TARRYING HERE THERE IS NO WAY, YOUR TIME HAS COME AND YOU MUST AWAY
With a perfectly straight face and wearing his "Sunday informal" chin and head stubble,
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Sajid Javid told the nation this morning that there was no plot, no conspiracy, but that he had experienced a Damascene epiphany when he went to hear some revivalist preacher in a London tent on Tuesday morning (parliamentary prayer meeting - ed.) banging on about integrity and he thought, whoops, I've got no integrity, I'd better resign and then run for Prime Minister. And he is not embarrassed to reveal his non-dom tax-status-years because, being incredibly clever, and involved in lots of international-type top jobs he had to have a tax advisor, as so many of us do, who advised him how to minimise his tax burden and pay a ha'penny here, a farthing there, and a groat over there, but nary a Great British Pound to the Great British Tax Collector; and he will, if he is presented as a candidate to the Tory Membership, reveal his tax records. And everybody else better had. The problem with these moments of Epiphany, Javid, me old duck, is that, as mr ishmael said "The road to Enlightenment is knee-deep in dog shit."
Nope, he won't do. Who next?
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Oh yes, Jeremy Cunt. He also set out his stall on the Sunday Sophie Show:
Headline: Sophie Makes him Squirm!! (Sorry - tiny, lispy Kate Ferguson, politics editor of the Sun, was on the show, and it is catching). Jeremy Cunt's shtick seems to be: I had nothing to do with Boris, I set up a business when I left Uni, and I had lots of clever, interesting jobs in government before Boris came along. You can look at my tax records and I'm not a Remainer any more, honest.
Nope, not him. Who's next? Oh yes, French citizen Tom Tugendhat, who informed the nation that his naughtiest moment was "invading a country once" - Iraq. Over on Scottish Politics, Martin Geisler subjected him to an in-depth interrogation regarding his intentions towards Scotland.
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Cleverly managing his bleached white teeth so as not to blind the cameraman, M'sieur Tommy assured Geisler that he was a Conservative and Unionist and that he wouldn't be agreeing to any referendum, not in this generation. A fair amount of taunting followed.
Over the next few days we'll be treated to the Unique Selling Points of the Tory rats candidates for leadership and the unedifying spectacle of lots of in-sack fighting. Apparently, they are already briefing against each other and have released dirty dossiers to the media.
I'm told it has been jolly hot down in England. Orkney has continued in its equable way, temperatures climbing as high as 12 degrees of C, lots of rain - so good for the garden- and helpful winds to blow away all the pollen and allergens. I know you want to get away on your hols - who wouldn't want to escape the city? But you really can't - transport not quite up to scratch. So here's a summer city song to console you that it was jolly hot in 1966, too:
Hot town, summer in the cityBack of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity?
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half dead
Walkin' on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come on, come on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
Cool town, evening in the city
Dressing so fine and looking so pretty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
Gonna look in every corner of the city
'Til I'm wheezing like a bus stop
Running up the stairs, gonna meet you on the rooftop
But at night, it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come on, come on and dance all night
Despite the heat, it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity?
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
But at night, it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come on, come on and dance all night
Despite the heat, it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
Been down, isn't it a pity?
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half dead
Walkin' on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come on, come on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
Cool town, evening in the city
Dressing so fine and looking so pretty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
Gonna look in every corner of the city
'Til I'm wheezing like a bus stop
Running up the stairs, gonna meet you on the rooftop
But at night, it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come on, come on and dance all night
Despite the heat, it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity?
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
But at night, it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come on, come on and dance all night
Despite the heat, it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
"Summer in the City" by the Lovin' Spoonful appeared on their album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, in August 1966, for three consecutive weeks. It has since received praise from several music critics and musicologists for its changing major-minor keys and its inventive use of sound effects.
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To rest my eyes on shades of green........ for mr bungalow bill - a walk in the Firth Community Garden:
And I learn that a new Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis has been appointed, who can bite his way out of trouble..... Brummy Sir Mark Rowley, retired, March 2018:
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| Busy barking at work |
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| And in more relaxed moments? |
Which leads us into the Bristol Glum Pride Parade:
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| Sing if you're glad to be gay..... |
WotsonTelly? (continued)
The tension is ratcheting up in the Undeclared Codswallop. I'm up to Episode 4 and we are being teased with a very intrusive, music-y, scary, ominous soundtrack as the Food-is-my-Enemy theme escalates.
It was implied that Simon Pegg had eaten a Full English off screen - the shot started with
him busily messing about with knife and fork on a besmeared but empty
plate before taking a hearty swig of tea and bustling off to save democracy.
Pegg is very thin, of course. Sir Mark Rylance, taking time out from confounding those Russkies, is still trying to make Saara a palatable sandwich. White bread, crusts cut off, cut into triangles. Saara takes a tiny nibble and returns it to the plate, to Sir Mark's chagrin.Then there's the American lesbian spy who has now
moved in with Saara and her left wing male partner, all the better to roger
Saara. When Saara passionately pulled the Yank's top off whilst athletically sitting
astride her, she was revealed as possessing a very UnAmerican
physique. Another one in imminent need of a gravy dinner with extra chips 🍟.
The UnDec is crewed by skellingtons. One longs for Uncle Monty and Vera to sail in and take over the job of saving the Free World.
And when Channel 4 sell this to the RestoftheWorld, they will know that Britain's economy has finally tanked, the population is starving and there's no point in laboriously and expensively crossing the channel in small boats, because they can't make better life here. Not enough to eat.
The UnDec is crewed by skellingtons. One longs for Uncle Monty and Vera to sail in and take over the job of saving the Free World.
And when Channel 4 sell this to the RestoftheWorld, they will know that Britain's economy has finally tanked, the population is starving and there's no point in laboriously and expensively crossing the channel in small boats, because they can't make better life here. Not enough to eat.
Unlike in Sicily, where Commissario Salvo Montelbano tucks into his pasta with visceral growls of appreciation. Aah - Sicily - where three course lunches with white wine are followed by five course dinners with red wine, where all the women apart from the fat little, black clad nasty nonnas, are curvaceous, barely clothed and have a thick layer of subcutaneous fat to disguise the skeleton under the skin. Salvo, the great gourmet and gourmand creation of Andreas Camilleri, is bodied forth on our screens by Luca Zingaretti, a great Italian actor who has mastered the complicated business of acting whilst eating and speaking lines.
And then works it all off by swimming around in the blue waters of the sea lapping under his balcony (sigh)
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| well, works off some of it. |
All 37 episodes of Montelbano are currently available on i-Player, and highly recommended. And if you fall asleep, like I used to when it was broadcast at 9:00 pm on a Saturday night and had red wine taken, it matters not, because you'll have had a weekly fix of sunshine, rapid Italian and even more rapid Sicilian, baked landscapes and blue seas, and will dream of olives and lemons just falling into your hands and pasta 'ncasciata. Spoiler alert - episode 37, Montelbano bins his life-long girlfriend, Livia, for a colleague with a buttering of subcutaneous fat over her ribs and hips.
Now Available
If you've missed a contribution from mr ishmael this week, look no further than Ishmael’s Blues - which is now
published, in both paperback and hardback editions; both editions are
immediately available from lulu.com.
The paperback is also listed on amazon. Honest Not Invent and Vent
Stack, the first two books in the sequence are also available from Lulu
and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a
review on their website.
Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should
follow these steps :
Unless you’ve done this already, please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
The book’s full title is
"Ishmael’s Blues – further Chronicles of Ruin", and the cover you'll
see is red with white titles and a picture of blogdog Buster retiring from the
fray, cat gloating from a safe distance. The cover is the same for both
editions.
Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr
Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux
At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which
(for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has
expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for
"Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
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| Got away with that, then. |
30 comments:
Looking forward to getting my mitts on a full set of Montalbano. We had the early series down here on TeeVee, but probably once it became an international hit, and cost more to show, it was no more. Anyhow: just to say it hits all the good spots for me. The anorexic series I will hold for now.
Lovely pictures Mrs I. It been raining in biblical quantities here in Sydney this year. Its very green now, but not that green.
What a horror show UK politics is; I dare say Zelensky would win if he stood.
Horrow show? Exactly, mr mike. If the answer is Rishi Sunak, WTF can the question be? It is all a confection to lure stupid but ambitious people into what Fr Diamond called the betrayal of ourselves. As you dip your hand into the poor-box to nick a shilling, the greatest destruction falls upon yourself. So the two not-quite-one-of-us lads who went over the top are like the mercenary warriors who prostrated themselves before Edward 1 and whom he committed first in battle so that they didn't have to be paid. Those two lads won't sit at top table. Not unless there is fuether blood to be shed.
I do think though that I sniff in the air a wicked internationalism. Not of the old "Workers of the World, unite!" kind but of the powers that be arranging international events. The green bollocks, the tranny-bothering, the COVID drivel. Somehting wicked is afoot. The silly bastards should look to Sri Lanka to see what can happen in a single morning. Never mind guns. There are too many of us to withstand if the horseshit gets too obvious. If the Dems, err, finesse the November mid-terms, almighty hell may break loose in the US.
It's me for Boston tomorrow. I shall look in when I can. If I am spared, back next week.
Bon voyage, Mr mongoose, and bonne chance.
Sri Lanka is not that far away. The UK (never mind Europe) had better hope that Rossiya turns on NS1. Don't be fooled; the UK relies on Russian oil/gas. The very best outcome is a big price increase; the worst outcome is Sri Lanka 2.0.
What the heck is really happening in the Ukraine, mr mike?
Mr mongoose: the Ukie army is systematically being destroyed. The losses are horrendous. They should have surrendered months ago, but are being egged on by the West, in particular the UK, and lots of money is changing hands to that end.
But this isn't really about Ukraine; its a proxy war between the West and Russia (+China). The West is badly loosing particularly on the economic front.
The interesting fact is that Russia has committed <10% of their armed forces to this conflict. And very little strategic aviation. They are not out to destroy Ukraine (Putin's essay of last year emphasised the history and Slavic brotherhood). Russia could flatten Ukraine in short order if it wished; but this is just one act in a play about defeating the West. Recall, the Soviet Union created Ukraine in the 20th century.
Putin gave a speech last week in which he said that the West wants war with Russia. "Let them try", he said. He said Russia hasn't really started yet in Ukraine.
There is a decisive battle coming up in Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, probably beginning of August. Then there are no further defensive lines to the West of Ukraine. Its a question of how far Russia wishes to go - my personal view is they will likely take the lot, then give part of the West to Poland, which was historically Polish territory. Ukraine will cease to exist for all practical purposes. The only question remaining is whether NATO gets directly involved (it already is covertly), in which case we will see the full power of Russia's military and NATO will be destroyed. But it could go nuclear - I doubt it.
oh heaven help us: the truss has joined the fake neo-liberal fray...
will the fissile foreign secretary keep the financial roof on? not-a-chance: she was the idiot who invited the steppenwolf to blow the house down.
if you wanna be nuked, vote for loud-mouthed liz - the schoolgirl who fell to the foreign and commonwealth office.
as for late entrants, i understand the bat-outta-hell's on the brink of giving all them wanky public schoolboys a damned good thrashing with their old school-tie - so watch out, if you're a first division civil servant flunkey for the eu blood mineral emporium or the washington warlords who control that nasty neo-imperialist cesspit.
finally, look out for gillingham and rainham mp rehman chishti, who is neither a public school twat nor an oxbridge oaf, and would have had to fly under prickli patel's racially-charged radar had she been home secretary in 1984, when he, his mother, and sister arrived in the uk from pakistan to join his politically-exiled father - an imam once appointed by zulfikar ali bhutto as federal adviser on religious affairs to the prime minister of azad kashmir. this cricket-mad barrister was formerly a political adviser to benazir bhutto, and is currently an army-reservist, but although probably by far the most interesting runner in a fairly cruddy old field, chishti-the-cashtree has blotted his parliamentary-copybook somewhat by being paid £200-an-hour as an adviser to the king faisal center for research and islamic studies, a saudi think-tank. of course, as rank outsider in this conservative custard-pie contest, the essex-bred boy is certainly sneaking under that radar - however, as an unapologetically practising muslim, will in any case stand fuck-all chance of being elected leader by a party of unashamed islamophobes.
Yes, indeed, there are some interesting candidates, mr ultrapox - none of them will get the job and they know it - they have declared their candidacy only so that the big beasts will buy their loyalty and withdrawal with a Cabinet post. Your Rehman Chishti is a professional politician - coming from a background distinctly not in the Tory breeding grounds, he originally stood as a Labour candidate. Failing to get elected, he had a go at being a Conservative candidate - hey ho, you can hear him saying - Paris is worth a Mass and the important thing is to get into Government, not hold a set of coherent and consistent values.
Is that the appeal of Priti, mr ultrapox, for public school boys? the whole dominatrix vibe? I knew there had to be something.
Have you stumbled across the back story of Kemi Badenoch? Admirable and not-out-of-the-usual-tory box. She was born in a London hospital, her mum having been flown in from their home world of Nigeria, on a gynecological referral. Mum and new babe returned to Nigeria, which back then was a violent, dangerous and corrupt country, although Kemi, having a dad who was a GP and a mum who was a professor of physiology, and attending a fee-paying private school was spared the worst of Nigerian practices. This is no bare-foot girl attending the village school for a couple of years. When Kemi realised she had a chance to get out and join the real world, because, having been born in Britain, she was a British citizen (the rules have subsequently changed) she successfully applied for a British passport and moved to Britain, alone, aged 16, to stay with a friend of her mum, whilst supporting herself through her A level studies at Phoenix College by working at MacDonald's.
Does it really matter who gets the job? The French and Germans think so - hardly had our Boris finished his resignation speech and swaggered back into Downing Street, than the champagne corks were popping across the English Channel (note that, mr tiny Macron - English Channel, not la Manche, or le gant or whatever) as they celebrated the possibility of a Remainer successor Prime Minister who would come a-begging and they could haughtily say Non, Nein, or peut etre on our terms.
Ah, mr mike - I've just finished watching the Undeclared War - I'll do a full review soon, for it certainly deserves a thorough kicking. It just ends, after 6 episodes, with no resolution, its cardboard characters all looking worried as the Russian bombers head towards Britain. I daresay its Writer/Director is hoping for another series. His thesis seems to be that Britain attracted the ire of Russia because we supported Ukraine and as we have cut ourselves off from European protection we will make a nice little target. In 2024. Hope he's wrong.
Safe journey, mr mongoose and come back home to us in one piece. Keep away from any teenagers heading to the local school with a sub machine gun.
Just been listening to the Kemi Badanoch lady on the PBC, talks far too much sense, so that’ll be no chance of being Selected as our future prime torturer.
Ishmael's Blues arrived today (hardback). Excellent quality production, once again.
Congrats Editor verge and Mrs I.
Thanks, Mr Mike - spread the word!
v./
your shocking revelations about chishti-the-cashtree certainly indicate him to be a mercenary opportunist, mrs ishmael, however - since this character-flaw is generally considered a prime qualification for career-advancement within our corrupt parliament - i would reckon that it is actually the bhutto-supporting mp's tribal-allegiance to the more anti-american strain of pakistani politics which has blocked his progress in the conservative leadership election.
so ms olufunto olukemi adegoke was delivered to us on a day-trip to the neo-imperial mother-country, was she?
well, nothing to see there, i'm afraid, mrs ishmael, for back in pre-eu days, the uk traditionally comprised the wide-open sargasso sea for pregnant middle-class nigerians, until, that is, our immigration-rules were racially streamlined, with the result that the favoured citizenship-spawning ground for expectant west africans migrated to the more relaxed reproduction-zone of the republic of ireland - where, due to looser jus soli legislation, bulging nigerian para-maters would habitually touchdown in order to knock out an eu-passport for their nationally promoted off-spring. quite frankly, you've gotta admire the mettle of these border-busting mamas - yet under the west's culture-controlling neo-colonial empire, the use of such drastic escape-routes from the soul-destroying grindstone of neo-liberal exploitation has sadly become de rigueur.
according to the yoruba-meaning of the former levelling-up minister's name, god cares for her, watches over her, and will raise her to ascend the throne...
therefore should the argumentative african princess actually garner the required endorsements to progress in this cia-choreographed charade, we ought not write off her chances of success - and not least because she has already proven herself a doughty debater, who's probably every bit as tough as her intrepid mother.
yes, the euro-bastards across the water are indeed intent upon harbouring their petty bourgeois beef with us, and since ms patel would most certainly have formed the perfect foil for vile macronian anti-angloism, i consider it a terrible shame that the battling home office brit-stick has now made a tactical withdrawal from this - us - lap-dog dominated leadership-race.
maybe i'm just an old irony-junkie, but for a mortally ruffled conservative membership, one could understand the rather wicked temptation to replace an 'eton-mess' with a "watermelon-smile"...
Survived the first day! Although my first Uber driver wanted me to walk off the airport under my own steam and meet him in the road. I stood there in the "Ride App Pick Up" area - numbered slots, security cameras everywhere, each driver getting out of his car to be seen on the camera... Nah. Apparently the oldest trick in the relatively new Uber book.
Having shed my US colleague to airport delays, she was spark out this morning and so muggins had to risk the streets for a pint of milk and some bread and eggs. Fuck me the local paki shop - in this case the local korean paki shop - had more security screens and the airport. Proudly boasting "No cash, No Liquour". I bought me trash and ran. To MIT tomorrow to be talked down to by the clever people. I shall try to be good.
My Ishmael Vol 3 hasn't arrived yet, mr mike, and my house is 12 feet away not 12,000 miles. So Rishi to lose in the popular vote to? The penisless Morduant just tried to lose herself a few thousand votes. Jeremy What-rhymes-with got what was coming to him, I see. Excellent.
Well done Mr mongoose - surviving in the land of the infidel for one day. Remember, they all carry guns, so don't tell any jokes - they won't understand, and they shoot first and ask questions later, particularly the coppers.
Re Mordaunt v Sunak. I don't know the lady from a bag of apples, but maybe its because I'm a racist, or because Sunak strikes me as a slippery entitled cunt (by virtue of his wife's money), or maybe both, but I would give the lady my vote. However, and its a big HOWEVER, I stick with my prognostication on an earlier thread: we always say it can never get worse, but it does.
to run this country anywhere other than into the ground, requires a quantum of brainpower - not unmanaged blonde hair, murky middle-english establishment-credentials, and a second-rate mind - yet judging by the flavour-of-the-month being promoted in this latest leadership-election, i'm afraid to say that, once more, the conservatives seem to have their dear little hearts set upon hurling both themselves, and all of us, straight over a moral and economic precipice...
for like boris jobsgone and mrs dismay - who beyond-all-reasonable-doubt proved themselves not to be the sharpest cia-tools in the box - the current true blue pin-up, penny "cruiser-class" mordaunt, is undoubtedly just another political dud in an ever-lengthening line of tory intellectual inadequates.
yes, if nasty nato-warmonger penny continues to pursue putin to the brink, if she makes war against russia the rallying raison d'être of western civilization, if she decadently declares the defence of neo-nazified ukraine as the holy grail of great british endeavour, then we europeans will definitely never again have two brass-farthings to rub together...
and of course, so long as it's confined to our side of the atlantic moat, this back-to-the-stone-age scenario will suit our washington-warlords, and their cia-svengalis, down to the british ground-zero, because, sitting pretty over in the insulated states-of-plenty, our colonial masters really don't care whether we old world peasants are paupered by their policy of perpetual power-accretion: they only want us to follow orders.
oh never mind, whilst suffering the decadence of democracy, i suppose our sole comfort will be dourly derived from watching the dickhead from devon as, flapping her ideologically fixed wings, she flies cocksure over the capitalist cliff-edge - closely followed, in the manner of so many ludicrous nazi-lionizing lemmings, by the neo-imperialist nato-nobheads who incautiously voted her into downing street.
Be sure to get the clever people’s pronouns correct mr mongoose, wouldn’t want to be mis-gendering some lady with a beard and cock, would one?
If asked what your preferred pronouns are try Sir or Mr. If they’re not appropriate then God or Emperor.
the last person this country needs running it, mr mike, is another blue-eyed blonde bimbo with over-inflated ambitions...
and in any case, i just have this deep-rooted fear that penny is boris in drag.
Sorry to hear that, mr mongoose - was it a paperback ordered direct from lulu? Kick up a stink, you should have received it by now. Please let us know how you get on.
On he subject of Korean corner shops - I remember reading that certain supermarkets survived the LA Rodney King riots unlooted and unburned; their Korean owners and staff stood guard throughout on the shops' flat roofs with submachine guns. When in Rome, I suppose.
cheers
v./
Mr ultrapox: I agree; but its a case of do you want to die of cancer or heart disease?
Well chaps, the hustings debate tonight on Channel 4 will allow them to perform for us. Mordaunt will give good value - she's clever, quick in debate and delivers biting put-downs. Her name surely derives from mordant - a substance, typically an inorganic oxide, that combines with a dye or stain and thereby fixes it in a material, named from the Latin - to bite or sting. Mordaunt by name, mordant by nature. And she is capable of serious caustic repartee in the House, despite Lord Frost's recent, ungentlemanly remarks about her - they don't hold back, these Tories. Unlike the other candidates, she has been a Brexiteer from the get-go.
Funny, isn't it, that despite all the windy Labour rhetoric about equality, only the Tories have serious candidates for their Party Leadership who are female and/or non-white.
mongoose, my dear, good to read your dispatch from the Land of the Free. This is getting more than a little Evelyn Waugh-ish. In his 1938 satirical novel, "Scoop", William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty, far from the iniquities of London, contributes nature notes to Lord Copper's Daily Beast, a national daily newspaper. He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent, when the editors mistake him for John Courteney Boot, a fashionable novelist and a remote cousin. He is sent to Ishmaelia, a fictional state in East Africa, to report on the crisis there. He equips himself with appropriate tropical gear and a cleft stick, into which to lodge his missives and carry them clear of the water as he fords rivers and wades through swamps.
We await further dispatches with bated breath. If you send photos to me, I'll post them so we Ishmaelians can follow your adventures.
Kind Regards,
Lord Copper.
It is a land of groupthink, mrs i. Here in ruthless, sunny, Democrat, red-in-tooth-and-claw Boston venture capitalists swarm around the clever young things vomited out by the three great universities in the town. Everything is money and advantage; nothing is reflection and causation. The poor sleep in empty doorways next to the electric money engines of the accelerators and incubators. Everyone, everywhere an expert about how to carve a living from the public purse. Carve it once because it stays forever. Nothing ever closes, the gravy train is eternal, generational once you're on it. It is quite sick-making.
Everyone "ubers" everywhere in Mercs and massive people wagons which can only be corporately provided. The humble taxi driver fucked from his security and now a gig economy ghost. Double-chitted against being an assassin, they sit in air-conned splendour moving degenerate juveniles from oasis to oasis.
The food is wicked. Great mounds of it pushed into their mugs with their fingers. I was in a restaurant yesterday which proudly proclaimed its complete lack of cutlery the better to protect us all from the invisible lurgy.
My genteel suburb of Medford could be Belgravia. Unnoticed mums steeling out into the early morning sun wrapped as their mums were in Hanoi and Lagos to sweep the dust away and water the roadside plants. For fourpence doubtless. An hour's gig before getting the kids up to their local "public" school. The word spat out like a curse. These all ring-fenced and a guard at every corner. Cameras and hatred everywhere.
The visible people of course are as helpful and friendly as any on earth. Their brains manicured and trimmed of excess doubt and all contemplation. All of them their hats on backwards like a legion of half-wits from the hood. Everyone smiling manically because if you don't mummy gets you all soma-ed up at 12-y-o. This is the American Dream and you will damn well smile while you act out your pretend part in it.
indeed, mr mike...
mayday, the party-beast, and now bugger-knows-what, the carnival of incompetence cracks-on in an unconcerned blizzard of blather, and all makes david cameldung look like a giant standing among pygmies - it's just such a pity he armed isis of course.
Terrific stuff, mr mongoose - keep it coming.
It has to be said that your typical American is a kind and helpful body. Ridiculously polite, patriotic and devout. Lost in somewhere today, I found and went into a tube station but there was nowhere to buy a ticket. Suspecting mandatory traceable electronic lunacy in case folk with MAGA hats try to storm Nantucket or some such, I asked a passing young man if he could help. Not only did he point me but he went back down 2 escalators and physically showed me the machines. There are three different types of ticket apparently. Non-transferable, natch. Much like home. There was no need for that, Sir, but thank-you. $2.40 for any one trip in the bay area by any public means.
And then across the river to see the scene of the Massacre of Boston. A few squaddies fired on a few rowdies. Three were killed. The platoon leader and the platoon were all charged and tried. Defended by rebel lawyers, none were found guilty of murder. It was a bit of a ruck in the street and punches were thrown. Squaddies did what squaddies do. And yet still it is declaimed as being on a par with Dresden. The first local killed was miraculously a black lad. His star will never set. Indeed, he has never been more famous.
In the afternoon to the shallows off Massachusetts Bay to look for whales. Three humpbacks and a minke sighted in the sea. Fifty or more of various makes and models on the boat gawping. I should have known. Yesterday, business done we went to look at Harvaaaarrrrd. Two stops down from the scene of the crime at MIT. It was hot and busy so we had an ice cream. "How many scoops, Sir?" "Oh, three I think, pls. Cherry, chocolate and pistachio." 8 dollars later I was presented with almost a full fucking pint of ice cream. A scoop is bigger than a human fist. Fantastic ice cream it was but FFS. It is no wonder that the buggers are all enormous.
And yet you'd never guess it from their TV and film productions, where all the actors are frighteningly thin, with plastic breasts for the lady actors who have dieted their own boobage out of existence. Being a textile artist and clothes creator, I can tell you that the American public is in deep denial of the fact that their elephantine proportions are out of kilter with British and European sizing: a US size 16 is a UK size 20. All those size zero models? Ok, thin, but in Britain, they'd be size 10.
Thanks for the latest missive - fascinating stuff from our American correspondent.
Flying back overnight, I encountered Rory Stewart, see above above, and can report that as well as being just as fantastically grotesque in person as he appears to be on the telly, he is also a near full shrunk midget. And he has taken the questionable decision to procreate and prejudice the gene pool a further generation. Mrs Rory - as is the unjust way in these matters - was, of course, a delightful figure in her summer frock, like something off a greek pot, so she was, towering over Rory in every way, and looked good enough to eat in the jolly hockeysticks way she had about her. The twin-looking young lads therefore may be spared the full consequences of daddy's disastrous draw in the Charlie Darwin lottery.
It is the truth the world over, mrs i. Relatively rich folk tend to have the time, the resources, and the education to eat well. It is the gig economy mum or the labouring dad who is too knackered to shop and cook of a night who sticks a takeaway or a ready-to-eat meal into the kids. Last day in Boston and my colleague demanded a "clam roll". I had no idea what such an item was or would look like but down to the seaside we went. The quayside was chocker with tourists. A whole historic building was given over to fast food. It was truly shocking but a clam roll was found, and was as big an amount of food as three people should eat as a snack. Or four. Again, this is far too much food for a small female person to consume, and about a million calories salad cream and batter and bread around a few hundred calories of clams. Certainly more food than I eat in any usual day. It is mad that this is the most vivid message from my visit - the sheer horror of the continuous super-grazing.
Time for home yesterday, and so a quiet packing of bags before a couple of beers in the local bar. We watched the ball game on the telly with a nice bloke - a dad and a building company owner. Over a couple of burgers and a few New England IPAs, he had not a good word to say about Biden or anybody in Washington, he chuckled darkly into his plate at the mention of AOC and the new people. Now this is Medford and you need proven Democrat party affiliations going back to the Mayflower just to get served a beer, and so this can be seen as a marker that the woke/Biden/media Newthink coup d'etat is just that - a confection, a veneer as deep and as meaningful as the condensation on his beer glass.
What will happen over there? I do not know but they won't be hungry when it happens.
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