Red Carpet Treatment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.