A Stencilled Rat Writes

Okay, dweebs. The Blue Rubber Cat has hijacked Dive's blog again and asked me to keep an eye on the dork while he's shopping in London.
"Not only does he stick his hand up my arse" the Cat told me, "but he's done a post on going shopping! SHOPPING! … First it was Tiffany Lamps, then fucking spice racks, then ironing, ferChrissakes! Keep an eye on that fucker. I don't want him coming home in a dress."

So here I am, Banksy's Rat. Your guest blogger for today. Dive has walked past me thousands of times over the years, but this time I'm following the fucker.

So what's the first thing he does? Goes to see Big Gay Alex for a haircut.
Big Gay Alex likes to giggle and say "Going down, sir?" when he pumps that stupid hydraulic chair of his. Today we learn that Alex is thinking of getting married.
Holy Crap! I pity to poor bastard who marries him. I mean he's BIG! Like American Fat! (Note from the Blue Rubber Cat: I'm gonna have to trademark that phrase after all the hilarious whining the Yanks did after Dive first used it) That guy wears his mumu skin tight. If he rolls over in bed it's Goodnight Vienna. One "Squish" and it's all over.

So anyway, when he comes outta there he heads over St.James's Park. We're having some serious weather here; floods, storms, tornados, plagues of locusts, the lot. So this is St.James's Park at lunchtime in July.
Note to Robyn: Bring a brolly when you come over.

Even The Mall ain't exactly thronged with tourists. Though the "fucking huge flag" salesman seems to have had a good day.

So then Dive disappears into the Royal Academy to look at the Summer Exhibition, which he says is seriously good fun except the stupid bastard checked his camera with the security folk instead of smuggling it in so all we get to see are Jake and Dinos Chapman's outsized Kiddies' Dinosaurs in the courtyard. My money's on the T Rex.

And then he emptied a couple of Japanese supermarkets of all their stock for his party tonight and staggered back across the city, just in time to get caught in this huge thunderstorm.
Boring fucking shopping.

Bring back the ranting I say.

Gone Shopping

Day off today. I'll be trawling round London's Japanese supermarkets gathering ingredients for tonight's end of year party at college for our lovely Japanese class.
Yes, I will take a camera.

In the meantime, feel free to amuse yourselves.
If you've got no games to hand, then masturbation is fun.

Revolting Colonials

I'd been preparing a nice lefty rant today, taking key phrases from the Declaration of Independence and contrasting them with events and political statements from more recent years (and both parties) to show how those wonderful principles have been eroded and degraded by successive administrations.
But then I thought "Fuck it. Let the buggers enjoy themselves."

So Happy Independence Day to Robyn, Sassy, Rich, Prudence, Ame and Bear, Maria and Bing and Liv, Terroni, Fresh Hell, SLS and Frances and to all who sail in you.
Woohoo!

Meanwhile, over here on the side of the pond that still can't get rid of our parasitical monarchy, newly unelected Prime Minister Brown has announced the removal from the Executive of the power to take the country into war; that power so abused by the disgusting Bliar.
It will henceforth revert to being a Parliamentary decision, so George, when you invade Iran you'll be doing so without us you warmongering bastard.
Perhaps this could be the start of our own Declaration of Independence from the USA. Here's hoping.
"Yee" - and probably "Haa" as well.

Enjoy your fireworks.

Just A Quickie

First off; welcome back Alan Johnston.
Nice to have some good news from Gaza for a change.

On an entirely unrelated matter, huge thanks to Peahen for pointing me at Monkeyfluids. Hee, hee and hee again.

Don't Jump

Hokay.
Back to the fragrant joys of long distance commuting.

Some of you may remember the statistic (absolutely true - I have meticulous records going back many years) that my rail company has to date provided me with more trains that have burst into flames than trains that have deposited me at my destination exactly on time.

And I may have related the 'delightful' feeling of screaming horror when my two alarm clocks - at opposite ends of the bedroom - go apeshit at four-forty every morning and propel me out of my lovely bed to stagger blindly down the landing toward the shower.

And my minimum seven hours a day travelling to get to work and back (thank God I love my job).

And my amiable feelings toward my fellow travellers (anyone who has not read the advice contained in this link should do so now. I mean it).

And the odd things that I have to put up with on the train, such as being invited to fornicate with cultists, the erotic yet weird thumb-sucking girl and the happy time I spent with the one-armed man …

Well today, for the edification of non-commuters I am going to talk about jumpers.
By jumpers I mean the selfish, fucked-up worthless pieces of shit who jump in front of trains.

Apparently not everybody shares my deep sense of joy at Mondays. Over the past five Mondays we have had three jumpers. And that's only because there were no trains to jump under on the other two Mondays; one was a bank holiday and so the line was closed for engineering works, and on the other the overhead lines fell down so no trains could run anyway …
There may well have been jumpers on those days too, but the most they could have hoped for was a twisted ankle from landing awkwardly.

We do get an awful lot of these useless fuckwits on my line. And though it is by no means exclusive, Monday seems to be the most popular day to piss Dive off by making my journey home a couple of hours longer than the three and a half hour pit of misery that it already is if everything runs smoothly (which it does on average once a year).

If you're thinking of jumping, here's some advice.
DON'T!
At least don't do it on my line.
An Intercity train travels (allegedly) at over a hundred miles an hour (HA!).
Sure, when the occasional loco does manage to struggle and wheeze up to speed stepping in front of one is a nice quick way to check out but believe me there's not much left afterwards.
It's not like jumping in front of a tube train or a local stopping service where there are still recognisable bits of you scattered around; with an Intercity it takes the police and rail staff at least an hour to hose what's left of you into the verge and there are very rarely any lumps left that are too big to plop into a bucket.

I've been on a train that hit a jumper. We started braking and then there was this icky banging sound that travelled back down the floor of the carriages as the larger bits of skull or pelvis got bounced between the train and the stones and concrete sleepers.
Then we just sat there for ages, not one of us feeling in the least bit sorry for the twat smeared along the bottom of the train and seeping into the landscape just underneath our feet.
And the poor drivers have to have time off whenever they hit a jumper; we are running out of drivers!

So …
If you really want to end it all, and those nice folk at Samaritans cannot dissuade you, just let me know and I'll happily strangle you.
Just don't jump under my fucking train, you bastard!

Cheetah Fucks It Up Again

Wow!
I never thought it would be possible for Bush to devalue the US Presidency any more than he had to date, but give him his due; in commuting Libby's sentence he has somehow managed it.
In the eyes of the world that hallowed office is now sunk to hitherto unimagined depths in the reeking pismire of debauched corruption.

"One law for me; one law for the rest of you".

It's Independence Day tomorrow.
Jefferson's ghost must be shrieking in vertiginous horror seeing just how far his mighty ideals have fallen.

Truly disgusting.

Monday Melee

Excellent! Another rainy Monday morning.
Time once again for Fracas Monday Melee.
Be warned; the Man Who Loves Mondays(TM) is your host for today.

1: The Misanthropic.
(Name something - about humanity - you absolutely hate).
This week I have been mostly hating our fœtid and pathetic excuse for an outgoing Prime Minister and celebrating his demise.
It's thanks to him and his incomprehensible one man crusade to lick chimp arse that London is once again a target of terrorist bombs, and no thanks to him that they are so crap at bomb making.

2: The Meretricious:
(Expose someone or something that's phony, fraudulent or bogus).
People who don't like Mondays.
Miserable fuckers who want to shoo … oo … oo … oo … oo …oot the whole day down.
What on earth could anyone possibly find to dislike about Monday mornings?

For a start, there's no more housework or gardening until next Saturday.
Work is wonderful (I love my job). Hey, you've only got one life; if you're doing something you hate five days a week then for fucks's sake do something else!
Even on a rainy Monday like today, and with crap trains, the walk from the station to the office is somewhat splendid.
Here are a couple of shots I took this morning on my way in:

Jolly Old Father Thames rolling along.

Our sartorially challenged police enjoying a tender, hand-holding moment.

So stop moaning, you joyless misanthropes. Mondays are lovely. Enjoy the fuckers!

3: The Malcontent:
(Name something you're unhappy with).
I'm not overly ecstatic about the summer cold I caught last week, which is lingering on with the hacking cough of a sixty-a-day smoker and bouts of explosive phlegm-flinging sneezes that leave the inside of the car looking like the aftermath of a bukake party.
ICK! If anybody needs any wallpaper paste I've got lungsful of the sodding stuff.
Oh, if you don't know about bukake, you really DO NOT want to know …

4: The Meritorious.
(Give someone credit for something and name it if you can).
Simon, our delightful structural engineer, for waiting until I had just finished a month's worth of work preparing the construction drawings for Heathfield School before telling me he wants to make every single internal wall 50mm thicker.
I am of course being sar-fucking-castic. The bastard is rather wisely working from home for a couple of days having left me a note to find this morning.
Get the fucking calculations right the first time, you cretin! It's what we pay you for. If you want to come back to a job on Wednesday it's gonna cost you a lot more than the grovelling apology I got on the phone this morning.
Twat!

5: The Mirror.
(See something good about yourself and name it).
I can't sing to save my life and I don't care. Morning walks along the Embankment are perfect for warbling atonally along to my iPod.
Today's screech-fest was Patti Smith's "Horses" album. Apologies to the poor folk passing by Cleopatra's Needle at around half-eight this morning who were subjected to my appalling singalong to "Rock and Roll Nigger".

6: The Make-Believe:
(Name something you wish for).
Every day to be Monday.

Architectural Genitalia

After my "Welcome To Hell" post last week from Norwich Castle Mall, Full reminded me about the "Vag Mall" and I said I'd take a couple of photos.

The Vag Mall is one of Mikey's buildings.
The idea was to incorporate the shape of a Viking longship to commemorate the Viking history of the site, but inevitable things got simplified a bit and the recurring motif throughout the mall is now not so much a longship as a vagina.

Hey, ho. It may not be anatomically correct but it is nicely welcoming nonetheless.

It's a shame that it's full of such crap shops when it's so nicely designed, but at least you can get inside out of the rain and wander round looking at vagina shaped openings.
It makes a nice counterpoint to Kate's cock-shaped building in Newy.

Matinée Idle

Rainy weekends … I love 'em.
It's Wimbledon fortnight so it's going to rain all weekend and instead of the tennis the BBC will show loads of trashy old movies.
Hoorah!
Whether it's Deanna Durbin singing "I Love To Yodel" or Gary Cooper or Doris Day or anything with Ray Harryhausen stop-motion monsters in it I'll be there, crashed out on the sofa with a big mug of coffee and a bigger grin.
I don't have satellite or cable and - living just beyond the middle of nowhere - my TV reception is so crappy that all I can get is four channels. And on a rainy weekend that means Old Movie Heaven.

Saturday Matinées at the Regal cinema were one of the great joys of my youth.
Every Saturday at tea time the peeling art deco façade would disgorge hundreds of shrieking children, all of us acting out the magic we had seen on screen … Mock swordfights for swashbucklers; mock gunfights (and unfeasibly large moustaches) for "Viva Villa", parting the local river for any Chuck Heston Bible-fest, and best of all: Doug Mc.Clure!

Woohoo! I have to admit I almost succumbed and bought the Doug Mc.Clure boxed set of DVDs the other day in HMV. Now that I'm (slightly) more grown up I can better appreciate CarolynMunroe running around with him in a fur bikini. Mmmmmmmmmm …

Bollocks to Spielberg! THIS is Movie Heaven

And those terrible, terrible supporting features … inevitably black and white efforts from the Childrens' Film Foundation, usually starring a young Melvyn Hayes and a bunch of kids in a bus chasing ne'er-do-wells around London; or Laurel and Hardy.

Of course, we only realised much later that our parents were not handing over their hard-earned thruppenny bits (the front seats were then thruppence - three old pennies - the thruppenny bit being a bizarre, multifaceted lump of brass, going up to ninepence as I got older) to finance our education in the history of cinema … Oh, no!
They were having sex!
All through the sixties, the shops and streets of our town were emptied on a Saturday afternoon, when every parent managed to dump their kids at the Regal for a few hours and take advantage of the "something for the weekend" bought at the local barbers' shop.
Back then, we never realised such things went on. We knew where babies came from, having seen wildlife documentaries, but figured our parents had only "mated" twice to produce little brother Full and myself.

But by the time we realised the awful truth we were hooked on bad movies.

In our early teens we graduated to Bungay Fleapit (Full has posted an educational photo taken in Bungay on his blog).
Bungay Fleapit was a filthy, fly-blown shit-hole with a faulty projector, run by two elderly and very cranky perverts. What made it a Mecca for underage movie freaks was:
- The old guys didn't give a shit how young you were, they just wanted your money;
- We could take beer in;
- Monday nights were all night horror movies;
- Thursday nights were all night sex movies.
Teenage Heaven. A cinema full of drunk fourteen-year-old boys watching exploitation and splatter movies in those glorious few years before they all got banned.
At some point during the Monday gore-fest the screen would go white and huge silhouetted fingers would fumble a 35mm slide into the projector. It would always be painted red (you could see the brushmarks) and have Thursday's movies scratched into the paint, complete with mis-spellings. Every expense spared.
We could then decide whether to fork out for such delights as The Virgin Witches, The Sex Twins, Swedes In The Snow or of course, the bestiality classic On The Farm.
They would also do softcore Russ Meyer nights for those whose interests ran to unfeasibly large breasts and nazi regalia (I remember David Neech fast asleep and snoring loudly throughout Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls while we decorated him with food and trash off the floor).

And you wonder why I turned out like I did …

So this weekend - like any rainy weekend - I will spend my afternoons in glorious black and white, re-living more innocent days.
Unless the tennis is on, in which case I'll watch girls in miniskirts leaping around and grunting.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

It's Thursday So It Must Be Crap

Talking of crap, here's another meme:
I found this one on Terroni's blog a few days back.
Or rather I found the bones of it.
It was pretty good but I felt it needed a touch of Dive to make up for its lack of cynicism and swearing.

It started with "What were you doing ten years ago", which - as the original meme was written by an extremely smart ten year old kid - is a pretty good question.
I felt his answer lacked not only anatomical correctness but graphic and disgusting detail … and possibly video … so I hi-jacked his meme.
Hey ho, here we go:

What were you doing thirty years ago?
Yikes! 1977!
Most of that year I spent naked with Judith Flaxman, going at it like there was no tomorrow. And playing in bands and going to punk gigs and managing a punk band (Hi, Mini. Where are you now, I wonder) and co-running Radio Maidstone and passing A-levels and going to college and smoking dope and hanging out.
Fuck me, that was a good year!

What were you doing one year ago?
Waiting for death.

Five snacks you enjoy
Onigiri.
Croissants.
Wasabi peas.
Edamame.
Clitoris.

Five songs you know all the lyrics to
Prayer To God by Shellac (easy as most of the words are "fucking").
Little Green by Joni Mitchell, for reasons of my own.
Fish Heads by Barnes and Barnes because it should be our national anthem.
Nightswimming by REM for the photograph on the dashboard.
Chicken Pussy by Bongwater for obvious reasons.

Without moving your sorry ass from your chair, look around and select one item within your reach and eat it. Well? What was it?
Dammit! There's no food in my studio you bastard.
At work I always have one of those fruity oaty bars that look like poo for just such an eventuality, but I just tore up and ate today's page from my Dilbert desk calendar. Ick.
Actually it tasted no worse than the fruity oaty poo bar.

Five bad habits (and no, masturbation is a good, healthy habit)
I'm a world class nose-picker.
I occasionally drink from the bottle; milk, beer, whatever … but hey, I live alone and hate washing up.
Caffeine addiction.
Sitting up all night watching old movies and crying.
Long distance commuting. That's the one that's gonna kill me.

Five living people who shouldn't be (at least one of whom you should know personally … c'mon; get bitchy)
Let's start with George Bush Senior. Take out that fucker and we automatically lose Dubya, too. Bonus! After all, without daddy, the twisted, throwback chimp-sperm that brought forth Junior would never have existed. That particular combination of proteins and enzymes could and should have gone on to become part of something far more useful, like a piece of cheese or an ant, or something oozing around in the digestive tract of a yak.
Bono … obviously.
Karl Rove … even more obviously.
Margaret Thatcher - spiritual Mother to Blair (like the Bushes, we take out two with one shot).
Me.

Five things you like to do
Walk along the Embankment every weekday morning, whatever the weather. Watching the Thames roll by as the city staggers out of bed and gets its ass in gear.
Sit on the bottom step of the stairs with my old Gibson Les Paul and see what it has to say.
Have sex with girls.
Sleep.
Blog.

Five things you would never wear again
Flares.
Hawai'ian shirts.
Tank tops.
Cardigans for men (what the fuck?).
Brüt (any Brits alive in the seventies will be gagging at the memory).

Five favourite toys
Guitars.
Macs.
iPod.
PS2.
Car.
So I'm a bloke! Go figure.

Five things you would never put in your mouth again
Lychees that have been left in an uncovered bowl in a "friend"s fridge overnight next to some iffy prawns and strong, French cheeses.
Ming The Menstrual's tongue (or any other part of her).
Pork cheese (don't ask).
Home-made wasabi chocolate.
My own cum (hey, it was in somebody else's mouth at the time). Ick!
Never accept a blowie off a mischievous woman!

Hey! You're a millionaire! Five things you'd do now you have all that money
Woohoo!
Move to Tokyo and sit outside Harajuku Station leering at girls.
Dress how the fuck I want (currently - looking down at myself - like somebody blew up a tramp and wore what was left).
Buy waaay too many books … er … hang on, I do that already.
Point and laugh at those less fortunate.
Be a complete and total bastard.

Five things you've done while drunk
Puked.
Had sex.
Played gigs.
Eaten sixteen raw scotch bonnet chilis.
Broken into Dunston Hall (now a hotel, but then a derelict Elizabethan mansion, all boarded up) one Halloween night with some friends and sat around in the dark telling ghost stories to scare the willies out of one another. We found an old harmonium and were playing horror movie style chords on it when there was a fucking great bang that came echoing down the empty corridors. Holy shit, did we run! It was only the board we had prised off the window falling down in the wind but Paul was sick and Sue peed herself. hee hee hee. Ah, drunken youth.

Name something (or someone) other than your poo that has been inside your bum
Gack!
An enema tube and a load of soapy water before my appendix operation. Luckily I was out cold but my mad aunt, Nurse Wratched told me all about it. Ewwww.

Five albums you own that embarrass you (be truthful)
Olias Of Sunhillow by Jon Anderson (appalling sub-hobbitry from Yes frontman … Hey, I was a hippy; these things happen).
Boston by Boston. Holy crap, it's time I joined Robyn's church and started smashing old vinyl.
Rising Force by Yngwie Malmsteen. What the fuck was I thinking?
Not Fragile by Bachman Turner Overdrive. Shit! I didn't even know I owned that. Take my advice; never look through your old vinyl shelves. Yikes!
The Eagles Greatest Hits. Kill me now.

Five criminal acts you've committed and have never been caught for
We blew up a telephone box back in my bomb-making youth. Woohoo! That was a doozy!
Sneaking into car parks at night and swapping round all the number plates.
Following a police patrol car around Norwich for a good twenty minutes while smoking a fucking HUGE spliff.
Driving under the influence of: drink/drugs/fellatio.
Stealing a load of traffic cones and shutting off a busy street for a whole Saturday.

Hokay. That's enough crap for today.
I won't tag anyone as we all hate memes, but if anybody feels in the mood, go for it.