Yes, I could have done better

I was delighted to find this little note in my inbox today.

I hear via the grapevine that you're getting (or got ) married recently.  Whenever  your name is mentioned my thoughts go back to your stupendous fruit salad marathon at dan's 21st - a long time ago already !

All my best wishes and love to you and your bride for a stupendous fruit salad filled future !

Love and hugs, audrey and barbara.

Here is my reply:

Auds! Babs!

How great to hear from you.

Loved the “grape”vine pun, by the way – I looked for more, perhaps you should get a punnet to store them in! Lol!!!!

Yes, I got married recently – 29 years come February, and I am giving it a go – if it hasn’t worked out by 2042 I’m out of here – I will have to sneak out, as I can’t elope (cantaloupe – geddit?)

How is Dan? I haven’t seen him for ages – what did he do for his 22^nd?

Yes, it was a long time ago – round about the time that Dan turned 21, if I remember correctly.

It may have started to occur to you by now that you sent your email to the wrong guy. But, hell, I need all the friends I can get. I shall be over to stay for a couple of months in the new year – please don’t go to any trouble, my needs are few, I can live on mostly fruit.

And, to be fair to myself, I usually write more articulately and less like a moron than this, but hey, if people can’t get the email address right, why should I demonstrate my rich and unique prose?

Now, were any of you at Dan's 21st, and do you know what he did with the satsuma?

More seasonal suffering

If you would like to read reasoned and intelligent commentary on books and films, you might wish to give dear Rol a try. He is a very nice boy and may help you to try something you may not have considered before.

Alternatively you can stay here and enjoy (shurely shome mishtake. Ed) a foul mouthed lambast of one the most popular films of recent years. Is lambast a noun these days? I don’t know – has there been a decent film in the last ten years?

I watched “The King’s Speech” the other day. I even watched it all the way through, and I was sober so can’t explain that particular lapse of judgment, but at least when I continue my biased and ill-considered onslaught on this much applauded work of art, no one can accuse me of not watching the sodding pile of dross.

I find it hard (not quite impossible) to imagine a situation in which the world is threatened by a megalomaniac fascist oppressor (not Slimy Dave this week, do try to keep up) and those people considering taking arms against him being persuaded by words uttered by an outdated, inbred, over-privileged half-wit, whose ancestors had been megalomaniac oppressors themselves. Did their inner dialogue consist of “I see that things are a bit iffy over in Europe, shall we do something about it, or finish this game of bowls? Not sure, but our beloved Bert Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was just on the electric radio giving us a damn fine pep talk, let’s go and bash some Boche”.

My diatribe against the concept of royalty might lead you to believe that I have some personal issues with the current incumbents. This is not the case; neither do I hold them responsible for the actions of their predecessors. But you would have to search pretty carefully in the house of Windsor to find two connected brain cells.

Then the inevitable old chestnut of the class system. FFS. Is this the best you can do? See me. Or see the film, if you want to be persuaded that the British royal family could actually get on quite well with people. Let me know how you get on with that, and let me know if you would like your brain drying after it has been washed.

Or is it, perhaps, the story of one man’s bravery in the face of an enormous difficulty? A heart-warming story of victory over adversity? Well, given that the backdrop to all of this was the second world war, where adversity meant watching your family being tortured, gassed and burnt in Auschwitz, or having to scrape your best friend’s entrails off your face when he was blown up, or spending years in a prisoner of war camp being starved, or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of your life from the things that you had experienced, then I hardly think that learning to say “privileged pissing ponce” in less than 24 minutes bears comparison.

As for the acting, I have never considered Colin Firth to be anything special, Geoffrey Rush is a splendid actor who could have done this film while unconscious, and WTF Derek Jacobi was doing there, I don’t know; perhaps he needed some easy cash. Was there anyone else in it? Wasn’t it the fat one – you know the one in that crap thing with David Walliams - playing Churchill?

One day I might manage to sit through more than the first 15 seconds of “It’s a Wonderful Life”. If I do I will let you know how they made truly dreadful films in the old days.

*****

I confess that, until reminded of it by one of my dear friends, that what this mediocre film needed was a good bit of crude sex. Let's face it, how unlucky was Bertie to find the only Australian who would have thought that therapy was the answer. Your typical Bruce would have suggested a few tinnies and giving the missus a fucking good seeing to. We would then have witnessed our dear old queen mother flung over the dining table in the great hall at Windsor and shagged mercilessly by an increasingly articulate heir to the throne. "G-g-g-g-od save the queen!" he would have screamed, increasingly purple faced and animated. The winter home would have been renamed Shaggingham, we might have seen a prince produced as a result, there would have been no princess Diana, and the queen mum would have died of exhaustion 50 years earlier, saving the tax payer a fortune in gin bills and gambling debts. The King's Shag. That would have been a good film.

Kim Jong Merrily on High

Today has not had the most auspicious of starts. I find little human compassion in evidence on news of the passing of Kim Il Jong.

Indeed, the event seems to have created a backdrop for poor jokes over on facebook (“I didn’t realise Kim was that Il”, for example).  Dear FFE who used to entertain us over here hinted in response to a suggestion that things might improve in North Korea now, that should that occur then monkeys would fly out of his ass. He did not specify a time frame, but I would advise you all to keep up to date with Youtube postings over the coming weeks.

I was moved, also via the medium of facebook to adjust my comments about wishing to see Nick Clegg punch Cameron, by a friend of a friend who took up the position that Cameron needed love and compassion. I said this: “Perhaps we should remember to be as compassionate towards Slimy Dave as he is towards others, and in the spirit of his legacy - no national health service, the education system perverted to the creed of Wackford Gove, and generations of young people and innocent citizens killed by his continued support of unjust wars on behalf of the petroleum industry, I have changed my mind. No right uppercuts for him. Perhaps we could arrange for him to be slowly kicked to death on Saturday night television, providing that it is not shown on all channels so that those of us who abhor violence can watch something more gentle.”

I now look forward to my short drive to work, where I will be regaled by soppy seasonal shite and cheerful updates on the world’s prospects for next year.

Are you ready for Christmas yet?

Baubles

It is the time of year where people are wont to say to me (not just me, you fool) “Are you ready for Christmas?” I remain unsure as to how to respond. Sadly, I am never ready for Christmas. Each year the contrived atmosphere of jollity affects me less, and I begin to suspect that I am some alien species from the planet WTF, being punished for some undefined crime by witnessing the ridiculous antics of the native species here.

No, I am not fucking ready for the constant repetition of the same crap dirges each time I call into Sainsburys for my supply of horse tranquilizer that I find a necessity at this time of year.

No, I will never be sodding ready for the word ‘Christmas’ being used twice in every sentence on the electric television.

No, I am buggered if I am ready to even add any more examples of stuff for which I am not ready.

*****

On a more cheering note, perspicacious readers will have noticed that our old friend Wackford Gove has been told off, with a warning of a detention if it happens again, if he continues to use and encourage the use of by his staff, private emails as a medium for communicating government related business. 

“P-r-o pro s-e-e-d seed y-o-u-r your proseedyour –noun insubstantive  - follow it”.

Please, someone, make it stop

I am getting tired of writing about these bloody scientists. (Good. Write about something you know about. Ed.)

This morning’s news from the world of fantasy, is that the Higgs Boson has been “glimpsed”. Yes, £10billion for a glimpse. Good job that there is plenty of money to go round, isn’t it?

Then there is the exciting news of the discovery of two large black holes not 300million light years away. “How big are they?” you ask, “Fucking big” is my riposte. The reports about these holes all mention that in a black hole the laws of physics break down. The laws of physics are always breaking down, which is why I refuse to obey them. They are silly. Very silly indeed, and I wish that I had taken the time to explain this to Mr McDermott in my fourth form physics lessons so that he could have talked about something more sensible.

Not to be outdone, medical scientists are trying to grab attention on the BBC news site by proclaiming the value of faecal transplants. I shit you not. For those of you not of a scientific disposition will perhaps be aided in understanding this process by the analogy of the British democratic process. Every few years we have a transplant called a General Election, in which the same shit is moved from one set of bodies to another. Unlike the claims of our doctor friends, however, in this case nothing ever gets better.

I trust that this has cheered you all, to the extent that you can now listen to some twat playing “White Christmas” or some other seasonal shite without resorting to mass murder.

I am not a street fighting man - I'm out of here.

I was somewhat taken aback this morning to read in the Grauniad the headline reporting: “Williams: riots could happen again”.

The Williams in question is Rowan of that ilk, not Robbie or his sister Venus.

I am alarmed that the head of the church is threatening insurrection. I cannot recall this happening before. The establishment does not take kindly to the clergy interfering in matters temporal, as poor old Tommy Becket discovered. In my view, we haven’t had a decent ab of C since Sigeric the serious. Perhaps Dave might consider a move in the January transfer window.

I hope Rowan has not been inspired by my post yesterday. He ought to know I was not being entirely serious. I thought he was one of these modern clerics who did not take the scriptures literally. I see I shall have to be more circumspect.

I am fearful for the survival of our society. I do not know how I would survive were they to stop broadcasting “Have I Got News For You”.

****

The scientific community are showing signs of excitement about the discovery of the exoplanet (what that? Ed.) Kepler 22-b, which has all the signs of being able to support life. They say it is quite close by – 600 light years, but I can’t find it on the North East Hampshire bus timetable, so probably won’t make the effort of visiting, at least until the new year.

I haven’t read all of the articles, but so far haven’t found any mention of the implications of Kepler being 2.4 times the size of the earth. Unless they have more sensible scientists than ours who have abolished the law of gravity, I would have thought that the probability is that Kepler has therefore 2.4 times the mass of the earth, and therefore moving about on it would be quite tiring. This appeals to me, on balance. “Sorry, won’t be at work today, I find I that I can’t get out of my chair”.

Please let me know if any of you see a list of for volunteers to join the first trip. It behoves me to present any existing inhabitants with the friendlier face of humanity. I will do my best to make sure that all members of the party are carefully vetted. We have all seen the results of letting a bunch of psychotic god-botherers loose on new colonies, after all.

Wait for six weeks, and all you get is the same rehashed whinging

Boris is trying to make me cross again.

“What!?”, is your response, “Are you deluded, he is trying to make everyone cross!”

“What difference does that make?” is my reply. I know my Yossarian.

In the Torygraph, Boris has come clean and admitted that the future of capitalism involves all of us being able to buy expensive things that we don’t need, and because there isn’t an alternative then we should all do just that.

I suspect that the silly fucker has overspent this month, and needs some cash wrung from the labour of the world’s poor people to make him feel a bit more comfortable. Perhaps his shares in “International  Child-Murdering War Machines” have taken a dip. Let’s have a whip round for the odious tit, shall we?

There is no alternative, or so Bozza and his slimy mates would have us believe. 

They want to bring about the end of the world in an orgy of consumerist ignorance. Better use up those last few resources even if it means poisoning us all.

I would love to see an end to these bastards. I am not, by any means a man of violence, but I suspect that if someone were to build a nice long wall and line up all the capitalists, bankers and their apologists and proceed to shoot them, I doubt whether I would manage much more than a shake of my head and a loud tut as a symbol of my disapproval.