I’m turning into…

…a Giant Slug. It’s true. I’ve started leaving silver streaks down the stairs as I slither between kitchen and screen. My legs have atrophied into a squidgy tail, my arms are now little stumps with digits, and my head has sunk to just above my gelatinous tummy. One has to admire evolution; if it’s not needed, it falls off. And lets face it, I don’t need what I’ve lost. I hear people bang on about arms and legs and the good old days when they went skiing and rock climbing and stuff but what fool would suffer all that danger, pain, cold and rain when I can do it all via digits and a screen? I’ve got all the information I will ever need, every past performance and show, and I can fight wars past, present and future without a scratch. There’s enough TV in a single week to last a lifetime and I can play them again 24/7 on my iPlayer and iPod. I can see giant killer whales snaffle penguins, ants copulate and stags kill each other. I’m beginning to realise that’s the difference between humans and animals; they do physical things and we don’t need to anymore. I don’t even have to walk to the shops. As Christmas passes and we move into the 2010’s we will begin the decade of “Do it with digits.” No cars, no flights to the Alps, no holidays in the sun, just a nice warm lamp, microwave chips and a screen. No global warming and the solution to overpopulation, water and food shortages as we evolve past the slug stage to being digitally integrated. A human being will become a fully integrated, networked unit residing in a waterproof box the size of a portable radio. Complete nutrition fluid will be pumped down tubes and we will live forever. I can’t wait; those trips to the kitchen are getting quite tiring.

Prematurity.“

It cometh to passeth that I was a bit prematureth. God’s been in touch again. Apparently they were my thoughts. He says he is far too abstruse for the likes of me and anyway he doesn’t do words, so the book won’t be coming out. He says writing the ‘Word of God’ is a beginners mistake. It’s easily done but it’s like Pinky and Perky covering a Beyonce’ song. Won’t work; never has, never will. I’m like, “Well make it complicated why don’t you.” So I can’t use words, what then, am I supposed to draw pictures? Apparently pictures and stories are a bit better but even that’s not enough for His Godliness, oh no, he wants me to be as God is. I mean what does that mean, be as God is? And apparently God isn’t even a person, not even human. He’s definitely not Hugh Grant just to squash that particular rumour. He’s like this floaty floaty thing like air and everything, like derdy derdy der, oh there you are. And then you know something and then you don’t, or you know it isn’t proper knowing but you’re not sure, but sometimes you are. I mean that’s no way to run a cosmos, there should be proper chains of command, line managers and stuff. He laughed. So come on then, how are you organising all this?
“Consider the lilies of the field.” Oh don’t give me that old trollop, I’m a twenty-first century rodent. I’ve got cheese to fry, mouths to feed. He does like a bit of tuff talking I’ve found.
“Just because humans will be gone soon doesn’t mean you’ll get a step up boy-oe. We may skip a size and go straight to cockroaches.” I must say that came as a terrible shock. But Cockroaches are ugly ignorant bastards, they’re not a patch on mice!
“Word of God matey. I win.” Not that again. I suppose the lilies will be OK too eh. Teachers pets. ‘Teacher says you should copy us ‘cos we’re good and you’re not. Naaar.’
"Look at humans,” Do I have to, “they’ve read the runes and learnt how to play the sorcerer’s apprentice and now that millions of brooms are ruining the planet they’re like, ‘Oh what we going to do, what we going to do?’ Do you know what I do in situations like this?” What? “Downsize stupid.”

Prophet Stiffmouse.

I’m going to be a prophet. No more accountancy exams for me, no Jesus didn’t get a single GCSE, or Buddha. They just wandered about for a while and bam, Word of God. Mohammed wrote a book on his holidays when he was bored and bam, Word of God. The Ace of Trumps. Trumps are like that, any old shit and ‘Oh dear, I win.’ They’re like beliefs, another way of saying don’t even think about it. Nope that’s it, Trump of God. “But I put down the ace of diamonds.” Tuff, I win.”
“But daddy I love him, and he’s also a Muslim, we’re happy together.”
“Wrong sort, my belief, dishonour. Qur’an says so. Word of God. Must kill you. I win.” So being a prophet has its advantages. Oh hold on I’m just getting a message.
“Everyone must be nice to Stiffmouse. Anyone who upsets Stiffmouse must be killed. You must forward all your money immediately to Stiffmouse Inc. PO Box 1337, Ocean Boulevard, Los Angeles. I will be e-mailing Stiffmouse his own personal Word of God book later to sell on Amazon. Over and out.” Wow see, I am a prophet! I can’t wait for that book. I expect it will have something about virgins…
“PS. All virgins must lay down before Stiffmouse, in sexy underwear, desirous of a seeing too.” Oh my God see, another message.
So if you need anymore proof that God exists keep reading the Word of Stiffmouse, sorry, God.

Prohibition. The follow on?

Remember Star Wars, the Dark side, Luke Stiffmouse, Skywalker’s trusty rodent? No? It wasn’t a big part. Well let me tell you, Death Stars cost money, big money. Even Darth couldn’t do it on his own what with his bad chest and all. I bet you’ve never even thought about the Storm Trooper wage bill! Imagine the trembling accountant who had to ask, “But Mr Vader, how are we going to pay for it all?” and in a sickening wheeze came the reply, “Prohibition George.” Vader explains,

“In the

beginning

the Jedi were

good. So good they

needed to protect themselves

from bad things. So they invented

Prohibition. But they still did bad things

because they had freedom of choice and that.

So the Empire sold them bad things and took their

money. That George is how we pay for all this shit.”

“But we need more to pay for the new planet blaster.”
“Then ramp up the supply of narcotics numbskull.” Zzzermm, tschitsss, padump.
“Oh sorry I didn’t mean to do that.”
Anyway so it was in the beginning. Well not actually the beginning, a bit afterwards, but definitely a long time ago.
But the rebels led by Luke and his mouse fought back, Ferrrrss, kmow, mernamerna. They were losing. In desperation Luke stood up, “We must stop doing these bad things. Our money is paying for the evil Empire!”
“Oh man drugs are the only way to make television interesting!”
Obi-wan appeared, “Trust the force Luke.” “But they’ll all do bad things!” “So let the fuckers die Luke, they’ll soon learn. Stop looking after them.” So it was that Luke made all bad things legal.
When Darth Vader heard the news he was distraught. His evil empire would crumble without the money from the illegal supply of bad things. He transported himself to Jedi HQ in Stroud to see Skywalker.
“I am your father Luke. Huurrrs.”
“Well that explains it all dun it! All those ‘don’t do this and don’t do that.’ I believed you father!” A tear welled up in Luke’s eye, “and now you are rich on the profits of supplying all those bad things!”
“Son, huurrrs, I was young, I had your education to pay for. Huurrrs. Join me Luke. You’ll be just the same when Princess Lia starts nagging you for an extention.”
“But she’s my sister.” “OK I’ll sell you a nice Polynesian girl.”
“No Vader, you are no longer my father, anyway I’ve made Polynesian girls legal now. And I get the tax on them. Hah!” Luke swiped him with his light sabre.
The man lay broken on the floor. “Ah taxation. Why didn’t I think of that.” Padump.

Stiffdog undercover.

Stiffdog undercover.

Stiffdog’s just back from interviewing Bo at the White House with this chilling exclusive. “Wuff everybody. Bo is good, you know, looking forward to Christmas dog biscuits and that but he’s been listening in. Did you know that humans have three world economies, the state, the criminal and the terrorist? It’s like the first is in green dollars and the other two are in dark dollars; like dark matter, you can’t put your finger on it but it has to be there somewhere. Well they also count in trillions. The criminal economy is straightforward, sex, drugs, fake goods, crime etc, but the terrorist economy is murkier. There are always people who want things doing they can’t do themselves because it wouldn’t look good on their résumé. They can’t use criminals because they’re immoral so they need people who are so passionate about something they’ll do anything ‘for the cause’. Now world governments always need stuff doing they can’t be seen to be involved in. Enter terrorist economics. The CIA for instance has been funding terrorist activity since World War II all over the world, the Far East, South America, Sadam Hussein, Osama Ben Laden etc, often arming and funding them with profits from the local drugs trade. See the Iran-Contra Affair. They simply couch what they wanted doing in the terms of the poor unsuspecting believers beliefs.
But the problem when dealing with ‘believers’ is they may start doing what you want because it coincides with what they want but they usually carry on doing what they want even when it diverges from what you want. So Ben Laden, by now well connected into the dark dollar economies, starts biting the hand that he used to work for in the name of Islamic fundamentalism and goes a smidgen too far on 9/11. Bush retaliates by passing legislation on money laundering and stuff, which cuts the green dollar off from the dark dollar and removes the latter from the American economy and the US finds a hole in its numbers.
Meanwhile the Talaban and el-Qaeda backed by dark dollars continue fighting for Islam in Islamic countries that in general don’t want them against green dollar backed US troops. The suicide bomber is actually fighting not for Islam but the terrorist economy. But increasingly the dark terrorist economy is drifting towards the criminal economy as they come to rely more and more on funding from narcotics. The poor suicide bomber, in a surreal play on the World Wars, is dying to be replaced by poppy fields. Maybe if this was pointed out to him he might not be so keen to strap on his exploding cummerbund.
Bo says dogs would play it differently. “1/ stop talking about threats to National security because the criminal/terrorist alliance isn’t interested in states. 2/ legalise drugs so nation states take control of the narcotics trade and turn dark dollars back to green, and 3/ interrupt dark money movements. And for God sake make people realise this isn’t an idealistic struggle anymore, it’s just about dark economics!” With thanks to Loretta Napoleoni, research economist.

Sailing by.

I fear I’m entertained out. Like the Queen would feel at the end of a Royal Variety Performance that lasted fifty years. Radio 4 has the news which is depressing, Radio 1 has Radio 1 DJs who are depressing, Classic FM, who assume its audience is made up of people who regularly say “I don’t believe it!” and so run adds for incontinence pads, is also depressing. On TV soaps, sitcoms and drama are depressing, especially Holyoaks! ‘Phone in to make me rich’ programs with audiences overdosed on e make me sick. Hiphop makes me want to shoot myself and MOR overproduced pop is, yes it’s depressing. Anything with David Tennant in is OK though. It’s not that they’re bad, apart from Holyoaks and hiphop, it’s just that I’ve listened to and watched so much TV and radio over the years I’m beginning to hate it. Thousands and thousands of hours just gawping, it’s not good for my posture. I mean even goldfish swim around in their bowl, “Oh there’s the settee, the fireplace, the window. Oh there’s the settee, the fireplace, the window. Oh there’s the settee, the fireplace, the window.” That’s what it feels like, “Oh there’s the X Factor, Big Brother, News at 10. Oh there’s the X Factor, Big Brother, News at 10.” I am not a goldfish! And now there’s iPods with a thousand apps. You want a wank? There’s an app for that. You want the Conservative front bench put down? You’ve guessed it. I don’t want apps! I don’t want musak 24/7 that I hear but don’t listen to. Lift voices are OK though; they’re quite pleasant to talk to. So this Christmas raise a glass to the end of entertainment. In the commercial breaks of course. ('Sailing by', by the way, is the last piece of music on Radio 4 to signal the end of the day)

Happy Xmas Interfacial

As it’s nearing Christmas, in the spirit of said season of good cheer I’m going to dedicate this entry to Stiffmouse Blog’s only follower. Happy Christmas ‘interfacial’, whoever you are. So Inter, how’s your year been? You don’t mind me calling you Inter do you? But I guess these must remain rhetorical questions. I mean I’m not blaming you. Silence is golden, we all talk far too much don’t we. Another rhetorical question. There goes my urge to reach out, to make contact. And this silence I’m hearing is somehow God like. Like a prayer, maybe answered but never discussed. In fact I’m rather favouring it. How wise I might appear if I don’t open my mouth. And in some sense it might prove true. Someone might come to me with a problem, I would say nothing, they would ponder, make a suggestion. I would say nothing. They, as they are the supreme living authority on their problem and its solution would progress from suggestion to suggestion until some rightness appeared to them. They would smile and thank me for my insightfulness. Someone expecting a rebuke might, hearing silence, come to know better their own misdemeanour. Someone clinging to me for some necessity of their own, in hearing silence, might have to find their own substance to fill that requirement, just as someone eager for learning might learn.
So thank you Inter for your insight, you are indeed far wiser than I.
Just don’t get in touch, OK.

An Ordinary King.

X Factor Final Night, the Nuremberg Trials to music. Screaming crowds at the mercy of their emotions, unaware those emotions have been carefully induced, nurtured and brought to climax. Do we kill Jews or vote for Joe? Luckily these emotions are happy ones. Joe, Olly and Stacy are extremely nice people and extremely good singers, and the judges are on the whole genuine. Yet something unsettles me. The super euphoria of a wedding day where ordinary people briefly play king and queen. It’s not that ordinary people aren’t the equal of kings and queens, they are, it’s that ordinary people, when they believe kings and queens are special can believe their own ordinariness is not. Maybe one of a million will go on to pursue his kingly role as a pop star and shoulder the complex yoke that goes with it, while the rest bear an ordinary yoke. Yet all bear a yoke just the same. And few learn the lesson of their eyes, that Olly from the call centre can be the equal of Robbie Williams in 8 short weeks.
So cherish this moment that you will tell your grandchildren about as a firework, a brief display or a new beginning and hope it will be one among many wonderful ordinary moments of your life.

Floor sander heaven.

I am hovering on the net between hiring a floor sander and learning about Islamic history. I’ve hired from HSS before and they’re organised and helpful. £37 per day, refundable deposit, easy parking and they’ll help you put it in your boot if you need it. Islamic history is not so clear-cut. Islamists believe the Jews are just plain nasty and Western Christian countries are un-islamic, Sunni’s are at odds with Shi’as and so on. Odd seeing as they’re all monotheistic religions believing in the same God. Muslims are called to help Islam take over the faith and government of the world much as the management of HSS would like to in the lesser sphere of equipment hire. Personally I’ve seen too many James Bond movies to have much faith in those planning world domination. Gun in hand they explain their dastardly plot to the one person who could scupper it only to trip over their pet cat, get sliced in two by an inconveniently placed laser and fall into a small pool of piranhas. Unfortunately strong belief seems to lead to over confidence. Personally for instance I’m not sufficiently confident in a virgin filled afterlife to don the waistcoat of a suicide bomber.
Now I hired my last floor sander from Killy’s the Cleaners. Nice people, good service but you have to park on a yellow line in a side street, which always makes me a little apprehensive so I’ve decided on HSS this time. God works in mysterious ways.

Austerity's OK

When my earnings went briefly into 6 figures I had to struggle hard to not let us blow it in luxuries. It’s very tempting. My reasoning was it’s easy to spend and the enjoyment is brief but it’s far more painful when the money runs out. That plus being born in ’43 austerity was a fact of life much like throw away is today. We were never short of essentials but what we had we looked after and mended. So even now if your washing machine croaks or your central heating packs in just as the weather gets cold, give me a call.
Well it seems that the population of the world will rise to 9 billion from its current 6 billion or 1 billion around a hundred years ago. Oil and more importantly water, soil and thus food are peaking and showing signs of long term decline. So mouths are going up and corn flakes are going down. There’s a tummy gap. Fine in the short term if you want to lose weight but as you pass size 10 heading for 8 you’ll be ready for a plate of chips. So we in the developed world are heading for that unenviable time of the money running out. We’re the champion boxer who lived the high life for a while and is now telling you about it while he’s giving you a shoeshine. It’s been calculated that if everyone in the world had our UK standard of living the world could only sustain 2 billion population, a third of what it is now. It seems a quite frightening state of affairs. We seem to be on the points of entering a period of post war austerity that could last for the foreseeable future. That’s where I came in, in 1943, and it wasn’t that bad. We were never short of essentials and we had more fun learning to make do and mend than you ever have watching television.

Bonuses in CO2.

It’s Copenhagen and time to talk about CO2 emissions. As we’re also trying to get our heads around bankers’ bonuses it seems a good time to connect the two.
Assuming bankers are not simply printing their fifty-pound notes themselves their bonuses must be coming from economic activity somewhere. It’s also reasonable to assume our developed commercial dealings have honed the price of everything such that the value in one thing equates to the value in another. Economists also agree that wealth is created from labour and resources both of which equate in value to everything else.
Now lets take a bankers bonus of a million pounds. That would buy roughly 1,000,000 litres of petrol. OK, now my car, a Renault Scenic does around 14 km per litre and emits 183gm/km. That means it emits 2.44kg/litre. Still with me?
So a bankers’ million litres would take me around 9 million miles and create 2.44 million kg of CO2 or 2,440 metric tonnes. OK it’s unlikely the banker will spend it all on fuel for his Audi but his million pound bonus will have come from 1 million pounds worth of economic activity somewhere and that million pounds of economic activity will equate to 1 million litres of fuel somewhere along the line, which equates to 2.4 thousand metric tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere whether he has his central heating set to 80*C with the doors open and flies to Bermuda several times a year for his holidays or not.
So a banker is not worth his weight in gold, he’s worth 24,000 times his weight in CO2 emissions. Now that’s a fat bastard.

Unconscious Incongruence.

I’ve done some Person Centred counsellor training right. Come in, sit down, silence. Basically they find the silence unbearable and start something off. It’s also a good time to relax yourself and let your mind drift off to old holidays when the family was still together. After a bit of empathic understanding I’m usually way ahead of them but on the basis it’s better if they figure it out for themselves I keep my mouth shut. That’s very important. After they’ve done enough interminable waffling, which is all rather boring, and this is where congruence comes in, I tell them what’s wrong. This is where the training is so important. One has to learn the true meaning of congruence, to know what one thinks clearly and concisely, and to be able to say it in a way that gently eases them to your way of thinking. It’s no use saying, “Don’t be stupid, it’s never going to happen”, or “My God woman what were you thinking!?” It puts their backs up and can lose one valuable income. It’s far better to make them think it’s their idea. Things like, “Might it be that….”. It’s quite easy when you get the hang of it. You see you have to treat them with what’s called unconditional positive regard. It’s just a long way of saying you have to make them think you’re their friend. It helps them accept your ideas more easily. I mean no one’s going to agree with some obnoxious, opinionated bastard are they. Rogers who invented PC was a wonderful man and came up with five counselling conditions.
1/ be aware that your client has turned up and is there. One doesn’t like to be mercenary but if they haven’t there may still be time to ring another client.
2/ the client must realise their life has been, if not a total waste of time, at least sad and misguided.
3/ the client must realise the therapist is a beautiful human being.
4/ the therapist must appear to be friendly. I know it’s hard when your husband’s just left you, the kids are self-harming and you’re depressed but the show must go on.
5/ the therapist must understand the client in order to provide them with solutions.
6/ the client must be made to think the therapist both likes and understands them.
Just follow these golden rules and you won’t go far wrong.

Surfs are shit.

I swear if one of the X Factor judges said a critical word against Hitler singing ‘I did it my way’ the audience would start booing. What is it with these people who would rather ignore reality than accept some imperfection? Or is it simply gross manipulation. The collective ‘we’ have had enough of the collective ‘them’ and unlike the boss at work we can openly vent our collective spleen on Simon et al without fear of redundancy.
It is of course just a new arrangement of the old standard, ‘Call me names and give me money’, based on an even older folk tune written by the Sheriff of Nottingham, ‘Ye surfs are shit but I’m in charge.’ In this ancient ballad of puppetry the puppet master controls both the actors and the audience and collects the money at the door of the theatre. One can often hear it sung at bankers Christmas bonus parties. It is surely pleasure for everyone. Sing, phone in or collect, everyone gets what they want. In an even newer slant the group ‘Rage Against The Machine’ is issuing a Christmas single with a twist. It’s called, ‘Call them names and give me money.’ One has to admire human ingenuity.
Might it be that capitalism is feudalism with a twist? Feudalism was based on ‘give me money because I tell you to’, where as capitalism is ‘give me money because you want to.’ Oh and by the way, I’ll tell you what you want.
I’m just glad I’m above it all and I do what I like, as I smoke my fag and drink my beer.

Kitchen in the hole!

Many years ago a good friend, a fellow toy inventor, showed a working prototype to a company at the annual New York Toy Fair. The company guy was very impressed. They began negotiations. My friend was very pleased. He remained pleased right up until the company guy said, “I must come over and visit your facility.” Cut to our conversation back home, “What am I going to do, show him my back bedroom!?” That was his ‘facility.’
There lies the difference between England and America. It’s rather like judging the quality of a football team by the excellence of its changing rooms. They may win matches but do they have power showers? Something to muse about as you fly the Atlantic, Business Class.
That’s England/America, now think about Al-qaeda/America.
Al-qaeda doesn’t even have football boots! They could change in a telephone booth like Superman if they had a strip to change into. But they kick balls pretty hard. Now if the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost America $3 trillion and they’ve killed 200,000 that’s $15 million per death. Al-qaeda’s cost per American death by comparison is probably around a thousand dollars. This is similar to Robert the Bruce defeating Edward II’s two thousand fully armoured and mounted knights by supplying his men with long pointy sticks. War in these situations becomes a contest of monetary attrition and ends when one side can’t afford it anymore, and on those figures it’s likely to be the Americans.
Now everyone likes a new fitted kitchen right, and that goes for Afghans too, so why not spend the money on shipping in thousands of flat pack kitchens? Al-qaeda can’t do that, they don’t have the facility. During the cold war someone suggested air dropping thousands of JC Penny mail-order catalogues over the USSR. OK you would kill a few pedestrians but it could have toppled the regime. So next time there’s a war forget bombs, fight it with fitted kitchens.

Work without end.

Work’s a strange thing. You want it to end but you don’t want it to finish, because then you’d be out of a job. If someone invented everlasting paint, painting the Forth Bridge wouldn’t be a job for life any more. But then everlasting paint has been shelved by paint manufacturers because they would be out of a job too. So it’s vitally important that one invents work during the long years waiting for retirement. In fact putting back the age of retirement will make the country less efficient as the whole work force will have to spend far more time inventing work than they do now to fill the extra years.
Now the legislature started work around 1300 with Edward II and it’s been inventing work ever since. That’s 700 years of painting the Forth Bridge. So if the legislature had been painting the Forth Bridge it would be four times its original weight and there would be barely enough room for the traffic down the middle by now.
In fact it’s been calculated that putting all the volumes of Hansard into one big pile would be Britain’s best chance of putting a geo stationary satellite in orbit. Just climb up the side with a rucksack. This though is impracticable.
It does though suggest we have enough laws to sink the Forth Bridge together with the unfortunate ship passing under it at the time. But the golden rule of work must be obeyed; especially as it’s unlikely the legislature could be successfully retrained as a plumber. So new laws must continue to be drafted for ever and ever until Doomsday Book II, The Sequel, is published.
Which brings me to the point of this item. A law is currently going through parliament that stipulates if a child is to be educated at home it must be Ofsted inspected and its parents CRB checked. Now home education is a middle class thing, where Toby and Leonora spend happy hours with mum, Clare, making plasticine numerals. I wonder then if the implicit assumption, that said Clare, a trusted and loving evening parent, might turn into a sex offending, drug dealing, knife carrying daytime parent, is entirely justified. Or might it just be the legislature making work for itself to continue in gainful employment? I fear the traffic is beginning to scrape along the walls of solid paint.

Christmas Past.

What do you want for Christmas? I was thinking potatoes. No! What then? ‘I dropped a hint two months ago. Remember, when we were in town.’ Why do I always forget to buy a notebook in August and carry it around with me to capture just such information. Without the aid of modern technology two months ago means nothing to me. I wouldn’t remember getting run over if I didn’t still have the bruises. So starting from zero I’ve advanced to minus ten by just opening my mouth. Like garage flowers. How do women know they’re garage flowers? I mean it’s not written on them, they look perfectly fine to me, and so convenient. Petrol, fags, flowers, and on your way. Maybe they smell of diesel. No it’s just far too convenient isn’t it. Love is shown by taking the train to Gatwick, jumping on a plane, buying a tulip and returning with it in your teeth. I mean where did this mouth/flower thing come from? You’d just bite through a flower stem and though a rose would take it your face would bleed.
I turn to magazine present edition. Bike mp3 player and torch, £99.99, iwantoneofthose.com. What! That must be £19.99 for the illuminating player and £80 for being gullible enough to look for prezez in a magazine. Star Trek bottle opener, £8.99. That’s more like it. Then Indian glitter swirl wrap, £3.95 a meter. For wrapping paper! What’s wrong with the woodchip left over from the dining room! Come on save the planet people. I wrack my brain, what happened in town in September? Of course! We bought some cat food from that big pet store, and … and she said how much she liked that dog basket. Dog Basket! I buy the dog basket, wrap it, bow it up hide it and relax. It’s Christmas eve and I suddenly remember what she actually said. “What a lovely dog basket. Shame we don’t have a dog.” Bugger!

Neda travels the world.

Remember 500 years ago? When the Catholics and Protestants were torturing, murdering and generally kicking the sh** out of each other in the name of ‘state’ Christianity? Well the Islamic religion is 500 years younger than Christianity. This raises a question in my mind. Is 1,500 years, you do the maths, a difficult age for a religion? Just old enough for the state to get its grubby hands on it and turn it to its own uses but not old enough for rationality to temper its extremes. History is set to repeat itself. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a cruel religious dictatorship backed up by respected Muslim leaders. Ayatollah Khomeini sanctioned the repression of the recent protests in the name of Islam, as did Mary1st in the name of Catholicism. It was also supported by the US who shipped arms via Israel during the Iran/Iraq war and sent the profits to the Contras in Nicaragua. Said double-dealing precipitated Oliver North and other CIA top guns to jail who were then mercifully pardoned and re-employed into the Bush administration. But that’s another five-gallon drum of stale fish. In the ensuing repression a young woman demonstrator, Neda agha Soltan is caught on You Tube bleeding to death. Which they didn’t have in Tudor England. She is beautiful and has caught the heart of the world. A heart that will see the deceits of the Ayatollahs and the corruption and cruelty of the regime they uphold in the name of Islam. May her death move mountains.

The X Factor election.

Continual electronic convergence is coalescing our numerous gadgets into one multifunctional pocket sized record player, radio, phone, TV, map of the world, encyclopaedia and restaurant bill calculator. Interesting that such human ingenuity can’t then divide £44.44 by 4. It’s even likely we will soon be able to whip out our handheld electronic matter transporter, dial the postcode for a restaurant in San Francisco and still get chased out by the waiter for getting the tip wrong. There is no end to convergence. And not only in electronics. Once popular music was made by a disparate array of motley crews making sounds as different as Beach Boys from Dylan. Now as band names move from disparate to the distinctly desperate the music has converged to minor variations of overproduced mush. And cars. Remember the Austin Metropolitan? You may have needed to be so visually impaired as to be unworthy of a driving licence to appreciate it but there was no arguing it was different. So as all things converge it shouldn’t be surprising that the X Factor and the forthcoming general election bear a striking similarity. Can you slide a fag paper between Gordon Brown and Susan Boyle or Cameron/Osborne and Jedward? No. Except that the former hasn’t resorted to Camborne or the rather unsettling Osberon. Yet. Brown/Boyle have faces like over cellulited bums and wouldn’t look out of place if painted into the foreground of ‘Monarch of the Glen’, and the twin twins popularity is squarely based on the fact that their naive incompetent unawareness flatters 99% of the public in comparison. I wouldn’t trust Osborne with my kid’s dinner money, even if I were a staunch conservative. Soon the Queen, aerodynamically restyled, will resemble a Renault Scenic and sound like Lady Ga Ga, and no doubt smell like a multi fragranced Glade air freshener. You will be like me and the understanding of the divine will come to pass, that we are all one.

Frightened by reality.

As the film fades to black the vampires, the bad ones at least, have been vanquished, the ogres slain, the flesh eating super bugs conquered, and the psychotic digital universe banished to another dimension. Phew! Next program. The murderers have been caught, the psychotic blonds taken away, the pimps, pushers and gun runners have met their sticky ends. Next program. Meanwhile at home Mary is fatigued by emptying the dishwasher, Clair is afraid of climbing a ladder, John is terrified by the sight of a mouse and Brian is confused by a plug.
It seems the younger generation are being well prepared to tackle all manner of fictitious evil characters, well equipped to deal with the extremely unlikely yet dissolve like wet paper at the thought of changing a tyre or doing the washing up. But they’re young, impressionable; they’re our children, let them have fun. Surely the days of eight year olds working down the mine are over.
Now I don’t wish to appear like a character from a Dickens novel but shouldn’t we be preparing them for the real world?

Artificial resuscitation school.

Teacher enters. Kids hyper. He calms their frantic minds to something approaching calm. He hands out 10 copies of Heat magazine, 8 of OK and 14 of Nuts. “Read these, I’ve got stuff to do.” The kids, sorry, students are stunned, joyful and the class falls into rapt star gazing silence. Fashion, football, ads, cosmetics, tits and bums are being absorbed in a hum of concentration. The teacher relaxes, leans back and flicks through his own copies of said magazines. A half hour passes.
“OK Y3B what have you just been doing?” A voice gives the obvious answer, “Skiving Sir.”
“No, you’ve been learning. That’s what learning feels like.” 30 confused faces. “What we’ve been doing this past year has not been you learning, it’s been me teaching. So, now you know what learning feels like do you want to do some more?” With the prospect of swapping mags and carrying on they joyfully agree.
“OK so what do you want, how do you want your life to be? What are your dreams?” The teacher gets many suggestions. He chooses one and asks for more detail. “So what will you need to learn to make that happen?” 30 brains balk at trying to make the transition from easy dreaming to challenging reality. They ache at the thought of it.
“Come on, you’ve just experienced learning, how absorbing and fun it is.” They reluctantly agree on some practical necessities if one is to become a film director or whatever.
“OK, now you learn it and I’ll help you if you need it.”
The teacher sits back and reads a book.
I find it interesting that the one skill all youngsters are outstanding at is typing, a skill that is not taught. Also that schools are quite toxic places.
The brain in a sense breaths in information through a mouth of curiosity driven by a need to know. Schools nowadays are the equivalent of a single teacher trying to practice artificial resuscitation on 30 patients all at the same time who see no point in breathing. The patients are dieing and the teachers are worn out.

Remembrance Sunday.

They were once like us, remembering.
They were once like us, not imagining they would be taken.
Taken in a wink or as in a casual breath.
We are only different by a trick of time and circumstance, and those will find us too between our breathing soon enough.
What must we in our memories of brave men remember?
So easy to say their sacrifice for they are not here to say they would not have chosen it.
So hard to say that now the mantle of bravery falls to us and we must dance our turn with what we might not choose.
For there is something in piety that lays responsibility with the dead and in solemnity lets that mantle fall that we in our turn make histories mistakes.
No, let these brave men be with us, blazing in our heart the fire that made them brave that we may warm and chat with them around it, for they, in death are wiser now than we.

A Troll’s oh yes!

If you watched the last two episodes of Merlin you’ll no doubt be aware of the fetching Troll featured therein. Though full of fart and disgusting habits her intense enjoyment of rotten fruit and dung, and her gleeful pursuance of self-interest made for a strangely appealing character. So much so that, as I was in the house on my own, I found myself muttering, Troll-like at the washing up and grunting at the settee as I shambled, Troll like past. This was fun. Here was a female that Photoshop could do nothing for. She was happy with her warts. Nor could any finishing school remove her enjoyment of bad habits. As my wife missed the episode we watched it the following evening and she too, being a woman who enjoys her windy noises, found the idea of Trolling fun and such a merciful release from doing what one should do and considering what one aught to consider. Where muttering obscenities, snorting and pfwarting and one’s heart felt ugliness goes un-judged. I look forward to many happy evenings so doing. In fact my mind is now moving on to Troll sex. Two half bent slobbering figures in a dimly lit bedroom grunting enjoyment at every touch, deep growl mutterings, slaps and scratchings, and all in blissful ignorance of consideration, decorum, judgment and “how was that for you?” More, “Cumear you beauty, pfarp, scratch. Ere, snort, mumbly sort of snort, nuzzle, luv this, aahhh, slobber, root. I’s got you a chocolate moose wiv raisins in, slurp, mutual slurp, enjoyment snort. Slap, geroff. Pfaaaaaaarp. Lovely.” That sort of thing.

The Speck.

As we speak, not that we are, Stiffdog is in Hollywood selling the script to Stiffmouse Productions latest thriller, The Speck. It’s a dark disturbing horror movie about a young man with a strange troubling illness. As the list of adjectives grows we know we are in for a bizarre, frightening journey into the weird unsettling world of, OCD. A young man has OCD, or more longly known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We’ve had Aliens, Elephant Man, psychotic chain saws and Dracula so we thought the time was the right for something more nuanced. But OCD is no less frightening. Imagine that your life could change, be devastated in some unforeseeable way by the merest speck getting past your defences. Cloths must be utterly clean, and if touched or brushed against by someone or something, must be cleaned and cleaned again. A mind caught between the unknowable, the un-see-able and unfathomable. The mother who told me this story was at her whit’s end, as was her washing machine. She had done everything to satisfy her sons OCD to no avail. As we talked it became clear she was in fact confirming her sons obsession. If she did all that cleaning she too must believe her son’s obsession was appropriate behaviour.
The Speck gives us entry into this strange world of obsession, where the slightest misdemeanour, the slightest slip of the tongue, the slightest fashion error, facial blemish or bad expression will ruin a career and taint all connected with it. Love turns to hate, desire to rejection, admiration to disgust in the wink of an eye. In response the unfortunate prostrates him or her self in apologies confirming our obsession with the jot. Welcome to the weird world of ‘The Speck’ where everything is obsession.

Drugs, don’t you just…

So Mr Nutt, the advisor for statistically proven fact, failed to grasp the governments need to send out a moral message. And the moral message is? Well, less harmful ganja is more immoral and thus requiring of greater legal penalties than more harmful tobacco and alcohol. Simple enough. Oh like slapping someone with a fish, less harmful, requires a higher sentence than murdering them, more harmful? Or leaving dirty finger marks on someone’s cherished Porsche is more morally reprehensible than stealing it and selling it in Dubai. That’s somehow not the way my father explained it to me. So now the public are confused. The government is steering us towards more harmful tobacco and alcohol and away from weed. The answer is of course tax. Tax has always been the government’s way of appreciating how much we like something. It’s their way of joining in with our happy moments. Alcohol and tobacco, yes, mental illness and rain, no. So what about weed? Well it’s not taxed, because it’s too immoral for the government to even contemplate its existence, but we do and we like it. It has to be Class B to stop its retailers being out on the street in their thousands and jeopardising Benson & hedges. Evidently the rule is, if people like something we can’t tax, it must be made illegal. Prostitution and historically homosexuality are/were illegal for just such ‘moral’ reasons. So why not just come clean and tax all our moral indiscretions? Legalise everything and tax it according to the harm it does. Cannabis, 200%, skunk, 300%, heroin, 500%, crack, 1000%. LSD, 0% as it would come under the category of further education. People are happy, the chancellor is happy. The only people who would be well upset would be pimps and drug dealers. I consider that a result. But then the two main parties may decide voting Lib Dem was a moraly taxable indiscretion.

What’s new in Hip Hop?

Hip Hop reminds me of fractals. However much they grow and change they always end up looking the same. This one is a million times larger than that one and look, it’s exactly the same. That’s amazing. It’s like watching me slowly turn through 360 degrees and, bingo, I look exactly the same as when I started. Truly magical. And it’s the same with Hip Hop. Over twenty years of constant change and development it hasn’t changed a bit. It’s still true to its roots, keeping the faith, not sold out, still in the hood, same. A unique first that appears to defy Darwin’s theory of evolution. No small feat. Where mainstream pop has chased ever-changing fashions, new romantics, punk, metal, glam rock etc; where hemlines rose and fell and now seem to be disappearing altogether Hip Hop has remained true to Hip Hop and bling. Where in the nancy world of pop can one find such rich statements of, “I got so much money and everything you desire I treat them like shit, you poor downtrodden bastard”? That’s just the blood of the hood brother.
You may by now be detecting some white elitist cynicism here. Let me challenge you. Who in the thirties, forties and onward was the evolving force in popular music, introducing new energy, harmony and rhythms? Who today are playing a rich variety of world music from Senegal, South Africa, India and South America? Who wanted and wants to take music somewhere new and exciting, to explore their own ability and technique? My argument is about neither colour nor elitism. It’s about breaking Hip Hop out of its cycle of “Got no money, get some money”. It’s about raising the horizons of ‘the hood’ to encompass riches far more valuable than wealth.
Ignorance has always had an allure; it’s easy and built within the most magnificent defences but it has one drawback. It never changes or evolves. So here’s to Hip Hop’s evolution into new directions, new lyrical forms and classy musicianship.

American Psycho.

Teacher and obvious grandmother of Sarah Palin comes to England to grace our TV screens with her version of aversion therapy for racists. Apparently all us whities are scum, halleluiah save the Lord. But this lady is SS concentration camp guard not zealous preacher. Thirty-year-old video footage shows her first experiments with kindergarten kids teaching the brown eyed ones to hate the blue-eyed ones and by so doing showing them they’re all latent racists. It’s frightening to imagine she’s been propagating her particular brand of brutality for so long, especially on the young. In Blighty though she finds complexity. One woman imbued with an English sense of fair play exposed her purposely fiddling the results to cause division. But sure enough those of other colours were quick to point out she was white and thus obviously racist, which if you think about it is kind of ironic. By the end of the day it was evident she had managed to induce racism in her motley band of experimentees but more importantly she had, as a person, given us a perfect example of fascism at work. By incessant belittling, bullying and over powering abrasiveness she showed, for me at least, a perfect example of what The Third Reich was built on. And that's a valuable lesson to put on television. It sure proved racism is about an individuals prejudice, bigotry, ignorance and bullying, not colour.

TV won't happen to you.

Disregarding the fact that 20% of the time (yes 20%) it’s telling you your life is unsatisfactory unless you buy something, and programs about the Second World War for reasons that will become obvious, nothing you see on TV will EVER happen to you. Unless you’re old enough to remember the Second World War, in which case you won’t want it to happen to you again. Are you really likely to move to a place where every mid summer people start murdering each other? Or the East End where, in amongst the general day-to-day backstabbing and misery, people murder each other? Or places where they have Crime Scene Investigators, or France, or be plane crashed on a desert island and all the other places where people murder each other? No.
Is it likely someone will come up to you in the street and ask, “In Oliver Wendell Holmes seventeenth century poem, ‘The Deacon's Masterpiece’, what was the object he was constructing? Christ’s, Smith.’ No. (a ‘One-hoss Shay’ just in case this unlikely event happens, and your name is Smith)
Are you ever likely to have five totally decent friends, who incidentally never murder each other? No. None of this will ever happen to you. Even if you sign up for X Factor or Big Brother you will most likely end up doing obscene things with a bottle in your own back garden or pegging out in the queue before you ever get to see Simon. No, your only chance is as a drunken blurred out face in a carefully edited police video, living proof that you, me and 60 million others can’t have a good time without jeopardising the fabric of society. Or you’re murdered by some fiendishly clever vicar getting even for some long forgotten ecclesiastical parking violation. In reality none of this will ever happen to you so why watch it? You may though find yourself strangely attracted to shopping at Asda, buying Weetabix and a Peugeot 305. That will happen to you.

Do cows flirt?

To clear up any confusion I’m talking about the four-legged moo type. Can any farmer out there write in to confirm my suspicions, because I think they do. I’m walking in the country. A field, some cows. The majority are far off occupied in the many stages of digesting, but maybe one is by the fence ruminating on less tangible things. She glances my way; our eyes meet. This is not a blank gaze; not some dumb animal stare at an incomprehensible object, this is soul to soul; an M&S look. She looks and looks away. Maybe she moves her head, angles it and looks again. I mirror and return. We say nothing; there is nothing to say. I smile with my eye and she, unblinking, accepts it feeling no automatic need to return it. Her eyes wander again but the slow movement of her head shows she is still in relationship, contemplating the timing of her next look. This reoccurs time and again but never breaking off the continuousness of being together. Under her muzzle of hair she blushes slightly. I feel accepted, accepted by an un-human presence, a presence far more gentle than my own frantic humanity. I am calmed. She eats some grass and returns to our conversation of looks. I enter her world with gratitude; a much simpler world of standing, eating and producing methane. Where standing is enough, owning nothing is enough and being used for the farmer’s needs is graciously accepted. That rain on a wet back just is. That now is enough. I thank her for our brief affair and walk on. So yes, cows flirt, beautifully. If you take the time.

Don't be unfair to brains.

I’ve heard if you ask Google to google Google you’ll bring down the Internet. I don’t think it’s true. You’ll probably just get Google. Maybe if you asked, ‘What is the last decimal digit of pi?’ because pi has an infinitely long number of decimal places. It’s the sort of number that just can’t make its mind up. That’s why it’s called an irrational number. It’s like, “Oh a bit more than that, OK, now a touch less, ah but more than, yes but just a tweak less” and so on. And on. Google may, in the twink of an electrons heartbeat, deduce the first hundred, two twinks for two hundred and so on, and in fifty years it would still be churning out digits. It takes a long time to do the impossible. So why do we set our brain to solve imponderable, impossible problems. It’s fabulously capable but that’s just nasty. Yet every day we wonder, “Should I have...? Could I be…? Will it be OK when…? What will happen if…? Why do they…?”
They’re all questions that could bring down the Internet. There is no answer. Google might just manage an error message, “Can’t cope. Question impossible!” before it fizzles into digital oblivion. Unfortunately your brain won’t provide you with a simple error message, unless you count sleepless nights, headaches, hair falling out and forgetting where you are. So stop it! Stop asking your brain impossible questions; you’ll melt the poor thing. Evolution has only designed it to make sense of your senses, i.e. see lion > vacate area > move legs rapidly, that sort of thing. Simple question, der,der,der, simple answer. ‘Txich. Simple’, as the meerkat says.
So next time you find yourself asking your brain to solve an impossible question, don’t! Ask it any number of simple, tangible questions to get you closer to what you want. It’ll answer them all without breaking sweat. It really is ‘Txich, that simple.’
Try googling Csikszentmihalyi on ‘Flow.’ It won’t bring the internet down though his name does resemble decimal pi.

More anger please.

Bankers pay themselves £6 billion in bonuses. The X Factor audience is herded into the simplistic emotions of cattle. The cynical make jokes. Politicians learn to be unanswerable and the public learn that critical thinking is useless. And no one gets angry. Each adult, be they destitute, student, single parent or struggling newlywed will pay several hundred pounds towards bankers earning millions. And no one gets angry. Pensioners who fought in the war and created the countries capital over half a century are left to freeze, and no one gets angry. Youngsters have no prospects other than to mortgage themselves in higher education. And no one gets angry.
I don’t have a dream, I just have an anger for the stupidity of the thoughtless masses who have been bribed by flat screen TVs to be quiet and sit in stupor on their couches. No great dream of emancipation or freedom, because dreams have become centred on much lesser things sold to us on catch phrases and fake pictures.
“Wow Stiffdog, I don’t think the public want to hear this, it will hurt our readership. It’s pointless! Make it more emotional, more personal.” Wuff, OK.
Last night this old woman shit herself because she was so cold she couldn’t get out of the chair and didn’t have any money for the gas meter. And a man beat his wife up because he was scared he couldn’t pay the bills. Or these kids who got so smashed on cheap alcohol one died and the others beat a father of two senseless. How’s that?
“No, it has to be more cheerful.” Wuff, OK.
Everything is fine, but some people are acting stupid. Better?
“Just cut the last bit.” Wuff, OK.
Everything's fine. "Excellent." Wuff.

Photoshop me.

Is it really true Britney Spears is a dog? Well you never know. Use the Lasso tool to replace fur with skin, dodge out the tail and numerous nipples, elongate the paws, re-shape various parts and ….. Beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder or the beheld, it’s the province of the Photoshop artist. With over 90% of all celeb pictures ‘improved’ to some unattainable perfection are our impressionable youngsters being depressed, caught up in their own personal blemishes? Cut to Nick in ‘Come Dine With Me’. Nick is a social disaster. He dominates the conversation with stories of his own self-involvement. He is one of those nice people you would, for some unaccountable reason, like to murder. And, presumable because no one has taken a knife to him yet, is blissfully unaware of his shortcomings. So are we impressionable or blissfully unaware? At this point I have a terrible self-realisation. I’ve been Photoshop-ing myself since my dawn of self-awareness. I have various points I am happy to expose and others, though clear for you to see, are in my eyes airbrushed out. I’m imagining Britney Spears with beautiful eyes and breasts and a backside the size of a small town. To the observer this is an unfortunate combination but to me as Britney, if you see what I mean, everything’s fine. This is my cherished self-Photoshopped concotion of me, and like Nick I’m not going to let it go without a fight, because “it’s true God damn it!” So should we ban Photoshop to save our children? Or is it good to have something out there that constantly reminds us there is a reality hidden underneath our doctored imaginings?

Exams eh.

Aren’t exams stupid eh? It’s like someone who knows loads but gets stressed does poorly and dumbo does well because he’s chilled. I mean how fair is that? They’re like really, really stupid and should be banned. Of course in real life it’s not what you know, it’s what you can deliver under stress that counts but anyway ditch exams. Much better is course work. When you’re judged on course work it’s a completely different story. No stress see. No, you take it home and get parental help. In fact as a parent I did some of my best work getting my son a GCSE. And he wasn’t stressed. In fact he didn’t do much at all. So course work favours students with eager, intelligent parents, which isn’t a lot of use to students when they go away to university. I know, continual assessment. That should do it. Students are assessed week by week on every small element of their subject by teachers who see tick boxes in their sleep. This week we’re completely focused on subject x, level y, section z. By Friday everyone can do it, wahhoo, end of. Of course by the end of next week spent focusing on q, p and r, only a small percentage has any recollection of x, y, z, and by the end of the year they’re only really good at what they did the last week of term. So that’s not too good either. No, what we need is a way of testing students on their long term knowledge and understanding of their subject that they can deliver under the stress of normal life. How about an exam? Yeh exams, they’re like a really good idea.

All your iTunes in one basket.

Ipods and iStore are great. They appear to sell you stuff, that you then appear to own. Imagine then a burglar creeping into your home one night and stealing your CD collection. Not nice. You appeared to own it and now it’s gone. Funny thing, appearances. At least the law, if it was enforced, would be on your side. But if your computer crashes, which is not unheard of, your CD collection is gone just the same. Or put another way, you wouldn’t buy CDs that would only play on one player thinking, quite rightly, if that player broke I’d be sunk. It’s called ‘bottleneck’ marketing or elasticated selling. To combat the publics refusal to recognise that to create and record music actually costs money iTunes have created intellectual property that will always in the end return to its owner like a well trained dog. You’re left with the temporary privilege of owning it for a short while like enticing said dog with a 70p morsel each time. Now I’m not against feeding dogs and cats but I do like permanent ownership of the things I’ve bought. There are three morals here. 1/ back up your iTunes collection onto DVD or such like, or 2/ buy CDs and 3/ lock yourself in at night with a big dog.

X Factor.

As the X Factor logo yet again falls to Earth like some hapless alien spaceship I experience emotions I haven’t felt since the last time I needed a pee and couldn’t get upstairs in time. In Dubai the dirty snorts of Alice the camel, not Alistair Campbell as I first heard, stole the show as Danny and Sis axed the girls. Stacy’s impersonation of Catherine Tate goes down a storm, ‘let’s hear it for Essex Stace!’, as does Welsh girl and the one who’s hair has unaccountably slid to one side. The judges begin their “you will, you won’t” summing up which is like enticing baby mice to play under a guillotine. Joy and misery unbounded, truly reminiscent of getting to the loo in time. Or not. Walsh, Cole and Cowell follow flailing like Attila the Hum in MFI’s kitchen department laying waste to dishwashers. It will ‘kill’ Eathan, Dwain will return to north London to become a victim of knife crime, Candy Rain, if they hadn’t got through, would have continued to take off, their cloths, aesthetically. Jamie will come back minus afro; no one wins X factor looking like a recently shampooed dog, and John and Eric will prove that factor X is based on pure loathing and be voted off by a hail of bullets from the cast of The Wire. Stiffmouse will not be competing due to being genetically incapable of cueing, emoting and having the unbridaled confidence to believe one could be bigger than, well everybody in the entire history of recorded music. Remember every day can change your life; you don’t need to be standing in front of Simon Cowell.

You know this already.

OK. Back. See FlashForward last night? Everybody in the world blacks out and falls over for two minutes and dreams of next April 10th. The world of inanimate objects takes over and many things crash into other things being devoid of pilots, drivers and general bounciness. Which raises a serious design issue; should we be building in far more bounciness into our products. I mean trees sway, frogs jump, salmon leap and even elephants dump about and rebound off each other. But you can’t play squash with an iPod or let a 747 loose on its own without it trashing itself against a building. Unfortunately nothing was made of this important aspect in a supposedly cutting edge drama even though it will require three series and eighteen episodes to cover the same story line as a single 45 minute Doctor Who. Because Americans can spin things out like Rapunzle. Why? Because it takes on average a $2million advertising budget to insert a two word phrase into the American consciousness enough for them to physically respond. So it’s important that the two words thus implanted should cover as much product as possible. That plus in the time it takes to switch a machine on and off again it’ll have produced 10,000 of whatever you asked it to make. So anyway FlashForward is equivalent to reading the last two pages of a book first. You know the denouement, you just don’t know how the book got to it. Except a caught on CCTV man in black, unrecognisable as they always are…I hope I’m not spoiling it for you… is seen walking about during this two minutes silence. Which as everyone knows is just not on. I’m guessing the story will unravel like Lost and the audience, if not lost along the way themselves, will find in the final episode what they knew at the beginning and thus be non the wiser but considerably older. So there we have it, the subtext of TV. It will make you older but no wiser. But I guess you knew that already.

Where’s Bush?

Do you want to know, really, do you really want to know, I mean really? Well when I interviewed him recently for CWBNTV he was depressed. What does the most powerful man in the world do once his kryptonite is exhausted? “Doggy,” he would say, (I ignored the pejorative term) “there was so much more I could have done you know given the time.” I pressed him. (he liked that) “Well nuke Iran for a start. And North Vietnam. OK we learnt a lot about suppression from that guy but he never buys from us, you know. We got the best nukes and we need to show him that. Health care. No strategy. Should be ‘spend your money on useless snake oil and then you die.’ I mean what use are cures? You just last longer as a burden on everybody. No, the only good drugs are illegal. 1/ they make you dumb, 2/ better profits than our inflated pharmaceuticals, and 3/ you die. Bingo, perfect. What else? Democracy. Would have loved to have moved more towards the Chinese model.” And what about the financial crisis? “Wow yeh, never saw that coming. But Barack, or is it Borat, well anyway, he’s your man. Chose him well.’ You mean the American people? “Hell no.” You mean the Republicans!? “No, us…” “Time for your tea Sir. I think you should stop talking to this dog.”

How the world turns- bad.

Being a developed county we, here in the UK, want to give aid to those less fortunate countries containing black people. We are noble and they are poor, but you don’t need to be Einstein to realise you can’t turn a profit from poor people. One, they have no money and two, they would only spend it on enjoying themselves eating and such like. And lets face it we need the money too. So aid must never ever go anywhere near poor people. Luckily though politicians are not poor, they just have to appear compassionate. So Tony Blair whilst in No 10 fulfils his agreed aid commitment by giving x million to Ugandistan. Well the politicians in Ugandistan are equally aware that squandering money on the poor would only lead to education, higher aspirations, and ultimately rioting. And who wants their people to suffer in that way. No, they must keep the peace and what better way than buying armaments. Which the UK government will be happy to supply for, don’t tell me, x million. Tony contacts BAE Systems, or maybe it was the other way round. “Yes, we’ve got some obsolete military air traffic control equipment. Been trying to sell it for years.” Tony contacts Ugandistan, “Lucky for you we just happen to have a state of the art military ATC system.” “Tony, I know we said military but, you know, it can’t be seen to be ...” “No problemo, say it’s civil, improved infrastructure, tourism, that sort of thing. It's not suitable but no one will know.” “And what about, you know, er encouragements?” “You’re new at this aren’t you. No, simple. We just overcharge you. BAE gets extra profits and you keep the difference. Couldn’t be simpler. We get our money back, you get well, encouraged, and we both look good.” “Ah Tony, no wonder England is a great country.” Wuff.
“So what do you think?” “Too serious.”
"Wuff."

Stiffdog joins team.

Whilst jaunting down the Eccelsall Road and popping into ‘Help the Aged’ with my wonderful wife, as we do after buying fresh fish, our prairs were answered. Meet Stiffdog. No more temps, thank God. Stiffdog who is fluffy but extra stiff will be doing in depth reporting of World News and insider dog views on the Stiffmouse Corporation. Please note that his reports may contain the odd Wuff as stipulated in his terms of employment. So welcome Stiffdog, we look forward to your contributions. “Wuff.”

Next 2.

Marxism. Ah vot a vunderful fellow was Carl Marx. Vis his yodelling unt slapping and his treatise on dialectical socialism. It alvays amazes me he had time to open up so many branches of M&S vialst writing for the Rheinische Zeitung. I remember the many happy eveninks we spent toiling over Hegel and his erotic antelope collection. “Next.”

Next.

Good morning boys and girls! And especially you boyz, txich, know what I mean? I mean Meerkats, aren’t they wonderful! I mean what is it with straight guys, ‘der, der, oil filter, der..’, ‘yeh, special tool, der, der, sump plug.’ Call that conversation! Yesterday (true) this guy said his car was off the road because its conveyer belt was loose. Darling, unless your car is half a mile long and lives underground it does not have a conveyer belt! Wake up, smell the bitch! Honestly. You would not find a Meerkat slumped under a Ford Mondeo with a spanner squeaking about the price of spares. They’re upright, alert, sniffing the breeze, always ready for.. And another thing. Stop calling genitalia after car parts, it’s demeaning. Where was I? No Meerkats are always erect, ready to play. Boing, boing, hump; it takes but a moment. But no, all that intelligence lost in old cloths and central heating. You can’t fuck a boiler! How many times do you need telling! Today I’m wearing a paisley head scarf, black T shirt (always fashionable), a loose red neckerchief and leathers. Oh and sandals, no socks, Ever! Nails red, black eye liner. That is intelligence put to good use. And pose! Pose, pose, pose, pose pose. What on earth is the use of a good body if you don’t position it correctly? And look at those eyes, dead darling!. Where’s the life, the fire, the come up and see me sometime? Forget Comparethemarket.com, compare your Meerkat. “Where did you get this guy?” “America’s next top model.” “Right. Next!”

Ausi Sun journo temps.

Poms deceived! Photos sexed up! Mouse not stiff and never did shake hands with Hitler. The Sun can now reveal the truth about Stiffmouse. It was all a hoax. Stiffmouse would have been 6 months old in 1944 when he allegedly had a homosexual romp with the leader of the Third Reich. Not so says Bishop Nisbet of Wolverhampton, “Apart from the obvious cultural difference Stiffmouse was still being breast fed in Manchester at the time and Hitler was in.. (deleted word; too long).” John Punis, our man in Scunthorpe also observed, “I think this rules him out as being the possible true identity of Jack the Ripper.” Surely though this shadowy character must have a murky past. Why when we know so much about the Rolling Stones and the Beatles do we know nothing of their contemporary? Someone who’s been off the radar for over 60 years must have something to hide. “Under the radar.” “What?” “We say under the radar. You don’t say ‘Down off’ in Australia do you, you say Down Under.” “Oh go screw yourself you pomy bastard. No in Australia we say Fuck off. Who’s writing this!” “What about mentioning Diana.” “Good one.” So where was Stiffmouse the night Diana died? The short answer is no one knows. 9/11, Lockerbie, is he in Afganistan, was his mother a Nazi or Church of England??? No one knows.

Stiffmouse is not dead.

There has lately been much talk about the possible Photoshop manipulation of Stiffmouse on scooter, which has led to rumours of possible deceasement. Not true, though Stiffmouse Inc. have admitted to some use of Speed Blur and the oft-used ‘Age Regression’ function. It is though true that Stiffmouse is a nom de plume for the original writer who, for contractual reasons is no longer involved. As a result this blog is now ghost written by a fan with in-depth knowledge of Stiffmouse’s original style and content. Who is currently on holiday in Wales. The staff writer tasked to fill in during this holiday period is ill and a freelancer was called in at short notice. Though happy to write under the name of Stiffmouse she unfortunately looked nothing like the photo and was excluded due to her links with BMW. A second freelancer refused as the large fee involved would have moved him into a disadvantageous tax bracket. A third was a Church of England Thatcherite conservative. Until this situation can be resolved Stiffmouse Inc. apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Human specialisation.

I sometimes worry that the human race has a rather elevated view of itself. Our specialism seems to be being able to solve problems only we create. Other animals seem happy to not generate them in the first place. And they have more useful specialisms of their own. Giraffes can pick things off the top shelves at B&Q, Hippos can carry three bags of organic peat-free compost (buy 2, get 1 free), to the checkout, though their teeth perforate the bags and make a mess on the floor, which ants can build complete civilisations in. No, the ability to just clear up one’s own mess is nothing to brag about. Carrot flies for example, presumably with noses the size of, well a carrot fly’s nose, can smell carrots from 7 miles away. That’s olfactory Olympics with Usain Bolt beaten by a diminutive pigmy dwarf. But. Isn’t there always a but. It can only fly 10 inches off the ground. I don’t know why, perhaps it gets dizzy. So it has to find a route across 7 miles containing no obstacles higher than 9.998” in the way. It probably begins on Tuesday flying round the clock lured by the promise of a meal the size of the Empire State Building. Round, through, over, under; hour after hour it weaves its way nearer and nearer our carrots. At the end of this mammoth journey it reaches its destination. And this is where our human specialism comes in. We grow our carrots in 18” high pots. Bugger!

Alcohol. What?

Alcohol doesn’t work for me anymore. Age. The romasomes in my brain have had it. So I’m not only perplexed I’m envious of the younger generation’s love affair with it. When I was young I used to play on the roundabouts in the park to get dizzy. The up and down five man horsie thing that would sling you off, break your arm and grind your leg to a pulp in its levers. Subtle techniques for getting as much air as possible under the other person’s bum on a seesaw. Not only fun, you learnt a lot about centrifugal force, momentum and bandaging. But nowadays fun’s not about bodily dismemberment it’s about mental impairment, about having good times you can’t remember. At least I’ve got the scars. Now it’s, “Good time?” “Dude it was so good I don’t know where I went, who I was with, I didn’t know where I was in the morning and, er, Dude, what’s my name again?” “Man don’t you remember, it’s Dude man, Dude.” “Thanks Dude.” Will their memories be working all week in a dead end job waiting for the weekend when absolutely NOTHING happened? But no. Mobile phones to the rescue. Writing this has made me realise why they take endless photos of faces pulling faces. “Oh look, I was at Plug with you and Sophie and that bloke who took his trousers down and sang the punk version of God save the Queen. So that’s where I was. Mental.” It will be a bitter moment when their hard drive goes down and their memories with it. “What did you do when you were young daddy?” “I, er, I… What’s your name again?”

Student loans, tomorrow's money

Being of a certain age I’m into saving. Saving is where you still have money now that you earned in the past. As everyone’s aware HP and credit allows one to spend money now that one will earn in the future, if one isn't unemployed, made redundant, injured, depressed or otherwise retired. I’m thinking this use of ‘future money’ is catching on. Take student loans. The government would have to spend mills on the 20% unemployed youth but no. Get them to spend their own future money to upkeep themselves in further education, thus supporting the alcohol industry, landlords, the construction industry (to build unis) and lecturers. Bingo, savings and a massive cash injection into our current economy to boot. What a wheeze, and they’re too young to realise. And the recent economic collapse. Our future money is being used to fund current capitalism. So what other wheezes are available? You want to live in a free society? So take out a ‘Citizens Security Loan’ to pay for your anti-terrorism and policing needs that you can pay back, interest free, out of your future earnings over the next ten years. Ditto NHS, infrastructure projects, primary and secondary education. Forget public private partnerships; fund all current spending by introducing loans on everyone’s future income. It’s a good job nobody reads this blog!

Grunting's back in fashion

Two things I notice about writing these days, especially writing aimed at the internet savvy younger generation (Guardian Guide). One, spelling must be creative so that search engines can find your ‘Phrustration’ or ‘Sonix Masterpeace’ in amongst the dross of real words, and two, style is so much more important than content that content, if perceivable at all, appears as a diffusion seen through layers of frosted glass. Record reviewers assuming you already know the material in this instant age feel free to simply associate it with their favourite vegetable and what they had for breakfast. ‘Left Field’ is no longer an inventive move down the sideline; it’s gone behind the stands into the stadium car park and is fast approaching the old deli two blocks away. I can’t say personally I remember the advent of language but I imagine it began with idiosyncratic grunts. Over time we humans made agreements as to what our sounds meant. We devised ways to write them down, agreed spellings and syntax. It was a long process. Yet as we approach the old deli at the end of time we’re falling back into that old idiosyncrasy. A typical review might read- “This is like pebbles weeping. Like those Sundays when all the dogs bark in unison and the city’s late for lunch. When carrots are inspired by, well other carrots.” Add personalised spelling, “Sundaze excepshonal karots inspirify otha karots”, reduce for texting, “Sundaz krts insp o krts” and pretty soon we’ll be faced with “sxt t grfb a 4 actv8 ll snozrs.”
Have we become terminally lazy, incurably self involved or simply lost the need to communicate? Or are we suffering from Qwertyfication? If we assume all the people with broadband already know everything and the future has already happened since we last looked then I guess there’s no need to communicate. Grunt.

Our cat, Chopin.

My cat doesn’t watch television. How stupid is that! I mean it’s the moving picture I spent my childhood with and grown to love like a mother. I’m not concerned about the content, I just need to know she’s there for me. Test card, fish tank, I don’t mind. Most of what I watch was made before I was born anyway in a far away country founded by disaffected puritans who couldn’t cope with English eccentricity. Compare for a moment good old American Apple pie with the English variety filled with singing blackbirds. But mum is apple pie, totally sweet and undemanding, endless fun to eat and eat.
So there I will be, 30 years on still watching Friends. Jennifer Anniston has grandchildren, Joey’s gone to HIV, Chandler’s retired as VP of Weeners and Monica’s put all that weight back on. So sad. But I’m fine. I’ve forgotten how to tie my shoelaces but that’s OK, I can’t get up anyway. And the cat’s leart to play the piano.

The Prince of Micro-crime.

My good friend who, to protect his, or her, identity I’ll call John, is indisputably the Prince of micro-crime. Where unscrupulous city types steal with impunity, bullion robbers and aging Nazis remain at large in Bolivia, John will be pleasing Her Majesty for the merest indiscretion. No crime is too small for John to feel the long arm of the law. It’s as if he emits a high pitched whistle that only passing policemen can hear or uses flypaper chemicals as a deodorant. Plod is on the spot every time. A midnight relief in a secluded car park and Plod is there, lurking like some predatory paedophile. Littering, walking in an unpredictable manner, parking with a permit improperly displayed, they’re all there on his crime sheet. A misunderstanding in a French bar and Inspector Ploodoe introduces an international dimension to this life of micro-crime. It seems, as we pass more and more anti discrimination laws, there’s only one group left to pick on, the criminally irreverent. I can only conclude these gentle sweet souls are such a pleasure to arrest. Their indiscretions are so straightforward, there’s no verbal or physical abuse, in fact they are positively amusing, a rare delight in a life drained by dealing with endless devious despicables. So here’s to John who has brought a little ray of sunshine to all the numerous policemen who’ve arrested him with his rare wit and intelligence.

Therapy and Swine Flu

My wife recently had swine flu. For twelve days her body just said ‘no’, and more importantly so did her brain. ‘Do you, Brain, want to make a shopping list, work on my project, even do a jigsaw puzzle?’ All calls for cognition were met with ‘no’. No question, no debate, no ‘OK I’ll try’, just nietto, non, no. Maybe swine flu is so called because it makes you think like a pig. I’m not being derogatory, I respect pigs, they’re very intelligent, but they are warned at birth by their mothers about the dangers of thinking. Give a pig a jigsaw puzzle, it will eat it, a newspaper, a ten pound note, a plane ticket to Los Palmas, it will eat them. They learn one word, oink, and that’s it. They refuse to read books, they eat them, and they don’t do politics, though there is some debate about that, art or furniture design. Their brain is free to permanently muse in some whimsical candyfloss hinterland without the hint of aspiration. Happiness requires only food and suitable conditions for complete relaxation. This was my wife’s experience. The result was profound. Ten short days of freedom from mental clockwork, ten short days discovering the wonder of simply being.
In fact bring on the pandemic, the human race needs it! But think of the consequences for world governments! This is financial meltdown! Whatever.’ Have you read my report? ‘No but it tasted good.’ You got 1% in your exam! Explain. ‘Oink.’
No wonder they’re rushing out that vaccine. (which apparently contains mercury by the way)

Threesome in a chip shop.

Walking on Woodseats still weak from a viscous bout of man-flu I glance in. Two women in white T-shirts and pinnies cleaning down the fish fryers, tattling now the queue’s gone. A strangely humorous idea, a threesome in a chip shop. The dangers of bare bottom backing into hot stainless, wild lunges dislodging the mushy peas, one’s dangling part dangling in … or caught in … Multiple layers of incongruity. But there are positives. It’s hot, sweaty with liberal quantities of warm chip fat on hand. There may even be a place for salt and pepper, no vinegar. Yes slippery condimented bodies. But then. Pretty soon one wouldn’t be able to get a meaningful grip on anything, even the things one wanted to, not even stand up, be reduced to slithering about on the floor. An old lady would comment through the steamy window, “Well I never knew cod were that big. Must be right fresh though.” Sensuous sex is reduced to a fight for slithering survival, and as the earnest endeavour for sexual gratification fades into futility they begin to laugh. “Ee Margaret you look set to swim’t channel.” “aven’t been this lathered since week in’t Costa del Sol.” I walk on. Some day’s life seems just brimming over with humour. Not the mundane reality but the endless embroidery of it. I’ve often been in that chip shop queuing for fish, chips and curry sauce but I never imagined what they got up to once the fat cooled down.

Making demand and supply.

Roosevelt warned of the military/industrial complex. Supply the army and get rich, simple. But of course there needs to be a war every so often to run down stocks. That’s not too difficult either when the Crooks In Administration also appreciate the benefits. OK that’s old news, just don’t talk peace in the US or some lone gunman will insist you joint JFK, BK, MLK and JL in heaven. Fine as far as it goes but what about the pharmaceutical industry? They’re like “We’re being left out in the cold here”, “OK so start your own war.” “How can we do that?” “Simple, start a pandemic and sell people the vaccine.” Wouldn’t that be a good wheeze! “But that’s …!”
“No, you’re not getting it. To join the complex you need to train your brain in a particular way of thinking we learnt from the mob, ‘Make the world an offer it can’t refuse.’”

I want M&S government.

I want M&S government. It’s not just ‘it’s not just…’, it’s more than that. I’m thinking food rather than wooden slacks and white shirts tailored for a court appearance. M&S food is aspirational. If I bought their food and cooked it to a cinder I would feel I’ve let the side down where a Netto pizza in the same state would hardly raise my emotional eyebrow. No I stand erect in M&S like a retired guardsman, defender of the realm. Compare that with buying a second hand car. I know they’ve bought an auction banger and polished it to within an inch of its life, put cornflower in the oil to thicken it up, had virgins sitting in it overnight so it smells nice and carefully painted the tread pattern on the tyres. I know if I bought it I’d be better off taking it straight to a garage to save the hassle of breaking down in the middle of nowhere; but it’s shiny and the man is ever so nice and tells me just what I want to hear. I even begin to feel sympathy for his ailing mother in law. In fact he’s so nice I somehow feel a ridiculous need to constantly check the presence of my wallet. And when he says he’ll clamp my car for parking on his forecourt if I don’t sign a 12 page HP agreement I somehow feel in a hostile environment. And even he doesn’t ask me to take a CRB check! “I’m sorry sir but I can’t allow you to buy this car in case you take young children out in it. We all know what that can lead to don’t we sir. Filthy rummaging about in knickers, undoing one’s….” Stop!! However I fight it I feel my mind following his drift from nobility to squalidity, decency to deception. So like my citizenship I walk away, my vote in my pocket, owning neither car nor my rightful place in society. If only M&S sold cars and did government. I might feel proud to be British again.

Erectile dysfunction and football

Erectile dysfunction is not the inability of teenagers to get up in a morning; it’s having a permanently wobbly weewee. In this respect, as my mouse will tell you, stiffness is a virtue. The answer is simple. You’re not being rude enough! It reminds me of football. The hundreds of hours of a weekend’s games are reduced to an hour on Match of the day; only the cream of the highest highlights get through with roughly a goal every 15 seconds. That’s like condensing my adult sex life into a minute and a half. My juvenile sex life would last about as near as scientists have got to the Big Bang, i.e. milliseconds, which is a lot nearer than I got! My point being? Yes it’s the brain again. Sex is not a brain thing, that’s why teenagers don’t have a problem. When one is polishing one’s Pope one doesn’t think of ‘the usual’ with some lardy slag with tits drooping out of the bottom of her jersey, no, one is swimming in the heights of exotica with the likes of Britney Spears. There it is on tap 24/7, the brain’s equivalent of sex on a stick. And reality? Really, am I going to score a goal like Rooney this side of ever? No. My highlights consist of kicking a wayward ball back to its owner and reasonably successfully tackling a dog. I’m an abject failure and that’s the truth. No, the truth is I’m not seeing the funny side, I’m not being rude boy. Forget having a rubber mallet, forget getting a result, that’s Man U’s problem. Slap her with a kipper and do the naked wobbly willy dance. Works every time.

If Hitler had done stand-up.

Laughter’s a funny thing. I mean if Hitler had done stand up… Can you imagine shooting a comedian? It’d be like strangling a puppy in public, nasty. So why do we send in armies covered in guns to trouble spots? That’s just asking for them to be shot at. Like trying to put out a fire with petrol. No, we should send massed ranks of comedians, the Clown Light Infantry trained in falling over and ‘bunch of flowers.’ That would teach the Taliban a thing or two. You got a gun; well that’s no match for my squeaky red nose fella. Take that- squeek! “But you are filthy western scum.” Time for the banana skin. Oops! “Das ist silly.” (sorry wrong accent) “No, here try one. Just put it on the ground and…” Aaahh! “Oooh I falled on my AK47. No don’t tickle me. No no. Allah save me from this merriment!” Voice of Allah- “Chill my brother. Does not the Koran say ‘have a good time all of the time’? Why not tell him the one about the Afgan, Iraqi and the Iranian walking into a pub.” And so on.
Being serious is a gambit of the ego to attract power to itself. Being funny is the opposite. That’s why really intelligent people choose stand-up over politics. But then of course there’s George W Bush who was so stupid he managed to combine the two.

Singing mice and politics.

32,000 feet aboard one of earths many thousand atmospheric fan heaters. Disregarding the fact a19th century espaduro (we’re over Spain) would consider me an alien in a space craft and worship me for ever my mp3 player is barely audible. Normally max volume is perfectly capable of giving me tinnitus but now it’s no louder than a mouse squeak. In fact I’m beginning to see a little mouse family scampering over hi hats and synths, little mouse mother stretched on a mouse rack squealing, sorry singing like a trapped er, mouse. Der silly, it’s the jet engines drowning out the music. Well no actually. Yes there is lots of noise and yes that’s the cause but it’s not drowning the music out, I can hear it fine. The cause is that my brain having adjusted to the high level of noise ‘thinks’ the music is quiet by comparison. I have in effect turned the volume down in my head. All our senses do this. A drink may appear refreshingly cool on a hot day and hot if we’ve just walked in from the frozen north. In fact none of our perceptions are absolute, they’re just reactions to whatever ambient we happen to have adjusted to. So don’t be mean to politicians that talk rubbish and think they’re important, they’ve just adjusted to the ambience of politics. They can’t help it.

Happy reading

It costs £49.99 to fit a new headlight bulb in a Renault Scenic. Apparently you have to take the engine out. Designing in CAD obviously doesn’t take into account the human finger has a finite thickness. But then few of us realise the unholy mess the inside of our computer is in, which I guess brings me to the object of this blog. My brain is buggy. Having studied psychotherapy for several years this is my main conclusion. I really shouldn’t believe it and I should definitely never be trusted. So this blog is dedicated to proving your cherished organ of sensibility is in dire need of a clean install. Happy reading.