Thursday 24 December 2015

CHRISTMAS EVE CAN KILL YOU.


 What can we  say about it all?
 For most, it is but an inevitably disappointing affirmation of their shackling to consumerisme nouvelle totalitarienne, of their families' lives and appetites and futures being determined  by the servants of a handful of wicked, greedy bastards - those who have and continue to steal everything by any means up to and including holocaustal war on civilian populations.  

A Christian at prayer.
Deck the whore with boughs of money
Tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la

Some will, tonight and tomorrow,  sing Gaudete, Christus est natus, as they worship the long-prophesied Christ-child, the virgin birth,  the rescinding of Adam's  original sin and the hope of redemption and resurrection.
  Much smarter people than I believe in this miracle so, unlike the Reverend Dawkins, his own priest, in his own church, I can say but  Amen - let it be so.
For most, however,  in the countries of active or culturally-entrenched Christianity, their even  notional faith is turned upon them,  their purses and wallets;  Christmas, as ever,  will be  a desperate, indebting and frustrating nonsense, sitting in a bath of WTF-ism;  the unnecessary  feast vastly over-rated, ill-digested, troublesome and not worth the fuss and expense, it is not as though we starve throughout the year, or even, as we should, throughout Advent.  Selling a stuff-yourself-til-you-puke feast to an already overweight, fasting-averse population  is a triumph of GodlessHeathenBastard mind-control advertising.

None, though,  no mere wife or common-law hussy,  however fierceley they are scourged, will ever recreate Nigella's simply yummy Xmas Fayre.

A kitchen scrubber
First, send the servants out for several heaped teaspoons of cocaine, I find that Colombian is the best, although, sometimes, anything will do.  If you can't find coke, don't be afraid to use weed, lots and lots of it, marijuana's just simply one of those things you can never have too much of. 
 What?  Yes, in your cooking. 
Although I find I can smoke it, well, all the time,
in one of those clever bong things;  
your dealer will let you have one.

or Tom's

 
 The real pub landlord, a stupid ignorant  fat fuck.

Ooh, arrr, viewers, just you follow them scrumptious recipes of moine'n you'll all be as elfy as worrIyam. What I love is that you can take two kilos of lard, two kilos of butter, two kilos of brown sugar, two kilos of caster sugar and a great big scrumptious two kilos of honey, mix it all togevver wiv some really scrumptious chocolate  and you've got a really helfy Christnmas snack for the liddle 'uns. S'worritsallabout4me,keepin' me family helfy.

or Jamie's perfect, healthy cuisine, 

 

for it doesn't exist, it is a televisual confection, filmed over and over, in September, until it looks right, then lit and orchestrated and arranged and styled, its creators, probably off their faces on coke or booze, tasting but a teaspoonful and pronouncing it simply Ambrosian. 

Without endless supplies of labour, materials and an entire production team, poor Mum's turkey, cooked in a tiny, inefficient, dirty oven will probably taste like shit, turkey does, anyway, no matter what you shove up its sundered arse.  And anybody aping BoyJamie's approach to food-handling will probably have a merry, diarrhoeic New Year, the dirty fucker; Christ, if he'd ever worked in a decent hotel he'd have had his arse kicked all around the range; dirty, dirty, dirty man. Why has his producer never said to him, look, Maestro, kicking  oven doors closed with your street shoes, they could have anything on them, dogshit, sperm, snot, spit, not to mention that they are, anyway, filthy, stinky sweaty trainers, not really shoes at all, just bitsa fucking filth, sold to you by criminals like Nike and you know, Chef, they can be transferred, all those germs on and in your shoes,  by hand, by teatowel or oven glove, and, as for wiping your hands on your trousers, and then sticking your fingers in dish after dish, without washing them in-between, well, y'know, even these bloated little bastard kids that you'er trying to educate,  the ones that're gonna die at forty from exploding livers, gonna be so fucking fat they'll need to be winched in and outa bed, whose teeth are all gonna fall out and there's not enough fucking dentists, anyway, to fix the fat bastards up with false ones, and even if they were the bloated fucking mutants wooden be employable and wooden have no fucking money to pay a fucking dentist even  if there was one, which there won't be, but even them, the bloated, blubbery stupid ones with the tooth decay and the failing kidneys, even  they would know that putting your shitty shoes near their grub, and sticking your bacteria-infested mitts in everything you see  and then in your gob and then over the arse of your trousers is like, y'know, bad shit, man?  
All I wanna do is use my fame to make more money, I mean, save the national diet, yeah, from the supermarkets poisoning everybody. Only not Sainsburys.

I should think that what with his vile spices  and his utterly filthy kitchen habits,  Jamie Oliver is single-handedly responsible for the national epidemic of what we call irritable bowel syndrome, has given any who follow his recipes and his filthiness an incurable case of the shits. And, God bless his greedy little piggy head, he simply can't give up, he has  made maybe a hundred million pounds from his filthy, greasy, finger-licking food  bollocks;  he could afford an education, to relax, travel the world, but being in  salmonella showbusiness he must endlesly renew his dire, greasy, infected  cheeky chappy, currently he is a dietician, gonna make the nation better; 
right, son, first go and wash your fucking hands you cheeky cunt, and invest in a box of latex gloves, like I do.

  The family visits will be a festival of strained madness and simmering rage.  Even here, in ishmaelia, a realm largely without family relationships, Christmas spurs contact. I have just received a fucking Dear Uncle  email from a distant nephew, although all of mine are distant, some of them I've never even seen, nor want to, fuck me, being related to their mother was punishment enough for one lifetime.  I haven't seen her in forty years and being much older than me, I expect her to be dead from drink and fags and depression and I live in fear of a horde of nieces and nephews arriving whom I have never seen, 
expecting me, somehow, to care for them, bequeath them stuff.  It's times like these that I wish I had Rottweilers, instead of Harris.  


I'd love to be able to say to somebody Get off my property, Sir or I'll set the dogs on you.  Harris, however, is not up to controlled savagery.


 Even the fucking television will be an insult, its owners and managers holidaying in the Bahamas, a skeleton staff broadcasting ancient fucking rubbish that the viewers have paid to see several times over, indeed, their parents have paid several times to see it, before they were born, and,  having shopped their fucking fingers off buying plastic and silicon shit for the  little LuvEm2Bits,Me  sugar-maddened, attention-deficit, pornography-saturated, consumer-crazed  lunatic kids


Some, of course,  suffering from Otherness, will be  stumbling ragged by the road, Plenty's one-point-six diesel, with lowest-ever carbon emission, whooshing past, on a mission of goodwill to all men, just not the ragged ones;keen to give unto those who have, avoiding like the plague those who have not.  Some will be bereaved, revisiting,  enduring all their joint yesterdays alone, maybe alone for ever, now, sick, faltering,  GlabaCorp's cruelly  ubiquitous enforced bogus jollity, a relentless, rusty blade, prodding at their heart's wound, twisting.  Many, many are estranged, separated, irreconcilable, alienated, maybe hospitalised, incarcerated, squatting, trying to find a place to kip in our citizen-hostile cities, forever anxious, pulling Life's cheap cracker alone, with both hands.

But, hey, Fuck the Others, no reason to put our Christmas  on hold.  They should just get a life.

And that is  the way of it, such empathy  as we are able to feel for others, such as remains, after govament has trashed the homeless as villainous, lazy and unworthy; the old as selfish and greedy for not surrendering their property to the young;  the sick and infirm as workshy chancers, living off the rest of us, bone idle.  And so we leave it the professional carers  and the cynical,  showy regiments of tin-rattling  care,

The national conscience, sub-contracted.

 maybe bunging them  a few pounds; for to pry, too deeply, into state-sponsored Sorrow, well, we might have to do something about it.

I have no answers and, overwhelmed, as I am sure everyone must be by this yearly atrocity, this remorsless bombardment, this wasteland where footfall in the wretched shopping malls is the index of our national value, the purchase of worthless tat our very own act of deliverance, our  unavoidable disappointment a price worth paying,
I'm sorry to mention it.

Those parts of the pagan MidWinter festival not colonised by Greed, those  unmolested Christian essences of fellowship and neighbourliness, those gifts of Creation - life, light, hope, purpose and art's magic, I wish to all here, with thanks for your goodwill.

We wish you merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

Christmas Evensong Blues
Babe, I'm broke and I got no place to go.

This is from Sorrow's anthology. Not, as Gillian Wlash says, by Doc Watson but originally a gift to us from the angelic Mississippi John Hurt,  a man whose music, much imitated, steeped in slavery and share-cropping, was somehow bathed in delight and mischief. 
I have been listening to Hurt all my life and he always makes me smile.

This arrangement, by Dave Rawlings, for  his magical 1935 parlour guitar  and his partner, Gillian,  is the finest re-working of this song that there could ever be, bluesy, pretty, melancholy and dusted with Heaven's dissonant reminders.

23 comments:

Citizen-Consumer Mr SG said...

A fine Christmas Card Mr I. Fuck knows what the new year will serve up but I am sure you will not be short of material to work with. I note your observations regarding the 'celebrity' supermarket fare, in the meantime you didn't visit a certain hamburger store somewhere, way back when, did you?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-eREiQhBDIk

call me ishmael said...

I cannot get there, mr sg, from blogger-in-excelsis Apple. Is it Richard Thompson's hymn to the Golden Arches?

SG said...

Close Mr I. Actually the breakfast scene in 'Falling Down'. On the odd occasion that I have visited such emporia, the thing I've always noticed is the underlying ambience of soiled nappies. Bon Appetit!

inmate said...

The inmates will be here in force tomorrow, four generations, a fifth on the way; from the family matriarch, 94 years young, to a grumpy teenager, a simple, traditional meal, made a feast by their presence. We will spare a thought for those less fortunate than ourselves as you have mentioned in your post.
Also a prayer for those recently passed, who we can only hope have met their maker on favourable terms.

Many thanks Mr I, for another glorious year of truth where our betters are concerned, may it long continue, personally I can't wait to hear Brenda's apologies for being the worlds greatest parasite.

Wishing you sir, Mrs I and all who frequent Ishmaelia a wonderful Christmas and a healthy New Year. I shall raise a glass of Auchentoshan to you all.

Mike said...

Christmas Day already down here. Just been for a 2 hour walk around the harbour foreshore - its all bush and track, amazing really near a big city. It started off clear blue sky and sun, but now clouding over. My kids are here for lunch, its probably the only day in the year we eat lunch, and I hope we can avoid the traditional Christmas Day falling out. Mr Pug is excited as he can sense food.

Bit of a weird year really; interesting trip around Europe which finally put the lid on ever returning. Not sure what 2016 will bring, as I think we are closer to WW3 than any time since Cuba. That nutcase in Turkey seems determined (or maybe he's being encouraged) to provoke Vlad. Right now I would put my money on Russia; if China gets involved its game over. Europe is so last century.

Anyway, lets hope it doesn't happen, but enough poor bastards will suffer that's for sure.

call me ishmael said...

Thank you, mr inmate, for your regular presence and your kind words and may harmony and humour attend your table.

call me ishmael said...

I think your trip excited some envy, mr mike, among we, less nomadic souls; it was good to read your despatches. I try to be very careful about Harris's food, carefully preparing well-balanced, unprocessed dishes of various meats, loads of root and green vegetables, some herbs, he loves garlic and celery and parsley, and sometimes fish, with rice; I freeze them by the dizen but he eats three a day, so I am often handling foods which I no longer eat, myself; sardines on toast are a favourite snack, as are bread and butter, but not margerine and he is fond of scrambled eggs on toast. I laughed at Mr Pug's watermelon cutting, for my little warm brown friend will eat any fresh fruit known to man, his weight, condition and poos are a transport of delight.

Talk about our national failure quotient, COMA is meeting this very Christmas morn to later talk some tripe about fresh floods in Cumbria, again, poor bastards are being comforted and reassured by Rory Stewart, a man of whom I expected much but who emerges as another fucking camera-conscious windbag. I am no civil engineer but guve me the resources available to government and I'd do a better job than this. That fucking useless prat HamFace strutting the world, talking shite and he can't help keep a handful of his subjects dry.

As you say, we are so last century, handing-out fucking sandbags, when we need massive new drainage systems and barriers.

mongoose said...

And so we are done and ready. God knows what time it is and he being a newborn, that is a clever trick.

It's impolite to meet Christmas on an argument, Mr I, but you wouldn't do better than the EA Flood Defence people because they are pretty good. NW Cumbria is not flooded "again"; it is flooded "still". It is horrible but you don't hear them whining. You do though hear the media making a stick with which to beat somebody.

I do hope that that wee dog is getting some turkey tomorrow even if you ar not. Drive to a neighbour, they'll have kilos of it. Happy Christmas to you all.

SG said...

By the sounds of it, your dog is better fed than the average citizen-consumer here in the remains of Christendom Mr I. I bet he doesn't suffer from IBS either. Meanwhile I see that the Reverend Oil-Welby has been wringing his hands over the fate of Christians in the Middle East. It doesn't seem long ago that his  predecessor was calling for Sharia Law here, in the place the bearded ones call 'UK'. One should be careful what one wishes for it would seem... 

call me ishmael said...

It is indeed infelicitous to argue of a Christmas morn but these are fresh torrents of water, not the same old water, sloshing around, six fresh inches it is confidently asserted by the only news organisations to which I have access, and if it us used to kick Stupidity's arse then that is not unchivalrous but all to the good. That residents have cultivated some Blitz spirit, is porbably, also, a media confection, either that or they have been drinking poisoned water and think its 1940.

There is a good piece by Simon Jenkins in the current Guardian in which he rages at the vast, incomprehensible amounts of arts and infrastructure lavished on London, whilst our libraries close and our regions wither; you should read it, you know I rarely recommend stuff. But if this flooding continuum was in London, trillions would be magicked into existence to keep dry the homes of the tax-avoiding wealth-stealing kleptocracy. |

And if the stuttering EA Flood Defence paraplegics are very good then God fucking help us, what would we do in a war, a proper war, requiring all hands to the pumps, watch some gabshite explaining to us that our demands for results are really quite unreasonable? That we must be patient? I'd sack every last fucking one of them, get somebody in who knows what they're doing, from a proper country, not from here, from Wimpsville,. When the sea levels rise, these dunderheads'll all be atop the Pennines, with projections and estimates while everyone else is swimming below them, living in rowboats. This is the 21st century, there's a wee gabshite spinning around in the space station, waving and we can't prevent our tiwns being flooded. What is the point of anything, when every fortnight you get shit coming out of your washing machine? What is the point? If you were getting your oaken timbers submerged every month, I suspect your patience would suffer an unpredicted, total failure.

As I said, Harris is very well provided for, nutritionally and emotionally, but our neighbours are some way away, and have dogs of their own, so he will be restricted to beef, lamb, chicken, haddock or salmon dinners, followed by grapes or blueberries.

Happy Christmas to you, too, and the little mongeese, although by now they must surely be full-grown snake-munchers.

In a final word on the subject of the Triumph of Incompetence, I refer you to the motto, at the head of these pages.

May your Fenian God be with you at this special time.

call me ishmael said...

It is actually cheaper, and better, that feeding him dogfood, the only cost is my time, something he considers worthless. I do believe that it is cheaper to be well-fed than poorly, if only people knew how to cook, simply, simple, healthy food, its cheap, easy, nutritious and appetising. Oliver and his gang, they are a pollution, I would jail them all, in the national interest.

I will return, I hope, to Justin, having recently watched him EmCee the opening of some Synod event, involving Brenda, Phil, Archbishop John Underopants, of York, the Leader of the Laiety and I don't know what other mediaeval flunkies.

mongoose said...

You are right about the for-dog cooking, Sir, but wrong about the engineering. My timbers have been here about 400 years. Maybe 500. The river doesn't come here - by about ten meters horizontally and maybe 400mm vertically. These are crucial small numbers that somebody understood before the EA was born.

It matters not. Merry Christmas. We will reconvene and argue anew these margins in a few days. St Jezza is going to have his time, I think. I doubt it will help any of us though.

call me ishmael said...

No, we're both right about the dogfood but you're wrong about the engineering. 400 mill, Christ, that's about a fucking cubit, isn't it, an armslength, I have a couple of metres in height and a hundred metres in distance, some of my timbers have been here for three hundred years, the rest for over two and I am fairly sure I'll be under water come fifty years, maybe less. if I was you I'd move to the Cairngorms, be close to the Edinburgh branch, although that, too, will be under water, the Scottish Executive not even being as bright as the EA. Bon apetit. oh, do listen to Rawlings, when you have a moment.

Mike said...

I, personally and with care, look after the dogfood. I select the organic broccoli, green beens, carrot, and steam them to optimum texture. Usually a shop at the local growers market each Sunday lasts a week. He also likes watermelon, apple, pear but not peach. He has venison and free-range organic chicken, and sashimi grade salmon; for his Christmas lunch he had minced lamb. Its a measure of civilisation how we look after our dogs, who in my observation are much more intelligent than humans.

yardarm said...

Thank you and good wishes, Mr Ishmael.

Anonymous said...

Hurrah, wake up and find Mr Ishmael has left a present under my tree.

Mrs Raft

Anonymous said...

Ho Ho Ho, I love Christmas too.
Thank you for todays post Mr Ishmael, had me crying with laughter, a lovely present.
We wish you peace and tranquility in your island fastness.
From a windy and wet Brittany, Happy Christmas.
Mick and Diana.

Billy Gruff said...

Stumbled here after a nice man said "Not here Son, try over there".

The zombie apocalypse party is up & running again, Headless Turkey's abound. Full moon madness swamped in the love of the lard. Merry & white, jingling bowls everywhere. I'm in lock-down, A fusion, Gregg's mere cocktailed with Ian, in my block. Only a week to go! If I appreciated stupidity, I'd prefer it banal.

You made me smile, in our aloneliness. Ta.

call me ishmael said...

Happy Christmas, and thank you, mr mick and ms diana, Brittany must be nice in the winter and good luck, mr gruff, if you mean what I think you mean. And even if you don't.

call me ishmael said...

And to you, mr yardarm, my conmrade in righteous rage.

call me ishmael said...

So good to see you, mrs woman on a raft, on Christmas Day; last time you went to York we had to send search parties. The power of the fertility brush theory has given much amusement, hereabouts. I will mention it, next time I see mr sweep.

Anonymous said...

Season's Greetings. My collie and weimeraner get pelletised dogfood at ten quid for 12 kilos, the company has worked out the veg/protein/vitamin ratio. My dogs have shiny coats and are in great health. Doggies don't need refined food because in the wild they eat carrion, bones, berries, mushrooms etc. They aren't cats or ferrets which need high quality protein. You don't need to put aviation fuel in a lawnmower and a coarse diet suits man's best friend.
-richard

call me ishmael said...

God grant you Boxing joy, mr richard. We have had other blokes who did well on the stuff you mention, Barney even going to Crufts - not, I hasten to add, at my behest, but a daughter's, who later sent him, refugee, to us. I have never been able to tempt a Yorky with pellets, and being very small, fasting has a quick impact on them. Harris will eat most proprietary dog foods but considering what's .shoved into human processed and even unprocessed foods I am happy to prepare his meals and he seems to thrive on them; they are also cheaper by far.

I am always in a quandary about the question of anthropomorphising the dog - the part that says: in the wild he would do this or that so therefore we should treat him thus. For many, however, the dog is a cherished lapdog, utterly domesticated and probably defenceless, alone. That is taking the question one stage further back - isn't making hoisehold pets of them, in the first place, humanising them, a monstrous cruelty?

In my case I am with mr mike, that in recognising the incongruity of the situation, all we can do is be as civilsed and respectful as we can. There is no ethical perfection to be achieved in this contrary situation.

You may recall a song, from the old days, Momma Told Me Not To Come, by a band called Three Dog Night. Only years later did I learn that the name was kderived from an aboriginal expression fir an extremely cold night, when a man sleeping on the ground, would need the shared body heat if not one but three of his dogs. Fuck me, fella, it's a fucking three-dog night, tonight, an' no mistake.