Friday 22 January 2016

A WORD FROM THEIR SPONSORS

AN OLD  CHAR LADY SPEAKS. 

 I find that if I have a blocked nose,

 a sore throat

 if the wretched servants had got me the wrong sort of coke or weed
 
 if I'm feeling a bit low,

or just a bit pissed, 

 well, then , viewers, what I find, in my rich, hectic, sexy and successful life is that there's nothing compares to a nice sweet, muddy cup of Ty-Phoo's HorsePiss Strength  Tea.
Delicious with milk, cream, lemon, sugar, honey or cocaine.

Nothing like a warm brown stream of liquid between one's tits, eh viewers?  
 I do it twelve times a day, you know.
As I always say, money is a metaphor for life, I mean pissing, no, I mean cooking, course I do.
That'll be one million pounds, please.


64 comments:

Alphons said...

She always strikes me as a young woman with a light touch!!!!

SG said...

I think I prefer her when she's pissed...

Anonymous said...

1 Down: Recipe requires anal gel in slow. (7,6.)

v.//

call me ishmael said...

A post-menopausal, coke-crazed, pothead young woman of 58, you mean, m alphons; always the gentlenan of the blog, you are. She similarly fronted ads for Twinings, a while back, the ghastly, porny old tramp, only it was abroad, so it didn't really happen.

call me ishmael said...

Never been able to watch her for more than a few moments, mr sg, gives proper, decent porn actors a bad name. I hate the sight of her. And that other pair of cokehead Tatler bints Trinny'n'Wotsit.

call me ishmael said...

A mind like a sewer rat's vomit, mr verge, Bravo.

Mike said...

An old philosopher once told me "tits sell".

Mike said...

Mr Verge: I know its an anagram, but I'm struggling.

Anonymous said...

Simply her name, Mr Mike - "Nigella Lawson" broken down to its component parts, so to speak.

I thought rats pissed everywhere, Mr Ish - or would that be yer men the mice? Whatever, thank you for the kind words.

v.//

call me ishmael said...

Think nothing of it, mr verge.

Mike said...

Thank you Mr Verge. That's a goodie.

call me ishmael said...

I saw it instantly, mr mike but I used to do crosswords, before I set writing to the newspapers and to blogging - the same, squinty way of looking at things, and of one solved clue revealing a rush of succeeding ones. Other minds work differently - I would be ninety and still unable to link two computer monitors together.

Mike said...

I was on the verge (sic) of writing some software to crack this. Its one of those things that will now stay with me for the rest of my natural. My dad who left school at 14 could do the Times & Telegraph crosswords in minutes (mind you, he was also fluent in Arabic after 6 years in the ME) whereas me, with all my formal education, I usually struggle.

call me ishmael said...

Were you to do that, mr mike, it might raise mr verge's mind from the gutter of le literature transgresif, where it customarily feeds on hallucinatory tales of hanged arab boys' ejaculations, and all the rest of it. ( "all the rest of it" early 21st.century Cameronian obfuscatory, revealing the ignorance/laziness/intoxication/stupidity of the speaker and his presumtion of the same among his listeners, as in, Yeah, lesssbeclear, wogwomen, burkas, hijabs, wogswomen, terrorism and all the rest of it.)

lilith said...

She is to food as Brian Cox is to science or Neil Oliver is to beaches.

Anonymous said...

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I have the sense that Mr Mike may be too civilised to know you're referring to William Burroughs; it's true there's quite a lot of (ahem) death penalty satire in Naked Lunch (conjured in the 50's) but he was still writing decades later and had learned to vary his routines a bit by then. Ishmaelites might like his vicious, bone-dry sense of humour and appreciate his strange vatic accuracy; for one thing, the current shambles in the Levant is like a looking-glass (or anti-matter) Wild Boys scenario. (Best speaking voice of any recent author - youtube will be full of it I imagine.)

verge.//

lilith said...

Not to mention Dan Snow/history, Stephen Fry/smartarsery, Monty Don/gardening. All considered by someone as sexy as hell.

lilith said...

William Burroughs,now your talking. My husband, from a distance in the right light with the right hat is his spitting image. Phwoar.

call me ishmael said...

They are all old favourites here, ms lilith, as are Dr Lucy Lisp and Dr Tubby Ramirez and the corset bint from Kiling Houses. What bugs me especially about Lawson is that she did mediaeval languages at Oxford, comes from privilege and yet chose to slut about in the telly kitchen, pretending to be a cook, or chef, as we are instructed ti call them. Oh, and tried to frame the help.

call me ishmael said...

I think I only read Naked Lunch, Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded, and it is only a style, a genre, which I now recall and while it was interesting, Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn I found wretchedy, despairingly moving. There was a lot of cruelty in art, then, even permeating the pop song, Like A Rolling Stone, for instance, surely the nastiest lyric ever; Lou Reed and the Velvet Undergound, setting emotional violence to three chords. I may have mentioned that in my experience most junkies are utterly insufferable, some, the odd one, like Coleridge, de Quincey and Burroughs being exceptional rather than routine.

Talking of such, mr mike, Lawson's latest image reminded me of Samuel Delaney's MadMan, which we have discussed, the holiness of humiliation.

mongoose said...

Nigella needs to peer into her future as the I-used-to-be-Delia of the remaindered section on Amazon. Notwithstanding which, the Saatchi bastard needs a good kicking. One hopes that Nigella has a brother to deliver it.

Anonymous said...

I hope your husband also has his old-school St Louis manners, Ms Lilith; maybe minus the "women are a biological mistake" tendencies, though?

I probably delivered this lecture already, Mr Ish, but the three you mention are much less rewarding than "Cities of the Red Night." A late work, "Ghost of Chance", deplores some of the earth-crime often mentioned here, and a short story ("The Priest They Called Him"*) in "Exterminator!" has an ending to rival any of the Selby chokers you remember. (Selby has a short story somewhere called "The Coat", which nails that wretched despair just as hard.)
(* Much better in this incarnation than an alternate take called "The Junkie's Christmas.")

Burroughs was an addict to the end, apparently (methadone.) He was an exception to the pain-in-the-ass rule about junkies partly or largely thanks to an indestructible work ethic and the American tradition (where writers are concerned) of admiring volunteers acting as a servant class in later life.

v.//

call me ishmael said...

Monica Lewinsky, too, a big brother, any sized brother, really, I always thought.

Dudya see Chelsea, SpunkyBill's brat, staking her claim to the Black vote, taking a pop at Charlotte Rambling?

Bungalow Bill said...

Mr Mongoose may be thinking of the wrath of Dominic. Perhaps Dom could deliver an especially humiliating mate to a befuddled Saatchi, or tear him off a strip in the Sunday Rupert.

I've never read a word of Mr Burroughs but Mr. Verge makes me want to do so. I thought you were referring to the North African memoirs of Leon Brittan, Mr I.

Anonymous said...

Mr BB - you could do worse than his very first book, Junkie, which a matter-of-fact slice of lowlife (and has, in passing, the best definition of slang I've ever seen.) The 50's follow-up, Queer, which wasn't published until 1985, is not the cornhole fuckfest you might expect but rather a melancholy South American travelogue, with some of the funniest riffs this side of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A good sense of the radical mind behind the mask is to be found in the reviews and essays collected in The Adding Machine (1985 - the first English edition omitted the final piece entitled "Bugger the Queen"; chickenshit publisher.) Cities of the Red Night, which I mentioned above, forms a loose trilogy with The Western Lands and Place of Dead Roads.

v.//


Bungalow Bill said...

Thank you very much, Mr Verge.

mongoose said...

Dominic Lawson. I had blotted him out, I am afraid.

I am also now a bit worried about the Bishop of London. Don't think he is our man either.

call me ishmael said...

Archbishop Beard, you mean, I think he's just gone rogue because he didn"t get the top gig, first Rowan beat him, then Dave's man, Justin Dallas, shoulda been him, head of the Church of King Henry's Cock'n'balls, as we should properly call it and which so brutally treated your forefathers.

It is shameful, though, Dick Chartres, of London, urging us to grow beards, that we might better welcome the Mohammedan - a foretaste, perhaps, of the coming Brianism and his wish to be defender of faith, per se, the thick, addle-pated bastard - perhaps we should stone the adultress, too.

Bungalow Bill said...

Chartres is an arrogant, self-absorbed tit and so it is little wonder that he views beards as the way to take down ISIS. If the Mutilating Perverts of The Prophet ever do enter the gates of Highgrove, there will be that silver lining. Perhaps they might stick his head among his favourite delphiniums, the stupid fuck.

Bungalow Bill said...

Poor construction there, sorry. It's Brian's head I was thinking of among the delphiniums, not the Archbish's. Though a delphinium and bearded Anglican Primate cross (by which I mean hybrid) might be equally delightful.

call me ishmael said...

They seem interchangeable, bankers, the PBC directorate, the cabinet and the prelatry, the latter busily diluting and fragmenting their charge, too cowardly, too fucked-up to revive and defend it, as bad as the noncing monsignors.

Mike said...

Good to see the noncing monsignors re-appear into the discourse, Mr I. But admittedly, there has been much alternative delicacies to feast on recently.

I'm not religious, but to my mind the CofE went off on a tangent, from which it never returned, in the 70s when it went all happy-clappy, setting hymns to acoustic guitar. Surely the great hymns with organ accompaniment and fire and brimstone from the altar was a better way to keep the flock together? If a religion isn't absolute, but can be re-interpreted at a whim, then it has no basis. Instead of wanting to appeal to the heathen headchoppers, surely the vicars should be preaching for a new crusade?

Mike said...

PS: every morning on my way to golf I drive past an Anglican church. Outside is a large blackboard on which the vicar chalks up his daily cliche. Its very hard to believe that such an idiot is in a position to influence the simple minded. More than once I've been tempted to stop and leave a pithy reply.

call me ishmael said...

It just came, one morning, the noncing monsign -ors, I hadn't meant it to exclude the vicars and curates and canons, of whom I have known a couple. One I knew early on, he was young vicar, with a living in urban Coventry, also studying economics with the OU. I met him fifteen years later, in a rich country parish, talking to me about how the Church had to adapt and change, to be meaningful, in the modern world, and now it doesn't mean anything. He had a stuttering choir, and an organist in his fine, Norman Church, but I suspect he'd have been happier with an acoustic guitarist, and a lesbian curate. We used to go to his Christmas Eve service, for the organ, the carold, the building and the idea of worship and for the fact that, it being Christmas, he coukdn't sermonise, really, about the Church's changing mission. Ther will have been hundreds, thousands, like him, grown old in betrayal and incompetence.

I actually thought it was fucked with the coming of the New English Bible, dunno if that pre-dayted Kumbaya and Morning Has Broken, but it was equally heretical and vulgarising.

I suppose the lovely Norman churches can become mosques, once the tide of Islam laps at the villages.

Bungalow Bill said...

And yet, and yet, Mr Mike, there is the wondrous Anglican parson poet, George Herbert, whose poem Love (3) is as close as I can get to the exhilarating truth/lie that we will be welcomed and forgiven. He pierces you to the very heart does the Rev. Herbert, with no flash, though he could have done flash if he'd wanted. Admittedly, he died in 1633 so he's missed the exciting, updated version of Christian truth.

Same sort of thing as the General's last speech in Babette's Feast; the ridiculous, soul-churning idea that we might be excused.

call me ishmael said...

Bewildered, this morning, we were watching an Aussie house reno show, a Queenslander, a shack bungalow, in a suburb, boarded t'n'g inside and out, with a corrugated iron roof, sitting in a quarter acre block, and it was listed. I'd have used it for kindling and built something else on the site. It made about 700,000 Oz dollars; seemed a lot of money for a shack. Esoecially since I saw a lovely, faux sheep shearing station home, huge and light, purpose-built, by a seventy year old for less than three timed that on Oz Grand Designs, last year, is period city housing really so bad there?

Mike said...

Thanks Mr BB. I shall look that up. However, I doubt our modern day scribe will be a match for Rev Herbert - judging by his spelling mistakes.

call me ishmael said...

I see it, mr bungalow bill, that in truly forgiving others we forgive ourselves, a state arrived at of necessity, not merely by observation of the Lord's Prayer. That is why I so despise filth like McKenzie and Brooks and Morgan and Murdoch, who would see bereaved parents squirming on hatred rack, never forgiving, unckeansed, raging, until their last breaths, as did the Moors mothers, as long as their anguish sells more filthy newspapers. I caught a glimpse of Kelvin, Liverpool's own Beast, copping another grand of my money on Question Time, and felt again the hot breath if the Jihad on my cheek. How can a society which respects and rewards Kelvin McKenzie survive?

I will go and look at your ancient poet, feeling, increasingly, like one myself.

Mike said...

Mr I: you want to see whats happening in the housing market in Sydney. The definition of madness.

Aussies class anything older than 50 years a 'heritage'. They look at me all wide-eyed when I tell then my last house was built in 1516.

In Sydney, now, houses are bought for millions and then immediately knocked down to build a more modern monstrosity (1 in 100 may have some architectural merit, to be fair). The value (outrageous) is the land - anything that can see the harbour is premium; the building is changed as you would change the curtains.

There are few places left in the world where the well heeled want to go, and Australia is one of them right now. There is a massive in-flux of Chinese money into Sydney property. In fact, one of my neighbours was a dyed in the wool Aussie; his wife died and he sold to a chink for millions. A young kid who looks about 19 (his parents money). He's quiet and polite - a new Aussie.

In Sydney, there is some period housing (late 1800s) in the inner city areas (eg Paddington, The Rocks); nice terraced houses, but many with corrugated roofs. Yours for many millions.

Some of the old Queenslanders (not in Sydney) are very nice buildings; very solid, traditional wood.

call me ishmael said...

Hmmm. Love 3, I can see why that Kelly Joe Phelps' song sang to you, mr bb.

call me ishmael said...

I suppose that is an understandable approach, considering modern building methods and materials, valuing the view iver the breezeblock and chipboard. That Queenslander was quite pleasant in its way, like a Raj bungalow, but the timbers had been overpainted so much they might have been anything.

It's an odd business, listing, in England, my byre, a bit ancient, maybe 1700s, massive and original, would be listed, here, nobody gives a fuck. I could knock it down tomorrow, and may yet.

Mike said...

If I was 30 years younger, I'd buy a farm in NZ. Become self-sufficient. Beautiful country. GMO free. It will probably be the last white refuge (possibly with Russia).

SG said...

"I suppose the lovely Norman churches can become mosques, once the tide of Islam laps at the villages". That is in my mind too Mr I, as I observe the columns marching up through the Balkans. The fate of Constantinople offers a warning from history and I doubt if any of our Emporers would have the courage to throw off their regalia and fight to the death with the 'common' soldiers' as Constantine Palaiologos did when the walls of what remained of their civilisation were finally breached.

Bungalow Bill said...

The final words of Mr Phelps' song are precisely on point, Mr I, and I revisit them.

Mike said...

Mr SG: I recommend The Great Siege of Malta by Ernle Bradford.

A good historical read about the Knights of Malta who turned back the cream of the Ottoman Empire's forces, thereby stalling the Muslim conquest of Europe - at least for a few hundred years. I visited Malta last year because of this book, and wasn't disappointed.

call me ishmael said...

If there is anything there worth having, mr mike, it will be overrun eventually, unless it can be, as an island state, self/sufficient and able to defend its coastline; billions of chinks billions of muslims.

Not sure what you mean by white refuge, perhaps a place which preserves European, white Greco-Christian art and culture, but there is no such place. Continental Europe, leaving aside Russia, is in the throes of being overrun by Islam, all of it hostile and alien, some of it murderously so, the Anglicans have dismantled themselves, like the tobacco barons, the Roman catholics are rightly in retreat from their European crimes and opening new markets among superstitious, vulnerable people, in India and South America. Here, I think the
Reverse Crusade has already commenced, millions, combatants and non-combatants, colonising Europe's cities, Godlessheathenbastard bleeding hearts urging them on, things now at a point where the only deterrent will be bullets. And shooting the faithful will ignite fraternal nukes.

And it doesn't matter how often we say if, none in power hear the warning that: It's not the economy, stupid.

Mike said...

Mr I: by last white refuge I have in mind what is happening in Syria and elsewhere in the ME and north Africa. If you are a white (christian) you will be rounded up and beheaded.

It sounds alarmist, but just look at the change to England over 100 years, and then project that forward.

I used to play football for the London Hospital (Whitechaple) then go drinking afterwards across the road in the Blind Beggar (of Kray fame). That area is now under sharia law. My life would now be at risk.

call me ishmael said...

His, KJP's, later stuff is interesting; he is singing of redemption through the Lord, not the hectoring, accusatory, Goddamnyou, unholy viciousness of Bob Dylan's Christianity, just a quiet, thoughtful, musically gifted man, singing his own quiet truth. Something about Jonah and the Whale, it's called.

SG said...

Perhaps they were imbued with the spirit of Ptocholeon, the 'Poor Emporer' ('a very plain and poor man'), who is yet to come, Mr Mike - whom, according to Doukas, having taken a sword from an angel of the Lord, would chase the Turks, 'cutting them down as they fled', to a place called Monodendrion on the borders of Persia. I shall look out for Ernie's book.

call me ishmael said...

Just seen something on the news, mr sg, about a British ferry in France having to turn the fucking hoses on migrants. What the fuck is going on? Cheeky fucking bastards.

Mike said...

Time to start turning hot lead on the bastards. These are by definition NOT refugees, since they have managed to transit several safe countries in Europe.

This is an organised invasion. Someone (ie Govament) is funding this. You can't just walk across Europe. Fuck! I traveled across southern Europe last year; it took months of planning, thousands of dollars, and a lot of queuing at customs.

SG said...

Yes I saw that Mr I. Much, much more of this to come I fear. Much as recriminations are of little use now, it is a great pity that Bush and Blair got their hands on the keys to Pandora's Box, the fools - I'd like to give them 'shock' and fucking 'awe'. Maybe they could be sent to Alaska on a wilderness adventure. Give 'em a half hour start then unleash Sarah Palin with a hunting rifle...

call me ishmael said...

I hate those ferries at the best of times but the thought of being aboard or trying to get aboard with young or vulnerable people....what would one say to them? Don't worry, these are nice young men, who are going to come and work hard and lead exemplary lives, and yes, you need to be searched and have documents but they don't.....

I thought the PBC reported this very sotto voce, just an everyday case of fit young men storming a British vessel, move along, now, it's pissing snow down on New-York, New-York.
It's all very strange, the UK having a notional border in a foreign country. Maybe we should lease a secure perimiter area in Calais and elsewhere and enforce it by all means necessary, it would delay travellers but I am delayed and searched going through a local airport in my own country, why does Ahmed think he can smuggle himself in on a lorry? All. vehicles should be stopped and thoroughly searched and if illegal entrants are found they should thrown back into France, who let them in in the first place, and then France can send them back to wherever they like, and so on and so on. Fuck the extra cost to hauliers, think, instead, of the cost to everybody else of even a handful of Jihadis entering or re-entering or of thousands of fit layabouts fetching up in Luton or Bradford or Glasgow. Oh, but they only wanna come and work in the NHS and pay taxes. Aye, right.

Mike said...

Back to the subject of Nigella: its not so much the tits, or the faux cookery, or even the jewish princess - its the fake upper class snobbery that pisses me off.

yardarm said...

Muslim governments, Mr Mike have certainly been behind a lot of this and not just recently. Our beloved allies, the Saudis, fawned on by Top Hat Dave and Brian have been funding mosques and madrassas in the UK for years and are responsible for a lot of this extremist shit. Long before Nonceislamic State, our beloved Pakistani allies were training up British jihadis, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, courtesy of their Interservice Intelligence Agency, a hangover from our backing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80`s. The object was to use them as proxies in Kashmir against India.

All this known and tolerated, if not fucking encouraged by the politicians/diplomats/intel shower in Whitehall. This mob of useless bastards flooding into Greece and Italy is a by product of the Great Islamic Civil War, between Sunni and Shia, now heating up again. We are not the principal target, (you`ll note Nonceislamic State haven`t even blown a stinky fart at Israel ) Muzzies love killing other muzzies and there should lie opportunities for proper statesmen, not fucking rubbish like Merkel, Obama and Top Hat Boy.

We should build up Iran against Saudi. The Saudis were so terrified of Iran that in the 80`s they funded Saddam to the tune of billions. The lorry dodgers should be rounded up, trained as a proxy army and set to fight Nonceislamic State, a shower of brigands, rapists and opportunistic trash. Although years of bombing seem to have done fuck all there. And the Turks need putting in their place, made to leave the Kurds alone for start (another Muslim civil war). Give the Armenians equal billing to the Holocaust.

Some cunning bastards in Ankara dream of reviving the Ottoman Empire, destabilising Europe and extending influence east to the oil and gas fields of central Asia. Maybe Bad Vlad could be induced to avert his dark gaze from the Baltic States to Constantinople; bearded metropolitans could yet rededicate Hagia Sophia to Christianity. Vlad`s a cunt; let`s use his cuntitude. The biggest cunt in the world may end up not some bearded goat raping Emir or some slob riding the Dragon Throne but a Tsar.




tdg said...

How could all debate about human cloning not be immediately and irrevocably settled by the existence of Rampling? The Tristan chord made flesh.

call me ishmael said...

Thanks, mr yararm, I envy your perspective. I don't know if you read Snooty Moore, recently, defining, for his crooked masters at the Filth-O-Graph, the nature and components of Western Civilisation - he called it Christendom buf I suppose he meant Greco-Abrahamic-NewTestament-Capitalism, the very worst parts of which were harnessed by his adored Whisky Maggie. Foolishly, I thought, he just excluded Russia from his assessment, as do so many and whilst we all obediently chorus our loathing of the Plutonium Assasins, as though this was the worst crime ever, we cuddle-up, still, to the unspeakably foul House of Saud.

In the Way of the Sufi it is said that one should not befriend an elephant keeper unless one has room to entertain an elephant, in the case of Saudi Arabia the elephant is not only domestic rape, torture, stoning, flogging and decapitation but the exporting of terror to our streets and maybe, in the near future, the annihilatory statecraft of one of the nuke- or bug-holding 'stans. You are right, self-interest dictates that we change partners, waltz a while with the Bear.

call me ishmael said...

Those wishing to contact their inner Hermann Goering pistolero could do worse than youtubing Steven Fry and the Tristan Chord, there to discover our newly-wed, Wildean polymath sitting at Wagner's very own piano, vamping the very chord to which mr tdg refers, pleased with himself as pleased can be, expounding with some hapless, proper musician on the cultural impacts which have attended the combining of these four notes into a miserable fucking discord. Wagner and I are not entirely estranged but our intercourse extends no further than my sniffling, occasionally, to Herbert von K's Overture to Tannhauser and hearing its echo in all sorts of subsequent, arrangements, notably in Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb. I do not know the myths which Wagner operatised and I don't suppose I ever will, finding the whole form oppressive, forced and vulgar, albeit often containing some heavenly vocal performances.

There is a fascinating DVD of Lenny Bernstein conducting for the first time and recording, in his old age, his own West Side Story with opera stars like Dame Kiwi and Jose Carreras, from whom he simply cannot purge the vulgarity of the opera stage. Frustrated, time after time, by Jose's lack of sympathy for the song, Maria, which he drowns with rolled Rs, vibrato and volume, the session is abandoned, Jose the star, angry at Maestro's indifference to his greatness, Lenny strolling off, within earshot, insouciantly singing the line, with his desired emphasis - Carreras, I'll never stop saying Carreras.

I don't like it, snyway, all that Wagner Gotterdamerung stuff, maybe in another lifetime. I think I understand, though, mr tdg's Rampling metaphor, her assertion that giving black people Oscars just for being black was nothing other than racism deployed against white playactors, but for her to say that was a mighty discord in light entertainment's ongoing symphony to itself. Bravo!

The occasion of her comment is, of course, preposterous and unwholesome, pampered, overpaid, over-indulged freaks giving each other baubles, it's a trailer for Hell.

Funny how useful people don't get Oscars, plumbers, teachers, nurses; if you have icy water, condoms, sanitary toweks and turds flooding down your stairs, it's a plumber you need, not Tom fucking Hanks or Helen Mirren.









Bungalow Bill said...

Yes, the slightly pained forbearance of the pianist, while Sir Stephen frots away, is priceless.

tdg said...

One can clean the soot on the surface of a painting, burnish the excessive patina of a sculpture, but the cultural dirt that clings to music with age may be impossible to remove. So I think it is with Wagner. But the genius of the man will always be astonishing.

Compare,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNajSaGR-0U

with, say,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=envQ-ZqGQu8

SG said...

Wagner? Hmmm! Best played very loud, over a Tannoy, mounted on a helicopter gun ship, swooping in low over the sea towards a village harbouring enemy insurgents... "scares the shit out of the slopes" (Colonel J. Clarkson, et passim).

Doug Shoulders said...

Wagner probably found patronage in our very own royal family before they hurriedly changed their name.

call me ishmael said...

Thankd, mr tdg, I listened to both of those and several hours' worth more, currently The Walkure and I must say that none of it is what one would expect to hear whistled down the street by Eternity's milkman. Smarter and wiser people than I appreciate Wagner - and Mahler - many attest to his astonishing genius but these works do little for me. I have tried them before, maybe in another lifetime.

I see how their sweep may carry away others in their sstringy and woody tides and I care nothing about their Nazi application but even if I stop LISTENING to his works, instead immersing myself, as I did with that Sibelius piece, Wagner will never, barring a deathbed conversion, be my John the Baptist. I find so much of it a Tristan Chord; my bad, my shortcomimg, I looked, bewildered and irrtated, at the van Goghs in a Rheichsmuseum exhibition, similarly unmoved.

I have just, this weekend, received a shipment of Black Bison; and while I normally work in sepulchral quiet, I may try polishing something wooden to a deep, dark and fragrant lustre, while Wagner plays.

call me ishmael said...

I think they are probably too stupid, mr doug, for that, the Ruritanians, having grafted a Woman's Own, chintzy, how-DO-you-do sensibility onto a Prussian pig ignorance.