The Sunday Ishmael 12/06/2022

In the East the corpses lie, foaming in the sun

And the Tyrant of Great Peter's throne is smiling at the fun;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
And guns and tanks and armaments have scared the feeble West.

Zelensky cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross:
The old queen of England was looking in the glass;
Whilst Olaf Scholz was speaking quite directly from his ass.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Saying "this Rwanda wheeze is far from good at all".

And the last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Bo Jo the Ho Ho is going to the war.

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and He comes.
Bo Jo laughing at the traitorous one four eight
Spurning of old party-gate like juggerling the plates,
Holding up his head for Biden's flag of all the free.

Domino Gloria!

Love-light of Carrie show!
Death-light of Africa!
Bo Jo the Ho Ho
Will make Zelensky crow!

Putin in his paradise above the evening star,
(Bo Jo the Ho Ho is going to the war.)
He moves his mighty motions on the loyal doctor's  knees,
His poo-poos that are woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the secret closets as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees.
And he saith, “Break up the cities where mine enemies do hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And hang the mercenary foes without surcease or rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the West."

Macron's in his closet with Brigitte about his neck.
(Bo Jo the Ho Ho is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
Vlad holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Bo Jo the Ho Ho has fired another clerk.

On the telly Z'lensky pleads before day or battle break,

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money - I've used up all my aid  

And should I sue for peace I do fear my own death knell

For many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell.
And he smiles, but not as Comics smile, and settles back the blade....
(Whilst Bo Jo the Ho Ho  survives one more Crusade.)

with apologies to G. K. Chesterton, Lepanto and Don John of Austria

 

This pastiche  business is really not at all easy, but I was inspired by a couple of things: the revelation that Prince Charles does thinking and isn't keen on sending migrants to Rwanda, For Fuck's Sake (Call Me Ishmael, 14/4/2022), no-skin-on-his-face Boris will crusade on despite 148 Members of his Parliamentary Party having no confidence in him, President Zelensky asking for yet more expensive lethal aid; and a story that the Independent is running - that when he travels abroad, President Putin's bodyguards collect his poos in specialised containers to take home to Russia. So that the West can't spy on Putin's state of health as revealed by his mighty motions. This isn't a new thing - when Vlad went to France in 2017 and to Saudi Arabia in 2019, he brought his poo back with him. Apparently, Stalin started it, by having Mao Ze Dung's dung analysed during his visit in 1949 in order to assist in psychological profiling. When Mao went to the little boys' room, he was provided with special toilets that were not connected to the sewage system, but to "secret boxes" so that his levels of potassium and amino acids could be analysed. And British spies examined the soiled toilet paper used by the Soviet soldiery in East Germany during the Cold War. This is all so preposterous that it sounds like yet more propaganda, but I really, really want it to be true -

my name is Bond, James Bond, Licensed to Look at your Poo. 

Must be a Lib Dem.

 

A friend asked me the other day if the world would make more sense if women did the governing and men stayed home and did the cooking. It took only a moment for this image to come to mind:

 Rapidly followed by this:

 

No, not really, I said.

 

The Jubilee Crossword Solutions:

 

The indefatigable editor mr verge has found some fuck-firing correspondence that he attributes to stanislav. See what you think:

 

Saturday, December 29, 2007

john bright said...("the finest slagging-off in internet history").

 

 Dear Mr Rabbie rotten

 

Is there anything in eternity, in the infinity of space and time which you feel would not be illuminated, amplified, clarified, altogether improved, embellished, glorified by you commenting upon it, from out of your arsehole?

Is there no occasion or event or circumstance about which you are not compelled to comment at insufferable length? Might there ever be something happen in this world without it attracting your observations ?

If someone was to write OH NO, NOT THAT CUNT AGAIN in letters as big as the Milky Way it would be a poor illustration of the effect you have on sensible people. You are as funny as rectal cancer. You have the insight of a cement mixer, although entirely lacking its utility. You know nothing of any value. You and elegance are estranged. There is better reading on a bus ticket. Nothing you say is witty, informative, provocative, original or scurrilous; nothing you write is worth reading. You are clumsy, cackhanded, plagiaristic, trivial, meaningless, insincere; unredeemed garbage. Even pored-over, analysed, the odd nugget is seen to be stolen from other postings, shabby, second-hand, grubby; you cannot even recycle with any distinction.

You are a one-man walking Daily Mail. You make Iain Dale look like a revolutionary. You are the dullest, most boring, predictable, tedious, mind-numbing gabshite on the planet. Aside from that bloke with his double rrs, and he, narcolepsy in the flesh, doesn't even merit correction. Contrasted with reading your musings, watching the grass grow is scintillating, dazzling and provocative. You are as stupid as it is possible to be and still be sentient; nay, that is a misjudgment, lumps of rock are smarter than you, a bag of sand has a better sense of humour. Living with you, even a garden gnome would hurl himself in front of a train, rather than endure one more moment of your endless, infantile commentary. You are an unspeakable cunt. Why don't you just either shut the fuck up or seek psychiatric assistance for your delusion, the one that makes you think the world cannot survive without you being its continuity announcer. Nobody on earth, not even your mother, if you have one, gives a fuck about what you think about anything. Most people would rather gouge their eyes out than read your drivel. You are an almost unassailable argument for shutting down the Internet; single-handedly you undermine the case for freedom of speech.

 

The Saviour himself, encountering you on the mountain, would say Fuck me, not this cunt again, does he ever, ever, ever even for a fucking second, shut the fuck up and just be? Or does he think that he spellbinds his betters, enchants his peers and renders reality herself incomplete without his tuppence worth? This is one cunt and a half, lads.

Do you really imagine that you are so perspicacious, so wise, so seasoned that your turds of wisdom, your barrel scrapings of warmed-up Daily Mail leaders, your worthless sweepings-up are indispensable to the world? Do you think people tune in to Radio Four in the morning and exclaim: I can’t wait to hear what Robbie Rotton thinks about copper smelting in Zambia; gosh I hope he posts quickly?

It may be argued in your favour, although I wouldn't, that crass as you are, your heart is in roughly the right place; your head, however, remains, inextricably, cemented up your arse.

You are unpardonably stupid so, here, for Mr Rotten, your very own, easy to understand parable:

"Omar went to the Master. He said, Master, I have been painting for years and remain unhappy with my work, can you help? Go, said the Master, and do your finest work and bring it to me. Five years later Omar returned with a painting he had slaved over and handed it to the Master, who threw it straight on the fire."

 

Look at your posts for something not already better said; it's not there. Is this the point of you? Cover versions?

If you would speak, first learn silence. Learn some Zen, Shithead. Learn some plumbing.

 

With apologies to the Buddha for the worthlessness of incarnations like Mr RR.

6:56 PM, December 28, 2007

 

john bright said...

Dear Senor Quixote,

Don't know the works of Mr Blackadder, I am afraid and would run a mile from little Mr Ben Elton. I understand that their joint opus was a bit like Dad's Army for Oxbridge types but I have no way of knowing as I rarely watch TV. There may be a touch of Mr Adams, off the wireless, in my jottings but it is much more likely to be a Mr Persig, whom you will not have heard of, you being an avid tv watcher, and it will be there subliminally and not a bare-faced theft.

I grant you that in my avuncular note to Mr Rotten there is much of the King James Bible and Shakespeare but I fear that such is unavoidable in anyone with an education and can hardly be called plagiarism. Again, you will probably be unaware that both these sources somewhat predate Mr Rowan Atkinson and Mr Elton in their influence on the language.

It is touching that you spring to Mr Rotten's defence; more telling, though, that he, if not you, read my note in the spirit in which it was intended. That squiggly thing, by the way, after the word defence in the last sentence, is a semi-colon; no, Senor Quixote, it is nothing to do with the arse, which in your case seems to be located where others keep their minds and through which, no doubt, you share your wisdom, such as it is, with your unfortunate, backward children, on the, one hopes, restricted occasions on which you meet them and for whom, I regret, there can be little prospect of academic excellence, not with a dimwitted troglodyte like you for a pater. Do you still see them at all?

 

I would love to stay and chat with you about Mr Elton; he does musical theatre now, I believe, and jolly good luck to him. Do you perhaps envisage a career in show business yourself ? I must warn you that even in these dumbed-down days a budding entertainer requires a firmer grasp of English than that which you display and indeed even a slender acquaintanceship with irony. Fuck me, mate, there's fucking Poles round here write better stuff than you do, as it were.

 

As for visiting libraries, I have my own library, thank you; I am sitting in it; it is only about twelve thousand volumes, but none of them, I assure you, are by Mr Elton or any of the other celebrities you mention. If I did want an autobiography, say, of Mr Max Bygraves or Ms Kirsty Wark, then I would probably take your advice and venture to the public library; such desires, however, would be most uncharacteristic and, in any event, I would rather leave the library service exclusively to folk like yourself, who cannot afford their own books. It is, so I am told, very difficult on Incapacity Benefit these days.

I really must go but I fear I would be failing the body politic - or that snarling, resentful, libertarian portion of it which resides hereabouts - if I failed to mention that you are a fucking po-faced, humourless, sanctimonious, toilet-dwelling cocksucker. I suspect you're one of those presbyterian chaps. Only a presbyterian thinks as you do.

 

People rant and rave and froth and gibber on here but they are also quick and sharp and bright and funny, alert, enthusiastic and compassionate and angry and well acquainted with the dark doings of our masters; some are partisan, some anarchic; poor Dr. Moneybags, for instance, is so angry that he is dying from multiple ailments: prolixity, angry cynicism and pure hatred. You, on the other hand, are merely a prick and a dullard.

3:03 AM, December 29, 2007 Mr Shitbag

In my country, calling someone a Liberal Democrat is considered most infelicitous and can lead to a sudden catastrophic and involuntary falling incident - or, detubare deorcum shaftus Scargillitum fatalis.

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

 

You can see why folk would boast of having had a right good blogging off that stanislav, why they would have it framed and hung in their ground floor loo (what our American friends call the first floor bathroom without a bath) so all their friends can read the particular honour meted out to them.  John Bright, by the way,  was a British Radical and Liberal politician. Bright (1811 – 1889), together with Richard Cobden,  founded the Anti-Corn Law League, aimed at abolishing the Corn Laws, which kept food prices high and protected landowners' interests by imposing taxes on imported wheat. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846. A Good Bloke.

Ishmael's Blues is not yet available for purchase, but Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack, anthologies of the work of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish plumber - can be purchased  from Amazon or from Lulu. 

 

Lulu Link for Vent Stack:

https://tinyurl.com/naajavmu

 Lulu Link for Honest, Not Invent

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.

To rest my eyes on shades of green. For mr bungalow bill