Tuesday 12 July 2011

Cover your keyboard.

Along with no safe level of smoke, there is now no safe level of alcohol. Even sniffing a bottle of Chataeu Plonko or Le Patio D'oor will give you a rampaging cancer throughout your body. It'll be so extensive that doctors will diagnose the cancer as having caught you.

Yawn. This is where antismoking started. Antidrinking will follow exactly the same pattern and reach exactly the same heights of absurdity and exactly the same morons will lap up every word. Most of them will be in Parliament, drinking subsidised booze while the rest of us live Puritan lives and beat our heads with stout wooden boards. Until we start to enjoy it, then headboarding will be declared a cancer risk.

No real point pursuing the issue, even CAMRA will support it because they'll still believe it won't affect them. An eventual total ban on booze will have no more effect on pubs than the smoking ban. Pubs will be closing because of the evil supermarkets and their two-for-one offers on multipack crisps and pork scratchings. They will be accused of selling salted pig fat for less than the price of bottled water, and the drones, who shop at those supermarkets so could check for themselves if it occurred to them, will believe it.

As with smoking, eventually the cancer part will be glossed over in favour of booze causing meningitis, middle ear infections, women giving birth to things that look like Cthulu and a disturbing lack of wholesome and Righteous thirst. Already the drones have latched on to 'foetal alcohol syndrome' and decided that any mother who glances at a sherry bottle during pregnancy will definitely produce a miniature Father Jack Hackett. "Milk? Feck off. Drink!"

I didn't learn about alcohol in the womb. I had to wait until I was older. All those wasted years...

Oh, and let's not forget those who don't like the smell. They'll be rubbing their hands with glee and getting ready to start on this one. Might spur them on myself - well, it's going to happen anyway, let's just get straight to the utter nonsense and save all that build-up time in the middle.

No matter. I'm ready to start brewing. I wonder if I can recreate that brew I made at university, the one that turned people religious? One mouthful and they'd exclaim 'Christ Almighty!' and fall to their knees.

It's not going to stop. Not until the lunacy reaches the level when it all falls apart completely. The sooner that happens the better. There are going to be a lot of Righteous heavily pummeled in every enclosed public space when it does.

I wonder what the safe level of exhaust fumes is? Probably about four tons per lung, because petrol is good for you. There is definitely no safe level of exposure to idiots who think they are doctors.

How mad can it get? As Mr. George was fond of saying, plenty much mad.

Having friends is bad for you. That's okay. I'm a smoker so getting rid of people is not usually a problem. Besides, with the pubs closing up faster than Jim Devine's sphincter in the showers, there is no danger of finding new friends. There is also the very real danger of secondary friends and some of them might smell.

Look on the bright side. With no tobacco, no booze, no salt, no fat and no friends, you can't possibly be at any risk at all of a heart attack, right?

Wrong! The sellers of toothpaste want in on this game too. Buy our stuff or die. Well, I suppose the dentists have been feeling a bit left out of it all lately. So they have attributed diseases to those who don't pay them to have holes drilled in their teeth and filled with mercury. They have chosen...

Heart disease, bronchitis, floppy knob, dementia, diabetes, reduced fertility and arthritis.

Let's be honest here. They have picked from the Standard List, just like everyone else. While I agree that not cleaning your teeth is pretty gross, if you have no friends and washing your hair has made you obese, does it matter that much any more? If you can't eat, drink or smoke anything, how will your teeth even get dirty?

Who will be next? Opticians haven't said much yet. Paediatricians are keeping a low profile because the drones aren't too bright and have mistaken them for Gary Glitter in the past. Midwives have had a go. I think it must be the opticians' turn about now.

So, not allowing them to shine lights in your eyes and then getting you to read a Chzechoslovakian menu at fifty paces will definitely give you cancer of something or other. Probably dandruff too, and loose ears as well as the onset of the nadgers, spots before the ankles, soft shoulder, pink toenail and greasy elbow. Oh, and heart disease. That's standard.

There was once a scare about dirty keyboards. All kinds of things live in the gaps between the keys. Bacteria, fungi, stoats, you name it, it's in there. That's bound to cause heart disease as well as cellulite, pigeon chest, scurvy and exploding spleen. No, wait, that's the 'B' list.

I think I'll set up in business selling keyboard protection covers. Would anyone be interested?

It's all lurking in there, you know. Ash, dust, drinks, mythical creatures and Johnathan Ross. The cover is not to protect the keyboard from you. It's to protect you from its demonic inhabitants.

Oh, almost forgot. It's for the cheeldren. Studies have shown. Experts have said. And there is no safe level of Johnathan Ross.

That should clinch it. Where do I apply to become a fake charity?

21 comments:

Curmudgeon said...

Sadly I fear it has a lot further to go before it all implodes on itself :-(

In a sense, the knowledge that even a tiny quantity of alcohol is fatal is quite a relief...

Mark Wadsworth said...

Passive drinking. Kills thousands of people a year. Particularly vulnerable groups and children. You heartless bastard.

Under Nulab there'd be a fakecharity for this, but it's a bit trickier under the Tories as they prefer industry lobby groups to fakecharities.

Either way, the key is to think up a snappy name for your fakecharity-cum-industry lobby group, it has to be two words welded together where each word starts with a capital letter, for example DrinkAware but ideally where the two words combined have at least two different meanings such as SmokeLess.

So for our passive drinking body, I'd suggest "AlcoHarm" [that's just a rough sketch of an idea].

View from the Solent said...

Won't affect me. You've already convinced me that I don't exist, all this is just an illusion.
(but who is experiencing it?)

Twisted Root said...

Opticians are getting in on the act. Ours has a poster saying smoking makes you go blind.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Wow! France too? They're moving startingly quickly on alcohol. This was Australia's effort only the other day.

I can see a future of CAMRA members still wibbling about how tobacco is different while they are drowned by anti-alcohol rhetoric.

It's 1901 all over again!

Curmudgeon said...

The key, of course, is how quickly attitudes can be translated into actual policy. Although there has been a huge shift in official attitudes to alcohol, it is yet to be significantly reflected in policy changes. What, I wonder, will be the "oh fuck, this means me" moment? Or will it be more of a "death by 1000 cuts/duty increases"?

subrosa said...

Ah ha, I'm ahead of you for once. Cleaned my keyboard today so no hairy bits or germs lingering under my fingertips!

Sometimes I see the benefits of living in a rural backwater where I can escape at times.

PT Barnum said...

As someone who cannot drink (on medical grounds) I ought to feel smugly welcome in the arms of AlcoHarm (or perhaps it should be Alarm?) but I appear to lack the genetic propensity to want to ban other people's pleasures (with the exceptions of Woss and David Mitchell). Do I need help from a doctor, dentist or optician?

Anonymous said...

You forgot 'podiatrists' (or whatever they are called). Smoking affects the blood supply, therefore feet must be affected. Corns, bunions, blisters - all exacerbated by smoking.

No study yet? Why not?

Shinar's Basket Case said...

Newsflash from 13-jul-2016

A spokesPERSON for the Charity 'Alco-Harm' says that the total ban on drinking of alcohol in public has not caused the recent spate of pub closures.

----

In further news a famous Scottish author of Horror fiction , the 'tartan Stephen King' is missing. Apparently he was seen walking down the road towards the loch naked having left a note saying 'THAT'S IT!!! I CAN'T TAKE THE STUPIDITY ANYMORE'

Anonymous said...

I ran a correlation study on the computer and discovered that as each spin of the earth increases by one whole number, the number of people dying keeps increasing at the same time. Therefore the earth's rotation is 100% correlated with the cumulative effect of people dying on a daily basis; thus a causative factor - and must be banned. Hopefully one of those comets or meteors heading inbound toward the sun manages to smack into the planet just enough to stop it from spinning. If not but if enough windmills are installed on every continent, perhaps the propellers will begin to slow down the catastrophic daily spinning that is the cause of everyone's death. I already sent this analysis to ASH and they confirmed my science is solid.

Leg-iron said...

Curmudgeon - incredible levels of lunacy are on the way. There are signs of a fightback by the few sane ones still in positions of authority, but they won't win yet.

The people as a whole have to recognise the stupidity of it all and there are still many who can't or won't.

Still, the more bizarre it gets, the nearer the day comes when they all stop and think 'Hold on a minute...'

Leg-iron said...

Mark - third-hand drinking is when a drunk hits someone and that someone bleeds on you.

Wait a minute. These doctors put alcohol in a lot of their medicines, wipe people with it before injections and force hospital visitors to wash their hands in it.

If there's no safe level, they're deliberately trying to poison their patients! Including children.

The Daily Mail readership must be informed! I can hear the gnashing of teeth and rending of hair already.

Leg-iron said...

View from the Solent - just consider me an imaginary friend. And don't worry about the horns and the tail.

Twisted Root - the futility of putting up posters in a place you only visit because you can't see properly...

Dick P - starting on alcohol in France is a big challenge. The Vineyard Riots can only be days away now.

Subrosa - you missed a bit ;) Only kidding. Just trying to scare you - I'm a keyboard worrier.

PTB - I wouldn't go so far as to ban Woss and Mitchell. Skin them alive and dip them in salt, yes. Lower them at a rate of an inch a day into a tank of piranhas, sure. But banning is just going too far.

Leg-iron said...

Mark W/PTB - putting those ideas together gets Al-Harm. Multiple connotations there. Including having the whole thing led by Oddbins Laden.

Leg-iron said...

Junican - I did say smoking rots your socks, and so can booze. The horrible nasties are exuded in sweat and since people's feet are enclosed so the sweat can't escape, it builds up and decays the socks.

So there's a chance for Sock Shop to get on this bandwagon too. Holed socks are a definite sign of depravity. Get new ones today and hide your sins from the world.

I'm sure, with a bit of thought, we could even find a place for Tie Rack in there.

Leg-iron said...

Shinar - they've set that one up already. Pubs are now food outlets rather than boozing dens. So the removal of booze can only enhance their new child-friendly status.

Therefore the hospitality industry will take an incredible imaginary boost from the banning of booze. If only the supermarkets would set a minimum price for food so there was a level playing field.

They'll have to be quick. The banning of choldren has already begun and once they're gone, the main excuse goes phut.

Leg-iron said...

Anon - using ASH-style logic, if the planet stopped rotating nobody would ever get a day older. It does work (as long as you don't think about it), and there's just enough in there that a deadpan delivery could make it convincing.

In one of the Superman films, the man in the blue clingfilm suit made the Earth spin backwards and that made time run in reverse. It's nonsense of course, but people link time to clocks so closely that it can be convincing.

Well... this is mostly because so many are so very, very easy to convince. Lex Luthor is bald and smokes cigars. An obvious connection. Superman does not smoke or drink and he can bend tank barrels, lift houses, fly, catch missiles and get the lids off jars without having to screw up his face.

Can I convince one of the drones they could fly? That's stretching it, but worth a go. Of course, I'd have to shout 'You forgot about passive smoke' just after they jump. It's like Kryptonite.

The windmills and the solar panels can be sources of fun too. All those windmills take energy from the wind, which slows the wind, so enough windmills and there'd be no wind at all. Same trick works with wave power. Solar panels absorb light so enough of them and it will be dark all day.

All it takes is just enough apparent logic to fit the pieces to one another and a mind suitably conditioned to accept gibberish without question.

Thanks to many years of such conditioning, experimental subjects are not hard to find.

jones said...

Prohibition NOW!

You know it makes sense....

Think of the unborn cheeeldren....

MikeF said...

"Who will be next? Opticians haven't said much yet."
..until now: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2014483/Take-care-teeth-eyes-cut-risk-dementia.html

You'll have to get far more surreal in your predictions! How about 'Incorrect tyre pressures on cars linked to cancer of the spine", no doubt sponsored by Halfords!

Robert the Biker said...

I'm going to start making mead again, honey, water and yeast; one sip ang you turn into a viking and axe peoples legs off. What could possibly go wrong.

opinions powered by SendLove.to