THE CHOCOLATE FIREGUARD on holiday?

This is a painful one isn't it. Snorkelling in the Lybian sea! Strolling through Rome at dusk! What about that dream of climbing breathless up to Machu Pichu?! Bugger!

HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?

I told you all we had to do was wait!

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

I'm posting this a tad prematurely - (it needs checking by those in the greater know and then shrinking down to a more manageable size) -to make myself feel useful after a (no more than usually) dissappointing day at one of Her Majesty's madhouses. (I am currently gainfully underemployed deep in the compacted bowels of forensic psychiatry.) It will eventually carry some lively and informative footnotes, and I shall amend it as they arrive.
My apologies to Aubrey Meyer for the TERRIBLE likeness on page 8. I should have paid more attention at art school.

Good manners...

I suppose I should have better control of myself by now, but I still get innappropriately and rudely furious about the willful obtuseness of the rather too comfortable. I get angry very quickly sometimes. I can be offensive and overbearing. I know, it's not big and it's not clever and I wish it were otherwise. But anyway...The "why don't you just f*ck off a live in Russia/Tehran/Havana/Glastonbury" brigade are still alive and well and performing well paid proffessional and responsible duties somewhere near you. Somebody who- politics aside - it has been my habit to like and respect actually said to me today that the invasion of Iraq and threatened assault on Iran were/are "all about Freedom". You could have knocked me down with a cursory overview of modern Middle Eastern history. Arguement is futile. The pat dismissal of all (that's ALL) views outside the left/right fudgings of sound-bite infotainment is indulged without a trace of contextual reflection. Views arrived at through the triangulation of a range of information sources are derided as mono-cultured brainwash by those who only access mass, commercial media. "The telly (proudly sponsored by Omnicorps) tells me that you're mad/bad/mediaevel to question the telly (proudly sponsored by Omnicorps)." It is uncomfortable to question the basis of one's own privilege
OK. People will believe what they want to believe and history will teach us nothing whilst we never open the books.The comfortable will continue to claim all the justification they can for the continuation of their comfort, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is bought with shame and pain and sudden blood repeated over generations and enshrined in unspoken prejudice. Who can blame them? The poor? The oppressed? The doomed? F*ck 'em!
However. Good manners, as they say...

ICEBERG? WHAT ICEBERG?

Everything's perfectly alright. Honest. Don't worry. Those nice people in the Government and at all those big companies have got it aaaaall under control.They've got all sorts of awfully complicated plans and whatnot. They're really very clever people - scientists and businessmen and lawyers and the like. So we should all just do what they think is best - go to work, pop down the shops, you know - and not make a fuss. OK? That's settled then. Get a DVD in. Maybe a pizza . Have a few beers.




















Or to put it another way...

THE CHOCOLATE FIREGUARD at the shops.

I post from a small disorientated northern town with two shops :- an unfashionable soft-furnishings warehouse and a Gargantumart! Nothing else. All erstwhile businesses have passed into history along with milk floats and lard. OK. I tell a lie. There are small local emporia for haircuts, tans, bets, booze and pizza (and recently an infestation of no-win, no-fee-ery) but everything else is trucked in from Mozambique or Uranus. Thank the Gods for squirrels and injured cats, else there'd be nowt local to eat at all.

over developed thumbs

I have zero console skills. I can't navigate my way around even the most basic virtual environment. I have trouble with the real one too. My main gripe (don't worry, I have others) with video games is the effect they have on children's expectations. The impression grows in the impressionable mind that many of life's more intractable problems can be resolved by the pressing of buttons. Cornered by a baying mob? Right thumb down and leap through that mystic portal! Lacking in that special ability? Left index finger tweak and pick up that magic wand. What a marvellous and misleading world. And then of course there's guns!