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Front page graffiti from 2021 and 2022. Might not always be in the right chronological order.

That genre of female power ballads that's like Donna Summer's 'I Will Survive' had children with Chumabawamba's 'I Get Knocked Down But I Get Up Again' and their descendants started one-upping each other and have just gone on and on getting more and more more shrill and hysterical until the lyrics are like a quicksilver Terminator or some kind of regenerating monster boasting of indestructibility:

You can hit me in the face with jagged bricks
Or run me over
With a steamroller
You can drop me down a mineshaft and then fill it with sharks
I'm stronger than that, so strong inside

They made me crawl through hell on my hands and knees
With broken glass on the floor
And snot on the glass
And wasps on the snot

They beat me with breeze-blocks and iron bars
And farted on my head at random intervals
I came out smiling
I'd do it again

Drop an Acme anvil on me from the top of a canyon
It won't stop me
I might waddle round a while just a pair of blinking eyes between my shoes and my hat
But don't let it fool you
I'll grow taller

You pulled out all my toenails and I laughed in your face
You fed me through an ore-crusher and I barely shrugged
You shit in my porridge and I didn't care
I ate it all up and I asked for more

Cut my arms and legs off, they'll just grow back
Drop an atom bomb or spray me with napalm
Lower me into acid an inch at a time
You will never, never, never, never destroy me

...But then quite often it turns out they have abusive boyfriends, so maybe
it's the equivalent of a 'seeking partner' ad, 'you can punch me for hours and I'll take it'

Dabniel Crag

Jeff Wode

Jeff Wode is Sensitive

(it wear the tuxedo tie

(it speak) Name Wode. JEFF Wode. GOOD. Goooood

(it drink martini, eat glass, also eat the tuxedo tie

GOLDFINGER: Supriiiise! I is long lost uncle of Jeff. We is never met but I is thwart your whole life out of spite. That time you lost your favourite rock? WAS ME

Jeff (kicks him to death) ung ung ung ung

(Six month later

Jeff is sit playing with his second and third favourite rocks, pensively

Doorbell is ring?

Jeff: Hur?

is baby on doorstep

Jeff. Nur!

him pick up baby

Jeff. Jeff has baby?

Jeff eat baby?

(period of cogitation, like unto the shadows of distant clouds scudding across the face of Ayers' Rock

Jeff feed baby!

(it kill cow, squeeze milks in baby mouth

(bad mans is appear, Jeff is kick to death while holding baby

(it speakk) Not to hurt baby

(it kill seal make the papoose

Woke filmmaker mans (it hold the silk dress

Jeff wear dress?

Jeff (suspish) Hurr?
(him touch
Is shiny. Soft. Jeff like stroke soft things

filom mans (all cunning like) If wear dress can stroke all time

Jeff> Hur!

Is come in the titles and SONG

Jeff WO-ODE
It hit the people, and make the things blow up
But also gentle
And sensitive

(Tiny dancers writhe around giant baby-bottle, high heel which go up Jeff bum, etc

Is it true there's a shortage of guide dogs for the blind? Or did I dream that? I have certainly just dreamed the answer, which is genius: give them a pig. GUIDE PIGS. Think about it. A pig isn't going to cross the road against traffic, it'll run off squealing. AND it can lead them to truffles.

New TV trigger warnings:

Self-loathing, tops left off pens, jeopardy to a zebu

Cannibalism, split infinitives, running with scissors

Spoiled milk, the folding, spindling and mutilation of mail, armpit sniffing

From time to time, when I pay attention to the world, and semi-seriously, I try to devise tests to disprove the possibility that I'm actually in a coma and having a nightmare which extrapolates from bad things that were already happening when I went into the coma or parodies them in a sledgehammer way. And I think I finally came up with one, which is that this world is more bizarre than any nightmare I've ever had, and even asleep I would not stoop to such over-the-top satire.

Also if I was in a coma my loved ones would be playing the wrong fucking music, things I drunkenly and ironically sang at a karaoke once decades ago and would die rather than hear again. If 'Macarthur Park' ever starts blasting from the sky you are all figments of my imagination. Wait patiently for everything to devolve into something surreally erotic such as Nigella Lawson force-feeding me ants or Estelle Getty in fishnets as the Whore of Babylon.

There should have been a Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, shouldn't there, riding a pink horse, symbolizing or unleashing Embarrassment.

Average contents 50? Average contents 50? For that to be true there'd have to be a packet of cigarette papers somewhere thirty feet wide with 500,000 leaves in. Misters Rizla and Zigzag keep one in a vault and point to it triumphantly when the trading standards people come round.

When you flip off God remember to keep both middle fingers exactly parallel so the lines meet at infinity

OK that's worrying, or would be if we weren't far beyond worry and deep into 'it happened' at this point. An episode of the 80s radio drama 'Detective' was just on BBC Radio 4 Extra, and they prefaced it with a warning of 'outdated attitudes', and I expected to hear a casual 'wog' or 'slut' or 'fat nacker' or 'gaylord' or something. But there was nothing like that and what the episode was was this: the 6-year-old daughter of an underworld figure had been raped and hospitalised by a child molester, who got off with a suspended sentence after the judge was told he needed and would seek psychiatric treatment, and the policemen were mildly annoyed, and the gangster yelled at them and the judge and vowed revenge, and the policemen warned him not to take the law into his own hands, and he may or may not have had the nonce beaten up. Some part of that was considered to need a trigger warning and half-apology. Is it now outdated and forbidden to even daydream of the slightest possible sliver of justice or fail to sympathise with a child rapist?

Also, 'jamjar' gets not bleeped but blanked on the classic TV channel, which could be a drawback for cooking shows. But what if you lip-read? Don't mutt and jeff jamjars deserve protection from the claws of a cruel world? Shouldn't a thing be superimposed over the mouth for extra safety? Or the word ginger dubbed in? No, wait, that could be taken for rhyming slang too.

Has anyone checked old programmes in case they depict actual jamjars right in people's faces? What if they're just on display in a shop somewhere, right out in the open where anyone could see it? That's why WI types make jam all the time, it's a dog-whistle. What if there was an olden times TV show with someone fishing, and he's sitting on a fisherman's wharf and he's brought his bait in a jamjar, and the jamjar's got a gollywog on the label, and next to it is a bottle of ginger beer? Who kicks off first?

What if his girlfriend's pregnant and she says 'I'm going to be a mother'? Is she allowed to say mother, right in people's faces? Will that get blanked next?

Was that the trouble with Detective, is the word 'daughter' forbidden too now? 'I'm cross that nonce raped my daughter.' 'I think you mean, that differently-oriented individual surprise-sexed your not-quite-ripe cradle-snatch.'

(That's probably the term trannies use for women, the way Catholic converts used to snobbishly look down on cradle-Catholics).

Wait wait wait sorry, now I'm being offensive, 'the cradle-snatch of whom you are the male-identifying parent-type figure.'

Glengarry Glenn Gould: 'The lieder are weak.'

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One must imagine Obelix happy.

  OK there's you who's an unsung genius, and your friend,
and possibly that guy at the pub, and maybe the mumbly one from down the street if you could only talk to him properly;
  Possibly that guy who was smarter than you at school and recently died mysteriously, it might have been suicide or an overdose and his parents aren't letting on, drugs or autism did him in and he never really had a job in his life but maybe he left something behind
  Oh, maybe your neighbour who used to be the most miserable man in the world and is now the happiest because he was forced to follow his dream to make arty-crafty things because he lost his shitty job in the covid;
  Possibly that guy you always see out walking and you'd like to talk to him too and your neighbour did and it turns out he's a doctorate-level philosopher who can't get a philosopher job and disdains everything else;
  While you think of it, that repairman once whose philosophy startled you
  (There was a bloke driving my bus once and we got talking after I paid the fare and hit it off and kept talking and it became so intense I was afraid he'd crash it, and lasted until I disembarked; we started writing film scripts together, in a pub, not on the bus, but split up over creative differences)
  Now factor the ones you found on the internet:
  The bloke whose blog contained snippets that remain your favourite writing ever but he got shy or something or disgusted with the internet and deleted it and won't write a book or respond to you no matter how many times you nag him, which is every time you remember how good his stuff was;   That one who used to publish brilliant and original and disquieting books but became disgusted with the state of publishing and now doesn't bother finishing them because he knows they won't publish them;
  The one whose book fragments still haunt you years later but he's never bothered putting all the material together for a reason you can't fathom (but maybe a lazy genius isn't a genius)
  That other one you nag to write books but he prefers his paying job and who can blame him
  The guy who still lives with his parents whose stuff is so wild you once thought 'It's like he's fishing in infinity' and a lot of it is gibberish to you but once in a while it hits the spot and you think Yes yes yes and once when you knew a publisher you told him he had to publish him but he wouldn't;
  That other one who used to publish brilliant books but doesn't bother or isn't allowed any more and who in between brilliant one-liners and social media breakdowns casually discovered a loophole in the Laws of Thermodynamics once;
  That one who used to write brilliant essays but stopped for lack of an audience;
  The girl whose unfinished book made Joyce look like a kids' writer but she chose philosophy instead;
  That woman you used to stalk shamelessly from forum to forum because you loved her posts so much;
  That social media account that got zapped for wrongthink and only had about three followers anyway but you miss it so much you sometimes search for all the variations on the handle you can think of in case it reincarnated;
  The bloke whose only output is erudite and too-lengthy replies to someone else's blog posts in which he laments the state of the world and his own life in a manner so poignant and so beautifully written you have to keep copying and saving them, and English isn't even his first language;
  The writers and artists you grandly plan to commission things from when your own boat comes in;
  The chan anons you'll never even know a fake name for who made you howl with laughter with a hasty scrawled cartoon once;
  Now stretch a point and throw in the ones other people are starting to know about too (the one who did write books and is starting to get somewhere after years of plugging away, the comedic genius finally getting the breaks, the blokes whose blogs may have tilted the world on its axis a degree or two, the one whose self-published book has made the mainstream scream, that one brilliant podcast)
  Already it's starting to add up
  (And you can double it for all the equivalent ones I know about and you don't)
  And what if it's only the tip of the iceberg? What if there are people who never bothered with the internet, who -really- never leave the house, who never even showed up for school because they knew they'd get the shit kicked out of them? Who just stayed in one room and did their thing, knew in advance publishers wouldn't publish or galleries hang or never even thought about that, barely looked up when their parents knocked timidly and said, 'Son, we've sold up, we're moving somewhere else now, remember to eat and good luck with the new people.'
  What if there are undiscovered Cornells around every corner and an army of Kennedy Tooles whose mothers just threw their crap out when they died, Ortons who never met their Halliwell, Morrisseys who never met their Marr, Lennons who met McCartney but never found an Epstein, mute inglorious Miltons and Van Goghs living out of vans?
  What if whatever it was in the water or the food or the vaccines or the culture that messed people up also made them artistically weirder and wilder and more wonderful? What if knowing you'll never have a place in the limelight or even the daylight sets you free to make really new things?
  And what if, somehow, improbably, all this buried gold is one day unearthed? And they forgive the shyness and not showing and not finishing things and the grief we put our parents through?
  What if, all appearances to the contrary, this is -not- after all the most culturally dead-arsed hole-in-the-air nothing period ever but will be known to the future as the Age of the Hermetic Genius or the Time of the Hidden Renaissance?
  Or what on the other hand if it's just a Renaissance That Might Have Been and a horrible, horrible waste?

RIP my great friend and kind host Jeremiah, gentleman, poet, independent man, funniest writer of our times.

Such a spirit does not die. Now he is where all the art and music and poetry comes from. Be with Ludwig and Mahler and your Ma, chase the looser-virtued angels, delight, astound and scandalise God with jokes he never thought of and lines he never foresaw.

I think in the future, if we manage to survive the present and some kind of civilisation arises again, our era will be hushed up completely, just erased from the history books. I keep meaning to write this as an SF story. The future society is dignified but austere, not quite totalitarian the way ours almost is but spartan, repressive, run by hard men doing harsh things out of stern necessity. So naturally there are rebels, and they're all, 'Tell us the truth about the past, the wonderful world of the early 21st century.' And there's a vault where the authorities conceal all the archives relating to this time. And the ones who go too far in rebelling, they throw them in there as punishment. 'There are good reasons for what we do. Stop rebelling.' 'Never!' 'Then what choice do I have? I will give you your heart's desire.'
Wait wait wait no, or maybe they just allow them to discover it, the best of them, the noblest, it's like a test, they have to break in there, and there are all traps and safeguards they have to overcome, the rebels think they've found it for themselves, and they scale all the walls and shoot all the robots and break all the codes, and they're in -
And they find themselves in a gallery full of pictures of our times. You can imagine the kind, you can pick which ones yourself. The door closes behind them but they barely notice, they're so open-mouthed and aghast.
And after three days they let them out, heads lowered.
'Are you satisfied?' asks the stern world leader.
The leader of the rebels nods.
'Then you will join us?'
'Yes.'
And those who have seen the truth are inducted into the secret police, dedicated to stopping their world ever becoming like ours, and become the sternest and harshest of them all.

The modern world's like an ongoing series of tests of independence and moral courage and sanity, and even though they're usually bleeding obvious the most surprising people fail each one.

People you would not have expected fell for the global warming shit, for example, or passed most tests with flying colours and then went shrill for vaccine mandates.

In the last round there will only be two people in the world left with any integrity, Peter Hitchens and some random redneck.

The final test is, 'The government has the right to crack open your skull to find if you are harbouring any negative thoughts towards the baby-fucking community which could make them cry.'

Hitchens, finally worn down by thirty-odd years of bien-pensants yelling at him, shrugs and says, 'Do what you like, you bloody degenerates, no-one ever listens to me anyway.'

The redneck says, 'Nope,' with the qualification, 'Faggit.'

At this point the New World Order rip their masks off revealing God. The redneck has won, he is the One Just Man and is made the Judge of all the Earth. Hitchens looks wistful. He is given a shiny pick-up truck as consolation prize. The redneck looks wistful. He asks if he can change his answer and the whole thing has to start all over again.

I've just made the discovery for which I'll be remembered. Hanging on washing lines. Try it, you'll never look back. You just hook your elbows over and let it take your weight. And then just sort of sway back and forth like laundry in a breeze. It's like being on a ship on a gentle sea or being rocked in a cradle. The most soothing thing ever. I think you're slightly steadier if you clasp your hands together. Is it in Down and Out in Paris and London, there were places were tramps could go who couldn't get a place to lie down, and they'd just stand up in a room but they had a clothes line to go to sleep over? Don't feel sorry for them. I might sell my bed and do that. I might start a theme bar, no chairs or counters, just washing lines to hang on, just all hang there swaying, grinning at each other, make lots of new friends. I might start a new type of therapy. It is impossible to be unhappy while doing it.

A computer when you start it up is like a pompous professional man with whom you have an appointment keeping you sitting there waiting while he unhurriedly finishes phone calls and makes notes in a file and sharpens pencils
Finally steeples his fingers and says,
'Now. What can I do for you?' You can die screaming while I embed this pencil in your brain. Or central processor.

Or you fuck off for a cup of tea while he's farting round and come back to find he's blacked out.

When you're good the devil tempts you
When you're bad God suddenly starts being nice to you to try to win you back
If you were smart you could just go through your life playing one off against the other,
like switching between rival utility companies.

Louis Theroux has become a completely surreal or Dadaistic thing. This grey thing lurking watching, staring blankly as young women expose their vaginas for a camera. Long gone the sly malicious jokes of his youth; he forgets now even to do a look of solemn concern. Maybe later on he will prop his chin on his hand thoughtfully as she starts to fuck a beagle. Eerie in its state of zen non-judgement, this dead eye staring like the fish at the end of Dolce Vita. Who knows what he is thinking? Possibly he would rather that the young woman did not show her vagina to the camera, but never would it occur to him to tell her she ought not to, or if it did he would reproach himself.

The post-liberal kids on social media ought to choose him as an embodiment of liberalism, its culmination and epitaph and tombstone; photoshop him lurking blankly in the middle of the most extraordinary scenes, scenes of debauchery and harrowing degradation, historical scenes, scenes of bloody carnage and the fall of empires... this enigmatic Easter Island head or Buster Keaton face... the eternal onlooker, some modern equivalent of the (old, long-nosed) Chad or Kilroy, forever peering over a wall...

(Be it noted that I only caught five minutes before I started to choke with laughter; for all I know later on he ran amok like Jesus in the temple, overturning cameras and yelling, 'That's your wife's twat you're hawking on the internet!')

(And of course you could swap in any member of the establishment and the results would be the same; the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi... Prince Charles... 'And what do you do? You fuck beagles? That must be jolly interesting. How did you get into that line of work - I presume you wanted to work with animals? Mother is fond of dogs but she doesn't take it that far.')

Anyone with any kind of creative or constructive or knowledge-pursuing urge no matter how inept should be exempted civilisation. It should be reserved for people who don't know what they want to do. It just feels like a conspiracy to stop you working. It's just a constant round of, get up! Put some pants on! Eat your breakfast! Shit! (On the toilet, first taking your pants off again and putting them on again.) Brush your teeth! Brush your hair! Wash your hair! Get your hair cut! Remember your mother's birthday! Remember Mother's Day! Remember your sister's birthday. Remember your friend's birthday. Remember your own birthday. Here comes Christmas again. Fix this. Fix that. Buy things. Wash your clothes. Eat again. Shit again. Take your pants off. Go to bed. You forgot to brush your teeth! Rinse. Repeat. All coming between you and the thing that you love.

I swear to God I'm going to start living like a caveman and shitting in a nappy like a gamer

There was a young man from Limerick
Who powdered his todger with turmeric
His old chap or fellow
Went exceedingly yellow
And his sex life became largely chimeric

I -think- if I was a progressive the PC anachronistic-lies rewrite-the-past TV would annoy me even more than it does. Isn't 'Everything was always like this' an outrage even to -their- narrative? And an insult to all kinds of protests and sacrifices? I mean if a black man could become a top CIA guy in the early 60s what was Martin Luther King whining about? And if a woman could be an MI5 chief what were feminists whining about?

There are almost no novels for or about management types, which is a shame as the sane and competent ones are the people who make the world run. Also they're a big potential audience, they spend a lot of time in airport and train station bookshops; they have to make do with thriller crap or crappy non-fiction management How-to books, which they ought to be discouraged from as it's where they learn buzzwords and faddish theories that annoy the rest of us.

Books about them ought to become a genre, you could make a billion.

I'd do it myself but I tend to be the deadwood in any office so it would be like a rodent writing about exterminators.

Set them up as being like westerns, or a certain kind of spy thing:

'Something rotten in the Denmark office.

Returns down. Staff turnover up. Morale in the basement. Troublesome leaks to the press.

No-one can put their finger on why.

These kinds of problems, you've got only one move.

SEND FOR

THE TROUBLESHOOTER'

But it's more like a detective thing, an exercise in problem-solving. (And for the writer, a new form of problem-creating, and it's about time, we haven't had a new type in too long.)

Or a ghost-investigating thing - he can tell the vibe is off in this department, but what is the root cause?

Avoid modern management-speak, just make them regular no-nonsense hard-headed blokes who can out-think-and-observe everyone else.

And I think avoid the ulcers and whisky and demanding ex-wife tropes, maybe even banging the secretary. Maybe the secretaries throw themselves at him but he doesn't want to know.

The Troubleshooter just has samurai discipline, you dig? He's above everything but the job. He lives in one room staring at the wall waiting for the next call to arms, his bag already packed.

Platinum library card holders have access to the Forbidden Books, the ones the man in the street never gets to hear about. 'The Kids Are All Right' by Dostoyevsky, 'A Smile Is My Umbrella' by Kafka, 'The Prettiest Pixie in Elfland' by Hemingway, 'Poor People Are Creepy' by Dickens.

  'Gender is a contruct.' 'Constructed out of penises and vaginas.'
  I don't bother with this stuff much because, if I saw someone going round smearing his own shit all over his face and trying to encourage me to do likewise, I wouldn't bother trying to reason with him, I'd feel both degraded and futile.
  But, one thing I've kept meaning to say re the 237 Genders piece, as people might not have quite realised it, as I certainly didn't before I wrote it, is this:
  The Woke don't really believe in more than two genders any more than the rest of us do.
  Seriously. If you ever meet someone (in real life I never do) who kicks off at you for saying there are only two genders, challenge them to name the others.
  I assumed there was a list, so when I wrote the piece I went looking for the list to find things to take the piss out of. And all I could find was one listing about two or three dozen, not the 63 or 100 or whatever there are claimed to be, and the guy was clearly as tongue-in-cheek as I was about some of them, and scraping the barrel and duplicating for others; and this was something he had idly put together himself when he (a wokie) had also realised there was no list of the reputed many many genders.
  OK so they fall back on 'it's a continuum of infinite gradations of gender, there can be literally any number.' But... they are forbidden to believe that and would be sent to Woke Hell if they did. Are they saying Jayne Mansfield was 100/100 or 99/100 of a woman and Camille Paglia or a female soldier is some degree less of a woman? That a Trump or a Schwarzenegger is pure male and some willowy fop is less of a man? They would be sharing that view with people they despise.
  If someone cuts his dick off - if someone even says he's now a woman and might get around to cutting his dick off - we're meant to just accept them as women, who can compete in women's sports and enter women's toilets, women pure and simple, no quibbles, no comebacks, no caveats, and if you even dare to dream of suggesting they're the slightest fraction less of a woman than someone who was born with a vagina you ought to lose your job and go to jail, right? So where's the continuum now? That sounds pretty fucking binary to me.
  Really, it must have started as ...they tend not to do jokes, more likely an exercise in showy oneupmanship and go-one-further by one of them, and they all had to go along with it as they felt afraid to call it out. Probably some College of Cardinals somewhere has noticed the contradiction and felt uneasy but they're keeping shtumm. They're persecuting people out of reflex for something they don't and can't believe.

  Which gets us bloody nowhere and helps us not at all.
   Any Wokie who read the above would feel superior to me. For a moment he wouldn't even feel angry, he'd feel pity for me. A bishop rather than a footsoldier would anyway. He would smile smugly and feel a satisfying glow on the inside. Because he can grasp the sublime quantumness of it, hold the contradictory concepts in his head at the same time, and I can't.
  Because it's a plus that it's deep and esoteric and can only be explained with lots of waffle and to the layman is flagrant bullshit. It confers status on the believer, the same way that in the middle ages espousing some complex bit of theology that was over the heads of the shit-caked masses would, or the way that in certain circles liking difficult music does.
  And of course it's a plus in that it enhances the power-boner they feel in forcing the rest of us to go along with something that is patently and obviously bullshit and that we know they know not even they believe; the modern equivalent of '2+2 is 5 if the Party says so'.

I find it embarrassing and humiliating even to have an opinion
on most of the supposed issues of the day

It's as if people come up to you dribbling and gurgling and making lip-fart noises
and you're supposed to engage with them

(Isn't there a Philip K Dick story about an invasion by an alien
race who are so absurd everyone's embarrassed to fight them?)

(Is that how they won, just by being ridiculous? Is that how they took over
academia and government and the media? Did people just go, 'Fuck, I'll just
give in to everything they want, it'll spare me having to talk to them'?)

(Oh, could the sane people fight back by becoming even more embarrassing?
Would it be possible to espouse solid common-sense principles while, say, going
round with your tongue lolling out, wearing nothing but incontinence pants, and
loping everywhere like Groucho Marx?)

And as well as soiled I start to feel more than a little unreal

It's like when you're in a bad dream, and you start
to apply logic to a situation, and that in itself makes you
realise, 'Oh, but it's all mad, this is a dream isn't it?

Except in this one you don't wake up, it just goes on and on and gets madder and madder

I got into this in Clara and Miles, but where the hell did the thing come from that if a neighbourhood is friendly and functional and pleasant it equates to Stepford, or the British equivalent might be The Village? When did it start, how the hell did They get us all to swallow it, why do we go along with it?

A friend (and ideological ally) just moved somewhere nice and he did it too, he was complaining, 'Creepy, sinister, Stepford, cult-like, everyone's unnaturally friendly and smiling,' and (even though I got into it in Clara and Miles) I automatically started commiserating and telling him he'd get used to it.

And all the 'So cute and picture-postcard you could throw up', 'So perfect you could vomit', where does that come from?

Communities are supposed to be friendly. People are meant to smile at each other. The place you live is meant to be harmonious and aesthetically pleasing, not all shitty and broken and violent. It's dysfunction that's unnatural, and learning to love your shit-hole that's sinister and brainwashed. Leave mean streets to Philip Marlowe.

Blowing up power stations for twenty years and suddenly starting nagging us
to turn light-bulbs off behind us. Get fucked. And what if it's all deliberate?

Proposal: there ought to be a queue for sex. For example if you've got a wife or girlfriend and split up with her, you then have to go to the back of the queue and can't have another UNTIL I'VE BLOODY GOT LAID

Look. If I was in charge I would send immigrants back to France via a supergun aimed at Paris. (And then Remainers, and exchange students, and quite a few tourists.) And I hope this works out, I really do. But... um... how to say... Rwanda? Really? Is that really the best place he could find? Is he, belatedly, starting to go for a Trump level of trollery? Or is this an example of Robert Conquest's thing of all organisations being headed (I personally think just advised) by secret agents of their rivals? The 'optics', you know, are, er, somewhat dubious. The associations. I mean try a free-association on anyone. 'Rwanda.' 'Genocide.' The only possible worse destination would have been a camp at Auschwitz. 'What's the matter, you wimps? It's safe NOW. And we tidied up. It's only one ad campaign away from being a ritzy holiday destination. At least a caravan site. The gas is already laid on. Look, look, excellent shower facilities. And communal ovens, for the self-caterers.'

(The following few were originally posted somewhere else)

The self-doubt of the artist, the self-laceration of genius, always thinking they could do better... it isn't right, it isn't fair, it's a tragic arrangement...

The Dunning-Kruger effect, how is that fair? Brilliant people think they're rubbish and mediocrities think they're great? That ain't right.

The only thing worse than the Dunning-Kruger effect is the discovery of the Dunning-Kruger effect, because if you've even heard of the thing any moment of either self-loathing or self-confidence can put you on a never-ending carousel or roller-coaster of manic depression:

'Christ I'm crap. I'm a complete waste of space. I'm the most useless person ever to walk the earth.

- Wait though. I'm forgetting Dunning-Kruger. If I think like that, that must mean I'm brilliant!

... But if I think like that, that means I'm crap.

- Which means I'm brilliant!

... But that means I'm crap.

- Which means I'm brilliant!

... Which means I'm crap.'

And on and on and up and down and round and round in an eternal loop forever.

(How did they even submit their paper, Dunning and Kruger, when they came up with their theory? 'Hey it's pretty good stuff this, Kruger, it'll make our reputation.' 'Yeah, we can be proud of our work, Dunning... Oh no! That means it's shit!'

So they throw it on the fire and at the last second realise this self-doubt makes them geniuses and rescue it at the cost of burnt fingers. And all the way to hand it in they alternate between drooping their heads like 90s shoe-gazers and strutting like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.)

And no-one's ever happy being who they are. Woody Allen cries himself to sleep because he isn't Ingmar Bergman, Bergman wished he was Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky, probably, wanted to be Shirley Temple. In between takes on Andrei Rublev he would sneak off and sing 'On the Good Ship Lollipop' in a piercing falsetto and repress a tear of envy, I'm sure of it.

I want there to have been just ONE artist in the history of the world who was pleased with himself. Is that so much to ask? Just one. Maybe Leonardo da Vinci. Surely him, at least?

'Mona Lisa! SCORE! Madonna of the Rocks! Who's the boss? The Last Supper? The dog's bollocks, more like! I would need a bloody helicopter to see the top of my talent. Oh - that's OK - I already invented one! Oh - I wonder who did these anatomical studies, they're completely brilliant - oh - that's right - it was me!'

And he sashays round his studio singing, to the tune of The Girl From Ipanema:

'Bald and bearded and pale and lovely
Leonardo da Vinci goes drawing
And as he sketches each thing he sketches
Is Art...'

Or Michelangelo, maybe... or Raphael, or Rembrandt, or Vermeer ... how could they not?

But more likely the one will be Damien Hirst.

'I pickled that shark SO GOOD!'

'See how well I chainsawed that cow! That cow's gonna stay cut in half! That's one bifurcated cow, all right.'

'I painted spots on a Mini! I painted spots on a Mini! LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!'

PHEW WHAT A TORCHER

TINDERBOX BRITAIN

CLIMATE ARMAGEDDON

FAHRENHEIT 999

GENOCIDE FALLS FROM THE SKY

THE SUN HAS GOT HIS DEATH-HAT ON AND HE'S COMING OUT TO SLAY

DID YOU EVER BURN ANTS WITH A MAGNIFYING GLASS? WE ARE THE ANTS NOW

DO NOT GO OUTSIDE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES YOU WILL BURST INTO FLAME LIKE DRACULA

DON'T LEAN TOO CLOSE TO THE THERMOMETER THE MERCURY MIGHT PUT YOUR EYE OUT

PUT ON SUNSCREEN
PUT ON A HAT
COWER INDOORS
DRAW THE CURTAINS
CLIMB BODILY INSIDE YOUR FREEZER
IT STILL WON'T SAVE YOU
EVERYONE IS DOOOMED

WE MUST SACRIFICE VIRGINS TO THE SUN GOD LEST HE DEVOURS US ALL

ALL WILL DIE IN A STATE OF RAPTURE TURNED TO TERROR,
MESMERISED BY THE EERIE BEAUTY OF THE ALL-CONSUMING ALL-REVEALING LIGHT UNTIL THE FLESH MELTS FROM THEIR FACES LIKE CANDLE-WAX LIKE THE NAZI AT THE END OF RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK,
MET OFFICE REPORT WARNS

THERE WILL BE THE BURNED
THERE WILL BE THE SINGED
NO-ONE WILL ESCAPE UNMARKED
THE LIVING WILL ENVY THE DEAD
BUT THEY WILL NOT HAVE TO BURY THEM BECAUSE THEY WILL ALREADY BE CREMATED

RAIN ON SATURDAY

(copyright all British newspapers)

(continued from the previous, as to my slight surprise the nice weather's continuing:)

HEAT-KRIEG

SOLOCAUST

SUNBEFRIGGINGLIEVABLE

IT'S OFFICIAL: THIS ONE'S BIBLICAL

GOVERNMENT ADVICE:
KEEP CALM
CARRY ON
BUT PLUCK YOUR OWN EYES OUT SO YOU DON'T SEE THE HORRORS TO COME

EMERGENCY MEASURES:
BRITAIN TO IMPORT 100,000 PUNKAH-WALLAHS
EVERYONE TO BE ISSUED A PEBBLE TO SUCK TO TAKE AWAY THIRST
ANYONE SPILLING DRINKS TO BE SHOT
STILL-SUITS OUT OF DUNE TO BE MANDATORY
INFLAMMABLE HAIRSPRAY TO BE BANNED BEFORE PEOPLE TURN INTO HUMAN MATCHES
ALL PETS' FUR MUST BE SHAVED INTO BIKINIS
HATS TO BE NAILED ON ALL UNDER-10s

IS RUSSIA BEHIND THE SUN?

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS, NOT WITH A BANG BUT THE WHIMPER OF A SMALL CHILD WHOSE ICE CREAM HAS JUST MELTED TO NOTHING FOLLOWED BY THE FLESH OF HER ENTIRE BLOODY ARM BECAUSE SHE STEPPED INTO DIRECT SUNLIGHT

KENT TO BECOME A DESERT THE HARSH EMPTINESS AND EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM OF WHICH WILL BURN AWAY ALL THAT IS IGNOBLE IN YOU AND RESULT IN LAWRENCE-OF-ARABIA-STYLE APOTHEOSIS IN THOSE WHO DARE TO ENTER IT

THEN YOU WILL BE BUGGERED BY TURKS

ONE DAY YOUR CHILDREN WILL ASK, 'WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE HEAT-WAR, DADDY?'
AND YOU WILL REPLY, MODESTLY, 'NOT MUCH, SON. I WENT TO WORK IN A TINFOIL TOGA AND DRANK MY OWN URINE BEFORE IT BOILED INSIDE ME, SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE. THEN I FOUND YOUR MOTHER WAS HOARDING NIVEA SO I HUNG HER FROM A LAMPPOST AND DRAINED THE FLUIDS FROM HER BODY, AS IS OUR WAY.'

OUR LAST FORLORN HOPE:
SCIENTISTS TO FIRE A GIANT PARASOL INTO ORBIT
CORNWALL AND THE HEBRIDES WILL ONLY BE UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FRILLY BITS AT THE EDGE
AND WILL BE ALTERNATELY SEARED AND SAVED IN A SORT OF LACY PATTERN

(these will continue until morale improves or the sun goes away)

(getting a bit esoteric at times now)

(also I'm finding them slightly less funny now that I'm spending parts of each day prostrate in front of an open fridge moaning Someone Please Shoot Me)

APOLLOCALYPSE

SPURLOS VERSUNKT

TUSKEN RAIDERS ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH

EVERY VILLAGE IN SURREY NOW HAS A PARIAH-DOG AND A WHISKY PRIEST

CONGA LINES OF LOOTERS MARAUDING THROUGH CHELSEA LIKE IN 'THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE'

ICE-CREAM BARONS TAKE OVER MIDLANDS,
HUNT ENEMIES DOWN IN MR WHIPPY VANS TINKLING 'RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES'

BORIS TO PERFORM RAIN-DANCE

PLAN TO RUN WIND TURBINES BACKWARDS TO CREATE NETWORK OF GIANT FANS

BE NICE TO EVERY REDHEAD YOU MEET, THEY MAY SOON BE EXTINCT
AND THE FAT
AND TALL PEOPLE, WHO ARE CLOSER TO THE SOLAR MENACE

TOILET BAN TO BE INTRODUCED
WEE ON YOUR LAWN, OR THAT OF A CLOSE NEIGHBOUR
COLLECT SWEAT TO DO YOUR WASHING-UP
WASH BY RUBBING YOURSELF DOWN WITH A HANDFUL OF MUESLI
IF YOU HAVE ELDERLY NEIGHBOURS REMEMBER TO CHECK ON THEM
IF YOU FIND THEM USING A HOSEPIPE, GARROTTE THEM WITH IT
THEN LOOT THEIR HOUSE FOR LAVENDER WATER AND ANY BISCUITS WITH JUICY RAISINS IN
OR FIG NEWTONS, THE OLD FARTS PROBABLY HAVE A BIG STASH OF THOSE

THE NEW NORMAL:
LONG LUNCH HOURS AND PROTRACTED SIESTAS
DINE LATE AND TALK PHILOSOPHICALLY LONG INTO THE NIGHT
MAKE WRY GESTURES OF FATALISM AND NURTURE COMPLICATED BLOOD FEUDS OVER SEVERAL GENERATIONS
JEALOUSLY BLOCK UP WATER SOURCES AND INADVERTENTLY KILL YOUR HUNCHBACKED BASTARD SON AND EVENTUALLY YOUR SEMI-IDIOT LEGITIMATE ONE WHILE 'LA FORZA DEL DESTINO' PLAYS MOURNFULLY IN THE BACKGROUND

DOWNPLAYING THE GRAVITY OF THE CATASTROPHE NOW A CRIME
SO IS DEFEATISM
A SORT OF HABITUAL GLOOM UNDERCUT BY SPURTS OF MINDLESS OPTIMISM IS THE IDEAL, LIKE EVERTON SUPPORTERS
WE *WILL* DEFEAT THE SUN AND IT *WILL* BE PUNISHED FOR WHAT IT HAS DONE TO US
BUT ONLY AFTER MILLIONS HAVE DIED

DO NOT WHINE OR CRY WHEN THE ENEMY FINALLY KILLS YOU
REMEMBER YOU ARE A SOLDIER OF HUMANITY
FACE IT SQUARELY AND TELL IT,
'ONE DAY, SOMEONE WHO LOOKS LIKE ME WILL WIPE YOU FROM THE GALAXY'
OR, 'WITH MY LAST DROP OF MOISTURE I SPIT AT THEE, YOU EVIL YELLOW BASTARD'
BUT DO NOT REALLY SPIT AS IT IS NOW ILLEGAL EXCEPT IN A WASHING-UP BOWL

THE SUN NEWSPAPER TO BE BANNED FOR COLLABORATION
AND ANYTHING CALLED 'DAILY'
WE WILL NO LONGER MEEKLY ACCEPT THE DIURNAL CYCLE
COPERNICUS' THEORY IS NOW OUTLAWED
WE DO NOT REVOLVE AROUND THE ENEMY AND NEVER WILL
IT STALKS US, CIRCLING REMORSELESSLY,
LIKE A BIG ROUND BIRD OF PREY OR A MESSERSCHMITT STRAFING US WITH HEAT BULLETS,
LEAPING OVER THE HORIZON TO POUNCE WHEN WE LEAST EXPECT IT,
SOURING MILK, LAYING WASTE THE LAND, DESPOILING EVERYTHING IT GAZES ON LIKE THE EYE OF SAURON

WE WILL SMASH ITS TYRANNY AND COME BACK STRONGER
SOON WE WILL BASK IN THE COOL OF ETERNAL NIGHT
WE WILL BUILD AN EMPIRE THE SUN WILL NEVER RISE ON
STAND FIRM AND REMEMBER HYSTERIA HELPS NO-ONE
APART FROM THE AGE-OLD NEMESIS WHICH SINCE THE DAWN OF RECORDED HISTORY HAS FLAILED BRITAIN MERCILESSLY FOR TWO AND A HALF WEEKS OF EVERY OTHER YEAR

VICTORY OVER THE SKY-BEAST

NOW START BUILDING AN ARK

IT TRICKED US

IT'S BACK

FIERCER THAN EVER

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO TURN ON THE WATER

HEAT-TSUNAMI

HEAT HOKUSAI

THE RAIN IS NOW OUR ALLY AGAIN
WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH THE SUN

PLAN TO BRING THE RAIN BACK BY ANNOUNCING A BANK HOLIDAY

THE RESIDENTS OF THE AREAS THAT FLOODED NOW BEING STEAMED TO DEATH
WHEN YOUR LUCK'S OUT YOUR LUCK'S OUT
ALSO I THINK THESE ARE NOW THE IDEAL CONDITIONS FOR ERGOTISM SO YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO HALLUCINATIONS AND YOUR LIMBS BLACKENING AND ROTTING EVERY TIME YOU EAT A SANDWICH
BUT DOUBTLESS WE WILL HANDLE THAT WITH EQUANIMITY AND FLAWLESS SANG-FROID AS WELL

BIRDS FALLING FROM THE SKIES LIKE FLAMING METEORS
TENNIS RACKETS MUST BE CARRIED AT ALL TIMES TO DEFLECT THEM
TRY TO AIM AT A POND

MADAM TUSSAUD'S NOW HOLDING AN EXHIBTION OF PRIMORDIAL SOUP

BACK TO CASH ECONOMY AS CREDIT CARDS MELT AND COMPUTERS OVERHEAT

BLACKPOOL TOWER BUCKLING, CATHEDRALS TURNING GAUDIESQUE
BIG BEN LOOKS LIKE A DALI
SO DO ZOOS BECAUSE OF THE BURNING GIRAFFES

RAILWAY TRACKS WARPING SO BADLY TRAIN JOURNEYS NOW LIKE ONE OF THOSE CORKSCREW RIDES
OR WOULD BE IF THERE WERE ANY RUNNING

MIKADO AND SEVERAL OPERETTAS CANCELLED AS GOVERNMENT REQUISITIONS ALL PAPER FANS

OBAN MAN KILLS ARAB DUE TO HEAT AND INTOLERABLE FLASH OF SUNLIGHT IN EYES, WAS UNMOVED AT MOTHER'S FUNERAL

WREXHAM WOMAN TRADES SEX FOR OPAL FRUIT
NO CHANGE THERE

LIGHT GLARE SO INTENSE SNOW GOGGLES MUST BE WORN BEFORE LOOKING AT A BALD MAN

COLLAGEN INJECTIONS MELTING
ALL TEENAGERS NOW HAVE MOUTHS LIKE THE GHOSTFACE MASK OUT OF SCREAM
AND SOUND LIKE A BAD JANET STREET-PORTER IMPRESSION
EPIDEMIC OF SILICON IMPLANTS EXPLODING
ALL BREASTS MUST BE HANDLED WITH CARE
AND TREATED AS SUSPECT UNTIL PROVED NATURAL
A MAN FROM THE COUNCIL WILL BE COMING ROUND TO CHECK

REVISED TANNING GUIDELINES:
2 MINUTES EXPOSURE SKIN TURNS INFRA-RED
5 MINUTES EXPOSURE CAUCASIANS ARRESTED FOR BLACKFACE
AFTER 10 MINUTES YOU TURN FULIGIN, THE COLOUR THAT IS BLACKER THAN BLACK
AFTER A QUARTER OF AN HOUR ALL MOISTURE EVAPORATES AND YOU BECOME A CHARCOAL BRIQUETTE
WE MAY HAVE TO COOK WITH YOU IF THE ENERGY RUNS OUT

ALL WELLS RUNNING DRY INCLUDING PROBABLY THIS ONE

One time I gave a plumber five hundred quid to fix my water, and he never did, he just used the money to go on holiday and spent it on debauchery, I had no water for weeks. I just laughed it off and put it down to experience.

But the next year the same thing happened again, same bloke, he said 'It'll cost half a grand to fix this' and I said 'You better had do this time' and gave it him and off he went and nothing was fixed and I had no running water for days.

And the exact same thing happened the year after that, and then the next year, and in fact it went on for, oh, forty or fifty years at least, regular as clockwork, I'd give him money to fix my water and he'd disappear and blow it and I'd have no water and sometimes my house would flood. It became a bit of a standing joke.

No, that isn't true, it never happened. But there's this country I know, supposedly civilised, supposedly first world, where it rains for about 360 days of the year, and after five days of not-rain they run short of water. And when it rains more than usual they can't cope with that either. And this has gone on decade after decade for as long as most people can remember, they keep giving huge sums of money to the people in charge of the water and the same thing keeps happening; and it just gets treated as a joke.

Nay. Such a passing is not possible.
This I'll not credit on my own eyes' tale.
As durable as the mountains she seemed,
As fixed as the stars. Always has she been
Here: a godly, stately, upright monarch,
Dam to our nation, pattern of the best
Of us. Our hist'ry was writ in her. The
Axle-pin is gone from our polity.
Few left now who know such lash of duty.
The harness thrust upon her, untimely
And unlooked for, she wore light as swan's down.
Let men pause as we seek to gauge our loss.
Let wheels be muffled and tall pyres burn bright.
A page turns; a chapter's closed; an age ends.
I salute a noble spirit: I grieve.
S. It was her time, my lord.
R. - That balms me not.

I don't believe anyone will actually go to jail but in a few years it will be like PPI mis-selling. 'Have YOU chopped your dick off by mistake? Or been talked into having your fanny condemned and boarded up? Have a million quid.' (From the taxpayer, not anyone who was responsible.)

I had a dream there was a conman who had some mental syndrome where he couldn't stop blurting out his thoughts, he'd say things out loud he only meant to think. So he'd go up to people and be like, 'Do you want to buy shares in a mine? You fucking moron, it's a complete dud but you don't realise, I'm going to take you for every penny.'

But then when he realised why he wasn't getting anywhere he did like a human rights case, he claimed discrimination against people with his syndrome and they found in his favour. So from then on he could just come up to you and call you a stupid cunt and say he was going to take your money, and you had to just give it to him, because you might have fallen for it if he didn't have a syndrome and it wasn't fair otherwise. And it went to his head and he just started luring people to shady places and robbing and killing them, telling them he was going to do it, but they couldn't object.

Waking up I decided it was deeper than just the human rights and equality thing. I think the completely open and up-front conman stands for governments, authority, the world elites. They just keep calling us cunts and telling us what they're going to do to us and we just keep letting them.

I've just noticed something and it outrages me: girls are really small.
I mean they're practically midgets. It gets hushed up in the culture but they're these little tiny things.
Even the occasional Scandinavian supermodel barely comes up to your nose.
There's an absurd disproportion between the amount of mental space they take up and the amount of physical space. You spend all day thinking about some woman and then you meet her again and you realise she's this little dwarfish toy you could throw across the room. It's ridiculous! It's demeaning! They're tiny! Tiny!
It's as if you were obsessed with ants or mice ruled the world.
Something that big in your life should be big in reality.
I'm going to start fucking elephants, or stiltwalkers, or one of those fat Americans who spread across three rooms.

I'm trying to imagine a situation in which anyone would not realise an engine sound getting closer meant a vehicle was coming towards them without the added MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP and the voice saying 'Vehicle reversing'. Perhaps a blind man who had been raised in and just escaped from a cult that eschewed all post-19th century technology. Oh but why is 'vehicle reversing' only in English? What if he was a foreign one? I claim a racism. Probably there should be a man with a red flag at the back to shove people out of the way.

I think it's about time the word 'unbelievable' was acknowledged to have had a meaning shift, the same way 'literally' can now apparently mean 'not literally.' I mean now more often it means 'all too believable' or 'fairly bloody predictable' or 'not this again', or when I hear news I keep exclaiming it and meaning it like that.

God basically has less idea of social skills than I do and thinks if he torments you and makes you suffer you'll be driven into his arms
He's stuck at the pigtail-pulling stage
Or he's a moody scowling growling Mr Rochester, that's why more women go to church, it works with them

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY CIGARETTE LIGHTER YOU BASTARD

The French have no word for 'pixie-like'. I found the recordings of the Truffaut-Hitchcock interviews online, and Hitchcock describes some actress as having a pixie-like quality. The translator pauses for quite a long time and finally comes up with 'spirituelle'.

The strange thing is, despite their cool and sophisticated reputation, when you get to know them the French are more than averagely capable of being pixie-like. I would even say a childlike playfulness is inherent in them. They just don't know they're doing it, they think they're being spirituelle.

I was throwing around lines like 'I hope next Elon buys x'
and a friend topped me with 'I wish he'd buy Britain'
WHY DIDNT I THINK OF THAT
WHY DIDNT HE THINK OF THAT
Please Elon please
You could probably pick it up for pocket change now
but in the right hands it would honestly have potential

(Added later) - both topped by someone on social media:
'Imagine the squeals when he buys Dominion voting machines.'

'The poor Krells. They stood on the brink of greatness but disappeared completely overnight.
No physical trace of them remains, but if you study their characteristic doorways you can get some idea of what they must have been like.'

Halloween 1982:
bob-apple, a carved pumpkin, some black crepe and fake cobwebs here and there

Halloween 2022:

Full re-enactment of Passchendaele with zombies. Meanwhile the next-door-neighbours have turned their entire house into a giant copy of the Necronomicon.
The smart-arses across the street have brought in an Italian horror director to fake an axe-massacre but are topped by the rich people three doors down hiring a team of physicists to open an actual portal to hell.

(Probably redundant, in 2022.)

Index