Sunday, 30 May 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 30/5/21

56 year old father-of-six marries.

Spontaneous, sexually incontinent, insouciant father of Lara Lettice, 26, Milo Arthur, 24, Cassia Peaches, 22, Theodore Apollo, 20, Stephanie,12, and Wilfrid, 1, has done the decent thing by marrying his mistress in a nuptial mass at the Catholic Westminster Cathedral. Evidently not a practicing Catholic, baptised into the One True Faith but confirmed in the Anglican heresy, it looks like Boris is not picky about the finer details of difference in the many branches of Christianity, nor in matters of belief, doctrine or dogma. As he didn't marry his previous wives according to the rites of the Roman Catholic church, those women were no more than sinners in the eyes of the Church and therefore no impediment to Boris - (as long as he said Sorry for that and I promise not to do it again, within Confession), marrying his Catholic mistress (as long as she said sorry for being a mistress and having a bastard child, within Confession) from marrying for the first time - yes, such is the logic-chopping that enabled Father Daniel Humphreys to bestow the great Sacrament of Matrimony upon those children of Mother Church, Boris and Carrie.

As a lapsed Catholic myself, I have intellectual respect for those who have managed to throw off the shackles of early indoctrination, but our lad has done no such thing - he seems to simply and consistently do what is convenient at the time. It may work in one's private life - although the trail of failed marriages, relationships and casually-fathered children in Boris' wake kinda suggests it doesn't really, but honestly, is this any way to run a country? His former right-hand man, Dominic Cummings, doesn't think so. The whiff of a PR stunt to distract from Cummings' revelations (Westminster spite is the spiteiest) clings to this hastily arranged wedding (the original plan was for something grand, splendid and even more expensive than the redecorating project that so enraged the nation's B&Qers, scheduled for Saturday, July 30th 2022) Doubtless this devout pair simply couldn't continue to live in sin for a moment longer than necessary.

Wearing that nice white linen shirt that he sported in the Rose Garden, last year, Dominic, (educated Durham School, fees £15,993 per annum day pupil, values: "moral integrity, ambition, responsibility and kindness, which are the Mark of a Durham School education and give our pupils Confidence for Life"): dished the dirt for 7 hours. Dom graduated from Exeter College, where he took a First in Ancient and Modern History. He was described by one of his tutors as "someone determined to bring down things that don't work."

He said Boris was unfit for office.

No! Really? What else, Dom?

Carrie, now Mrs Johnson the Third, was desperate to get Dom sacked, and get her chums into top jobs.

Well, we kinda knew that, too, Dom. What else?

In February 2020, instead of getting to grips with a pandemic plan, Boris was: "distracted by finalising his divorce, his girlfriend wanted to announce being pregnant and an engagement, and his finances".

Got anything else, Dom?

Key people went skiing in February.

And?

He didn't go to Cobra. Five times. But he would only have been flippant.

What else? In March, Donald Trump asked if Boris would join in a potential bombing campaign in Iraq. And Carrie was upset about her dog. And nobody paid any attention to my plan.

What plan was this?

And?

People were trying to break into my house to kill me and my family, so I had to leave London.

What else you got, Dom?

Nicola Sturgeon attended the devolved governments' meetings then went straight out and gabbled on to camera.

Okay.....

That Matt Hancock, he's a liar.

We know.

Here you go, folks, we are governed by a bunch of dilettantes who are completely out of their depth in matters not pertaining to their immediate personal wealth, comfort and status. Cummings suggested that when the choice was between being governed by BoJo the Hoho or Corbyn, then matters had come to a desperate pass. Would we fare any better with Captain Hindsight?

All this plays straight into the hands of those who would break up the Union. Cue Gordon the Ruiner, lurking in the far North Lands, and galloping to the rescue. He has his own Thinktank: Our Scottish Future.

He commented: "Middle Scotland's support for the SNP is conditional - and they are now asking for honesty, for openness and for getting the facts on the table.....it is time for the SNP to agree to hold public hearings on what independence means for everything from the pound to the pension."
And Nicola is stalking around on her six inch killer heels, saying ye ken? they Westminster barmpots, it's nae wonder I led the Scoatisch people the way they needed to be led. Her spokesman said:"if even half of the shambolic picture Dominic Cummings has painted of the Tories' chaotic response to the pandemic is true then it proves the First Minister was absolutely right to take the initiative to help keep people safe."

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We might have fared better had this chap succeeded in his leadership bid in the 2019 contest for leadership of the Conservative Party.

Despite winning the backing of several senior cabinet ministers, he was eliminated, and subsequently resigned from the Conservative Party. He did have a go at the 2021 London Mayoral election, but withdrew after the election was postponed due to Covid-19, saying he could not maintain a very lengthy campaign against the deep pockets of the Labour and Conservative campains. Shame. An intelligent man, with integrity. Would make a refreshing change in politics.Mr Ishmael rated him very highly - here's his review of Stewart's book: The Places in Between.

THE BOOK PAGE, RORY STEWART, THE PLACES IN BETWEEN. 7/3/2010

A travel book without pictures is hard travelling, but hard travelling is Rory Stewart's Zen-hobo schtick, Woody Guthrie meets Lawrence of Arabia, not for him a Land Rover to Kandahar, and a film crew; no, a modest, unsupported, blistering walk along the old Silk Road across Afghanistan; eat your heart out, Eddie Izzard, celebrity Marathon Man - isn't he the most revolting of transvestites, all these things he does, for charity ? - but probably Stewart's rucksack, filled with antibiotics and notepads, had no room for a digital camera and so The Places In Between has no illustrations, save a few wee maps, schoolboy stuff, or junior officers, for the use of. It will, however, be a conscious, editorial judgement, not to have pictures, the prose requiring none, presumably; that's a moot point, at least it is around here, in bonny Scotland, and the spartan and entirely unnecessary omission of illustrations is a huge irritation to we miserable few who are not globe-trotters. Although the book, the stuff it relates, is different enough to merit perseverance, some illustration of the scale and barrenness of Afghanistan would have helped, without distracting; there is a happier medium, between film and prose. I learned recently that Stewart has the snaps and that he lectures around the world about his journey, utilising them in a quaint slideshow -see YouTube Rory Stewart Lectures parts 1 - infinity - but my edition of the book has nothing to ventilate his meetings with remarkable mullahs, headmen and shapeshifting warriors - one minute Taliban, the next fighting for the puppet government of Karsai the Pimp in a war without end, Bismillah. Stewart reveals that it is often brother against brother and then brothers against cousins and then cousins against the next village and so on, comprehension of the hostilities impossible, even to those involved. Rory, perhaps casting around for a project to enhance his extraordinary cv - Guards officer, governor of an Iraq province, writer, film-maker and now Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, and all whilst still resembling a sixth former - hit upon the idea of tracing the steps of a mediaeval Moghul emperor across parts of the Old Silk Road, where the villages, caravanserai-style, are never more than a day's march apart and wherein - an Islamic rule - he must be given hospitality and shelter, however poor his hosts. He remarks, tellingly, that in many villages people dined mainly on Naan bread, there was neither power nor sanitation, the only evidence of technology being the ubiquitous Kalashnikov propped against the wall, a mute, potential contradiction to the weighty and convoluted etiquette of successive village elders. Here, says Stewart, loyalties shift like desert sand. He knew most of this stuff before he set off in the steps of Babur the Great, yet he went unarmed and alone, relying on his wits and his knowledge of Persian dialects to see him through a hostile terrain, in deep snow and likely to encounter many with reason to suspect, hate or kill him. Hard travelling such as this would be a commendable feat in the Lake District; in Afghanistan, now or at any time I suppose, it was Odyssean Homeric. Claiming it for himself by citing it in his bogus political heroes, Prime Minister Snot has devalued courage as he has devalued the pound and the nation, the horrible fucking bastard. The staggeringly narcissistic, one-trick pony and busted-flush Messiah, Obamalama, writes acres of glowing, flowery pages devoted to his own entirely unremarkable yet by his own lights heroic journey - his Da left his Ma and he is of mixed race parentage, No Shit? And don't call him Barry, he courageously prefers Barack, that's about it, now that he travels Air Force One Class, in the middle of an army of crophead pyschopaths. Rory Stewart, should he be elected, will be a rarity, perhaps unique in UK politics, a person of real, demonstrated courage, insight and ingenuity. The Places In Between can be read as largely apolitical but then Animal Farm can be read as a fairy story and to miss the politics of either is to miss the point. Stewart, in his succession of meetings with Afghani men - it is nearly always men, is observing power, not of a party political kind, the kind which so taints and corrodes our own societies but of a more robust and potentially explosive nature, the sort which comes from the barrel of a gun or a knife in the back. Towards the end of the book Stewart lets rip at the futility, the stupidity and the arrogance of the current Infidel presence in that distant shithole. Oh, he almost cries, the impudence of these Presbyterian mass murderers and their careerist public administrators. Having chronicled the disparate feudalities of a dog's breakfast of a land, often living several centuries in the past, Stewart contrasts this Devil's melange with the air-conditioned youngsters doing Obama's and Brown's vain, stupid opportunistic bidding in Afghanistan's beleaguered capital, trying to impose on this alien place a set of spurious values to which even they do not hold:

"I doubted that the new policy makers in Kabul understood much of this. For the last three months, whenever I reached an internet cafe, I had received an email from someone who had gone to govern Afghanistan. They started passing the UN application forms around in 2001 and then the circulars appeared: "Please don't expect to write to this email - there is no internet connection in Kabul. " Finally, there were messages from new addresses "@pak.id" "@afghangov.org" "'@worldbank.org" "@un.org," talking about the sun in the mountains. I now had half a dozen friends working in embassies, thinktanks, international development agencies, the UN and the Afghan government, controlling projects worth millions of dollars. A year before they had been in Kosovo or East Timor and in a year's time they would have been moved to Iraq or Washington or New York. Their objective was (to quote the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan) "The creation of a centralised, broad-based, multi-ethnic government committed to democracy, human rights and the rule of law". They worked twelve- or fourteen- hour days, drafting documents for heavily-funded initiatives on "democratisation", "enhancing capacity", "gender", "sustainable development," "skills training" or "protection issues". They were mostly in their late twenties or early thirties, with at least two degrees - often in international law, economics or development. They came from middle class backgrounds in Western countries and in the evenings they dined with each other and swapped anecdotes about corruption in the Government and the incompetence of the United Nations. They rarely drove their 4WDs outside Kabul because they were forbidden to do so by their security advisers. There were people who were experienced and well informed about conditions in rural areas of Afghanistan. But such people were barely fifty individuals out of many thousands. Most of the policy makers knew next to nothing about the villages where 90% of the population of Afghanistan lived. They came from post-modern, secular, globalised states with liberal traditions in law and government. It was natural for them to initiate projects on urban design, women's rights and fibre-optic cable networks, to talk about transparent, clean and accountable processes, tolerance and civil society and to speak of a people "who desire peace at any cost and understand the need for a centralised multi-ethnic government". But what did they understand of the thought processes of Seyyed Kerbalahi's wife who had not moved more than 5 kilometres from her home in forty years? Or Dr. Habibullah, the vet, who carried an automatic weapon the way they carried a brief case? The villagers whom I had met were mostly illiterate, far from electricity or television, knew very little about the outside world and had very distinctive attitudes towards politics, Islam and ethnicity. The people of Kamenj understood political power in terms of their feudal lord Haji Mohsin Khan. Ismael Khan, in Herat, wanted a social order based on Iranian political Islam. Hazara such as Ali hated the idea of centralised government because they associated it with the domination of other ethnic groups and with their suffering under the Taliban. These differences between groups were deep, elusive and very difficult to overcome. Village democracy, gender issues and centralisation would be difficult concepts to sell in some areas. Their policy makers did not have the time, structures or resources for a serious study of an alien culture. They justified their lack of knowledge and experience by focusing on poverty and implying that dramatic cultural differences did not exist. They acted as though villagers were interested in all the priorities of international organisations, even when they were mutually contradictory."

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister Snot, the horrible fucking bastard, cannot deliver a fit-for-purpose national health service or police service or education system or pension arrangements or immigration policy or transport infrastructure or energy-delivery policy and the legislature he heads is as full of thieves as is Mr Karzai the Pimp's family. Meddling all over the world, like some far-sighted visionary, some adroit global-scaled public administrator here, at home, Brown is such an incompetent, despised, risible figure of contempt and ridicule that he cannot even sack the members of his cabinet of all the fools. Barack Obama, both nigger-made-good and suave, urban sophisticate, cannot even deliver a health service of any kind, cannot rebuke the thieves on Wall Street, nor deny the impetus of Uncle Sam's all-consuming military-industrial complex. What place have knaves and gobby dimwits such as these, Brown and Obama, YesWeCanning, in the proxy management of complex, ancient, tribal Afghanistan, whilst their own nations slide into police-state repression, austerity and Ruin? And crucially the so called insurgency in Afghanistan has killed nearly three hundred British citizens without Ahmed even having to get a passport or a UK visa. By what deranged arithmetic does Field Marshall Snot, tearing his nails in the wee small hours, make sense of this madness? Sending Tommy as a propitiatory human sacrifice is not actually defeating terrorism, simply making it easier for those who would kill us to do so. Rory Stewart's book tells us of an Afghanistan which the BBC and skymadeupnewsandfilth, embedded, compliant, never visit. It is a real place and foreign - and it will not easily bend itself to globalisation or the New World Order of Mandelstein and Merkel and the French dwarf - none of whom would ever risk a hair on their heads for their countries, fuck, no; vous etes 'avin le laff, n'est ce pas. Proper book critics have hailed The Places In Between as a Bostin', Dog's Bollocks of a Travel Book and it may be that here we over-interpret its tales. I learned more, however, than I ever have about Afghanistan from reading it and for me the wee man's subliminal authorial message is the same as the one he recently delivered about Iraq - we shouldn't be there.

The Places In Between is in a library near you.

Ed. note: Rory Stewart OBE FRSGS FRSL (born 3 January 1973), is a British diplomat, author, explorer, academic and politician, who is a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs where he teaches politics and international relations. Prior to this appointment, he served in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom as Secretary of State for International Development from May to July 2019. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Penrith and The Border from 2010 to 2019.

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Both anthologies of the work of mr ishmael and his young Polish friend, Stanislav, Plumb Cheap for You: Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack - are available to purchase for mere money at Lulu or Amazon. It is cheaper to buy from Lulu. Here's how to buy your own copies:

Please register an account with them first. This will save you a couple of quid, as going straight into the link provided below seems to make paypal think it's ok to charge in dollars, and apply their own conversion rate, which will put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow our link; a pop-up box asks for age confirmation - simply set the date to (say) 1 January 1960, and proceed. (If you type the title, the anthology will not appear as a search result until the "show explicit content" box - found at the bottom left by scrolling down - has been checked. You may also see the age verification box, as above, at this point.)

The full title is "Vent Stack love from stanislav" by ishmael smith, and the cover you'll see is red with white titles and a picture of Buster the Previous Blog Dog having a green thought in a green shade.

Link for the paperback:

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/vent-stack/paperback/product-q8jzk2.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Or...

shorter link, which might make it easier if you wish to paste it into an email and tell a friend:

https://tinyurl.com/naajavmu

Honest, Not Invent is available in paperback or hardback.

Link for Hard Back :

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/hardcover/product-njr7vg.html

Link for Paper Back :

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/paperback/product-wq2kpg.html

At checkout, try WELCOME15 or TREAT15 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, the book (including delivery to a UK address) should cost £10.89

Sunday, 23 May 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 23/05/2021

William Wordsworth tells us that poetry is the "the overflow of feelings, recollected in tranquility". By that measure, this unfortunate young woman must be a poet. Maybe not. She certainly enjoys the overflow of feelings, but I doubt she has experienced a moment's tranquility in her life. The pop song and the video are her representation of her suicide attempt, albeit prettily dressed with perfect hair and make up, looking like a child's image of an angel. I actually find it shocking, this callous milking of hospitalisation and near death for the purposes of fame and fortune.

As you know, I don't keep up with popular music, and until mr verge brought this person to my attention, I had never heard of Demetria Devonne Lovato, who now wishes to be referred to in the plural. She was born on August 20, 1992 and is described on her Wiki page as an American singer and actor. Exploitation started early for her - aged 10, she appeared on the children's tv series Barney & Friends 2002-2004. Having got off to a thoroughly bad start in life, she has ensured that she has remained in the limelight ever since. She is now busily working the rich seam of gender and identity politics, and has announced that she is non-binary and wants to be referred to as they or them. She, he or it, or possibly they, them or we, has a new podcast series called 4D with Demi Lovato, in which the non-binary identity will be explored with a variety of guests and conversations will be had that "transcend the typical discourse".

Is it a coincidence that Demi Lovato anagrams into To Void Male?

Another, considerably more serious, transgender horror story:

A man named Allan Brennan sexually abused four young girls between 1998 and 2016. He is now a 54 year old father of two children. At his trial at York Crown Court, one victim statement said: "Anything that this evil man gets won’t be enough for what he’s done to me and my family.” Another victim spoke of her “pain and suffering over the last 21 years. I had minimum understanding of what was happening to me. The comprehension of what happened to me as a child makes me sick to my stomach."

Allan Brennan has now chosen to identify as a woman called Jessica Brennan. Newspaper headlines described this person as "An evil woman has been jailed for 22 years" and went on to report that "She tried to rape one of the victims and another girl was subjected to systematic abuse over the course of a decade, which involved “multiple” incidents. She groomed then sexually assaulted the children at least 86 times."

I have no idea about Brennan's undoubtedly complex psycho-sexual functioning and his reasons for now wishing to be called a woman. But - these offences were committed when Brennan identified as, and physically was, a man. To now call him a woman, by his choice, must seriously mess up the statistics for sexual offending. It has been fairly well accepted that sexual offending is a man's crime and that women are involved primarily under some form of coercion. For the offences of men to now be ascribed to women is to render impossible any serious analysis of sexual crime.

What about this one?

Paul Wilson, also known as Melissa Wilson, pleaded guilty before Liverpool Crown Court to using public libraries to access child pornography. Wilson - who has gender dysphoria and "identifies as a female even though she was born as a male", according to the defence, as well as Asperger's syndrome and multiple personality disorder - had bypassed library security systems to search for "Harry Potter erotica with a focus on Hermione Granger", as well as "children porn" and "young girls modelling underwear" at Liverpool Central Library and Toxteth Library "almost every other day". The Court was told that a confession had been received by police in the form of a letter from Wilson in the name of Dan Thompson because, his defence lawyer said, Wilson wanted to go back to prison because "she feels safer and happier in that environment."

Wilson was sentenced to 32 months which (s)he is currently serving at HMP Altcourse, a men's prison.

Or this one?

Andrew McNab, a sex offender, convicted in 2011 for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and subject to an Order requiring him to report his whereabouts, activities and aliases, was brought before Teeside Crown Court for failing to tell authorities that he now identifies as a woman, having changed his name by deed poll to Chloe Thompson. In the ten years since that order was imposed, he has breached it eleven times. He has set up a TikTok account in order to contact children. On the 19th May, the Northern Echo reported: "Judge Recorder Nicholas Lumley QC sentenced her to a four month custodial sentence, suspended for 12 months, issued them with a 12 month community order and imposed 20 days of rehabilitation activity requirement days."

Okay, the syntax is getting way complicated, but something deeply disturbing is happening right under our noses. In the reluctance to be seen as judgemental or discriminatory, liberal thought is creating conditions in which it is becoming impossible to protect the vulnerable from those who would prey upon them and will use fashionable identity politics to pursue their ends. And I grant you, these predators are deeply disturbed themselves, but, for the sake of the greater good our institutions, authorities and laws should not be swayed into accepting that the sun is the moon, just because they say it is.

Here's mr ishmael, on matters not entirely unrelated, following the Liberal Democrats Conference in September 2010, when Clegg took the Party into Coalition with the Conservatives:

2/10/2010

It's not entirely a joke, all this stuff about the Cleggies being, well, you know, unduly fascinated, obsessed, even, by bottom parts. The recent Power At Last, Great God A'mighty, Power At Last Conference was, in parts, an actual freak show, a morning, it seemed, given over to the shrill - or not so shrill - demands of the BGLT sandwichers, gays who wanted a gayer world, a rasping ladyman called Jenny who demanded, sulky and wanton, that ladymen be treated just the same as proper natural ladies; Straight Simon Hughes, all warty and ingratiating, offering himself up to humanity's diversity, I'll fuck anyone who votes for me, and loves me, a little bit and former TopGayOldBill, the revolting Brian Paddick wanting everything and wanting it now, Sunshine. Just a nice morning of heterophobia, even the non-homos clapping like self-hating seals at each new outrageous and abominable demand.

Paddick, Steven, Simon and the rest, that ghastly ladyman, Jenny, at the LibDems staged conference are just old-fashioned embittered fucking misanthropes, spiteful malcontents, upsetting their parents like that; they should, all of them, men dressing as nuns, bearded ladies with Adam's Apples and dykes in brogues, just join the Old Bill and beat-up on ordinary people officially. And as for transgender surgery which the LibDems want made available on demand, what on Earth is all that about if its not malcontentism running riot through Ruin's consulting rooms, why don't the doctors just tell them to fuck off, like they should ?

I mean, if I went into psycho-sexual counselling and said Look, Doc, can you fix it for me to have two cocks, and right big ones, one at the front and one round the back, only nowhere near the wotsaname thing, the anus, above, far enough above it so's a nice pair of balls can hang down and not get all covered in poo-poo, you know, and not get all crushed-up when I sit down, maybe cut out a new pocket or something, you surgeons are clever......? Say that again, Mr Ishmael, you want me to transplant an extra cock and balls onto your arse...is that it...? Yes, Doc, I'm serious. You see I'm actually a bi-phallic man trapped in a uni-phallic existence, and I am so unhappy, I've been unhappy since I first started having erections and noticing there was only one of them....There's only supposed to be one of them, Mr Ishmael.... But if a bloke is born a bloke and wants to be a woman, claims he's been, wotsaname, wrongly assigned, then you have no problem cutting his balls out and shoving his scrotum up inside like a vagina and reducing his John Thomas to clitoris-size? That's what you do, isn't it? It is fucking grotesque and you all oughta be up before the BMA, not that they're any good for fuck all, the mentors of Harold Shipman. But the police, certainly, they should be talking to the surgeons about mutilating folk like that, they should all be banged up.

It's almost a byword here, that scrotum- sanding story, but for newcomers, it was in England, about fifteen-twenty years ago, there was a group of blokes, don't know if they were LibDems or not, probably, met-up regularly and applied Black and Decker sanders to each others Crown Jewels. The judge ruled it illegal, even among consenting offenders. You're not doing any of that shit in my jurisdiction, he said, no matter how much you like it, I don't give a learned flying fuck about consent, this is bad shit and banged the freaks up for a few months. They were also nailing each others' foreskins to the workbench, consensually and with great mutual respect, knobheads.

But it seems relatively harmless, compared to that ladyman Sunday Roast carve-up shit. Take a perfectly good set of meat and potatoes, hack it to bits, turn it inside out and shove it up inside where it hadn't ever oughta be......That's different, it's about personal fulfillment....... Fulfillment my arse, how is it different, Doc, it's worse, much worse than me wanting two cocks; I wanna stay a man, for fucks sake, I just wanna have two cocks so's I can, y'know, so's I can entertain two ladies at the same time. Twice the fun. For me, anyway. And how would that BLGT gang react if they couldn't get in to have their balls scooped out of their scrotums,like they were bits of melon, or Stilton cheese, the mad fucking bastards, because the place was full up of normal heterosexual geezers having penile and testicular enhancement surgery? The size twelve stilleto'd be on the other foot then and no fucking mistake. Sarah-George Brown'd be up in fucking arms. See what Brian Paddick has to say about that, the silly LibDem fucker. Invented for the likes of Paddick, the LibDems. Married, now, to a Norwegian bloke he is.

But only in Norway. Go down a bomb that will, with the voters of London.

Would-be Mayor Paddick, in an artistic moment.

Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree, I want everybody to be free but no, it's not funny, a man demanding two cocks, just because he's unhappy with one. And it's not funny, a man demanding to be surgically altered, just because he really, really wants to be. And to those who join, supportively, in that absurd clamour, those like Sarah Brown, the greater opprobrium attaches. There is only so much about which we can protest, and there is already plenty without this bollocks. There is no such thing as a legitimate transgender cause, about which people should march, or fundraise, there are just whining arseholes, unhappy with their lives. Fuck 'em. There may well be cases, however, where Nature has been insufficiently determinate at conception and which require surgery at birth or in infancy.

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The Ameriguns

Did you come across this in the week's news?

America has more firearms than people - an estimated 390 million in a population of about 331 million though some experts believe the real figure could be close to double that when unregistered weapons are factored in.

Gabriele Galimberti, photographer, saw a great book opportunity.He contacted more than 500 people on Facebook groups for firearm enthusiasts. Fifty agreed to pose for him with their gun collections. His resulting photographs are fairly jaw-dropping - these are a sample.

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In other news:

Eurovision Humiliation

Don't Care.

The song was shit, I'm told. Not that it matters. We were always going to get a kicking.

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Sunday Morning Sick Dog Blues.

Mr. Harris, Gentleman, of Lanarkshire, Harris and Orkney, is unwell. He stands in a distinguished line of Yorkshire Terriers. Have I told you this before? First, Frankie Sweetheart Smith came to live with us. He was a chunky boy, whiteish, and I adored him. He was the first dog I'd ever had to live with me, although mr ishmael had prior experience of dog ownership, and so he was most amenable when our friend Pat told us Frankie's hard luck story. Frankie's human dad had been admitted to a respite facility for palliative care - ominous words, so his little companion couldn't go with him. Pat was looking for another family to adopt him - she couldn't herself as she already had two huge, soulful, greedybastard Labradors living with her. Frankie cheerfully adapted himself to his changed circumstances, which involved walks, baths, gourmet grub and many very comfy beds. Charming towards humans, he couldn't abide small, yappy dogs. He died on the road outside our house under the wheels of a chap who was absolutely devastated, and no doubt will drive more mindfully in future - but too late for inoffensive Frankie Sweetheart, who had taken advantage of an open door to launch what turned out to be a kamikaze attack on the two small dogs on the other side of the road. mr ishmael, sitting in the road, blood on his jeans, cradling his little friend as the light went out in his eyes, was inconsolable, as was I. He decided that the only thing to be done to get over our mutual grief was to adopt another little dog in need of a home. So we went to a Yorkshire Terrier Rescue Centre and came home with an 8 year old, neurotic, hyper sensitive quivering bundle of nerves and yap called Pepi. Straight to the vet who said the best thing to do was to kill him. He'd got destroyed kidneys and Kennel Cough from the Rescue Centre.We took him home, kept him warm and hydrated and stopped him running about like loonytunes by putting him into a soft crate. Mr ishmael phoned an old boy who was a Yorkie specialist, who prescribed Buttercup Syrup. The cough was dreadful but the Buttercup Syrup sorted it out and the little dog slowly recovered, without any help from the murderous vetbastard, and lived for a further 8 years. Mr ishmael decided that a large part of the problem was Pepi's name. He thought Pepi needed a name to toughen him up, give him something to swagger about - a boxer's name. So he called him Rocky, after Rocky Marciano, or, possibly, Rocky Graziano. His Imperial Majesty, Rocky-Woo Smith.

Pretty soon, mr smith found it increasingly difficult to leave His Excellency at home whilst he went to the shop, so he would leave later and later, playing his guitar to Rocky-Woo, who was particularly fond of guitar. So mr ishmael thought the best thing to do was to get Rocky-Woo a dog of his own to be his companion in order to allow mr ish to go to work. The little dog who came to live with us had been rescued from a puppy farm, where he was a stud dog, had never been in a house, climbed stairs, been toilet trained, worn a collar or a lead. He was a little barbarian. Rocky-Woo taught him everything he knew, which was considerable, and was rewarded by the incomer periodically leaping onto his back and sinking his teeth into the back of his neck. He would also creep up behind humans and bite their ankles before darting away to dig a hole in the garden to hide in. Operating on the same naming principle, mr ishmael bestowed on this unnamed stud dog - he'd previously only had a number - the name of Buster, channelling American heavy weight boxers, including Buster Mathis and Buster Douglas. Of course, Buster rapidly became corrupted into BusTerminnel. Somewhere along the line Barney joined the household - Barney was a collie, about five times the size of Buster, who was an equal opportunities kinda aggressor and meted out to Barney the leaping-on-the-back-and-sinking-teeth-into-neck routine.

Buster, of course, has enduring fame as Buster the BlogDog: https://mrishmael.blogspot.com/search?q=In+search+of+little+Buster

Following the passing of his warm brown friend, mr ishmael endured the state of doglessness for quite a while, before launching a full-on dogsearch which culminated in Mr Harris entering our lives. He already had a fine name of his own, having been named for the island of Harris, where his people had liked to holiday, and he was in need of a home. Mr Harris, Gentleman of Lanarkshire, was mr ishmael's constant, close companion during his illnesses. Harry is ten years old now, and his pancreatitis has required several hospitalisations in the last 12 months. He has now developed diabetes in consequence of his compromised pancreas. mr ishmael would say Harris just wants to be like me. They love him at the vet's and he likes going there - they have opioids. He'll be home soon and I'll be having to mince chicken to disguise his meds and he'll be needing insulin.

I note that, following the death of his beloved golden Labrador, Nigel; Monty Don, target of much ishmaelian abuse, has taken to being seen on camera with his little Yorkie, Patti, tucked under his arm: