“Remember, fascism and a police state doesn’t come all at once, it comes piece by piece. How far will we allow it go until we are all locked up in concentration camps.”
Sherman Austin, webmaster of RaisetheFist.com
Almost back to normal, and happy enough to sit and write a blog! Hoorah!
A couple of days ago we received our first ever mailing from Iran. An Iranian congratulations card from Alex, the manager of our local pizza delivery place, who wanted to wish me and Michele happy anniversery while he was on his honeymoon in Iran. Thanks Alex. Nice to have such a friendly relationship with our local businesses….do I sound like a local councillor ? Sorry….
Thanks also to the other Alex who has been keeping me entertained during my malaise with his most excellent blog.
Last night I wrote a shitty letter to the BBC complaining about a bit of tabloid shit that accidentally crept into their schedules in the guise of a documentary on the NHS and immigration. It was filth. They haven’t written back. I hope this is because they are too busy crying with regret, but I suspect not.
Michele had a job interview today. Sadly I decided not to follow the example of Alex and make my blog anonymous…pity, because I’d really like to slag off those involved. BASTARDS….
Humphrey was particularly cute today….feathery little thing.
In Hell you are always too hot – there is no refuge from the heat, no way to cool down, no way to feel comfortable. You think you can bear it no longer, but you have no choice – the heat continues forever. Every drop of water is tepid, every breeze is warm and Hell-mart has perpetually sold out of air-conditioners.
Everyone has a chest infection that keeps them coughing and restricts their breathing, while sinus infections keep heads feeling ready to explode. Beacuse you feel so lousy, all you can do is lie about, whinging and watching daytime television…
Alright, you get the picture, I’m still feeling crappy after a tortuous weekend of overheated misery I’m off work. Many people may consider that taking a monday off work the day after the hottest day EVER in Britain was a tad dodgy. But believe me I would much rather be sitting in an ice-cold puddle in the rain, than be sitting in this humid, sweaty, posionous smog. So would my lungs. We have 1, 12-inch fan that is doing a sterling job, considering how it is now running on good will and vaseline…but not good enough. Michele went out to buy another fan, and just got laughed at. In fact, the woman in Agros told her that they hadn’t run out of fans, they just weren’t stocking them because, and I’m not making this up, they’re now on their winter catalogue. What a great business strategy that is. The hottest August ever on record, and all you can get from Argos are some woolly undies, an electric fan heater, and a cardie – although the latter would probably be useful to mop up the puddles of arse-sweat I’m leaving around the house.
…oh yes…I nearly forgot…the heavy, heavy depression. I don’t know whether it was one of the many infections, the weather or just the daytime television, but my illness has been accompanied by total despair and a feeling of hopelessness I haven’t felt for a long time. Thanks for that God – it really helped.
It’s seriously, no-messingly, indisputably
. And muggy. So muggy. It’s like trying to breathe jelly. People all over europe are keeling over with heatstroke, but England continues to firmly shun any suggestion that we should all be using air-conditioners, with the stiff-upper-lipped resoluteness that will probably result in my death later today.
Last night was Brodie’s brithday. The Fish Brothers played the Rosemary branch and many many people turned up and drank too much….including the man himself, who became very tired and emotional and it took three of us to get him upstairs and into bed. Good gig tho. One of Brodie’s friends who lives in Ireland was looking at the Fish Brothers’ website and noticed the gig in honour of his birthday, so came all the way over! He ended up staying round at ours as the host had an early bath.
Thanks to Andy, I now have a copy of the radio show from the other night. Have a listen. I don’t actually appear until about 28 minutes in to it, but the non-me bits are much better listening anyway.
Smile were kind enough to send me a copy of the fraudulent cheque. It was made out to somone with a name that can only belong to a Columbian drug baron or ficticious identity. Obviously I can’t publish this name, but suffice to say that his first name is “Pedro”….honestly…
Yesterday included one of those random injections of weirdness that makes life bearable. I got a phonecall from sebastian in the DoC (department of computing) inviting me up to their 12th floor barbecue. Apparently there was a “geek” there who wanted to see me. The geek was a thoroughly bloody nice chap called Andrew, and with him were Jenny and “Tyndall”, who turns out to know a friend of mine Peter. They wanted to know if I was interested in going onto the radio that night to talk bollocks. Seb and Claire had obviously tipped them off that I was very adept at it. Their friendly manner and the beer I’d consumed convinced me it might be fun so I agreed.
8pm I was waiting on Charing Cross Road, full to the brim with dutch courage and a paranoid feeling that the whole thing was probably a wind up, but they arrived and up we went into the cramped studio of Resonance FM 104.4, situated in the roof of a curry house. Even though it’s a legit station, it had such a pirate feel to it with everyone shuffling past each other, pulling cables about, and knocking things over while someone was trying to do a radio show. It took about 15 minutes for the “sound engineer” to get the desk working properly – which of course was 15 minutes of airtime. As a result the output must have been pretty bizarre, consisting of the same gamelan tune twice and “busy line” by Rose Murphy played through a flanger…..but hey, this is art radio! All the better for it. The programme was called “Big Ears” and although
I never actually heard the final output, it was essentially a peculiar soundscape of ambient noises, strange music and a chat between me and Andrew, where he asked me all kinds of jocular tech questions and I gave jocular bullshit answers with the sound of running water over it. Good fun tho’. After an hour and a half we made way for the next turn, who appeared to be a large Turkish family, and went to the coach and horses for a couple. Ian, who’d been in the west end for teh past few hours, met up with us and was in a tired and emotional state. All most amusing.
A perfect day. Zap called me at about 10am to see if I was up for goint to the computer fair in Sratford. The prospect of yet another day in, working, or rather pretending to work, while the sun’s out, persuaded me to accept his offer. What a wise choice.
The weather was HOT. We went around the fair getting a handle on the prices, and eventually Zap bought a SmartCard reader while I bought some RAM and then we went to the pub.
A couple of pints later we went back to the fair.
If you’ve never been to one of the computer fairs, you’ve missed out. They’re reminiscent of middle-eastern bazarrs, only more high-tech. There are almost no white people working there. It’s essentially middle-eastern, Indian, African or Pakistani people who are selling their warez. Whilst people haggle over the price of motherboards and RAM with women in muslim dress, kids behind the tables solder, strip and chip people’s playstations. Haggling with people over the price of hard-disks, DVDs and all kinds of hardware really does make for a good holiday.
After our hagglefest we got on the DLR, scanned a few wireless networks and reired to the Gypsy Moth in Greenwich for a nice sunny drink. Beautiful.
A trip to Eltham to visit my parents followed. The 286 brought back many memories, mostly tedious, but Stella managed to cook a splendid Salmon dinner and we ate, drank and laughed until hometime. Cathy and Kate from next-door came round too – altogether a nice evening.
Primary Colors could be summed up as:
“Power corrupts,
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Firstly, I wish to apologise to Kate, the person who in a previous bolog convinced me of something totally ridiculous – that there are people in Argentina who castrate sheep with their teeth. It turns out she wasn’t joking – they really do bite the bollocks off sheep. How do I know ? I’ve seen the pictures…and it made me feel very uncomfortable, and slightly nausiated. Sorry for doubting you Kate, but come on, you must admit it does sound unlikely….
Tonight BBC 1 had a new reality TV game show where you could vote for or against a asylum seekers. Sadly they couldn’t swing it so that the general population’s decision was final because that would have given it the edge it was sadly lacking. Instead the cases have already been decided and all we could do was compare our results with what the “experts” decided.
To make it more interesting there were panels of people who would also vote and either support or enrage the viewer. The panels consisted of
So what did we learn ? Well not very much. In summary:
One of the ex-seekers, a stunning turkish girl is now my hero for managing to put the dialetical Doc-Martin into the Gary-Busshells whilst smiling all the way. Nice one girl. The only other person to stand out was a vicar who was actually really sound…but then again he was probably a gay, paedophile, leftie so he doesn’t count. Interestingly the Littlejohns had several different arguments they could apply to just about any situation. Firstly if the story sounded unlikely then obviously it’s a rejection. But if it sounded believable, it might not be brutal enough to justify entering Britain…rejection again. Finally if it was believable and brutal, then why come all the way to England when there are plenty of other countries between Africa/Eastern Europe/South America and here. Why can’t they try all the other first ? eh ? Why come over here and nick our jobs and NHS beds ? Let Pakistan take em…rejection again. Needless to say they rejected all of the contestants.
At the end of the program I was foaming at the mouth and feeling very glad that I haven’t been given any sort of political power because I would turn into a total dictator. All asylum seekers, immigrants and anyone really would be welcomed into Vegworld. Even if they said they’d come here to leech off the state. Good on you sirs. Have our money. We’d only spend it on killing people who are threatening the financial interests of the rich otherwise. Go and buy yourself some food. You see it’s very, very simple. As Ghandi [supposedly] said “There’s enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.”
“So you think if we stopped letting asylum seekers in, the NHS would be back working again and we’d all be happy ?” Asked my new hero to a pensioner in the Moseley group. “Don’t be ridiculous” they responded. Indeed.
There really are enough resources to end poverty and hunger, with a bit left over for a curry a week and a pint or two. The problem is that Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch have them all.
So why don’t the lamebrains get as angry with the leeching-rich-fatcats as they do with the asylum seekers ? Well Michele answered that by quoting one of her social-policy texts. The gist of it was that it’s far harder to cope with someone seemingly getting something for nothing, than it is to cope with someone being extremely rich.