The Sunday Ishmael 29/01/2023

 

As Shifty Zawari shuffles off to spend more time with his money, 
we shake our heads in awe at the power of the Sunday Ishmael to change Richi Sunak's mind. All together, now, everyone, concentrate, ishmaelites: "time for a general election, Richi".

I suspect that Wriggly Richi thinks he is displaying firm leadership, taking decisive action and setting high standards in public life by sacking Shifty out of hand, but the question asking itself in minds and public houses up and down the land is - why appoint the dodgy bastard in the first place? One glance should have been sufficient

for Richi to realise that this is the kind of guy who will send his nephew into the dangerous cave to retrieve the Magic Lamp and is not to be trusted with the nations' money, nor indeed, the chairmanship of the Conservative Party. Whatever could have attracted Richi to Abanazzer Shifty in the first place?

Funny, that. Pretty, Straight Guy Tony also found himself mysteriously drawn to the filthy rich. 

Anyway, if I was Shifty's Trade Union Representative I'd advise him to lodge a complaint of Unfair Dismissal with the Employment Tribunal. After all, mr mongoose has pointed out the Spanish Practices of HMRC, Shifty was done for Carelessness, not Criminality, and there was no Due Process in his dismissal. And I could do with a good laugh. 

What Fresh Hell is This?

Andrew Burns

Adam Graham

These two gentlemen are currently held as prisoners in the Scottish Prison Estate. 

Andrew Burns has a series of violent convictions. Whilst incarcerated, he has assaulted inmates, security officers and female nurses in various jails. He has self-harmed, swallowed razor blades and opened veins with his teeth before squirting blood at prison officers. He has been held in isolation within a men's prison. His applications for transfer to a women's prison have been refused until recently, when the application was granted.

Adam Graham has been convicted of two rapes of women, using his penis, which is still attached and functioning. Whilst on remand, he was held at Cornton Vale, the Scottish facility for both remand and convicted female prisoners. Cornton Vale has the design capacity to hold a maximum of 119 prisoners, along with a separate Mother and Baby Unit with 7 spaces. He has been found guilty and is awaiting sentence. Nicola Sturgeon has finally found the sense to transfer him into the male prison estate.

Both Mr Burns and Mr Graham have adopted female names and cross dress. Mr Burns is clearly a deeply disturbed individual. Mr Graham's former wife believes he has adopted a female identity in order to manipulate the system to avoid incarceration in a men's prison and to be housed in a women's facility.

Mr Dolatowski, a violent paedophile, has convictions against a 12 year old girl, filming her in a supermarket toilet, and a 10 year old girl. In the latter offence, the 10-year-old went to the supermarket toilets while her father waited outside. He heard his daughter screaming and she then came running out saying that “a crazy man with long hair was in the bathroom and had grabbed her face and pushed her into a cubicle, before demanding she take her trousers off.” The court heard that when the girl came out of her cubicle, Dolatowski had shoved her back in and told her there was a man outside who would kill her mother. The girl managed to punch Dolatowski in the face, stomach and groin and escape to her father and siblings waiting just outside the toilets. Her mother told the court that the girl was hysterical after the attack and continued to suffer flashbacks. Mr Dolatowski, 6 foot 5inch self-identified trans woman who calls himself Katie, has been accommodated in women's hostels and refuges in Scotland and in Leeds, and is currently on remand in Cornton Vale for an assault.

This is madness, surely? I know full well that life in the male prison estate is deeply unpleasant and can be dangerous, but housing mad, bad and dangerous to know self-identified transwomen with intact meat and potatoes in the female prison estate poses a risk that is not manageable given the instincts and behaviours of what Nicola euphemistically calls "bad actors". The solution, of course, is to build  trans prisons to house Scotland's 15 trans prisoners and the 230 trans prisoners in England and Wales.

mr ishmael had this flagged up in the Drafts as something rather special. And it is. This is Mandy Patinkin singing Over the Rainbow. Made me cry, anyway. The man's vocal range is astonishing. I've been watching him in Dead Like Me,  an American comedy-drama television series starring Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin as grim reapers who reside and work in Seattle, Washington.

You can find both seasons on Prime. It is one of those shows that the Americans do so well - an ensemble piece, with sharp dialogue. I suppose it is a coming-of-age show, or a coming-of-death, more accurately. Live every moment as though it is your last, and one day you'll be right.

It is still winter here, mr mike, but, mindful of your love of Spring, I've found you some spring flowers.

I also thought you might like to see Yesnaby. When I was new here, I complained to a colleague about the boring Orkney topography. You need to get up Yesnaby, Nasty Little John said. It has one of those Thelma and Louise roads, running straight through fields up to the horizon - a folie de grandeur invitation to jam your foot down ont' accelerator and sail out into the blue. It is a popular suicide spot, attested by the cellophane flowers from time to time. There are concrete machine gun emplacements and rotting buildings and lots and lots of air moving rapidly about.  The Orkney blurb says it is one of the most spectacular stretches of coastline in Orkney, and should definitely be on your list of 'must see' locations during a visit to the islands. Found on the west coast of the Orkney mainland, this wild location offers stunning sea views. During a westerly gale you can see huge waves crashing into the cliffs. The cliffs are incredibly high, but I've been there when the white sea fret is blown across the cliff tops, and you struggle to stand upright. Best not to let the dog off the lead. Later in the year the wild flowers on the tops include the tiny and rare Primula scotica, and down in the steep valley the wild yellow irises are thick in the stream bubbling down into the sea.

Here you go:

George Mackay Brown (1921 - 1996), the Orkney writer and poet, was big on Yesnaby - it's just up the coast from Stromness, where he lived and worked. And drank. Stromness was a dry town from the 1920s, its citizenry having voted to keep the place teetotal. Young George, growing up, never tasted alcohol - "lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine". When Stromness voted in 1947 to allow the demon drink back in again, George had a revelation. The first bar opened in 1948, and George first tasted alcohol. He found alcoholic drinks "a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself 'If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness". Alcohol played a considerable part in his life, but he says, "I never became an alcoholic, mainly because my guts quickly stalled." That's always the problem - the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Imagine that - no alcohol until you are in your twenties. It would be like the stars appearing "one night in a thousand years, how (then) would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

Mind you, there was this brilliant short story by Isaac Asimov: Nightfall, in which he predicates a planet which is lit by two suns, no night, until the orbit of the planet around the suns takes them into darkness once every thousand years - and chaos ensues, in which humans are driven mad by the appearance of stars, tear down their civilisation, kill, burn, rape and pillage, beat their breasts and ululate. Bit like George Mackay Brown and alcohol. 

No, I do the fellow a disservice - its just that G.M.B is a bit of a cult around here, and you know how I am with organised religion.

 

thanks to editor mr. verge, there are now three anthologies of the collected works of ishmael smith:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack  and Ishmael’s Blues are all 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 :

Thanks to editor mr. verge, there are now three anthologies of the collected works of ishmael smith:
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack  and Ishmael’s Blues are all 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 :
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.
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.