Sunday 10 October 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 10/10/2021

 
Rowan - Sorbus Aucuparia
It is definitely Autumn,  Ishmaelites, the foraging, hedgewitchery  season, but let us still look to the sunlit uplands, under the blue sky thinking and gaze out onto the clear blue waters, which are not full of migrants come to England to make better life. 
Oops, maybe we'd better give the French the £30 million they have requested to pay for increased patrols along the French coast to turn back migrants. Apparently, 12,500 migrants have crossed the Channel and made safe landing this year.  The £30 million could pay for more rubber bullets to stop the problem at source: on September 22nd, allegedly, French police fired rubber bullets at migrants attempting to cross the English Channel. One chap described the shooting, which allegedly took place on September 22, at point blank range. “When the police saw us, they shouted stop. We stopped and they still shot us. Then we ran away as best we could”. It was reported by the Daily Mail that two Iranian Kurds were hospitalised by their injuries, one with a fractured leg, the other with a broken hand. The shooting allegedly occurred on a Dunkirk beach five miles from an area where hundreds of migrants live in camps among the woods awaiting their turn to cross into England. Investigations by French national police authorities into the incident are ongoing. A full and far-reaching cover-up will, no doubt, ensue.
 
So it seems we now have a UK Health Security Agency. Wow. Will they be armed, this new security agency, all the better to conduct stop, search and insert long probes up nostrils? What sort of uniform? 

Not white, as it shows all the stains. 
Maybe blood red. Or pus yellow.

 Who would be best placed to lead the new agency into containment and control of bio hazards? 
A new career adventure for Dame Watercress Cock – even more citizen-suspects to secure and neutralize with maximum and extreme force.
 
All the Economist Pundits are saying Boris doesn’t understand economics, that his efforts to level up and stop the owners  of companies from growing their British Business Profits through cheap foreign labour are as wrong headed as the repeal of the Corn Laws, that having low-paid workers actually helps the British working man to be prosperous, healthy, well-clothed, shod and fed, and that what needs to happen is that the British working man and woman are employed in highly skilled middleclass jobs whilst foreign labour toils away for tuppence an hour harvesting, waiting tables, making beds for tourists (and jumping into them for a tip), changing nappies and wiping drool off the geriatric population.
 
Hah! I say to the Economist Pundits – get yourselves into the social housing hinterlands of our Great British Cities and observe for yourselves the generational unemployment and the wholly Alternative Culture in which crime is as normal and accepted as breathing, and is funded in its contrarian attitudes by the state. Observe the breeding grounds of abuse. See uncontrolled  psychopathy stalking the corridors and hallways of tower blocks. See neglected, illiterate, but very clean children reared by American gangsta rap culture and Influencers. Then go away and do some proper economic thinking that will replace this pestilence with full employment, the dignity of work, self-respect and honour.
 
I’m not saying that this dire state of affairs has been brought about by the welfare state, the nhs and youtube over the last 70 years. After all, Hogarth showed us gin-sodden London reality 

Not much change here, then

 in the eighteenth century, babies falling from the breast, women evicted into the street through the fecklessness of their husbands who owned them, their dowries and their bodies. 

In the nineteenth century Dickens exposed the miseries of the poor. 

And in the twentieth century Hitler undertook slum clearance of our major cities, which, incidentally exposed the dreadful living conditions of the majority of the urban population. 
Of course there's been progress: we have social media and TV with pretend murders as entertainment rather than public executions. And Food Banks.

I’m complaining that the massive state expenditure aimed at lifting people out of poverty actually seems to have had the reverse effect and there should be a better solution – one that fits together like a dovetail joint the vacant posts with unemployed people in this country. 
Maybe not that.
Like the rest of Britain, Orkney cannot fully staff its care homes. Even before Brexit, there were large numbers of vacancies. Agency staff at great expense are brought in, willing enough to work when their housing is provided free of charge, their trips home are paid for and their hourly rate is such that the permanently employed are spitting blood in the local press. You will remonstrate with me and say – mrs ishmael, the unemployed people live in the cities of the south and they don’t want to move to Bloody Orkney.* They are comfortable where they are, surrounded by their families. Well, how come there are Polish people willing to leave their families and travel the length of continental Europe to work in England? How about imbuing British people with some of that spirit of adventure and self-improvement? And provide the financial rewards that will fund that adventure? (As with the agency staff).

*Bloody Orkney
This bloody town's a bloody cuss No bloody trains, no bloody bus, And no one cares for bloody us In bloody Orkney.
The bloody roads are bloody bad,The bloody folks are bloody mad, They'd make the brightest bloody sad,In bloody Orkney.
All bloody clouds,and bloody rains,No bloody kerbs, no bloody drains,The Council's got no bloody brains,In bloody Orkney.
Everything's so bloody dear,A bloody bob, for bloody beer,
And is it good? - no bloody fear,In bloody Orkney.
The bloody 'flicks'are bloody old,The bloody seats are bloody cold,You can't get in for bloody gold In bloody Orkney.
The bloody dances make you smile,The bloody band is bloody vile,It only cramps your bloody style,In bloody Orkney.
No bloody sport, no bloody games,No bloody fun, the bloody dames Won't even give their bloody names In bloody Orkney.
Best bloody place is bloody bed,With bloody ice on bloody head,You might as well be bloody dead,In bloody Orkney.
There's nothing greets your bloody eye But bloody sea and bloody sky,'Roll on demob!' we bloody cry In bloody Orkney.
 
by Captain Hamish Blair - Written whilst on service in Orkney during the Second World War and prompting this response from an Orcadian, which kind of proves Captain Blair's point:
 
Captain Hamish 'Bloody' Blair
Isnae posted here nae mair
But no-one seems tae bloody care
In bloody Orkney.
 
 
No sense of irony, some people. Huge confidence, though.

I see that American Christian fundamentalist attempts to force women to have babies against their will have suffered a setback. No doubt they will fight back, as they seem to think there’s a people shortage or something.
 
And, in other news, the Army has been called in to help deal with what the Tories have taken to calling the EFFing issues (Energy, Food, Fuel). So we're alright, then, as mr ishmael reported in 2011:
 
A FERAL UNDERCLASS 8/9/2011 

 
THE QUEEN'S OWN LANCASHIRE NANCYBOYS.

Brigadier-General Rupert Golightly-Jockstrap today insisted that his men were all splendid fellows, to a manjack of them they do a magnificent job, with great professionalism, grunted the useless bastard. You know, people sitting at home in comfort have no idea how hard it is for heavily armed psychobastards to kick a defenceless civilian to death, dragging entirely blameless nigger individuals from their homes and workplaces, beating them, starving them, sexually assaulting them  and jumping on their heads is real man's work and I'm happy to say that all the men under my command are either capable of doing it to the best of their abilities or of covering it all up and fixing the courts martial; which amounts to the same thing. God Save The Queen.
...................................................................................

 Returning to the EFFing issues, Andrew Marr today interviewed a most personable young man, Stephen Fitzpatrick, who explained simply and clearly how the energy industry is fucked. The cheap energy suppliers, to whom all the clever, I-know-best consumers switched their business to save a bob or two, were insufficiently hedged. I shall set about explaining this industry term by way of an unnecessarily complicated analogy, with the help of Donald Rumsfeld, in order to establish my credentials as an Economist Pundit.
The BlogDog, Harris, eats two chickens per week, to liven up his Royal Canin Diabetic kibble. This is a knownknown. I can either buy him a chicken at the point of consumption at £4.00 per chicken, or, when mr Tesco sells chickens at £2.00 each, because they have reached their use by date, I can buy all that are on offer at that price and stick them in the freezer, knowing that tomorrow chicken pricing will revert to the status quo ante. That is another knownknown. As chicken supplier to the Blog Dog, it is in my interests to buy in the chicken at the best available price. If the BlogDog was paying me for supplying chicken, it would be economically illiterate of me to charge him the reduced rate, as, once the cheap chicken had run out, I would have to buy chicken at the normal rate, and if I then start charging him at the normal rate he would bite me. So I could add up the cheap chicken price and the normal chicken price, divide by two and charge that, whilst constantly searching for more cheap chicken. Here come the variables. Should the BlogDog acquire a foster brother or sister with a liking for chicken, the chicken consumer base instantly increases, the cheap chickens run out faster and I have to buy more chickens at the increased price. This is a knownunknown (I think). Having bought in more chickens to fill my freezer, I find another source of cheap chickens at Lidl, calculate that the cost is only going to go up, what with all these EFFing issues, (knownknowns) buy up all Lidl's chickens, pop down the Co-op and buy theirs, go to the white goods store and buy a big chest freezer and fill it with cheap chickens, thus hedging my chicken investment against my known and increased consumer base.
 Meanwhile, the BlogDog and his fictional sibling have gone off chicken and want fish as it is better for the planet. (unknownunknown). I have two freezers full of chicken, no consumer base and I need to buy in quantities of fish and another freezer, thus increasing my costs which I cannot hand on as the market has dropped out of chicken and I'm still paying energy costs to keep the damn stuff from thawing. Then there's a big gale causing a week-long power cut and all the chickens rot - they were on their use-by date, remember. This is another unknown unknown. Then the lieges throw milkbottles full of petrol and a lit fuse at my house because I've cornered the market in chickens and they want to do some panic buying. At least this placates my neighbours, as it cooks the rotting chickens which were stinking. The BlogDog and his putative sibling have left home, gone to find Better Life. And I have moved beyond unknown unknowns to absolutely fucked.
There, that's all you could possibly wish to unknown about hedging. Apart from this snippet by mr ishmael:
 
The Hedging News:


This hedge, a hundred metres long and two and a half metres high, is outside the walled garden and cruelly battered by salty, gale-force winds; an escallonia, it is spreading, above two metres, into tree-like branches, as seen below, from a distance, and there is much dead wood, both inside and on the surface.
Having cut back only a little I am deep in green blood and insects and birds rebuke me. What do other hedgers think? There are no nests, the birds, brown ones, just chill out there and return when the clipping is done. Should I continue to remove a couple of feet, whilst the weather is nice, or should I await early winter, and freeze my bollocks off?
Another mixed hedge, of thorn, rosa rugosa, hebe and escallonia is planted on the left hand, seaward side of the lane and both within a 
year or two should give each other some protection from the howling winds.

See? Definition of Hedging : protection from the howling gales.

Wot's on Telly
The Blair Brown years - do watch it, the whole thing is available on i-Player, rammed with archive footage interspersed with current interviews with  the ageing four horsemen of the Apocalypse - Blair, Brown, Mandelson and Campbell: how do these people manage to stay out of jail, year after year? Somehow, though, the director missed this photo:
 
Back to mr ishmael and his ambivalent relationship with Bob Dylan:
 
RECORD REVIEW, STORM IN AN OLD MAN'S TEACUP. 28/09/12

warning by mrs ishmael - only click the link if you have full immunity 
 
A DRONING TEMPEST.
Bob Dylan, as a young man, wrote some of the most hurtful and unlovely  songs ever recorded and the Love Generation, well, in a spirit of PeaceandLoveMan,  loved them. The world of Yoof, joined in a spiteful, bilious community sing-song. How does it feel, taunted wee Bob, to be not as clever as me in a musical short man syndrome.

Obvious candidates for the All-Time Nastiest Grammy are Like A Rolling Stone and Positively Fourth Street but there are many more lurking in the albums, the bootlegs, the outtakes;  Ballad in Plain D savages the sister and mother of the girl he was unable to dominate, as though it was their fault that she had a mind of her own and eschewed the dwarf gunslinger's eternal bitching.
Ballad in Plain D
I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze, with the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn. I courted her proudly but now she is gone, gone as the season she's taken. In a young summer's youth, I stole her away from her mother and sister, though close did they stay, each one of them suffering from the failures of their day. With strings of guilt they tried hard to guide us. Of the two sisters, I loved the young with sensitive instincts, she was the creative one. The constant scapegoat, she was easily undone by the jealousy of others around her. For her parasite sister, I had no respect. Bound by her boredom, her pride to protect countless visions of the other she'd reflect as a crutch for her scenes and her society. Myself, for what I did, I cannot be excused, the changes I was going through can't even be used. For the lies that I told her in hopes not to lose the could-be dream-lover of my lifetime. With unseen consciousness, I possessed in my grip a magnificent mantelpiece, though its heart being chipped, noticing not that I'd already slipped to the sin of love's false security. From silhouetted anger to manufactured peace answers of emptiness, voice vacancies 'till the tombstones of damage read me no questions but, "Please what's wrong and what's exactly the matter?" And so it did happen like it could have been foreseen the timeless explosion of fantasy's dream. At the peak of the night, the king and the queen tumbled all down into pieces. "The tragic figure!" her sister did shout "Leave her alone, god damn you, get out!" And I in my armor, turning about and nailing her in the ruins of her pettiness. Beneath a bare light bulb the plaster did pound her sister and I in a screaming battleground and she in between, the victim of sound soon shattered as a child to the shadows. All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight I gagged in contradiction, tears blinding my sight. My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night leaving all of love's ashes behind me. The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet, the words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet, I think of her often and hope whoever she's met will be fully aware of how precious she is.
Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me "How good, how good does it feel to be free?" And I answer them most mysteriously "Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"

(reproduced in full for the purposes of personal study and enlightenment.)
 
mr ishmael's essays today are:

A Feral Underclass                                               drafted  8.9.2011 
The Hedging News                                                drafted 14.7.2009
Record Review, Storm in an Old Man's Teacup     drafted 28.9.12

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

"Why don't you write a book, my friend said to me, for forty years. There's enough books, don't need any more fucking books, books're the last thing we need more of. The last time he asked, a couple of years back, I wanted to say Well, in a sense, I have, it's called stanislav, a young Polish plumber."

And you can buy both anthologies of the books of mr ishmael and Stanislav :  Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack from Lulu or Amazon. It is cheaper to buy from Lulu. Register an account with Lulu to save 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.) 
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 PROWRITINGAID15, WELCOME15 or TREAT15 in the coupon box, which  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
 
Blair, Brown, Mandelson and Campbell

 

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to be reminded of the Orkney original whose structure the great John Cooper Clarke riffed on in Chicken Town (strictly the fucking this & fucking that version, bloody was just for the PBC.)

Anyway, which came first, then, the chicken or the hedge?

(I'll get me coat...)

v./

Mike said...

Dylan was someone, in my yoof, that I had to tolerate, listen to, and pretend to "appreciate" in other to get my grubby hands on young birds. It never occurred to me, at that time, that young birds were going through the same pretense.

For me, and its not a sexist thing, Dame Dick symbolises all that is bad in the UK. The triumph of authority. The more medals and sashes and ribbons they wear, the more they are the problem. Just look at the balcony at Buckingham Palace. Andrew was wearing an admiral's uniform at his father's funeral - despite all the allegations hanging over him. Gadaffi had the right idea when he regularly turned up in uniform, with a photoshopped chestfull for fruit salad medals, and a guard of young females. He knew how to take the piss - so obviously had to be killed.

With your grasp of economics, Mrs I, you are much better placed than that bloke of colour whose suits are too small.

mrs ishmael said...

When I was a young bird, mr mike, I liked Lay Lady Lay, and could with striking sincerity assert that Dylan was the spokesperson of his generation, whilst privately thinking that the noise he made was unenfuckingdurable. The catchy little Dylan number I've linked to in the post is a case in point. Dreadful noise and downright spiteful lyrics, as mr ishmael said. Al Stewart could do that sort of singer/songwriter introspection so much better - and more tunefully. There's also a place for Leonard Cohen and Roy Harper. I can even abide the Incredible String Band - but that chap with the beret that mr ishmael was so fond of - I had to leave the room.
When contemplating the career of Dame Dick, the only solution to the mystery of how she achieved her present position and continues to hang on to it in the teeth of progressively appalling revelations about the Met, is that she is fucking the right people. And, like you, I'm not being sexist or homophobic - just aware of how these things are sorted out.
I agree - the comedy Ruritanian uniforms are in inverse proportion to the level of competence of the wearer.General Mike Jackson is at his scariest in his battle dress.
And we are following the legal shenanigans surrounding the Queen's no-longer-favourite son - best soap opera on the box.
Rent boy suits, mr mike, designed to showcase the skinny adolescent male body. The Sun estimates that Sunak's net worth is £200 million with an impressive property portfolio, so he could afford to wear proper clothes. His aesthetic is therefore a studied choice - Why? I've been learning from the Pandora Papers about the money-laundering trails that have so inflated the British property market. Just saying.
I'm glad that my exposition of the chicken in the hedge theory passed muster - I'm available for Economist Punditry gigs.

mrs ishmael said...

I suppose Cooper Clarke could add a fucking hedge chicken poem to his oeuvre, mr verge. The "bloody" version of Evidently Chicken Town reveals its indebtedness to Captain Hamish Blair - here's a verse:
The bloody clocks are bloody wrong
The bloody days are bloody long
It bloody gets you bloody down
Evidently chicken town.

mongoose said...

Cressida ticks all the boxes at once - wimminz, cervix, lesbian, woodentop. Self-awareness quotient: stone cold, dead, zero.

The Dylan boy was very good though. Yes, a smart arse; yes, a show off; yes, unbearably rude to those not as hip as his golden trilling tribe. As for "young-man-has-access-to-too-many-birds-treats-some-of-them-badly-shock", what did you expect? (It is a dreary tune BTW.)

As regards the shenanigans of the monied classes, I read an explanation of the gas nonsense this morning. Not a mention of the massed ranks of innumerate, scientifically-illiterate psycho-rabble that rule us but it's an interesting ten minutes worth. The chap is apparently "Professor of Finance and Energy Markets, Director of the Global Energy Management Institute at the Bauer College of Business, University of Houston". Fuck me! If he don't not know not none of us not does. Too clever by half, those Professor types.

Mike said...

Hard to see any physical attraction in Dame Dick, Mrs I, however your hypothesis for her rise up the ranks may be the only explanation, given her general high failure rate. But with a name like Dick she may arouse some in the Met, and it seems there is no shortage of perverts there.

I know some very rich people. Mrs I, and they are all a mixture of neurotic and unhappy. I know no money can make you unhappy, but the corollary that money makes you happy is not so. Just enough and not too much is optimum. As an example: I played golf first thing this morning; been playing well recently, so looking forward to it; BUT played badly and also managed to fall in a dam (a pond/lake in your language) going for an out-of-reach ball. But I'll be back tomorrow and looking forward to redeeming myself.

mrs ishmael said...

The learned Professor lost me on netback bases and Texas Hedges. As for hedging instrument, I've got one of those in the shed - it's a de Walt hedging instrument, battery operated, swipes through the eschallonia and privet, squares off the hedge. I'm humbled, though, that you understand the Professor. I'm just a textile artist,but I'm mixing in very good company, here on cyber street.

mrs ishmael said...

Better luck at keeping dry on the golf course, tomorrow, mr mike, but I understand that is not a factor in one's enjoyment of the game. My hairdresser plays golf in the rain and has brightly coloured golf balls so they can be seen in a thick haar. (Haar = sea fog, which rolls up from the sea and blankets everything in cold wetness in minutes.)
Interesting usage of dam. Puts me in mind of dyke which contrarily means both a wall and a ditch.
As for the phrase "fucking the right people", yes, it can mean getting biological with persons of power and influence. But it also has a less specific meaning, akin to "the old boys network" .
Dame Dick is the third and youngest child of Marcus Dick, Senior Tutor at Balliol College, Oxford,and Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and of Cecilia Dick, a University of Oxford historian, daughter of Wing Commander Denis Alfred Jex Buxton, granddaughter of the banker and politician Alfred Fowell Buxton, and great-granddaughter of Thomas Jex-Blake, headmaster of Rugby School. Dame Dick herself was educated at Dragon School and Oxford High School. She graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, and gained her Master's from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
In England, still, it is a question of who you know.

mrs ishmael said...

Sorry, I didn't make it clear that my earlier comment related to the link mr mongoose sent us to the Gas and Hedging article.

mongoose said...

Oh, I didn't understand it all, mrs i. Where would that get us? I also work on the general principle that just because something is legal that doesn't make it necessarily right. These sophisticated and opaque investment strategies and instruments are as closed a shop as Cressida's. They are meant to be beyond understanding. I think for obvious reasons. "Look how clever Rupert is! 28% last year. Goodness knows how he does it!"

How's the price of fuel in Orkney? Although, y'all have but a few trees, here the cost of firewood has tripled in a single year. Some Islington eco-cretin sticking his nose into matters that do not concern him.

mrs ishmael said...

That's a relief, mr mongoose, sir, not just me and my dyscalculia, then. Gas hedging. It sounds like some form of drug abuse.
I haven't noticed fuel prices - there's the dyscalculia, again - I just pay what I'm asked, as I'm so pleased that mr Tesco has got kindling in stock and I can light my fire. It is really hard to light a fire without kindling, even when you have fire lighters, as I discovered in Spring, when Tesco did their seasonal marketing shift from kindling and bags of coal to compost and grass seed, long before Orkney had warmed up enough not to need the fire. I really should have checked whether Amazon could help me out, as I've just had a look - Amazon is doing free delivery on 15kg of kindling for £19.95.

Mike said...

Mrs I:, its all about planning - kindling, I mean. You know you will need it next year, so it has to be harvested this year and stored somewhere safe and dry. Same story with gas - which is why Europe is stuffed.

mongoose said...

Ha! Ha, mrs i, ha! As an amateur maker of wooden furniture, I make more kindling than furniture. My problem is storing the bugger.

mongoose said...

But what cost be 80-100 squid last year is now near 300.

I shall have to go down the pub and find out how the black market works, or where it's gone to.

Anonymous said...

You'll probably find it's been cancelled, mr mongoose, like Brown Sugar.

v./

mongoose said...

I have never been a fan of the Stones, mr v, but I hold no particular animus. He who controls the past, eh? It is a sorry, silly world.

I am trying to write an Ishmael Christmas Crossword btw. To annoy you all. Not a word to any of the rest!

ultrapox said...

mr verge,

i'm convinced politically correct sugar's a major contribution to rock-safety...

but not necessarily rock-satisfaction.

in the interests of safe-guarding middle-class mores, maybe it'll soon be conveniently taboo to even mention the extreme human-exploitation upon which the slave-trade so imperiously flourished, and altogether non-u to examine the nasty nitty-gritty of relationships engendered by the abusive trans-atlantic commerce in african abductees.

dunno what the #metoo-mafia thinks about this ultra-modish immurement of sexual violence - as exemplified by the fervid 'cancellation' of raw rock-songs probably considered conscious in their day...

but then the democrat-servile #metoo-movement never was about women-of-colour - only about white millionairesses on the make in movieland.

why don't mick lick it without words? that'll cook their fuckin' goose in the blues-pencil brigade.

anyway, weren't the blues always raunchy and politically pithy?

to my mind, raking the rough-edge outta rock seems almost as sacrilegious as kicking racism out of football...

s'posed to be about unchained expression, ain't it...?

'n lettin' off steam in an anti-socially acceptable arena.

what'll be left when the boring blood-mineral-bartering bourgeoisie has sucked all the fuckin' fun out of our great british institutions?

yes, in much the same manner as we're no longer allowed to sound-off about slavery, we're also expected to observe racial radio-silence about the equally horrific resource-genocide still ongoing in africa...

lest, of course, we mortally upset poor hillary with untoward details of bill clinton's integral foundation-inflating involvement in the historic congo-butchery...

lest we allude to hustler biden's bonanza from flogging off the tenke fungurume cobalt-mine to the chinese...

and lest we dwell upon the eu-blood-mineral-emporium's facilitation of neo-colonial resource-rape from algeria to south kivu and beyond.

oh, and god forbid that we might dare rap on the congo-colluding riff of corrupt european commissioner louis michel and son charles - slithering in his footsteps as president of the european council.

nigger-bombing neo-imperialists the lot of 'em.

well now, albeit provocatively juxtaposed against a blackground beat of slavering sexual violence, doesn't brown sugar actually celebrate the miscegenating sin of interracial love?

does not the emotional tension derived from racial and political conflict constitute the very essence of real rock 'n roll...?

does it not create that inherently irresistible interference which, in line with any self-respecting reverb-revolution, just keeps a cummin' an' a hummin' out the amp?

no, this was no racist rant: be in no doubt that, to get laid, shagger was composing under strict orders from his black activist-girlfriends, ms marshy shunt and ms claudia lendrear, each of whom later claimed the song was about her own pussy...

although i daresay he was being whipped by both of them.

tragically, i imagine mellow mick'll roll over like money-marinaded macgowan - and let the neo-liberal élite tickle his stones...

however, just remember: there's nothing makes our race-obsessed establishment more angry than a 'mixed-race' relationship...

and so if you wanna get jiggy with someone of a different skin-tone, for fuck's sake don't try dating at a blm-antifa-demo.

sir alan sourgrapes said...

mr ultrapox,

i thought that song was about me when i wore blackface

mrs ishmael said...

Masterly, mr ultrapox, (or mistressly?) anyway, jolly good stuff. Reverting to the theme of back when I was a young burd, in the past, foreign country, did things differently, Jagger was as far away from Sir Cliff on the spectrum as it was possible to be and still dwell in the realms of popular culture. Suffering from a slight hearing impairment, or not paying sufficient attention, as mr ishmael used to say, I never could make out the words that Jagger belted out with such sexy aplomb, other than the apocryphal brown sugar, and just about midnight and like a young girl should. Now that he has bent the knee, metaphorically, and finds his younger self unwoke (but very successful)he has joined the crowded bandwagon of apologising for stuff in order to remain very successful and to keep the money rolling in. I looked up the lyrics and they do confront the nastiest realities of the slave trade and the nasty depths of human nature. Jagger has always said that this song poured out of him in 45 minutes, implying that he was channeling someone or something. Nasty as it is, it is a great piece of art and he should have the balls to say that he is proud of it. mr ultrapox' use of the term "nitty gritty" was chosen to remind us that nitty gritty was the term for the detritus left in the holds of the slave transport ships after the cargo was disembarked.

mrs ishmael said...

I was never short of kindling, messrs mike and mongoose, when the late mr ishmael was in charge of maintaining household stores of everything and anything. Shelves groaned under the weight of tins of tomatoes, soup of every formulation and branding, hedging coffee bought when on offer, huge bottles of oil and water. I had only to express a need for an item; mr ishmael would spring into action and pallets of the stuff would arrive. It proved necessary for him to construct wooden buttressing supports to prevent the wall-mounted kitchen cupboards crashing down under the weight of stores. And he spent happy hours in his workshop with his chop saw creating kindling which he would bag and store in the many wheelie bins with which Orkney Islands Council had endowed us. Would that I had them now! But stuff gets used up, as mr mike reminds us, and effective Quarter-Mastering requires replenishment. Anyway, mindful of your wise advice, when I called in at mr Tesco's emporium yesterday, I bought two bags of kindling, one for now and one for my friend Later. And if I keep on doing this, I shouldn't again run out and have to try to light my coals with torn up Amazon packaging.

mrs ishmael said...

A Christmas Crossword, mr mongoose! How wonderful!! I won't breathe a word!!!
Enlist mr verge in your endeavour, do.

Doug Shoulders said...

Always thought Dylan got Leonard Cohens cast offs. When the lyrics weren’t miserable enough for Leonards oeuvre.
Gotta hand it to the Stones though. Fifty odd years of rockin’ and barely a handful of decent tunes. Good work if you can get it.

ultrapox said...

mrs ishmael,

academia states there to be no evidence that "nitty-gritty" originated as a description for the detritus left post-disembarkation in a slave-transporter's hold, and whilst i do not trust the propaganda-inclined establishment on any matter pertaining to the history of slavery and colonialism, it does rather strike me that, attributed such a derivation, this term could just as feasibly have been used to denote the nits - lice-eggs - and grits - groats - which would have littered the cramped and over-crowded quarters of any ocean-going craft of the period...

nevertheless, the question as to whether the meaning of "nitty-gritty" was ever extended to signify african slaves themselves is an intriguing possibility...

which i fear only old-time african-americans and their old-time jazz-musicians - such as arthur harrington gibbs - can truly answer.

perhaps shirley ellis could give us a clue...

or - since certain of its members obviously contracted the nitty-gritty-lurgy - even the addams family...

or do we just have to squeeze dear ol' gladys knight until we get the gospel?

anyway, for what it's worth, i've always considered the phrase "get right down to the real nitty-gritty" to have somewhat sexual connotations - hence the dance - therefore if - as appears to be the case - "nitty-gritty" proves to be african-american in origin, i'd sincerely suggest progressive scholars re-focus their etymological research way back before the slave-trade and - instead of perusing ancient anglo-saxon annals - scour the mende, temne, yoruba, hausa, ibo, or kikongo lexicons for the solution to this nitty-gritty mystery...

because, as afro-dance-aficionado pancocojams so perceptively indicates, nitty-gritty possesses the selfsame spiritual roots as its congolese sister-word funk.

funkin' obvious really

ps

pancojams is a spanking good blog - as are all azizi powell's other cultural hubs...

coz she's the real funkin' mccoy.

ultrapox said...

i've never paid much attention to mick's squawking either, mrs ishmael, but in order of preference, my three favourite stones-lieder are:


1. gimme shelter

2. sympathy for the devil

3. lady jane

mrs ishmael said...

Thank you, mr ultrapox, for your explanation of nitty gritty, and also for the links. I had a look at the pancojams blog - most interesting, but at first glance, seems to be overwhelmingly Christian, and you know I'm allergic.

ultrapox said...

it's pancocojams, mrs ishmael, and i apologize for confusing you through my misspelling.

no - although its content may concern some christians - pancocojams does not predominately concern christianity, and is in fact a comprehensive historical resource for research into african-american song, dance, costume, cloth, language, and connected afro-cultural matters - indeed, amongst the deluge of pancocojams-showcased delicacies, i believe the late mr ishmael would, for example, have particularly enjoyed the delightful dance-video tsabana, which, despite its title meaning "for children", is strangely age-restricted.

according to keagile keikitse:


"'tsa bana' is a botswana phrase meaning 'for children' - it's a name for a supplementary feeding product supplied by the botswana government; once a month you carry your under 5 kid to the clinic for checkups and you get a 5kg bag - it was meant for low income families who cannot properly feed their babies. the product is made of soya beans, maize meal and fortified powdered cow milk - it was meant for children, but it has been a big hit with adults too. that is the story behind the song."


furthermore, i feel that - together with wandering minstrel mick shagger - sir alan sourgrapes and mr jazzskin tru-peau would find the following pancocojams-articles most absorbing - if not spiritually liberating:


the history of rabbit foot minstrels, an african american minstrel & variety touring show - youtube video & article excerpts

blackface minstrelsy and black entertainers who performed in blackface - article excerpts

ultrapox said...

mrs ishmael,

after one viewing of tsabana, the origins of the nitty-gritty dance - if not the word itself - should be self-evident...

bobby banas eat yer heart out.

incidentally, a cursory investigation of southern african-american slang suggests that the term "niity-gritty" originates in activities relating to corn-grinding:


etymology of reduplicative compound "nitty-gritty"

nitty-gritty - 1947, 1948

the real nitty gritty - w. r. higginbotham and j.a.


thanks again to pancocojams for keeping it real:


all african dances aren't about shaking your booty