Beer and wine are extremely easy things to make. Stuff the 'units', just brew it to extinction and then freeze-distil it and you can produce something in your kitchen that will make your eyes melt.
You can even start with a bread yeast, if the Controllers ever ban the sale of beer yeast. The first batch will be crap but it'll adapt. Just keep using the sedimented yeast for successive batches. It's the same species of yeast, all you'll be doing is selecting the individual cells that grow best in a beer/wine situation rather than a flour/water one.
So all this concern over Government plans to tell us we can't drink when we're old is misplaced. When I get old, assuming I get that far, I plan to spend the last years of my time permanently and entirely pissed. If I die at home, nobody will notice because this corpse won't start to decay for months. If that means brewing my own, so be it. Just think of the duty and VAT I'll save. In fact, sod it, I'll start now. Rose left a recipe for mead somewhere back in the comments. I have plenty of fruit growing and all of it can be fermented.
I'll also insure myself against being sent to Hell. They won't let me in because I'll be an explosion hazard. Hell is bound to be stuffed full of health and safety inspectors and risk assessors. As for the other place, well I'll never make it up all those steps. I'll just have to find myself a Puritan to haunt.
Picture the scene. There I am, older and wrinklier and utterly guttered when the caped skeleton with a scythe shows up.
"Mr. Leg-iron. It Is Time."
"Aye, time for another drink, ya bas."
"No, it is Time to Go."
"Whit? Ah went ten minutes ago. Ma bladder's barely trickling."
Death's shoulders will slump at this point. "No, you don't understand. It Is Time. You must leave this body and come with me."
"Where to? The pub? They winnae let me smoke in there so ye can go alone, loon. And ye cannae have ma body. I have a few more bottles to pour in here yet."
"You can drink no more. It is over for you."
"Aye? I'll drink you under the bloody table any time you like, bone boy. Sit you down and we'll have a little wager. My soul, such as it is, against your stick with a sword on the end of it. First to fall off their chair loses."
"It's a scythe. I do not wager. I collect."
"Oh, a bloody taxman, aye? So whit's in it fae me?"
"Eternity and peace."
"Booze?"
"No."
"Baccy?"
"No."
"Not much of a deal then, is it? You want my soul, you'll drink for it or you'll feck off before I ram that stick right up your pelvic bone, sharp end first."
In the years following, I will tell the tale of the scythe hanging on the wall...
Tobacco plants are coming along nicely. I have some to post if I can move my body clock around to being awake when the post office is open. Those lazy buggers don't work at night.
Some of those plants are now in twenty litres of compost in buckets. The garden ones are slow because the weather is, once more, cold and horrible. A few years back I'd be sitting in the garden now because it would have been too hot in the house. Now I have the heating on at midsummer, when it used to be entirely off between May and September. If someone were to beat Chris Huhne to a bloody pulp using a large potato masher, I will be first to provide them with an alibi. Bring photos.
The slugs managed to mince one garden plant by chewing through the stem. I rewarded them with some nice blue sweeties. The slug named Blair tried to tell the others it would take me 45 minutes to mobilise chemical weapons and they'd all be yards away by then. He was wrong. I did it in five. The Brown slug tried to take 50% of the pellets because it was the right thing to do for hard-sliming molluscs. I generously provided extra. Mandelslug insisted they provide a levy of pellets to the garden next door, which has promised him access to lettuce, but that's no problem. I have plenty. If only I could stop that Milislug waving a pellet like a banana.
The Health Slugs are warning of the dangers of salt. I have a lot of that. If the rain stops, I'll provide them with some. Next I think I'll set up a pub for them, but they won't be allowed in if they've been chewing tobacco.
There are those who said there was no point growing tobacco because it'll be at least a year before it produces anything smokeable. Well, by that logic, there's no point buying a house because it'll be 25 years before it's yours, right? I have fourteen years to go on this mortgage and I have paid extra into it to bring the monthly payments right down. I'm almost halfway to owning this house in time and well over halfway in cost.
I'm also, now, halfway to having home-made tobacco. The first batch won't produce much and might not work at all. In which case I will apply the lessons from this year's batch to next year's. Even if this crop fails completely, I'll be one year closer to getting it right. Waste of time? It's my time, and if I can get it right, the return on that invested time is incalculable because the rate of increase of tobacco prices is insane. If I only make enough for say, five two-ounce packs of baccy, what's that at shop prices now? It was over a tenner a pack last time I looked. What will it be by the time that baccy is ready? Man with a Van is not a charity. He pitches his prices below shop prices but as shop prices rise, so do his. I might well find I've saved myself a hundred quid or more just by letting some plants grow.
A tip on the slug problem - they can't swim. The buckets I'm using are cheap, a quid each. Drill a few holes in the bottom, get down to the pound shop and buy cat litter trays for a pound each. Drill a couple of holes in the sides of those, a couple of inches up from the bottom. They're too deep otherwise and too much water will swamp the plant.
Stand the bucket in the litter tray, fill the litter tray with water and keep it topped up. You now have a continuous supply of water for the plant and it's surrounded by a slugproof moat. It has cost two quid per plant, and you can use it all again next year. A circle of copper tape around the bucket also works but the moat approach is cheaper.
Booze and tobacco aren't my biggest expense. Heating wins that by a long way, but in a house with no chimney it will take a big initial investment to install a wood-burning heating system. I'm working on it because I live near tradesmen who are always throwing away wooden pallettes and just down the back is a wooded area where fallen branches are left alone. Nobody around here has a chimney.
However, I can seriously cut my costs on booze and tobacco, and hence the amount of money the government steal from me, without very much effort and with trivial initial investment. The reality of both these things is that they are cheap, and the high price is due to tax. Plus, of course, tax on the tax. As the prices of booze and tobacco escalate - and they will keep escalating - so the savings grow.
Every penny saved is a penny I don't have to replace by earning. Every penny not earned is a penny not taxed. Tax is generated by the transfer of money so the less I rely on money, the less tax I pay.
I cannot eradicate cash completely from my life. Not until the council accepts their taxes in plums, the electricity and gas companies accept payment in gooseberries and the butcher is willing to trade meat for rhubarb. There are wild rabbits nearby, so that's always a possibility. What I can do for now is minimise my use of tax-heavy transactions.
Of course, the minimalist approach could be buggered up if someone turns one of my stories into a film, but I'll worry about that if it ever looks like happening. So far, no danger. Anyway, the point is to stop paying the tobacco and booze lobbies to torment me and that looks like it can be done without much effort.
With cheap buckets and dirt. Next, I'll need a big plastic bin for fermenting purposes. Those are cheap too. Insulation? Ha, the local charity shops are full of tatty clothes. Come to think of it, so is my wardrobe.
For every penny I don't pay to the government, an antismoker gets cancer. Well, I like to think that's true and it has as much scientific backing as anything the health loonies come out with. Every penny of duty I keep gives me a warm glow. It doesn't matter which party is in government, they have all stated they hate smokers so sod them all. Now they are working on drink in the same way. I am not paying for my own denormalisation.
Are you?
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Abandon Law, all ye who enter here.
The Cameroid has made Big Man Noises lately. It's really funny to watch this little mouse roar. It's almost as if he actually thinks he matters. Or maybe, almost as if he actually thinks.
First he says we won't bail out Greece by giving money to the EU (we'll do it by giving the same money to the IMF instead. We're not fooled, forehead boy).
Then he resorts to 'fighting talk' when dealing with the military. Someone really should point out to him that 'fighting talk' is not at all a good idea when faced with a lot of people who are really, really good at actual, physical fighting. Still, I expect he'll find that out in time and I hope to be allowed to watch. I'll pay for a good seat within splatter range.
Now he says we can use 'reasonable force' against burglars. Well, isn't that nice? Isn't it also exactly what Strawman Jack said a few years ago, and won't it make just as much difference in reality?
A judge living in a safe place with police protection has a certain definition of 'reasonable force'. Someone with a wife and daughter in the house, woken in the night by a burly stranger drooling over the wife's side of the bed, has a definition of 'reasonable force' that might be a little different to the one the courts will expect him to have abided by. The judge's definition will be the one applied.
Get off the bloody Lib Dem fence, Cameron. The answer is very simple.
If someone chooses to live outside the law then they forfeit the protection of the law. If someone chooses to steal, kill, rape and so on, then they have no recourse to the law when caught and convicted. They deny the law, so take it as read that they deny all of it. All of it, including the Criminal Rights Act.
This can only apply to common law, of course. Statute law has so many ridiculous rules that you might as well build prison walls along the coastlines of this island. Not a bad idea, actually. If this was all a prison, we could smoke in it.
Cameron, make it clear. If you break into someone's house, you deny, and therefore forfeit, the law. The householder can do whatever they want to you. State it, Cameron, I dare you. Burglars will be prosecuted even if the court has to wait a year while doctors stitch the bits they can find back together. The homeowner will never be, not even if he put the burglar through a bacon slicer, re-enacted the entire 'Saw' series in his basement, or even smoked a cigarette at him.
Now that would make burglars think twice. All this 'reasonable force' nonsense is going to be interpreted by judges who have never been so much as punched in the face, no matter how much they should have been.
As it is, burglars know they will get a really serious ticking-off if they're caught. They know that they used to get far worse in the headmaster's office at school. Except this time they can not only keep the dinner money they stole, the law will give them more. Soon they will get off scot-free because they will have reported the homeowner for smoking, drinking, or having too much salt in his house. I have no confidence in any member of this government ever bothering to challenge that. It's their plan.
Go on, Cameron. You dehumanised smokers, drinkers, and the overweight, and recently even divorced fathers. We're all fair game for anyone who fancies having a go.
Dehumanise criminals. I dare you. Your predecessors didn't and neither have you. Move on from the easy targets and pick on one that actually matters. Stand up for something with a principle behind it instead of playing along with the whiners and the fake-science snake-oil merchants. Grow a pair. Stop talking and start doing. You are the Prime Monster, man. Prove that you are at least less worthless than the Brown Gorgon before you hand over to the next cloned drone. Ah, what the hell. You won't listen. You won't act.
You don't have the guts.
Cameron, you are the archetypal oik. And not the clever kind. The drooling kind. With a twitch.
In the meantime, if I am faced with a burglar, I can be sure that he hasn't told anybody his plans for the evening. So, no need to trouble the law with all that paperwork. And no need to trust any mollycoddled girly-man judge's interpretation of 'reasonable force'. My definition is simply that I stop hitting when my attacker stops moving.
I've had the crap seriously beaten out of me in the past. I am not talking Bullingdon japes, I am talking council estate bleeding. To hell with 'reasonable force'. All I will be interested in is ensuring that my attacker will never attack me again. If that means the tiresome chore of digging a hole in the woods, so be it. Nobody is looking for that hole in the woods because the burglar, in most cases, will never be missed.
Burglars, enter at your own risk. I don't play the 'reasonable force' game.
And Cameron, try visiting real life once in a while. You might actually end up knowing at least some of what you're talking about.
First he says we won't bail out Greece by giving money to the EU (we'll do it by giving the same money to the IMF instead. We're not fooled, forehead boy).
Then he resorts to 'fighting talk' when dealing with the military. Someone really should point out to him that 'fighting talk' is not at all a good idea when faced with a lot of people who are really, really good at actual, physical fighting. Still, I expect he'll find that out in time and I hope to be allowed to watch. I'll pay for a good seat within splatter range.
Now he says we can use 'reasonable force' against burglars. Well, isn't that nice? Isn't it also exactly what Strawman Jack said a few years ago, and won't it make just as much difference in reality?
A judge living in a safe place with police protection has a certain definition of 'reasonable force'. Someone with a wife and daughter in the house, woken in the night by a burly stranger drooling over the wife's side of the bed, has a definition of 'reasonable force' that might be a little different to the one the courts will expect him to have abided by. The judge's definition will be the one applied.
Get off the bloody Lib Dem fence, Cameron. The answer is very simple.
If someone chooses to live outside the law then they forfeit the protection of the law. If someone chooses to steal, kill, rape and so on, then they have no recourse to the law when caught and convicted. They deny the law, so take it as read that they deny all of it. All of it, including the Criminal Rights Act.
This can only apply to common law, of course. Statute law has so many ridiculous rules that you might as well build prison walls along the coastlines of this island. Not a bad idea, actually. If this was all a prison, we could smoke in it.
Cameron, make it clear. If you break into someone's house, you deny, and therefore forfeit, the law. The householder can do whatever they want to you. State it, Cameron, I dare you. Burglars will be prosecuted even if the court has to wait a year while doctors stitch the bits they can find back together. The homeowner will never be, not even if he put the burglar through a bacon slicer, re-enacted the entire 'Saw' series in his basement, or even smoked a cigarette at him.
Now that would make burglars think twice. All this 'reasonable force' nonsense is going to be interpreted by judges who have never been so much as punched in the face, no matter how much they should have been.
As it is, burglars know they will get a really serious ticking-off if they're caught. They know that they used to get far worse in the headmaster's office at school. Except this time they can not only keep the dinner money they stole, the law will give them more. Soon they will get off scot-free because they will have reported the homeowner for smoking, drinking, or having too much salt in his house. I have no confidence in any member of this government ever bothering to challenge that. It's their plan.
Go on, Cameron. You dehumanised smokers, drinkers, and the overweight, and recently even divorced fathers. We're all fair game for anyone who fancies having a go.
Dehumanise criminals. I dare you. Your predecessors didn't and neither have you. Move on from the easy targets and pick on one that actually matters. Stand up for something with a principle behind it instead of playing along with the whiners and the fake-science snake-oil merchants. Grow a pair. Stop talking and start doing. You are the Prime Monster, man. Prove that you are at least less worthless than the Brown Gorgon before you hand over to the next cloned drone. Ah, what the hell. You won't listen. You won't act.
You don't have the guts.
Cameron, you are the archetypal oik. And not the clever kind. The drooling kind. With a twitch.
In the meantime, if I am faced with a burglar, I can be sure that he hasn't told anybody his plans for the evening. So, no need to trouble the law with all that paperwork. And no need to trust any mollycoddled girly-man judge's interpretation of 'reasonable force'. My definition is simply that I stop hitting when my attacker stops moving.
I've had the crap seriously beaten out of me in the past. I am not talking Bullingdon japes, I am talking council estate bleeding. To hell with 'reasonable force'. All I will be interested in is ensuring that my attacker will never attack me again. If that means the tiresome chore of digging a hole in the woods, so be it. Nobody is looking for that hole in the woods because the burglar, in most cases, will never be missed.
Burglars, enter at your own risk. I don't play the 'reasonable force' game.
And Cameron, try visiting real life once in a while. You might actually end up knowing at least some of what you're talking about.
Monday, 20 June 2011
Pop goes the Ponzi.
Everyone knows what a Ponzi scheme is, even those who don't know the name. They are also often known as 'pyramid schemes' and the Internet is full of them.
You join up and pay money. Then you entice others to join up and pay money, some of which comes to you. The whole thing is built on the new members and when the pool of suckers is exhausted, nobody is paying in any money and it all falls apart.
The only one who gets rich is the originator, the one at the top. Those near the top might make a little or at least break even. Everyone else gets back less than they paid in. Those at the bottom get nothing back.
Why does it work? It all hinges on convincing the new member that they won't be at the bottom when it all falls apart. The bigger it gets, the more there are at the bottom.
There is another way to make it work. You can threaten anyone who refuses to pay with jail. That way, the new member pool just keeps refilling. That kind of Ponzi can run for decades.
It's how the State pension works. The money we've all been paying in is not there waiting for our retirement. It's gone. All of it. What we pay now is used to pay the current pensioners, because the money they paid in was already gone by the time they retired.
When we retire, our pensions will come from the taxes of those who are now children. So those who are complaining about paying for pensioners at the moment will be those who are complained about in the future. That's if there is any pension in the future.
The pension age has been creeping upwards, at a rate that means I'll never reach it. I'm paying pension contributions to the State for a pension I'll never be able to claim. Well, why not? I'm paying in to a health service that wants to refuse to treat me, I'm paying towards the mortgages on MP's property portfolios, I'm subsidising their booze while they put up the price of mine, what's one more indignity heaped on that lot?
The pension Ponzi will fail because there are no longer enough taxpayers to support the current elderly. They try getting the NHS to kill them off, they try freezing them to death in the winter with coffin - I mean carbon taxes, they have plenty of homes to put them in where they can be ignored while their remaining bank accounts are emptied, but the stubborn old buggers just keep hanging on.
Meanwhile, businesses close due to idiotic regulations and spite-driven controls. More and more are out of work, more and more on benefits which means the State pays the State the National Insurance demanded by the State which really means anyone paying taxes pays that too.
They've tried raising NI, they've tried raising the pension age, they've tried killing off the pensioners and it's not enough. The money is gone. We are not paying in to a pension pot. We are throwing the money into a hole with nothing but greedy suits at the bottom.
There's only one thing left to do.
No pension age. Nobody retires. Ever.
This is sold as a benefit to you. You don't really want to retire, do you? You don't want all that bothersome gardening and tiring hobby work. Think how bored you'll be. No, best stay at work until you drop, and get a hero's funeral in a heroic mass grave provided by the State.
I know, it's not what Captain Toaster (oldies will get the Tefal reference) actually said. Look at how it works and compare it with the Righteous Standard template.
Raise NI. -------------- One non-smoking carriage.
Raise pension age. ----- One smoking carriage.
Change pension ------- No smoking on trains.
age to 'flexible'.
Next? ---------------- No smoking on the stations.
Antismokers will scoff because I compared it to the smoking template. Pensions have nothing to do with smoking, other than that most public sector pensions invest heavily in tobacco. Yet it is exactly the same template, and you can do the same comparison with drink, waist size, salt, burgers, anything you like.
Face it. If you have not retired by now, or are not retiring imminently, you're not going to. This does not mean you can stop paying NI because that's just another income tax and the government need it to support bomb-belt training in Outer Boomistan and for Hate the West lessons in Swampania.
We pay the NHS to treat us as an inconvenience, we pay the council to treat us like serfs, we pay the government to treat us like cattle, we pay the EU to treat us like something they've stepped in and now we'll be paying for a pension that's promised in the next life.
I'd rather be mugged. At least muggers are honest about it.
What to do? Write to your MP, the beneficiary of all this theft? Protest? You need police permission for that. Complain to the council? All authorities are paid out of that money taken from us all. None of them are going to help put a stop to it.
The only course of action I can see is to learn to live on an income that's just under the income tax threshold. I've managed on much less in the past. Cut expenditure to the bone, buy no gadgets, no fancy goods, and cut income to match. Barter wherever possible.
The only thing they care about is money. Stop the supply. It won't affect current pensions, they are paid out of thin air anyway.
Will that make them listen? I don't care. I no longer want them to listen.
I just want them to go.
You join up and pay money. Then you entice others to join up and pay money, some of which comes to you. The whole thing is built on the new members and when the pool of suckers is exhausted, nobody is paying in any money and it all falls apart.
The only one who gets rich is the originator, the one at the top. Those near the top might make a little or at least break even. Everyone else gets back less than they paid in. Those at the bottom get nothing back.
Why does it work? It all hinges on convincing the new member that they won't be at the bottom when it all falls apart. The bigger it gets, the more there are at the bottom.
There is another way to make it work. You can threaten anyone who refuses to pay with jail. That way, the new member pool just keeps refilling. That kind of Ponzi can run for decades.
It's how the State pension works. The money we've all been paying in is not there waiting for our retirement. It's gone. All of it. What we pay now is used to pay the current pensioners, because the money they paid in was already gone by the time they retired.
When we retire, our pensions will come from the taxes of those who are now children. So those who are complaining about paying for pensioners at the moment will be those who are complained about in the future. That's if there is any pension in the future.
The pension age has been creeping upwards, at a rate that means I'll never reach it. I'm paying pension contributions to the State for a pension I'll never be able to claim. Well, why not? I'm paying in to a health service that wants to refuse to treat me, I'm paying towards the mortgages on MP's property portfolios, I'm subsidising their booze while they put up the price of mine, what's one more indignity heaped on that lot?
The pension Ponzi will fail because there are no longer enough taxpayers to support the current elderly. They try getting the NHS to kill them off, they try freezing them to death in the winter with coffin - I mean carbon taxes, they have plenty of homes to put them in where they can be ignored while their remaining bank accounts are emptied, but the stubborn old buggers just keep hanging on.
Meanwhile, businesses close due to idiotic regulations and spite-driven controls. More and more are out of work, more and more on benefits which means the State pays the State the National Insurance demanded by the State which really means anyone paying taxes pays that too.
They've tried raising NI, they've tried raising the pension age, they've tried killing off the pensioners and it's not enough. The money is gone. We are not paying in to a pension pot. We are throwing the money into a hole with nothing but greedy suits at the bottom.
There's only one thing left to do.
No pension age. Nobody retires. Ever.
This is sold as a benefit to you. You don't really want to retire, do you? You don't want all that bothersome gardening and tiring hobby work. Think how bored you'll be. No, best stay at work until you drop, and get a hero's funeral in a heroic mass grave provided by the State.
I know, it's not what Captain Toaster (oldies will get the Tefal reference) actually said. Look at how it works and compare it with the Righteous Standard template.
Raise NI. -------------- One non-smoking carriage.
Raise pension age. ----- One smoking carriage.
Change pension ------- No smoking on trains.
age to 'flexible'.
Next? ---------------- No smoking on the stations.
Antismokers will scoff because I compared it to the smoking template. Pensions have nothing to do with smoking, other than that most public sector pensions invest heavily in tobacco. Yet it is exactly the same template, and you can do the same comparison with drink, waist size, salt, burgers, anything you like.
Face it. If you have not retired by now, or are not retiring imminently, you're not going to. This does not mean you can stop paying NI because that's just another income tax and the government need it to support bomb-belt training in Outer Boomistan and for Hate the West lessons in Swampania.
We pay the NHS to treat us as an inconvenience, we pay the council to treat us like serfs, we pay the government to treat us like cattle, we pay the EU to treat us like something they've stepped in and now we'll be paying for a pension that's promised in the next life.
I'd rather be mugged. At least muggers are honest about it.
What to do? Write to your MP, the beneficiary of all this theft? Protest? You need police permission for that. Complain to the council? All authorities are paid out of that money taken from us all. None of them are going to help put a stop to it.
The only course of action I can see is to learn to live on an income that's just under the income tax threshold. I've managed on much less in the past. Cut expenditure to the bone, buy no gadgets, no fancy goods, and cut income to match. Barter wherever possible.
The only thing they care about is money. Stop the supply. It won't affect current pensions, they are paid out of thin air anyway.
Will that make them listen? I don't care. I no longer want them to listen.
I just want them to go.
Through the looking glass.
The world is now a maelstrom of chaos. To a dysfunctional, unsociable borderline Voorhees like myself, this is better than the maddest fiction I've ever read, and I've read and enjoyed Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy twice. I am having the time of my life reading about the latest collapse of the Righteous and I am delighted to be around to see it happening.
Remember when the Forehead of Eternal Emptiness declared himself the Heir to Blair? Well, now Special Ed Moribund has declared himself a Thatcher fan. Seems they get off on role-swapping games in Wastemonster. I look forward to seeing Special Ed wave his handbag at the Cameroid and insist that 'this baby's not for burning' and 'there is no such thing as socialism'.
Soon, Nick the Griff will convert to Judaism, dreadlock his hair and start talking like a West Indian ganja dealer (Oy-and-oy vay, innit?), while Clegg the Boy Wonder will declare war on Brussels and demand ashtrays on every bench in the Commons. The Brown Gorgon will appear on 'Britain's Got Mugs Who Think They Aren't Just There To Be Laughed At' doing Julian Clary impressions and the Tiny Blur will use all his money to buy bricks for a Jewish dog's home, then have all his teeth removed and retire to live as a hermit in the woods, where he will suck live stoats to entertain tourists.
The Blur's wife will renounce the Human Rights Moneyspinning Act and settle for a job modelling for postboxes. With her as a model we wouldn't have to pay more for large letters. Greenpeace will convert the Rainbow Warrior (the new one, without the French-adapted doyley hull) to run on nuclear power and declare themselves veal-eaters to a man. Climate change scientists will admit that, actually, the climate has been changing all the time anyway and they've just been cashing in on nature, and finish with 'April fools!'
The way the world is now, none of that would surprise me in the least.
The cracks in the Great Plan have become fissures. Even the Cleggeron's love of Master EU is coming under fire. With apologies to Creedence Clearwater Revival -
I see a bald man cycling
I see trouble on the way
I'll work on that one, it has promise.
In the meantime, how can anyone not laugh? When someone takes over a pub and decides the best way to make his business profitable is to get rid of all the customers.
But I object to swearing, tattoos and dogs sitting on chairs. If I was going to take my mother to dinner there I would not wish her to be exposed to that sort of thing.
It's comedy gold. He doesn't want his mother exposed to a dog sitting on a chair?
Then the police arrest a fork-bending magician in a bar and the bar has this to say -
Fiona Williams, boss of the Apres bar in Lichfield, Staffs, said: “We have to protect our customers and knives and forks are a security issue. He was not organised as a magician, nor announced himself or his intentions.”
I once went to a fancy dress party with a fork stuck to my nose. What was I supposed to be? Fork nose. If I did it now I'd apparently be a security risk. Look at these people. Look at them. See them cower in the presence of cutlery. Watch their terror at a dog in a chair - "My God, that dog is sitting in a chair. It's trying to declare mastery over us. Quick, trounce it with political correctness. Oh no, wait, it has a spoon!"
Then there is the ever-reliable comedy king, Trevor Philips. I see a bald man whining - no, no, save it for later. Those terrible Christians have looked at the gay community and said 'Oooo, no, we don't like it', and that makes them evil, evil people. Far more evil than those Muslims who blow people up, who want to behead everyone, who burst forth in rage about mere cartoons, who declare that freedom is wrong, who want to cut the hands off thieves, who demand that raped women produce four male witnesses and if they can't they get stoned to death, and who want to... er... kill all the gays. That's all okay with Magical Trevor, as long as they don't wrinkle their noses and say 'Oooo, no, we don't like it.'
Isn't that kind of turnaround straight from the world of Mony Python? Think of their Hell's Grannies sketch. Many of those arrested these days are arrested for farcical reasons, while those who rape children are to be set free early so they're back out before their victims get too old to interest them. Tiny Blur changed the treason laws before committing treason. One can only speculate as to why Chubby Ken wants these particular laws changed.
We live in a farce. A continuous joke. The humourless comedians run the show now and they are sicker than anything Bernard Manning, Frankie Boyle or Jim Davidson ever even dreamed of. They don't even realise they are funny. They seriously believe they are in control, that it is not all just slipping through their fingers faster than a greased eel.
So we see Chancellor Ozzy pretending he's not going to rob every Tory voter, but with this government's record for doing the opposite of what they say, stop bothering with your pension right now. It's about to be stolen from you. Again.
We see Dai Cameroid, whose memory evidently does not extend as far back as the Fathers4Justice protests on the Wastemonster roof, declaring that all absent fathers must be despised. Special Ed Moribund is to do a Thatcher on the unions who put him in power while the Coagulation declares that innocent mistakes are a crime.
I'm not having to dig far for these links. They are all in the current papers. Yes, this is just the recent lunacy. There is new stuff every single day. Far more than anyone could catalogue. An accelerating vortex of insanity, a wild ride into the depths of chaos, a madness so complete we can only weep at its absolute perfection.
Fear of everything, hatred of everything, ban everything, wrap yourself in non-allergenic carbon-neutral unbleached cotton wool and never eat or drink anything ever again. Never leave the house, take your medication, cower and squeal and hand over money to State-appointed highwaymen when they call. Beware the lack of sunspots that will bring an ice age, and fear the simultaneous surge of sunspots that will fry your iPhone. Become vegetarian to save the planet but don't eat vegetables in case you get poisoned. Save the planet for the animals by killing all the animals. Doublethink has never been so perfectly implemented.
But never fear. The government will look after you. They know where you are.
It has reached the zenith. The absurdity is complete when you are told that you are the very danger you are trying to escape. Yes, you. The final target for your unmitigated bile is not smokers, fat people, drinkers... it's you. Hate yourself, fear yourself, and finally demand a ban on yourself. For the cheeldren.
There's no point getting depressed about it. Just sit back and watch the world burn. Toast your marshmallows and light your cigarettes and laugh.
It's happened before. Civilisation has collapsed many times. From the embers, we just start all over again. Perhaps next time it'll be different.
But I doubt it.
Remember when the Forehead of Eternal Emptiness declared himself the Heir to Blair? Well, now Special Ed Moribund has declared himself a Thatcher fan. Seems they get off on role-swapping games in Wastemonster. I look forward to seeing Special Ed wave his handbag at the Cameroid and insist that 'this baby's not for burning' and 'there is no such thing as socialism'.
Soon, Nick the Griff will convert to Judaism, dreadlock his hair and start talking like a West Indian ganja dealer (Oy-and-oy vay, innit?), while Clegg the Boy Wonder will declare war on Brussels and demand ashtrays on every bench in the Commons. The Brown Gorgon will appear on 'Britain's Got Mugs Who Think They Aren't Just There To Be Laughed At' doing Julian Clary impressions and the Tiny Blur will use all his money to buy bricks for a Jewish dog's home, then have all his teeth removed and retire to live as a hermit in the woods, where he will suck live stoats to entertain tourists.
The Blur's wife will renounce the Human Rights Moneyspinning Act and settle for a job modelling for postboxes. With her as a model we wouldn't have to pay more for large letters. Greenpeace will convert the Rainbow Warrior (the new one, without the French-adapted doyley hull) to run on nuclear power and declare themselves veal-eaters to a man. Climate change scientists will admit that, actually, the climate has been changing all the time anyway and they've just been cashing in on nature, and finish with 'April fools!'
The way the world is now, none of that would surprise me in the least.
The cracks in the Great Plan have become fissures. Even the Cleggeron's love of Master EU is coming under fire. With apologies to Creedence Clearwater Revival -
I see a bald man cycling
I see trouble on the way
I'll work on that one, it has promise.
In the meantime, how can anyone not laugh? When someone takes over a pub and decides the best way to make his business profitable is to get rid of all the customers.
But I object to swearing, tattoos and dogs sitting on chairs. If I was going to take my mother to dinner there I would not wish her to be exposed to that sort of thing.
It's comedy gold. He doesn't want his mother exposed to a dog sitting on a chair?
Then the police arrest a fork-bending magician in a bar and the bar has this to say -
Fiona Williams, boss of the Apres bar in Lichfield, Staffs, said: “We have to protect our customers and knives and forks are a security issue. He was not organised as a magician, nor announced himself or his intentions.”
I once went to a fancy dress party with a fork stuck to my nose. What was I supposed to be? Fork nose. If I did it now I'd apparently be a security risk. Look at these people. Look at them. See them cower in the presence of cutlery. Watch their terror at a dog in a chair - "My God, that dog is sitting in a chair. It's trying to declare mastery over us. Quick, trounce it with political correctness. Oh no, wait, it has a spoon!"
Then there is the ever-reliable comedy king, Trevor Philips. I see a bald man whining - no, no, save it for later. Those terrible Christians have looked at the gay community and said 'Oooo, no, we don't like it', and that makes them evil, evil people. Far more evil than those Muslims who blow people up, who want to behead everyone, who burst forth in rage about mere cartoons, who declare that freedom is wrong, who want to cut the hands off thieves, who demand that raped women produce four male witnesses and if they can't they get stoned to death, and who want to... er... kill all the gays. That's all okay with Magical Trevor, as long as they don't wrinkle their noses and say 'Oooo, no, we don't like it.'
Isn't that kind of turnaround straight from the world of Mony Python? Think of their Hell's Grannies sketch. Many of those arrested these days are arrested for farcical reasons, while those who rape children are to be set free early so they're back out before their victims get too old to interest them. Tiny Blur changed the treason laws before committing treason. One can only speculate as to why Chubby Ken wants these particular laws changed.
We live in a farce. A continuous joke. The humourless comedians run the show now and they are sicker than anything Bernard Manning, Frankie Boyle or Jim Davidson ever even dreamed of. They don't even realise they are funny. They seriously believe they are in control, that it is not all just slipping through their fingers faster than a greased eel.
So we see Chancellor Ozzy pretending he's not going to rob every Tory voter, but with this government's record for doing the opposite of what they say, stop bothering with your pension right now. It's about to be stolen from you. Again.
We see Dai Cameroid, whose memory evidently does not extend as far back as the Fathers4Justice protests on the Wastemonster roof, declaring that all absent fathers must be despised. Special Ed Moribund is to do a Thatcher on the unions who put him in power while the Coagulation declares that innocent mistakes are a crime.
I'm not having to dig far for these links. They are all in the current papers. Yes, this is just the recent lunacy. There is new stuff every single day. Far more than anyone could catalogue. An accelerating vortex of insanity, a wild ride into the depths of chaos, a madness so complete we can only weep at its absolute perfection.
Fear of everything, hatred of everything, ban everything, wrap yourself in non-allergenic carbon-neutral unbleached cotton wool and never eat or drink anything ever again. Never leave the house, take your medication, cower and squeal and hand over money to State-appointed highwaymen when they call. Beware the lack of sunspots that will bring an ice age, and fear the simultaneous surge of sunspots that will fry your iPhone. Become vegetarian to save the planet but don't eat vegetables in case you get poisoned. Save the planet for the animals by killing all the animals. Doublethink has never been so perfectly implemented.
But never fear. The government will look after you. They know where you are.
It has reached the zenith. The absurdity is complete when you are told that you are the very danger you are trying to escape. Yes, you. The final target for your unmitigated bile is not smokers, fat people, drinkers... it's you. Hate yourself, fear yourself, and finally demand a ban on yourself. For the cheeldren.
There's no point getting depressed about it. Just sit back and watch the world burn. Toast your marshmallows and light your cigarettes and laugh.
It's happened before. Civilisation has collapsed many times. From the embers, we just start all over again. Perhaps next time it'll be different.
But I doubt it.
Sunday, 19 June 2011
The Smoky-Drinky Chronicle.
Back from Smoky-Drinky, and it was interesting.
There is a new Wetherspoons in this little town. It took over the most recent closed-down pub. I haven't been in and won't, it opens directly onto the street, has nowhere to put even the rudimentary so-called shelters the government allows for its most hated citizens, and the weather is still lousy. It's a non-smoking pub for non-smoking people. There's nothing for me there. They can have a free beer night and I won't be there.
The interesting thing was, none of the other Smoky-Drinkers had been in there either, and none plan to visit. Why visit an establishment that hates you when you can have a Smoky-Drinky where you are not hated? The price of drink is not the issue, something the pubs will never realise. It's paying to be hated that's the issue. We won't do that. This new Wetherspoons might thrive or fail. I really don't care either way. It's of no more relevance or interest to me, or to the other Smoky-Drinkers, than the pensioner's knitting circle.
Stolen Child is nearly four years old, still doesn't talk much and still can't eat solids. His problems were genetic, which we all knew, but his lack of development was the reason the SS used to take him from his parents. Actually, I still think the main reason lay in the fact that Stolen Child's grandfather told an SS drone to fuck off when she insisted he couldn't smoke in his own home while she was there. Spite and vindictiveness is the order of the day, among those who think they are important because their pay is extracted from real people by force. It is becoming ever more difficult for the SS to justify this decision, but they will never admit they were in the wrong and nobody will be disciplined. They are infallible in their own eyes, filth in everyone else's, and they'll never understand why.
Soon they will all go on strike. I'm looking forward to it. Let them strike, and if they are not missed, close their jobs. I'd like to think that's what Cameron plans but as he has demonstrated over and over again, he doesn't have the guts. More likely he'll cave in and do a U-turn, something his government have done on every policy they've announced so far. As soon as someone starts shouting, Cameron cowers. Spineless? Cameron is beyond spineless. He's a mollusc. If he put slug pellets in his garden, the slugs would make him pick them up.
The Angry Ranting Man has more to say on the subject. Me, I'm losing control of my fingers and the sun's coming up, so it's nearly sleep-time for me.
There is a new Wetherspoons in this little town. It took over the most recent closed-down pub. I haven't been in and won't, it opens directly onto the street, has nowhere to put even the rudimentary so-called shelters the government allows for its most hated citizens, and the weather is still lousy. It's a non-smoking pub for non-smoking people. There's nothing for me there. They can have a free beer night and I won't be there.
The interesting thing was, none of the other Smoky-Drinkers had been in there either, and none plan to visit. Why visit an establishment that hates you when you can have a Smoky-Drinky where you are not hated? The price of drink is not the issue, something the pubs will never realise. It's paying to be hated that's the issue. We won't do that. This new Wetherspoons might thrive or fail. I really don't care either way. It's of no more relevance or interest to me, or to the other Smoky-Drinkers, than the pensioner's knitting circle.
Stolen Child is nearly four years old, still doesn't talk much and still can't eat solids. His problems were genetic, which we all knew, but his lack of development was the reason the SS used to take him from his parents. Actually, I still think the main reason lay in the fact that Stolen Child's grandfather told an SS drone to fuck off when she insisted he couldn't smoke in his own home while she was there. Spite and vindictiveness is the order of the day, among those who think they are important because their pay is extracted from real people by force. It is becoming ever more difficult for the SS to justify this decision, but they will never admit they were in the wrong and nobody will be disciplined. They are infallible in their own eyes, filth in everyone else's, and they'll never understand why.
Soon they will all go on strike. I'm looking forward to it. Let them strike, and if they are not missed, close their jobs. I'd like to think that's what Cameron plans but as he has demonstrated over and over again, he doesn't have the guts. More likely he'll cave in and do a U-turn, something his government have done on every policy they've announced so far. As soon as someone starts shouting, Cameron cowers. Spineless? Cameron is beyond spineless. He's a mollusc. If he put slug pellets in his garden, the slugs would make him pick them up.
The Angry Ranting Man has more to say on the subject. Me, I'm losing control of my fingers and the sun's coming up, so it's nearly sleep-time for me.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
The Smokophobes kill the wrong target again.
The Health Nazis have succeeded in banning cigarette vending machines. I never use them, the price is way over the top, and I don't know anyone who does use them. But then we do have a 24-hour Tesco here so there's little interest in buying a half-filled pack at full price. Also, the machines have never, as far as I know, carried rolling baccy. Even so, there are obviously people who do use them or they wouldn't exist.
This is billed as an attack on smokers but really, smokers will be entirely unaffected. The only difference will be that those who forget to pick up some smokes on the way to the pub will now have to remember to call in at Local Shop on the way. Adjustment will take a matter of days.
As to the 'kiddies might use them' nonsense, those kiddies really shouldn't be in the pub in the first place and setting up a remote lock so the barman can check your age before you use the machine isn't particularly difficult. That argument is irrelevant, as are most of those already accepted by the pinheads of government.
However, the entire cigarette vending machine industry has just become worthless. Have a factory making the machines? The factory, and everything in it, is worthless. You cannot sell up, you cannot recoup any losses, the specialised machinery is a load of scrap metal now. Have a business, built from scratch, based on the supply and maintenance of these machines? All your carefully-built business is now worth less than the shirt you're wearing. All your staff are out of work. Redundancy payments? With what? That stock of machines can't even be sold to cover the losses.
Everyone in that industry, from the managing director to the cigarette machine refilling operative, is now out of work. Not in October when the measures come in. Now. Are you seriously going to keep trying to run a business the Government has declared will close in a few months? Are you really going to keep making vending machines until October, when they will roll off the production line straight into the scrapyard?
All those people will be on benefits, all those people who once paid tax. All the company taxes stop coming in. All the VAT on the sales stops coming in. Suppliers of sheet metal, glass, plastic and other materials will see their order books shrink. Transport companies that used to move the materials to the factory and then move the machines from the factory to the pub will lose money. All these companies will lay off staff, those staff will no longer be taxpayers, the companies will all record lower profits and will all pay less tax.
The effect on the tobacco companies? Zero. Smokers will simply stock up at Aziz's Late Shop so tobacco sales will be unaffected. The effect on smokers? Apart from a little irritation at a new inconvenience for a few days, zero. The effect on underage smokers? Zero. Very few of them are buying from the machines and all of them have alternative suppliers.
Next, plain packaging hidden under the counter. The effects of this? Well, the shops will no doubt lose sales but the tobacco companies won't. Man with a Van buys his stock on the continent. The tobacco companies will not lose a penny. Legal sales will plummet but smokers will smoke, children will find them even easier to get because the criminals bringing it in don't care about age, and tobacco companies will remain a solid investment for the pensions of the same pinheads who are pretending to ban it.
Effect on smokers - zero.
Effect on tobacco companies - zero.
Effect on British industry and the economy - a disaster.
So, a round of applause for the smokophobes. They have moved us all one step closer to the Brown Gorgon's dream of a destitute country while having absolutely no effect whatsoever on smoking, other than making it far, far easier for children to get hold of cigarettes.
No wonder all their pensions invest in tobacco.
No wonder the tobacco companies do no more than make a few token objections. No matter where you buy tobacco, they make a profit. The only difference is which government gets the tax, and it will always be the country that charges the lowest duty.
Oh, and if you think you're safe with an Electrofag, best take a look at this. Apparently that water vapour is even more dangerous than tobacco smoke now.
What? Did you think the truth would save you? These people are not interested in truth. They don't want facts.
They want to control your life.
Unfortunately, their pathetic attempts to control the uncontrollable will only lead to disaster for everyone. Not just the smokers. The tax take will plummet as a result of these measures and it goes far, far beyond the simple duty on cigarettes. Since the pinheads can't even contemplate any form of control on their excessive spending, they will simply find new ways to take more money from us all.
The smokophobe drones won't see it because all they have is hate and spite. The ability to reason left them long ago. They are now open to any bizarre story as long as it fuels their hate and I'm happy to wind them to greater and greater heights of idiocy.
Those who can see what's coming can be ready. I see no reason to warn the enemy.
Anyway, it's time to leave for Smoky-Drinky. No pubs, no vending machines, no staff, no public access, and no bans. Nothing here has changed.
We're still laughing at you, smokophobes.
This is billed as an attack on smokers but really, smokers will be entirely unaffected. The only difference will be that those who forget to pick up some smokes on the way to the pub will now have to remember to call in at Local Shop on the way. Adjustment will take a matter of days.
As to the 'kiddies might use them' nonsense, those kiddies really shouldn't be in the pub in the first place and setting up a remote lock so the barman can check your age before you use the machine isn't particularly difficult. That argument is irrelevant, as are most of those already accepted by the pinheads of government.
However, the entire cigarette vending machine industry has just become worthless. Have a factory making the machines? The factory, and everything in it, is worthless. You cannot sell up, you cannot recoup any losses, the specialised machinery is a load of scrap metal now. Have a business, built from scratch, based on the supply and maintenance of these machines? All your carefully-built business is now worth less than the shirt you're wearing. All your staff are out of work. Redundancy payments? With what? That stock of machines can't even be sold to cover the losses.
Everyone in that industry, from the managing director to the cigarette machine refilling operative, is now out of work. Not in October when the measures come in. Now. Are you seriously going to keep trying to run a business the Government has declared will close in a few months? Are you really going to keep making vending machines until October, when they will roll off the production line straight into the scrapyard?
All those people will be on benefits, all those people who once paid tax. All the company taxes stop coming in. All the VAT on the sales stops coming in. Suppliers of sheet metal, glass, plastic and other materials will see their order books shrink. Transport companies that used to move the materials to the factory and then move the machines from the factory to the pub will lose money. All these companies will lay off staff, those staff will no longer be taxpayers, the companies will all record lower profits and will all pay less tax.
The effect on the tobacco companies? Zero. Smokers will simply stock up at Aziz's Late Shop so tobacco sales will be unaffected. The effect on smokers? Apart from a little irritation at a new inconvenience for a few days, zero. The effect on underage smokers? Zero. Very few of them are buying from the machines and all of them have alternative suppliers.
Next, plain packaging hidden under the counter. The effects of this? Well, the shops will no doubt lose sales but the tobacco companies won't. Man with a Van buys his stock on the continent. The tobacco companies will not lose a penny. Legal sales will plummet but smokers will smoke, children will find them even easier to get because the criminals bringing it in don't care about age, and tobacco companies will remain a solid investment for the pensions of the same pinheads who are pretending to ban it.
Effect on smokers - zero.
Effect on tobacco companies - zero.
Effect on British industry and the economy - a disaster.
So, a round of applause for the smokophobes. They have moved us all one step closer to the Brown Gorgon's dream of a destitute country while having absolutely no effect whatsoever on smoking, other than making it far, far easier for children to get hold of cigarettes.
No wonder all their pensions invest in tobacco.
No wonder the tobacco companies do no more than make a few token objections. No matter where you buy tobacco, they make a profit. The only difference is which government gets the tax, and it will always be the country that charges the lowest duty.
Oh, and if you think you're safe with an Electrofag, best take a look at this. Apparently that water vapour is even more dangerous than tobacco smoke now.
What? Did you think the truth would save you? These people are not interested in truth. They don't want facts.
They want to control your life.
Unfortunately, their pathetic attempts to control the uncontrollable will only lead to disaster for everyone. Not just the smokers. The tax take will plummet as a result of these measures and it goes far, far beyond the simple duty on cigarettes. Since the pinheads can't even contemplate any form of control on their excessive spending, they will simply find new ways to take more money from us all.
The smokophobe drones won't see it because all they have is hate and spite. The ability to reason left them long ago. They are now open to any bizarre story as long as it fuels their hate and I'm happy to wind them to greater and greater heights of idiocy.
Those who can see what's coming can be ready. I see no reason to warn the enemy.
Anyway, it's time to leave for Smoky-Drinky. No pubs, no vending machines, no staff, no public access, and no bans. Nothing here has changed.
We're still laughing at you, smokophobes.
Children influenced by adults?
Well who'd have thought it?
Lord Longrider and the Duke of Puddlecote have already covered the astounding ability of modern science to actually notice that which has been right in front of everyone else's eyes all the time. Next time, include a few windows in that ivory tower, and let the researchers look through them once in a while. It'll save a lot of bother.
Science has realised at last that those parents who don't give a damn about their children tend to produce nasty little scroats, while those who apply discipline and caring tend to produce well-brought-up and actually worthwhile human beings. My grandmother would have had words to describe these scientists, and she wasn't shy about using those words. She also wasn't shy about whacking any grandchild who used them, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it because when she used them, she did it in Welsh. It was years before we even knew she was swearing at us.
Well, science has more to do yet. Now they are fretting about the mystery of why ten-year-old boys are so obsessed with their weight that they are becoming bulimic. Why those children, who are not at all obese, are being bullied for not being stick-thin.
Maybe one day they will make the connection with the health freaks' obsession with BMI to the extent that perfectly normal children are being sent home with a letter saying 'You are fat'. Maybe one day they will realise that this bulimia isn't just some random outbreak, but has been carefully nutured and instilled into those children by all the health Nazis, and drummed into each and every child in every school.
Your child might not look fat, but computer says 'fat' so he's fat. We've informed the school and all his friends, who have promised not to bully him or harass him or call him 'Tubbo' or attempt to roll him like a barrel. They swore a solemn oath with their fingers crossed, which is their culture, innit?
Even the Daily Mail commenters have spotted it. Well, the lesser froth-mouthed Mail commenters have spotted it.
When, I wonder, will science? And if they do realise that they are responsible for this in the first place, will they ever admit it?
Lord Longrider and the Duke of Puddlecote have already covered the astounding ability of modern science to actually notice that which has been right in front of everyone else's eyes all the time. Next time, include a few windows in that ivory tower, and let the researchers look through them once in a while. It'll save a lot of bother.
Science has realised at last that those parents who don't give a damn about their children tend to produce nasty little scroats, while those who apply discipline and caring tend to produce well-brought-up and actually worthwhile human beings. My grandmother would have had words to describe these scientists, and she wasn't shy about using those words. She also wasn't shy about whacking any grandchild who used them, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it because when she used them, she did it in Welsh. It was years before we even knew she was swearing at us.
Well, science has more to do yet. Now they are fretting about the mystery of why ten-year-old boys are so obsessed with their weight that they are becoming bulimic. Why those children, who are not at all obese, are being bullied for not being stick-thin.
Maybe one day they will make the connection with the health freaks' obsession with BMI to the extent that perfectly normal children are being sent home with a letter saying 'You are fat'. Maybe one day they will realise that this bulimia isn't just some random outbreak, but has been carefully nutured and instilled into those children by all the health Nazis, and drummed into each and every child in every school.
Your child might not look fat, but computer says 'fat' so he's fat. We've informed the school and all his friends, who have promised not to bully him or harass him or call him 'Tubbo' or attempt to roll him like a barrel. They swore a solemn oath with their fingers crossed, which is their culture, innit?
Even the Daily Mail commenters have spotted it. Well, the lesser froth-mouthed Mail commenters have spotted it.
When, I wonder, will science? And if they do realise that they are responsible for this in the first place, will they ever admit it?
Friday, 17 June 2011
Computer decoke.
Last night I found out what was making the computer fan scream every time the antivirus scanned. Removing the thick layer of dust over the grille cured it.
Then I had one of those Really Good Ideas. You know, the ones that start with 'This will be brilliant' and later turn into 'What the hell was I thinking?' It seemed like a good idea to disassemble the computer and de-dustify it completely. I mean, the thing is seven years old and has been quietly cleaning the house by sucking all the dust into itself.
I have it all back together now and it seems to be working okay. I had forgotten how many wires were plugged into the back of it and how few of them could be plugged in before shoving it back into the restricted space it lives in. I freely admit to swearing like a toothy clown.
Right. Out with the booze, time to read the papers. That's something best not done sober.
Then I had one of those Really Good Ideas. You know, the ones that start with 'This will be brilliant' and later turn into 'What the hell was I thinking?' It seemed like a good idea to disassemble the computer and de-dustify it completely. I mean, the thing is seven years old and has been quietly cleaning the house by sucking all the dust into itself.
I have it all back together now and it seems to be working okay. I had forgotten how many wires were plugged into the back of it and how few of them could be plugged in before shoving it back into the restricted space it lives in. I freely admit to swearing like a toothy clown.
Right. Out with the booze, time to read the papers. That's something best not done sober.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Fishing? Best let the sandwich inspectors check your lunch.
Apologies for lack of interaction lately but the book I'm reading is really very good.
Anyway, I almost sprayed my whisky at this article. I held it in, this isn't the cheap stuff.
I like fishing. It's one of the dwindling number of pursuits you can still do while smoking at the same time. Fly fishing or ledgering (maggot or worm) for trout, mostly. Never could get the lengths and weights right for float fishing and there's almost no coarse fishing here at all. There was once a pond with pike, which was cheap to fish because the owner wanted the pike fished out so he could stock it with trout. I caught one with a wooden minnow spinner on a wire trace, the only time I've used that rig, and it was, shall we say, a little different from getting a hook out of a trout.
Anyway, I have read about bread balls and such things used in coarse fishing. Apparently, it turns out that modern bread is very bad for fish. It makes them bloated and gives them dodgy guts. If I was a fish, I'd be happy with that, compared to being hooked in the lip, dragged to the bank and then smacked across the head. Feeling a bit bloated doesn't sound so bad in that context.
But there is great concern for the fish. Aside from the comical claim that one fag-end can poison the Atlantic, it seems there is a more pressing concern for the health of the fish. This is what nearly sprayed my screen with a good malt -
This is the view of one fishery that has become the first in the country to outlaw it, insisting anglers cast out only wholemeal or granary bread.
...
Graham said: “There is not much nutritional content in the white bread compared to the brown.
“The fish tend to get lethargic and bloated. The salt and sugar levels in white and brown loaves are similar but in a typical white sliced loaf there is 3.5 grams of protein per slice compared to 5.6 grams in brown bread.”
The whole point of fishing is to catch and kill your dinner. Predators do not discuss dietary requirements with their prey. Also, the nutritional requirements of fish are not subject to the arbitrary rules laid down for humans. There really is nothing to suggest that the 'brown bread good' mantra applies to fish at all. In fact, since white bread has been used in those baits for centuries and brown bread hasn't, isn't it reasonable to suppose that brown bread makes a lousy bait?
So anglers will in future turn up with brown bread 'bait' and white bread sandwiches for 'lunch'.
Maggot sandwiches. Mmmmm.
Anyway, I almost sprayed my whisky at this article. I held it in, this isn't the cheap stuff.
I like fishing. It's one of the dwindling number of pursuits you can still do while smoking at the same time. Fly fishing or ledgering (maggot or worm) for trout, mostly. Never could get the lengths and weights right for float fishing and there's almost no coarse fishing here at all. There was once a pond with pike, which was cheap to fish because the owner wanted the pike fished out so he could stock it with trout. I caught one with a wooden minnow spinner on a wire trace, the only time I've used that rig, and it was, shall we say, a little different from getting a hook out of a trout.
Anyway, I have read about bread balls and such things used in coarse fishing. Apparently, it turns out that modern bread is very bad for fish. It makes them bloated and gives them dodgy guts. If I was a fish, I'd be happy with that, compared to being hooked in the lip, dragged to the bank and then smacked across the head. Feeling a bit bloated doesn't sound so bad in that context.
But there is great concern for the fish. Aside from the comical claim that one fag-end can poison the Atlantic, it seems there is a more pressing concern for the health of the fish. This is what nearly sprayed my screen with a good malt -
This is the view of one fishery that has become the first in the country to outlaw it, insisting anglers cast out only wholemeal or granary bread.
...
Graham said: “There is not much nutritional content in the white bread compared to the brown.
“The fish tend to get lethargic and bloated. The salt and sugar levels in white and brown loaves are similar but in a typical white sliced loaf there is 3.5 grams of protein per slice compared to 5.6 grams in brown bread.”
The whole point of fishing is to catch and kill your dinner. Predators do not discuss dietary requirements with their prey. Also, the nutritional requirements of fish are not subject to the arbitrary rules laid down for humans. There really is nothing to suggest that the 'brown bread good' mantra applies to fish at all. In fact, since white bread has been used in those baits for centuries and brown bread hasn't, isn't it reasonable to suppose that brown bread makes a lousy bait?
So anglers will in future turn up with brown bread 'bait' and white bread sandwiches for 'lunch'.
Maggot sandwiches. Mmmmm.
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Death and reading.
Just quick ones at the moment. I am engrossed in a book (ignore the 'out of stock' and order it anyway, it'll turn up just the same).
So, floppy-hatted author Terry Pratchett has watched someone die and that's now the ultimate in reality TV. What's next? Convicted murderers on TV given the option of life in prison or a bullet to the head? Yes, my sick sense of humour did in fact picture the Countdown clock going while they decide. Admit it, so did yours.
Do-do, do-do, do-do-do-do, bang.
Justice will be fun when I'm dictator.
Suicide is a difficult thing to discuss. I've never tried it myself, despite nearly thirty years of urging by several people, but I've known a few who did - and no, I didn't cause any of them. Most were to do with money. I can't comprehend the depression that people need to sink into in order to decide that they'd rather be dead. As far as I'm aware, this is the only chance I get at life and even if reincarnation is true, what if I were to come back as someone in a tin hut in a shanty somewhere, or as a Miliband? I mean, however bad life gets, it could always be worse.
To me, it's unthinkable. I will never kill myself. If I end up old and mad (well, older) and consigned to one of God's waiting rooms, the staff will kill me. I'll drive them to it. I will not voluntarily die, in fact I am determined to hang on as long as possible because I know that when I die, I'll be a 'smoking related death' even if I get flattened by a falling piano or fall into the whirling blades of an electricity non-generating device. I refuse to be a notch on the Dreadful Arnott's dead smoker scorecard. Sheer bloodymindedness has kept me going so far and will keep me going for a lot longer.
It is a personal thing and every suicide case is different. I know not everyone thinks like me, which, on reflection, is probably a good thing overall. I would not, for example, make a very good diplomat. Nor could I ever be a waiter, a teacher, or anything involving being patient with idiots. Some people get so depressed that life has no meaning. I can honestly say that even when penniless and on the streets, I have never experienced such feelings. If things don't go my way, I go the way of the things until I'm back in control of my life. Some people can't, I've met them, I don't understand why they can't but that's just people-differences, I suppose.
Some people have terminal illnesses, but in the end we are all terminal. I wouldn't like to know how long I have left but if I did, I'd write faster and drink more. One last chance to drop something offensive into the world and then I'd be dead and they can't get me. Then again, being dead, I won't be able to enjoy it. No, on reflection, there are no upsides to being dead. Even pain is an experience, and death is the absence of all experience.
It's sold as 'the end of pain' and it is. It's also the end of everything else. The absolute end of all physical experience, and not something to be embraced at any cost. Certainly not voluntarily.
Others think of it in different terms. Anna Raccoon considers the effect on the family. Oldrightie is disgusted that something so private should be televised. Mummylonglegs wonders why simply dropping the old fogey off a cliff or holding a plastic bag over their heads isn't just the same.
Me, I simply cannot understand what sort of mental state is necessary to even consider killing myself, or letting someone else kill me. I'll die one day, we all will, but I don't worry about it because there is nothing I can do to avoid that day.
What I won't do is book an appointment with it.
And when the day comes, I want to be the one in the floppy hat.
So, floppy-hatted author Terry Pratchett has watched someone die and that's now the ultimate in reality TV. What's next? Convicted murderers on TV given the option of life in prison or a bullet to the head? Yes, my sick sense of humour did in fact picture the Countdown clock going while they decide. Admit it, so did yours.
Do-do, do-do, do-do-do-do, bang.
Justice will be fun when I'm dictator.
Suicide is a difficult thing to discuss. I've never tried it myself, despite nearly thirty years of urging by several people, but I've known a few who did - and no, I didn't cause any of them. Most were to do with money. I can't comprehend the depression that people need to sink into in order to decide that they'd rather be dead. As far as I'm aware, this is the only chance I get at life and even if reincarnation is true, what if I were to come back as someone in a tin hut in a shanty somewhere, or as a Miliband? I mean, however bad life gets, it could always be worse.
To me, it's unthinkable. I will never kill myself. If I end up old and mad (well, older) and consigned to one of God's waiting rooms, the staff will kill me. I'll drive them to it. I will not voluntarily die, in fact I am determined to hang on as long as possible because I know that when I die, I'll be a 'smoking related death' even if I get flattened by a falling piano or fall into the whirling blades of an electricity non-generating device. I refuse to be a notch on the Dreadful Arnott's dead smoker scorecard. Sheer bloodymindedness has kept me going so far and will keep me going for a lot longer.
It is a personal thing and every suicide case is different. I know not everyone thinks like me, which, on reflection, is probably a good thing overall. I would not, for example, make a very good diplomat. Nor could I ever be a waiter, a teacher, or anything involving being patient with idiots. Some people get so depressed that life has no meaning. I can honestly say that even when penniless and on the streets, I have never experienced such feelings. If things don't go my way, I go the way of the things until I'm back in control of my life. Some people can't, I've met them, I don't understand why they can't but that's just people-differences, I suppose.
Some people have terminal illnesses, but in the end we are all terminal. I wouldn't like to know how long I have left but if I did, I'd write faster and drink more. One last chance to drop something offensive into the world and then I'd be dead and they can't get me. Then again, being dead, I won't be able to enjoy it. No, on reflection, there are no upsides to being dead. Even pain is an experience, and death is the absence of all experience.
It's sold as 'the end of pain' and it is. It's also the end of everything else. The absolute end of all physical experience, and not something to be embraced at any cost. Certainly not voluntarily.
Others think of it in different terms. Anna Raccoon considers the effect on the family. Oldrightie is disgusted that something so private should be televised. Mummylonglegs wonders why simply dropping the old fogey off a cliff or holding a plastic bag over their heads isn't just the same.
Me, I simply cannot understand what sort of mental state is necessary to even consider killing myself, or letting someone else kill me. I'll die one day, we all will, but I don't worry about it because there is nothing I can do to avoid that day.
What I won't do is book an appointment with it.
And when the day comes, I want to be the one in the floppy hat.
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