Moping melancholy and moon-struck madness

I started to write about Armando Ianucci’s television programme about Milton and Paradise Lost, but after the first paragraph realised that, like said poem, the resulting text was much too long.
Here are the edited highlights.
The programme was average. It did not encourage me to read Milton.
There were too many changes of venue for someone who was just talking to camera.
Most annoying bit was when he compared Horton (check spelling, I can’t be bothered) in Buckinghamshire to Florence. Horton has changed a lot since Milton’s time, otherwise he would have mentioned the bloody M4 and being on the Heathrow flight path in one of his poems.
He might have mentioned the bloody M4 for all I know. I haven’t read his stuff. Don’t wanna, ain’t gunna.
Close ups of Armando were too close up. At one stage you could see right up his nostril and out of his left ear.
I don’t like poetry much. The only serious poem I really like is Gray’s Elegy. Don’t see the point of the rest. None of these guys have anything worthwhile to say. If Keats was writing a blog today no bugger would read it.
Perhaps I am Keats.
The programme failed to convince me that I should read Milton, despite the great regard in which he is held by Armando.
When people move home or job, 70% of them are moving to “pastures new”. This is Milton’s fault. Bastard.
Milton was a republican. There was a need for reform but what we got was a load of uptight god-bothering dickheads. When they turned out to be uptight god-bothering dickheads that nobody liked much, we got a return to the house of Stuart, a load of stupid dickheads, and we are still lumbered with their inbred descendants.
It should be noted that the current economic climate makes political upheaval more likely. If that happens, godelpus, we are likely to finish up with an intolerant rightwing coalition, in which the BNP is included. As with the interregnum, lots of people will dies, lots more will suffer, and we will be no better off at the sorry end of it. You may say that Bill Cash and his friends are a bunch of sleazy, disreputable, bone idle, incompetent tossers (I couldn’t possibly comment), but they are likely to be slightly better than having Kilroy Silk as prime minister.
I bet you are glad I didn’t publish the full article, aincha?

Sesquipedalian circumlocution

I mentioned in my previous diatribe the “controversy” surrounding the decision of a BNP politician to invite his hideous boyfriend, Nick Griffin, to Buckingham palace.

I see, courtesy of the BBC, that one of Boris’s underlings has written to said politician thus:

"While elected representatives may and do attend, the event is a social occasion hosted by Her Majesty and it is inappropriate to exploit this privilege for party political purposes. …. However, in the light of the views expressed by the mayor and chair of the assembly, reinforced at yesterday's assembly meeting, I am writing to say that the authority may need to review its position in relation to your nomination unless you revisit the selection of your guest with a view to avoiding further controversy and desist from any further publicity."

I doubt whether Boris could comprehend that, let alone a knuckle-dragging Hitlerite. I would have phrased it in a manner that the recipient could understand. Perhaps: “Stop hanging out with this cunt”.

As I mentioned on facebook, I have posted the following notice on my front door:

Political campaigners

Please put your literature directly into the recycling bin, thereby cutting out the middle man.

If, albeit unlikely in these parts, you are from the BNP, please put your literature in the recycling bin, and follow it by shooting yourself and recycling your putrid corpse.

This led to Adam instigating some sordid innuendo, which I am sure will not occur over here.

Turn on, tune in, drop dead

Having been somewhat preoccupied these few days, I felt it behoved me to give you a quick update, so I sashayed over to the Torygraph to pick up on any old trivia that I may have overlooked, and thence to reassure you, my dear readers, (aMToNW) that all is in order.

I was saddened to read of the passing of Albert Hoffman, who, praise the Lord, survived to the age of 102 to prove that just saying “no” is really crap advice. I have affection for him as the inventor of one of those things that made young adulthood so enjoyable. He did not lend his name to his invention, unlike the others who contributed so much to my formative years, such as Sidney Durex, Muriel Chillum and Sir Colin Stereo. Albie famously fell out with Timothy Leary.He felt that Tim was entirely wrong in promoting the recreational use of his invention, rather than preserving it as a medium for academic research. I never saw the two as mutually exclusive, although the quid’s worth that I purchased at a famous seat of learning in Staffordshire in 1970 fell short on both counts. I hope that God has prepared a banquet for old Alb, and is chilling out with him this evening. If that is the case, it may explain some of the strange phenomena around us at the moment.

I notice that our pal Boris has spoken out against the BNP being invited to Buckingham palace, and says that he is opposed to anything that embarrasses the queen. I done a lol. 98% of the people who visit the old bat would embarrass most human beings, and Bozza himself is in the upper portions of that list. I pride myself on my resistance to embarrassment, but anyone who has hung around with barmy Phil for most of her life must be totally immune.

Out-borissing Mr Johnson by some considerable distance, however, is the Roman catholic archbishop of Westminster, who has launched a scathing attack on secularists. He accuses them of encouraging intolerance. I done an even bigger lol, as did my friend Gerald Torquemada, when I mentioned it to him in Waitrose this morning. Much as I applaud anyone having a go at that prize anus Dawkins, I see little difference in the tripe that any of these god botherers purvey, whether they believe in God or not.

No, not Tebbit

As part of a comment on a young person's status update on facebook, I left the criticism:
"Not to mention the ubiquitous superfluity of the word indicating similarity."
She affected (blaming inebriation) not to understand.
I expect all of you to know exactly what I meant, even without seeing the context.

Have you noticed how sales assistants of the female tendency use the word "lovely" when the transaction is completed.
I usually agree with them and say that I am lovely.
They usually laugh at this. I suspect that they are laughing at, rather than with, me.
My loveliness is obviously only revealed to those who have a perspicacity well above the norm.

No, not the least bit amusing

Squeaky clean

Say what you like about the Torygraph (pause while correspondents dutifully vent spleen about fascism, right wing propaganda, Conrad Black, anachronistic jingoistic clap trap and so forth), but they do have good investigative journalists.

The secret behind the delay in the reopening of the meccano set in Switzerland has been revealed.

Brian Nerd, the Torygraph’s science and jolly wheeze’s reporter tells us:
But just 10 days later an electrical fault led to a catastrophic leak of helium used to cool the machine's powerful magnets, causing a complete shut-down.

The world assumed that there was something fundamentally flawed in the design that had to be fixed, or they couldn’t get a plumber for six months, or they had lost the blueprints, or there were no spare parts and then B&Q closed down before they could fulfil the order. This is all nonsense. Switzerland was chosen because of its inherent efficiency (and also because we all thought it would be bloody funny that if there was a small black hole created it would be these smug cheese chewing protectors of nazi gold hoarders who were the ones who copped it).

We can deduce that the actual mechanical problems were quite minor, it is just that every time someone said “pass the wrench, Ludwig” (I have no idea what a wrench is) everyone else would fall about laughing at the silly voice. I can report that something in excess of 212000 litres of urine has had to be removed from the floor during the repair process.

Now that the effects of the helium have worn off, everyone is speaking in a normal voice, and the tedious and ostentatious malarkey can recommence.