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!