The Sunday Ishmael: 15/06/2025

 "Let's ask the cook what he thinks."

"Well, Laura, thank you for having me and I think that we shouldn't forget the people of Gaza. And we should ask the people of Israel what they think about Netanyahu."

In what alternative universe do I give two flying fucks what the frigging cook thinks? But, believe it or not, there he was on the Kuenssberg Politics Show this morning, right up there with half-way serious people, giving us the benefit of his studied reflections on the Middle East situation. Specifically, Israel having done the civilised world - indeed the world - a massive favour by taking out Iran's nuclear capability. Dear God, I sincerely hope they have taken out Iran's nuclear capability. And so cleverly and courageously, hand in glove with President Trump, backing up his ultimatum that Iran had 60 days to agree to a new deal on nuclear development and military activity. And in Israel went on Day 61, Iran, of course having never had the slightest intention of agreeing to anything. As Trump said, laconically, "they should have done a deal".

I can see why the BBC might have thought that the cook could make a useful contribution to the discussion. Laura introduced him as a green activist, and you'd think someone who self-publicises as caring about the environment could have some pithy things to say about the impact of a nuclear winter. Like you wouldn't be able to do a ten-bird roast on account of there won't be ten birds left not already charred into a smoking heap. But no, he needed to swing his pro-Hamas credentials at the viewers. Couldn't be shifted to consider the possibilities inherent in Iran tooling itself up with nukes, despite the BBC giving a platform to a cold-eyed spokesman for the Iranian regime, who told us that if Britain involves itself then it becomes a target. So, time for a short sharp extract from mr. ishmael's:

HOW TO KILL AND EAT A TV COOK.

They're everywhere, useless fucking bastards, cooks,  in the bookshops and all over the telly. Used to be cops, doctors, lawyers, cowboys and Panorama, now it's fucking cooks, although they call themselves chefs, even if, not counting  soufflé and sauté, none of them can speak a word of French, apart from the French fuckers.  Why don't those fucking Roux brother bastards stay in France,  if they're so good at la belle cuisine.  Frog wankers. Probably wouldn't get a job washing the pots in a French transport café but pop over here on Eurostar  and people're falling all over themselves to pay hundreds of pounds for their fucking rubbish,  Ees zee apple pie, 'ow my Mama used to make eet, Ah, I can steel smell zee apples and zee cinnamon, eet ees tres deliceueueueueuese, zat weel be twenty five pounds, s'il vous plait, you Anglaise pig, Non, ees not for zee 'ole pie, ees for zis tiny leedle portion. Time  to kill the gobby fag bastards, and eat them. Frog, English, Spic, Wop, Dago or Chink, take your pick. What sort of a job is it, for a bloke, fucking about with egg whites? Country's hurtling down the toilet and you can't turn on the telly without some fucking mouthy  cook with an Equity card, larging it, with fucking  fresh chilies, is it chilies or chilis, I don't know, not the sort of thing a decent Briton should know. 

 For a special treat, catch your Hugh Fearnly-Wanker - if you just stand there with a camera, he'll march up to you and start trying to make you feel guilty or stupid or both, for not being a pretend farmer and pretend restaurateur, like he isn't, at least not without a C4 production crew of scores - seedsmen,  food technicians, gardeners, labourers, drivers, all perpetuating this myth that clever, resourceful, industrious and ethical  Hugh does all this, just him and his  ghastly family and his pretend neighbours, the horrible fucking bastard.

and tie him by his lank, greasy hair, the dirty fucking bastard,  to a centrifuge, spin at 5,000 rpm for three hours, until he's dead.  If you want to hit him with a big stick as he spins around, that's all very well and will help tenderise the meat. When he's dead, chop off his arms and legs and head and throw in the stockpot, this makes a really good mediaeval stock, if you add enough OXO cubes and monosodium glutamate, put all his guts and organs in the bin for the dogs, and leave him to marinade in a mixture of  fennel and beetroot  and freshly picked privet leaves and store in a fridge until required.

When it's time to cook, roast in a hot oven until the juices run clear, or it's all burnt to fuck, like Jamie does.

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Right, that's out of my system, so back to politics. None of the politicians doing the rounds this morning on the various politics shows would be drawn on where the fighter jets that Britain has deployed to the Middle East are actually going, what they will be used for, and on whose side they will be fighting. Rachel Reeves said they were there as a "precautionary measure". You can bet the house, though, that they are not there to defend Tehran. Mel Stride, Shadow Chancellor, said he supported the Israeli action against Iran as the intelligence showed that Iran was close to a viable nuclear weapon. Well, duh, that's why America was negotiating with Iran. Reeves said the UK government is "very concerned" about Iran building nuclear weapons. Good to know. Both Reeves and Stride and everyone else urged "the need for de-escalation in the region." I wonder how they are going to do that? 

In amongst the careful diplomatic language, it is pretty clear that Israel's initiative has caused approval and relief. No-one in Britain, especially in the Labour administration, is saying thanks, however,  because, I suspect, of this:

These chaps are Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan and Iranian President Dr Masoud Pezeshkian. According to PTV News, Shehbaz Sharif got straight on the phone to Pezeshkian to assure him that Pakistan stands in complete solidarity with the “brotherly people of Iran against Israel’s unprovoked and unjustified aggression”. He condemned Israel's "provocations and adventurism," calling them a serious threat to regional and global peace and stability.  As reported on Radio Pakistan,  Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Saturday that Pakistan will “safeguard Iran’s interests”. 

Condemning the Israeli attack on Pakistan’s “neighbour and fraternal country” during a session of parliament, the defence minister urged that a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation be convened to launch an initiative that “manifests the unity of [the] Muslim Ummah. He said: “Pakistan stands firm on its traditional stance, as it has neither recognised Israel nor established relations with it. “Pakistan will safeguard Iran’s interests at all international fora, including the United Nations.”

So what has that got to do with Sir Steer Calmer, mrs ishmael? Oh, come on. The man is in hock to the Muslim vote. He is terrified of losing his Muslim support. He is terrified of civil unrest and another hot summer of rioting on the streets of Britain's cities. He's only just given in and agreed a national inquiry into the euphemistically-named "grooming gangs". And which Muslims is our Prime Minister so concerned not to offend? Muslims of Pakistani origin. 

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For how long will the Labour Government continue to tell the nation that they inherited a "financial blackhole" of £22 billion? It is already old. Rachel Reeves took it out for a walk again this week with her Spending Review. Here's a plan to plug it.

The San José galleon was carrying an estimated £16 billion in treasure on its homeward journey to Spain to finance a war against Britain when it was sunk just outside the Columbian city of Cartagena by the British Royal Navy in 1708 (yeay us). 600 crew members went down with the ship (okay, maybe not yeay, us).

 Colombia announced the discovery of the wreckage in 2015 and is setting about conducting an inventory of the contents "to inform academic studies" the Columbian Institute of Anthropology and History said. The project will use remote sensors to generate images of the site and underwater robots to take readings. But the thing is, it isn't theirs. Just because it went down in Columbian waters doesn't make it theirs. Does it? Spain says it's theirs - which it most certainly was and wants the Columbians to keep their hands off, as does the U.S. Salvage company, Sea Search Armada, whose predecessor organisation found the wreck. That case is still going through the courts - Sea Search-Armada, LLC v. Republic of Colombia, PCA Case No. 2023-37.

But hey - really, its ours. The Royal Navy defeated it, and had it not sunk, it would have been sailed back to Britain, as a prize of war, relieved of its treasure which would have funded the war against Spain, would have been renamed and brought into service in the Royal Navy.

There you go, Rachel. Get on the phone to some adventurous lawyers and start plugging that black hole. 

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Talking of adventurous lawyers, 

Yes, I know he looks like Dracula

Aamer Anwar, the amazing Glaswegian lawyer who took on the case on a pro bono basis of Sheku Bayoh, killed by the police, has now interested himself in the appeal of Michael Ross. Convicted of murdering a waiter in an Indian restaurant, in Kirkwall, Orkney, Ross, then a child of 15, donned a balaclava, equipped himself with a gun and ammunition supposedly from his father's stash, but never recovered, entered the restaurant in full view of diners, shot the waiter with deadly and fatal accuracy, then left. He was not apprehended until 14 years later, by which time he had become a decorated soldier in the British Army, married and fathered two children. He and his family have maintained his innocence. As we know, it does you no good when serving a life sentence to say you didn't do it, because that means you cannot address your offending behaviour and reduce the risk of committing further offences. You end up serving your whole sentence. There's a new Prime documentary The Orkney Assassin which has interviews with the families of Ross and his victim, Shamsuddin Mahood. Worth having a look - the whole thing is very odd, not least the fact that Ross' father, Eddie, a serving police officer at the time, deeply involved in the investigation of the murder, was convicted of Perverting the Course of Justice and sentenced to four years, of which he served two. See what you think.

If Department Q and The Outrun haven't put you off island life, The Orkney Assassin certainly will.

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There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of Stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

Some More Incredibly Old Buggers Die

 As I'm edging inexorably onwards to becoming an incredibly old bastard myself, I think we should speak out against this conspiracy which seems to be offing people when they reach a certain age. I mean, what's going on? Is it part of the generational war which sees the young coming for our incomes, houses, free prescriptions, bus passes and comfortable footwear?

Here's mr ishmael, on Brian Wilson, the latest dead bastard.

Brian Wilson  June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025

It's said that Ludwig van Beethoven, mad and deaf, had to be turned around to see the applause of the audience at the first performance of his Ninth Symphony; it is a poignant example of Art really being created for its own sake, written over decades, never to be heard by its composer; if you cried, you know you'd fill a lake with tears.

Biographies have revealed that he was stone mad, as well as stone deaf, how could he not be? His diaries read, Monday: engaged housekeeper, Monday afternoon, dismissed housekeeper; Tuesday morning: engaged housekeeper, Tuesday morning, dismissed housekeeper, just couldn't get the staff, those days - I know how he felt, it has been a long time since I have been even content with the efforts of anyone I have engaged to do anything for me, and if I ever was, it was only because I was stupider then than I am now.

Outside his muses, Beethoven's relationships were shit, nobody really knows who Elise was and his closest known relationship was up and down, one-sided, with his nephew, he infuriated friends and patrons alike and sank, eventually, into tragic, lonely deafness. Doesn't matter a fuck, at least not to us -  sonatas, quartets, concerti, symphonies, opera, among the greatest ever to be pulled from whoknowswhere and written down, sometimes sixteen lines at a time, for the rest of us to hear, to weep and wonder at, the quality of genius, troubled, ailing, non-conformity bursting out of the shadows, outshining wretched normalcy, provoking, captivating and enchanting the Earthbound.

I listen to the Beach Boys now and again, normally in the Summer - Little Deuce Coupe, I Get Around, Barbara Ann, Help Me Rhonda; Fun, Fun, Fun and on into the sublime God Only Knows, Good Vibrations, Heroes and Villains; perfect pop songs, albeit snippets of white, verging on redneck, Americana; Chuck Berry, sanitised in four-part harmony, carsangirls, loveanmarriage, California girls and beach parties, all summer long......Before he became too much for himself and disappeared into bed, sandpits, drugs and therapy, Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' composer, arranger, and producer, pissed all over everybody, including the Beatles, crafting his pet sounds into  popular songs and albums rated as among the best ever. Ever.

Jools Holland, however, is rubbish. He suits the BBC, though, what with his clunking, faux Edwardianism, his midget suits with too many buttons and pockets and his arse-clenchingly embarrassing interviewing style, ladeezangennulmen; he wasn't even the main man of his original band, Squeeze, a no-account bunch of Cockney wankers, still, sans Jools, performing their handful of miserable chart-toppers, in tiny concerts, unplugged, at any opportunity. Christ allfuckingmighty, bad enough we endlessly revisit the 'sixties - although there were hugely important societal changes in that overfluffed celebrity decade - the 'Seventies and 'Seventies' ensembles don't bear thinking about.  Squeeze and Jools Holland, who the fuck are they?

I don't know many people but I must have known a good half-dozen who could play better barrelhouse piano than Holland - and as for his R and B Orchestra, well, you wouldn't go and see them if they were playing in your back garden. Jools sings, but he shouldn't, he has no voice. He's like a Bruce Forsyth-lite, for our times, doing duets with the proper stars, only he can't sing or dance, like Brucie does. Rock icon, Carol Vorderman, was on the show, tonight, often it's the bints from AbsFabs, R and B legends like Krishnan Guru Murty, off Channel Four News, a charmed circle of Celebrity shits, drinking our money and cheering any old rubbish, as though any of them gave a fuck about music. Time it was scrapped and Joolsie sent off to his wardrobe studies, producer Mark Cooper sent to work on the Archers. There have been seriously important artists on the show, for sure, - although Seasick Steve isn't one of them - but Holland is an intolerable, smirking, over-promoted prick and the format - of us watching liggers, media whores and Z-list celebrity cocksuckers cheering to order - makes tabloid the occasionally excellent. Who says that this little tosser must be the vehicle through which popular music is presented, this isn't intelligent music broadcasting, this is Goddamned fucking Hobbitry.

Brian Wilson was on the Jools show tonight and he shouldn't have been. Fronting his own Beach Boys tribute band, a slew of session men, singing all the parts and playing most of them, Wilson perched on a stool, gutty and goitred, playing nothing, barely singing, waving his arms like a loony at the mental hospital long-term residents' Christmas Party, making wavey gestures with his fingers, in time to Good-good-goo-ood-Vibrations, an offence against Man and God. Lord, how the studio crowd loved it.

It doesn't matter, much, that Bob Dylan grunts and wheezes his way through his own repertoire; instrumental flawlessness, sophisticated arrangements and heavenly harmonies were never his stock-in-trade, on the contrary, swift Chaos, unrehearsed, wrought his ensemble meisterwerks, often first takes, recorded live and people, maybe too young to know any better, still visit his dreary concerts, it doesn't matter, man's a legend, people have bootlegs of his kettle boiling, his dog barking. In concert, Paul McCartney plays Beatles' songs much better than did the Beatles, and generally that's saying something. The Rolling Stones do what they've always done, play a load of old dross, illuminated by selections from their two or three exceptional albums, nobody overvalues the Stones, just as long as they get to hear Keef Richards riffing in open-G, like he was a bluesman, or something.

But Brian Wilson, tonight, (14/05/2011) a madman in an empty room full of heartless strangers; a third-rate, jive-talking emcee, who believes that his being there, gobbing, dignifies the unforgiveable, is all; and one of the very few musical  classics of our times is trashed by its composer. 

Watch it and weep.

mrs. ishmael - Unfortunately, you can't watch it, as it has been removed from Youtube. You can get the flavour of the horridness in this clip, a year later, instead, in which Brian Wilson is slightly more animated:

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And here we go with the second dead bastard. Here's mr ishmael's piece on Frederick Forsyth. It is extracted from The Book of Common Pulp, genius stuff, but too long to reproduce here. 

No, Forsyth's not the one wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I thought initially - well, it is an understandable mistake - both their surnames began with an eff.) No, this eff wrote Day of the Jackal, Dogs of War, The Odessa File, fourteen other books, a memoir (that's like an autobiography, but not chronological and with frilly bits as far as I can make out) and a load of short stories.  None of which I have read, because they are all bloke's books. 

Frederick Forsyth 25 August 1938 – 9 June 2025

In his Berkshire manor house, bristling with state-of security and anti-surv measures, he had just completed his briefing of the PM and  his Joint  Chiefs of Staff; a body of men known, by those cruising  along Horse Guards Parade, as the JERCOFS.

His manservant, a former US Navy Seal captain, his housekeeper, a former lieutenant-colonel in Mossad, the  elite, shadowy Israeli counter-terror regiment and his driver, a former sergeant-major in  the SAS, had withdrawn for the night and he was alone, sipping frugally on his rare, sixty-year old single malt, the last existing case of which had been a gift from a senior royal, grateful for his assistance in thwarting a potential scandal which might have rocked the nation of Greater Ruritania, brought it to its knees.

 It had been a long day, he had briefed MI6, the CIA,  the French Surete, the White House, Downing Street, Bonn, Paris, Tel Aviv,  Karachi and the Daily Express; the free world was safe for an hour or two. In his time he had saved the life of the French president, destroyed a post-war Nazi network, defeated the KGB and killed several highly-skilled international conspirators against the West.  Time now, he reflected, for prayer. Kneeling on his prayer mat - a finely woven facsimile of Sir Charles Moore's Daily Filthograph obituary of her -  he gazed at her serene, resolute, blue-suited image and began his five-times-daily prayers to Margaret Thatcher. 

Now in his nineties, the greatest espionage commander in history showed no signs of slowing down, she wouldn't have,
 why should he? 

Let them come, wielding rusty Czech Kalashnikovs;
 let them come, with their kitchen table chemistry-set bombs, 
let them come, holding hands, like the degenerates they were, wailing that their God was good.

Even in his nineties, Frederick Forsyth was ready for them. And his God was better.

Five hours away, in Maryland, in his wooded estate, ringed with  state-of security, a solid, rangy Irish-American sat at his Colonial oaken desk briefing President Obama, wondering what the Last Great American President, LA Ronnie,  would have thought of it all, a neegra boy, - alright, he may be a decent, white supremacist at heart but a neegra boy's always a neegra boy - sitting in the Oval Office, playing President. 

He had turned, made defector, a wife-beating  Russian-Scottish submarine commander, 

who sailed his top-secret, state-of vessel right into Boston Naval Dockyard; when 9/11 made Irish terrorism - the best kind - uncool, he had single-handedly defeated the IRA militarily, paving the way for his fellow-Republican, Tony Blair's, famous Peace and Get Out Of Jail Process and after that he had masterminded the foiling of large numbers of nigger-muslim-bastard terror plots, any of which could have DestroyedCivilisationAsWhiteFolksKnowItShouldBe. Without him, successive Nine-Elevens would have swept the nation like a Kansas tornado. Senators and Congressmen, Kings and Sheiks, Princes and Prime Ministers, Security Chiefs, Field Marshals and Generals, all of them were on speed-dial in  his solid platinum LimitedEdition WogSmash iPhone.

A grateful Defence department had ringed the space above his sprawling estate with the latest MusWaster satellite-directed drones. Any Muslim, be he snooper or assassin, even a kebab delivery boy, seen approaching his  boundaries would be instantly taken-out, turned to ashes,  not even his prayer beads would survive.

In recognition of his service in saving the world several times over, making it safe for his company to develop the Chinese child slavery arm of his enterprise,  Apple's chief executive, the almost mythical inventor and ontraprenewer, Steve Skinflint,  had  designed a one-off,  world-saving-novel word-processing programme.  And his was the only copy.  The ruddy Irish-American, sitting pensive, in his  baseball cap, had only to click on the icons for ex-Navy Seals, Mossad, ex-SAS, KGB, Karachi, Tel Aviv, Moscow, London, Washington,  Sniper's Rifle and Stealth Bomber, in any order or combination and a three-hundred page novel would be wireless-printed in the office of his publisher, and then in the office of  the agent of Hollywood megastar, Harrison Wood, 

who acted in the films of the books.  The programme, known as BigBogPulp has already, several times over, flooded the world's airport bookstores with millions of copies of BigBogPulp stories, sometimes at three for the price of two, most of which had been turned into BigBogBlockbuster films. Alright, he'd had to deal with Jews, in Hollywood, and fags, too, but better them than the Ayatollah-lovin' sonsabitches in the TeeVee networks.
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In Summer 2015, for a medical treatment, I went, four days a week, to Aberdeen, determined to do some proper reading, worthy books, some on my shelves for years, others recommended to me, here. John Julius Norwich's Venice, for instance, some Lapham's Quarterlys, Paradise Lost, The Man In The High Castle  - but being away from home, in a hotel-cum-hostel among strangers, savage wee groups of terrified and bitter Shetlanders, skulking together against the Big City, I couldn't find the right frame of mind.  
I wound-up reading shite.  Thrillers.  Hotel and hospital shelves are filled with them. I never knew there were so many, nor that everything ever written by these innumerable assemblers of cliches proved,  without even having been read,  an outstanding, blockbusting, international, number one bestseller, half a billion copies sold in hardback, translated into four thousand languages - often, even before they were published - never knew that as far as Tom Clancy was concerned, Clive Cussler was the master, the man he read; that as far as Clive Cussler was concerned Tom Clancy was the master, the man he read  and so on, in a disturbing daisy chain of fulsome praise, one hack for another; yes, like Martin Amis-Teeth and Salman Rushdie-Fuck used to do. About their prize-winning tripe.

I had last read these things a lifetime ago, the spy and military thrillers, when Quiller's and Bond's and Harry Palmer's enemies had been the Reds, the Soviet Union, when the action went down in Berlin and Washington, not Kabul and Baghdad - WASPs, grammar school boys and above,  fighting Slavs, the Christian Capitalist fighting the Heathen Communist from inside a Ford Zephyr or a Zil or a smokey Trabant, with a laconic, self-deprecatory flippancy. How the thriller fiction world has changed.

In  Aberdeen, I got right into them, frenziedly reading three and four at a time, into the wee, small hours. I durst  not leave my room,  you see, so anxious and paranoid were my fellow guests about my presence among them, it reminded me of a Sunday School holiday on Anglesey, when my visit to the local shop brought utter,  chilly silence to gossipy wives, mothers, presumably, shocked and irritated by the appearance of an alien ten-year old.  It was just the same atmosphere in this Aberdeen  situation, but this time I was a big grown-up, with a glance that could strip paint. They were a parody, this gang, like something from Whisky Galore. Archie, from Lerwick, and his wee wife, Morag, accompanying him, week after week to make sure that her man, who, at sixty, couldnae cook,  got his six beefy sausage sandwich snack and his Jaffa Cakes, him down from the North for bowel cancer treatment, she force-feeding him red meat and sugar, watching protectively, leaving only to make him mugs of sweet tea, those two and endless other of their fellow islanders, scowling and fucking muttering, as though they had washed up in Hell, among foreign devils, like me.  

There was a residents' lounge, which they colonised in bitter silence, wherein they took it in turns, standing around a central table, to do a jigsaw, grunting happily as another piece was fitted into something like Noddy's Christmas Party or A Big Boat On The Sea - baby stuff, but they took it in paired turns, Norman and Ettie,  Susan and Lawrence, Mhari and Donald,  guarding it from non-Shetlanders, like treasure.

I was tempted to tell them that this facility in which they slept and gorged on animal fat, that  this, their accommodation, their transport over hundreds of miles, their health care, all fabulously expensive, were paid for by the mainland savages whom they despised,  that their islandness was only possible through the as yet unchallenged sentiment of the wider nation which supported them but there is no point in casting pearls before swine,  for they believe that tomorrow they could  return to  living off seabird eggs,  their lives lit and warmed  by lantern, selling jumpers for a living, even though, fat, lazy, stupid and drunken babies,  they would starve in a month.

 I found them difficult and graceless people, anyway, the Shetlanders, best left where they are, imagining themselves bold Viking. A Viking, myself, I consider them welcome to it, their rocky redoubt. They did drive me, however, to a fiendish amount of reading, cloistered-away from their repulsive, pampered infantilism. And I did discover a whole world with which I was only vaguely acquainted, and for that I am grateful. 

Read your book and lose yourself

In another's thoughts
He might tell you 'bout what is
Or even 'bout what is not

And if he's kind and gentle too
And he loves the world a lot
His twilight words may melt the slush
Of what you have been taught.

(Mike Heron, 1966.)

Wither, then, the popular, mainstream thriller, the pulp fiction?

There is, actually, only one Book of Common Pulp. 
 It comes as the illuminated Lindisfarne Gospel and  the Book of Kells; as the Compleat Works of Shakespeare and  the gilded, leather-bound King James Bible;  the dog-eared Penguin Lady Chatterley's Lover and the intangible, Kindle-ised Fifty Shades of Grey, and it comes, lonely, lewd and lustful, written on the cyber toilet-wall.  
We tell each other the same story, over and over and over again, of war and peace, of life and death, love and hate, feast and famine, vice and virtue, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and the lifting-up of our eyes unto the hills.
There is a however, however.  

Never mind the plagiaristic re-hashings of whore-writers, we need not re-publish Ovid, as though we had made him up; let us leave the Book of Common Pulp on the shelf and let us build a new library.   Much as there is in the Book of Common Pulp there needs must be more; 
 if we would  trip Ruin in his stride we must write our own stories. 
Thank you for reading mine.

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The Sunday Ishmael: 08/06/2025

 You know how distressing it is, right? when you are working some fine embroidery on white linen and whoops, the needle slips into your finger and hits a minor blood vessel. There's a blood spot in the middle of the work, you can't use chemicals on it and you can't throw it in the washing machine. No? Not happened to you? Well, how about you're shaving, nick yourself and a spot lands on your crisply white work shirt. Ok, talking the same language here.

Happened to me this morning - stabbed myself with a pin and you wouldn't believe the blood that ended up on the Tuscan hills I was appliquéing. The Tuscan hills are well-soaked in blood, what with all the Medici wars on the city states and the wild boar shooting. 

A Tuscan family. That's a shotgun the girl on the right is toting.
 

But I was doing pretty, not real, hills.

We textile artists have the remedy to hand, however, and now, so have you next time you are doing whatever and have to deal with a small quantity of blood. Spit on it. Not great lung-rattling phlegmy expectorations from the crusty bottom of your lungs. Just mouth spit - lots. Then rub it with the corner of your hankie - remember hankies? Or any bit of natural fibre fabric you have to hand - and hey presto - blood all gone. It is truly amazing. It fades away before your very eyes. If you don't like spitting, then put your hankie corner in your mouth, thoroughly wet it, then rub away. It has to be your spit on your blood, though - you can't get your wife to spit on it. The enzymes in your spit will digest away your blood. 

You're welcome.

John Swinney is making heavy work of spinning the Hamilton by-election defeat into a victory for the SNP, but, by God, the boy's having a good go at it. We'll have to try him out with spinning straw into gold. For our overseas readers and those who haven't been paying much attention to Scottish politics, and, as usual, who can blame you, John Swine is the SNP First Minister of Scotland, Scotland having a devolved administration that it likes to call a government, the Scottish National Party having been in charge since 2007, on the pretend platform of wanting independence for Scotland.

You wouldn't believe he's only 61 - it's a hard and disappointing life in the SNP. John nobly stepped forward to take over the helm of the SNP after the glorious leader - Nicola Sturgeon - resigned from the job when she and her husband were arrested on charges of fraud.(Camper van, missing £600,000, forensic tent in the front garden). You couldn't make it up. Business as usual, though, on with the show, until last Thursday when the voters of Hamilton, Larkhall and  Stonehouse defeated Swiney's expectations by returning Labour to the seat. The by-election was triggered by the death of the incumbent, Christina McKelvie, who had held the seat for the SNP in the 2021 Holyrood election with a majority of 4,582. Since then, of course, scandal and disgrace have been best pals with the SNP, providing the most amusing politics this century. Swiney really didn't see it coming - he thought that the threat was Reform, not Labour. Before the election, he said that it would be a two-horse race between his party and Reform UK, a party he described as racist. What's he saying now? “We must recognise I came into office a year ago with an inheritance of difficulties for the SNP and we are in the process of recovery - we have not recovered, we are recovering....What I said transpired - the Labour vote collapsed. A year ago [in the general election] Labour commanded 50 per cent in this constituency and on Thursday that fell to just over 30 per cent.” Way to go, John, spin away - Labour still won the seat, maybe because Reform split the SNP vote, but Labour won. Maybe there's hope yet for Scotland escaping the heel of the SNP. He's decided that the voters were not racist, nor gullible, but angry - with the SNP? No, of course not, he reckons the issues were the cost of living and the NHS, and he's now going to sort them out. Get a move on with that, John, there's a Holyrood election just around the corner. 

Meanwhile, in England, the well-connected Sir Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt, better known as Jeremy Cunt, has written a book. (Well, of course he has. Don't you dare buy it - it will only encourage him.) The once, but not future, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Health Secretary (so multi-talented) has appeared on the Laura Kuenssberg show, promoting it.

Here's Amazon's blurb:

Hunt observes how Britain has continued to exert global influence despite losing its empire and economic dominance. Where does our influence lie - in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights? Or climate change, promoting global health security and dealing with the excesses of the internet? He argues we have acquired authority on the global stage that is about much more than history and informs a positive vision of the future. He writes with passion and clarity, interweaving stories about his time in Government with questions he can now ask publicly about our attitude to China, Tech, Security, Climate Change and all aspects of our global role.

Now it's that sort of thinking that has landed us in this mess. The only sensible thing to do, if you are an unfortunate citizen of the U.K,  is to find a quiet corner - of England, preferably, and keep your head down. None of this passion and clarity, Jeremy, old bean - that has led us to being Putin's Enemy No. 1. As for those questions about China - well, he could try asking the wife - Hunt's wife, Lucia Guo, comes from China. They met in 2008, when she was working at Warwick University recruiting Chinese students. She presented a segment on Sky's China Hour, a show co-produced by state-owned broadcaster China International Television Corporation.
They married the following year and have a son and two daughters.

Back to the wild boar - you've not forgotten them?

They revere them in Tuscany - put up statues to them. The form their worship also takes is shooting and eating them. I had wild boar ragu - which was rather good - but that was probably the garlic and red wine, which makes everything better - although, thinking about it, probably not fish fingers. Now, down in the Forest of Dean, which is proper ooh arr country, the wild boar seem to have the same status as cows in India.  Wild Boar became extinct around 300 years ago in the UK, but re-established themselves in the Forest of Dean after escaping from a wild boar farm in the area during the 1990’s. In 2004 around 60 farm-reared wild boar were dumped in an illegal release near the village of Staunton on the western edge of the Forest and   the two populations merged. My Forest of Dean ooh-arr acquaintance tells me that there are almost a thousand of them now, living in the Forest and predating upon the villages. They stroll down the village streets, upending dustbins and sorting through the contents for snacks. They are very big and very clever, can open garden gates with their noses, holding open the gate for their relatives to pile into the garden and eat all the nice greenery. If you leave your bi-fold doors open they will stroll into your kitchen/diner. The wolves released in the Scottish Highlands haven't done near as well, but give them time.

Give me strength - there was a reason that wild boar and wolves were hunted to extinction, a reason that probably remains valid today. I wouldn't want to come home to find a wild boar in my kitchen. The day the cows came in was bad enough. They jumped over the wall, having kicked it down first, and rampaged round the garden, made their way into the delectable kitchen garden and helped themselves. They reckoned without me and Harris running round like lunatics, shouting at them until they galloped back the way they came, leaving destruction, deep, deep hoof prints and cow pats behind.

Oh yes - Orkney. It is buttercup time now.

And iris time

And Boat Time:

Talking of boats, do watch the BBC offering: Dept. Q. It features our very own Pentolina pretending to be a car ferry between the Scottish Mainland and some fictional island and a plot line that resolves into it were the island nutters wot done it. It will cure you of any island longings you may be secretly harbouring.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of Stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

The Sunday Ishmael: 01/06/2025

 

Showing the perfidious Scot a little bit of muscle this morning, John Healey, Defence Secretary of Great Britain, informed the Scottish politics programme that the Scottish National Party's "government" sounded a lot like student union politics. D'you know, I've often thought that myself, with their espousal of an extreme wokista agenda - a man can be a woman if he says so, Scotland must not extract any more fossil fuels because that is naughty, Scotland's fishermen cannot fish in the 240 Marine Protected Areas around Scotland, as that is equally naughty - and the policy that caused Healey's contempt today - the Scottish Government will not, as a matter of policy, allow public money to be spent on munitions production. It refused to invest £2.5 million in a specialist skills centre - a welding college to train  Scottish shipbuilders, supported by Rolls-Royce. Healey said the UK will kick in the cash if the SNP continue to refuse.  We Scots must be grateful that Defence is not a devolved power, now that we're at War. Healey was all over the politics programmes this weekend, in preparation for his launch of the Strategic Defence Review tomorrow. He said:

“Russia is attacking the UK daily as part of 90,000 attacks that we get that are linked to different states on our defence system in cyberspace. It’s one of the reasons that we’re acting already by putting an extra billion into creating a new cyber command and to link our Armed Forces with the digital connections that make them more effective in the future. We’re in a world that is changing now and we’ve got to respond. It is a world of growing Russian aggression, it’s those daily cyber attacks, new nuclear risks and increasing threats in other parts of the world as well. The government will build at least six new munitions factories and thousands more long-range weapons as part of the defence review."

There's going to be new houses for married squaddies, to make a career in the armed forces more palatable, new aircraft to drop nuclear bombs on our enemies (we can only launch them from submarines at present), and lots more conventional weapons. This will create lots of jobs and is A Good Thing. Despite all this gung-ho-ness, it will still not amount to the 3.9% of GDP that NATO's Mark Rutte has said would be a good idea, and nowhere near the 5% that Donald Trump requires his NATO allies to cough up, to make up for having taken the U.S. for granted all these years.

The best thing to do, in the event of a nuclear war is to get outside and enjoy the nuclear sunset. You really don't want to survive it. A conventional war is pretty bad, as the citizens of Gaza would tell you, but survivable. Is the best strategy to say - hey, lets not fall out, can we sort out a deal? Or to muscle up and "send a message to Moscow" as Healey puts it?  It's all looking a bit dodgy and public opinion is being nudged war-wards.

Blessed are the War Mongers, as Christ didn't say. Or maybe He did?

The Problematic Teachings of Jesus Christ. 

Lets' start with the non-unionised Labourers in the Vineyard. This teaching can be found in the Gospel of Matthew 20:1-16. A farmer needs to hire in some casual labour to work in his vineyard. He hires some lads at an agreed rate of one denarius each for the day. He drastically underestimates the number of workers he needs, so he gets back down the Job Centre no less than 4 times, at the third, sixth, ninth and eleventh hours, hiring on lads, promising to pay them "whatever is right". Comes time to pay them and he gives all of them one denarius each, which causes the workers who've been at hard, back-breaking work all day in the heat of the sun, to complain. The farmer says: "Fuck off. My vineyard, my money, my terms." No, really? And he gets away with it? No unions, you see. No contracts for casual day labourers. 

Moving on to the Pigs Don't Fly story. You can read this in the  Gospels of Mark 5:1–20, Matthew 8:28–34 and Luke 8:26–39. Jesus had just disembarked after a short sea journey when he was met by a troubled man, given to self-harming and not wearing clothes, whose neighbours didn't like him and kept trying to chain him up in the graveyard, but he would break free, being a strong chap. Jesus said to him: What's your name? and the bloke replied: "My name is Legion, for we are many". I told you he was troubled. Schizophrenia? Multiple Personality Disorder? The bloke begged Jesus not to send him/them away, but to send him/them into a nearby herd of 2000 pigs, grazing contentedly in the sunshine. Jesus did so, (How?) the bloke got dressed and the pigs raced to the clifftop and flung themselves over, drowning themselves. Poor pigs. Poor pig-farmer. No compensation. No criminal charges for destroying 2000 pigs, probably the pig-farmer's entire livelihood.

Then there's the Fuck the Poor story, which you can read in the Gospel of Mark 14 3-9, although there are other versions in the other gospels. All feature a woman, a jar of expensive ointment and anointing either the feet or the head of Jesus. In one story she's a prostitute, which makes things worse, in one she's Lazarus' sister, Mary, but I like this version best: this woman comes in when Jesus is having his dinner and breaks open a perfume jar and spreads it on his head, which not unnaturally upsets the blokes that Jesus surrounded himself with. "This cost more than a year's wages," they said, "it could have been sold and the money given to the poor". This does not go down well with the Boss, who says: "Leave her alone", and, with a touch of the Donald, added, "She has done a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing to Me. The poor you will always have with you. But you will not always have Me." Hello? Ego, much?

Now, the washing-up you will always have with you - I can relate to that - the damn washing-up breeds, if you take your eye off it for a moment. Don't Blink. But the Poor? Always with you? That's really negative, that is. That's a god-ordained licence to fuck the poor, which advice has been freely taken by greedy capitalist bastards (sorry, wealth creators) for 2000 years. As Edmund Sears has it in his 1849  poem It Came upon a Midnight Clear:

But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not....

And how about hard working Martha? You can read this one in the Gospel of Luke 10: 38-42. Jesus and the usual gang dropped in at Lazarus' place, to see if he was still not dead. All these blokes turning up unexpectedly caused a great deal of work for the household, and Martha asked Jesus if he would tell her sister, Mary, who was lolly-gagging as usual, to help her, instead of just sitting there, listening to the boys' banter. Jesus refused, admonishing Martha: "Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." So, next time you ask the kids to help with the washing-up, which, as we know, is always with us, don't be surprised if they say Jesus says its ok to watch TV/go on the PlayStation/check Facebook.

In Acts of Thomas, chapters 1-3, we find Jesus instructing his followers to go into the world to spread his word. His twin brother Thomas (slow down. Who? Twin? How'd that happen? Well, that's what it says) balks a bit. "No", he says, "not India. Anywhere but India". (I really feel his pain. India!). So Jesus goes up to this merchant from Afghanistan, and says, "Need a carpenter? 'Cos I've got one here that I can sell you." The deal was struck and Thomas was sold off and left on the next ship to India. As a slave. Honest, not invent (no, but maybe someone did). And there's a bill of sale to prove it. It reads: "I, Jesus, son of the carpenter Joseph, declare that I have sold my slave to you, Abban, a merchant."

Acts of Thomas also describes the occasion when a newly wed bridegroom was surprised to catch Jesus sitting on the nuptial bed with the bride. Jesus has turned up to deliver a lecture on family planning. He told them that children are, without exception, awful: "they become either lunatics or half-withered or crippled or deaf or dumb or paralytics or idiots". Children inevitably do "unprofitable and abominable works. For they will be detected either in adultery or in murder or in theft or in unchastity, and by all these you will be afflicted. Therefore refrain from this filthy intercourse."

As the Saint Thomas Christians still thrive in the state of Kerala, tracing their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century, we can assume that the teachings of Jesus on sex never caught on.

So, the Problematic Teachings of Jesus Christ do not fit neatly into our increasingly secular Christianity - oh yes, we are all cultural Christians  - we like the smells and bells, the music, the architecture - but the weird teachings - well, that was all well and good two thousand years ago, but really, darling...... we don't mean any of it. When I was in Siena last month, I saw the little finger of St Catherine in a glass case in her Cathedral. My travelling companion, a cradle Catholic, now as lapsed as it is possible to be, had nostalgically inhaled on entering the Duomo and said, ah, the smell of a Catholic Church, said authoritatively, its a bit of wood, mrs ishmael, cleverly carved, quite a work of art. 

  Looks like the vacancy created by this  abdication of belief from the heart of Christianity may be filled by a more committed religious group - although, as ever, religion is politically driven.  You remember the Charlie Hebdo attack? On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 a.m. in Paris, the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo were targeted in a terrorist shooting attack by two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd Kouachi  and Chérif Kouachi. Armed with rifles and other weapons, they  murdered 12 people and injured 11 others; motivated by rage against satire directed against their religion. They fled after the shooting, triggering a manhunt, and were killed by the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group on 9 January. The Kouachi brothers' attack was followed by several related Islamist terrorist attacks  between 7 and 9 January 2015, including the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege, in which a French-born  Muslim took hostages and murdered four people (all Jews) before being killed by French commandos.

Here's mr ishmael in 2015 on matters religious and Je Suis Charlie Hebdo.

.............................................................

I don't know quite how to caricature les caricaturistes Francaise;  worthless,  decadent,  layabout  dilletantes; publishers' ink-stained rentboys, drawing dirty pictures, but not too dirty, whatever they do it's not a proper job, doesn't produce anything, doesn't serve anyone.  What's the point, today, of a dead-tree press cartoonist, if it's not to become not a recreational but an occupational martyr?

I don't give a fuck about a handful of French scribblers, Christ, I'd be hard-pressed to care if the entire British press corps was put up against the wall and shot;  these guys, actually, were asking for this to happen to them, they knew, everybody knew that you can't argue with those who don't care if they live or die;  now that it's happened, why must we beat our breasts?

And there is a wider, more realistic view of la Belle France, in which she is not, never has been Freedom's last redoubt.

France's aggressive secularism, its historical repression of religion, its own glorious head chopping past and  its recent denial of religious expression through clothing and diet are hardly emblematic of a   nation wedded to freedom of speech, thought and expression, of a nation  which we are now urged, commanded to admire, a nation in whose hysteria we must all painfully  share, lest our arses fall out, a nation with whom we must all, twittering,  solidarize.  I saw several of the New People interviewed, 

they said they'd queued all night to get a copy of Charlie Hebdo's Greatest Hits, took a bloodbath, mind,  for them to even be aware of political satire but now that they had a hold of it they were all gonna soundbite the fucking thing to death, whatever it was. 

Solidarity, they intoned, with some idiot editor, that's what counted; values, freedom, rights; all that was missing was Gordon the Ruiner, mincing onstage and  gobbing-off about his moral compass, his mad father and the right sol-you-shun for hard-working families. Christ, have we ever been so platitudinised, and by such  brain-dead, Twittering imbeciles?  They couldn't even spell sanctimonious, most of them, jerking about in the moveable maelstrom of a crass shitegeist. Death to the NewPeople 'swhat I say, stone them with their i-things, their latte coffees and their moisturising products. Solidarity with racist, Nazi-loving scum bags, that'll do for them, until the next thing comes along.

The recent Frog banning of the burqa and the hidjab are redolent of  surrenderiste Nazi France, in which only a few bravely resisted while  the many collaborated with Hitler's Godlessheathenbastards, sucking Hermann's bratwurst and rooting-out French Hebes for the death camps. 

Now, it's How dare these Muslim bitches dress as they wish?  We, their masters, must be able to see into their eyes, and mebbe 'ave a peep at their duskee tits, too, for aren't we Frenchmen, a-ha-ha-ha and uzzerwise we do not know if zey are planning to bomb our arses off. Ah, oui, d'accord, le freedom de speech and  de thought, c'est magnifique, but not for ze niggers and les Allah-bothereurs,  merde, non.  Whaddayoumean, zey are as French as moi, moi, Jean-Claude de Paree?  'Ow can zey be French, when zey are fucking niggers,. eh, vous etes 'avin ze laff, n'est ce pas? 

In some regions, M'sieu Frog has insisted that - in mainly Muslim schools -  pork must be on the menu, for true secularism demands that religious dietary concerns have no place in public life.  Aye, tolerance, freedom, rights.  Cunts is what they are, these Frogs with their nasty, cowardly bullying.

There have always been racists, the French, they've always hated the Jews.

 The slopes in Indo-China and the wogs in Algeria gave them a good kicking, denying their supposed military superiority and despite de Gaulle skulking away the Hitler war in London - at my parents' expense - the haughty monsterqueen barred his former allies and protectors from entry to the then Common Market, hard to believe, now, really, when you think of the boys gutted on the Normandy beaches, that the French would shun the British so. Must be their concern for rights and freedoms and tolerance which excluded us from their private cosying-up to Hermann, post-war.

And le premier frog, Hollande, he wasn't in office five minutes before he wanted to bomb previous colonies, massacre the natives and then suck Obama's cock all the way from Washington to Damascus; socialiste, he claimed to be, internationaliste, he claimed to be, now, having betrayed both causes he has leapt on this relatively minor contretemps murdereuse as though it was his electoral salvation.

So, mind you, has everyone else, 
from old HamFace, CallHimDave

Lessbeclear about this, if, back home, you believe in Freedom I order you to vote for me.

to Bibi The Crook Netanyahu;

Vote for me or its fire and fucking brimstone, a murrain of frogs, burning bushes, all that shit

 Although, in Paris, this was the reality,
 

  back in BibiLand

all the gentile whore leaders
 had been photoshopped out of reality,
maybe by Jehovah, Himself.
Values, you see, solidarity.

Even Andy, the other night,

Did I ever tell you I went to Glasgow University before helping Mr Murdoch destroy Britain?

betrayed his true, vile self - was so outraged by a French totty calling him  what he is, a white, elderly, comfortable entitlementista, living in middle class environs that I was sure the hateful old playboy was going to have a stroke, maybe next time, if it please God. 

Freedom of speech is all very well, Mademoiselle, but not on my show.

And now, as if all that Je suis Charlie shit was not enough, we must endure this further abomination, first compulsory Froghood, now compulsory Judaism. If I was Jewish I'd kick their fucking teeth in, these two, resurrect Irgun and the Stern Gang, hang these two  from the nearest hotel balcony.

No, Eric, you're not, you're a fat, lying, worthless, thieving, opportunist  old cunt, for which God, if He is, will punish you by making your arse fall out.

No, you're not, Tracey, you're just a decrepit old Tory slapper, one blessed with the Everything-I-Touch  - border controls, passports, immigration, extraditions,  police reform - Turns-To-Shit magic of the wannabee prime minister.

This Tracey May shit, this mad, screeching  old crow, vowing to eradicate something which no-one has been able to eradicate for at least two thousand years, even by the miserable standards of the Coalition of Greed, this takes some beating. She can't even  manage to count the immigrants in and the emigrants out, how's she going to perform this miracle.  Doesn't matter, logic, history, none of that matters,

Have-nagilah, have-nagilah, have-nagilah ve-nismeha

cos Tracey, the dancing queen, is  gonna stomp out anti-Semitism;
even though the Jews don't want it stamped-out, it is central to their faith, their scriptures and their politics, their exceptionalism, as God's favourites, just them, mind, not us, for even though their connection, one to the other, is religious, they insist, bizarrely,  that they are a race; a mad, inverse racism. A race is something that one cannot convert to. But never mind that. What's love got to do with it, one for another? Those mad fuckers'll see us all blown to Hell, Jews, Arabs and  Christians; Abrahamians, what are they good for?

Burbling about Freedom, what they're interested in, all of them,  those orchestrating Charlieism and Hymieism,  is ever greater control, ever greater censorship, ever more intrusive and brutal, militarised  policing.  The NewPeople, of course, complicit in their own degradation, believe whatever they are told, as long as it's vaguely sentimental, each passing, viral banality a Beautiful Obsession.

I am so often reminded by current events of George Steiner's remark that the Holocaust happened because the 'Thirties Berlin intelligentsia was too busy listening to the string quartet in the salon to hear the cry in the street; the NewPeople,  shoulder-to-shouldering, are equally immune to Reality's signature notes, indifferent, in their stupidity, to the hot breath on their cheeks, of the Jihad. Serve 'em right if Ahmed, bringing it all back home,  visits their local Free School or worst of all possible big bads, takes a stroll through the quadrangles of Harrow or Eton or the colleges of Cambridge.

Always dreaming of another, vaguely better, more reformist world, we are told, endlessly,  that there was a time, before photography, an eighteenth and nineteenth century time, of pamphleteers and broadsheeters, when cartoons made monarchs quake and politicians cower but there never was such a time, political satire has never meant anything, never achieved anything, always been done amongst and to a tiny,  political chattering class, then, as now, gleefully and pointlessly fucking its own arse. And the self-acclaimed successor, the inheritor of this mythical, satirical greatness is the public schoolboys' co-operative known as  Private Eye, itself so radical that it  engages in some  annual, Westminster Oscars-giving political celebrity dinner,  its smirking editor nothing more than  a wealthy, Oxbridge PBC Tory on a nice little earner, Villainy's licensed Fool, pretending to be bold, rather like this jerk

Apres moi, le deluge racialiste

leading his friends and employees to  a bloody, pointless death;  bestowing their friends and family  grief and bereavement and gifting to the PBC, skymadeupnewsandfilth, C4 News and the entire ghastly political establishment, at home and abroad an unexpected but entirely welcome New Year thoughts'n'prayers  jamboree. 

I would rather they were all still alive, the doodlers; I'd rather that Obama shut Guantanamo, jailed the CIA torturers, that Bibi stopped expanding into Palestine and that......fuck it, it doesn't matter, what I'd rather.  mr mongoose and others have described this as the time of the Islamic Reformation;  we had ours, we may not deny them theirs, no matter how hard we try.

  JeSuising his scabby arse off, Hislop said, last week, that nothing seemed very funny, just now; 

welcome, FatBoy, to the real world.

.................................................................................

To read more of mr ishmael's fawts n' prares, there are four splendid anthologies of his work, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.