The Sunday Ishmael: 27/08/2023

 One good thing about the Covid Plague was that there was none of this kissing and hugging business. Very difficult to negotiate, the etiquette of kissing and hugging - even a handshake can be problematic, especially for a woman. The person to proffer the hand first is the aggressor, as it were, the higher status individual, so if a woman advances on a man of similar social status, hand thrust out, then the bloke can legitimately and historically resent it as a put-down.

If you have to greet a French person, then you are faced with the horror of the triple cheek brushed kiss. And which cheek first? Get it wrong and you can knock someone over. Hugging these days is not perfunctory, as the hugger tends to reel in the huggee and grasp them closely and warmly for an unconscionably lengthy period of time. Any slight tensing by the huggee will be interpreted as rejection, dislike or autism. 

As regular readers may remember, I am nobbut a working class girl from t'North of England and hugging and kissing was generally regarded with horror - something a terrible old great aunt would inflict upon a child and tolerated only for the sake of a sweetie. Courting couples might indulge a bit, although there would be ribald shouts of Get a Room, and there'd be none of that nonsense after the first child was conceived. A mother might kiss her child, at least until it was weaned, but thereafter, affection would be expressed by a slap on the back of the legs, the bare bit, just above the Wellies. A father generally thought it safer not to touch, although holding a hand to cross the road was permitted, if the father was not at work, down the allotment or in the pub. Television has a lot to answer for, not least in spreading this germ-laden practice. It really is a shame that Covid-protocols didn't embed themselves into Western culture. I met a Buddhist nun the other day, who, after our conversation concluded,  pressed her palms together, bowed her shaven head, thanked me for the pleasure of my company, then gave me a packet of biscuits. Now that is a custom that I would like to see catching on.

I bet what's his name, you know, the Kissing Spic, wishes he'd adopted a more Buddhist way of congratulating Footballing Jenni Hermoso for her performance in the World Cup. 

Teach yourself Spanish

                                                              

Eres tan feo/a qué hiciste llorar a una cebolla -  You’re so ugly you made an onion cry

¡El burro sabe más que tú! - Donkeys know more than you!

La mona aunque se vista de seda, mona se queda  - Although a monkey dresses in silk, it stays a monkey

Me cago en tu madre - I shit on your mother

¡Métetelo por el culo! - Stick it up to your ass!

No saber ni papa de algo  - Not to know even a potato about something

Peina Bombillas - Someone who combs light bulbs

¡Que te folle un pez! - I hope you get fucked by a fish!

¡Te voy a dar una galleta! - I’m going to give you a cookie!

Vete a freír espárragos - Go fry asparagus

Me Importa un Pepino - I care a cucumber

Tu puta madre - Your bitchy mother

hijo de puta - Son of a bitch

Hijo de la gran puta - Son of the great bitch

Hijo de la grandísima puta - Son of the greatest bitch

Pollas - Dicks

Gilipollas - Douchebag

So, using this list of common Spanish phrases and sayings, lets compose a response by Jenni to her lover's  Luis Rubiales' public demonstrations of affection, respect and congratulations. Here we go:

Go fry Asparagus, you Douchebag son of the greatest bitch! You do not know even a potato about football, you comb lightbulbs, you're so ugly you make an onion cry, you silk-dressed monkey. I shit on your mother, stick your world cup up to your ass, go get fucked by a fish and I should care a cucumber!

He does have a certain Spanish, silk-dressed monkey approach to getting dressed up to go watch his girls trounce England at the football - not just the watch and bracelet combo, but d'you see the red silk-stitched buttonholes and the buttons stitched on with red silk?

Lush.

Anyway, do you suppose the media frenzy picking over the testosteronic mores of Spanish footballing culture might have its origins in - okay, dago, you might have beat us, but we have the moral high ground.

mr ishmael, who looked upon football with an anthropological eye, wouldn't agree.

THE FABULOUS FUNNY FREAKY WORLD OF FOOTBALL

 SMUNAF  SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2009

By the Filth’s Sports Reporter, Gorilla Morrisons

 “Aye,” said beetroot-faced, gum-chewing, truculent Oldie-punk, Alex Fuggitson, “we got all the silverware, bar one. The lads just went out there and done it, it’s what the fans expect. They got the Drunken Driving Shield, the Beating People Up Cup, three times in a row we’s won the Stupidest Fucking Millionaire In History Challenge Cup - it’s just that Gang-Rapists Cup that we cannae seem to win.”

 “It’s no for lack of effort, the lads is dedicated to the game, they get some wee totty, in the nightclub, and they all fuck the arse off her, all at the same time, like, they’re very professional. Ordinary young men just like a bit of totty but our players cannae get it up unless they’re all watching each other, that’s true healthy teamwork and it shows on the field. Its no fair that they dinnae get the recognition they deserve. The Club does go after these wee lassies and bully them and bribe them into no pressin’ any charges, so maybe yon’s the problem, we’re hiding our lights under a bushel, so tae spreak,” grunted this obnoxious old bastard. “But gang-rapin’s all they’re fit for anyroad in today’s Blairite world, eh, so they shouldnae complain. But even so it’s heart-breaking for me to see the lads go out most evenings, coked-up in their wee Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and passin some wee slapper between them like she was a fitba and no gettin proper recognition. D’yous wanna fight? I’m yer man.”

 Fuggitson is worshipped around the world.

 

“It wuz one of my greatest honours wot as ever been given to me in my long career of selling fings, not avin’ to work fer that cunt no more.”

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

That's enough footballing. Moving on to rather more serious matters. 

There has been some discussion on the previous thread about Col MacGregor's interview with Tucker Carlson and where truth lies in this Ukrainian business. The following is a poem by 8th century T'ang Dynasty poet Li Po ("Rihaku"), translated by Ezra Pound and included in his 1915 collection Cathay. T.S. Eliot praised it by remarking that Ezra Pound had "reinvented Chinese poetry for our time." This poem is around 1,300 years old and shows that war is as old as the human race and so is poetry and reflection. Demons and angels. 

Lament of the Frontier Guard

By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,

Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn.
I climb the towers and towers
                     to watch out the barbarous land:
Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert.
There is no wall left to this village.
Bones white with a thousand frosts,
High heaps, covered with trees and grass;
Who brought this to pass?
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?
Who has brought the army with drums and with
          kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle
           kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning.
Desolate, desolate fields,
And no children of warfare upon them,
            No longer the men for offence and defence.
Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the 
         North Gate,
With Rihaku's name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.

Svetlana Petrenko, a spokesperson for Russia's Investigative Committee, announced that molecular-genetic examinations of the 10 bodies found in the wreckage of the private Embraer Legacy plane which crashed while on its way from Moscow to St Petersburg on August 23rd, have established the identities of all ten people and confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin was one of the seven passengers and three crew.

Svetlana wouldn't be lying, would she? Prigozhin isn't relaxing in some fabulous Black Sea villa, sporting a wig and counting his money? 

Marking the end of Prigozhin's splendid and mutinous adventure and his thirty-year friendship, the President of Russia said of him that: "He made serious mistakes in life. But he achieved results both for himself, and for the common good when I asked for it - like in the last few months."

I thought this extract from Exile's Letter by Li Po, translated by Ezra Pound, might capture something of that regret and necessity:

To So-Kin of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor of Gen.

Now I remember that you built me a special tavern

By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin.

With yellow gold and white jewels, we paid for songs and laughter

And we were drunk for month on month, forgetting the kings and princes.

Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and from the west border,

And with them, and with you especially

There was nothing at cross purpose,

And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of mountain-crossing,

If only they could be of that fellowship,

And we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and without regret.

And then I was sent off to South Wei, smothered in laurel groves,

And you to the north of Raku-hoku,

Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories in common.......

And if you ask how I regret that parting:

It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end

Confused, whirled in a tangle.

What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,

There is no end of things in the heart.

I call in the boy,

Have him sit on his knees here

To seal this,

And send it a thousand miles, thinking.

 

The Call Me Ishmael oeuvre now comprises four volumes, thanks to editor mr verge.

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are 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

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

 

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.

She's off at last, then.