Survival of the Fattest

Question:

Two men (or women, but I feel safer saying it's men because I'm not stupid) are lost in the wilderness. There is plenty of water but no food.

Both are six feet tall, same build, but one is 12 stone and the other is 30 stone.

How much longer would the fat man take to starve to death?

That's assuming he doesn't eat the thin man.

I know the thin man could kill the fat man in his sleep by smothering him with branches from a tree and stuffing clumps of earth in his mouth and live for much longer by eating the fat man and then drying out strips of his flesh and hanging them off his belt for later, like Bear Grylls no doubt would. But let's assume they don't eat each other. Would the thin man starve much sooner than the fat man?

Subsidiary question, if they didn't eat each other, walking out of the wilderness, would the thin man get further because he had less weight to carry and could keep going longer, or would the fat man get further because he had all that lard to feed off to keep him going?

I think the fat man would, for sure. And that's why, if I was in that situation as the thin man, I would definitely kill the fat man and eat him. If I could get a fire going. Barbecue mainly.

Or just eat him raw, the fat bastard.

Basically, thin man, fat man, who survives?

Unless they stumbled across a woman with enormous tits, then maybe they would both survive.

There are always variables.

I need a rethink of this question. It's difficult being a scientist like me.

Anyway, I need more drink. Laters...

Father Christmas

About a dozen years ago, an old mate of mine approached me while I sat at the bar in my local and asked me if I could do him a favour. This guy, Des, was always involved in local community projects, like driving a school bus taking kiddies on outings, or organising bingo nights for elderly folk in a nearby hall. I’d previously helped him out lugging tables into the street for some royal celebration or other and had also stood in for him as bingo caller – luckily knowing my two fat ladies from my key of the door and all the other bingo banter having grown up with it on seaside holidays – and I expected this favour to be something similar.

“It’s the kids' Christmas party on Saturday,” he said. “I can’t be there this year because…” here he gave me some reason which, with the mists of time, I now can’t remember. “So could you stand in for me as Father Christmas?”

Well, my gut reaction was no bloody way am I dressing up as Father Christmas, as I instantly felt embarrassed just thinking about it. I can get up in a pub full of strangers and sing them a song and I have done so many a time when it wasn’t even karaoke night and have performed on open mic nights to crowds almost entirely comprised of singers and musicians. I have also been known to hold the attention of groups of people, regaling them with a flow of jokes and stories and having them rolling in the aisles, but being the man in red was a performance of an entirely different kind.

Singing and tale telling aside, which I love and feel in complete control of, I can be extremely self-conscious when put on the spot. I started to shake my head and pull that “I’d like to help, but” face, only Des wasn’t going to be put off so easily. Before a decent excuse had even come to mind, he hit me with a guilt trip.

“I don’t know anyone else I can ask to do it,” he said, a hang-dog expression appearing on his kindly face. “If you don’t step in, I think we’ll be forced to cancel the party.” I was about to say I was sorry but I couldn’t help when he nailed me with, “The kids are going to be really disappointed.”

I was trapped. Butterflies already in my stomach, even though Saturday was still several days away, and with serious misgivings, I caved in and agreed to do it. He beamed at my positive response, bought me a thank you pint and then quickly disappeared before I could change my mind. I sat there staring at my free pint, groaning inside and knowing full well I had just been manipulated and thought to myself what a nice chap Des was and also what a crafty bastard.

Saturday arrived with indecent haste in my opinion and as I awaited my 2 pm appointment at the kid’s Christmas beano, my stomach was turning loops. I paced about my flat all morning, going from room to room for no other reason than the nervous ants in my pants and at one point, I became so anxious, I found myself hanging over the bathroom sink retching. Luckily I’d been in too much of a state all morning to eat anything, so all I lost was a cup of tea and an indigestion tablet.

With thirty minutes to go, I washed my face and brushed my teeth for the third time and headed off to the hall. A couple of ladies were waiting for me at the door and before any of the kids could spot me, they ushered me to a downstairs loo, handed me my costume and left me to change and prepare for my “jolly” entrance.

My Father Christmas outfit must have been the cheapest one in the fancy dress shop and the red nylon crackled with electricity as I tried to pull it on. I got my right leg into the flimsy trousers, but as I hopped on one foot and attempted to insert the left, disaster struck and the crotch split wide open. Already a bundle of nerves, this wardrobe malfunction was all I needed.

There was only one option, so I reversed the pants and put them on back to front. The suit jacket was just long enough to cover the rip and I figured, if I didn’t bend over too far, the children wouldn’t get a tell-tale glimpse of my blue jeans. Finally, fitting the equally cheap, itchy beard into place with its attendant elastic, I perched the red hat on my head and I was ready to go.

For a few moments, I stood and took long slow breaths to calm myself down and looked myself over in the mirror. The Father Christmas who stared back at me looked more like a down and out than the man of myth, but he was going to have to do and with one last deep breath, I opened the door and prepared to meet my audience.

“Yo ho ho, hello children,” I bellowed as I strode into the hall waving cheerfully. The smaller kids turned from their games and their crisps and squash and their little faces lit up with excitement. The older children had expressions that were a good deal more suspicious, but when the organising ladies handed me a sack full of gifts, they swallowed any awkward questions and decided to play along.

The gifts were all wrapped and marked with pink and blue stickers to mark out the girls’ presents from the boys’. As I plonked myself down on a chair in the centre of the hall, I was suddenly surrounded by a sea of expectant faces and as I reached into the sack to begin the gift giving, assailed by a good few squeals of delight. There then followed half an hour of the usual have you been good this year banter and paper tearing and kids not wanting what they’d been given, but something someone else had got.

The boys got plasticine or one of those small polystyrene plane kits, the girls, either plastic necklace and brooch sets or a packet of coloured felt tips. By the time the sack was empty, many of the boys were wearing shiny necklaces, while the girls were throwing planes around the room, but each to his own.

The have you been good question reminded me of something my ex wife’s nephew had said one year when his mum had told him Santa wouldn’t come if he was naughty. He thought hard for a moment and then replied, “But I was naughty last year and he still came.” Impeccable logic which made me smile at his cheek.

While this was going on, I’d noticed two teenage girls loitering on the edge of the crowd. They were fourteen or under and I swear they were looking at me with the sort of interest of a pair of Lolita’s, hands on hips, with little secret smiles turning up the corner of their mouths. Eventually one of them caught my attention and asked if they were going to get a gift as well.

“Have you been good girls this year?” I asked, at which they looked at each other, smirking and giggling, before replying that they had indeed been good. At that, for a moment, I forgot to put on my jolly Santa voice and as I handed them their presents, I said, a bit too loudly and ironically, “Yeah, I just bet you have.” That brought more smirking, giggling and knowing looks and I suddenly came over hot and bothered and felt my face flushing as red as my floppy hat.

Finally, it was over. All the gifts were gone and I stood and said my yo ho hos and goodbyes, patting a few tousled heads and reminding them one final time to be good boys and girls. I was almost at the door when one boy, a suspicious look reappearing on his face, suddenly blurted, “That beard isn’t real. I can see the elastic.”

The eagle-eyed kiddie detective had rumbled me at the last second, but the little bugger wasn’t going to outsmart me that easily. “It’s very windy when I’m riding through the sky on my sleigh. This elastic, young man,” I said, giving it a twang, “is what keeps my hat on. It would blow away otherwise.”

He looked doubtful at this explanation, but before any more difficult questions could occur to him and I was forced to tell him that, no, he couldn’t see my sleigh because it was invisible to children, I made good my escape and was back in the downstairs toilet, lighting up the room with blue flashes of static as I stripped off my Father Christmas suit.

I was actually rather proud of myself for overcoming my Santa stage fright and if ever asked to do it again, especially now I have my own genuine white beard, my answer would be: “not a fucking snowball’s chance in hell!”

As for the torn trousers, no one ever mentioned them to me, so I’m guessing the following year they must have thrown caution to the wind and lashed out another £3.99 for a new set.

How Much Does a Soul Weigh?

There are those who claim that, in reality, we are all energy beings. May seem hard to believe when you look at the meat and bone and gristle and tooth enamel that goes into making a person. Those who think we are less like the solid form that we perceive and more like an electrical charge, a creature of spirit, often say that if we could free our minds, we could see this reality as it really is.

Perhaps the latter explains why so many people - poets, shamen, mystics and rock and rollers, in the main - have used opiates, magic mushrooms, peyote cactus and the like, attempting to lift the veil from their eyes, to travel to astral realms or contact the world of spirit. Many would claim they have done just that and - though no drugs were involved - I myself once had an out of body experience* that I am one hundred percent convinced was genuine. Somehow, my essence, my consciousness, my soul if you will, began operating completely independently of my sleeping body and standing looking at my own form lying on the bed was quite a hair-raising experience, I can tell you.

A couple of things got me to thinking about all of this. I’ve been reading a book on quantum mechanics and one of the things that struck me was the following. Those things that we call atoms, tiny as they appear, are actually made up of 99.99 recurring percent of empty space and the author states that if we could remove all of that space, the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube!

That blows my mind because, if all seven billion of us humans could fit into a sugar cube, the hundred and sixty pound guy I see in the mirror would compress down to the size of a single atom, or perhaps less. It seems to me, therefore, that the claim that we are actually energy beings doesn’t seem that far fetched. You, me, all of us, are made up of atoms. Atoms are 99.9999% empty space, which means we are as well.

If we somehow turned off the electrical charge that holds us together, we would dissipate into almost nothing, like a puff of smoke in a gale. I guess the fact that we are glued together by electrical attraction means we are indeed made of energy, whichever way you look at it.

The other thing that got me wondering was something I heard several years ago. The thing I heard stuck with me, but now I can’t remember where I heard it, though I suspect it was one of those end of bulletin throwaway news items that are never followed up on. It concerned a scientist who was carrying out an experiment on people near to death. No idea how he was doing it, nuclear powered scales maybe, but he was weighing dying people shortly before death and then weighing them again as soon as life had flown the coop. What he claimed to have found was that people invariably weighed a tiny fraction less after death than while life remained. I don’t remember the figure now, but it was something like 0.000003 of a gram. Can’t help but wonder if that’s the missing weight of the human soul once it’s departed.

Well, I have drawn no particular conclusions about any of this. Not even sure if I’ve linked it very well, or even explained myself properly, but I offer it up simply as food for thought. I find these things fascinating. They make my head hurt, I admit, but fascinate me nonetheless.

I sincerely hope we survive after death, if for no better reason than I want some of these mysteries cleared up once and for all. Like, if the universe really is infinite, what’s it in? And if it isn’t infinite, where does it stop? Is there a wall? If there’s a wall, what’s on the other side? Like they tell us that it is scientifically impossible to go faster than the speed of light (because at that speed mass would become infinite requiring infinite energy to shift it faster than light) and yet now they say the big bang shot all of the matter out of it’s centre at faster than light speed. Seems they can’t make their minds up. I may not understand any of it, but when it comes to all these science boffins, I’ve come to the conclusion that any guess we make is as good as theirs. Maybe better. For example, I wrote a fantasy novel about twenty five or more years ago and in it I had my hero travelling through what I called the "multiverse". Now, in recent years, physicists have started suggesting that there may indeed be a multiverse. Sorry guys, but I thought of it first and I will be taking you to court any day now for infringing my copywrite. So there.



(*Out of Body Experience elsewhere on this blog). 

Humour

Juxtaposition between the known and the unknown, the safe and the threatening, is almost always the culprit for causing that thing which we call ‘laughter‘. We giggle at sometimes inappropriate moments because of fear, or nervousness, or the simple fact that the injury, loss of face, death, etc, has befallen someone other than ourselves.

 

For example, despite the fact that I adored him, I got an uncontrollable fit of the giggles at my own father’s funeral. I pinched my thigh until my eyes watered and bit the inside of my cheek bloody, but no amount of pain would stop it and seeing my sister’s sweaty face all scarlet and howling only made matters worse. I tried to disguise my laughter, of course, burying my face in my hands and making crying noises, but with my shoulders shaking from mirth, I don’t suppose the other mourners were fooled for a second. No one said anything, but if looks could kill, me and dad would have been cremated together that day.

 

‘Schadenfreude’ is the name our German cousins give the act of finding humour in the misfortunes of others. That may sound callous, even spiteful, but I would suggest one’s laughter is more an expression of relief that the bullet of fate missed us, rather than any genuine pleasure at the other person’s pain.

 

Scientists aren’t sure why laughter is important, but believe it has some deep significance in terms of survival, in just the same way as the fight or flight reflex. What’s more, laughter isn’t confined solely to humans, but is shared with other species. For instance, if a monkey spots what it believes to be a poisonous snake, it will cry an alarm to its compatriots. When, however, it discovers the snake is nothing more threatening than a length of dead creeper, it spontaneously bursts out laughing in relief, as does the rest of the troop. Therefore, when some prankster springs out on us and shouts ‘Boo!’, we don’t laugh because they scared two year’s growth out of us, but because of the realisation a moment later that we are actually safe and unharmed.

 

Another example was filmed in a wildlife documentary on chimpanzees. The head of the troop, something of a bully, had fallen from a tree and hurt his wrist. As he limped along, the chimps behind him were mimicking the limp, but each time he stopped and turned, they would all instantly walk normally again and appear to be looking anywhere but at their chief. Put simply, they were taking the mickey out of him and thoroughly enjoying it – bit like the labour cabinet did with Gordon Brown – but didn‘t dare do it to his face for fear of retribution and having chairs kicked about the room.

 

It would appear that laughter provides the antidote to the rush of adrenaline pumped into our system by fear, signalling to the nerves, muscles and pulsating sphincter that, threat now passed, they may stand down from red alert. After all, it has long been known that laughter releases mood-enhancing endorphins within our brains, which not only promote a sense of general well being, but also gave rise to the old adage, laughter is the best medicine. Unless, of course, you have a brain tumour the size of an ostrich egg, in which case you might consider chemo. Or suicide.

 

Of all the beasts, the snake has the least developed sense of humour, apparently, because you can’t pull its leg (hat tip to the Beano circa 1965 for that one). Laughing hyenas have no real humour either, they just laugh at anything. Ugly, irritating bleeders.

 

Schadenfreude – or the malicious enjoyment of another’s misfortunes – is a great word, but trust those stone-hearted krauts to invent a word for sniggering as some bruised and bloodied old lady cartwheels down the up escalator, in a surreal race with her ancient wicker shopping basket, while flashing her piddle-stained bloomers at the world.

 

Mind you, I laughed until I nearly suffocated when I saw a bloke trip and fall while trying to jump onto the old route master bus he’d been chasing, so I can talk about stony hearts. It dragged him, twisting and turning, around a corner and for another hundred yards along Streatham High road. Why he didn’t just let go of the handrail, I will never know, but he made my day. I wonder if the conductor charged him for the journey? That would have cracked me up as well.

 

We have, of course, appropriated ‘schadenfreude’ into the English language and that’s what makes English the greatest language in the world. We steal all the good words from other languages and after all, a wigwam is a wigwam, a poppadam is a poppadam, why mess about making up new words when things already have perfectly usable names we can pinch and call our own? We did it with everyone else’s countries, so why not their words. Us English were never stupid and pretty damned good thieves. We should be proud. I know I am.

 

 

 

The Matrix

The Matrix movie trilogy is often quoted and referred to these days in relation to the modern world around us and how reality is often not what we think it is. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, as well as conspiracy theorists (me included) and they will often ask the question, have you taken the red pill or the blue pill, meaning are you awake to the truth, or are you one of the sheeple who swallows all the lies and propaganda hook line and sinker.

However, I’ve been thinking about The Matrix and in one important way, I’m not sure it means what we all seem to think it means. Neo is “The One”, the saviour, the Jesus figure and he has a small band of true believers assisting him. They are his disciples, if you will.

One of these disciples is actually working against Neo and the rebel cause. He wants to be plugged back into the matrix and be rewarded with a life of ease and riches. He is the Judas figure, taking his bag of silver to betray Neo. The rest of the human rebels display varying degrees of scepticism that Neo is really the saviour they have been waiting for, which probably describes how Jesus was viewed by the majority.

There is the old lady, the Oracle, and I think she represents God, offering advice and guidance, but not actually interfering directly. Or perhaps she could be viewed as Mary, the mother figure, or even a combination of the two.

Then we have Agent Smith, Neo’s nemesis, the representation of evil out to destroy the good guy. If Neo is Jesus, then Smith is the devil. Not only is he out to destroy Neo, he also tries to tempt him. Why do you keep struggling, Mr Anderson, it could all be so easy, he offers, but Neo is not to be swayed in his mission to free humanity and after many trials, including being briefly dead and resurrected, he wins the day, the war is over and the rebels celebrate.

Well, that’s the basic plot of the movie and although it tips its hat to many religious and historical references, it boils down to good versus evil, God versus the Devil.

But, and it’s quite a big but, let’s look at it another way. Apart from stopping the war between the machine overlords and the human rebels, what in fact has Neo accomplished? The rebels are free from further attacks, fine, but are still left living in their bleak underground bases. The earth is still a scorched and blasted wasteland to which they can’t return. The matrix still exists and the majority of humanity are still in their vats of liquid, being used as an energy source against their will, while dreaming their lives away.

In fact, Agent Smith was the one hell bent on destroying the matrix, so doesn’t that actually make him the good guy and not the bad guy we have all been lead to view him as? By making a pact with the machines and destroying Agent Smith, in reality Neo is responsible for preserving the matrix and the domination of mankind by the machines. Great for him, flying about like superman in his sexy black gear, but what has changed for the rest of mankind? Not a thing. They are still enslaved and they are still living in a fake reality - a state of affairs that Neo is guilty of maintaining. Left to his own devices, Smith would have shattered the matrix illusion and with it, the machines' ability to control mankind.

I wonder if the rebels woke up with a hangover the next day and said to themselves, hang on a moment, Neo is actually the machines’ most powerful agent and not our saviour as we believed. We’ve been sold out!

By coincidence, yesterday I saw a video posted on Facebook of a man called Simon Parkes. In it, he was talking about various alien races, which he firmly believes exist, both extra terrestrial and inter-dimensional. I didn’t watch it all because it was quite long and video downloads eat my data allowance like slugs eat your favourite plants, but what I did watch was very interesting.

One of his contentions was that the Earth is actually a prison planet and that humanity is being fed off. I think he said it was by those pesky reptilians. Apparently our emotions are a source of energy to them. Love, anger, hatred, despair, yum, yum, we’re just one big emotional buffet to those green buggers. Remind me to buy a packet of “Lizard-Be-Gone” next time I’m in a hardware shop.

He also stated that mankind has had its DNA tampered with to dumb us down so that we can’t perceive reality as it really is and also to remove our telepathic abilities. He further maintained that when we die, they trap our souls and return them to Earth in another body, memory wiped, so that we can continue to feed them. Don’t, he said, walk towards the light when you pass on, because that is the trap they set for us. If anything, run away from the light as fast as you can and be free of them. Maybe these claims explain past life memories, the wiping process not being a hundred percent perfect, and also the reincarnation beliefs of so many people.

This may all sound like airy fairy nonsense, but I’m not so sure that it is. There are obvious comparisons with The Matrix in that we are all blinded to what is truly real; that we are all in one way or another slaves to the elites and possibly to the alien entities they all work for. And being used as an energy source is one of the main premises of the movie and we all (those of us who have taken the red pill anyway) know how they like to taunt us by showing us the truth in fictional form and having a good laugh when we still don’t get it. It may also explain why our leaders are hell bent on creating constant wars and conflicts, a smorgasbord of misery for the aliens to feast upon. All the dead get recycled anyway, so they can continue emoting all over the shop, so there's not even any wastage.

I have to say, Simon Parkes sounded extremely sane and believable. You may want to look him up on Youtube. Just one note of warning, however, he has the most dreadful comb-over I have seen in a very long time…

Just to end with a small fact about The Matrix. Will Smith was originally offered the role as Neo, but turned it down to instead make his movie “Wild Wild West”. Yep, said no to one of the most popular and critically acclaimed sci-fi movies of all time, to go off and make a complete turkey instead. Obviously took the blue pill, the Muppet.

Cockney Sparrow

About twenty or more years ago, I was walking over to the local supermarket, when I came across a baby sparrow huddled up against a low wall. The flats that the wall belonged to are forty-plus feet high, so though the little mite had survived the fall, there was no possible way its mother could get it back into the nest and a local cat was bound to stumble across it sooner or later.

 

Anyway, touched by its plight, I hurried back upstairs, found a small basket with a lid and returned to the chick. As I tried to pick it up, it squawked and shrieked and spread its wings trying to look bigger and more imposing, which was an impressive display for such a youngster given it wasn’t even two inches big and probably weighed an ounce dripping wet.

So I scooped the tiny sparrow up, with it loudly protesting the entire time, put it in my basket, took it back to my flat and fashioned a home for it. First I cut one side out of a cardboard box and covered it with cling film, then cut a flap in the back to act as a door. Finally, I put a number of cotton wool balls into the small basket, turning it into a surrogate nest, all nice and cosy.

At first, the baby sparrow was rightfully wary of me, but when you’re as hungry as growing birds are and someone keeps bringing you food, it’s not long before trust is gained and given. I fed it oats soaked in milk, small bits of bacon fat (remembering how we used to put the rind out for the birds), crushed up nuts and slivers of dried fruit, all supplied by a pair of tweezers. The diet was pretty much guesswork on my part, but it gobbled down what I provided and seemed to thrive.

After just three or four days, I started leaving the box open and all I had to do was walk into the room, tap the food bowl I was carrying and “Birdy” - as I had so imaginatively called my little friend - would fly across the room, land on the rim of the bowl and open its tiny beak demanding to be fed.

Every evening, when my girlfriend of the time, Allison, came home from work, first thing she would unfailingly do was ask how Birdy was and go and check on her. That’s when an amusing idea came to me in the form of one of those sugar coated mini eggs. Sorting through the bag, I found the most convincingly egg-looking one and just before my other half got home, I placed it on the cotton wool in Birdy’s nest.

I was sitting in the living room when Allison got back that night and as usual she asked how Birdy was and went straight into the bedroom to check. A few seconds passed and then she cried in a voice full of surprise and delight “Tony! Tony!”

“Yes,” I responded, trying to sound innocent, but my voice clearly giving away my barely suppressed laughter. There was a brief pause and she called back, “Nothing…”

When she came from the bedroom, I was grinning from ear to ear. “You bastard,” she said. “I really thought for a moment Birdy had laid an egg.”

“Yes,” I laughed. “She’s only a baby and an egg that size would have split her in half, but you still fell for it.” She replied that she would get me back and sometime later, she did, in the form of a large plastic spider placed half behind a pipe in the bathroom. Being a terrible arachnophobe, I was almost sick from fright, so she did indeed get me back. Good and proper.

It was a shame that my suppressed laughter gave me away, because the next part of my plan - expecting to be called in to take a look at the "egg" - was to amble in, pick it up, pop it into my mouth and crunch it up. I think the look on Allison's face would have been priceless. Just the same, all these years on, my prank still makes me smile when I think about it.

Birdy grew fast and within another week, when she started flying around the room, I realised it was time for her to leave the nest. She was clearly ready and cooped up in my bedroom, I was scared she’d bang into a wall and hurt herself.

Next morning, a nice bright warm day, I took Birdy in her box/cage out onto my balcony. She had only been with me a matter of days, but having been a mum to her and having won her trust, I was sad having to let her go, but knew it was the right thing to do. I opened the front of the box and Birdy hopped out onto the wall. She hopped about a bit, looking out towards the big world she was about to enter, then she turned back around, took a good long look at me like she was saying goodbye, then turned again, spread her wings and flew off like a tiny rocket.

 

I freely admit to shedding a few tears watching her go, but I was also pleased that I'd managed to give Birdy her life back when the little soul I'd found, feisty or not, likely wouldn't have lasted an hour or two out on the street. They say that God looks out for even the smallest fallen sparrow and on this occasion, I guess I was the one sent to do the rescuing.

For many years since then, sparrows had all but disappeared from London. No one seems to know quite why, but they went from a daily part of life, to non-existent. Recently, however, I have started seeing a few about again. I particularly noticed because they have been conspicuous by their absence for so long.

There are actually a breeding pair of sparrows nesting somewhere in the downstairs communal garden. Whenever I see them hopping around foraging, I can’t help but wonder, or even hope, that one or other is a direct descendant from Birdy and that perhaps I had some hand in continuing Birdy's line and in my own small way helped to stop sparrows from vanishing for all time.

Still, a comparatively huge chocolate egg, Allison, really?




 

I Talk to the Trees

Remember the song, I Talk to the Trees, sung by Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Waggon? Well, I was talking to a tree earlier - an old oak tree and very chatty it was - and I asked it what it thought of climate change.

 

"Son," it said, "I'm four hundred and sixty-two years old and I've seen it all before."

 

"Really?" I said.

 

"The climate changes," it shrugged its upper branches. "That's just how it is. In the 1970s and 80s we had nothing but droughts, now it rains all the time and no doubt, in another few years time, we'll be back to hosepipe bans again. The only thing that remains constant is change."

 

"But," I stammered," a lot of scientists are telling us that man is making the climate warmer, leading to floods and droughts and all sorts of chaos."

 

The oak barked with laughter. "I have a giant redwood in the family and he tells me his great grandfather told him the climate was much warmer back in his day. That's why the snakes and crocodiles and other cold-blooded reptiles were growing forty or fifty feet long, or more. The extra heat provided them with the energy to grow massive. Why do you think Britain has one snake six inches long and all the hot countries have things ten, twenty and thirty feet long? Even your scientist friends will tell you that. It's all about heat and the energy they get from it. They dug up bones in Columbia from a snake they named 'Titanaboa' that was around 45 feet long, weighed a ton and they reckon some may have grown even larger than that. Imagine how much heat/energy those giants must have needed."

 

"So man is not to blame for climate change, then?" I asked.

 

"Of course not!" The oak exclaimed. "They just use it as an excuse to chop down my friends, turn them into paper and use that to send you bills for CO2 reduction. I know you're only a human, but I would have thought even you would have realised that. This is a planet. The climate changes. Get the hell over it. You humans do make a terrible mess of everything, but on this count, not guilty."

 

Well, that told me. Tomorrow, I am going to strike up a conversation with a patch of nettles. I'm sure I'll get more sense and honesty out of them than I will our lying politicians and assorted other climate change fraudsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kill the Cabbage!

Way back in the 1970s, a scientific study showed that plants react to pain. Wired to an encephalograph, when a plant had its leaf burnt with a lighter, the needles on the graph went haywire. More than that, however, after repeating this process a number of times, when one plant was burned, all the plants nearby “screamed” as well. So not only do plants feel pain, they communicate with each other to boot.

After this experiment had been done over several days (always the same nasty white-coated man doing the burning), the moment the experimenter even entered the room, all of the plants “screamed”, although the needles on the graph showed no reaction to any of the other people in white coats.

Thus, these plants were showing reaction to pain, communication with each other, sympathy with their plant friend’s pain - even those that had never been burned themselves - and the ability to differentiate the man with the lighter from all of the other scientific bods wandering in and out, showing distress or fear before he even commenced torturing any of them.

Finally, these scientists found that all living cells, even the scrapings from the roof of someone’s mouth, showed the same reactions. They concluded, therefore, that all living things are somehow in sympathy with all other living things. These experiments have also been replicated since and have gained the same results, so this was no freak set of data.

The author of the book “Supernature” (where I first read about all this), Lyle Watson, said his research had lead him to the conclusion that the only way to have a clear conscience would be if he only ate cabbages that had died of natural causes. He also said he imagined grass screaming whenever he walked over it.

So, short of becoming a fruitarian and only eating windfall, i.e. fruit that has fallen from the tree naturally (no picking!), it is impossible to keep yourself alive without killing things. Hey, smug vegan, that lettuce you're munching on is screaming its head off (lettuce, head, get it?).

Personally, given that the carrots in my fridge are facing a horrific death by boiling, while the chicken has already met its maker in a slightly less barbaric fashion, it’s chicken and chips for my dinner and no troubled conscience. I will also honour the poor bird’s death by ensuring not one scrap of meat is left before chucking out the stripped carcass. The juicy parson’s nose* will, of course, be the first thing shoved into my gob. It’s the least I can do.

And don’t worry about the chips. They are of the pre-murdered oven variety and beyond feeling any further pain. RIP chips - in my tummy.


(*See "Parson's Nose" elsewhere on this blog, but only if you enjoy laughing).



 

White Lightning

My family never had much money when I was growing up and couldn’t afford to buy me expensive toys and games like the other kids had. To make up for this paucity of plastic playthings, I developed a truly amazing imagination and came to inhabit a world that was authentic in every detail.

 

My favourite escapist game was daydreaming about being a cowboy. Not any old cowboy, but the greatest gunslinger around. I was a good guy with a hard edge and baddies feared me and my blazing law-bringer because they knew I was super fast, deadly accurate and remorseless in my battle against the forces of evil.

 

Like any decent lawman, I rode a fantasy steed called White Lightning – an equine friend more fleet of foot and more loyal than any other horse in the west. Wore an imaginary Stetson to shade the hot sun from my eyes (even when there was a bit of a light drizzle outside). Had a pretend Winchester thrust through a loop on my fanciful, hand-tooled, Mexican saddle and toted a made up colt 45, complete with non-existent mother-of-pearl handle, carried in a fictional many-notched holster slung low on my hip.

 

In my time as a fake US marshal, I cleaned up several lawless towns, tracked and gunned down many a murdering bank robber and rogue comanchero, butchered the entire Indian nation (in my day, pre PC, the injuns were always the bad guys), created the legend of the mysterious hero on the thundering white stallion and kissed two girls from my school, Sharon and Tracey, whom I liked to visualise as pretty and obliging inhabitants of my tough western utopia – though in reality they were the pillows off of my bed.

 

A large, tatty, soft toy monkey I owned came in handy during my cowboy games and we had regular fist fights, in which I would punch him from one side of the room to the other and back again. We would roll around the floor, Mickey trying to strangle me and then I would gain the upper hand and throw him against the wall like a Vietnamese guy killing a guinea pig.

 

Mickey’s face (Mickey the Monkey) was made of rubber and squashed under my knuckles in a most satisfying manner. Usually, outlaw Mickey was called Roger Cooper, named after a little shit from my school who used to twist my ear or give me dead legs and I would beat him mercilessly. If voodoo worked, Roger would have been black, blue and dead.

 

Anyway, one day, I was galloping along on White Lightning in hot pursuit of a particularly vile bunch of outlaws who had just robbed and murdered a stagecoach full of young women (including that bitch Sharon, who I’d gone off after she spat on my school blazer when I was standing in front of her in the dinner queue), when an unfortunate accident occurred.

 

Just as I drew my shiny peacemaker to bring down the first of the leering, unshaven desperadoes, a mentally constructed diamond-back rattle snake slithered into my path, thus spooking my pretend steed, causing him to rear up and throw me violently to the ground. I hit the mythical desert floor hard and the jarring impact made my dreamt up six-gun go off – the imaginary wayward bullet entering my head via my nose, blowing out my heroic brains and allowing the villains to escape.

 

I was never the same after that.

 

These days, I just drink a lot of White Lightning, rock back and forth a lot and dribble down my chin. I still miss my super powers, though. Particularly the x-ray vision and my bat cape. Wibble.

 

 

　

Pedal Off!

I hate ruddy cyclists. There, the cat’s out of the bag. Face it, push-bikers contribute nothing, don’t pay any road tax and if one ever runs into you or your car you will discover, to your cost, that they don’t have any insurance either. I don’t drive and never have, so I’m hating cyclists purely from the perspective of a pavement basher, but one who still sees the essential unfairness of one bunch of road users freeloading off another bunch.

 

Bikers ride on the pavements even when no single car is in sight. They weave through pedestrian precincts and dodge down the wrong side of the road as if they were invulnerable to harm. They sail through traffic lights, road junctions and crossings, ignoring common sense and all the rules of the highway, terrifying innocent shoppers and mums with prams and toddlers, intimidating people on foot with their near silent approaches, with no slightest sign of remorse or sense of wrongdoing.

 

They ride like brainless idiots, scooting in and out of traffic, going from road to footpath and back again, without signalling their intentions or giving a moment’s thought to the motorists who have to slam on their brakes or swerve dangerously in order to avoid them. They don’t give a rocket-propelled shit about anyone but themselves, yet still have the cheek to feel they are hard done by, constantly whining about the lack of cycle lanes (which they rarely use anyway, even though they are provided gratis, courtesy of tax-paying car drivers), forever bleating about how inconsiderate other road users are to them, for crying out loud. The traffic lights do apply to you as well you know, dickheads.

 

And what is their excuse for acting like crazed mobile yobs and expecting the rest of us sinners to dodge out of their saintly leg-powered ways? That they are using an environmentally friendly mode of transport, that’s what. Well, you dangerously bloody arrogant cycling terrorists ain’t too friendly to my environment. No sir. May I also point out, here, that the bicycle was not designed for lazy chavs to walk their lead-less muzzle-less pet pit-bull Sampson, nor are they meant to be used as mobile telephone kiosks. In other words:

 

WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING CLOWN!

 

And I hope the dope on the racing bike who jumped the red light and almost knocked me down recently, broke his sweaty weather-beaten neck about ten yards further up the road. If I see that whelk again, I’m going to tip him over and watch him wriggling like an upended beetle, struggling to get his feet out of the stirrups before a huge tanker lorry comes roaring past and squishes him into paste like the turd-burrowing insect he is.

 

Personally, I would like to see a total holocaust among this breathtakingly selfish fraternity of bi-wheeled ignoramuses. Then, once we’d wiped out the sticky-Lycra wearing buggers, we could have all their mountain bikes melted down and turned into electric trams and statues of famous walkers like Scot of the Antarctic, Ian Botham and various American astronauts. The latter didn’t walk very far, I know, but it was on the moon, so hey, that’s still gotta count.

 

Anyway, cyclists, I hate you because you are a menace to the public, a pain in the bum with your bitching about car drivers when you are to blame in almost every accident and near miss and because you think it’s OK to dump your bike wherever you like – on the floor outside shop doorways, for example, because you’re only concerned with what you want to buy and not if anyone else can actually get into the place thanks to your thoughtlessly erected barricade.

 

Mind you, at least cycling with criminal stupidity means the mortality rate on the roads for bikers must be considerably higher than for other users and with each one that gets themselves wiped out, I guess that makes the rest of us that little bit safer.

 

Tossers, the lot of you. Use a bit of common sense and common decency and who knows, I might stop hating you. Except for Boris the bike Johnson, the fat blond philanderer, with his stupid rent a bike scheme, wasting untold millions putting gaudy bright blue cycle lanes all over the bloody place that will likely get used about as often as the moon turns the same colour as the lanes.

 

There’s one bike lane near me at the end of a quiet, rarely used road, and it’s about five feet long with a little bollard separating it from the road proper. Why? What for? How much did it cost and which over paid wazzock decided it was a good idea? These people are so dumb, it’s enough to make you spit red-hot rivets. That money could have gone to the kid’s hospital or a hospice, instead it’s wasted on an unused bit of green tat on the road that probably took about six council workers to lay.

 

And just to add insult to injury, that wally, Ken Livingstone, when incumbent as mayor of London, decided it would be a good idea to also put cycle lanes on the pavements at Vauxhall where I live (one of the heaviest used road junctions anywhere). So now, as a pedestrian, you can avoid getting knocked down by traffic, think you’ve made it to safety and still risk getting killed crossing the cycle lane to the pavement proper after foolishly dropping your guard. No pelican crossing for those and if you’re blind or can’t move too quickly, then God help you.

 

Then we get rid of that fool Livingstone and Boris the bike spends millions putting in blue cycle lanes all over the place (no doubt blue to differentiate his madness from the green madness that came before) which I have NEVER seen one cyclist using. Not one. Not ever. What he should have done is had written right down the middle of them in huge yard-high letters “DO NOT CYCLE HERE, IT IS STUPID AND DANGEROUS AND MAY RESULT IN DEATH OR INJURY TO INNOCENT PEOPLE” and then the cycling morons would have been all over them like ants.

 

And quit the wheelies, already. If that’s the only lame trick you can do it just makes you look like a sap. Unless you intend falling off and seriously injuring yourself, in which case, please continue. I like a good belly laugh and seeing any of you pig ignorant cycling maniacs bleeding on the pavement is one of life’s simple pleasures…

 

Did I mention that I hate ruddy cyclists, by the way?

 

 

 

 

Stop That Pigeon!

I was looking out of my window the other day, watching the world go by, when I saw a particularly tatty pigeon flying past. These disease-ridden rats of the sky are foul unhealthy things, so without hesitation, I snatched up a glass ashtray and threw it at the feathered flapper. Unfortunately, aim a tad poor, I missed the avian beastie by several feet, the ashtray consequently hitting the garden wall below and shattering into about a thousand pieces.

Well, one of the largest shards of razor-edged glass then shot into the street and struck a passing woman on the side of her face. Shocked and dazed, cheek gashed open to the bone, white polyester blouse and crimplene slacks rapidly becoming soaked with blood, the female pedestrian fashion-victim dropped her Quicksave carrier and unwisely staggered off the pavement and into the road, slap bang in front of a speeding motorcycle.

Luckily for the canny shopper, the leather-clad rider was on the ball and swerved in the nick of time, thereby missing the witless woman by mere inches. The helmeted chap’s manoeuvre proved ill-advised, however, cruel fate sending man, pillion passenger and machine into the path of a giant tanker lorry racing from the opposite direction. Unable to break in time, or otherwise avoid a collision, the lorry smashed into the motorcycle and crushed it flat, thereby propelling the luckless biker into the air, whereupon he crashed through the windscreen of the tanker’s cab and butted the driver in the face, knocking him unconscious.

Out of control and unguided, the lorry jack-knifed, hurled the dead bike rider into a nearby tree - where he landed on a branch adjacent to the one his unconscious pillion passenger was draped over - mounted the pavement and careened at high-speed through the gates of the junior school opposite my house.

The wayward wagon then ploughed a deep furrow across the playground and demolished several classrooms, before coming to rest in the assembly hall. In the process, it not only wrecked year three’s papier mache nativity scene, but also killed forty-one ethnically diverse children in the middle of singing “all things bright and beautiful”, their geography teacher, “no-nonsense” Mr Frith and Gertrude, a passing West Indian dinner lady, who had unwisely chosen the wrong moment to leave her post at the turkey twizzler tray to go for a sneaky fag, poor woman ending up tangled around the lorry’s back axle with the butt of the unfinished ciggy jammed up her nose.

Filled with thousands of gallons of highly flammable petroleum, the tanker finally exploded in a ball of flames, creating a conflagration that spread rapidly through the building, causing five million pound’s worth of damage and barbecuing another one hundred and seventy-three school kids, the deputy head, Mrs Narendra Patel, six other assorted piss-poor teachers, Bill the caretaker and Violet, a blue-haired school cleaner, who was due to retire the following Monday after thirty years of faithful service on minimum wage.

To cap it all, the blaze miraculously leapt the school wall and raced across a forty-foot lawn, before consuming the old folk’s home next door, leaving no survivors among the aged residents and putting the kibosh on two Irish nurses and four Ghanaian care workers who sadly choked on a mixture of noxious fumes emanating from burning dentures and colostomy bags while desperately trying to drag some of the charcoaled oldsters from the cinders.

The only bright spot in this terrible tragedy – apart from the bricks in the school wall which continued to glow for several hours after the fire was finally extinguished – the motor bike passenger’s miraculous escape from serious injury - apart from his broken legs, nose, ribs and collar bone - became somewhat tarnished several weeks later when he hung himself from his adoptive family‘s banisters out of pansy-arse survivor guilt syndrome.

Luckily for his step-parents, taking a leaf out of Madonna and Jolie’s book, they had recently bought/adopted a little foreign baby, so didn’t really miss the soft twat. They may have seen things a little differently, however, if they had known at the time, while not bothering to attend his funeral, that they had actually wasted their money on a little cutey that was already infected with the ebola virus that was set to eat its eyes and internal organs within a matter of days.

That pigeon was a blasted menace. Filthy bird!

And I missed Eastenders, what with being distracted from my TV guide by all the people outside running about in flames, screaming, and the sirens of the emergency vehicles that turned up just too late to be of any help. Anyone get murdered this week?

Practical Jokery

I haven’t done a whole lot of practical jokery in my life, but when I decided to, they were doozies, as you are about to hear.

 

My first victim was my older sister, Shirley. My Dad summed up my relationship with Shirley as, “you two are always fighting like cat and dog.” This was true, but I was the innocent in all of it because Shirley was both a bully and a snitch.

 

In fact, Shirley bullied me when I was too small to fight back, but when I grew big enough to get her in a headlock and rub dirty socks in her face, she switched to the tactic of getting me into trouble with my mum at every possible opportunity – which wasn’t difficult with mum delighting in slagging me off and nagging me senseless every moment I was in her company. That’s what being raised a Catholic did for her.

 

I remember, when I was around seven and she was thirteen, my dear sister folding a thin mattress in half like a sandwich, turning me into the filling, and then jumping up and down on it. She was a lump, my sister, and soon developed into a young woman with a forty-two inch bust, with a barrel body to match. Five feet two and at least fourteen stone if she was an ounce, meant her using me as a trampoline was no joke.

 

Then there was the time she knelt on me and repeatedly rubbed her knuckles spitefully on my wishbone, not even desisting after she had managed to make me cry. Or the time she pinned me down and roughly tickled me until I was screaming for mercy. There was nothing playful about it, just tickling way too hard and with nothing but malice. Bullying cow that she was.

 

Anyway, a few years on, I took my revenge on her in a most creative way. At the time, we lived in an old Victorian house that had provided a few creepy and inexplicable events already, which made my prank all the more effective (and terrifying).

 

The family were all sitting watching TV one Sunday night and luckily for me, the first to need a toilet break was Shirley. As she headed off into the hall and down the stairs to the bathroom on the landing below, I could barely contain my glee.

 

You see, what I had figured out was that the toilet chain to the overhead cistern just about reached the door jamb. Thus, I had pulled the toilet chain and then backed from the room, pinning the chain handle in place with the door. Shirley duly arrived outside the loo – in a hallway lit only by the light filtering down from the kitchen – pushed open the door to the unlit bathroom and then let out a blood-curdling shriek as the toilet mysteriously flushed itself and the chain swung violently back and forth clanging against the cistern pipe.

 

She was a big lass was our Shirley, but she proved she could move at some speed when necessary, and she came hurtling back up the stairs, screaming all the way, bursting back into the living room howling and crying, face gone so red it was almost purple. A gibbering wreck, she managed to explain what had just frightened the living crap out of her, only to have my dad dismiss the whole thing as nonsense. A toilet didn’t just flush itself, so she must have imagined the whole thing.

 

How I kept a straight face through all this and not give away my own involvement in this “supernatural” event, I will never know. Thereafter, for several weeks, Shirley refused to go to the toilet at night unless someone accompanied her and I never did own up, leaving her convinced a toilet flushing ghost resided in our bathroom.

 

After a good bit of time had passed, Shirley finally calmed down and began braving toilet visits on her own once more. Well, that is, until I did it to her again!

 

Bruhahaha and other evil noises. Teach her to mess with me.

 

My next victims were two of my friends. At the time, I was living with a mate and his family, my loving mother having kicked me out at age sixteen. Again, this was a somewhat spooky old house, which lent itself very well to the prank I had lined up.

 

I was the only one at home at the time, but expecting my mate and his younger brother to turn up at any moment. In preparation, I dressed myself up, switched all the lights off and lay in wait. On my head I had a fright wig, in my mouth a set of plastic fangs. I then put a black crombie overcoat on back to front and slipped a torch into the neckline so it would shine its light up across my face, casting all sorts of eerie shadows.

 

I didn’t have long to wait and a few minutes later, I heard a key go into the front door and peering through the banisters at the top of the stairs, watched as the two lads came into the front hall. They were no sooner in than I made my scary appearance at the top of the stairs, torch shining across my face and glinting off my fake fangs, arms outstretched in front of me zombie-like.

 

As soon as they spotted me, I began to shamble down the stairs, emitting a low growling from my throat. For a long moment, they froze where they were, eyes wide, mouths dropping open, then the pair of them took off at a lick even a scalded hare couldn’t have competed with. Getting the door open only delayed them for half a second and then they were off down the path and through the garden gate, with me in hot pursuit in a loping side-to-side run that would have made Igor proud.

Passers by looked on at all this with expressions of either bewilderment or amusement depending on whether they realised they were witnessing some silly youthful shenanigans and not anything more sinister. We hadn’t gone more than a few yards before my two mates regained their senses and realised it was me chasing them and not the horrific apparition they’d first thought me to be, but by then they were so spooked, they kept right on running.

 

Truth be told, my hair was standing on end as well, so though I knew it was me under that fright wig, I had somehow managed to even frighten myself. Finally, the three of us came to a breathless halt, me gasping for air and laughing, them gasping for air, calling me rude names and vowing they would pay me back. They did try, bless them, but they never did get me as good as I got them that night.

 

Then comes victim number three. I was in my mid twenties by now and working as a tube driver on the Bakerloo line. One day, one of my colleagues was riding up front with me on his way to pick up his own train further up the line. Peter, his name was.

Peter was slim, blond and quite a handsome chap. That aside, he was also a dirty sod. He collected porn films and I mean seriously collected, to the point where he would travel to Holland armed with a list of titles he couldn’t buy in Britain and smuggle them back home. Had a whole wardrobe full of them, apparently. This was at a time before the porn explosion went off in the UK and aside from girlie mags, there was little else on offer for the smut aficionado and not even any internet filth to drool over.

 

Now, in the old 1938 rolling stock, the driver’s door invariably had a small hole where some screw had fallen out over the years and when bored (which was all of the time) the drivers would have a peer through the hole at the passengers, generally in the hope of spotting some good looking woman or other.

 

Well, a cunning plan struck me. Pure devilment. While Peter chatted away to me, I leaned down and began peeping through the hole in the door and after a moment or two, I said “wow” followed by a low whistle. Breaking off in mid sentence, Peter looked down at me. “What?” he said. “There’s this bird sitting just outside,” I said, “and I can see right up her skirt.”

 

“Let’s have a look,” he said, interest instantly peeked.

 

“Hang on a second,” I said. “Blimey, she’s got suspenders on and everything. Cor!”

 

“Come on. Let me have a look,” Peter repeated, tugging at my shoulder.

 

Pretending to be reluctant, I sat up and made way for him, whereupon he dropped to one knee and with his hands either side of his face to steady himself against the door, put his eye to the hole. The second he was in this position, I reached up, turned the handle and swung the door open.

 

What a tableau! Peter on his knees peering through a hole in a door that was no longer in front of him and a packed carriage full of passengers all swivelling their heads to stare in his direction, wondering what on earth he was doing. For a painfully embarrassing second, Peter remained kneeling in front of his confused audience, but when the penny dropped, he leapt up and backwards to dodge from sight.

 

Um, that’s when my joke went a bit wrong, because Peter jumped back with such force, he crunched his head against a piece of overhead equipment and blood started to pour down the side of his face. Actually, it went more than just a bit wrong, because Pete had to book off duty and go to the hospital for stitches.

 

Peter was not best pleased with me, to say the least. I lost count of the times I offered up grovelling apologies, but all to no avail. He never forgave me, rarely spoke to me again, even after years had passed, and on the odd occasion that he did, it was in a clipped staccato that let me know offering me even the smallest communication was painful to him.

 

I couldn’t have foreseen what was going to happen, of course, and it was so damned funny, I didn’t feel as badly about it as I perhaps should. All my other mates on the job thought it was bloody hilarious when I told them what I’d done and knowing them, I dare say they ribbed him about it mercilessly. Might be that was what stopped him from forgiving and forgetting, in fact, rather than the initial incident.

 

Obviously I’m sorry he cut his scalp open, but I wouldn’t have missed seeing him kneeling there, hands pushing against an invisible door, one eye shut and the other peering through a small hole that had suddenly turned into an open doorway. If only there had been camera phones at the time…

 

If Carlsberg played practical jokes, they’d be the best practical jokes in the world.

 

 

 

 

Tax, Tax and More Tax

Tobacco kills. They spend millions warning us it does, millions on studies to show it does, millions on pictures showing the hideous results to put us off doing it, but do they ban it? Nope. They tax it. They tell us we shouldn’t be doing it or inflicting passive smoking on others because it gives them cancer of the face and they provide terrifying pictures to prove it. But do they ban it, I ask again? No. Why? Because they want the tax revenue, because many of them work for the tobacco companies and because they don’t really give a flying fig whether you die or not just as long as they are raking in the tax money.

 

Ken Clarke works for a tobacco company that pushes cigarettes to children in Africa, laying on free music festivals to attract them where they can have cigarettes given to them to get them hooked in a cool place with cool sounds. He would spout about how bad it is over here, but he is a pusher in the third world, just as bad as any crack seller. That Dragon bloke, Duncan Bannatyne, fronted a very illuminating documentary about all this a couple of years back and, apparently, the tobacco company Clarke works for actually gives free cigarettes to local shops in Africa so they can hand them out to kids to get them addicted nice and early and create millions of life long customers – and tax payers. When confronted by Bannatyne with the evidence, cuddly Ken put his head down, refused to say a word, scuttled away like the parasitic insect he is and fled in his chauffeur driven limo.

 

Marijuana is a plant and so is tobacco and both have good effects as well as bad (cigs help prevent Alzheimer’s and dope eases pain, etc), but are you allowed to grow either one without being arrested? No. You can’t grow marijuana because they can’t tax it and you can’t grow tobacco because they – yep – can’t tax it. One is illegal and one isn’t but you are not allowed to grow either, but only because they can’t tax it.

 

If they could make growing tomatoes in your garden illegal, they would, and in places they are already trying to. And why? Because they can’t tax home grown food, or profit from it, or genetically Frankenstein it before you consume it.

 

So who are these people? What gives them the right to say I can smoke tobacco and pay tax on it, but I can’t grow it? Tobacco is just leaves, after all, so why am I not allowed to grow some in my garden? Who made them God and said I can get lung cancer from smoking, but only if I pay the manufacturers of it, plus the tax on top? Who said they are right to tell me not to smoke a joint, but they can go to their tax-free bar and swallow brandy until their brains are addled?

 

Who gave them any of these rights? Not me, was it you? If they could legalise cannabis and tax it, they would do it tomorrow, but it’s a sore point with their blue-rinse supporters and the companies they all work for can’t control it, so no way will they let you have a crafty puff they haven’t profited from.

 

The CIA are said by many to be the biggest drug runners on the planet and our lot pretend to be fighting drugs, but the truth is they only fight the drugs they can’t control, tax, or profit from. Look at some of the terrible side effects of legal drugs, but that’s ok because the drug companies are raking in huge profits from them. Thalidomide anyone?

 

In the past I smoked dope a thousand times and I’ve been drunk ten thousand times. What was the difference? None of it was big or clever (downright stupid, in fact) and probably did me no good at all, but when I used to puff, apart from not waking up with a headache, I wasn’t paying tax to the criminals who run the world and that’s why they don’t like it. Get cheap fags from abroad, do they take them off you at customs because they will make you ill, of course not. They take them because you haven’t paid them enough tax.

 

This was written about America, but it applies all over…

 

Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table, At which he’s fed. Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes Are the rule. Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts anyway! Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt. Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he Tries to think. Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries Tax his tears. Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways To tax his ass. Tax all he has Then let him know That you won’t be done Till he has no dough. When he screams and hollers; Then tax him some more, Tax him till He’s good and sore. Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in Which he’s laid… Put these words Upon his tomb, ‘Taxes drove me to my doom…’ When he’s gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply The inheritance tax. Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit Tax CDL license Tax Cigarette Tax Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax Excise Taxes Federal Income Tax Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) Fishing License Tax Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon) Gross Receipts Tax Hunting License Tax Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) Liquor Tax Luxury Taxes Marriage License Tax Medicare Tax Personal Property Tax Property Tax Real Estate Tax Service Charge Tax Social Security Tax Road Usage Tax Recreational Vehicle Tax Sales Tax School Tax State Income Tax State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) Telephone Federal Excise Tax Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax Utility Taxes Vehicle License Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Watercraft Registration Tax Well Permit Tax Workers Compensation Tax STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

 

Got a spare bedroom, they’re even taxing those now. Many years ago, they had a window tax, so even free sunlight was taxed. See many old buildings with bricked up windows, well the window tax is why they bricked them up. Maybe you should brick up your spare bedroom and pretend it doesn’t exist…

Me and My Bird

Girls, ladies, women folk, Mrs, Miss and even bloody Ms which is impossible to even attempt to say without looking and sounding like a complete twonk, I am going to tell you about my bird. My pet cockatiel bird, that is, not my girlfriend type bird, touchy.

Anyway, I’m going to tell you about her, about our story, me and my bird, and you girls will weep buckets. Lots of men will too and not only the gay ones. Face it fellows, we cry at toilet roll adverts and women get drunk and kick bloke’s heads in outside curry houses before puking and passing out in the gutter. It’s a topsy-turvy world, lads. Oh yes. But if Naomi Campbell spat on my face or punched me, I would slap her good and hard. A line must be drawn somewhere.

Anyway, I was walking home from a shopping trip on my birthday in 2003. It was February the twelfth, should you wish to put notes in your diaries re cards and expensive gifts. I had been broke for a long time and having had a small windfall, and as I was starting to look like a hobo, and given it was my birthday (Feb 12th) and as I was alone with no family or friends and would be getting sod all from anyone, not so much as a cake nor a candle, I decided to treat myself to a few new togs. Items of apparel, don’t you know Mary Poppins.

Well, on the way back from my shopping trip, I was passing my local pub and feeling a bit sad and lonely, I decided to pop in for a beer. It was a wet, cold, very grey, blustery day and the warmth of the pub seemed as good a refuge as any and I thought a little company may just raise my spirits too. And it was my bloody birthday (12th Feb in case I haven’t mentioned it). I deserved a drink.

Inside I found the middle-aged owner with a face like his poodle had just died from being cooked in a sad but funny chinese restaurant misunderstanding, two blokes who had clearly been killed by their first sip of warm bitter and a sleeping dog. There was no music, the heating wasn’t high enough to keep the chill out, leaving the place colder than the pint in front of me and the landlord was amusing himself by scrolling through teletext on the TV over the bar. Definitely no dancing-girls or even any jolly cockney banter. Happy birthday, Tony, I thought, welcome to hell’s waiting room.

Ten minutes into all this frivolity but before the froth had died on my pint of chemicals, the door swung open - like a scene from some hammer horror film – and swept by rain, wet leaves and burger wrappers, this guy popped his head in and said:

“There’s a parrot out here”.

I looked at the dead men in the corner, misery behind the bar looked at me, the dog woke up and looked at all of us, and our eyes all said the same thing – he has got to be taking the flipping michael!

“No, really,” the bloke said, obviously hearing the disbelief our eyes were saying. “There’s a parrot out here”.

So I said, go on then, I’ll fall for it and walked outside.

Get the tissues out boys, this is the first tearful bit. I’m going already and I’ve heard it before. On the wet pavement huddled this bedraggled, sodden, shivering little mite and being a big soft touch my heart went out to her. I realised she was all in and wouldn’t see out the night, so I scooped her up, took her inside and put her into an empty crisp box supplied by mine host. After downing my birthday pint in one and bandaging my fingers and stemming the blood from her frantic beak attacks, I took her home.

At first I cobbled together a cage out of a big cardboard box with thin sticks for bars. Then, a couple of days later, I built her quite a cool cage out of scavenged stuff – a kitchen cupboard, a bamboo bookcase and twigs from the local park – mainly doing so because I still had flip all money and couldn’t afford a cage. I could buy a “proper” one now, but she seems happy in her modified cupboard so why disturb her? I still don’t have much cash anyway and my birthday has just been and gone again (Feb 12th), and I needed my few pennies for a celebratory packet of biscuits and a pint of meths.

She has been with me now for over 11 years. She has gone from a depressed, skinny, half tail-less and mistrustful bird, to a happy, cocky little nut case. Mostly she is to be found on my shoulder, nibbling at my ears. She loves me she does. So she bloody should. Be dead if it wasn’t for me…

She comes and goes as she pleases from her cupboard cage and has the run of the place. A ceaseless flow of bird poo and several million molted feathers are my enemy!

Her name is B.B.

B.B. stands for Birthday Bird.

She just whistled to me.

If you’re not crying by now, you’re a hard-hearted cow. Yes, you too Kirk! I know you’re not gay, just stop blubbering.

And no I’m not homophobic, before anyone starts chucking their toys out of their pram. Arachnophobic yes, homophobic no. So if you are gay, but refrain from growing eight legs and scuttling across my carpet, I have no problem with you. Otherwise, it’s the rolled up newspaper for you my gay leggy friend.

If she and I survive for another 2 years, BB will become my longest ever relationship. Well, apart from my childhood cat, Ginger, who was also rescued from the street, but by my equally soft-hearted dad.

Ginger, linked with my mother’s maiden name, makes my porn star name “Ginger King”. Just thought you’d like to know that. It doesn't work with BB because a certain blues singer already took the moniker BB King about forty years ago.

... Sadly, after weeks of being ill, with the Blue Cross unable to help due to her having an enlarged heart, BB seemed to perk right up for a couple of days, but yesterday she suddenly took a turn for the worse and last night my lovely little baby died in my hands. Though I knew she was gone, I couldn't put her down for a good hour and just sat stroking her as though she was still with me.

God rest you my loving, tiny friend. When my tears finally stop, I will never forget you. For years, you were my only companion and you gave me affection even when I was grumpy and shouted at you to shut up when you were chirping non-stop. I will miss those sounds now. I will miss tickling your little neck and you snuggling up behind my ear and nuzzling me. I will miss you sitting on my shoulder and turning into a little beggar whenever you knew there was food about. I will miss you being there in the morning and miss saying goodnight to you before bed. I will even miss you biting my ear to remind me your food bowl was empty.


Birthday Bird, for as many of those as I have left, I will raise a glass to you. Sleep tight little one.  

Sword of Fire

Democracy lays bleeding
Freedom coughs out its life
On a planet torn by chaos
By hunger, pain and strife

 

Rights no longer given
Dignity ripped asunder
Fearful and divided
Into slavery we blunder

 

Dark the evil people
Darker still their plan
Genocide by the millions
Bringing Hell on earth to man

 

They barely even hide it
As they meet and greet and grin
Drunk on wealth and power
Made high with mortal sin

 

Is humanity finally waking
Or is it now all too late
Have the centuries of blindness
Placed the seal upon our fate

 

Should defeated eyes be cast down
At the end of our shared rope
Or turned up to God’s heaven
With courage, love and hope

 

Here there sits no prophet
Just one sheep gone astray
But I’ve read the story’s ending
Where the dark ones finally pay

 

A Son came bearing forgiveness
A gift from His Heavenly Sire
Soon, in wrath, He will return
With a cleansing sword of fire

 

 

 

 

 

Dumb Award

Question: what is the most stupid thing characters in movies say? My nomination for dumb award varies in actual dialogue, but always comes to pretty much the same thing. The words used are usually along the lines of “let’s split up”, or, “you search upstairs, I’ll take the basement”, or, “I think I heard something in the barn, let’s check it out”.

And the same thing it always come to is a grisly death for at least one of the parties concerned, usually the only sensible one who was actually pleading with the others to run far, far away. Let’s not split up. Let’s search the house together. And sod the barn, I’m locking the front door and calling the police. That’s what non morons would actually do, but no…

Close cousins to let’s split up syndrome are “stay there” – and they don’t – moments later being decapitated with a machete. Or the non verbal pushing through a fire door onto a flight of stairs and deciding it’s a good idea to run up towards the roof from where there is no escape, rather than down towards the exit. Do they think they are going to sprout wings along the way, or what? If they’re lucky, there’s a swimming pool ten stories below for them to jump into (in real life you'd die trying that anyhow), if not, the man with the gun, the brain eating zombie, the chainsaw maniac, the crazy mother-in-law, has them cornered and bang to rights.

As for hunting Dracula, he’s asleep all day from dawn to dusk, so why do they always reach his castle just as the sun is going down, instead of arriving with the milkman at first light? Are vampire hunters the kind of people who can’t get up or do anything useful before 4pm, like teenagers and students?

When having to hunt down a serial killer in an old creepy graveyard, great idea turning up at midnight instead of at lunchtime, I don’t think. Same applies for mummies and zombies and if you suspect there is a werewolf on the loose, avoid the woods until the night of the full moon and then decide to go for a stroll. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, you have a single silver bullet in a one shot flintlock, so safe as houses, clearly.

On the Enterprise wearing a yellow shirt, why not volunteer to beam down to the planet below with Kirk and Spock. You’ve seen any number of your colleagues do the same thing, only to get killed and never come back, but boldly go anyway you dumb schmuck. Honestly, if these people weren’t all fictional, they’d really get on my nerves.

I only posed the original question because these are the sort of things that occur to me when, bored rigid by the TV and the fifty-seventh showing of Fantastic Four, my eyes have gone glassy and my brain has zoned out to make up its own entertainment. That said, if you can think of more deserving cases to receive the dumb award, do please share them.

Wait a minute! I thought I heard a menacing growl coming from the unlit cellar. Just going to check it out. Armed with a vase and a faulty torch…