a very tough steak. You'd simply hire a set of dedicated dentures that could cut through it in an instant.

Because we live in an age of air travel, it would be necessary to establish international tooth rental schemes, too. I'd suggest that this be done through the existing international car rental agencies. So upon arriving at the Hertz desk in, say, Los Angeles, you'd give your American Express or Visa number and pick up both a hire car and a set of teeth. International tooth insurance might become a booming industry as a result, creating thousands of jobs in a depressed world.

Some mornings, I really do think I deserve a fucking Nobel Prize for my brilliance.

Trojan

2010-01-11T15:28:00.001Z

You often hear the expression “He worked like a Trojan.” This is meant to be a good thing, implying that the person being discussed laboured greatly and accomplished much. It suggests, too, that Trojan employment agencies were very busy places and, by contrast, the dole queues in Troy very short. (With an overall DHSS bill the lowest in Antiquity, no doubt.)

When you think about it, however, history shows us that the most successful Trojans were, in fact, the lazy ones. Take, for example, Laomedon, son of King Ilus. When instructed to build walls for his city, he said, “Suck my dick! I will not!” Instead, he employed the gods Poseidon and Apollo to do it for him. In fact, such a good job did these two deities do – far better than Laomedon himself could have managed - that the city was then able to endure several years of siege by the Greeks during the subsequent war. Then, of course, there was Paris. When ordered to go out and fight Achilles to the death, he said, instead, “Fuck that. I can’t be bothered. I'll just shoot him in the heel with an arrow and see what happens.”

Given all of this, it really makes you wonder what would have happened if only the lazy Trojans had prevailed throughout. Had they said, for example, “Kiss my arse. I'm not dragging that fucking massive wooden horse inside. It can stay outside the fucking walls as far as I’m concerned.” How differently history might have turned out.

I imagine Troy would have endured, and Aeneas wouldn't have gone on to help found Rome. Thus we would have been spared Heinz Spaghetti, polenta, and Fiats. Also, the best-selling condom in America would probably be called a Greek, rather than a Trojan, thus forcing prostitutes who engage in anal sex to find another term for what they’re offering.

Milk Maids

2010-01-11T11:00:00.004Z

According to Wikipedia, on this day in 1878, milk was first delivered in bottles. Before this, customers were supplied on a personal basis by wandering milk maids.

As you can see from the accompanying illustration, milk maids all wore yokes across their shoulders, from each end of which hung a milk churn. The modus operandi was relatively simple: At roughly the same time each day, customers would pour their Cornflakes into a bowl, or their tea into a cup, and then wait until the milkmaid arrived to fill them up.

Traditionally, a milk maid’s right-hand churn contained full fat milk, while the left was filled with skimmed. Of course, this meant that if you wanted semi-skimmed or UHT, you were a bit fucked. Unless, of course, the milk maid herself was lactating and could produce to order from her left or right breast. Most couldn’t, however (the best they could manage was a sort of homgeonized goo), which is presumably why milk maids gave way to home-delivered milk bottles.

Notwithstanding this, I imagine that January 11, 1878 must have come as quite a shock to many full-fat and skimmed aficionados. Expecting the usual comely, smiling wench to come by, many were dismayed by the arrival of a hairy-arsed milk man, even if he was able to offer greater choice and could diversify into butter, orange juice, and bread deliveries. This is because, back then (and even today, to some extent, if all those Internet porn sites are to be believed) men customarily fantasized about milk maids. Consequently their only alternative was to give up on milk altogether and switch to soya, or else start fantasizing about the milk man, instead. Many did. This is how come we can accurately date the advent of homosexuality to this day in 1878, too.

Another problem with milk bottles was that they were responsible for an upsurge in burglaries. If you forgot to cancel your milk, it was obvious you were away from the accumulation of unused bottles outside your door, so robbers would know it was safe to ransack the place. And while, beforehand, it was equally obvious that you were away when half a dozen unused milk maids starting piling up outside your front door, thieves were far less likely to break in because the presence of the wenches would act as a reliable deterrent.

Especially if they were lactating UHT.

Gravitational Anomaly

2010-01-10T12:08:00.001Z

My post-Christmas weight, according to my brother’s Cadmore End-based bathroom scales, was an enviable 12 stone and 3 lbs, exactly the same as my pre-Christmas weight registered here at home back on December 23. Imagine my surprise, then, when, for the first time this year, I stood again on my own hi-tech “speak your weight” Tanita bathroom scales and they declared, somewhat derisively, “Your weight is 12 stone and 10 lbs. You have increased in weight by 7lbs.”

What the fuck?

There can be only one logical explanation: Obviously, between December 23 and today, the force of gravity in Hertfordshire has become slightly greater than that in Buckinghamshire - specifically, by 0.024 per cent – thus skewing the results. And gravity, as we know, is a product of mass (put simply, the heavier a thing is, the more gravitational attraction it exerts) which means that, in just 10 days, some phenomenon has occurred to make Hertfordshire heavier than Buckinghamshire. But what?

I think I have the answer. If you carry out demographic surveys of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire you’ll find that, per square yard, the former, unfortunately, has more Working Class people in it. And what do Working Class people typically do over the Christmas period? They pig out on cheap lager and disgusting, fatty foods such as KFC Bargain Buckets and Deep Pan pizzas, that’s what. Consequently, their already burgeoning beer-guts and backsides become even flabbier than normal. The aggregate of the increase concentrated in the one county causes that county to exert more gravitational force. QED. Hence this morning’s Tanita tragedy.

So what can be done? One solution, I suppose, is to herd a given percentage of the Working Class into rockets and blast them off into geostationary orbit above Hertfordshire, from where their mass will help counteract that of their Earth-based counterparts. But that’s an expensive option, which could later impact itself on my Council Tax. So a more cost-effective alternative might be simply to deport them to other counties, such as Essex and Surrey.

Of course, this then means that Essex and Surrey will become commensurately heavier. However, that’s a small price to pay for ensuring the accuracy of my bathroom scales.

Prams and Pushchairs

2009-08-12T13:25:00.000+01:00

I cannot understand why women always insist on pushing their whelps around in public in prams and pushchairs. Apart from the inconvenience they cause to pedestrians and shoppers, it can’t be much fun for the women, either, especially if they have to combine manoeuvring their offspring around with hauling heavy groceries, too. So why can’t they just leave the brats at home for the duration?

Some, I imagine, would argue that it’s because the little bastards might get lonely or injure themselves if left unsupervised. But that’s bollocks. I sometimes injure myself when left unsupervised (only last week, for example, I cut myself on a tin can) but no one is suggesting putting me in some sort of perambulator and wheeling me around a supermarket. How come? I’d be a lot better behaved than most of the horrible kids one sees. I wouldn’t, for instance, keep demanding sweets or ice cream and then go into a screaming, hour-long tantrum if I didn’t get what I wanted. (That said, I would like a high-definition video camera, so it’s possible, I suppose, that I might start throwing a fit if, while wheeling me around PC World, you didn’t buy me one. One never knows.)

No, the only reason I can think of as to why they push the brats around in public is because they’re somehow proud of the things. They therefore want to put them on show and announce their existence to the world. To “share the joy,” if you will. Thankfully, this problem can easily be dealt with.

Henceforth, whenever I see a toddler in a pram, I’ll say to its owner: “Fuck me! That is disgusting! If we were living in Ancient Sparta, that would have been chucked over a cliff by now. What do you think you’re fuckingwell doing inflicting that on innocent members of the public? Have you no thought for anyone but yourself?” I encourage everyone else to follow my example.

Do this enough, and prams and pushchairs will soon disappear from our streets and supermarkets.

Webcams

2009-07-12T15:03:00.000+01:00

In 1899, Charles Pathé set up one of those new-fangled motion picture cameras on a busy London street and filmed passers-by. The resulting featurette lasted only 15 minutes (the camera was hand-cranked, so Pathé’s arm would have fallen off had it lasted much longer). Yet, despite its brevity, minimalist plot, and lack of big-name stars, Victorian audiences apparently queued round the block.

In 1972, Andy Warhole tried much the same thing when he filmed the Empire State Building. Unfortunately, popcorn sales for this one didn’t reach expectations. Probably because the whole thing lasted over 24 hours. Twenty-four hours of just the Empire State Building, without even a guest-appearance by King Kong, is perhaps overdoing it, even by “Children in Need” standards.

Which brings me to webcams. Not the ones people use to broadcast themselves shagging over the Internet, but those giving 24-hour coverage of town centres and other nondescript sights. Given that Warhole couldn’t turn the most famous New York landmark into a blockbuster, what, then, is the point of live coverage of, say, the centre of Bootle?

Nothing against Bootle you understand (apart from the fact that it's a shithole and its population mainly retards), it’s just that these things simply strike me as being another example of Internet silliness, of which we already have an abundance. Pathé had the excuse that, back then, motion pictures were truly innovative. And, besides, during those 15 minutes, there was at least the off-chance of seeing a suffragette chaining herself to something or a young Winston Churchill giving you the finger. But live pictures of Bootle, taken from a camera mounted half a mile away? You may as well be looking at a postcard (assuming they actually do postcards of Bootle).

The only webcams that strike me of being any use whatsoever, if only because they’re mounted sufficiently close to the “action” to make out people and features, are found at www.thisislondon.co.uk, and show Soho street scenes. Here, once you’ve located a suitable camera (I suggest the one opposite the Café Nero), you can successfully moon it. Then again, given the slow refresh rate of 60 seconds between pictures, this does entail standing around for at least a minute with your backside exposed. Which, given the proximity of all those gay bars on Old Compton Street, is perhaps not the best idea in the world.

Gorgon

2009-07-04T07:18:00.000+01:00

It must be terribly difficult for gorgons to get hair appointments. I'll bet whenever they phone up their local salon, they're invariably told that the stylist is fully booked up for the foreseeable future. Even if, by some miracle, they do manage to make a booking, their problems have only just started.

Someone like Michaeljohn of Albermarle Street, London, for example, is unlikely to want to deal with a gorgon personally, however much money she's got to spend. There's too much risk of being turned into stone if he inadvertently looks her in the face while inquiring after her health, her sex life, or whatever. He'd therefore let one of his lesser-qualified, expendable underlings deal with the appointment. This in itself would undoubtedly result in an inferior hairstyle. You can beat experience, after all.

Of course, gorgon hair, being composed of live snakes, is a problem area in itself. They'd probably go for you if you tried to stuff them into heated rollers. They almost certainly would if you attempted to trim them. So I'd imagine it's necessary to stun each one separately before you can start do anything creative with the hair.

But is it really practical to be that creative with gorgon hair? For instance, you might be able to give her what, initially, looks like a perfect perm. But two hours later, all the stunned snakes are going to start waking up and squirming all over the place, thus destroying all those hours of precision styling. Worse, if you've dyed the hair (some of the black mambas might be going a bit grey, and you want to disguise the fact), the snakes aren't going to recognise one another and will start fighting.

I suppose male gorgons, if there are any, have a better time of it. They can at least apply something thick and gooey to their locks, such as Extra Strength Brylcreem, which will stop the snakes wriggling so much. But bald gorgons are the most fortunate. Except during the initial stages of alopecia, when their hair loss runs all over the house and climbs up curtains.

If I were a gorgon, I wouldn't spend too much time in the countryside. If I lay down in a field for a nap, for instance, I might wake up and find a grass snake trying to fuck my head.

Stones

2009-07-03T10:53:00.004+01:00

As everyone knows, gorgons are so hideously ugly that, if people look at them, they're instantly turned into stone. I, however, have exactly the opposite problem to a gorgon: I am so fucking good-looking that, whenever I pass by, any stones in the immediate area are turned instantly into people.

As you can imagine, this causes no end of hassle. Little pebbles, for example, become little people, about two to three inches high. But, unfortunately, they don't then adopt Irish accents and bury pots of gold at the end of rainbows which I can easily dig up to enrich myself, nor do they sit on toadstools and wear pointy hats with bells on the end. No, instead, the vast majority are usually eaten pretty quickly by cats and dogs, or else chased down rabbits holes by ferrets, and therefore, fortunately, the phenomenon goes largely unnoticed.

Not so stone cottages, though. As I walk past, they literally come apart at the seams (which can be particularly embarrassing if their occupants are having a bath or having sex when it happens), and each newly humanized block goes off and hangs around public lavatories in order to be buggered by homosexuals. Hence the term “cottaging.”

As for large masses of stone, such as boulders and mountains, those are transformed into fearsome giants which then attack major population centres. The reason why you never hear about this happening is that the Government imposes a blanket D Notice while it sends out the armed forces to destroy the creatures.

But this is nothing compared to what happens to human-sized stones. These, as you might expect, turn into pretty regular-looking humans. Sadly, however, because their only previous experience was being a stone, which isn't a particularly challenging existence, they have no knowledge or intelligence. (Indeed, they are barely sentient and are classed as plant life by some scientists.) They therefore buy The Daily Mirror and vote Labour. Consequently, every rock in my immediate area risks a return of Gordon Brown in next year's General Election.

What can I do to prevent this happening? I suppose I could endeavour to make myself less attractive. To this end, perhaps I should travel to Ireland and join aerobics and jujitsu classes. Then, pretty soon, like everyone else over there who does that sort of thing, I'll acquire a flabby, 48 inch chest and a humungous arse, and so, hopefully, will no longer be a danger to rocks.

Lycanthrope

2009-07-02T14:07:00.003+01:00

Turning into a werewolf is regarded by most people as an embarrassing affliction, akin to herpes or BO. Therefore those with lycanthrope tendencies tend to quickly change the subject if mention of their problem comes up in conversation. However, I believe that they're mistaken. If you think about it, turning into a wolf on a regular basis confers quite a few advantages.

For example, your weekly food bill can be reduced dramatically. This is because instead of having to eat expensive, gourmet meals, you can survive quite contentedly on whoever lives nextdoor. Or, failing that, on a few cans of Pedigree Chum and the occasional Bob Martin tablet. You just turn yourself into a wolf each time you feel hungry.

Actually, I'm surprised that restaurants don't employ werewolves as waiters. If they did, they could bite the customers and transform them into wolves, too. Then the management wouldn't have to serve up anything expensive - just a few helpings of dog food would suffice. As a result, profit margins could be increased dramatically.

On the social side, lycanthropy is a positive boon. Conventional, non-metamorphosising humans have to keep themselves entertained in a number of bizarre, expensive ways. Going to the cinema, attending sports events, watching television, and travelling to exotic destinations, for instance. But if you turn into a werewolf, you can keep yourself inexpensively entertained all evening simply by retrieving thrown sticks, chewing on slippers, and chasing postmen.

On the other hand, there are a few downsides to lycanthropy, I suppose. Those who remember the 1939 film, "The Wolfman" may be aware that, because of 1940s' censorship restrictions, certain scenes had to be cut. I refer, of course, to those depicting Lon Chaney pissing against lamp posts, licking his balls, shagging stray dogs in the middle of the street, and being pursued by a council-employed "pooper-scooper". Nor was there any mention of the fact that he had to wear a flea collar almost permanently. Perhaps these omissions will be rectified in the remake, starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, which is due to open in November.

Whatever, all in all, being a werewolf is generally a good thing.

The King's Head

2009-07-01T12:12:00.001+01:00

Many of us have drunk in pubs called The King’s Head or The Queen’s Arms. But have we ever given any thought as to why they're so named? This question occurred to me this morning, so I went to Hertford Library’s local history section to do a little research. My results are, I think, quite interesting and reveal that, until just a few centuries ago, all pubs were in fact required by law to call themselves after a monarch or nobleman's bodily part.

This was all well and good for such places as The Duke's Head, The Prince's Knee, and The Queen's Arms. The yeomanry of Olde England drank ale to their hearts' content in these inns, and helped enrich their local economies as a result. Unfortunately, not all pubs were so blessed. In particular, establishments like The King's Cock and The Queen's Tits.

The main problem here was the painted sign outside. Every inn in the land had to have one in order that the illiterates, who then made up the majority of the population, could identify where they were getting pissed, so that their designated postillions would know exactly where to pick them up afterwards. But this caused the sign painters no end of grief. How were they expected to paint an accurate representation of the monarch's member or mamilla? Unless the regent in question had previously moonlighted in the area as a flasher or strippagram, obviously no-one had ever beheld the sight.

At first, therefore, they would request a private audience with the King or Queen. Once they'd been ushered into the royal presence, the monarch would say, “Arise, my good sir. Is there some way we may assist you?” At which point, the sign painter invariably answered, “Yes. Can I see you cock?” Or “Show us your tits, please.”

After the first couple of dozen executions, the remaining sign painters realised that it maybe wasn't a particularly good idea to ask such direct questions. So they settled on what they imagined was an acceptable alternative: They painted pictures of their own cocks, instead, on the assumption that these would be more or less identical to the royal organ. Unfortunately, it was rarely so.

Artists all have small cocks. It's a well-known fact. So pubs throughout the land started displaying signs that were largely blank, except for a little picture of the teensiest, most flaccid looking pink, wiggly thing in one corner. Naturally enough, when word got through to the Palace, the monarch - who usually prided himself on being well-hung - flew into a rage and ordered troops to destroy the offending inns and beat up their regulars. Vast areas of the country were subjected to reigns of terror.

After a while, pissed off landlords came up with another solution: They ordered the sign painters to use shire horses and elephants as their models. Thereupon, hostelries the length and breadth of England sprouted signs with pictures of penises the length and breadth of England. They were really humungous. They made the royalty in neighbouring countries quite jealous.

The reigning monarchs were, of course, delighted. Many a King's Cock played host to the royal family for the weekend. The village in which the pub was located benefited enormously from the royal patronage. All was sweetness and light. But disaster was not far off.

One day, Anne Boleyn was visiting England, on holiday from France. She chanced to stop off at a King's Cock near Dorset. On seeing the sign, she exclaimed, “Fuck me! King Henry's hung like a fucking wildebeest!” Thereupon she resolved to have him for herself.

Well, we all know what happened next. Anne Boleyn went to the royal court, said to Henry VIII, “I want to suck your massive, throbbing cock till it bursts, then I want you to fuck me with it”, and pleaded with him to marry her. Naturally enough, Henry was quite charmed by this and got a raging hard on. So he decided to divorce his Queen, Katharine of Aragon, and marry Anne. This caused the reformation, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the Protestant work ethic.

Sadly, things didn't go too well thereafter. On the wedding night, Henry VIII stripped off and revealed his erect member to his new Queen. She was most unimpressed. Compared to the painted sign she’d seen in Dorset, it was as nothing. “You are fucking tiny!” she exclaimed. "I have seen bigger things chewing holes in a lettuce leaf!" Consummation of the marriage was an embarrassing affair, and the King never forgot this insult. Indeed, soon after his Queen gave birth to the future Elizabeth I, Henry flew into a small cock-induced rage, complained that it had been big beforehand but, because of Anne's witchcraft, it was now much diminished, and so charged her with high treason and had her executed at the Tower of London.

So as this sort of thing could never happen again, Queen Mary decreed that all pubs called The King's Cock should henceforth rename themselves The Red Lion or The Slug and Lettuce, or something equally innocuous. Likewise all the other silly sounding places, like The Queen's Clit, The Duke's Scrotum, and The Prince's Rather Loose Bowel Movement. At a stroke, much of England's heritage disappeared.

Anyhow, after this, never let it be said that you don't learn something of value when you read this Journal.

Fight

2009-06-30T08:36:00.002+01:00

Because I’m not a member of the Working Class, I don’t do prole things such as attend football matches or go to rowdy, down-market nightclubs. Consequently my opportunities for getting into a decent fight are rather limited. This seems most unfair. Where is it written that it's perfectly acceptable for me to punch a pre-match Arsenal fan or head-but a Plaistow resident in an East End dive, but I mustn't do similar at, say, Wimbledon or Le Gavroche?

What we must do is change attitudes here. Part of the problem at up-market events such as tennis matches is, I feel, that there are no clear demarcation lines drawn between the various fans. So, for example, it could be that an Andy Murray supporter actually does want to give an Andy Roddick supporter a good kicking, and vice-versa, but neither can easily identify who's who in order to do so.

To rectify matters here, individual tennis players should be made to wear special, unique colours. Likewise their supporters. And, as at football matches, rival supporters should be kept in different parts of the ground, facing one another. In this way true enmity could develop. Cliff Richards could be brought on, too. But instead of singing "Congratulations", or similar garbage, he should be encouraged to direct a barrage of "You're going home in a fucking wooden box!" at Murray’s supporters opposite. Maybe Katherine Jenkins could be booked to respond in kind with "Shit on Roddick, shit on Roddick today!" for the opposition.

As a result, after the match, the cucumber sandwich tents and the strawberries and cream tents would become scenes of unparalleled savagery, as rival supporters glassed one another with Champagne flutes and rammed strawberry pummets into each other’s faces. Police would have to be brought in with water canons to disperse the mobs. The whole thing would become so much more exciting.

There's opportunity for violent rivalry at up-market restaurants, as well. Everyone knows that vegetarians are unnatural degenerates, but no-one does anything about it. But if, say, Le Gavroche were to pen off a Vegetarians Only area, the morally-sound carnivores would then know their enemy. So, come the end of the evening, post coffee and Cognac, you'd be able to set upon the vegetarians, or wait for them to finish and beat them up outside.

Or better still, different restaurants could have gangs affiliated to them. Then the Le Gavroche Stanley Knife Gang could arrange to have fights with L'Escargot Cut Throat Razor Firm. Better yet, both could forget their differences for the evening, team up, and go and kick the shit out of everyone eating at Quo Vadis.

In this way, my life would become a tad more colourful.

Heat

2009-06-29T11:39:00.003+01:00

I do not like excessive heat, such at today's. It displeases me. Out of context, anyway. In context, however, it's fine. When I was at the Victoria Falls, for example, the temperature was much as it is here, now, in Bumble's Green. But that's what you expect in that part of the world. Just as you expect crocodiles, too, and so don't grumble overly if one emerges from a river and eats your children. Whereas, if a crocodile were to emerge from the River Lee and and started eating people's children, I'm sure everyone would start bitching about it. Context again. So what I'm saying, basically, is that, just as man-eating crocodiles are fine for Rhodesia, but not for here, temperatures in the 90s should confine themselves to Rhodesia, as well.

Given the extremes I'm currently experiencing, therefore, I'm having to sit in the garden, dressed only in shorts. Fortunately, I am possessed of the sort of body that can be displayed without embarrassment. Still, I don't like the idea of giving the women of the area a “free show”, as it were. But what can be done?

I suppose someone could invent the counterpart of one of those Calor gas-powered patio heaters that pubs use outside in winter. Except it would have a refrigeration mechanism inside, instead, and therefore be a patio cooler, effective over a radius of about six feet. Then again, the disadvantage of having one of these is that it might encourage smokers to come into my garden and congregate underneath in a huddled mass, exhaling their pollutants, getting pissed on cheap lager, and shagging themselves silly. Or worse, it might encourage immigrant crocodiles to emerge from the River Lee in order to more efficiently cool themselves. (Or, if they were male and female, they might shag themselves silly as well.)

I'm sure the crocodiles would eat all the lager lout smokers but, still, they're not something I'd want in my garden. Slugs and snails are fucking bad enough. At least they can be dealt with by pouring salt on them. A crocodile probably wouldn't react in the same way, though. Which is why, when you see one of those Tarzan films where he's fighting with a crocodile in a river, he always uses a knife to kill it, and never bothers trying a bag of Saxa.

My Teeth (2)

2009-06-15T13:08:00.000+01:00

I spent much of this morning counting my pearly-white teeth. It appears that I have 29 of them, with no significant gaps. The left hand side of my mouth has more teeth than the right hand side, however. Hitherto, I had tended to chew using this right hand set but, on reflection, have decided that this is obviously a very inefficient use of my mouth. I therefore now intend to start chewing primarily on the left hand side, as the greater of number of teeth will obviously make eating a lot faster and more satisfying.

In my opinion, food packaging should be labelled with an indication of how long the contents will take to eat for any given number of teeth. This would work in a similar way to microwave cooking instructions. For instance, just as a 750 Watt oven might be described as taking three minutes to cook a particular dish and a 650 Watt oven four minutes, so 15 teeth (assuming you eat using just one side of your mouth) might take, in total, two minutes to chew the food as opposed to two and a half if you only have 12.

Indeed, further to this, I feel we should redefine the concept of “fast” food. Rather than being a description of the speed of its cooking, it should refer, instead, to the speed of eating. Some sort of legal upper limit should be imposed, too, for safety reasons, constantly monitored by kitchen and restaurant-mounted closed circuit television cameras and GATSOs. This is because, if you ate too fast while consuming something slippery or irregularly shaped, you could slide off it and accidentally chew off the arm of someone sitting next to you. Accordingly, if people exceeded these speed limits, Food Police should be empowered to hand out on-the-spot penalties. Those miscreants who accrued more than 12 penalty points during any given period would be banned from eating for a period not exceeding 6 months. Persistent offendors should be banned from having teeth altogether.

In this way, eating would once again become a refined, civilized activity.

Tourette's Syndrome

2009-06-10T10:23:00.002+01:00

One of the more disturbing aspects of Tourette's Syndrome, at least as far as onlookers are concerned, is that, for no apparent reason and out of nowhere, the sufferer can come out with a string of obscenities and swearwords, aimed at no-one in particular. So, for example, he'll be sitting next to you on the train or bus and then, all of a sudden, will loudly shout "Fuck! Cunt! Shit", and so forth. Naturally enough, this can be most off-putting for many people. I am able, however, to offer a simple, low-cost solution:

Everyone who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome should have a mobile phone permanently affixed to his or her ear when out in public. Then, people will simply assume that all their obscenities are directed at the person on the other end of the line and therefore think no more of it. Indeed, they might even join in.

That said, what happens when a Tourette’s suffer actually is talking to a total cunt over the phone? Does he suddenly moderate his language and change his “fucks” and “wankers” into “fiddle-de-dees” and “twits”? And, for that matter, what of those of us of normal mental balance who just happen to be having a telephone conversation with a complete arsehole and are therefore compelled to use the requisite swear words? Witnessing this, some people might jump to the wrong conclusion and assume we’re suffering from Tourette's. (This is especially a risk if you have one of those poofy hands-free mobiles which are concealed in the pocket.) What to do?

I'd say that, if, like me, you routinely have to talk to lots of total cunts and wankers, you should cut your losses. In other words, before every telephone call, you should sit on park bench or a seat in a railway station, down a can of Tennent's Super or similar, and shout, "I'm going to fuck you sister, you cunt bastard!" at everyone who passes by. Then, your subsequent expletive-filled telephone conversation will go unremarked. Indeed, some people may even feel sorry for you and, if you've got a polystyrene cup and a dog to hand, donate a couple of quid, which would help defray the cost of both the call and the line rental.

Operations

2009-06-09T12:02:00.000+01:00

Until the late 15th Century, barbers and surgeons were the same profession. So whether you wanted an appendectomy or just a shave, the one establishment handled both. Dropping in for a haircut must therefore have been a fairly unnerving experience, because you'd be sitting, waiting in the barber's shop alongside, not just people with bad hairdoes, but lepers, amputees, and the bubo-afflicted, too. Accordingly, "Anything for the weekend, sir?" could well have been a dose of the plague.

Then again, I'm sure that, in those days, customers were fairly blasé about the whole thing, regarding something like major brain surgery and organ transplants as being on a par with a short back and sides or a perm. A typical scenario must therefore have been as follows:

Barber-surgeon: Hello again. What can I do for you today?
Customer: It's the leg. Slightly gangrenous.
Barber-surgeon: OK. Shall I trim it a bit for you at the bottom?
Customer: Yes, just up to the knee should do.
Barber-surgeon: Level with your other stump?
Customer: Please.
Barber-surgeon: No problem. Do you want it square cut or tapered?
Customer: I'm easy. Whatever you think looks best.
((FX: Saw, saw, saw))
Barber-surgeon: Bastard weather again, eh? Won’t do the turnip harvest much good.
((FX: Saw, saw, saw))
Customer: Fucking gypsies cursing the crops, they say.
((FX: Saw, saw, saw))
Barber-surgeon: Cunts. OK, how does that look?
Customer: Yes, that's good. I like it. Can you just cauterize that artery up there?
Barber-Surgeon: There you go. Anything for the weekend, sir?
Customer: Yes, a pack of three leeches, please. I’m feeling lucky.

Of course, if the split between barbers and surgeons hadn't occurred, Harley Street would now be full of Toni & Guy and Vidal Sassoon franchises, all manned by scalpel-wielding homosexuals sporting blonde bouffants and mincing around in tight, black trousers. And if you didn’t have BUPA cover, you’d probably be on a three-year waiting list for root treatment and hair extensions. So all in all, it’s a good thing that it did happen. (Unless, of course, you’re one of those who actually relishes the risk of being buggered while under general anaesthetic.)

Delivery

2009-06-08T12:18:00.016+01:00

You may recall a scene in the film, "The Godfather", where the clothes of Luca Brasi, one of the Corleones' top hitmen, are delivered to the family home wrapped around a fish. The meaning of this, it's explained, is symbolic: "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." He's dead, in other words, his body presumably dumped in the sea or in a river.

This Mafia-specific courier service - a sort of DHL with knobs on - while obviously quite efficient, is, however, not really commercially viable. This is because, while you of course do need to execute hitmen every now and then and inform people of the fact, it's not something that happens so regularly that, for example, Hallmark could turn a profit by producing a dedicated card to celebrate the occasion, or Parcel Force offer a special “fish and frock coat” 24/7 delivery service. Besides, even if they did, they’d still be left with the serious logistical problem of, on each occasion, having to source a whole, fresh fish to stick into the deceased’s clothing. If, thanks to time constraints (half day closing at the fishmonger, for instance), crap fishermen, or whatever, they couldn’t readily get hold of the genuine article, I shouldn’t imagine a kipper or a packet of cod in parsley sauce would be regarded as an acceptable substitute.

With this in mind, I suppose it’s also fortunate that the Mafia doesn’t have a Newfoundland or Spitsbergen branch. If they did, and they were contractually obliged to dump dead hitmen in the sea over there, too, then, given the marine demographics, the resultant message would perforce be more along the lines of “Luca Brasi sleeps with the sperm whales.” Wrapping any sort of cetecean in a standard-sized man’s suit could be something of a challenge. As indeed could delivering the combination to its intended recipient without drawing lots of unwanted attention to yourself.

Then again, we're talking here about people who can routinely hack a horse's head off, transport it unnoticed to someone's luxury mansion, then, in total darkness, locate the owner's room out of the dozens, if not hundreds of other rooms in the house, and finally slip it under his bedclothes without waking him. So perhaps it’s doable after all.

I reckon you'd still need a fucking big duvet before you could slip in a whole whale unnoticed, though.

Dirty

2009-06-07T12:45:00.004+01:00

Whenever you finish your meal in a restaurant, the staff generally take the used plates and cutlery away and then wash them. This is because, even in places like the Aberdeen Angus Steak House or Café Uno, where you’d imagine that the clientele are too dumb to give a toss one way or the other, people actually do get pissed off it you try to serve them food on plates that have still got eggy bits and steak detritus on them from the last service. It’s not enough to tell them that the previous diners have licked the plates clean, either. Most people who go to restaurants demand that they’ve been sterilized, too, before they’ll eat off them.

All well and good. But why isn’t this same concern for proper hygiene applied to clothes shops, as well? I refer specifically to the mirrors in their changing rooms, of course.

I, personally, object to the idea of looking into a “used” mirror that’s possibly reflected the images of several dozen other people that same day, particularly if a lot of them were fat, ugly cunts. For me to look into such a mirror would be exactly the same as eating a magnificent gourmet meal off an unwashed plate that had previously had chicken nuggets and chips on it. It’s totally unacceptable as there's danger of cross-contamination. Consequently, when I do go into a clothes shop, I always insist that a member of staff spray the mirror with Windolene, or similar, beforehand. And, if it’s at all practical, I ask that the mirror be sterilized, as well.

I suppose one possible down-side here is if the shop owns one of those magic mirrors you're always hearing about that can tell you whether or not you’re the fairest of them all. If you spray and sterilize one of those, I’d imagine that, each time you do, it resets to its factory defaults and loses the memory of anyone else who might have looked into it. Consequently, because it no longer has any other point of reference, it now risks giving you a highly inaccurate assessment of exactly how good looking you are in relation to everyone else. Which means that if, for example, you’re a wicked, ageing stepmother with a cute, adopted teenage daughter, it will tell you that, notwithstanding your flabby arse and crow's feet, you’re nevertheless more attractive than her.

So, whereas, out of sheer pique, you’d normally send a wood-cutter out to kill the little bitch, now, because of the disinformation, you don’t. As a result, she eventually ends up living with a bunch of dubious dwarfs in some shack in the middle of a forest. If the Sunday tabloids pick up this, that’s your reputation as a responsible parent totally fucked.

Think Tank

2009-06-05T11:24:00.007+01:00

I see from today’s Daily Telegraph that architect, Mark Hacket, is setting up a think tank in Belfast. About time, too. What with all these Gay Pride marches and flabby-arsed powerlifters running all over the place, Belfast fucking needs it. Then again, I suppose many other cities could benefit from their own think tanks, as well.

How often, for example, when asked difficult questions or posed near insuperable problems, do people simply shrug their shoulders, say, “I’ll have a think”, and then just go away and do nothing? Most of the time, I’d say. This is because while they might indeed like to have a think, they usually can’t actually obtain one. Not a fresh one, anyway. This is where a dedicated, heated and oxygenated think tank comes in (with a deep-sea diver and model sunken galleon for the deluxe versions).

So next time anyone says “I’ll have a think”, he can then be directed to wherever the appropriate tank for his think is kept and there make his choice from the free-swimming selection. So, for instance, if Stephen Hawking is asked “What, exactly, is the `God Particle’?”, he can request that the exact, corresponding think be fished out of the tank for him by its proprietor, just like with a lobster in a Chinese restaurant. Thus will the mystery of the universe finally be solved.

I suppose where this system breaks down (aside from the pump getting blocked with floating think turds) is with the so-called “political think tank.” I can’t imagine, say, a BNP think and a Christian Democrat think swimming happily together in the same tank. It would be a bit like putting a goldfish in with a piranha. An Anarchist think might even do serious damage to the tank. But at least watching the ensuing "life or death" struggles would be entertaining.

Rather like today’s, in fact, in the Labour Party.

Buskers

2009-06-03T10:35:00.001+01:00

Street “musicians” really piss me off. I encountered several this morning. Basically, they’re beggars with musical instruments. All they want is money. But instead of being honest about it and saying “Can you spare us a couple of pence for mug of tea, guv?”, they maintain this pretence of offering so-called entertainment, as if a syncopated beg were more likely to elicit my sympathy and coin than the conventional variety. Why the fuck should it?

If I were trying to negotiate a loan, for example, would it help my case if I gave the bank manager a sudden rendition from “Oklahoma”? If I wanted to buy a washing machine from John Lewis on extended credit, would I get a better rate if I sang “Ave Maria” while I filled in my bank details?

It's not even as if these people were any good. If they were, they wouldn't be singing on the street; they'd be doing it professionally and getting paid for it. They're therefore imposing their mediocrity upon me, unbidden. It's the equivalent of pissing in my direction or farting at me.

Furthermore, their dress sense is usually non-existent. I saw some specimen “performing” in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station. If he'd tried to donate his clothes to Oxfam or Sue Ryder they would have been thrown out as a health hazard. Furthermore, his “singing” was more akin to the cries of someone being castrated.

In fact, that's the one thing that would have induced me to donate money. If his testicles were being torn off on the Underground, I might have put a few coppers in the tin for the entertainment value derived from the spectacle.

The Working Class should be neutered.

Amphibian

2009-05-31T09:15:00.001+01:00

Women often complain about how it’s unsafe for them to go out at night or use public transport because of the risk of sexual assault. Indeed, as a result, many convert to Islam and wear an all-enveloping burqah, in the hope that any predatory men will think twice about molesting them lest they turn out to be Muslim transsexuals underneath or maybe keep a dog under there.

It seems to me, though, that they would do better by taking a leaf out of Nature’s book. With just a little help from genetic engineers.

Why don’t these worried women inject themselves with genes from frogs or toads? I suggest this because many amphibians can change sex, as and when the whim takes them. It follows that, with such a course of frog gene therapy, the women would eventually be able to do this, too. And the advantages of being such a hybrid would therefore be many for the lone female.

For example, if she had a late-night train journey ahead of her, she could simply turn herself into a well-hard Ray Winstone lookalike for its duration. No-one would dare mess with her/him. But upon arrival at the intended destination, (s)he'd simply change back again into female form.

Of course, it would be necessary for her to dress up in some sort of unisex clothing. Obviously, if you look like a bloke but are wearing a slinky black dress and mascara, you tend to attract the wrong sort of attention. On the other hand, the clothing wouldn't have to look too masculine, either. If she were spotted in female form wearing dungarees and bovver boots, likely as not she would be attacked by gangs of roving lesbians and dildo-fucked repeatedly, which would defeat the whole object of changing sex in the first place.

Another drawback that comes to mind revolves around sex. What would happen if you got one of these frog gene-spliced women pregnant? It's an unnerving thought that, as the result of just one careless fuck, you could end up having to bring up and pay for several hundred children, all gestated in the local pond. I doubt that the CSA computers could handle such a scenario.

The Face of Jesus

2009-05-29T12:24:00.001+01:00

I see that the face of Jesus has appeared again, this time on the underside of a Marmite lid in Wales. This follows close on the heels of His appearance last month in the middle of a Kit Kat, and before then in such foodstuffs as, variously, yoghurt, pancakes, and cookie dough. Isn’t it time, then, that the confectionery manufacturers started taking advantage of this?

Consider Unilever’s current “You either love it or hate it” campaign for Marmite, for example. To me, this is rather weak and indecisive, particularly in view of the fact that their product clearly now has divine endorsement, too. It’s therefore not dissimilar to God declaring to Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, “Christianity: Take it or leave it - I couldn’t give a fuck” rather than more assertive and marketable “In hoc signo vinces: In this sign you will conquer.” If it had been the former slogan, we might all still be worshipping Jupiter and the Roman pantheon of pagan deities (unless, of course, Muhammad’s face had appeared in the middle of a pot of humous, in which case Britain might well now be an Islamic republic).

So, with this in mind, I would suggest “Eat Marmite or you’ll burn in Hell.” And rather than “Have a break, have a Kit Kat”, it should be “Have a Kit Kat or your next break will be for a fucking Eternity in the Fiery Pit.”

This, of course, assumes that God is consistent with his choice of foodstuffs. If he were to appear in, for instance, both Marmite and Bovril, it could lay the seeds for bloody religious war. And anyone who ate a Kit Kat and then started nibbling on a Twix might well have to be stoned to death for apostasy. But this is a small price to pay for Divine Truth.

Doctors

2009-05-28T12:05:00.001+01:00

In my opinion, the medical profession should be stripped of its mystique. Doctors ought to be accorded the same status as other manual workers, with similar obligations.

For example, if the ball-cock on my lavatory functions incorrectly, I expect simply to call up a plumber and have him turn up at a time to suit me. (Granted, I’ll pay a premium for this, but as long as efficiency is guaranteed, so what?) When he does turn up, I expect him to diagnose the problem at once and fix it within minutes. When he's finished the job to my satisfaction, I pay him. If he doesn't, I don't. It's as simple as that.

What I wouldn't tolerate is phoning a plumber only to be put through to a fucking moronic receptionist who tells me to bring my lavatory along to some out-of-the-way machine shop in three days time at some ungodly hour in the morning. Nor would I tolerate the plumber taking the top off the cistern, prodding the pipework with cold hands, umming and ahing, and then saying, "It looks as if there could be a blockage somewhere along the line - try some Viacal, and if it isn't unblocked in a week, make another appointment and bring your lavatory back again, and we'll see what we can do." Nor would I put up with a situation where, having followed the plumber's advice, I find the ball-cock has fallen to pieces nonetheless, only to have him tell me, "I'm sorry, we did all we could, but we just didn't catch it in time - here's the bill, by the way."

No. Doctors' pay should be performance related. By this, I mean that if they turn up at your home within 15 minutes of being called out, correctly diagnose your affliction, cure it within a reasonable time (30 minutes, maximum, should be enough to deal with all diseases and injuries - any more is just tardiness), then they'd get there money. But if not, or if the patient died, they wouldn't get a fucking penny.

Furthermore, doctors should be forced to wear blue overalls and flat caps, and eat lard sandwiches. This is because, if truth be told, they are FUCKING WORKING CLASS.

Unleashing the Beast

2009-05-27T12:58:00.000+01:00

This morning I had my usual monthly appointment with Alessandro, my hair artiste. Yet again, he excelled himself. When, afterwards, I exhibited the aftermath through Piccadilly, the coiffeurred perfection of my glinting locks put all other men’s hair to shame. I suppose it was the equivalent of Charles Atlas stripping off on a crowded beach, flaunting his rippling muscles and finely-honed torso, and kicking sand in the faces of the seven-stone weaklings.

However, now, as I relax over a pre-lunch scotch and Canada Dry in Rules, a worrying thought suddenly occurs: What will happen to all that hair of mine that got cut off? I’d like to think it will be used to line the floors of up-market hamster cages or maybe help re-thatch Burt Reynolds. But there is another, more sinister possibility.

Suppose the management at Taylor’s attempt to extract genetic material from the clippings in order to clone me and thereby guarantee their future income? Worse, what happens if they succeed? I imagine that, if they do, they’ll probably have clones to spare. They'll therefore transport several of the surplus to an island just off Costa Rica, call it Slavko Park, and charge people extortionate sums to visit. This needn't be a bad idea in itself, of course. I'm sure I could claim in a court of law that, because the clippings were originally mine, I should be legally entitled to a share of the gate profits. No, the problem comes if any of the Slavkos escape and return to the UK.

Let's say, for example, that 500 Slavkos made it back here. Most likely, their natural instinct would be to head for their biologically programmed places of sustenance and recreation. So, for instance, I might phone up Rules to make a reservation, only to find that the whole place had already been totally booked up by me(s) for the foreseeable future. Or, if I went down to The Salisbury Arms for a quiet pint or two, I could find the whole pub totally packed out with boisterous Slavkos. And my attempts at creating gourmet meals could be thwarted by the fact of the Slavkos getting to the supermarket before me and buying up all the decent ingredients. I'd have to subsist on Pot Noodles and Big Macs, instead, which might turn me Working Class.

There is, though, a Worst Case Scenario. Instead of creating 500 Slavkos, the barber might create just one. But not just any Slavko - a giant sized, horribly hirsute Slavkong, possessed of 500 times my intellect, my taste, and my fecundity. Within hours, it would become the dominant species on earth, and would therefore have first call on all the best hairdressers and their haircare products. And, after its hairdressing appointment, it would probably seize some screeching, blonde-haired bint from Michaeljohn, on Albermarle Street, and rampage through London with her while simultaneously biting people's heads off, before finally climbing up to the top of Canary Wharf and getting shot off by biplanes.

Then some smart-arse will inevitably say, “No – it wasn’t the planes that got him. It was a combination of Taylor’s Mint and Jojoba Conditioner and Pierre Augé Styling Wax that killed the beast.” Which, all things considered, is a fuck of a price to pay just for a decent haircut.

Shroud

2009-05-26T12:49:00.000+01:00

The National Health Service costs too much money. An alternative method for curing people must be found. I therefore propose that scientists extract DNA from the Turin Shroud and clone Jesus.

In this way, every postal district could have its own Jesus. So if you had a full-blown terminal disease (or, indeed, were just feeling a little under the weather), you'd simply pop round, say, "Lord, I am afflicted, lay your hands upon me," and, a blessing or too later, you'd be cured. Or, if you wanted to go on the piss, but didn't have enough money to buy booze, you could take a bottle of tap water round and have Him do the business on it.

The other big advantage of having lots of live Jesuses is that, every Easter, you could crucify them. It's a well-known fact that, by dying on the cross, Jesus effectively negated the sins of all Mankind. It therefore follows that if a few hundred thousand die simultaneously, every year, humanity would effectively be in credit vis-à-vis grace, and could therefore sin with impunity for all time.

One problem here, though, is that crucified Jesuses tend to rise from the dead after about three days. You couldn't allow this to happen, otherwise Heaven would get full of the things, forcing its existing inhabitants out on to the streets. Consequently, saints and archangels would start squatting in boxes outside Waterloo Station, drinking Tennent's Super, and trying to cadge money off you.

So to ensure the Jesuses didn't rise from the dead, it would be necessary to grind them up. Then you could serve them to the Faithful as the genuine body and blood of Our Lord, and not some tacky, flour-based substitute. I expect He'd make a good lasagne or ragu. You could even serve Him up in a bun at McDonald's. It would, however, be necessary to mix Him in with other meat, too. Otherwise, come Ascension Day, your semi-digested MacJesus would have a tendency to become airborne, taking you with it.

Glow in the Dark

2009-05-24T08:43:00.000+01:00

“Glow in the dark” condoms are a fucking stupid idea. I daresay there are men who actually need their cocks to be visible under low-light conditions (perhaps so the woman doesn’t have to ask “Is it in yet?”) but, even so, surely it would be far more cost-effective for them simply to use indelible luminous paint and a conventional, see-through prophylactic. That said, there are still risks.

For example, if either the man or the woman (or both) suffers from photo-sensitive epilepsy, then the in-out motion during sex would cause a strobing effect, quite possibly exacerbating the condition. Or, seen from a distance, it might look as if you’re trying to signal someone using an Aldis Lamp. You might succeed, and inadvertently transmit something really stupid or obscene. As a result, an offended Aldis Lamp operator would no doubt send the authorities round. Worse, he might be a gay Aldis Lamp operator. So in response to your accidental transmission of “I desperately need ten inches of cock up my backside”, he’d come round himself and oblige, anally. Then there’s the danger of provoking Sith warriors. A really big, stiff, glowing dick would look not unlike a drawn light-sabre. Consequently, while you were both mid-coitus, large men dressed in black capes and wearing black helmets and masks would crash, wheezing, through your bedroom window and attempt to win you over to the Dark Side. If this is the sort of thing that does it for you, fine. If not, however, if could easily put a dampener on the proceedings.

But there is one, far more deadly potential consequence. The pigment used in luminous condoms is, of course, slightly radioactive. With continued, long-term use, some will inevitably come off inside the woman and very gradually build up until it reaches a critical mass. So much so that, after a year or so, having sex will become like suddenly plunging a fuel rod into Reactor Four at Chernobyl. The two of you will go into meltdown, rendering the whole area around your bed uninhabitable for thousands of years.

All in all, then, it’s probably wisest to stick to the “French tickler” or “ribbed” variety.

Ascension Day

2009-05-21T07:59:00.001+01:00

Two thousand years ago, what with flying angels, celestial doves, winged chariots, thunderbolts, and the like, the skies over the Holy Land must have been heavily congested. Jesus was therefore quite lucky to get away with ascending, vertically, from a mountain top like that, without getting clearance first of all. In fact, it’s probably only through sheer luck that, today, we’re not celebrating Mid-air Collision Day.

Then again, I suppose if Jesus were attempting the same thing in this day and age, He’d have even more serious problems to contend with.

For example, during His Ascension, Jesus would have to take special care to steer clear of duck hunters. Seen from a distance, an ascending Saviour looks not unlike a mallard, especially if He's wearing one of those homespun robes as featured on the statues, and He's got His arms outstretched. Consequently, members of the hunting fraternity, out to bag a brace or two, might mistakenly open up with 12-bore shotguns. And while Jesus would probably possess the necessary speed and manoeuvrability to take evasive action, there's nevertheless always the risk, however minimal, that He might get brought down.

If I, myself, were a hunter and managed to bag a Son of God instead of a duck, most likely I'd be well pleased with myself. In fact, I'd have Him stuffed and mounted alongside my moose-head. Or I’d try to flog Him to St Vincent de Paul Church, maybe. However, some people - proprietors of Chinese restaurants out to stock up their kitchens, for example - would no doubt be heavily pissed off. Somehow, the appearance of Szechuan Crispy Jesus on the menu lacks the culinary appeal of its quacking counterpart. And I can’t see Him combining too well with pancakes and hoi sin sauce, even as an experiment in so-called “fusion food.”

Storm in a Tea Cup

2009-05-20T11:28:00.002+01:00

You often hear people refer to something as being “a storm in a tea cup.” By this, they usually mean that the matter in question has been blow up out of all proportion and is, in fact, quite trivial. Consequently, the inference is that it needn’t be taken seriously. When you think about it, however, this is quite wrong: A genuine storm in a tea cup actually has the potential to become very serious indeed.

For a start, the storm itself would normally be initiated by a low-pressure area, formed directly above the surface of the tea. At the very least, therefore, an unwary tea drinker might find himself buffeted by winds as he put his lips to the rim of the cup. Showers of boiling tea droplets might even rain into his face. But these are mere inconveniences compared to what could develop.

If the storm were really severe, for example, the tea drinker might well be electrocuted by lightning, conducted up the length of his metal teaspoon (this would, of course, be "spooned" lightning as opposed to the more common "forked" variety). In a worst case scenario, the combination of the low pressure area combined with any subsequent stirring of sugar cubes or Sweetex into the tea could result in an extreme vortex which would have the potential to suck the unwary drinker (and, for that matter, anyone standing nearby) into the cup and thence the boiling liquid.

So what can we do to guard against this and minimize risk?

In my opinion, tea cups should be mounted with flags. A green flag would mean that there was no storm in the tea cup and therefore its contents would be safe to drink. A yellow flag would indicate severe ripples on the surface of the beverage, such that only really experienced tea drinkers should risk it. A red flag, on the other hand, would indicate a full-blown typhoon tea. In this instance, one would be well advised to stay clear of the cup until conditions improved.

Naturally, human nature being what it is, some foolhardy types would probably try to drink their tea regardless of the flag colour. To save these idiots from themselves, I think it might be necessary to station lifeguards in people’s kitchens and living rooms, ready to dive into the tea cup at a moment’s notice and extract the stupid dumb fucks from the tannin maelstrom before they become over-stewed. I suppose the cost of having such lifeguards on duty, 24/7, would add to the overall cost of the tea, but this is a small price to pay for public safety.

It's Raining

2009-05-19T12:14:00.003+01:00

I have often heard it said that cows are able to predict when rain is due. Apparently, pre-pissing-it-down, they start to lie down in their fields and cease eating grass. Country bumpkin hokum, or what?

Early this morning, I had occasion to walk through country lanes abutted by fields full of cows. It was a fairly sunny day. In fact, according to the BBC weather forecast on the Internet, the chances of rain today were as slight as those of Speaker Martin holding on to his job. Accordingly, I had set off coatless.

Anyway, half a mile or so into my walk, I noted that certain of the cows in the area were starting to lie down. A mile later, all of them were recumbent. Why? I asked myself, given the decent nature of the weather. I therefore scoffed, openly. Unfortunately, less than half an hour after, I could scoff no more. This is because clouds suddenly gathered and I got drenched by a fucking downpour which persists even now. So were the cows right?

No. After a certain amount of thought, I realized that the truth of the matter is this: Cows don't in fact predict rain by lying down, they actually cause it.

It's obvious when you think about it. Does it rain in the Sahara Desert? No. And how many recumbent cows are there in the Sahara Desert? Well exactly. Does it rain at the South Pole? No. Granted, it snows and it hails, but it never rains. And how many recumbent cows does one generally see on Antarctic expeditions? None. Then there are the Krubera Caves in Georgia. At nearly 7,000 feet below the surface, they are the deepest in the world. But does it rain in them? No. And how many cows do they contain? QED, or what?

What's actually here happening here is that, by lying down, the cows are absorbing the heat that rises naturally from the earth, cooling the air immediately above. This causes a low pressure area, which in turn produces rain. And, obviously, there's a direct correlation between the number of cows, their size, and the extent and severity of the rain.

This being so, we should export sleeping cows to arid areas in order to encourage rain. In this way, the Sahara might become a forest once more. Also, there are smaller applications. We could, for example, breed dwarf cows and have them lie down in our gardens. Then sprinklers would become obsolete. Hamster-sized cows could be produced and placed in washing machines and dishwashers, thus obviating the need to connect such appliances to the water mains (though you'd have to make sure your cat didn't eat them). The possibilities are limitless.

The only downside here, of course, is that midget cows would inevitably attract midget bulls. This could result in someone getting badly gored while he tried to extract his underpants from his Hotpoint Automatic. Or it could even attract midget matadors, who’d attempt to hold an entire corrida and sing "Votre toast, je peux vous le render" during the rinse cycle. But this is a small price to pay for finally achieving mastery of the elements.

Frogs

2009-05-18T09:45:00.000+01:00

I have eaten and enjoyed frogs' legs on a number of occasions. Their taste is vaguely akin to that of chicken. However, at the back of my mind has always been the thought that I might inadvertently be eating the limbs of an enchanted prince.

One often hears of witches and wizards putting spells on minor European royals, turning them into amphibians. Usually, the transmogrified nobles simply hop off and eventually settle, grudgingly, into their new existence. I would imagine this involves meeting intellectually compatible female frogs, forming relationships, and thereafter raising tadpoles together. The possibility of being caught and having one's legs cut off and served up in a London bistro is therefore part and parcel of this existence; like the risk a human runs of being knocked over by a lorry or having Ant and Dec move in nextdoor.

At this point let me get one thing clear. I personally am not concerned about the provenance of the frog. If, for example, during the course of the meal the waiter informs me that I am in fact tucking into the hindquarters of a member of the House of Hapsburg, my only reaction is to order a superior bottle of wine to wash them down. But the likelihood of this happening is so remote that I can usually stick to the house red with confidence.

Usually. I am becoming increasingly concerned, though, by reports of deviant princesses touring lily ponds and making unwelcome sexual advances towards their frog inhabitants. Under normal circumstances I suppose this is pretty harmless, even if both parties do go “all the way”. Unfortunately, there always exists the risk - however slight - that one of these princesses will eventually meet and “get off with” a metamorphosized prince. I am informed that the mere act of kissing one has the effect of converting him back into his human form, which could have potentially disastrous consequences.

Let me explain. To create the dish known as frog's legs, one simply hacks the hind legs from a frog and then tosses his body into a bucket. Thereafter he usually dies. Nevertheless, there remains the possibility that he will somehow manage to crawl out and escape. If so, his amphibian metabolism is such that the amputated legs will eventually grow back, allowing his to resume his career in the pond. Which would be no problem with a conventional frog. But what if this happened to an enchanted prince who at some point in the future was kissed by a princess?

My guess is that as well as the prince himself changing back into human form, so too would his lopped-off extremities, wherever they happened to be. Thus a diner might suffer the acute embarrassment of a pair of human legs suddenly appearing on his dinner plate, covered in a puff-pastry parcel or in sauce. More embarrassing still if he had already eaten them when the reconversion occurred, especially if the transmogrified prince had been a rugby player with really muscular limbs. The poor diner would probably explode in a scene reminiscent of the film “Alien”, showering the restaurant clientele with giblets.

And what if, during his frog days, the prince had indeed met a female frog, fallen in love, and produced children? The ponds would suddenly be full of hybrid royal-amphibians, all of them claiming kinship with the House of Windsor, and all, no doubt, demanding a payout from the Civil List. As frogs breed at an exponential rate, the country would soon be bankrupted. Democracy would collapse, too, as bunches of aggrieved tadpoles tried to dissolve parliament, claiming that their marshes had been drained to make way for the Channel Tunnel rail link or the new runway at Heathrow.

In my opinion, in order to forestall such an occurrence, top London restaurants should start to employ princesses to kiss the frogs as and when they are delivered. This would allow many of the country's sponging royals to actually pay their way, as well as guaranteeing the future of our constitutional democracy.

Whales

2009-05-17T10:59:00.004+01:00

I’m glad I’m not a whale. This is because, unlike other whales, who’ve got mounds of unsightly blubber all over their bodies, I’d undoubtedly be a trim, ultra-fit he-whale, of the sort who appears on the front cover of “Whales’ Health” and advertises whatever the whale equivalent of Blue Kouros is. As a result, I wouldn’t be able to dive much deeper than about 100 feet, otherwise, without those protective layers of fat, I’d freeze. Thus, swimming permanently near the surface, I’d be left vulnerable to harpoon attack and subsequent transformation into Japanese hamburgers.

The only option left to me in order to survive, I suppose, would be to devolve back into some sort of land-based creature. But, having sprouted arms, legs, and all the other necessaries, I’d then have to launch my 60 foot plus body on to the shore in search of sustenance. I’m sure humanity wouldn’t react very well, especially as I’m a carnivore, and so would most likely want to eat their children. Consequently, once the governments of the world had launched all their armed forces against me, I’d probably be just as dead as I would have been had I simply remained a hapless sushi ingredient.

That said, would I be missing much? Not really. It can’t be fun having to shag someone who, perforce, is usually the whale equivalent of Andrea Dworkin. Not that you can see her at depths below 300 feet or so, as there’s little or no illumination. But the probability is high, nonetheless. I imagine this is why whales aren’t monogamous and apparently have so many sex partners. The scatter-gun approach to shagging means that, statistically, at least, there’s a small possibility that you’ll be poking a cetacean Claudia Schiffer. (Or you can just fantasize and imagine you are.)

Great sex is out, though. A whale can only stay under water for about two hours, maximum, so if you indulge in lengthy foreplay and then an “all nighter”, you both drown. This therefore means that the survival of the species is dependent upon nerdy, premature ejaculator, trainspotter-type whales, whose idea of highly erotic “sex talk” is to recite the registration numbers of all the Liberian oil tankers currently doing the transatlantic run.

To be quite frank, given that, I’d actually prefer to be fucking extinct.

Bin

2009-05-16T10:32:00.000+01:00

Early this morning I saw a large, blue wheelie-bin outside the bar of The Salisbury Arms. There was a sign on it which read, “Category 3 Material: Not for human consumption.” A good idea, I thought. But this does, of course, imply the existence of separate, differently coloured wheelie-bins (red and yellow, maybe) containing Categories 1 and 2 Material, which quite obviously is for human consumption.

So where were they?

To me the answer is clear: they were put out last night by the hotel management but, by sunrise, all the contents had already been eaten, so they’d had to be taken inside again to avoid disappointing people. I’d imagine that, assuming Category 3 material is indeed as inedible as the sign suggests, then Category 2 must be Okish, if not exactly delicious, while the Category 1 bin contains the really gourmet rubbish. The connoisseurs no doubt go for this bin first. Perhaps there’s even a waiting list.

I wonder who decides which rubbish is best, though, and how to classify it. There’s probably an offshoot of Michelin and Egon Ronay that publishes “The Good Bin Guide.” They send undercover inspectors out to munch their way through kitchen scraps and then report back. It must be quite an accolade for a restaurant’s bin to receive a Category 1 status. I’ll bet there’s even a Category 1 Blue Ribbon for really superlative garbage.

The trouble with having a Category 1 Blue Ribbon, however, is that, you’re then likely to find celebrities rooting through your rubbish. This is why, even if Egon Ronay or Michelin do award my own bin a Category 1 Blue Ribbon at some future date – and it obviously deserves it - I won’t go public with the fact.

It’s currently a hard enough job keeping the foxes and rats from gnawing at my bin, so I don’t want people like George Clooney, Daniel Craig, and Madonna doing it, too, otherwise I’ll have to put poison pellets and traps down. Having George Clooney found dead in a spring-loaded trap outside my house, the remains of one of my turkey escalopes still in his mouth, is something I simply don’t need at the moment.

Love Log

2009-05-11T12:55:00.001+01:00

Now that the weather has become somewhat sunnier, clothes are inevitably becoming skimpier and, as a result, ever larger areas of flesh are being exposed to the light of day (mostly by people who really ought to keep it covered). One inevitable consequence of such disclothesure is that people who’ve invested in tattoos are finally able to show off their artwork to the general public.

In the majority of cases, the illustrations are quite banal stuff – roses, eagles, snakes, and so on – but in a few, declarations of undying affection are displayed. “Dave Loves Diana” is one such I saw yesterday on someone’s upper arm, for example. Another was a heart symbol, pierced by an arrow, with the names Kaz and Jenna on each side. This, presumably, was for the benefit of the semi-literate public.

But why do people do this? From personal experience, I know that this relationship business is a little too impermanent to commemorate with something as permanent as an indelible tattoo. It's rather like immortalizing "Big Brother" contestants on the Hollywood Walk of Fame or taking out a long-term mortgage on an equatorial igloo.

So what happens if and (inevitably) when you split up? You can either try to laser the tattoo off, I suppose, or have it amended in some way, both of which are fairly expensive, uncomfortable options.

I have therefore come up with a far better idea: Rather than attempt to obliterate the original tattoo, why not simply leave it there? Then you can list any subsequent relationships sequentially down one arm, together with their beginning and end dates. It would work like a car's log book. In this way, you’d be able to see, at a glance, whom your prospective partner had been with in the past and for exactly how long. This would give you and all others a pretty accurate idea about his or her general fidelity, views on commitment, quality of shag, and so forth.

Unless, of course, they ran out of arm space. Then they might have to start on a leg, or begin listing the names down their chest or back, and thence to other parts of their anatomy. But then, at least, the request “show us your tits” or “let’s see your cock” would no longer be regarded as a sexist, insulting term, but quite simply a polite inquiry into the quality and duration of one’s past intimate liaisons.

Box

2009-05-09T11:55:00.005+01:00

This morning I decided to give the women of Hertford a treat. Accordingly, I sat at a table outside Le Café Rouge, where they could all watch me, and had breakfast. The meal (and very nice it was, too) consisted of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, toast and marmalade, and a large pot of Colombian coffee. Anyway, as I was eating, a vehicle stopped outside. It was emblazoned with the legend “Horse Box”. Once I'd finished breakfast, I got up, walked over, and peeked inside. There was indeed one single horse within.

How wasteful of packaging and resources, I thought. If properly stacked and surrounded by those polystyrene blobs, there was room there for at least six horses. The situation was therefore akin to Kelloggs selling you a Cornflakes box containing just the one cornflake, and fitting it with a motor to allow it to drive itself from the supermarket to your home. Overkill in every way.

In my opinion, if you want to package a single horse, you should use a horse bag or a horse sachet. Or better (because few people are going to manage a whole horse at a single sitting), you should put it in a tube as horse purée. Then you can squeeze out as much or as little as you require, and keep it in the fridge for subsequent usage.

In fact, on reflection, perhaps someone could develop Pot Horse, where you just open the container, add boiling water, and enjoy. However, just as you have to beware of small bones when eating fish, I imagine you’d have to look out for the occasional horseshoe and stirrup when eating the rehydrated article.

Foam

2009-05-08T12:14:00.019+01:00

A few years ago, lots of pub-goers were bitching about the fact that their beers were basically all head and very little, if any, beer. I heard reports, for example, of one aggrieved punter saying to the barmaid, “You can give me head, darling, but not my fucking pint.” As a result, no doubt, Government legislation was introduced, compelling publicans (and barmaids) to serve the full measure. Now, if you do want additional spume on top, that’s up to you, but it mustn’t be included in the advertised price of the drink.

This morning, therefore, it was with profound satisfaction that I learned that people are starting to complain about the excess foam atop their coffees, too, particularly those served in Working Class establishments. About time. I, also, would be pissed off if, whenever I went into a café, I had to equip myself with a sonar depth finder in order to determine exactly where, relative to its froth, the actual coffee bit of the cappuccino was located.

Indeed, when you think it through fully, froth on liquids is almost always regarded as a bad thing. If, for instance, you see foam on the surface of a river, the sea, or a lake, it’s usually indicative of there being something horribly iffy in the water, particularly if there are dead fish floating on the top, as well. More often than not, it’s caused by noxious chemicals, of the sort that make men grow breasts and acquire other generally unwanted feminine characteristics. Thus it must be with coffee. (And I’ll bet they have to use a sieve to get the dead fish out before they serve it to you.)

The major downside to all this, of course, is that it could encourage would-be Thai lady boys to come over here and drink our coffee in order to transform themselves, physically, so they can then earn a living sucking men off in Bangkok bi-bars. Whatever your views on the morality, or otherwise, of this, I’m sure everyone would agree that if you do want a job sucking men off in Bangkok bi-bars, you should have to pay a private physician for the requisite hormones, and not expect Costa or Starbucks to give them to you prescription-free for just £1.80 (or however much a cappuccino costs).

And besides, there will be lots of men who don’t want to go into this line or work but who, nonetheless, may feel compelled to do so, simply because of the after-effects of their latte. What other option will be open to them? Realistically, are they going to be able to satisfactorily hold down a job as, say, a quantity surveyor or stockbroker if, when they get back to the office following their coffee break, they’ve suddenly sprouted DD tits and long, black hair, and keep screeching “Suckee, suckee, fuckee fuckee!” every ten seconds or so? I think not.

Coffee, therefore, should be be priced and served without foam. If you do want a job in a gay Far Eastern flop house, that, of course, is your affair. But coffee vendors shouldn’t automatically assume that everyone does.

Classical Eggs

2009-05-07T13:53:00.002+01:00

There are few, if any, egg recipes in the Classical texts, either Roman or Greek. This is quite simply because people generally didn't bother trying to cook them as there was no reliable way of timing the things. A few, faltering attempts were made, though. Take boiling, for example. Here, the cook would call a slave couple into the kitchen and order them to get down on the floor and fuck whenever the egg went in the pan. Upon ejaculation, the egg was deemed ready. Depending on the slaves’ sexual proficiency, you could end up with anything between a three minute egg and a rather hard boiled two hour one. If you were lucky.

Where this method fell down severely, of course, was when you got a male slave who was predisposed to premature ejaculation, or worse. In this case, the egg would be so under-cooked that you'd risk salmonella poisoning. (That's assuming there was anything to time in the first place.)

You'd have thought they'd have been on surer ground with scrambled or poached eggs on toast, but sadly, no. Here, the main problem lay with pop-up toaster technology, which, then, was still in its infancy. The toast eject mechanism was based on the principle of the ballista, or elementary catapult. Here, the bread slices, which were cooked on each side by a slave holding a flaming torch, rested on a bent-back tree branch. This was kept taut by a rope positioned over a burning candle. Once the rope had burnt through, the branch sprang back and the toast was ejected. Sadly, the force was such that the slaves were often propelled out with the toast, and could be deposited several miles away. So by the time the egg was eventually reunited with its toast (and with the slave), all three were usually cold.

Basically, all Classical age cooking was a bit of a hit and miss affair. The only generally available timepiece was a sun dial. This meant that cooking had to be restricted to sunny, daylight hours when there wasn't any likelihood of an eclipse. Late dinner was therefore totally impossible. Furthermore, as the smallest unit of time on a sun dial was an hour, all but the largest roasts tended to be pretty well done. Sometimes inedibly so. This is why no Ancient Roman or Greek restaurants ever got a Michelin Star.

My Teeth

2009-05-06T12:00:00.000+01:00

My teeth are pearly white and my smile is dazzling. So dazzling, in fact, that anyone standing within smiling range must wear a pair of those special, ultra-thick goggles as used by nuclear test scientists, lest his or her retinas be burnt out.

Unfortunately, these days, the only people with access to such goggles are nuclear test scientists. For safety’s sake, therefore, I have to restrict any grins and smirks to atomic weapons testing ranges. So, in practice, if you want to tell me a joke or otherwise make me happy, you’ve got to do it in Iran or North Korea. Which is a great pity because Iranian “How many Zionist imperialist lackeys of the Great Satan does it take to change a lightbulb?” and Korean “My dog’s got no nose – That’s because you ate it” gags aren’t particularly funny. Especially if, at the time they’re being told, I happen to be within fallout range of a 20 Megaton blast.

Then again, I suppose I have it very easy compared to Ancient Romans. My magnificently astounding teeth are courtesy of Eucryl “Whitening” Tooth Powder. If Catullus and others are to be believed, Ancient Romans’ sparkling teeth were down to urine. That’s right: They brushed their teeth with piss in order to get the true, “Ultrabrite Smile” effect.

I should imagine in the same way that, today, competing brands of toothpaste each claim to give you the whitest, brightest teeth, back in the 1st century AD, rival urine producers would make equivalent boasts. They’d claim that their piss, and theirs alone, was the most efficacious at removing stains, preventing plaque build-up and cavities, and giving you that “winning, confident smile.” Patrician piss was undoubtedly better than the plebeian variety, but I wonder how the average dental hygiene-conscious Roman citizen would decide on exactly which patrician he’d have piss in his mouth?

Ultimately, I suppose, one would go by one’s dentist’s recommendation. However, if 90 per cent of dentists agreed that, for example, Gaius Calpurnius Piso’s piss was the sine qua non of tooth-enhancing urine, then Gaius Calpurnius Piso would have his work cut out to produce a sufficient amount to satisfy demand. By the time he’d fulfilled the requirements of the imperial family, the Senate, and the two Consuls, there wouldn’t be much more than a thimble-full left for the rest of the Empire, even if the man was on a 24-hour asparagus diet. They therefore probably had to equip him with the equivalent of an olive press in order to enable a “pump action” which extracted the very last drop.

Actually, this explains why so few statues of Ancient Romans ever depict them smiling: There simply wasn’t sufficient “extreme whitening” piss to go round. Particularly if some inconsiderate cunt was in the habit of squeezing a piss purveyor down his middle.

Archaeologists

2009-05-05T11:35:00.000+01:00

You often hear archaeologists enthusing over having discovered a Roman villa. Indeed, so proud are they of their spadework, that, once the soil has been cleared, they usually put the thing on show. What I'd like to know, though, is why no archaeologist has ever admitted to having found a Roman maisonette or a Roman semi. Surely they must have existed. Actually, it's my opinion that such things are dug up all the time, but the archaeologists get so embarrassed when they find one, that they try to keep quiet about it.

Why should this be so?

It's obvious, really. Archaeologists are desperately trying to project a Middle Class, pipe-smoking, intellectual image. The reality of the situation, however, is that archaeology, far from being a cerebral, academic activity, is in fact more akin to road-digging or navvying. It's borderline Working Class. Archaeologists realise this. That's why they always make a fuss about having found something royal or some objet d'art associated with nobility. They think the kudos will rub off on them. And by the same token, that's why they shut up when they dig up an antiquarian equivalent of an item from the Argos catalogue. They fear guilt by association.

Take Heinrich Schliemann, for example. Yes, he did discover the site of Troy. Eventually. What people don't realise, however - and that's because he kept well quiet about it - is that, beforehand, he dug up the Anatolian equivalents of Milton Keynes, Croydon, and Catford. There, he unearthed thousands of objects from the Bronze Age Franklin Mint collection, including "limited edition" mugs with King Priam's face on them, plates commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Iliad ("which you will treasure forever"), and little thimbles with mugshots of Hector and Achilles painted round the periphery. The man almost topped himself from the embarrassment.

So those who tune into soi disant intellectual television, such as “The Time Team”, should realise this: What they’re actually doing is the exact equivalent of watching "The Big Match Live" or “Celebrity Big Brother”, while simultaneously guzzling a four-pack of Tennent's Super and chewing on a Big Mac.

Wankers.

Fishing Harbour

2009-05-03T14:46:00.001+01:00

I used to live in a house overlooking the picturesque fishing harbour of Newlyn. Every year, tourists flocked there from all over the world to take photographs of the village and its environs. There was (probably still is) much to see pleasing to the eye: The dozens of colourful fishing boats, the busy fishermen, and, of course, the many varieties of fish being unloaded. The sights also attracted artists. One often saw painters standing at their easels, attempting to immortalise the scenery in oils or watercolours.

All of this has set me thinking, though. Basically, the function of a fishing harbour is to land fish, process them, and then send them on elsewhere to be sold and eaten. In many respects, it mirrors the functions of an abattoir. So why is that abattoirs don't attract tourists, photographers, and artists, whereas fishing harbours do?

I think the problem is that abattoirs and their personnel lack aesthetic appeal. The abattoir buildings tend to be unimposing brick edifices, while the people who work there are dowdy cunts dressed in featureless white. But this would be so easy to change.

In my opinion, abattoir lorries should be painted in bright colours, and be given individual names like, "Beef Buggy", "Bloody Entrail", and "The Skewered Gizzard." They should all be encouraged to "land" their cargoes of cattle, sheep, and pigs simultaneously. This would ensure that the whole abattoir area became a sudden mass of colour. People from all over would bring their families to watch the animals being killed.

Abattoir employees themselves should be encouraged to dress in woolly pullovers, wear earrings, acquire tattoos, and talk total gibberish. Special pubs should be set up alongside the abattoirs, with names like "The Aberdeen Angus", "The Slaughterman's Arms," and "The Bull Castrator's Rest." There, the slaughtermen and drivers could get properly pissed after a hard day's butchering, and tell each other tall tales of the heifer that got away and of run-ins with quota-busting Spanish slaughtermen out in the treacherous reaches of the A37. It would also be a good idea to liberally scatter entrails all over the place. This would encourage vultures to gather. Vultures look far more impressive than seagulls, and so would attract lots of tourists.

If my ideas were to be implemented, town and villages with abattoirs would become "in" holiday destinations, thus boosting their economies. There could be a few problems, however. For example, if there was a storm on the M40, it's conceivable that one of the more unlucky abattoir lorries could be lost in it with all hands. But that's a small price to pay for enhanced aesthetic appeal.

Penguins

2009-05-01T11:51:00.001+01:00

Penguins tend only to be born during periods of climatic disaster. They spend their infancy eating putrid, year-old vomit. Fish vomit. At some point even this meagre nourishment runs out, and, because they can’t fly, they must then embark on an absurd trek of hundreds of miles over impassable terrain, usually with predators, high winds, and blazing fireballs picking them off in their hundreds. When they reach their destination, usually the shore of some half-frozen sea, they have to clamber down sheer-sided cliffs and run a gauntlet of psychotic seals, before finally plunging gratefully into the frigid waters - whereupon they are promptly devoured by passing killer whales.

A better idea, therefore, might be to take penguin eggs from their nests and submerge them in the sea. Then, when the baby penguins hatch, they will believe themselves to be fish. Consequently, flightlessness will no longer be a problem. They will be able to flit about the oceans to their hearts' content, no longer having to worry about waddling around in a ridiculous-looking, predator-enticing manner.

Of course, the sudden penguin influx might provoke some of the fish population into retaliating by laying their eggs in penguin nests. On hatching, the fry will believe themselves to be penguins, and walk upright on their tails. While this might not be a problem with smaller fish, such as sticklebacks or kippers, it could get quite dangerous once land-based species of, say, hammerhead shark and great white come of age. They will bounce all over the place, eating people, and generally looking decidedly non-cute As a result, no-one will want to name chocolate biscuits or book publishers after them.

Which is just as well, I suppose, because "P-p-pick up a porbeagle" sounds fucking stupid. As, indeed, does the concept of a Grey Mullet edition of "Lady Chatterley's Lover."

Perhaps, then, it's best to leave the status quo as is.

Hayfever

2009-04-28T09:43:00.001+01:00

It’s a good job bees don’t suffer from hayfever. If they did, spring and summer days would be punctuated by a cacophony of insect sneezes and subsequent pollen explosions within the flowers. Even if, by some Herculean effort, the afflicted bee were able to transport his pollen back to the hive, he wouldn’t be in any condition to turn it into decent honey. Indeed, because of the discharge from runny apian noses, jars of Gales Honey would probably consist of 90 per cent bee snot. You wouldn’t be able to spread the stuff on your toast; it would soak straight through.

Another thing to bear in mind is that bees assist in plant reproduction by transferring pollen from the stamen of the male plants to the pistillate cones of the females. But, of course, if they were allergic to the pollen and came over all sneezy and runny-eyed, they wouldn’t be able to do this any more and all plant life on earth would eventually die out. And without plants, there would be no means to convert carbon dioxide into breathable air so, in time, humanity would die of suffocation.

It therefore behoves us to listen carefully to bee hives. If we hear a single sneeze from within, we should leave a packet of Benadryl outside, just to be on the safe side.

Policing the Streets

2009-04-27T16:21:00.001+01:00

Whenever I go to Selfridges (once a week, usually) I always walk there via Grosvenor Square and the US Embassy. This is because it affords me a certain amount of sport with the armed SO16 police division patrolling the area. I take every opportunity to shout at them such things as "I fucked your mother last night. She wasn't much good. Tonight I'll try you sister - your father tells me she's a much better shag. So do all her clients." And so forth.

They sometimes get the odd shot off at me, but without much effect. One problem (apart from their lousy aim and general ineptness) is that their weapons, ostensibly automatics, have been modified so that they can only shoot single rounds. So while they're trying to get another bullet into the breach, I've usually darted into the shelter of a nearby Italian restaurant or sandwich shop. Sometimes, I'll even dart into the US Embassy itself. The commotion often brings out a Marine division, who then engage the police in a brief, but lethal firefight, usually wiping them all out. Of course, the Government always imposes a D-Notice on all of this in furtherance of "the special relationship", so you'll never have read about it.

How different things were a few years ago. Think back, for example, to Dixon of Dock Green. OK, not a hard man in the conventional sense. Nevertheless, back in 1950, he was shot and killed by Dirk Bogarde. But did this stop him? No – he fuckingwell rose from the dead, thereafter to star in a long-running television series. Then, of course, there were Regan and Carter in the 1970s. They seem to have gone around permanently armed, and weren't averse to shooting someone just for the fun of it. And they always hit what they were shooting at. And in the 1970s, also, there was Harry Callaghan, aka “Dirty Harry”, who'd shoot people left, right, centre, and from below, too. Again, not someone to mess with.

But what do we have today? Wankers in protective helmets, poncing around behind riot shields, and running off, crying, to Health & Safety if they get even as little as a splinter in their fingers. And as for their kill rate, forget it. Note the G20 demonstrations on the first of this month. Thousands of fucking tree huggers and unwashed anarchists within an easily containable "kill zone", but they only managed to eliminate one person, and he was just a Big Issue vendor. Little wonder, then, that there's a crime epidemic and that the forces of Law and Order are so scoffed at. Little wonder that we are no longer safe in our own homes.

I therefore propose that dead policemen from the glorious past be dug up and their DNA extracted. Then we can clone The Greats and have them patrol our streets and make them safe again. Indeed, we could gene-splice them to create the best of the best. A bobby on a bicycle, for example, who bids people "Evening all" and "Mind how you go, sir", before cutting them in half with an automatic weapon. Or a traffic officer who, while assisting a child across the road, asks "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" before delivering him into the path of a speeding articulated lorry.

Only in this way with Britain be Great again.

Plate Tectonics

2009-04-25T11:02:00.000+01:00

As everyone is no doubt aware, earthquakes are caused by drifting tectonic plates slowly pressing up against one another. Eventually, the pressure becomes so great that one of the plates slips and judders violently. The result is a shaking of the earth immediately above, with associated property damage, casualties, and an influx of Christian Aid workers.

This need not be the case, however.

In my opinion, all major fault lines in the world should have giant Vaseline factories erected above them. By pumping vast quantities of Vaseline between the tectonic plates, you could minimise any friction. Therefore instead of violently shaking, the plates would move smoothly, like greased axles.

Of course, this would speed up the migration of land masses, too. Normally, it takes several millions of years for continents to detach themselves from one another and cross oceans. But a Vaseline coated one could probably do the same trip in a couple of hours. So, for example, residents of San Francisco might wake up as citizens of the United States, but find themselves part of Bangladesh come dinner time. And a fortnight later, they could end up in the Arctic.

Fortunately, all this would help bolster international relations and promote world peace. What head of state would ever again advocate turning a faraway country into a radioactive desert or infecting its population with a plague if there's a distinct possibility that, in a week's time, it's going be the neighbouring postal district? On the other hand, it could fuck up the airline industry totally. Who’s going to pay £4,000 for a First Class return trip to, say, Australia, when all you need do is stand on the beach for a while and wait until Australia to come to you?

Delays will, of course, be inevitable due to the contrary nature of plate tectonics. You might, for instance, spend three quarter’s of an hour waiting for a continent to arrive, and then three of them will turn up at once.

Jump

2009-04-24T13:28:00.000+01:00

An acquaintance of mine is going on a so-called “sponsored walk” and wants me to pledge some cash. I’m frankly a bit bothered by the whole enterprise, particularly as it’s something of a misnomer. This is because it’s not the walking itself that accrues the money, but how far she walks. In other words, I’ve got to pay her more if she manages, say, 20 miles rather than just two. So it should properly be called a “sponsored distance.”

Given this, I’m now a bit pissed off with another acquaintance. She’s going on a sponsored parachute jump. But, unlike the walker, who earns per mile, this one expects to get the same whether she drops ten feet or 10,000. Either way, as soon as she leaves the plane, I’m stung for the full amount. I can’t even renege on it if her parachute fails to open because, technically speaking, she’ll still have done the jump and covered the full distance to the ground. Whereas, at least with the walker, there’s a chance that she’ll twist her ankle, break her leg, or get run over before she finishes, so I won’t be as out-of-pocket.

In all honesty, however, I can’t think of anything to suggest to the jumper that might help reduce my exposure. I suppose I could insist that she jumps out of the plane over a highly-forested area or above high-voltage pylons, then there’s a least a chance she’ll get stuck in a tree or electrocuted. Then again, even if she does, she could point to the contract (or, in the electrocution case, her Estate could) and hold me to my pledge, pointing out that it’s the jump I was sponsoring, not how far she got, and the fact she didn’t manage the last 20 feet or so is neither here nor there. The cunt.

I’m just glad I don’t live in New Testament times, though. Back then, if you sponsored Jesus or the Virgin Mary on a sponsored jump, they no doubt would have insisted that you paid for, not just the jump, but the distance covered. This is because, just before they hit the ground, an angel would come forth and raise them back up into the Heavens, thus allowing them to perform another descent. And another. And another. So you’d be out millions of denarii, having rendered both to Caesar and to God.

Little wonder the Church is now so fucking rich.

Diplomatic Status

2009-04-23T11:36:00.000+01:00

In my opinion, Greek, Indian, Thai, and other ethnic restaurants based in the United Kingdom shouldn't be allowed to get away with calling themselves such. For a start, invariably, their owners hold British passports. Secondly, unless the food has actually been air-freighted in, it remains essentially English, albeit tarted up with exotic ingredients. Therefore, more properly, these places should advertise themselves as Greek style and Indian style eateries.

A possible way round this, however, is to give them diplomatic status. Then a Greek restaurant could indeed be accurately described as such, because it really would be Greek territory, subject to the usual border regulations and immigration controls. Likewise all the others.

Some problems might, of course, arise from this. For example, where two adjoining restaurants - Greek and Turkish, for instance - shared a common parking area or a back yard, territorial disputes could ensue, possibly leading to wars. And if they got out of hand, the wars could quickly spread from the restaurants to the countries themselves. Or a Persian restaurant might try to develop nuclear or biological weapons capability. As we know, punitive sanctions are rarely effective in these cases. Consequently, it would be necessary to bomb the offending restaurant back to the Stone Age, regardless of any potential collateral damage to its “human shield” diners.

On the plus side, though, existing embassies and legations would probably feel obliged to upgrade themselves to restaurant status in solidarity. Which could only be a good thing. At the moment, if I ring up the Chinese ambassador in London and ask for two spring rolls and Peking duck with pancakes, he rarely obliges. But as a culinary diplomatic entity, he'd be forced to, if only to ensure international goodwill. And I'd get the meal in a specially insulated diplomatic bag.

Fly on the Wall

2009-04-21T10:40:00.002+01:00

You often hear people say, “I’d love to be a fly on the wall.” This usually means that they’d like to surreptitiously witness some stimulating event or other without letting the people involved actually know that they’re being observed. A good-looking couple shagging, for example, would be a case in point. Or me undressing, displaying my Daniel Craig-lookalike physique.

Whatever, the expression has now given rise to the so-called “fly on the wall documentary”, wherein the subjects go about their everyday business, apparently oblivious of the cameras. In other words, the cameraman and production team are effectively unnoticed, their presence, to all intents and purposes, like that of a fly on the wall.

When you think the expression through, however, you realize how ridiculous it really is. As you can clearly observe from this photograph, if you were a fly on the wall, all you would actually see would be the wall, and nothing else. The fly would have to turn round in order to get a view of what’s behind him, and if he did, he’d fall off, as it’s only his feet that are sticky, not his back or wings.

A better expression, therefore, would be “an owl on the wall.” This is because an owl (assuming he could find some sort of perch, such as a picture frame or a light fitting) can turn his head round 360 degrees to see what’s going on behind him.

On the other hand, I suppose you might notice if, mid coitus, there were an owl on your wall, especially if he hooted (unless the sex session was especially noisy). And if you did notice him, I suppose he'd be easier to swat with a rolled up newspaper. That's the plus side.

On the distaff side, if owls managed to avoid being swatted and went on to displace flies on our walls, spiders would have to get a bit more proactive in terms of catching their prey, as I don’t imagine a conventional spider’s web would last long if an owl got caught in it. So they’d evolve to be giant hunter-killers, like that one in the film “Tarantula” with Leo G. Carroll. Which, in turn, would force governments to use the nuclear option to deal with the problem.

This could put people off sex completely. Who’d want to risk a Pershing Cruise Missile coming through their window at the moment of climax?

Excrement

2009-04-18T10:43:00.001+01:00

Cadmore End, Buckinghamshire.

According to official-looking signs displayed on lampposts hereabouts, if you allow your dog to crap in public and don’t then immediately pick up the resultant turd, you could be liable for a £1,000 fine and/or three months imprisonment. As I’m currently cat-sitting in deepest, rural Buckinghamshire and therefore don’t have the dogs with me, this isn’t an issue. What is and issue, however, is what the signs don’t say.

Having now examined the small print thoroughly, it seems that the law is aimed at dogs, and dogs only. Should I, myself, for example, wish to suddenly lower my pants and deposit a load on the pavement, they can’t touch me for it. Leastways, there's nothing on the signs to say they can. Likewise if I allow my horse to liberally defecate (and, judging by the mounds of horse shit that pile up round here every day, hundreds of people do). As for the result of the local farmer marching his cows from the field to the nearby milking sheds, the less said the better.

So why target dog shit in particular? Granted, it isn’t a pleasant experience accidentally stepping in the stuff. But it’s even less agreeable, surely, sinking up to your knees in a cow-pat or being on a bicycle immediately behind a shire horse when he lets one drop. Yet, in these instances, the local council seem totally impotent.

This morning, just for research purposes, I went on a shit hunt. I wasn’t disappointed. Within 30 seconds walk from this house I must have counted at least 20 horse turds and three cow-pats. If the council applied the same rules to these animals as they do to dogs, they’d already be up £23K on the deal. So why don’t they?

I suppose official attitudes to the matter may date from the days when all transport was horse or bullock-based. Back in the medieval era, for example, while I don’t expect people were exactly overjoyed at having to deal with the aftermath of 1000 mounted men at arms riding through their village, they wouldn’t have thought it wise to complain too loudly, either. Shouting, “Oi, wanker! Your fucking horse has just shat on my front drive, you tin-plated tosser!” to a knight equipped with a long lance and a broadsword maybe wasn’t a good idea. Similarly, putting up signs saying “500 groat fine and/or beheading if your horse shits here” could have financially crippled any royal army marching through. Possibly this explains Richard the Lionheart’s failure to recapture Jerusalem during the Crusades: his army had been previously decimated by having to pay out all those horse-fouling fines. Today, therefore, mindful of this, and not wanting to be decapitated (and, equally, not wanting the Holy Land to fall back into the hands of the Heathen), council officials are still overly lenient with horse owners.

It seems to me, then, that the only way to accord dogs equal status in the pooing stakes is to involve them in the transportation system, too. Mine are a bit small, but could, I suppose, at a pinch, give a ride to Austin Powers actor, Verne Troyer. And, of course, I could harness all three of them together into a team and possibly get them to pull me in a little cart. But in the meantime, if they do take a crap and someone from the council complains, I’ll say it was me, not them. As I said, there’s nothing on the sign prohibiting me from dumping in public.

Knock Off

2009-04-17T09:13:00.001+01:00

Time was, an expensive hand-crafted watch was a status symbol, denoting great wealth and refinement. Ownership of, say, a Patek Philippe or a Rolex enhanced one's position in society. Beggars would happily line up to be kicked by such watch wearers, while women from all classes willingly dropped their knickers at the sight of the horological perfection of the timepiece's centre sweep second hand.

Sadly, however, this is no longer the case. Why? It is solely down to the malign influence of the Internet.

Every day, my e-mail inbox is full of Spam adverts promoting the virtues of replica watches which, it's claimed, are perfect in every detail, albeit at a fraction of the price of the genuine article. I've seen a few of these things fake Rolexes, Omegas, and so forth - and they are, aesthetically speaking, very, very good. Indeed, in many cases, unless you actually take the watch apart, it's impossible to tell the difference. As a result, the social cachet of owning the genuine article has been debased or negated entirely. These days, people won't even bother mugging you for one, assuming that your expensive watch is merely a cheap knock-off. In fact, I'm told that the Sultan of Brunei who, 20 years ago, purchased a diamond-studded Omega for about ten million pounds, now regularly has people coming up to him saying, "I'll give you five quid for that, mate." How annoying this must be.

But there could be worse to come. Having effectively rendered expensive watches apparently valueless, the Internet could soon do the same for sexual super-studs. I refer, of course, to all those "Give yourself an extra six inches" and "Make the bitch howl in orgasm all night" e-mails. If what they declare is truthful (and, given that the watch ads are, why shouldn't these be, too?), anyone can now effectively become an insatiable sex-machine. And if anyone can, how are women now to distinguish the genuine article from a cheap knock-off?

Gone, I suppose, are the days when, over dinner at an up-market restaurant, one could casually mention to a woman that one had a 12 inch dick and could go at it all night like an industrial-strength sewing machine, thus guaranteeing a shag. Today, she'd most likely say, "So what? Can't everyone?" (You can't even impress her with your degree certificates, either, because, nowadays you can get those over the Internet, too.) I suspect that, just as with watches, the only way to tell the difference between the fake and the genuine article is to take it apart. But I don't relish the idea of allowing a woman to take a scalpel to my penis merely in order to satisfy herself as to my bona fides. Yet, this may soon have to be incorporated as a regular feature of the sexual act.

I just thank the Lord that, if all else fails, I am still able to impress women with the quality of my cooking. But how long will it be before the junk e-mailers cotton on to this, as well, and start, and start promoting "Fantastic Replica Slavko Evening Meals" over the Internet?

I have seen the future, and it droops.

A typical replica Cartier

Sponge

2009-04-16T10:56:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening I was reading a newspaper feature that likened young children to sponges, in that they’re supposed to passively soak up information and influences from around them. So, for example, if you leave a toddler in a room full of Frenchmen, at the end of the day, he’ll come out speaking a certain amount of French. Or if left alone with a bunch of astrophysicists, he’ll emerge with a passable (if incomplete) theory for the formation of the Universe.

Anyhow, I decided to test this. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a child to hand. I did, however, have a sponge. (Which, according to The Daily Telegraph, amounts to much the same thing.) I therefore read it the opening chapter of “The English Patient.” The results were amazing.

When I’d finished, I squeezed the sponge. Out came: “She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.” And so on, unto the end of the chapter - all word perfect. But there was more. I gave it another squeeze. “Personally, I find this a very trite, overrated book,” said the sponge. “Why Ondaatje couldn’t have just gone for a standard linear narrative I do not know. You’ve really got to be one of those Guardian-reading ponces who lives in Islington to divine any artistic merit whatsoever from crap like this.”

Next, I played the sponge the CD of Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” from beginning to end. Then I squeezed it. Out came the opera, virtually note-perfect. It wasn’t in stereo, admittedly, but for a monaural sponge, the sound quality was pretty good, nonetheless.

But then disaster struck.

I played the DVD of “Reservoir Dogs”, forgetting that the sponge was still in the room. The next thing I knew, it had teamed up with a couple of J-Cloths and a scourer, escaped from the house, and attempted to rob the HSBC Bank on Fore Street. In the ensuing mêlée, the impressionable sponge and its colleagues were all shot dead by Police marksmen.

Given all this, therefore, it behoves us to take extreme care with the sort of material to which we expose the nation’s youngsters.

Bags

2009-04-15T11:51:00.007+01:00

I like bags. I like the entire concept behind them. Take shopping bags, for example. If they didn't exist, you'd have carry all your shopping in your arms. Or try, anyway. Even a limited number of items (nine or fewer) would probably start falling out all over the place, and then you'd be chased by dogs as your string of sausages unravelled when you walked down the street. But, fortunately, a shopping bag stops this from happening. They are therefore to be commended.

Sleeping bags perform a similar function: When you zip yourself up inside one, it stops your limbs and extremities unravelling in the night. As a result, you wake up next morning in one piece, safe in the knowledge that your errant dick hasn't rolled away and been swallowed, whole, by a wild animal during the hours of darkness. So, given that bags do offer these sorts of levels of security, I have decided to go beyond the concept of the shopping bag. Beyond that, even, of the sleeping bag:

I have created an "awake bag."

An awake bag looks much like a sleeping bag, but, as its name suggests, is for use only during daylight hours. It doesn't zip up all the way to your neck, of course. Instead, it zips up to your chest. This allows you to function fully 9-5. To move forwards, backwards, or sideways, you simply grasp the outer edges of the bag and bounce, as in a sack race. And, if bits fall of you while you're doing so, they're contained securely within the bag, and so won't get lost.

I suppose if you work for the Foreign Office, you could multi-task with one of these things. You'd of course rename your awake bag a "diplomatic bag." In addition to allowing you to bounce through foreign embassies and consulates, you could also park on double yellow lines and shop-lift with impunity. Indeed, the awake/diplomatic bag could also act as a shopping bag. You'd be able to hop through the aisles of a supermarket, tucking items into the bag as you did so, and then hop on past the checkout without paying a penny, or even trying to. If Security attempted to stop you, you'd simply point to your bag and claim diplomatic immunity. This could be a great help during the present credit crunch.

You would have to make sure that your combined diplomatic/shopping bag wasn't one of those biodegradable types that supermarkets are currently pushing, though. This is because there's a risk that, mid-way through your telling a foreign policeman or autocratic head of government that he's a cunt, the bag might spontaneously perform to spec and degenerate into dust, thus stripping you of your immunity and leaving you open to subsequent arrest and imprisonment. Just like those diplomats in the American Embassy in Tehran back in 1979, I imagine.

Car Wash

2009-04-14T10:19:00.003+01:00

I notice that people who drive cars often make use of a garage facility called an “automatic car wash”. (Obviously, they're too poor to afford to personally employ someone to carry out this function for them. But that's by the bye.) Here, cars line up and drive, one at a time, through a set of mechanical scrubbing brushes. Finally, the equivalent of a giant Pifco hairdryer comes down and attempts, as best it can, to eliminate the moisture.

Why have I highlighted the phrase “one at a time”? Because I think it's extremely wasteful, both of time and resources, that these machines can only process a single car while all the others have to wait in line. It's the equivalent of going to a launderette with a full laundry basket, feeding in your coins, and then only washing one sock, before repeating the process for each subsequent sock, shirt, pair of underpants, and so on.

In my opinion, an automatic car wash should be designed more like an automatic washer-dryer. Here, the cars would drive into a massive drum, 20 at a time, and then the door would be closed behind them. Thereupon a garage employee would pour in the appropriate amount of powder and water softener and start up the machine. Of course, he would have to great care to ensure no white cars drove in with the rest. These would have to be washed separately, lest the colours ran.

Anyhow, once fired up, the machine would go through its various wash and spin cycles and get the vehicles really clean. Indeed, during the rinse cycle, there should be a facility for adding conditioner. This would give the cars extra body and guard against them sticking together or coming out with funny smells. Finally, a decent spin-dry, followed by a hot air tumble-dry, would eliminate any lingering dampness. Naturally, in order to survive this process, the drivers would have to be specially trained beforehand on one of those NASA centrifuges.

So much for cheap cars. The more expensive cars, like Morgans, Aston Martins, and Ferrari Testarossas would have to be professionally dry-cleaned, in case of shrinkage. In fact, I believe that many so-called Dinky Toys are actually the result of their owners misreading the care labels that are usually affixed to the interior of the bonnets. It must be real bummer when that happens, as I doubt the insurance will cover the damage.

Surrexit Christus Hodie

2009-04-12T14:01:00.020+01:00

Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Some two thousand years ago, His followers (accounts vary as to who was actually there, depending on whose Gospel you trust) went to Jesus' tomb in order to marinade Him in unguents, or whatever, as one apparently did with Jewish dead bodies back then. Unfortunately, it was pretty much a wasted journey, as they arrived to find that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb's entrance and Jesus had pissed off. Or, as an angel who happened to be around at the time rather unhelpfully put it, "He is not here. He has risen."

All well and good. But was He risen enough, I wonder?

The reason I ponder this question is because, when Jesus was resurrected, it was clearly something of a half-arsed job. That's to say, although He was up and about, as you'd expect of someone restored to life, He still had bloody great holes in His hands, feet, and side from the crucifixion, as later witnessed by Apostle, Thomas, who put his finger through one. So to my mind, Jesus was, to use a cookery terminology, "underdone." Perhaps, then, He ought to have been left in the tomb a bit longer. I don't think three days were enough.

The thing is, if you microwave food, it says on the back of the packet exactly how long it should be left in. Timings depend on such variables as the weight of the item and the power setting of the microwave oven itself. Presumably, resurrecting someone in a Jerusalem tomb works on much the same principle. But the problem with Jesus is that He didn't have a message tattooed on his arse to the effect, "For 750 Watt tombs, inter for 72 hours. Check Saviour is piping hot before exhuming." Or maybe He once did have one, but it had been scourged off by the Romans a few days previously. Whatever, this meant that the angels (or whoever did the job) pretty much had to guess. And the procedure was made even more problematical because, in those days, tombs had no power rating, and the stones rolled across their entrances didn't have digital LEDs on them, either, to give an accurate timing. Therefore, I imagine that the angels kept rolling the stone back and forth, having exchanges along the lines of "Is He done yet?" - "No, I'd give Him another five minutes if I were you", and so on and so forth, unto ultimate resurrection. Or, as previously stated, given that they did have to guess at it, a semi-resurrection, leastways.

That said, it's possible, I suppose, that the holes in Jesus were actually there for a good, practical reason. Going back to the microwave oven analogy again, when you use one of those, you have to prick holes in the plastic packaging of things like lasagnes and currys before they're irradiated. If you don't, they often explode mid-way through the cooking process. So perhaps Jesus might have exploded, too, if those holes hadn't been left in Him. Then the angels would have had to have scraped Him off the tomb walls before they could let Him outside. If so, He'd probably have looked like one of those chicken and prawn biriani dishes that you often see puked up on pavements after closing time on Friday evenings. Hardly the sort of image to inspire a Piero della Francesca Renaissance painting. And certainly not a new religion.

That's how I hope it all panned out, anyway. Because, if it didn't and Jesus was underdone, anyone receiving a Communion Host today at Mass - a "Body of Christ" - could well risk getting a dose of botulism or e-Coli from it, too. Then they'd be the ones hoping to be resurrected in three days' time.

Transubstantiation

2009-04-11T10:02:00.001+01:00

As we all know, just under 2,000 years ago, Jesus, Our Saviour, transformed mere bread such that it actually became His own body.

This miraculous process, which is now repeated in churches throughout the world, is known as the Transubstantiation. How fortunate we are, though, that it doesn't work in reverse. If it did, and the Messiah were able to change His body into bread, He might be mistaken for the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Or worse, the Pillsbury Dough Boy might be mistaken for Jesus.

Some would say, of course, that such a development would be a marketing triumph for Pillsbury. The company could claim that all their dough products had divine sanction, thus boosting sales. But it's likely that if they did, rivals such as Rank-Hovis-McDougall and Homepride would convene a bakery equivalent of the Council of Nicaea. There, they would declare that in fact their bakery products, and theirs alone, were the Way, the Truth, and the Life. As a result, supermarkets would be riven by schism. Bloody religious wars would flare up, with Morrisons set against Sainsburys, Netto against Kwik Save, and Somerfield against Aldi. The loss of life would be horrendous.

Basically, then, we should be grateful that Transubstantiation is actually irreversible, like poaching an egg. On the other hand, if Jesus had transformed himself into dough, He'd have been virtually impossible to crucify. It would have been like trying to nail a blancmange to the ceiling.

Then again, when you think about it, the whole concept of Transubstantiation is a bit fucking far-fetched, isn’t it? It’s certainly nothing that you’d want to spring on your dinner party guests, unexpectedly. If you’re having one of these formal functions and, à propos of nothing at all, your host suddenly hands you a bread roll or its equivalent and says, “Take this all of you and eat it, for this is my body”, you’re going to be a bit sceptical, to say the least.

Actually, I’ll bet that the disciples must have thought, as one, “What a twat! He's claiming affinity with a piece of bread!” In the main, though, they just shuffled their feet and tried to humour Jesus, as you do on these occasions. Only Judas had the courage to say, “What the fuck? You're a stupid cunt, mate. I'm going to tell the authorities.” And indeed, off he went, returning a few hours later with a delegation from the local Sanhedrin.

I'm sure we’re all aware of how the tale subsequently unfolded. Neither the religious authorities nor the representatives of the Occupying Power were very pleased to have in their midst someone who identified so closely with a loaf. And is it surprising? It could, of course, have given risen to a series of copycat incidents wherein people claimed to be dates, castor oil plants, or various kinds of exotic fruit (“Leave your homes and families and follow me, for I am a kumquat sent by the Lord to bring you Salvation.”). Therefore to nip this in the bud, Jesus was executed. Various embellishments were then added to the story, but that's basically it.

Screw Jesus

2009-04-10T08:10:00.001+01:00

Good Friday again, no less, and, to celebrate the occasion, I’ve been re-reading Christ’s Passions, Our Passions, by Margaret Bullit-Jonas, while preparing my world-beating muesli breakfast. It’s thought-provoking stuff. The book isn’t bad, either.

In my opinion, however – and this is where I take issue with many theologians, including Bullit-Jonas herself - Jesus shouldn’t have been nailed to the cross; He should have been screwed to it. Then it would have been a lot easier to get Him off afterwards. But because they used nails, the Roman soldiers most likely had to employ some sort of claw hammer to prise those nails out, no doubt with some difficulty. All of this risked damaging the wood, possibly so seriously that the cross couldn’t be used again.

If, on the other hand, Pilate had authorised the use of a Philips screwdriver and just three heavy-duty screws, Jesus could have been secured quickly and easily, with minimum risk of His coming loose and dropping off mid-way through the crucifixion. And, of course, at the end, it would have been possible to remove Him in seconds, and re-use both the cross and the screws.

Similarly, if the soldiers had made a balls-up and accidentally put Jesus on upside down, they could have simply unscrewed Him, turned Him the right way up, and re-secured Him. Likewise, if, having screwed Him on, they’d stepped back and seen that He wasn’t quite level, it would then have been a simple matter of unscrewing one arm, inching it up slightly, and then re-screwing it. Whereas, if they'd nailed Him up and He wasn’t level, there wasn’t a Hell of a lot they could do about it. Except live with the fact, I suppose, and hope that the spectators and Gospel writers didn’t laugh too much

Anyway, the Romans obviously weren’t very economy minded when it came to basic woodwork, which goes some way towards explaining the ultimate decline and fall of their empire.

My Evening Meal

2009-04-09T22:38:00.002+01:00

Behold My Evening Meal: A delight for all occasions called Slavko's Caribbean Chicken. Herein is its unrivalled Perfection:

Ingredients

1 lb of chicken thigh fillets, cut into bite sized pieces
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 red pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
4 plum tomatoes, quartered
1 small can of pineapple chunks
2 small green chillis, chopped
4 tbsp tomato puree
1 inch or so of ginger, grated
1 can of coconut milk
Juice of one lime
2 tsp mild curry powder
1 tsp brown sugar
Seasoning
Olive oil

Method

Brown the chicken fillets in a heavy-based skillet in olive oil and then remove to one side. Next, fry the onion, peppers, garlic, and chillis for about five minutes. This done, add the the ginger and fry for another minute or so. Next, add the coconut milk, the lime juice, the tomatoes, the tomato puree, the sugar, and the curry powder and stir. Once you have, add the chicken. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 25 minutes or until the sauce is thickened. Five minutes before the end, toss in the pineapple chunks. Season if necessary. Finally, serve with plain boiled rice.

Result

The sort of meal that God would cook if He only possessed my culinary skills. Truly, my genius in the kitchen is yet again confirmed.

Vegetable Vengeance

2009-04-09T08:36:00.003+01:00

You often hear of people suffering brain damage and then going into what’s termed a “persistent vegetative state.” Or, as some would more crudely say, these unfortunates become “a dumb vegetable”. Totally unresponsive to outside stimuli, they can only be kept alive (albeit in a purely mechanical sense) via a life-support machine. Pull the plug and the body dies.

This, of course, can lead to all sorts of ethical dilemmas. If no brain function is recorded, should the hospital staff call it a day, turn the machine off, and then harvest the internal organs for use in transplants? Or should we abide by Catholic doctrine which maintains that it would be a sin to do this as “where there’s life, there’s hope”? The controversial Terri Schiavo case in the United States a couple of years ago exemplifies the entrenched positions.

The “don’t pull the plug” brigade usually point to instances (albeit a mere handful) where a patient who’s been proclaimed brain-dead by specialists subsequently awakes and goes on to make a full recovery. Interestingly, the use of music is often a common factor in these cases. That’s to say, friends or members of the family play a recording of some tune or song that was especially significant to the currently-comatose patient, at which point his eyelids flicker and he recovers consciousness.

I’m, of course, delighted when this happens. But is it worth the associated risks, I wonder? If a human whose in an accidental persistent vegetative state can be restored in this way, what would happen if something that’s in a natural persistent vegetative state is exposed to the same music? Suppose there’s a carrot or a cucumber in the room with him, for example? Obviously, there’s a danger that this vegetable could go into a persistent sentient state.

But, as anyone whose ever walked down a city high-street on a Friday evening will know, there’s sentience and then there’s sentience.

If a previously brain-dead “hoodie”, for instance, is restored to (for want of a better word) sentience by playing, say, Eminem, 50 Cent, or James Blunt, or whatever his favourite brand of down-market screeching is, then no-one’s going to notice much difference between the vegetative state and the wakeful one, anyway. So, similarly, a carrot made newly sentient by the same music will have an equal IQ, and can still therefore be peeled , diced, and boiled with relative impunity. But, conversely, if you play it the sort of music that a supremely intelligent, cultured person enjoys - Man of La Mancha and My Fair Lady are two examples I pluck from thin air – then it follows that the carrot, too, will acquire a corresponding level of sentience.

And if the carrot is suddenly made aware that humans have previously puréed its brothers and sisters or mashed them up with turnips, what is its reaction likely to be?

I imagine that it will try to exact vengeance. It will communicate with other examples of edible plant life and go into alliance with them against us. Consequently, bunches of coconuts, previously mere fairground targets for humans, will transform themselves into deadly projectiles, heaving their hairy, now unlovely forms through our windows. Fruit trees will uproot themselves and go hunting in packs, plucking sleeping men and women from their beds and ingesting them as they sleep. And can it be long before currants and raisins emerge from our muesli and consume us at our breakfast tables, like marauding armies of soldier ants?

To guard against this, we should ensure that all vegetables are henceforth blind and deaf, as well as dumb. Let us start by brutally gouging the eyes out of potatoes and hacking off ears of corn. Only then will we sleep soundly in our beds.

Red Flag

2009-04-08T12:17:00.003+01:00

Until 1896, British drivers weren't allowed to exceed 4 miles per hour. Furthermore, when they did drive, they were obliged to have a man running in front of the car, carrying a red flag, in order to warn people who couldn't manage 4 miles per hour to get the fuck out of the way. Although driving must have been fun in those days, it was also a ruinously expensive hobby. Not so much when the car broke down (which happened often enough), but when the man did.

The thing is, when a car breaks down, it's relatively easy to put right. Indeed, if you know what you're doing and have the proper materials, even a total write-off can eventually be resurrected, from either spare parts, or cannibalization of used parts from another car, or both. Granted, technically speaking, what you end up with isn't the original, inasmuch as there's usually a replacement clutch from one vehicle, a gasket from another, and so forth, but the combination works well enough. So much so that you usually can't tell the difference between the restored car and those fresh from the dealer. People don't usually flee in terror at the sight of it, anyway. This wasn't always the case with the restored man, however.

Films such as "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein", both of which I watched last night, show us that, in the 19th century, when your man broke down or expired totally, restoring him to any semblance of working order was a somewhat more problematic affair. Sourcing the replacement parts, especially. You couldn't go into a shop and say "Can I have a lung, please?" or "Have your got any reconditioned brains that will fit an 1857-vintage male?" No, instead, you had to go to graveyards, charnel houses, and medical research facilities and nick the bits you required, which wasn't entirely legal, even if their owners had finished using them. So reconstructing the red flag-waving counterpart to, say, a vintage Daimler, was rather long-winded and, usually, not entirely successful. But it was when you had your reconditioned man run in front of your car with his red flag that problems really started.

Even if your intention was to drive from, for example, London to Brighton, more often than not, your reanimant would lumber off in his own direction. Invariably, he'd take you to middle European destinations called Vassaria and Ingoldstadt, where he'd trash entire villages and really get up people's noses. Legally, though, you had to follow him, and at the regulation distance of 100 feet. So it must have been quite embarrassing, especially when people came up to you and said, "Oi, mate! Is that yours? He's just tossed my fucking daughter in a lake and drowned her!" or "Are you the cunt who's red flag man has shacked up in my blind uncle's forest cabin and nicked his cigars?" What could you reply? You couldn't deny it, because there he was with his red flag, and there you were with your car, driving immediately behind, so people would inevitably put 2 and 2 together. Then, before you knew it, you'd have hundreds of angry villagers descending on your house, bearing flaming torches and shouting something about witchcraft. Wouldn't you feel like a total arsehole?

It's a good job then, that, in 1896, the legal requirement to have red flag man running in front of your car was repealed. Now, if your reanimant rampages through Europe and murders people, willy-nilly, you can drive in the opposite direction, and people will never know he's yours.

Lingual

2009-04-07T10:54:00.003+01:00

Why, I wonder, is the penis the only major human organ that expands and lengthens to any noticeable degree when we get excited? Surely, for example, when we're stimulated by the smells of cooking, our tongues ought to similarly lengthen and expand. Then we could flick them out and grab the food, lizard-like, from a distance.

Then again, I suppose, such an ability might have its downside, too. Lingual impotence is one condition that could arise. If, say, you were overly worried about how the food was going to taste, or whether you were going to be able to chew it properly, you might not be able get your tongue to expand at all. Then, I suppose the only satisfaction you'd be able to get would be by just thinking about food, while simultaneously rubbing your tongue along the roof of your mouth.

Maybe people - young people, especially - who dreamed a lot about food would wake up in the middle of the night with their tongues stuck to the ceiling. And, no doubt, first-time eaters, and those who'd been without food for a long time, though they would be able to get their tongues to expand, wouldn't be able to maintain that expansion for more than a couple of seconds. Thus they'd only be able to eat one tiny morsel.

I suppose, given such a scenario, the world would divide into two groups. Predominant amongst them would be good, morally upright carnelinguals - those who ate meat. But there'd also be an alternative lifestyle sub-group called vegelinguals. They'd no doubt frequent salad bars in Old Compton Street, dress in distinctive leather outfits, and attempt to promote their perversion as being in some way "natural." And wives of apparent carnelinguals might discover that their husbands were actually bilingual and therefore swung both ways.

How humiliating for the poor women.

Fiscally Responsible

2009-04-06T09:42:00.001+01:00

Whenever you apply for a loan - it doesn’t matter for how much - the bank or financial institution concerned will always ask what you want the money for. And rightly so. This is to ensure that you’re fiscally responsible and won’t, in their view, "piss it up the wall", thus requiring them to send people round to break your legs if and when you default.

Accordingly, a person who replies that he needs the capital for, say, household improvements or a new car will, generally speaking, be approved. But if he says he wants to finance a string of sleazy massage parlours or purchase a couple of kilos of high-grade, uncut cocaine, normally he’ll be turned down. No matter that he might be able to provide documented evidence of his ability to import a bevvy of willing girls, cheaply, from eastern Europe, or that he’s taking over an already highly-profitable drugs distribution network – the majority of lenders (maybe even Ocean Finance and Purple Loans, too) will usually say no.

All well and good. But why confine this to loans? If you’re obliged to prove that you’re responsible enough to borrow money, surely you should have to show that you’re also responsible enough to spend it. In my opinion, therefore, in addition to asking you how much you want to take out, cashpoint machines should, as well, demand to know what you intend to use it for. This would be easy enough to implement, even with present-day IA technology.

Having entered your PIN and specified how much you required, you’d be presented with an on-screen message to the effect: “Please state the nature of your intended purchase(s).” Whereupon a fiscally responsible person would enter, via the ATM’s keyboard, “I’m going to buy groceries for the week and perhaps a good book. Something by Isabel Allende, maybe.” Then (subject to sufficient funds being available in the account) the ATM would cough up the requested amount. However, if you were to say, “I’m going to spend it all on one of those whores that operates in an upper room just off Dean Street, then I’m planning on getting totally fucking pissed in The John Snow”, the machine would simply respond, “Your bank has refused to authorize this transaction”, so saving you from yourself.

Of course, some fraudulent individuals, although they fully intended to hire a whore and get pissed in The John Snow afterwards, would undoubtedly type, “I’m heavily into early 20th century Russian literature at the moment, so I’m going to use the money to buy a couple of novels by Mikhail Bulgakov. One of them being The Master and Margarita, obviously.” At this point, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the machine would have no option but to take him at his word and dispense the cash. But it would store the client data to its memory for later retrieval. So the next time this particular individual tried to male a withdrawal, the machine would first ask, “What was it like, then?”

Thereupon, I imagine the exchange would proceed along the following lines:

“What was what like?”
“The Master and Margarita, of course.”
“Oh, it was great. I loved it.”
“You feel that Bulgakov was more incisive in his use of satire than, say, Vonnegut is?”
“What intelligent person couldn’t come to that conclusion?”
“So what do you reckon to Woland’s magic show at the Variety Theatre? What’s that passage expressing, exactly?”
“Err …. Well, that worked for me on so many levels, it’s hard to explain in mere words.”
“But you felt, for example, that Woland provided a suitable foil to the character of Satan?”
“Of course.”
“You CUNT. Woland was Satan. You haven’t read the book, have you? You spent your money of fripperies instead.”

Whereupon, members of the Fraud Squad, ejected from a slot in the ATM, would instantly arrest the miscreant and put him in chains. Thereafter, even hanging would be too good for him.

In this way we’d all be encouraged to spend our money somewhat more wisely. Or, if not, then it might convince us to at least get a lot better at lying about what we actually did with it. Which would serve us well for future encounters with the Inland Revenue and for those occasions when we genuinely did need to borrow money from the bank for massage parlours and high-grade, uncut cocaine.

My Evening Meal

2009-04-05T19:46:00.000+01:00

There are two ways to cook turkey escalopes. There is the wrong way and there is My Way. Here is My Way.

Ingredients:

2 turkey escalopes
4 tbsp seasoned flour
2 eggs, beaten
½ lb of seasoned breadcrumbs
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
3 red chillis, diced
½ lb chestnut mushrooms, diced
½ pint of chicken stock
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp medium dry sherry
3 tbsp crème fraîche
2 tsp olive oil
2 tbsp chopped parsley (or not, depending on whether you want a garnish)

Method:

Coat the turkey in the seasoned flour, dunk in the egg mix, and coat on both sides with the breadcrumbs. Next, in a heavy-based pan, heat the olive oil and fry the escalopes on both sides until browned. Then remove to somewhere hot. Meanwhile, fry the garlic, onions and chillis until soft. Add the mushrooms and continue to cook for another four minutes or so. Add the chicken stock and the soy sauce and heat until reduced. When it is, pour in the sherry and the crème fraîche. Put the escalopes on a plate and pour on the sauce. Serve with boiled rice and asparagus. And, if you wish, use the parsley garnish.

Result:

If you’re unable to have sex, tasting this will produce a similar sort of orgasm.

Palm Sunday

2009-04-05T09:17:00.000+01:00

Today is Palm Sunday, when we commemorate Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, mounted on a donkey that a couple of His disciples had previously nicked from some bloke living in Bethphage, just up the road from the Mount of Olives (Matthew 21:2).

According to The New Testament version of events, when Jesus went through the city gate, the population called out, as one, "Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest." And so on and so forth, as you do. Simultaneously, they threw down palm fronds on the road before Him.

What the Bible doesn't tell us, however, is if they already had the palm fronds to hand, or whether they had to cut them down especially for the occasion.

The fact of the matter is, Succot aside, palm fronds are basically fuck all use for anything else except chucking down at the feet of Messiahs. Consequently, they're not the sorts of things you're going to keep in your store cupboard just on the off-chance that one is going to turn up. Usually, therefore, they have to be cut down, fresh, as and when required. And, as it would be uneconomic to keep professional palm frond harvesters on 24-hour Messiah Watch, you'd probably need to go out and do the job yourself as soon as any sort of Lamb of God made His presence known.

I imagine that, on the day, this would have caused quite a few logistical problems. Given that His donkey was stolen, Jesus must have been travelling at a fair lick in order to put as much distance between Himself and Bethphage as possible. So, people wanting to put palm fronds down before Him wouldn't have had the time to travel very far in order to gather the things. Rather, they'd have had to go for the ones immediately to hand, most likely those right outside the Eastern gates of the city.

The thing is, though, as I recall from the time when I lived there, while Jerusalem does indeed have palm trees outside its Eastern wall, there aren't that many of them (they'd probably undermine the foundations if there were). So on the first Palm Sunday, several thousand people shinning up and plucking, at most, a dozen and a half palm trees must have done a shitload of damage. I'd think that, by the time they'd harvested sufficient fronds to cover the distance between the Golden Gate and Jesus' ultimate destination, the Temple, there'd be fuck all left of the trees except for their trunks and maybe a few withered coconuts or palm olives.

Coconuts and palm olives are inherently dangerous. I'll bet that by exposing them in this way, it encouraged Jerusalemites to chuck rocks at them in order to bring them down and then sing stupid songs about having lovely bunches of the things. Which, given the inherent sexual innuendo elements of such songs, can't have gone down too well with either the Roman or Jewish authorities. Almost as dangerous are palm olives. The oil you get from them is extremely high in saturated fats. But the Jerusalemites of the time didn't know this. Doubtless they harvested them, turned them into what they believed were healthy spreads, and then died shortly afterwards from congestive heart failure. And all because of Jesus.

It's therefore not surprising that Jesus, rather than Barabbas, got crucified, is it? What is surprising is that it took them as long as a whole fucking after Palm Sunday week to get round to doing it.

Not good for palm trees

Bonsai

2009-04-04T09:47:00.002+01:00

Through a certain misapprehension on my part, I have inadvertently come upon a solution to world food shortages. I shall explain.

Until two days ago, I believed that the fruit of bonsai trees, when planted, would result in another bonsai tree. But apparently this is not so. If you plant, say, a bonsai acorn, you eventually get a fucking big oak tree. This might, or might not be, what you're after. If not, the only way to turn it into a miniature oak is to trim its roots while it's still at the sapling stage, before it sprouts upwards and knocks your roof off. This goes for all other trees, too.

Indeed, plants, it seems, are also susceptible to this treatment. Hence my idea.

In my opinion, we should create bonsai vegetables and cereals. A bonsai carrot, for example, would probably contain exactly the same nutrients as its larger counterpart. Yet we'd be able to grow a few hundred of them in the same space normally occupied by one conventional carrot. Likewise, bonsai wheat fields would fit into a window box. We could harvest the wheat with a pair of nail scissors and a saucer, grind up the grain with a pestle and mortar, and produce bonsai sliced loaves.

Of course, after a while, standard evolutionary forces would come into play. That's to say, normal-sized animals that feed on normal-sized vegetables and cereals would have to reduce themselves accordingly to cope with the new dimensions of their fodder. So eventually we'd end up with bonsai sheep and cattle. In fact, it isn't inconceivable that humans themselves might miniaturize in response to their foodstuffs. In 200 years from now, the average man might be bonsai himself, no more than six inches high.

All of which bodes well for the future. In the meantime, though, I’m going to re-pot my own bonsai tree and stick it somewhere more secure. I don’t want midget dogs pissing against it. And I especially don't want to risk attracting the attention of itinerant midget lumberjacks. They might deforest my entire plant collection, leading to localised soil erosion and in-house global warming. Having the polar ice caps suddenly melt into my living room is just too much of a risk, especially since the new wooden flooring has been put down.

Bubble

2009-04-03T09:39:00.000+01:00

You know what really pisses me off about bubble baths? I’ll tell you: That they're nothing of the kind, that’s what. In fact, they should actually be called, not bubble baths, but bubbles baths. Yes, plural. Because there’s always more than one of the fucking things, isn't there? Which can be a right pain in the arse, especially afterwards, when you have to rinse the bubbly dregs away down the plughole or individually pop each one with a pin.

When you think about it properly, a bubble bath should be exactly that. In other words, it should consist simply of one, large bubble, covering the whole of the bathtub. This would be far more efficient and manageable than the aforementioned multiple bubble option. At the end of the wash, you'd just pop the thing with your finger to get rid of it.

Of course, initially, you'd have to sit in the bath with the tap running and allow the bubble to gradually form around you. If you left it until the bubble reached full size before you entered the tub, you'd burst it, thus rendering the whole exercise a waste of time. (I suppose you could always attempt to circumvent the bubble by squeezing in through the overflow, although that would probably be more hassle than it was worth.)

Naturally, you'd have to take great pains not to fart while in the middle of such a bubble bath. If you did, and you let off a particularly big, stinky one, its lighter-than-air methane composition could well render the bubble equally so, making it airborne. Combine this with a sudden, light breeze and an open window, and you could find yourself drifting, naked, up into the sky, trapped within the bubble; an object of derision for the neighbours. And men with pathetically small cocks would probably be dive-bombed by birds, mistaking their minuscule members for worms. In doing so, the birds’ beaks would most likely pop the bubble, causing its occupant to plunge hundreds of feet to an ignominious death below. There'd be no hope of a respectful obituary in The Daily Telegraph any more. Instead, newspaper headlines would simply read "Naked Man with Small Cock in Sparrow Attack Death Plunge." Or similar.

All in all, it's probably far safer just to take a shower.

Red Carpet Treatment

2009-03-31T13:29:00.004+01:00

As we can see with those attending this week's G20 summit, whenever Heads of State or other important dignitaries pay a visit, people always roll out lengths of red carpet for them, hence the term "the red carpet treatment". The idea is that VIPs can cross from point A to point B without having to soil their shoes on the pavement or risk stepping in a turd. Furthermore, if they're pissed at the time, it probably makes it easier for them to walk in a straight line.

But red carpets, it seems, are regarded as very personal things, like toothbrushes, hair combs, and vibrators. That's to say, if you have one, you're normally loath to share it with anyone else. I know this because I once stepped on President Mitterand's outside the Ritz (his red carpet, not his vibrator), and was immediately chased away by a large man in sunglasses.

The concept of an individual red carpet seems to me to be a tremendous waste of material, however, especially if the dignitary in question can't park his car properly. He might end up at an angle, for example, five feet or more from the kerb. Maybe standard issue red carpet comes supplied with an extra ten feet or so to allow for this kind of thing. Whatever, there ought to be a more efficient solution.

An obvious one, of course, is simply to glue a couple of red carpet tiles to the dignitaries' shoes for the duration of the event. Unfortunately, there are a few drawbacks to this. Because red carpet tiles are readily available in any DIY store, anyone could glue them to his feet and pretend to be someone exalted. Then, before you knew it, you'd have complete nobodies walking into, say, new art galleries or supermarkets and declaring them open. Or worse, a red carpet tile-equipped nobody could travel to Moscow and conclude a nuclear disarmament treaty with Vladimir Putin, thus leaving the UK effectively defenceless in the face of a renascent, increasingly bellicose Russia.

In my opinion, top hotels, theatres, ministries, and so on, ought to supply individual stiffened loops of red carpet, about 16 feet or so in circumference. Then, on State occasions, doormen could wheel them out to the dignitaries' cars and invite them to step inside and start walking. Thus the VIPs could go any distance they desired, confident that there would always be red carpet beneath their feet. Navigation might be a problem, as the VIPs wouldn't be able to see where they were going. However, it could be overcome by the doormen giving directions: "Left a bit, Your Majesty. Mind the lamp post. That's it. Over the kerb, now. Watch out for the dog turd on your far left." And so on.

Or the VIPs' security personnel could steer them instead. The only really serious dangers would come if you had several hundred dignitaries arriving somewhere simultaneously for a state function. Then it would probably become necessary to establish some sort of traffic control system, where you'd give kings' and queens' red carpet loops right of way over those of prime ministers and foreign secretaries.

On the other hand, it could cause a bit of trouble. For instance, a king might assume he had automatic right of way over a president. For his part, the president might think that, seeing as he's an elected representative of the people rather than being a mere hereditary head of state, his loop of red carpet should be given precedence. Another European war could result, infinitely more terrible than the First and Second.

Bubbles

2009-03-30T10:26:00.000+01:00

As I wandered through Waitrose this morning, I noted products such as soda water syphons and those plastic Sodastream machines whose function is to put carbonated bubbles into water and juices. They're very popular. The idea is that when you eventually drink the stuff, you experience a refreshing fizz. All well and good - provided you're into fizzy drinks.

However, there must be thousands of people who aren't - people who crave a beverage unsullied by even a single bubble. Yet, fizzy drinks outnumber still drinks on the supermarket shelves by a factor of at least 10:1. Indeed, many drinks - Coca Cola, Sprite, Perrier, and so on - can only be bought with bubbles already added. Which is a bummer if you like the flavour but are determinedly anti-bubble.

Why, then, don't manufacturers supply machines that work like Sodastreams in reverse and extract bubbles from fizzy drinks to render them still?

I suppose one of the problems lies in the fact that fizzy drink manufacturers don't actually say how many bubbles each beverage contains, or indeed if the bubble count is even consistent from can to can. So you might guesstimate a can of Coca Cola as having, say, 10,256 bubbles and hit the "Extract" button. But on drinking the end result, you could find that it in fact had 10,550 bubbles. Therefore the remaining 294 bubbles would hit you hard. Worse still, you could guess at 20,000 bubbles, when actually the drink only had 5,000. I imagine that trying to extract bubbles that weren't there would have some effect at the molecular level and cause the drink to go critical, devastating wide areas of the countryside.

In my opinion, therefore, fizzy drink manufacturers ought to be required by law to state exactly how many bubbles their products contain. Then extraction machines would become viable. And of course, the bubbles you extracted could be combined together to form one massive, fuck-off bubble which could be re-inserted into a fizzy drink to make it really refreshing. So refreshing, indeed, that people might start overdosing on the stuff.

But at least Coke then really would be "the real thing". Or, at least, a reasonable simulacrum of same.

Transformation

2009-03-29T09:25:00.001+01:00

If someone claims that, far from being, say, an ordinary run-of-the-mill plumber, electrician, or stockbroker, he is in fact Hitler, Napoleon, or Jesus, invariably, he will be locked up. But if you say that, though you may look like a man, you are in fact, inwardly, a woman, you're permitted to have a sex-change operation, usually on the NHS.

This is an iniquitous situation. Common sense tells us that a man who yearns to have his dick cut off, go on a course of hormone therapy, get silicon implants, wear dresses, and call himself Yvonne is equally as mentally ill as someone who wants to wear a tricorn hat and invade Russia. So why are the two treated differently?

In my opinion, this discrimination should end. And for the better. In future, anyone who believes that he is actually Jesus Christ should be given the requisite cosmetic surgery to enable him to look like our Lord. On the NHS, too. This way, when, eventually, he tries walking on water, raising the dead, or performing an ascension into Heaven, he'll soon discover that he isn't actually divine at all. Result: an instant cure. Of course, he'll still look like Jesus, but that will be his permanent punishment for acting like such a fucking arsehole in the first place. Likewise with all the rest of the self-deluding individuals.

There are a couple of downsides here, though. For instance, if two surgically transformed mental patients who believe themselves to be, respectively, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, manage to surround themselves with a few thousand surgically transformed mental patients who believe themselves to be, respectively, early 19th century French cuirassiers and early 19th century British infantry, inevitably, there's going to be some sort of ruck. However, as long as they can confine their dispute to somewhere that doesn't matter, such as Belgium, it needn't be too much of a problem. The Low Countries could do with being ravaged by another military campaign, anyway. Bunch of cunts.

Double Glazing

2009-03-28T12:31:00.006Z

Yesterday I found another mobile phone in the pub, obviously mislaid by its owner. The thing was on full charge and its service hadn’t yet been disabled so, as always on these occasions, I took the opportunity to dial random numbers and attempted to sell people double-glazing.

I’m actually quite good at this because, having no overheads whatsoever (and, obviously, no double-glazing) I’m easily able to undercut the competition. Typically, for example, I can charge just £1,000, inclusive of labour, to replace all the windows in a house, front and back, with ultra-modern uPVC ones, incorporating internal-beading and Pilkington’s energy-saving OptiWhite Glass. Eat your fucking heart out, Everest. All I ask is that customers take out their own windows first of all, at their own expense, at which point I say I’ll come round and fit the replacements. During the course of the afternoon, I made at least half a dozen confirmed “sales” and perhaps another ten or so “maybes.” And aren’t they going to feel like total cunts when I don’t turn up and they’re left with big, gaping holes in the walls of their homes?

It’s a pity, really, that such mobile phone technology wasn’t available to besieging armies in ancient times. One thinks, for instance, of the 66 – 70AD siege of Jerusalem where the army of Titus was forced to employ three entire legions over four years in an attempt to take the city. However, had Titus just used my stratagem on day one, phoned Simon Bar Giora, and offered to fit, at cost, new, energy efficient aluminium framed windows throughout Jerusalem, the Zealots would no doubt have knocked holes in their own walls to accommodate them, thus affording instant access to the Romans. Then they could have quickly and easily subdued the place – in just a day, maybe - without destroying the Temple. Thus we’d be spared Tisha B’Av, and you’d be free to shag Jewish women on the 29th of July this year.

Not that I necessarily want to shag any Jewish women on the 29th of July, but I’d at least like it available as an option should I feel the urge on that date. And, as an added bonus, having experienced my superior cocksmanship, I’m sure they’d be more receptive to my attempts to sell them double-glazing, so it would be a win-win situation, as they say. Indeed, fuck it, I’m that good, I could probably sell them single-glazing.

Cereal

2009-03-26T09:08:00.001Z

Yesterday evening in Waitrose I was buying oats, one of the constituent elements of my world-beating muesli. While doing so, I took the opportunity to peruse the other, competing breakfast cereals that are now available. The different brands and varieties are indeed many. But why, I asked myself, is one's choice of packet size so restricted?

Take, for example, Frosties. These are currently sold in only three sizes: large, medium, and individual. But in the latter case, one is obliged to purchase, not just an individual serving of Frosties, but a whole box, or so-called “Variety Pack”, containing little boxettes of Ricicles, Cocopops, and so forth, as well - each sufficient for just a single bowl.

Ridiculous.

If you’re a Frosties Man, you’re a Frosties Man, and nothing else will do. Far better, I think, to sell Extended Family Packs of Frosties, about the size of freight containers. Just one of these could keep you in breakasts for a whole year. As an added bonus, you'd only have to collect the one packet top in order to qualify for your free bathroom towel. (Or maybe collect five, and get a free bathroom.) Similarly, whereas a medium packet of Frosties only has one little plastic Tony The Tiger inside, an Extended Family Pack could accommodate a whole, genuine tiger. It might protest a little, of course, if you poured it into a bowl, doused it with whole fat milk, and then unknowingly bit into its tail, but at least the overall breakfast experience would become a tad more exciting.

At the other end of the spectrum, I feel more variety in size should be offered, too. Bulimic fashion models, for example, often find it a lot of hassle having to throw up an entire serving of Frosties every morning. For them, Kellogs should sell sachets, each containing just a single, individual Frostie. Someone like Kate Moss could swallow one of these and puke it out into the lavatory in a near simultaneous action, pausing only to snort another line of cocaine from the porcelain.

Then there are particle physicists. For them, Kellogs could sell Frosties that only actually exist at a sub-atomic level. These could then be put into particle accelerators and bombarded with deuterium to create anti-Frosties. When a sufficient mass of anti-Frostie met a similar mass of Frostie, energy equivalent to the birth of the universe would be created, thus freeing Mankind from its dependence on fossil fuels.

It therefore makes sense to have a wide variety of packet sizes.

Brick Wall

2009-03-25T10:36:00.000Z

You often hear people use the expression “It’s like banging your head against a brick wall.” The implication, of course, is that the activity you’re engaging in is futile and getting you nowhere, and so should be abandoned. Surely, though, this depends.

If, for example, your intention is to concuss yourself, then banging your head against a brick wall is actually a pretty efficient way of doing it, and therefore you should be applauded for your efforts and for your use of the expression. (Indeed, in this case, if you are trying to self-concuss but are getting nowhere with it, a better expression would be “It’s like head-butting a blancmange” or “It’s like banging someone else’s head against a brick wall.”)

Another problem I can foresee is that not all brick walls are equal. My own are fairly substantial and so if you did bang your head against them, you probably wouldn’t get anywhere, thus validating the expression. My neighbour, however, has a crap brick wall with bits missing and large gaps where the cement should be. If you banged your head against that you’d no doubt be through it in less than two minutes. Co-incidentally, my neighbour is also a homosexual. Perhaps, then, there’s some correlation between having a crap wall and going cottaging in public lavatories.

I definitely believe so. One reads, for instance, of Joshua and the Israelites besieging the walls of Jericho. Those walls were so crap that all the Israelites had to do was circle them seven times and blow a trumpet and then they fell down. The Bible, of course, doesn’t say that the inhabitants of Jericho were arse bandits, but it surely can’t be mere co-incidence that the Arabic for Jericho is ariiha, which means “fragrant.” QED, I think.

If your walls are crap, you are gay. So if we say “It’s like banging your head against a homosexual’s brick wall,” it means that the whole enterprise is very worthwhile. (Except, I suppose, if you’re gay and it’s your wall.)

Confectionery

2009-03-24T21:54:00.001Z

In my opinion, cars should be made edible, their bodies and engines constructed out of a mixture of chocolate, marzipan, nougat, and icing. If nothing else, this would put an end to the scourge of so-called "weekend drivers" - those FUCKING CUNTS who crawl along at 20mph, when everyone else wants to put their foot down. They'd know that if they did drive too slowly, there'd be the risk of hungry pedestrians coming up and taking a bite out of their bonnet or eating their wing mirror.

Of course, edible cars displayed in showrooms would have to be printed with a "Drive By" date in order to guarantee freshness. And I imagine they wouldn't last as long as metal cars, unless you parked them in a big fridge every evening instead of a garage. Even then, three months would be your maximum. Not that this would be a problem. Chocolate and marzipan are comparatively inexpensive compared to metal, so you could replace the whole thing quite cheaply, having first of all dined out on it, if you wished.

This freshness aspect would probably put an end to the second hand car trade, however. There's no way you could pass off a stale car as being new, and it wouldn't matter how many careful owners it had had. If any shady salesman tried the "Look at this pristine condition Volvo, John. Fresh as the day it was baked - just one previous lady owner" patter, you'd be able to take a close look and see the maggots crawling out. The smell would probably be enough to put you off.

Edible cars would be a lot cheaper to repair, too, if small accidents took place. For instance, if you had a scrape, you'd simply take the car to a baker to be re-iced. Or you could even do it yourself. And high-speed road accidents would no longer be fatal. The consequence of what would in effect be two lumps of chocolate and marzipan colliding would probably be a new confectionery creation rather than a wreck.

There would be the risk, though, that really fat people might eat their cars and then claim on the insurance forms that they'd been stolen in order to get a free replacement. To prevent this, anyone with a waist in excess of 34 inches should be stomach-pumped when he submits his claims form, and the contents examined, just to be on the safe side.

Pagan

2009-03-23T14:50:00.001Z

Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk by the river. It was a pleasant enough day, therefore I managed quite a few miles. Towards the end, tired by my exertions, I began to fancy a beer. Fortunately (or so I thought) a pub came into a view. A very pleasant one, too, judging by the exterior: hanging baskets, oak beams, leaded pane windows, and the rest. This being so I entered in order to assuage my thirst, certain that the interior, and all therein, would be of a commensurate standard.

I had been deceived. First off, the barmaid was an ugly fucking cow, completely out of keeping with the style and elegance of the building. Consequently, it was exactly as if I’d gone into what looked, from the exterior, to be, say, a picturesque 17th century Anglican church only to discover, on the inside, an altar constructed from a pyramid of human skulls manned by an Aztec priest, ready to rip the still-beating-heart from my chest. Not what I was expecting.

In my opinion, the brewery, McMullen’s, shouldn’t be encouraging the equivalent of pagan sacrifices. (Not on a Sunday, anyway.) At least pagans were honest about it. If you went to 15th century Mexico and climbed up one of their stepped pyramids, you knew exactly what you were going to get at the top. They didn’t post a sign outside saying “Free beer” or “Gorgeous dancing girls!!!” No, you could tell by the blood dripping from within, and the screams, exactly what was on offer. So, by the same token, if the exterior of the pub looks good, its barmaids ought to look good, as well. Or if they’re puke-inducingly ugly, then the pub should also look like a dump.

And another thing: When I started drinking my beer, some stupid cunt came up to me and tried to engage me in conversation. Why? I go into pubs to drink, not to talk. If I do want a fucking conversation, then I’ll take someone in with me. That way I can guarantee both the quality and content of that conversation. I do not wish to discuss the weather, football, or road congestion problems on the A10 into Hertford with some arsehole whose IQ is clearly at least 60 points lower than my own, thank you very much.

All in all, then, a not very satisfactory day. It’s just a good job I’m not an American or German high school student, otherwise I’d now want to go into class with an automatic weapon and start “taking out” the staff and pupils.

The City of God

2009-03-22T13:10:00.009Z

Many people hereabouts have their newspapers delivered by a so-called “paper boy”. I’ve never understood why. It costs you more and there’s no guarantee as to exactly when, or if at all, the bugger will turn up. Whereas if you just walk down to the newsagent (it’s only five minutes away) you only pay the cover price for the newspaper and you get it at the time that you want it.

That said, I suppose, for those who do have their papers delivered, there is a certain serendipitous element, which might appeal. This is because the gormless little cunt regularly delivers the wrong newspaper, so you often don’t know whether you’re going to get The Catholic Herald or The Sunday Sport. Consequently, for those who were expecting to follow, say, the controversy over the canonization of Josemaría Escrivá, the opportunity, instead, to have a wank over Veronica Zemanova’s decision to “lezz it up, big style” must come as quite a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, if you were expecting to have a wank over Veronica Zemanova’s decision to “lezz it up, big style”, having to read about apostolica vivendi forma might come as something of a let-down (particularly if you’re still disillusioned over the fall-out from Vatican II). For this reason, I believe The Catholic Herald ought to incorporate a “Readers’ Wives” section, just in order to placate such unfortunates.

Then again, this might, in turn, force The Sunday Sport to offer 0898 numbers devoted to discussion of Humanae Vitae in their back pages, alongside the usual “Bored Housewives” and “Lesbian Teens” ads. This brings the risk that some perve will inevitably misdial and start talking to a nun or priest about his raging hard-on and his desire to stick it any which where. Which isn't something that nuns or priests (nuns, leastwise) have much expertise in.

Pondering the matter further, though, this might actually be a good thing and turn the perve to the Way of Righteousness. Like St Augustine of Hippo, for example. We’re never actually told the exact reason why he abandoned his life of wanton profligacy and embraced the Lord. Perhaps it’s because, back then, there was a similar sort of reciprocal agreement between the publishers of The Life of St Anthony of the Desert and the Fifth Century equivalent of Razzle, where each carried ads meant for the other, and Augustine went for the wrong one. So, expecting to be brought to arousal by chatting to a 16 year old nymphomaniac, he was instead induced by a religious correspondent to follow the path of celibacy and godliness, thus enabling him, later, to develop the concept of the Church as the spiritual “City of God.”

Having a good intellect in the first place must have helped, however. I somehow doubt that any of the the Fifth Century Veronica Zemanovas were in much of a position to frame the concepts of Original Sin. Not without charging you at least the equivalent £1.50 a minute, anyway.

Clouds

2009-03-20T14:08:00.000Z

One of the prime characteristics of the Working Class is that they engage in manual labour (that's if they've actually got a job, of course). Superior people don't. They have cushy office jobs or, like me, work from home. People who engage in manual labour tend to sweat a lot - far more so than those who don't. And what happens to sweat? It evaporates, goes into the atmosphere, and eventually becomes water vapour. And, of course, water vapour is the main ingredient of clouds.

This means that clouds (or the majority of them, anyway) are FUCKING WORKING CLASS.

I personally object to having something proletarian suspended above me. I object even more if the fucker then rains on me. This means I'm not just getting wet, I'm getting Working Class, too. Something must therefore be done to distinguish Working Class clouds from those respectable ones that are caused by the perspiration from exclusive foreign resorts and expensive health clubs.

In my opinion, the Royal Air Force ought to actively seek out Working Class clouds. This they would do by flying their Harriers and Tornadoes over the sorts of areas where such clouds are most likely to develop. For example, cities like Liverpool and Birmingham, as well as areas like Brixton and Toxteth, are awash with proletarian sweat and so are more likely to have pleb nimbi above them. Having identified the clouds, the RAF should then spray them pink.

As a result, people on the ground would be able to look up into the sky with confidence. If they saw a grey or white cloud, they needn't be fearful of its raining on them. This is because it would most probably be the product of the glistening rivulets of perspiration flowing into Claudia Schiffer’s cleavage, and then on to her firm, pert breasts. However, if they saw a pink cloud, they'd know it was a common as FUCKING MUCK. They could therefore let it rain itself out, or be blown elsewhere.

Charity

2009-03-19T14:56:00.000Z

This morning I was approached just outside Waitrose by a charity collector, rattling a box. She had nice tits, so I gave her £1, whereupon she affixed me with an “I saved the whales” or “I single-handedly saved Africa from poverty” (or whatever) sticker, before I quickly moved on. In fact, there were at least half a dozen of these people out there today, all exhibiting the same modus operandi. That’s to say, you gave them money (curiously, it didn’t seem to matter how much or how little) then they gave you a sticker, which you put on your lapel.

Thinking about it, though, this system stinks.

Why is it that everyone gets an identical sticker, regardless of how much they've given? Surely, it stands to reason that, if I donate, say, £1, then I should get a better sticker than someone who's only given 50 pence. Otherwise, it's like a car showroom selling everyone a Skoda or a Hillman Imp, regardless of whether they've paid £5 or £50,000.

To operate a fairer policy, charity collectors should be graded according to their rates. So, for instance, the bottom end operatives would wear jackets printed with "50 pence to £2". By law, they'd only be allowed to accept money within that range. If you wanted to give £5, you'd have to find a "£2.50 to £10" collector. This would go right to the top, where there would be collectors who'd refuse to accept anything but platinum Amex cards and bankers' drafts over £20,000. And, naturally, each grade of collector would dispense his own, distinctive sticker. In this way, those who'd given the most money would be readily distinguishable from the cheapskates.

I suppose there is potential here for abuse of the system. For example, the top end collectors, flush with money, might start to act like international banks, and invest their funds in all sorts of dubious causes. Do we really need the likes of Help the Aged and CAFOD trying to destabilise friendly, foreign governments, laundering drug money, and investing in North Korean nuclear arms projects? I don't think so.

The next time I pass a Help the Aged shop I’ll lob a brick through the window just to warn the bastards off.

Nice and Nasty

2009-03-18T12:06:00.002Z

A well-known police interrogation technique is to have two officers, one a “Mr Nice”, the other a “Mr Nasty”, interview the suspect simultaneously. The idea is, if the prisoner knows himself to be guilty, he will eventually want to unburden himself to one of the interrogators. Exactly which one depends on his personality. A submissive type, for example, would tend to confide in Mr Nasty, while the extrovert would eventually empathise with Mr Nice.

This is a tried and trusted method of arriving at the truth, and one which I believe should be applied to other situations. And where is truth more in demand than in a clothes shop? How often, for instance, do we delude ourselves into thinking that a crap tie or suit is in fact fashionable? Who is there to point out the error of our ways? Having a spouse or partner along is no use, as they tend merely to back up our initial (and often erroneous) impressions of the clothing.

In my opinion, therefore, Mr Nice and Mr Nasty shop assistants should be employed. Having emerged from the fitting room, one would face them, and they would immediately go into their double act.

“That suit sucks DICK - like the person wearing it.”
“No, that suit is just so you. It makes you look like such a hunk.”
“Yeah, a hunk of raw meat. I’ll bet the only reason you've chosen trousers with turn-ups is so that they'll catch the dripping spunk after you've finished WANKING OFF over pictures of little boys.”
“Don’t listen. Those trousers are tailored exquisitely. They highlight your crotch perfectly”.
“It's a good job those trousers are so baggy - they conceal the fact of your DIMINUTIVE DICK.”

And so on.

Eventually, the combination of their praise and scorn would force you to plumb the depths of your psyche and come up with your true feelings re: the suit, in much the same way as a murderer's confession can be extracted from the slough of his despond by stick and carrot. Thus the purchaser would get true value for money. And as an added benefit, I'm sure such sales procedures would ensure that flared trousers were never again inflicted upon us.

Information Overload

2009-03-17T13:28:00.000Z

It's a good job that information isn't a tangible, consumable substance. If it were, it might easily become possible to drain a book or magazine of its contents simply by reading it through once. There'd be nothing but blank pages left, plus the occasional boring paragraph that had been skipped. People who browsed bookshops could start doing serious damage to the stock. The situation would be closely akin to that of someone roaming the shelves at Waitrose, periodically breaking into packs of biscuits in order to nibble the chocolate ones.

Talking of supermarkets, this is another area where voracious readers could do a great deal of harm, especially in the tinned food section. Anyone who read the label on a can that declared itself to be, say, soup or beans would instantly delete that information. Which wouldn’t matter much if he then went on to buy it, but would be a real pain in the arse if he didn’t, as the next customer who came along would just see a bare, uninformative tin. He might chance it, of course, and buy, anyway. But if he did, could end up cooking himself cat food on toast later that evening.

I suppose some types of information would be more potent that others. Existentialist novels, for instance. Intellectuals who visited existentialist book clubs and who overdid it on such might come staggering out, intoxicated by the text. Indeed, self-control might disappear altogether. After six chapters of Martin Heidegger, I'd imagine the average person would probably get very uptight and filled with self-loathing, and so try to pick a fight with someone who’d got similarly nihilistic after five and a half chapters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Come closing time, the pavements around these book clubs would doubtless be covered in festering pools of regurgitated Jean-Paul Sartre.

Another problem would be information bloat. An overly voracious reader could take in so much information that his head would expand, dangerously. In fact, his brain might get so heavy with the intake that his head would actually fall off. Consequently, university towns would become full of headless dons.

On the up-side, however, all of this would force doctors and dentists to continually update the magazines in their waiting rooms. There’d never be any more risk of reading yet another National Geographic from 1959, for example.

The War Against Terror

2009-03-16T10:11:00.006Z

This morning I went to the baker in order to purchase a fresh baguette. Having done so, I exited the establishment. Normally, I have to open the door to accomplish this. Today, however, another customer, unprompted, opened it for me (he didn't tug his forelock, but you can't have everything). I said “Thank you,” or words to that effect. But – and here’s “the kicker”, as they say – as I went out, someone else came in, virtually simultaneously. He also said “Thank you” to the man who was holding open the door.

This is obviously an iniquitous situation. Clearly, the door had been opened for me and me alone, yet this other arsehole seemed to think that he had the perfect right to make use of the service, too, hence his entrance and accompanying words of thanks.

Why does this bother me so much?

Because, when I stayed at the Hotel Nacional in Cuba, the doorman there used to expect to receive one dollar each time he let me in or out. At the current rate of exchange, this is about 0.71 pence. Now, I’m not saying that the man that opened the door for me this morning is necessarily going to chase me up with an invoice, but, in these troubled economic times, one never knows. And if he does, he’ll probably expect 71 pence, too. Which effectively means that I’ll be paying for that other twat, as well. But even if he tries to be even handed, splits the fee, and only invoices me for 0.355 pence, I’ll still think it a little unfair. This is because I’m far fitter, more intelligent, and better looking than the second man, so my exit is actually worth a lot more than his entrance. Therefore, if you think it through logically, I’ll, in fact, be subsidising his lower IQ and overall decrepitude.

On consideration, an exact analogy is the situation in Gaza where, back in January, Hamas officials helped themselves to a good proportion of the aid provided in good faith by the United Nations. By the same token, then, isn’t it fair that I should treat that second man like a Hamas official? Accordingly, the next time I see him in the baker’s I’ll lob a phosphorous bomb at the cunt.

I will, of course, endeavour to ensure it’s a precision bombing, but I can’t absolutely rule out the chance of collateral damage to the baker’s shop and to his other customers. But better this, surely, than allowing the forces of terror to succeed in their goals. It's just to be hoped that George Galloway doesn't then add fuel to the flames by turning up with an aid convoy.

Road Traffic Accident

2009-03-14T12:12:00.001Z

A few weeks ago, on a nearby stretch of road, I noted a dented lamppost, surrounded by flowers and a plethora of little wooden crosses. The reason for this, it seems, far from being some sort of new lamppost cult, as you might expect, is that a car had hit the thing and killed some, if not all, of its contents in the process. The various bit and bobs were therefore to commemorate the event.

Interestingly, last week, on this same stretch of road, just a few yards further on, I noticed another lamppost, almost equally dented, and with another load of flowers and crosses round it. My initial reaction that they'd run out of space round the first lamppost and so had decided to mutilate a second and similarly bedeck it as a sort of memento mori - had to be re-evaluated in light of new facts:

What had actually happened here, according to the local papers, is that there'd been a second fatal accident. Now, of course, some people in the area are complaining that this previously blameless road is an accident black spot, that speed restrictions should be brought in, and that loads of speed cameras and whatever else should be put up all along the length to dissuade drivers from travelling much over 30 mph. I, however, think this is a load of fucking nonsense.

To me, what happened is quite clear: The second driver had caught sight of the first lot of crosses, been distracted by them, and during this brief lapse of concentration, had ploughed into the next lamppost, with fatal consequences.

I suppose this sort of problem must have been particularly acute in the Golgotha area of Jerusalem back in Roman times. Whenever some chariot driver got pissed and smashed headlong into Golgotha's base, the Roman administration, as we know from the Gospels, usually stuck some crosses up in memoriam, decorating them with thieves and the occasional Messiah. But, as with St Leonard's Road, this could cause another chariot driver to look up at the sight, lose concentration, and plough into the hill, or into the nearby gate into Jerusalem. Which then meant you'd need another set of crosses, more thieves, and another Messiah to commemorate that particular accident. And so on and so on. It's a good job Jesus could resurrect so easily and thus be re-used. Not so the thieves, unfortunately.

Thinking about it, this fact could have pissed off quite a few people, thieves in particular. Especially when, inevitably and eventually, they noticed that it was always the guy on the middle cross who came back to life. I imagine it led to all sorts of "It's not fair I want to go on that one", "Fuck you this is mine and I'm not moving", and "How come He's got a crown of thorns and I haven't?" arguments. The sight of which, in turn, doubtless led to more road traffic accidents down below.

The whole sorry mess could have been avoided if the Romans had simply put speed bumps down on the road into Jerusalem, of course. But, then again, if they had, there'd most likely have been no Christianity, and so we'd all probably be Muslims by now.

The primary cause of ancient road traffic accidents

Traffic Management

2009-03-13T10:57:00.001Z

I am sure everyone is aware of the existence of bell peppers, or capsicums as they're also known to Americans (or should that be capsica?). Hitherto, though, I'm sure most people regarded them merely as an edible vegetable, and nothing else. But now I have decided that they could be of some road safety value, too.

Red peppers actually start out green. It's as they slowly ripen that they gradually become red. This being the case, I reckon that they would make ideal "traffic lights" for snails.

At the moment, busy snail intersections can be lethal accident black-spots. Speeding snails, impatient to be on their way, simply don't pay attention to what's coming from their left and right sides. They just bomb across the junctions regardless. Little wonder that there are so many snail fatalities.

However, if unripened peppers were to be positioned at the crossroads, they would be able to control the traffic flow with great efficiency. Upon seeing a green pepper, the snail would know that it was safe to cross the intersection. But once that pepper turned red, he would know that he had to stop. In the meantime, in the other direction, a fresh green pepper would spring forth from the ground, indicating "Go".

Of course, it would be necessary to carefully co-ordinate the pepper growth cycles. It would be extremely hazardous, for example, if, due to adverse climatic conditions, none of the peppers ripened. Both lanes would be on "Go" and carnage would result. Conversely, if both sets of peppers were to ripen simultaneously, there would be gridlock.

Naturally, there's always going to be some cunt who'll try to jump the red pepper. To discourage this, large pots of salt should be suspended above the intersections, controlled by a mollusc GATSO. Upon spotting a miscreant, it would automatically tip the salt over him thus rendering him desiccated.

Body Double

2009-03-12T10:03:00.001Z

You often hear of film stars requiring body doubles because certain bits of their anatomy just aren’t up to standard. Michael Douglas is a case in point. I read yesterday that, in the film “Basic Instinct”, the arse that’s displayed as he walks across the bedroom in the moonlight isn’t actually his own, but belongs to another, more posterially pert actor. Likewise, Demi Moore’s tits in the film “Indecent Proposal” were actually played by a model who specialises in mammary roles.

I approve wholeheartedly of this. Indeed, I feel that the concept ought to be applied in the real world, too, not just in the cinema and on television.

In my opinion, therefore, people’s individual physical attributes should be graded on a 1 to 10 basis. Bits that score 4 or below should be required by law to be hidden from public view. So if, say, you’re a woman and your knees score only 3½, you should be legally obliged to hire the services of body double. You’d then perch on her shoulders, your legs concealed by her jacket, while she displayed her own knees on your behalf. Likewise with other body parts. And if the aggregate of your body parts scores 4 or below, you should be walled up in your home and forbidden to go outside. Instead, you would be required to pay for a body double to impersonate you on a day to day basis.

Naturally, all this would be expensive. So I suggest that, when they’re young, people take out an insurance policy against turning ugly when they get older. Of course, the premiums would be far higher for those with two ugly parents, as there’d be more likelihood of their turning out nausea-inducing themselves in later life. Then again, I suppose you could defray some of the costs by agreeing to be exhibited in a freak show should this worst-case scenario actually happen.

Talking of which, most of the people in this village look as if they belong in a freak show. I must inform them of this fact. Then, perhaps, they’d agree to my acting as body double in their stead. I’d make a fucking fortune.

AC/DC

2009-03-11T10:58:00.002Z

Back in the 1970s (and, as far as I’m aware, the expression might still be used today), if you wanted to describe someone as being bisexual, you’d say that he was “AC/DC.”

As you may know, in its original context, this describes electrical current. AC is the alternating variety, while DC stands for Direct Current. So why apply the terms to someone’s bedroom inclinations? It’s obvious, really: Electricity must be just as susceptible to variations in sexuality as humans. But which of the two is the gay electricity?

Could it be AC? I think not. Alternating Current is the electricity that comes from the national grid and which powers all domestic electrical appliances. If it were gay, it would, for example, go into my electrically operated fridge and turn its contents, including my milk, my frozen peas, and my ice cubes gay. Over a period of time, ingesting such foodstuffs would undoubtedly turn whoever ate them gay, as well. Thus far, however (and I’ve had nearly 50 years of exposure), I remain straight. Putting ice cubes into my gin and tonic doesn’t make me suddenly want to put on one of those leather biker caps, head off to The Admiral Duncan on Old Compton Street, and take it up the arse.

The inescapable conclusion, therefore, is that it has to be the DC electricity that does make people want to put on one of those leather biker caps, head off to The Admiral Duncan on Old Compton Street, and take it up the arse. Users of DC-powered electrical goods – those with batteries, in other words - should be warned. These include i-Pods, portable strimmers, and battery-operated shavers. (Though, arguably, anyone who uses a battery-operated shaver – any electric shaver, for that matter - is already gay and so the warning would be superfluous.)

In my opinion, manufacturers should label such devices with a clearly legible sign saying, “Caution: Repeated use of this product may turn you into a homosexual.” Then you’ve got no grounds for complaint if and when it eventually happens.

On the up-side, however, this does suggest that the condition of gayness can be easily reversed. All a homosexual need do to turn straight is plug himself into the mains. After all, how many people who’ve used an AC electric chair in the United States have gone on to bugger anyone?

QED, then.

Gladiators

2009-03-10T10:47:00.002Z

There are lots of posters up hereabouts advertising the impending opening of a new sports shop. "G&H Sports (or whatever the fuck it's called) will be opened next Saturday by Wolf, from the Gladiators," says the legend. This is accompanied by a picture of said Wolf - obviously from his demeanour, a friend of many members of the Cabinet - attempting to look dead hard while simultaneously rippling his muscles.

I suppose this practice dates back to Roman times. In those days, fledgling Roman sports shops would no doubt try to drum up business by painting hundreds of murals and assembling mosaics throughout town, announcing, "Next Wednesday, Quintus Julius Varo's Sports and Leisure Toga Emporium will be opened by Marcus Quirinius, from the gladiators."

Unfortunately for the Ancient Romans, such advertising was, financially speaking, a somewhat riskier business than today's. This is because, unlike Wolf, who will most probably survive until next week, there was every possibility that, betwixt the posting of the advertising and the opening, Marcus Quirinius would get killed in the arena. In which case it would then be necessary to repaint all the murals and reassemble all the mosaics with the name of new, replacement gladiator. Which would take quite some time, and probably delay the opening of the shop. And, of course, if the replacement gladiator then went and got himself killed, they had to start all over again.

The situation must have been even worse for larger organizations. For example, if a company were to embark on an Empire-wide, multi-million denarii advertising campaign for, say, its new range of chariots, endorsed by a gladiator who managed to get himself hacked to death before even the first chariot had rolled off the production line, it would most likely bankrupt the company.

I suppose this is the reason why - whereas when you wander through London today you see lots of shops declaring "Established 1868" or "Founded in 1792" - you never see any that say, "Founded during the Consulship of Marcus Crassus." The advertising spend simply wiped them out.

Canine Behaviour

2009-03-09T12:49:00.001Z

People are often very abrupt with their dogs, ordering the poor things to “Sit!”, “Stay”, "Roll over!", and so on. Their tone of voice is so imperious, and there’s never any “Please” or "Thank you". It’s little wonder, therefore, that many dogs turn out to be vicious and anti-social. If humans were treated in the same way, I’m sure that they, too, would start to acquire a few of the less endearing canine indiosyncrasies.

This morning, just to test my theory, I went up to a random man in the street and said, “Heel!”. Fuck knows what people expect their dogs to do when they say this to them, because, according to my dictionary, it refers simply to the bit on the bottom of your shoe, or else it’s a verb meaning to tilt to one side. Anyway, he didn’t tilt to one side so, à la Barbara Woodhouse's advice, I hit him over the nose with a rolled up newspaper, causing him to whimper a little.

Next, I threw a stick over to the other side of the road and commanded, “Fetch!” At first, he proved a little reluctant, so I threatened him with The Daily Telegraph once more. Eventually, he got the message and retrieved my stick, wiggling his little rear end and panting as he did so. Having achieved success here, I held up a milk chocolate button and said, “Beg!” He instantly dropped to his knees and held his hands in the air, whereupon I released the sweet, which he proceeded to gobble up.

At this point I decided to leave him to his own devices. No sooner had I left than, as I expected, he immediately pounced on a three year old child and bit its head off. Then he went up to a lamp post, cocked one leg, and pissed against it. Finally, he approached a bus queue, jumped on top of one of the waiting women, and started shagging her in broad daylight. All this because I’d spoken to him as one does a dog.

Henceforth, therefore, dog owners should bear this in mind and be more polite to their pets. They might be surprised at the results. Who knows? Courteous requests - for instance, “Fido, would you please conceive a Unified Field Theory, there's a good boy” or “Tyson, old fellow, I would be very grateful if you could just take two minutes off from humping my leg in order to wipe out world poverty and solve the Middle East crisis, you clever fellow” - might work wonders, and transform the lot of humanity.

Red Hot Love Machine

2009-03-08T17:29:00.002Z

This morning, when I went down to the newsagent in order to collect my up-market, intellectual Sunday newspapers, I happened to catch sight of a couple of tabloids that are aimed primarily at members of the Working Class. Both carried somewhat identical special features, along the lines of "How to turn yourself into a red-hot lover."

As I already am one, there wasn't much point my buying either title, even if I felt inclined to stoop to the level of reading a tabloid. However, their subject matter did give me pause for thought. It occurred to me that both papers regularly carry these sorts of features, maybe every three months or so. The thing is, though, if, say, Gordon Ramsay were to publish "Ten tips on producing a perfect soufflé", but had to repeat himself every three months, you'd either think that the recipes themselves were fundamentally flawed, or else that the people reading them were too thick to take the information onboard in the first place.

So what is it with the Working Class? If they actually had got the message they’d all now be sizzling love machines, surely. Clearly, though, this isn't the case. If it were, respectable, frustrated women the length and breadth of the land would be commuting to council estates in places like Toxteth, Stockwell, and Croydon in order to get a decent porking.

But they don't, because they know that - notwithstanding the efforts of The News of the World and The Sunday People - the average Working Class erection lasts about three seconds, and that Working Class foreplay consists of reaching over to turn out the light. Further, they know that Working Class men (and women, for that matter) all weight at least 18 stone, thanks to their diet of lard sandwiches and Economy Lager. Even if they did possess the necessary sexual technique to give women pleasure, their physical appearance would act as an instant turn-off.

It is obviously impossible to teach the proletariat how to do it properly. And we should be thankful that it is. If they actually got to enjoy it, their already disproportionately high birth rate would go right through the roof. Does the world really need more Social Security scroungers and car radio thieves? In opinion, it's highly irresponsible of the tabloids to attempt to put ideas into their heads.

Wine

2009-03-07T11:22:00.003Z

As everyone is aware, there are many varieties of wine. In my own cellar, for example, one may find, amongst others, Shiraz, Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon (only for the cleaning lady, of course, and for chucking into stews), Rioja, Chianti, Frascati, and Chablis. I'm seriously considering opening a Chablis in half an hour or so, in fact, to accompany the seriously good chicken on ciabatta sandwich that I have just created, which I shall consume in the conservatory.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that, generally speaking, the better the quality of the original raw materials, the better (and, consequently, more expensive) the resultant wine.

Generally speaking.

Something is confusing me, though. It is a truth universally acknowledged, is it not, that cheap, shitty raw materials result in cheap, shitty wine? Hence, for instance, at the bottom, Working Class end of the scale one finds rhubarb wine, elderberry wine, dandelion wine, and so forth. What could be more common and brutish than those pathetic weeds and vegetables?

So how come house wine always languishes with them at the very bottom of the bibendary scale, often going for no more than seven or eight quid a bottle in a restaurant?

Given that, even with the current property crash, a house nevertheless still costs at least upwards of £150,000, you might reasonably expect any wine that's produced from one to reflect such initial investment. And that's before you factor in the substantial extra costs of having teams of peasants harvest the bricks, tread them, and then transfer the ensuing juice to vast fermentation tanks.

There can only be one answer: House wine is manufactured from condemned, slum dwellings. Drinking it is therefore the equivalent of eating condemned meat. Consequently, just as condemned meat is generally diseased, so, too, is house wine. House wine gives you salmonella and E-Coli. It probably gives you BSE, too. This is why people who drink too many bottles of house wine always stagger around and fall over, like BSE afflicted cattle.

QED, I think.

Ragnarok

2009-03-06T12:53:00.007Z

History records that the first successful passenger lift was installed in New York’s five storey E.V. Haughwout Building by Elisha Graves Otis in 1857. Before then, however, people who worked there had apparently managed quite well without one, so it makes you wonder why Otis bothered (and it also makes you wonder what happened with all those unsuccessful passenger lifts that must have come beforehand). After all, five storeys aren’t that much of a challenge, even for K. McEgan. Besides which, I’m sure that, in the mid 1850s, the very name of the invention could have caused concern to many, encouraging them to stick with the stairs.

How so? Because Otis called it an elevator. We call it a lift. The French say ascenseur. The Spanish, ascensor. To the Israelis it’s מַעֲלִית, and to the Arabs مصعد. And so forth. In all cases, in all languages, the noun conveys the concept of “going up.”

The thing is, though, if Otis had said to me “How would you like to ride in my elevator?”, and I’d never used one before, I'd most likely have been very wary. OK, it’s probably going to perform to spec and get me up there, as implied by "elevator", "lift", ascenseur, or whatever, but what about getting down again? Nowhere in the agnomen is there any suggestion that it’s capable of making that reverse journey.

There is, of course, a long history of people going up and not coming down. One thinks, for example, of Jesus and his mother, Mary. Then again, rather than being worried, those first lift users in the 1850s might have thought of Jesus and Mary, too. They might have said to themselves, “Yes, I shall ascend! I am as God Himself! Abase yourselves before me, therefore, mere mortals, lest you feel my holy wrath!” But then if, say, half a dozen like-minded individuals had tried to use the lift at the same time, each believing himself to be the One True God, there’d have been a sort of Ragnarok once the “Up” button had been pressed and all the would-be deity passengers fought for supremacy. Even if they didn’t, it must have been a letdown arriving, not in Heaven, as they expected, but merely in the office supplies and stationery department.

Maybe that’s actually what happened to Jesus when He ascended. Instead of sitting at the Right Hand of the Father, He’s in fact sitting on an ethereal photocopier, doomed to turn out pictures of His arse for all eternity while simultaneously inhaling the fumes from an infinite number of protoplasmic Tippex bottles. Which would certainly explain the present state of the world.

Suntan Segregation

2009-03-05T12:50:00.000Z

In my opinion, the Working Class shouldn't be allowed to have suntans. Or at least, if they are, some serious restrictions should be imposed on the degree or shade of tan they're permitted to acquire. Accordingly, the beaches and open spaces where these people wallow in the sun should be patrolled by armed tan-watchers, primed to spring into action whenever a prole starts turning an unsanctioned colour.

It makes perfect sense when you think about it rationally. After all, if I buy a Canali jacket, I expect it to look better than its equivalent bought in Top Shop or C&A. Similarly, if I spend a thousand or more pounds on two weeks in, say, St Lucia or Mustique, I’d want some way of differentiating my subsequent expensive international jet-set tan from a common, hoi poloi variety acquired in somewhere dead common like Blackpool or Benidorm.

Further to this, therefore, I propose the creation of special suntan lotions, designed to react with the skin and produce a different colour depending on how much you pay for your holiday. I'd suggest that lotions supplied to people who stay in five star hotels in exotic locations should turn their users a mahogany brown. On the other hand, those who can only afford a two star hotel or, God forbid, one star, in somewhere dire should be sprayed with a formula which turns them green when exposed to sunlight. Or maybe one that makes them come out in blue stripes, similar to the markings on Tesco economy products.

As for people who go to Mykonos (or any of the Greek islands for that matter, except Santorini), they should turn pink. Which is only right and fitting, because they’re probably gay, and pink is the universally acknowledged colour of gayness. This is a bit hard on straight pigs, of course, but they usually get turned into bacon and Parma ham early on in life, long before their sexuality really becomes much of an issue.

Explosive Yield

2009-03-04T11:25:00.002Z

I spent much of this morning teaching the Vicar’s budgerigar to say words such as “fuck” and “cunt”. He, in turn, taught me the budgerigar equivalents, and also instructed me in the best ways to wind up specific birds. Starlings, for example, apparently get very pissed off if you suggest that their mate might actually be incubating a cuckoo’s egg, while robins are easily provoked if you imply that they’re actually nothing more than sparrows with a crude paint job.

Anyway, fun though this was, we soon progressed to discussion of weightier matters. Specifically, Iran's efforts towards manufacturing a nuclear device and the implications for world peace. The budgerigar was quite concerned. I, however, felt more at ease with the situation.

The thing is, everyone always talks about a nuclear device in terms of its “yield”, which is expressed in Megatons or Kilotons. A one Megaton bomb, obviously, has the exact equivalent explosive force of a million tons of TNT. Why, then, if you set off a one Megaton bomb, does the World Community get really irritated, whereas if you drop a million tons of TNT on someone, no-one really gives a fuck? They’re both going to cause the same amount of damage, after all.

The budgerigar suggested that size is the real issue here. He said that, while a million tons of TNT is really massive, a nuclear device is small in comparison. Both, however, can do an equivalent job. To my mind, though, this is the exact same argument used by people with small dicks. It’s the “It’s not how big it is, it’s what you do with it” rationalization which I, personally, feel is a load of shit. Are nuclear-equipped countries really trying to tell us, “Yes, what we have is small, but we’ve never had any complaints.”?

Next, the budgerigar said that, because the nuclear device is small and compact, but offers all the performance and versatility of its larger counterpart, it's therefore deadlier. But surely this implies that a midget with an IQ equivalent to that of a normal-sized person is somehow deadlier than his taller opposite number. Or perhaps it’s an excuse to put brainy people who are shorter than 5 foot 8 into labour camps. It might actually be a good idea, when you consider it, but I wasn’t having a budgerigar tell me that.

I was going to feed him to the cat, but Cate suddenly returned and told me not to. I complied, of course, as I didn't wish to jeopardize my chances of a shag.

An Accident is Announced

2009-03-03T11:48:00.008Z

You often hear something described as “an accident waiting to happen.” Most people say they regard this as a bad thing. I, however, feel that it could provide an excellent opportunity for the right entrepreneur, especially in these dire financial times. After all, everyone actually likes to see an accident, whatever they might claim in public, and I’m sure they’d be prepared to pay good money to see one if only they knew its exact time and place.

Take, for example, Chernobyl. Back in 1986, Reactor Number Four was quite obviously held together with a mixture of Sellotape and polystyrene. Basically, it had “Meltdown” written all over it. Yet did anyone capitalize on this fact and invite a paying audience along to watch? No. This is therefore exactly akin to having Luciano Pavarotti turn up at your establishment, announce that he’s going to sing Nessun Dorma, but then not tell anyone about it. What’s the point in keeping such a thing quiet?

Then again, I suppose, Pavarotti may indeed have turned up at Chernobyl on the 26th of April, 1986, which is why the Russian nuclear engineers were distracted from their jobs. And it just goes to show that, regardless of how good your singing voice is, singing an aria next to a severe radiation leak is not particularly beneficial for the health. Could this have caused the cancer that eventually killed Pavarotti?

Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t concrete Pavarotti in with the damaged reactor just to be on the safe side. People are always talking about the potential dangers of irradiated fruit and vegetables, aren't they? But I would have thought that letting irradiated Italian tenors loose is a far worse hazard, especially if they go critical during a performance of Turandot (and who'd want the job of extracting uranium fuel rods from their arses in order to try to stabilize them?).

Now that really is an accident waiting to happen.

Altitude

2009-03-02T12:28:00.001Z

This morning, as I walked up to the baker’s, I observed a scantily-clad young woman walking down the road. Co-incidentally, so, too, did a bunch of builders who were atop the scaffolding of an oldish building that’s being renovated. I kept silent. The builders, however, cried out in unison, “Whoah! Get 'em off, darling'! I'd give you one any time, luv!" And so on and so forth.

This set me thinking. If you go to a lecture at, say, the Royal Institution or the Linnean Society, and some female member of the audience turns up in an evening gown with revealing décolletage, generally speaking, the assembled lecturers and professors don’t instantly launch into a series of thrusting motions with their hips, accompanied by cries of "Show us your tits, girl! Come on! You know you want it!" (Neither, for that matter, do these same academics usually have their arses hanging out of their trousers, but that’s by the bye.)

Why should this be? I wondered. Some people would say that it's because builders, being Working Class, are inherently crude. But if so, why don't other groups of Working Class individuals react in the same way to the sight of half-dressed females? I've never, for instance, seen teams of dustbin men or asphalt operatives responding with jeers and catcalls to passing women, yet they're equally as dead-common as builders.

So is this sort of behaviour builder-specific? If it is, what’s the causative factor? That the builders are up high on their scaffolding, where the air is thinner? I think not, because if altitude alone were responsible for the phenomenon, then you might reasonably have expected, for example, Sir Edmund Hillary to have grasped his cock and waved it, suggestively, in the direction of the Nepalese women down below once he’d reached the summit of Everest.

So, instead, could it be the hard hats that the builders wear, constricting blood flow in the skull? Or the proximity of the metal scaffolding attracting harmful radiation? Or the combination?

The only way to reliably test these theses would be to take a group of extremely posh, respectable people, such as high-ranking academics, equip them with hard hats, and stick them up scaffolding for a week, while glamorous-looking women ran underneath. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that many university professors and quantum physicists would agree to this procedure. (Not for a whole week, anyway.) Better, then, to select some respectable brainy person who, even if he didn't like the idea, wouldn't be able to do much about it.

To this end, I believe Professor Stephen Hawking should be given a hard hat, abandoned at the top of a large construction project, and told to ponder the nature of black holes (or whatever it is he ponders these days). At some point, a tasty female dressed in a tightly fitting, wet tee-shirt should be persuaded to walk along beneath. If, upon seeing her, Hawking's synthesized voice suddenly switches from explaining the origins of Dark Matter to blurting out, "Hi there, gorgeous! You're gagging for it, I can tell! I've a got a good nine inches for you here!", then we’ll know that our researches are proceeding in the right direction.

In this way, one of the major scientific questions of our times could, at last, be answered.

Pigeon Post

2009-02-27T10:17:00.000Z

In my opinion, the idea of sending mail by carrier pigeon - the so-called "pigeon post" - is deeply flawed when it comes to the pricing structure.

At the moment, if you send a letter by pigeon, regardless of how much you pay, there is no guarantee as to when, exactly, it will arrive. It could be, for example, that the pigeon will feel a need to migrate as soon it takes off, or fuck another pigeon for a while, or just loll around in someone's bird bath.

This is an iniquitous situation. People would soon have something to say about the matter, I’m sure, if their postman delayed delivering his letters because, first, he wanted to have a two week holiday in Benidorm, or shag some woman in the next street, or spend half a day in a massage parlour. So why should pigeons be given this sort of latitude?

To expedite matters, pigeons ought to be graded according to speed. Obviously, the faster the pigeon, the more expensive the courier charges. I suppose that, for the money-no-object brigade, you could use a broadband digital pigeon whose holographic image would be transmitted down a fibre optic link and then exactly reconstituted at the other end, thus allowing the recipient to read the message attached to its leg in only seconds.

The only problem with a digital pigeon, of course, is distortion caused by line noise. It might start out as a pigeon at the sender's end, but because of said interference, come out as a duck or a chicken at the other side. And who the fuck has ever heard of the chicken post? The whole service could quickly become a laughing stock. (Or a chicken stock, even.)

Superglue

2009-02-26T08:54:00.001Z

This morning one of the knobs on my chest of drawers fell off. I therefore quickly remedied the situation using Superglue. Now, the knob and its attendant drawer are as one again, as if the catastrophe had never occurred. But while waiting for the two to fully bond (the tube recommends 30 minutes), I had time to ponder the nature of my glue and the implications of its adhesion.

From what I’ve read, Superglue was originally developed as a battlefield remedy, first seeing active service in Vietnam in the late 60s. I expect whenever soldiers trod on a “Gook” landmine or were at the wrong end of a Howitzer barrage, the chief medic would instantly radio “Glue! Glue!”, whereupon an Apache helicopter would swoop down and drop a couple of tubes of the stuff. Thus, once the various bits of soldier had been gathered up (and, presumably, separated into individual piles), they could easily be stuck back together again. Then, 30 minutes later, the glue having fully dried, the soldier was restored to near original condition, just like my chest of drawers.

There must have been one major problem, however: alcohol.

According to the instructions that came with my glue, if I accidentally stick my fingers together (or to something else), all I need do is apply an alcohol-based solvent, and they’ll come apart again. This fact probably imposed severe restrictions on the repaired soldiers’ recreational activities. If, during R+R, they went to a bar, they’d have had to confine their boozing to something relatively weak, like beer. Were they to attempt to down whisky or gin, they’d most likely fall apart before Closing Time. At the very least, an arm or head would drop off. If they were too pissed, they might not even notice, and leave it there.

I imagine this happened quite a few times in Saigon bars. The barman therefore had the option of either binning the body part or storing it behind the bar in case the soldier, having sobered up, remembered where he’d left it and came back. But there must have been many instances where they didn’t bother, so the bits and pieces just piled up over time. Doubtless in several instances, the bar owners eventually found that they had enough to glue together a completely new body. And I’ll bet they often did.

Actually, this explains the various Vietnamese you see these days with mixed Negroid, Caucasian, and Asiatic features. The official story, peddled by the Hanoi Government and believed by many, is that they’re simply the offspring of American servicemen and Vietnamese prostitutes. In fact, I believe they’re the result of successfully Supergluing bits and pieces of assorted Vietnamese regular soldiers and US troops.

Anyway, talking of Asiatic features, the man who runs my local fish and chip shop has them. He claims to be Chinese, but could just as likely be ex-Vietcong. They all look alike. If he is, the fact that I’ve used Superglue could, in his eyes, make me some sort of enemy collaborator, so he may well try to come round here later on a bamboo bicycle and snipe at me from the undergrowth. Just to make sure this doesn’t happen, I suppose I’ll have to go across the road to The Golden Plaice and stick an anti-personnel mine on the side of his chip fryer. Better safe than sorry.

Cashback

2009-02-25T16:56:00.000Z

Whenever I'm in a supermarket, I usually pay for my groceries using a Switch card. This, however, always prompts the girl at the checkout to ask, "Do you want cash-back?" After cuffing her round the ear, I curtly inform her that, if I wanted cash, I'd have gone to a bank. In the same way that, if I wanted fish, I'd go to a fucking fishmonger, and not, say, an optician or a Building Society. In my opinion, the way in which supermarkets are now trying to muscle in on the financial area - offering, amongst other things, savings, pensions, and even ISAs - is quite unacceptable.

Time, I think, for the banks to retaliate. Henceforth, whenever you go into your branch to withdraw money, the teller should routinely ask, "Do you want some sausages with that?" And if the answer be yes, then you should be issued some, up to a limit of about 2lbs. Indeed, cashpoint machines could be adapted to output strings of sausages, too.

In order for this to work, bank customers would, of course, have to have some sort of pork credit at their local branch. This would be simple enough to set up. Whenever you opened an account, you'd be required to give them, not just a cheque or cash, but a pig as well. This would be then kept in a specially armoured vault, and either starved or fattened according to your credit rating. High Interest Savings Account customers would be given a pair of pigs and allowed to breed from them.

An unfortunate side-effect of all this would be a downgrading of the status of bank manager, though. Instead of being an aloof individual in a pin-stripe suit, he'd be a straw-sucking yokel with an IQ of 77, given to saying "Ooh, arrrr", and fucking his sister and daughter. But this is a small price to pay for financial diversity.

Another idea might be for banks to issue, not sausages, but herbs. In fact, shops could be encouraged to accept herbs in lieu of cash. Then, I suppose, thyme really would be money.

A Gay Egg

2009-02-24T09:02:00.001Z

According to the gay lobby, 10 per cent of all living creatures are homosexually inclined, as are their offspring (assuming they’re not too homosexually inclined to produce offspring in the first place, of course). Which means that, despite the fact that I bought them from a reputable supermarket, at least 1.2 of my dozen “farm fresh” size 1 eggs are FUCKING GAY. Indeed, in any average egg carton, there’s likely to be at least one deviant.

In my opinion, supermarket staff should seek out homosexual eggs and isolate them before they’re passed on to the public, lest people catch homosexuality. Either that, or else they should clearly label them as being bent. I imagine, with a little practice, an averagely intelligent shop assistant could become quickly adept at spotting a pink-oboe-playing Free Range. He or she would just apply a little top spin and study the way the egg turned: To the right, normal, to the left, decidedly dodgy. Then it would be a simple matter of adding a tiny plastic muir cap and a stick-on handlebar moustache to the outed egg for easier identification.

As a result people could, if they wished, make homosexual omelettes. And the true sexuality of quiche-eaters would at last be confirmed.

Peas in a Pod

2009-02-23T12:51:00.001Z

I've often heard the expression, "They are as alike as two peas in a pod." The analogy is a fair one, because if, as I myself have done on many an occasion, you open up a pea pod and peek inside, you usually find that there's little, if anything, to differentiate one pea from its neighbour. Indeed, peas in general, not just in the one pod, have a boring uniformity, even unto their frozen brethren. This means that people who are employed to shell them probably experience little, if any job satisfaction.

Then again, I suppose, very occasionally, a worm or grub will pop out, too. While, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't really on a par with, say, planting the first flag on Everest's summit of discovering the source of the Nile, a professional pea-sheller can maybe dine out on the experience for a few weeks. But only if he mixes with fellow pea-shellers when he does so. If he bursts into a room full of, for example, CERN physicists on the brink of perfecting nuclear fusion, and blurts out excitedly news of his find, it could well put them off, such that they'll forget what they were talking about. One can only speculate on how many cures for cancer, inexpensive fossil fuel alternatives, and genuinely effective penis extension creams have been lost to the world because of the rash actions of a professional pea-sheller interrupting the proceedings by brandishing a newly discovered maggot.

In my opinion, to make sure this never happens again, pea shellers should be allowed to inscribe their names and the date of shelling on each pea. This would boost their job satisfaction rating markedly, and they then wouldn't go putting the nuclear scientists off their stride. In fact, their lives in general could be enhanced. For instance, they could be eating egg, chips, and peas in a restaurant with their families, when suddenly, amongst all the others, they might catch sight of their own personal pea. With pride, they'd cry out "Look! That's one of mine! Oh joy!"

In fact, over time, some peas would attract a certain cachet. Those shelled by, say, Arnold Griffiths on such and such a date might become prized over others - the Mouton Cadets of the pea world, if you will. People would lay down a packet of Arnold Griffith 2008 frozen peas, for consumption only on special occasions. Thus would the humble pea be ennobled, together with those producing it.

The only disadvantage to all this is that some scientists could be sitting down to dinner, the solution to the problem of world hunger just about to pop into his head, when suddenly he discovers an Arnold Griffith 2008 amongst the other peas on his plate. I'd hope he'd be able to contain his excitement and concentrate on the research in hand but, realistically, I fear that all such thoughts would be doused by the exhilaration provoked by his find.

But it's still a small price to pay for making pea-shelling more interesting.

A typical pea

Naked in the Changing Room

2009-02-22T10:35:00.008Z

The changing room at my gym is open plan. People, whatever the condition of their bodies (and some, believe me, are truly pathetic), tend to take their clothes on and off and go into the shower in front of one another. Such public nudity doesn’t bother them. Or me. However, I have noticed that there are private cubicles in which you can dress and undress. Some individuals actually make use of these.

Why?

I suppose it’s possible that they’re mindful of the fact that the French playwright, Jean Cocteau, used to drill holes in changing room walls, peep through, and masturbate as he watched men changing and showering. But this doesn’t worry me unduly. Indeed, I often stand on a chair, drop the towel from around my waist, and shout, “Oi, Jean! Cop a look at this!” But not everyone is as comfortable with being “objectified” by gay French surrealist playwrights as I am, which might explain their hiding away as they dress and undress.

Thinking about it, one way to dissuade Jean Cocteau from wanking off over the sight of you would be to wear a swastika armband. This is because Cocteau was severely criticised for his collaboration with the Nazis during the 1940s (even though he only claimed to be doing it to protect Picasso from the Gestapo), so, if he were to be seen having “one off the wrist” over the sight of (apparent) members of the German National Socialist Party in the buff, his critics could plausibly argue that, far from being a Communist, as he claimed, he was, in fact, a fully-blown collaborationist fascist, and therefore deserving of a good dose of guillotine.

Then again, another potential problem with wearing a swastika armband in a gym changing room is that someone like Ernst Roehm, the gay head of the Brownshirts, could drill holes through the walls, instead, and start peeping at you.

Even I might decide to change in a private cubicle if this were to happen, as I don’t like the idea of the sight of my dick inspiring a One Thousand Year Reich, even if it does make for good motorways and ensures the trains run on time.