Thursday 9 April 2020

HAVE MERCY, I CRY, CITY.

From mr ishmael's drafts, 28th April 2014. No wonder everyone's ill....

I was thinking about The City;  I mean The City in the sense that I mean The Dog;  all my dogblokes have become the same dog The Dog, his dogness is uniform.  Same with the city,  they may have different characteristics but to me they are just The city. 

 One December  afternoon I was in Buckingham Palace Road, obtaining a passport from the Irish Embassy, the following day I was in Amsterdam;  London had been vile, filthy and noisy, edgy with criminality, cop cars blueing-and-twoing constantly;  bursted, black binbags were crammed opportunistically into alleyways and corners. Amsterdam was  Elysian by comparison but they were both The City. All my cities have become The City.

No doubt city dwellers would consider this an unjust misappellation - York isn't Exeter, Worcester isn't Durham -  but then they all just call the non-city places The Country, don't they? So fuck 'em.

I don't get to many cities, these days - Dundee, Aberdeen and the sparkling jewel of Inverness are my common city destinations; sometimes,  I get down to Birmingham, calling at historic towns, en route,  Berwick, Alnwick,  maybe Durham travelling down the A1 and A1M;  Stirling, Carlisle, maybe Penrith travelling down the M8/M74/M6.  That's about it, I haven't been to London since, well, not this century and I wouldn't visit Liverpool or Manchester for all the tea in China.  I think I have been to all of the English mediaeval cathedral cities and have enjoyed them all, if enjoy is the right word.

The professional travelogueiste - recently the vile Tory spiv, Portillo, obviously, like so many filthsters,  granted a pensioned sinecure  for life by the PBC - would have us recognise and characterise every hamlet in the land, instantly understand its people, its history and geography, its crafts and trades, its customs and traditions;  Portillo, for he is actually, despite his wet-lipped verbosity, quite stupid, dips, stagily - as though it was his and not his producers' idea - into something called the Bradshaw's Guide to British Railway Journeys and assumes, on our behalf,  that  all human British life is there; a few concocted interviews with local oiks and the odd dignitary  delude the viewer into thinking that Portillo's mincing through Glasgow or  Filey  or Llandudno is actually pure scholarship which  we just happen to find entertaining because we're sort of worthy and clever ourselves, can spell chaise longue, stuff like that, maybe even know what one is, maybe even own one;  not that they're worth having, good for fuck all the chaise longue, a design disaster.  

Anyway,  Evesham, he slurps, in some eye-haemorrhagingly lurid shirt'n'trousers combo,  is actually famous for its Aspergers Syndrome, what?  Cut?  Right, take seventeen:  Evesham, according to my Bradshaws, is famous everywhere for the quality of its Asparagus - only not in Peru, or Israel or any of the other places which grow most of the asparagus  we now consume, all the year round, nothing, I always say  about a free market and exploited workers -  and I'm here to meet Bob Plod whose family have been growing this prince of vegetables for many, many centuries.  Hello, I'm Michael, tell me, Bob, what is it, do you think, about the... the...SparrerGrass as I believe you yokels call it, what is it that makes it taste so good, to nasty metropolitan fairies like me? The taste, simple as that? Well, there you have it, viewers, straight from the horse's arse,  and dipped in melted butter, I mean mouth.  And on now to my next stop, Worcester, which Bradshaw describes as a charming Mediaeval/Georgian city of immense charmingness.  Portillo, brings to the Victorian railway network what Tony Robinson and his  elderly Graverobbers bring  to archaeology - nothing, fuck all. Both of these wretches are causative of what is,  in itself  ungrammatically described as dumbing-down, both peddling shit as education.  At least, in Robinson's case you can say that he walks about a bit, jumps in holes and gets his hands dirty, Portillo minces tight-arsedly around the country, as though, like David Suchet playing Hercule Poirot, he was deliberately wearing shoes two sizes too small.  Go on, watch him, next time PBC2 fills up an hour by  repeating his slobbery drivel, you'll see. Maybe it's a protective arseclinch, developed for self protection, in his glory days, in the Palace of Westminster. I know Nigel Evans wasn't predating in Mikey's days, but there's plenty of other ones, most of them, I should think

The city, though,  is not so easily nibbled into half-hour, tabloid  Portillo  bites. You get no sense of the city via the gogglebox because it's not just visual, it is noisy and smelly, pulsing and vibrating, flashing and strobing.  And then there's the shit, Oh the shit,  there's fucking millions, billions  of tons of shit.  You rarely see it, of course, the shit,  but its all around you.  Way, way back, my  late brother and I took some Mescalin and found ourselves wandering what seemed like vast, continental distances around early-hours Birmingham;  somehow we started in Moseley and next thing you know we were in Castle Bromwich.  I think what happened was that every so often I would become paralysed by the complexity of driving a car and we'd get out and walk for a bit.  The sodium streetlights seemed to be burning my scalp off, their columns hissing and crackling, neon tubes lasered my brain and traffic lights changed in a slo-mo kaleidoscope so utterly disorientating that I couldn't hold-on to whatever it was that  the colour indicated - was Red for Proceed With Caution, or was that Green;  why don't they just stay one fucking colour until a man gets a grip? 



Never mind Love Is All Around, it ain't.  

But shit most definitely is.

Y'ever wondered, walking between a couple of tall office buildings or high-rise blocks, just how much shit is  tumbling down pipes, just a few feet from your face,  how much shit, piss and Christ knows what else is just, well, all around you, kept from your nostrils and lungs just by dodgily-plumbed pipes, a bit of plasterboard and a breezeblock,  twenty-, thirty-, forty-, fifty-storey columns of roaring shit, cascading invisibly all around you;  traversing the city on foot you are crossing between, flanked by, hemmed-in on all sides by shiny towers of shit;   you are journeying through a veritable shit-gala, a  mountain range of busy, vertical toilets.


And then, under the pavement, there's fucking rivers of shit and piss and condoms and dead goldfish and blood and piles and used elastoplasts  and sanitary towels;  Greater London is a city of twelve million arseholes, all shitting ethnically diverse, seventy per cent of it non-white, curry'n'ginger'n'chili shit,  pastashit, sushishit, McDonald GoldenArchesshit, Polskishit, Somalishit, Bengalishit, Yemenishit, Baltishit, Franco-Germanicshit, Chinkyshit, SaudiSheepsEyeballshit, it's the effluent equivalent of the Tower of Babel and it's cosmopolitan horridness  is all pouring, helter-skelter, into a crumbling, subterranean Victorian sewer network that probably no bastard understands, or ever understood. And  then there's the piss and blood and snot and semen and saliva, all the rest of it,  Christ Alfuckingmighty, it's over your head, it's behind you, it's in front of you,  it's rushing past your ears, it's under your fucking feet,  you only gotta take a stroll down the average road in a London suburb and every house you pass will be flushing away kilos of turds every few hours, probably constantly;  oh,  the houses might look nice, from the outside, but they're just nicely parcelled-up shit factories, and they run for miles and miles and miles, a gigantic industrial estate of shit, that's what London is.  I don't know how anyone survives all that, all that shit everywhere. In the Southern Ocean post I mentioned my friend Coleridge's water, water, everywhere and all the boards did shrink, don't know what ancient mariner monologue  of guilt might describe the modern city,  faeces, faeces, everywhere, Lord, how the place did stink.  We don't smell it, of course, not unless we're on drugs, something like lysergic acid dyethelamide.  And then, lemme tell you,  it blows your fucking head off.  But it's there, pumped out into the street by extraction fans, working flat-out, in order to maintain for our employees a holistic, ergonomic and hygienic workplace experience.  That's it, just pump all the shitfumes out into the street, they'll probably be carried upwards, won't they, and diluted, quite harmless, really, seven or eight million morning shitblasts discharged over BorisVille.

My young, friend, stanislav, once railed against the utter madness of the tres desirable  ahn sweet, as he put it, the idea of building a special, hardboarded shithouse in the corner of an already pinched bedroom, so's hubby and wife, presumably, could enhance their intimacy by the sounds and smells,  the groans and splatterings of one another's defecations, could develop the fragrance of their bedlinen by wafting it with  a pungently fetid arsebreeze, raving fucking mad he thought it was, the ahn sweet,  that people would pay good money to shit in their bedrooms,  stanislav, coming as he did, from a horse-drawn economy had little time for such  sophisticated modernities. Best is go outside and do dump in proper exterior shithouse, can open door and let in breeze, send smell over nextdoor washing is only fucking bastards anyway; anything else fucking madness is, can turn fucking hose on outside shithouse or pressure washer bought off gobby old fairybastard on shopping channel; if poor bastard is and no hose has got, maybe has spent all of dole money on scratchcard and pizza can anyway fling bucket of fucking water over shithouse;  in bedroom ahn sweet only can squirt fucking airfreshener, what doesn't fucking work and gives cancer, anyway. Is fucking rubbish, shithouse in bedroom, might just as well store dogshit in fridge

But the en suite is actually just shorthand for The City.  I mean, I know everybody pretends that they don't shit, but they do and not only that but with the colon-ising of the national kitchen by the likes of Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Hugh Fuckhead and that fucking  lunatic, Blumentit, the national diet, and thus the national shit now contains irritants, abrasives and  toxins never meant to enter the British bowel;  I am sure that nine people out of ten suffer Irritable Bowel Syndrome as a direct result of Jamie Oliver, his wretchedly spicey bezzymates ingredients and his disgustingly bad-examplish lack of the most basic food handling hygiene standards,  the dirty, filthy fat fuck;  the Department of Health should send around a Kick-Him-To-Death squad, and stomp his oily, mutant face into the ground, not all cheffy-liked, just bish-bash-bosh, stomp the fucking life out of him,  man's a fucking menace. One member of the squad could just rythmically kick him hard in the rectum, reciting, with each impact:  Kick-Wash-Kick-Your-Kick-Fucking-Kick-Hands-Kick-You-Kick-Filthy-Kick-Fucking-Kick-Phoney-Kick-Fucking-Mockney-Fucking-Bastard. Kick-Kick-Kick.  And then just a drizzle of the very best virgin olive oil and a few artfully torn shreds of  coriander.  There, an arse-kicking in under fifteen minutes. An' it don't costya nuffink, which my kids, Poppy and Sesame, fink is just magic.

"Googling the lack of TV-kitchen handwashing throws up a 2016 blog by Patrick Boshell, which refers to a survey of screen chefs done by the europeancleaningjournal.com & name-checks Jamie Oliver as a notable culprit - evidently Mr Ishmael was basing his satirical rage on confirmed observation, and while it’s perfectly likely Mr Oliver has changed his ways and these days you could probably eat oysters off his jacksie with your bare hands, it was, regrettably, perhaps, not ever thus. The incitement to violence is clearly a Celebrity Deathmatch routine."   

40 comments:

Anonymous said...

Much as Mr Ishmael would have scoffed with courteous modesty at the comparison, I can't help hearing chuckles of approving laughter from the cheap seats on the Other Side, where Swift (Celia Shits) and Burroughs (Commissioner of Sewers) are seated with their pals. Never more than a few feet from a rat, but no more than a couple of inches from a load of crap, eh? Lovely.

I remember reading once that the air in Mexico City is so dry, and the summer heat so searing, that dogshit turns to fine dust in no time, and so what people breathe there is constantly contaminated. It would be nice to think a temperate climate spares us such horrors, but perhaps he was right and the City is all around.

v./

mrs ishmael said...

But the Country has its own shit-related horrors, mr verge. This is the time of year when the farmers fire up their massive shit sprayers and turn the fields black with slurry, sprayed wantonly as fine droplets over the emerging green shoots. It does not just smell like the bowels of the Evil One, you can taste the stuff. And they are doing it On Purpose.

mongoose said...

Farmers, eh? Never met a happy one.

Tootling about on my bike many an afternoon, I know the various paths and bridleways of Bandit Country pretty well. Yesterday I dedcided on north, upriver, mildly uphill out, across the river and downhill home. It was a way I not been for a while. And there I encountered one of the shit-sprayers. He wasn't actually spraying at the time, nor was he actually present, so encountered was not my best choice of verb but we are where we are. He had attached a chain and padlock to the stile-gate. And a fuck-off sign "Closed due to coronavirus". Laminated FFS. A sure sign that he has been swimming in EU grant money all his life. What sort of farmer bastard has a laminator? Hmmm, maybe it was Plod. Maybe it's a bit of law. Nah, they'd have a bit more heft wouldn't they. "By Order of the Sheriff blah". So I lifted the bike over the gate and carried on my way. Never, as per, saw hide nor hair of anyone working any of the farmland along the way either.

More police about, mrs i, than one normally sees. Every one of the tinpot Adolfs hidden among them a couple of inches taller in his police issue. "Illegal breathing, m'lud, look you, on the way to the illegal purchasementing of unreasonable Easter Eggs."

mrs ishmael said...

This was you on your daily exercise, mr mongoose? Best be careful. The pitchforks are being sharpened even as we speak. I've heard them complaining on the phone-in programmes - "they come out here, bringing their germs with them, leaving virus droplets on the gates. The ones in the cars are worse. They might break down." And there's that illegal breathing. They will track you by drone and mobile phone. There will be No Hiding Place.
Anyway, Bo-Jo is feeling a bit better, he'll soon be able to get back to being the saviour of the country and sort it all out.

Anonymous said...

From the BBC website: Northamptonshire's Chief Constable Nick Adderley said "We will not, at this stage, be setting up road blocks. We will not, at this stage, start to marshal supermarkets and checking the items in baskets and trolleys to see whether it's a legitimate, necessary item."

"But again, be under no illusion, if people do not heed the warnings and the pleas I'm making today, we will start to do that."

Sadly no surprise to see a Chief Constable struggling to form a coherent sentence. Where do they find these creatures?

Mind how you go, Mr Mongoose. And happy fucking easter.

v./

mongoose said...

Cheers, mr v, and the same to you. I go in prayer of a copper asking to see my shopping list or to look in my shopping bag. I was born for the moment.

I am always out and about - not for long, a half-hour or so - enough to raise the heartbeat and make the legs sing. I have to say that almost everyone has been completely kindly and decent. I did have one pair of gurmudgeons moan as I ever so politely asked if I might be allowed to pass them as they walked two abreast along the cycle lane but they had the air of proper walkers incensed by having to share nature's bounty with amateurs. EVeryone else has been a joy. I do wonder though what we might be seeing if the weather had been foul this last fortnight.

Mike said...

Down Here we have not been hard smitten ....yet. As of this moment 6103 cases and 51 deaths for Australia. Over a third of those numbers were caused by cruise ships docking. We are known as The Lucky Country, but I don't want to sound cocky. People's behavior has changed, I know mine has. Although golf courses are open, and I used to play every day, I've stopped. More people are out walking and exercising - working from home - but crossing over the street to avoid is the new norm. I usually walk through the Sydney bush each day, on the harbour foreshore, but the paths are narrow, and have now put this on hold. You may think I'm a bit of a wuss; and, for me the jury is still out on whether this is a triumph of hype over common sense, but why take a chance. Overnight my wife had bad news from the UK: her cousin's wife is a nurse in management; she volunteered for the frontline; within 3 days she tested positive; he is a Falkland navy veteran from HMS Sheffield, with diabetes. This little anecdote may not mean much statistically, but it brings the threat close to home.

Mrs ishmael said...

Make no mistake, there are two outcomes to this: either everyone will eventually test positive or a vaccine will be developed to provide immunity. Mr ultra is of the mind that it is not possible to vaccinate effectively against it.The present measures are designed only to delay the infection rate to spread out hospital admissions, so that those of us who develop serious complications can be cared for.
I'm particularly intrigued by the daily exercisers.I live in the back end of nowhere and, because Harris demands it, I'm accustomed to walking the lanes around here - lanes that were formerly deserted, but now are positively choked with walkers, joggers and bicyclists. Were all these people couch potatoes before - before and will an unexpected outcome of the crisis be a leaner, fitter population?
Sorry to hear about your family's trouble, Mr Mike. Not surprised that the cruise liners have brought the virus to Australia, though.

Mike said...

Unfortunately, Mrs I, the prospects for a vaccine are not looking too good. The reason being is that there is now evidence of re-infection. That is to say prior infection, and the resultant antibodies, are not conferring immunity. Perhaps for some, but not all. It could be the same situation as the common cold and flu which have defied an effective vaccine to date. We hope not, but there are worrying signs. All the measures at the moment are merely playing for time. The good news is that it is likely the infection rate is massively underestimated because of limited testing, and therefore that the fatality rate is overestimated. It may be something we have to live with (or die with) like the flu.

mrs ishmael said...

Absolutely, mr mike, as I said here somewhere, this particular virus will eventually form part of the virus background of our lives, and the fatality rate is less than 1%. I'm not volunteering to catch it yet, though but, although where I live, in this northern isle, the hospital is still comparatively free of the virus. Our local Mr. Tesco is giving all the hospital staff a free Easter egg. That'll help.
And here in Englandshire, mr mike, we have another candidate for a right good Demeaning - Robert Jenrick, Cabinet Minister, guilty of going home and visiting his parents. Nobody seems to have explained the rules of a satisfactory Demeaning to him, though, as he is robustly defending himself, along the lines of, "Yes, I know I told you to stay at home,not see your family/parents etc, let local services deliver food and medicine and certainly not drive 200 miles in order to do so, but that's a rule I invented for you, not me, and it was perfectly acceptable for me to do so, as I had to take medicine to them."

Mike said...

Mrs I: I don't wish ill to anyone, normally, but Mr Robert Jenrick deserves a good dose.

Anonymous said...

Oh, mr verge, I saw Northamptonshire's Chief Constable Nick Adderley, saying what the police are not doing at this stage. Thanks for spotting that one for us. Risible though he undoubtedly is, just a wee bit scary (or comforting, depending on your perspective - "nothing to hide, nothing to fear") that he has the powers to put his threats into effect. And here in Scotland, the Army has been deployed to assist the 14 Health Boards with disaster planning and logistics. Presumably the same holds for England? In our tiny archipelago, we have two Majors. I'm sure Glasgow couldn't manage with just the two.

mongoose said...

It seems that the hope is make something like the annual flu jab. They test and select the few flu strains that are most likely each coming season and concoct a vaccine against that profile. Our current foe seems to be a slowly-RNA-mutating beast and therefore this might be possible. But not this coming winter. Too soon. Something else will have to be done. Maybe an approximation of a vaccine and a smaller lockdown of the at-risk. That looks like the plan. As far as I understand it, that is.

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Movie nights at Mongoose Towers: I thought it would be a laugh to taunt the cherubs with The Shawshank Redemption. And there it was. They lock you in solitary confinement for a month and that is enough to send you bonkers. That's why the lockdown can't be imposed earlier nor held on longer. Serious numbers of people will start going tonto.

And saying that. Lawn is mowed, bandsaw is fixed, platform is not bodged - good for ten years, I reckon, floors are polished, beer is brewed, woodshed is moved and fixed, as much proper work as can be accomplished is done to the last dot and dash. Bored now.

Mike said...

Good film that, Mr mongoose. Hope its not giving us a hint- I don't fancy crawling through the sewer for a nightly bit of exercise. I watched The Big Short today - highly recommended if you haven't seen it.

yardarm said...

Even the Home Secretary and coppers have hinted to the jumped up berk Adderley that he should wind his neck in.

Does anyone remember, Christ, from many years ago, Viz and the Bottom Inspectors ? When the Gestapo like Office of Bottom Inspection would raid houses or seize passers by to examine their nether regions and any hint of imperfections would lead to a stretch in a Bottom Correctional Facility, to be held in Bottom Clamps at the discretion of the Herr Bottomdant.

Adderley and rather too many Plod are going down that route. As for Jenrick, it indicates at our current servility that that rotten little prick hasn`t been arse kicked across the pavement.

Bungalow Bill said...

"Geology is the study of pressure and time"; I've always liked that line from The Shawshank Redemption, its apt for now and puts us and our follies in perspective. Perspective is what we've lost, above all, I think: failing to figure ourselves correctly in the landscape and to draw courage. It's Easter, after all, even for pagans and atheists.

The majestic Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow has a lovely latrinal/cloacal passage, Mr Verge, as I'm sure you know, and Mozart liked crap. Trainspotting, of course. Takes all sorts.

Stupendous from Mr I. Not sure, I'll be able to go anywhere now without Shit Consciousness.

ultrapox said...

mr mike's uncertainty - due to evidence of re-infection - about the viability, or effectiveness, of a coronavirus-vaccine is valid, and indeed, pursuant to having absorbed the forthright opinion - published in the saker-blog-post entitled the coronavirus and galileo - of - eminent, but controversially anti-vaccination, italian nano-pathologist - the good doctor stefano montanari, i have myself also voiced such doubts, however, i must herewith, contrarily and supplementarily, confess to having experienced recent personal health-problems, and heard anecdotal, nay circumstantial, evidence, which may well be germane to the argument in favour of coronavirus-vaccine-viability.

you see, about this time last year, when ignorantly suffering from serious underlying health-issues - and consequently feeling lethargic to the point of just chain-smoking in front of the television - i was myself struck down by a nasty infection, and duly exhibited the coronavirus-type-symptoms of high fever, acute breathing-difficulty, chest-pain, a bad cough, night-sweats, itchiness, a possible rash, diarrhoea, and a persistent 'pins-and-needles' sensation in the hands.

i subsequently recovered from this virus, and after a month, or so - due to the unrelated underlying health-problems - was admitted to hospital for emergency-surgery. however, following a rather hasty, and frankly bungled, discharge from hospital into the care of relatives - and whilst still in a very fragile state-of-health - i was shocked to realize that two of my custodians - one a young adult and the other middle-aged - had coincidentally themselves begun to suffer from a serious viral infection - which caused a persistent dry cough combined with high flu-like fever, which appeared, in one case, dangerously close to precipitating pneumonia, and which i was, of course, mighty relieved, and in fact rather surprised, not to catch myself.

now, after three weeks of this convalescence, i was, as-it-happened, re-admitted to hospital due to the formation of a large blood-clot on the leg, which - despite my complaints about unusually swollen ankles to visiting nurses, a ward-doctor, and my general practitioner - had unfortunately been overlooked.

finally, about one week into the ensuing four week admission, i was suddenly isolated in a side-room, due to the presentation of an unidentified, but innocuous, fever - which caused my temperature to rise slightly, and my blood-test to indicate an infection - however, after less than a week, all signs of this mystery infection vanished, and i was soon returned to the communal ward without incident.

therefore, whilst - in the matter of coronavirus-vaccine-viability - i consider that mr mike is digging in the right potato-patch, i nevertheless recognize that - had my re-infection with a corona-type-virus not been spotted, at the height of last summer, by eagle-eyed medical professionals - it would have been effectively asymptomatic - and also that, given my parlous state of health at the time, this strange asymptomaticity would, unless induced by a developed immunity to this corona-type-virus, have been totally inexplicable.

last summer, furthermore, there were reports of ubiquitous dry-coughing on london-buses - and since then, i have known a variety of other, currently healthy, people bear witness to having suffered a severe coronavirus-type-infection during the course of 2019.

Dick the Prick said...

I had to take a breather half way through I was laughing so much xx

ultrapox said...

despite the conservative government inhumanely banning us all from seeing our families at holy eastertide - and thus, in ecclesiastical essence, sanctimoniously and transubstantially fucking the archbishop of canterbury, christ the lord, and the virgin mary each up the communal arse, as good and hard as if the devil had done himself with his smoking-hot black dick - i think, mr yardarm, that kicking to the kerb slimy solicitor and cia-slut mr ten-bob-trick for visiting his frightened elderly parents would probably be considered, by right-minded religious folks, a little beyond the punitive pale - and perhaps even somewhat unchristian.

try perhaps to view this consummate cabinet-hypocrite's desperate dashing actions as the ultimate act of heroic rebellion which morally busts the ill-wishing neo-liberal lockdown - for after all, an immaculate ministerial precedent has now been ethically established, and so there is, in political terms, nothing to stop the rest of us gaily following suit; regard this loyal shropshire lad's exoneration, by the starch-hearted palace-chamber, as but a cuntishly coded signal that the concrete conservative ziggurat of repressive whitehall-resolve is crumbling asunder like the spicy authoritarian sentinel-cake which you cannot have and eat simultaneously.

god bless the bare-faced little lying cheating jackboot-stomping two-tongued tory bastard...

and god bless priti bat-outta-hell too, who, as a shopaholistic ideological impulse-purchaser of god-knows-what-fucking-useless-crap, knew precisely upon which side her nanny-bread was buttered when she told the, rather over-enthusiastic law-enforcing, bother-boys-in-blue that she absolutely did not want obnoxiously odoured and over-familiar ogling officers rummaging through her kitsch-crammed shopping-basket, or setting up rudely retailist road-blocks up-and-down her spiritual second home of oxford street - as obviously all this sorta silly malarkey is bloody bad for the family business.

mrs ishmael said...

Sorry to hear about your ill health, mr ultra, it sounds frightful. And it just shows to go you that there have been a lot of strains of these corona-types around for a while. I hope that your health problems are being effectively managed now. I think I follow your argument about the cabinet engaging in black ops on this lock down in order to extricate themselves, and as to the necessity of it in the first place, it will be interesting to see how the Swedish approach pans out. However, I'm with mr yardarm on the matter of a Demeaning being necessary for Jenrick. Having made the rules, he should follow them - there's many elderly frightened people currently in solitary confinement who would dearly like to see their families. Jenrick and the not-so-pretty Priti are pissing on the public. Bo-Jo gains the love of the people by succumbing to the virus and cements his leadership credentials, whereas Jenrick despises the people at his peril. It's getting a bit Coriolanus, mr Jenrick, sir. Try saying sorry I fucked up.

mrs ishmael said...

mr mongoose, your industry is commendable. If you're bored, though, there's the windows to be washed, the ironing to do and the cupboards to be cleared out. And if all that palls, then get out the paint brush and start on the back bedroom.
Thanks for the link.

mrs ishmael said...

Dear mr dick the prick and mr bungalow bill -glad you liked the MidWeek Special piece from the Ishmaelian drafts. I shall have to go truffling through some more of the thousand or so drafts for something special for the Easter Sunday Ishmael. But, while you are here, mr dick, is the romance still flourishing?

Mike said...

Mr mongoose: I'm finding these lectures pass the time in a worthwhile manner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPUuF_dECVI

Also, re-started playing chess. Had a good win against the computer this morning.

Mike said...

Mr ultra: sorry to read of your problems. Your re-infection, although asymptomatic, is the problem for vaccine. First, it confirms the fact of re-infection. Second, you were fortunately asymptomatic, but this is not a given. Third, the fact you were asymptomatic is more troubling for the general population as you potentially become a super-spreader. Therefore, a vaccine could be a false dawn, causing more problems than it solves.

mongoose said...

Surely we are going to end up living in a world with another mutating respiratory virus in it. One that carries off a few thousand sick and old folk every year, like the flu. We are reacting like this now because - so we are told - it is new and could have infected a v great many people all at once and overwhelmed everyone's health services. (As did the post WWI flu pandemic.) In a few years it will be included in the annual flu profile and we won't notice.

I cannot play chess v well, Mr Mike, but the physics lectures are fab. I also have to properly learn a CAD programme one of these days and now seems as good a time as any.

As it happens, mrs i, I tend to wash the windows - when they do get washed, that is - and I hoover the floors and iron the ironing too. This is not due to an excess of virtue on my part but more to do with the fact that the good Lord manufactured mrs m in miniature.

Mike said...

Mr mongoose: another one from the archives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_HFnNTfyU

IMHO one of the most brilliant men in British science, unbelievably shunned by the establishment because he challenged. I highly recommend searching out his Royal Institution Christmas lectures.

ultrapox said...

thank you, mrs ishmael and mr mike for your concerns over my health, and thank you mr prick for reminding me to avoid writing anything too serious or personal upon these, or any other, internet-comment-pages - i absolutely did not wish to bore the presently gathered company with my mundane medical history, yet felt it my strict, patriotic, and indeed rather laborious, duty, in this quixotic psychosomatic struggle against the serial-conning bug-pandemonium, to examine the ins-and-outs of my own pathetic predicament, in order, in the name of british socio-political progress, usefully to expand the kaffeeklatsch-delved depth and breadth of mass-observed common-knowledge upon this sorry, and sorely misinterpreted, subject.

i feel i should add - by way of conversational caution - that my lurid lurgicological findings were, in fact, completely based upon feverish speculation and summary supposition, and that - lest i was in any manner misunderstood - the have-a-go-healer relations saved both me and my cripplingly exhausted, bacon from the horrible fate of a convalescent, and eo ipso potentially lethal, isolation in accommodation without adequate, or ease of, access, to bathroom and kitchen facilities - the corrupt social-club-membership-servicing council 'round these 'ere parts, unless comprehensively cornered by collaborative community action, and kicked repeatedly in the bollocks, you understand, not giving a wholesome hostel about supporting the on-going recovery of those, cursorily and compulsively, discharged patients circumstantially made homeless by the intrinsically incapacitating nature of their infirmity.

yes, thank you, mrs ishmael, i am in considerably better, medical and social, condition this year - which is, bar the coronavirus-related cancellation of all clinical appointments, well managed - and, whilst my restitutional op has in any case been indefinitely deferred due to blood-clottery, i await to be apprised as to whether the current politically precipitated crisis of pseudo-social conscience will leave me in the lurgi-aggravated lurch any longer than would otherwise have been the eventual case.

fortunately, mr mike, i believe that by the time i was asymptomatically re-infected by last year's corona-type-coughing-bug, it was already widely circulating - but god forbid that i was a super-spreader.

in conclusion, the deplorably deteriorating and dissimulating situation à propos the phoney war-on-infection leaves me only to express the excusably neurotic notion that the neo-liberal political élite is out to get us in general, and - sparing you the dastardly details and conspiratorial causes of my debilitating internal injury - this subversive cia-syndicate's local psycho-charged, and criminally insane, chapter me in particular.

ultrapox said...

lung-damage is a clear risk-factor in cases of coronavirus-infection.

if our government were truly serious about improving the british public's health, and limiting death from the coronavirus-infection, then surely it would now strongly re-emphasize the danger of smoking, in this respect - and also more-or-less immediately introduce a ban on all non-commercial diesel vehicles.

in what could be described as the environmental crime of the century, genocidal prime minister tony blair historically encouraged private diesel-engine-use - and consequently its exhaust-pollution of deadly toxic nitrogen-dioxide - on the bogus scientific grounds that reducing carbon-dioxide-emissions would reverse short-term solar cyclical climate-change.

on political grounds, the current british government is obviously unwilling to draw the correlation between pre-existing lung-damage from smoking - or from pollution - and death in cases of people infected with the coronavirus - instead preferring to pretend that the coronavirus is an indiscriminate killer.

the uk-government will never publish statistics which show the actual smoking-related proportion of deaths which have occurred following infection with the coronavirus - because it, of course, fears destroying tobacco-industry-profits and, in turn, tobacco-related tax-income which funds the national health service.

below, i have published a link to an extremely informed scientific discussion of the biological mechanisms involved in coronavirus-infection - in the comment-section are to be found:


a) references to the reasons for pollution-and-smoking-related lung-damage creating significant risk-factors in cases of coronavirus-infection.

b) references to the reasons for ace-inhibitors - used by diabetics - creating significant risk-factors in cases of coronavirus-infection.

c) references to the theory that this current coronavirus-infection originally presented as a gastro-intestinal disease.


https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/17/angiotensin-and-the-coronavirus

ultrapox said...

oh fair enough, mrs ishmael, i appear to be out-numbered in this comment-section, and so in the name of democracy, ten-bob-trick jenrick deserves a damn good demeaning.

in france, i hear it's gonna become compulsory to wear a burqa - as protection against coronavirus-infection. you see, wearing a face-mask for health-purposes is not symbolically religious, just an act of blind bloody medical faith - nevertheless, cops are still being put on high alert for widespread clinical radicalization amongst hypochondriac christians and hospital staff, who are now also being viewed as prime potential perpetrators of bank-robbery.

when they attempted to halt short-term solar cyclical climate-change, our revered and feared authorities believed they could control nature - now they are so confident in their own powers over the natural environment that our revered and feared authorities are attempting, by issuing great edicts, to halt the immigration into our countries, and our bodies, of viruses which are just 100 nano-meters in diameter; i look up to the public officials who run our authorities, because they are such big and mighty men.

to be honest, the game's up now regarding this coronavirus-hoax, because the germ-obsessed germans have begun to carry out anti-body-tests in sample-groups of their population, and have already discovered, in one town, that 15% of its inhabitants have, although presently healthy, already at some point been infected by the coronavirus - these results almost certainly mean that the mortality-rate for coronavirus-infection will henceforth have to be down-graded to the same level as seasonal influenza, or conceivably even lower.

of course, there are still some experts who argue that the german anti-body test is inaccurately identifying other more common strains of coronavirus, or that the programme's sampling-technique is faulty, but then, by the same token, should we also perhaps question the accuracy of the antigen-test used to identify those currently infected with the coronavirus - and accordingly assume that the results of that particular test, although it is completely different in structure, are vastly over-stated too?

however, what we actually do know is that 4 common human-coronaviruses cause 15-30% of common colds, and that maybe this magnitude of result - for infection by this year's, supposedly ultra-infectious, and therefore prevalent, coronavirus - should be broadly expected.

meanwhile, the british government will never bother to do anything as eminently sensible as carry out anti-body-tests on sample-population-groups, because it wants to continue its worthless social crackdown until the end of all fucking eternity.

mrs ishmael said...

How do, mr ultra, a Happy Easter to you and to everyone lurking here on this cyber corner. I don't think mr dtp was laughing at your comment, although his comment immediately followed yours - I assumed that he was laughing at the post by mr ishmael, and had got out of synch. This is a community of respectful friends, drawn together, god knows how and by what byways, all respecting mr ishmael's rules, exchanging news, views and good ideas. Very seldom does anyone need to go to the Naughty Step.

ultrapox said...

happy easter to you, mrs ishmael, and to the rest of the congregation, including mr p, whom i cannot blame for his innate hilarity - in response to mr ishmael's investigations of a bog.

well, there's me told for being so presumptuous about my own literary importance, with a chastening spiritual scolding - and a fitting festive come-uppance no doubt for my sins of omission, the most of damnable of which, i must confess, being that i have not yet bothered finding time to read mr ishmael's actual post.

ultrapox said...

mr mike, i do not reckon that, when an, albeit nasty viral infection, no more deadly than influenza, has, of its own natural accord, already naturally circulated - or in any case will circulate - throughout the community, that being a 'super-spreader' is of great relevance.

in fact, the myth of the 'super-spreader' is only of relevance if one also believes in the coronavirus-infection as an 'indiscriminate serial killer' more dangerous than seasonal influenza, or than those nasty coughing-bugs, from which - since the corrupt political switch, to dangerously toxic diesel-fuel, from cleaner greener unleaded petrol - we have, here in london, been suffering, and indeed dying, for years.

to buy into the myth of the 'super-spreader' - it seems to me - one must equally buy into the pseudo-medical necessity of the lock-down mentality, and whilst i accept that this coronavirus-infection presents the public health problem of an extended incubation-period, and that we would not - any more than we would seasonal influenza or the common cold - deliberately wish to pass this infection onto those whose state-of-health leaves them vulnerable, i nevertheless cannot view this current coronavirus-infection, or its associated health-risks, as anything out-of-the-ordinary.

of course, what does appear definitely out-of-the-ordinary is the malicious, and politically motivated, manner in which this pre-existing coronavirus-pandemic has been disproportionately deemed to be dangerous, then unethically utilized to comprehensively curtail civil liberties - and also the malicious, politically motivated, manner in which, manipulated into starring as the pox-stricken poster-boy for some sick public health-warning, the british prime minister has been allowed to become so unnecessarily, perilously, and pathetically infected with the coronavirus that scores of starving third world children would, if it were in their godly gift, probably wish to donate their aid-dollars to the get well boris fund.

jesus christ, given the precarious present position of the uk's trade-negotiations with the european union, i consider that - when he angrily adjudged his brother's care, at 10 downing street, to be a 'shambles' - boris johnson's half-brother, max, was actually understating the gravely, and suspiciously, serious implications of this politically undermining, and leadership-liquidating, situation.

Mike said...

Mr ultra: trying to be brief in my earlier comment, I aplogise if I have caused offense with the word super-spreader in relation to your good self. Nothing personal was intended, merely pointing out the unintended consequences of this virus. I am pleased you are now in better health.

ultrapox said...

when the epidemiological exigency for this social lockdown is finally disproven, public fingers viciously pointed, and the current uk and us governments consequently discredited, i have this awful sneaking suspicion that those bloggers, who are now tirelessly campaigning to reveal this politically precipitated coronavirus-crisis as the international neurosis-inducing neo-liberal hoax it surely is, will suddenly recognize the rather key-rôle which they have been duped into playing - as disposable pawns, harnessed to the hegemonic yoke, whilst temporarily indispensable to the bigger neo-imperialist game-plan to topple trump, bump-over boris, block brexit, and generally clear the, presently populist-jammed, path for our progressive establishment's rapidly resumed prosecution of its perpetual neo-colonial war against, nominally non-white, humanity.

watch out the middle-east, watch out africa - and in particular, watch out syria, and then iran.

ultrapox said...

no offence taken, mr mike, sir - i was just following a train of thought, that's all.

you know, there are two types of people in this coronavirus-lockdown: those who chat in the street normally - and those who think they're acting the final showdown in the good, the bad and the ugly.

Dick the Prick said...

Dear Mrs Ishmael

Flourish is a strong word, I prefer 'not told me to piss off yet' but you say tomatoes as, it turns out, does everybody. I tried to read that 100 years of Solitude, someone bought me 10 'good books' type thing but it was total bollox but the same lad did Love in a time of Cholera (page turner - absorbant you see, I've been using kitchen roll but it blocks the bog) and I feel my timing may be somewhat err...pants.

She is really lovely but i've been in solitary for nearly 4 weeks and she's a muzzie girl with a 20 year old son who has a good job and she was the one who asked me out but i'm such a fucking retard. P;us it's my 45th birthday tommoz and i've only ever really loved 2 girls and I do need to get my act together a bit. I dunno - too stoned, too drunk but I thought i'd be charming today and then my phone fucked up. I'm out of err...practice...

I hope you are ok sweetie and the island is bustling around you. He would have laughed his tits off at this xx

DtP

mrs ishmael said...

Dear mr dick, happy birthday - or as happy as you can have in these difficult times. You could have come round for a glass, or bottle, of mr ishmael's Champagne, but the borders have been closed and both you and I are in solitary confinement. God speed your courtship - a proper lovejob is a rare and fine thing and needs cherishing - ply her with emails and Facetime and all that stuff that I don't understand.
Thank you for asking - I'm as well as can be expected, I guess. At the best of times the island doesn't bustle, and now the streets are deserted and there's a cold northern wind howling across the fields. And thank you for that "sweetie" - kind words are good to find.xx

Dick the Prick said...

My Darling, have my heart as Cover xx

mrs ishmael said...

Yes, mr dick, exactly so - just the right thing to say in your email bombardment of your new lady love. By the way, did you notice that mr ishmael addressed one of the pieces in the Easter Sunday Ishmael to you? You must have been having a related discussion and he continued it in that essay.
Thankyou xx

ultrapox said...

@ultrapox - 12 april 2020 at 05:00

with regard to the second paragraph of the above comment, please replace "or ease of" with "or easy".


@ultrapox - 13 april 2020 at 05:31

in the first paragraph of above comment, please delete "naturally".

furthermore, the fourth paragraph of above comment should correctly read thus:


"of course, what definitely does appear out-of-the-ordinary is the malicious, and politically motivated, manner in which this pre-existing coronavirus-pandemic has disproportionately been deemed to be dangerous, and then without any ethical, or indeed medical, justification, utilized to comprehensively curtail civil liberties - however, what strikes one as even more irregular is the highly insidious manner in which, manipulated into starring as the pox-stricken poster-boy for some sick public health-warning, the british prime minister has been permitted to become infected with the dreaded coronavirus to such an unnecessary, perilous, and pathetic degree that, were it in their godly gift, scores of starving third world children would most probably feel obliged to donate their life-preserving aid-dollars directly to the get well boris fund."


@ultrapox - 13 april 2020 at 07:49

with respect to the above comment, the latter section of its first paragraph should read as follows:


"i have this awful sneaking suspicion that those bloggers who are now instinctively setting fire to the evidence-dry pandemic-narrative, by tirelessly campaigning to reveal this politically precipitated coronavirus-crisis as the international neurosis-inducing neo-liberal hoax it surely is, will suddenly recognize the rather key-rôle which they have been duped into playing - namely of disposable pawns, harnessed to the hegemonic yoke, yet temporarily indispensable to the bigger neo-imperialist game-plan of toppling trump, bumping-over boris, blocking brexit, and generally clearing the, presently populist-jammed, path for our progressive establishment's rapidly resumed prosecution of its perpetual neo-colonial war against, nominally non-white, humanity."


blimey, nearly one year has passed us by since these comments were originally posted, and yet the absurdly rationalized carousel of relentless civic repression still grinds 'round - gruesomely executing its blithe blitzkrieg of erratically established righteousness - meanwhile, of course, the illegitimately intimate accompaniment to this fraud-filled fairground-showpiece of democratic distraction, the coca-cum-cava-clinking cavalcade of uncivil corruption, rolls right on regardless.