The Pundit Of Doom

There are several reasons why Pedantry Filesystem became one of the UK’s leading gits. Possibly it was his deep interest in the classification of knees, his fascination with the doings of politicians, or even his unrivalled collection of tea flasks. However, it was his unusual greasiness that tends to stick in people’s minds. He was often compared – unfavourably – with some kind of unpleasant suppository usually inflicted on people for medically-unpleasant reasons, rather than for any worthwhile or helpful motive.
Of course, being such an unpleasant person, but with the right connections, meant that he somehow managed to worm his greasy way into the media where – for reasons known only to programme producers – mainly, it was thought, through blackmail – Filesystem became a regular on the ubiquitous chat shows that infest the TV schedules, and also on those sorts of panel shows that the radio and TV love to inflict on their long-suffering audiences where members of the panel compete with each other to be as oleaginously patronising as they can towards that audience. An audience – it must be remembered – that was not a part of the metropolitan media elite and therefore rather primitive, ugly and unfashionable.
Therefore, being a greasy little toad with an overwhelming sense of his own intellectual superiority (a delusion he was never to lose), Filesystem seemed to always be on one or other of these programmes each week, often to the disgust of the audience and bemusement of his fellow panellists, who found that Filesystem’s outspoken and vociferous ignorance of almost every topic brought before the panel meant that he dominated each show, with the audience going away promising that they would never again watch a show in which Filesystem featured.
Obviously this made the programme-makers themselves almost orgasmic with excitement, feeling that they had found someone ‘controversial’ who would guarantee that their programme would be talked about as ‘daring, edgy, innovative and willing to take risks’ whenever media executives gathered to give each other elaborate lunches on expenses; which, in turn, meant that those same TV executives would make sure that the programme won all the necessary awards it needed in order to be re-commissioned.
Unfortunately, however, Pedantry Filesystem thought that the increasing number of invites he received to appear on such programmes meant that somehow the viewing public had taken him to their hearts and now regarded him as a national treasure. Consequently, he then began to receive more and more invitations to appear on more and more programmes, until – in despair and desperation – a gang of feral chat show hosts cornered him in one of the BBC’s green rooms and beat him to death with the gnawed-off leg of an early-evening Gardening programme presenter.
Funnily enough, Pedantry Filesystem does not seem to have been missed by anyone at all.

Scientists Warn Of Biodiversity Threat

It was revealed today that some scientists are increasingly concerned by the threat to biodiversity caused by certain species dying out.

As one political scientist said yesterday:

With their increasingly plummeting poll ratings, it seems that the traditional Labour voter could soon be entirely extinct in the UK.

Some political scientists cite the loss of the habitat of the traditional Labour voter, the metropolitan polytechnic social science department, as the main cause of the decline. They point out that the Left as a political philosophy has been in a long slow decline more or less throughout its history, as its inherent internal contradictions become more and more apparent as they are tested against reality.

The political scientists point out that despite occasional flurries, and occasional apparent increases in numbers, it seems inevitable that the Labour voter is headed for extinction, and very, very soon.

Faced with the inexorable decline in its numbers, the Labour government set up protected reservations for Labour voters as workers in the public sector, but typical Labour over-grazing of the public purse means that there will – after the election – be a famine in public sector jobs, and even – it seems - some areas where severe culling seems inevitable.

In former times the traditional middle-class Lefty who was the core of the Labour vote used to survive by living off the working class, mainly by patronizing them and promising the herds of workers that the Left would lead them into a valley of milk and honey. Instead, though, the Left led them up an ideological dead end where the hopes and aspirations of the beguiled working class were cruelly slaughtered in frantic attempts at a hodgepodge of misguided social engineering aimed at increasing the numbers in its client base in order to feed the voracious Labour party’s election-winning appetite. Ironically, though, and seemingly much to the bewilderment of those in the Labour party itself, this has led to a massive decrease in the number of people willing to become Labour Voters.

Consequently, in recent years the Labour party has had to resort to increasingly authoritarian methods in order to keep its ever-dwindling herd of voters cowed and docile enough to vote for the party. But it seems now that even the most fervent and committed Labour voters are quite simply losing the will to live, and – it seems – will soon be extinct.

However, most scientists seem to think that this will not be a total environmental disaster. As one political scientist said, after forcing himself to sit through a TV interview with Gordon Brown:

Quite frankly the Left is a total evolutionary dead end. Everything they do makes things worse instead of better –as they’d hoped. They just don’t seem capable of learning that the world does not work in the way they think it does. To be honest, he sooner they all die out the better for all of us.

Cute Kittens Doing Cute Things In A Cute Way With Cutely-Spelled Captions

Anyway, this is what becomes of when we peruse the reams of drivel put out about this General Election by those pundits of the MSM who would wear the trousers of earnest pontification and adopt the serious stances of those whose opinions are not just like ours, which to them resemble the piss of small rodents blowing away on the breeze to be lost in the long grass of indifference.

Still, we here in the audience must adopt the furrowed brow and chin-stroking earnestness that must greet every one of their pronouncements, and – thenceforth - regard it as wise almost beyond our mental grasp, something we can only tentatively admire with our pedestrian minds, not reach out grasp and turn it this way and that to admire its brilliance under the sharp light of more enquiring minds than ours.

Only it isn’t like that, not at all.

What we get are some half-baked platitudes, some cobbled together rumours from bars and tea rooms lightly dusted with a sprinkling of multi-coloured speculations and wishful thinking. There is some insight, but that has all the depth of wisdom of a puddle after a summer shower and has about as much impact on the dry dust of public awareness.

We get the trite, the banal, the obvious. We get five or ten minutes of our time wasted that could so valuably be spent looking at pictures of cute kittens doing cute things in a cute way with cutely-spelled captions.

We could even turn to look out of the window for five minutes instead, and see that there is a world out there waiting for us to come out and play.

An Undulation Of A Shadow’s Edge

Sometimes you glimpse a world hidden away behind your thoughts, back in the shadows are those creatures lurk that you try not to think about too often. Those dark creatures that hide in the shadows behind you, occasionally you see flickers of them in mirrors and reflected back from the glass you are bringing up to your lips. Often nothing more than an undulation of a shadow’s edge that can be easily dismissed as a trick of the light.

Deep down though, you know they are lurking there and that they have all the time in the world to wait. They have been waiting for us from ever since our time began, and they will be here long after the legend of the human is forgotten by the universe.

Back when humanity was young these were spirits, demons, gods and all those other fates, hopes and malevolences that lurked out beyond control. These were the ghosts, goblins elves and other such creatures that lurked in the shadows waiting for the unwary to step on that deeper patch of darkness that was no ordinary shadow, but a place where life could be torn screaming from the one who took that step too far.

The Signs Of Aging

Time takes hold of all of us and pulls us through our lives, even though for most of us we want time to stay still at some point and for the world to go on revolving around us while we get no older. Getting older though is inevitable, and futilely fighting the ‘signs of aging’ is pointless, wasting that very time you hope to be saving yourself from as it passes by.

Your life will go by even in those moments where you deny it is passing and as you battle to turn back the hands of the clock. In the end, you fool no-one but yourself as you turn yourself into a parody of youth.



There is something though about a face that wears the ravages of time upon it, that carries the scars of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune upon it. It tells us of a face that has lived and come to know what life is for and what it is about. It is the exact opposite of those faces that are ironed smooth and are as fake and plastic as a doll’s, with the same forced expression that tells of nothing except its own blankness and the emptiness of what lies behind it.

Monday Poem: To Dust

To Dust

 

I fall slowly down
To lie on dead ground
And be forgotten.

I turn to dust
And am spread out
Everywhere on dry dead winds.

Then, that young woman daydream walking
Of her marriage dread
Steps forward, through my dust.

I stick to the hard-worn skin of her walking soles
And become the dust of a vague memory
She washes from the end of her weary day.

 

(First published in Interpoetry issue 15 (website no longer available)

Friday Poem: Mountain Stream

Mountain Stream

The shallows, clear as sudden understanding.
Your bare pink foot hesitates into water,
Swirling mud clouds eddying upwards
Like an insignificant world destroyed
By impatient gods seeking self-justification
And acknowledgement
Through harsh vengeance.

You crouch down
With hands sculling
As you shiver in the mountain stream
That still believes it lives as snow, high
Out of reach of mere mortal hands
Looking down on this small world beneath it.

You kneel naked in shallow water
Cupped hands pouring sparkles
Of captured sunlight all over yourself
Turning your body into a mirror
I can only turn away from.

Lost In France

Due to some volcano or other I'm currently stuck in the hell of the French Riviera at a comfortable apartment in glorious weather and with excellent food.
I may be back sometime soon-ish.
(from a internet cafe - Antibes).

Wee Calf

Q./ Two cows in a field. How can you tell which one is on holiday?

A./ The one with a wee calf.

(wee calf = week off, geddit? Eh? Eh? Oh, don’t bother then.)

There will be no more posts here over the next week as I will be away.

Abnormal service should be resumed here around Monday 19^th April.

That is unless the human race (and politicians) find some cure for our seemingly terminal stupidity.

Amateur Wins TV Contest

After a tense final, live on TV, Quick-Juan Ristoff an amateur from Luton, won the coveted MasterBate 2010 title, with one of the judges Hugh Sless-Tosser, claiming, ’wanking doesn’t get much better than this!’

Both judges, Hugh Sless-Tosser, and celebrity wanker Ivor Biggun, both singled out Quick-Juan Ristoff’s cum face as ‘like a slow-motion film of someone making their first attempt to speak Latvian whilst hitting upwards of 4g in a centrifuge used for astronaut training, while, at the same time, a team of blind untrained technicians attempt to insert a full-scale replica of Captain Cook’s sailing ship, Endeavour, into him from behind without the use of any lubricant.’

The three finalists had all survived a series of increasingly difficult masturbation challenges, such as wanking in the desert (as well as the show’s traditional tasks of wanking into a dessert in one of the preliminary rounds), wanking at the top of a bell tower of a medieval church, having a quick one of the wrist in the queue at a busy supermarket on the day before Christmas Eve, a sly hand down the front of the trousers at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party and so on.

The final round consisted of a live wank-off between the three finalists in front of former Page 3 model and celebrity slapper, Minge Décolletage, who awarded points for wrist action, stance and most imaginative use of the watermelon.

The winner of the contest, Quick-Juan Ristoff, took home the famous MasturBate trophy as well as wining a all-expenses paid full one year residency at one of London’s top private Artificial Insemination Clinics.

After winning the award, Quick-Juan Ristoff said, ‘I hope this award leads to bigger and better things, and that in future I become even more of a wanker than I am now.’

As judge, Hugh Sless-Tosser said of the victor: ‘He has the wrist action of a natural-born wanker, and I should know as I’m one of the biggest tossers on TV.’

The First Oscillator of Spring

It was the First Oscillator of Spring. I held my breath, dropped it and picked it up again. I wiped the mud off it and bundled it up in an old plastic bag for Later.

Later came through the trees and out into the clearing.

"You're late, Later," I said.

"You think you are so fucking funny, don't you?"

"No."

"Well, you certainly fuck funny," she said. "Sometimes I wish I'd kept those photographs. It took ages for that rash to fade."

I felt myself blush. The blush faded, but I carried on feeling myself. I enjoyed it. I smiled, remembering the photographs, and how they had burnt. I never told Later, but I still, occasionally, had the twinges in my lower back. Those wooden wings had been so heavy, and it had taken several days to remove the splinters.

I turned to watch Later. She was almost completely naked. Only the leather underwear remained - and the harness, of course. I gulped.

She looked up at me. "I see you're feeling yourself again." She sighed.

I let my hands drop to my sides.

"Get 'em off then," she said. "We might as well get this over with. I want my breakfast."

Wednesday Story: Darkness

Darkness

It was all silence. It seemed like some frozen, never-ending moment. Her hand reached out into the darkness, searching. Searching for something to touch, searching for something to hold. Searching for a shape in the blackness she could mould, form, into meaning.

Seeing nothing on the outside, her eyes turned inward. She tried to create an idea of her surroundings in her mind. All she had was herself; her name - Sally Moore; and her knowledge that all her previous nightmares did - eventually - end.

She was still; the hands of fluttering uncertainty had fallen to her sides. She had only shape in the blackness. She only had intensities of darkness suddenly brought into existence as her body met them.

She waited, knowing that - in a sudden realisation - that her next step could be one to send her endlessly falling, falling until she was stopped, awoken by her alarm's insistent ringing.

"But this," she said out loud, shocked to hear her own voice and how loud it seemed. "This is no dream."

How she knew it was not a dream was not that clear to her. She could feel soreness on both her shins that she knew would become bruises. It came from where she had bumped into the strange unidentifiable objects that seemed to fill the... the... whatever it was… the space she had been trying to move through.

She could feel the air, but no breeze or draught as such, on her naked skin. There was a vaguely tight uncomfortable feeling around her wrists and ankles where she had traced patterns that could be rope burns.

Suddenly, she was crouched, huddled and blinking behind upraised arms. Sharp tears stung her eyes as everything became painfully bright and light.

Slowly, she uncurled herself, trying to blink her eyes open. But still they refused the brightness. She had to look down, away. Her head kept hidden behind the crook of her arm.

Almost standing she became aware of sound; the sound of shoes on concrete. Her awareness of her own nudity, her own vulnerability, seemed to spread up her body from her bare feet where she stood on the rough dusty concrete. She felt a kind of numbing coldness that made her shiver and hug herself.

Her eyes still refused the light and her head remained bowed. She knew she gave the impression of surrender, of defeat. She wanted to stand straight, strong, confident. But the cold, the harsh light, the fear, they all held her in the posture of acquiescence. She knew she was beaten, beaten before she even had a chance of fighting back.

Eventually, she could look up. The lights were bright, pointing right at her, at her nudity, like an accusing finger. Almost at the level of instinct, she felt her hands needing to cover her body, her breasts, her pubis. She had to fight hard against her own body to keep her traitorous hands by her sides and to pull her body up from a posture of defeat. She clenched her fists, hard, tight, down by her sides. She could feel her sharp nails digging into her palms. She wanted the justification of her own blood.

The pain in her palms awoke her anger. She was angry with herself for getting into this situation. She should have known better, expected this, prepared for it created strategies to avoid it, and if not that, to cope with it.

She felt a presence behind the bright light. She forced herself to relax. "Who… who's… the… there," she said, annoyed that it came out weak and stuttering, almost a whisper. Even she could hear the weakness, the uncertainty, in her voice.

She stood up straighter, her feet a few inches apart. She clasped her hands behind her back, trying to relax into the posture she had taken.

"Come on then," she said, projecting her voice so that it echoed into the darkness. "I'm ready. I'm waiting."

There was silence, except for a faint sound, like water dripping onto concrete, somewhere off to her left. She was sure she could hear a slight electronic buzzing from the powerful lights too.

"Are you ready, Sally? Are you sure?" The voice was calm, cold, mocking.

Two loud footsteps and just a pair of black boots appeared out of the shadows. A calculated effect. Sally had to stop herself from smiling.

"Come on," she said. "That sort of thing isn't going to work. You ought to know better than that."

"Ah," the voice said. "But, my dear Sally, I do know better than that." The boots merged back into the shadows with the same two footsteps.

Sally took a step forward, towards the lights.

"Wait!" The voice was loud, echoing. "Do not step out of the light. That would be against the rules."

"Oh, yes?" Sally smiled. "And, just - may I ask - whose rules are they?" She smiled sweetly.

"Your rules, of course."

"Then what is there to stop me from breaking my own rules?"

"Nothing, of course. Except… except your own sense of the purpose of all this. The situation is yours. The rules are yours. Stepping beyond the rules is up to you, of course. But what is the point of that? What can you learn if you negate the whole experiment, the whole experience?"

"But doesn't the whole idea of rules, of formality go against the very nature of the reason why we are here?"

"I don't know, does it?"

"Of course it does.” She was silent for a moment. “Anyway, we've lost it now. It was… those boots - what a cliché. After that… well." She sighed and shrugged. "Could you throw me my clothes? Oh, and turn these bloody lights off, I'm getting a headache." She rubbed at the marks on her wrists, smearing the make-up, ruining the effect of rope burns. She wiped the smeared cosmetics from her wrists with the corner of her shirt and then shrugged it on.

With the powerful lights off, and the normal lighting turned back on, the warehouse seemed to have lost its air of menace. Sally looked around her. It just looked dull, dowdy and exactly like what it was - an abandoned warehouse. All except for the one corner, which was bright and clean where the computers hummed and the technicians sat, waiting for her. She picked up her white coat, slipped it on, and picked up her clipboard from where she had left it on a broken office chair. She strode across to the technical area.

"Right," she said. "Any thoughts?" She heard a whisper to her left and turned sharply. "What was that, Michael? Speak up a bit."

"N… nothing." Michael blushed and bowed down behind his computer screen.

"He said you've got a beautiful body."

Sally smiled thinly. "Thank you Emma. I'm sure Michael will thank you for sharing that with us." She put her clipboard down on top of a nearby monitor.

"Michael? Michael!"

Michael got slowly to his feet "Ye… Yes… Mi... Ma'a… Sa…." He blushed again.

"Thank you… for the compliment." Sally smiled. "But did it work?"

Michael blushed and sat down again. "Yes. Like I said last time, by mapping your b…body movements from the video and the sensors into the program we can get a much more re…realistic illusion of a real person. It looses all the a… angularity." Michael smiled. "Our heroine no longer has a rectangular bum."

"Great, Mike. Well done." Sally smiled at him and he blushed again.

"I think you're in there, Mike," Rod called from the back of the room. "Mikey's got a girl friend. Mikey's got a girl friend."

Michael turned swiftly on his swivel chair. "Shu… shut up!" He threw a ruler at Rod who ducked then stuck his tongue out at Michael.

"Settle down. Settle down." Sally said. "You lot are worse than a bunch of children. So… so… how did it go?"

There was a muttering of positive noises as everyone nodded their heads enthusiastically.

"Yes, well." Sally said. She sat on a desk. She saw her skirt had ridden up; she smiled at her automatic reflex as she pulled the hem back over her thighs. But, she said to herself, everyone here has just seen everything you've got, you silly cow. "I was really inside it, really there. That is… until those boots."

"Y… yes." Michael taped a few buttons on his keyboard. "Look." He pointed up to the big screen that took up most of the wall behind the technical area.

At first, it just looked black, empty, but then Sally thought she could detect something. Then she saw it, slightly paler than the rest of the screen, a human body - her body - moving through the darkness.

"I think it needs something," Emma said quietly. "A light, a torch, a flare, something like that."

"Y…yes," Michael's head was nodding rapidly. "Maybe pitch d…d…darkness at a later stage in the game. But, make it too hard in the beginning and everyone will just give up. I can't see where to go, what to do. I can't even really tell that I'm b…bumping into things. There is no feedback. Even when I map in your sensory inputs from the brain wave scanner all I get is the feeling of panic, fear and so on, but no real sense of why I'm feeling that way. To make it work in the darkness we are going to have to get some kind of physical sensation in there."

Sally thought about being in that darkness, the… the thickness of it covering her body like a blanket, the total disorientation, the loss of any sense of a world, the fear that the next step could lead to falling forever.

"No," John said, dropping his pen onto his desk and swivelling his chair to face Michael. "I've told you before that sort of thing will push the project way over budget. Even this brain wave scanner interface thing…. I had to work my bollocks off to get the board even to consider the experiment. Actually incorporating all the emotional data into the game itself… well, that is… I'll be honest pretty unlikely at the moment."

"Oh, shit." Michael buried his face in the palms of his hands.

"Sorry Mike," John said. "But you know… if it was up to me… and I'll keep pushing for it, for you. You know that don't you?"

"Y…yes John, thanks. Thanks for your support. I ought to have realised, but…." Michael looked up at John. "One day, eh? Maybe?

“One day. Yes.” John smiled and nodded his agreement. "Sally?"

John was looking at her. Everyone was looking at her. "No. I want the start in darkness. Just think about it, she starts with nothing, not even a world," Sally said eventually.

"But will they keep playing?" Emma shrugged. "I don't know."

"Oh yes they will," Rod's voice was loud in its certainty. "Who plays all these bloody games we make - teenage boys, that's who. Promise them that they are going to see a naked woman as soon as they find the torch, candle, box of flares or whatever and I can guarantee that ninety-five per-cent of them will stay up all bloody night if necessary."

"That was another point I was going to raise," John said. "Heaven knows I'm no prude, but…."

"But what?" Rod said. "You don't like the idea of all those teenage sad-cases getting all manner of pervy thoughts about your wife, our own dear Sally here?"

"No, I…." John looked around, at Sally, at Emma and back to Sally.

"Or, is it that you like the idea," Rod grinned at John.

"You little bas…." John stood up and headed towards Rod, vaulting over one of the desks. Rod sat, still smiling at John, waiting.

"John!" Sally yelled. "Stop."

John stopped and stood; his shoulders slumped and head bowed.

"That's it," Rod whispered. "Do exactly what little wifey tells you. Perhaps that's why she wants all those teenagers lusting after her, is that what gets you all hot and bothered? What's the matter, are you leaving her short, is she starting to look elsewh…."

"Rod! You shut up too," Sally's voice echoed around the silence of the warehouse. "I'd expect an apology. But you'd have to be a real man to do that."

"Yes," Emma said, standing up and deliberately moving her chair further away from Rod's. "And I don't think a real man would keep slipping off to the bog with those print-offs of Sally in the nude hidden under his shirt either."

"That's a lie!" Rod stood and pointed down at Emma. "You should apologise to me."

Emma just smiled and tapped a button on her keyboard. "These days it seems there are web-cams, spy-cams and mini-cams everywhere, doesn’t it? Here's one that just happened to end up in the men's toilets."

Everyone turned to look at the big screen. The camera was at a high angle - but it was obviously Rod walking into shot, locking the cubicle door and easing some photographs of Sally from under his shirt. Sally was stunned, seeing herself in the pictures - high definition prints of her walking around the set stark naked. She shuddered as she saw the image of Rod dropping his trousers in the cubicle.

"Obviously Rod was a name his parents hoped he'd grow into," Emma said. "They must have been so disappointed. I've seen bigger ones on my brother's pet hamsters."

"You sneaky, nosy little bitch!" Rod screamed at Emma, standing up. His chair tipped backwards and clattered on the hard floor. He stared at Jon, then Sally. "Are you going to let her get away with this?"

There was no answer. The only sound was the muted heavy breathing coming from the wall-mounted speakers on either side of the big screen. Rod turned and looked up at the giant image of himself on the screen.

"Right. That's it! I quit." He strode towards the door.

"Rod? Rod please!" Sally's voice was loud, strong, echoing in the large room.

Rod turned, looking hopefully at Sally. "What?"

"Don't slam the door on your way out."

"Cow. I never fancied you anyway," Rod said, as his image on the screen seemed to prove the exact opposite. The door slammed as the Rod on the screen sighed and ejaculated over the pictures of Sally. Emma tapped at her keyboard and the image faded to blackness.

"Emma," Sally said. "Is there a good reason why you installed one of you mini-cameras in the men's toilets?"

"Yes," John said. "I told her to. Someone was smoking dope in there. I thought it was probably Rod, but I wanted proof. I never expected that though."

Sally had a mental image of the pictures held in Rod's hand as his other hand…. She shuddered and wrapped her lab coat tight around herself.

"Second thoughts?" Emma said.

Sally nodded.

"I never liked this 'nude' idea anyway," John said. "Whose idea was it?"

"Guess," Michael said.

"Oh, don't tell me. Mister wrist-action?"

"Yes, I think it was. One of the first brainstorming sessions. That late-night one where we were all pissed." Michael said.

"Come to think of it, you didn't object to us smoking dope that night," Emma said. "In fact, if I remember, you were rolling most of the spliffs."

"That was different," John replied. "It wasn't company time, or company premises. Personally, I couldn't give a damn - as you say I like a smoke myself. But if one of the company high-ups - or their flunkies - take it into their heads to actually venture down her to see what it is we actually do to pay their salaries… well."

"You don't think… all that time, effort… all the late nights he put in. You don't think he did… all that, just to see me in the buff, do you?" Sally looked from John to Emma to Michael.

"Me…men can do strange things when they are obsessed," Michael lined up the pens on his desk parallel to his keyboard. "I know, from personal experience."

Everyone expected Michael to continue, but he was silent. The silence grew. John coughed and the others turned towards him.

"So… shall we drop this nudity thing then?" John looked around.

Emma nodded. Michael nodded. Sally shook her head.

"Why not?" Emma said. "Don't you… you know… as a woman."

“Partly… yes… and no," Sally said. "But I'm tired. Shall we call it a day?"

"That's a good idea," John said. "We'll discuss all of this. Everything… in the morning." He headed towards the door, shrugging on his coat. He turned to Sally. "I'll get the car, bring it around."

Sally nodded without turning to face him as she gathered some papers from her desk. "Okay."

"Aren't you worried," Emma said quietly. "About the effect that this sort of stuff can have? Especially now, with things like that brain wave interface thing of Michael’s taking emotions from real people's heads?"

"Yes. Yes I am," Sally said. "But not so much thing we do - games and such-like. I wonder what less… benign forces will do with the technology. That scares me. Some teenager beating his meat because he caught a glimpse of my bush - well, that's no big deal."

"Are you sure?" Emma said. "I saw your face when you were watching Rod come all over those pictures of you. You weren't so cool, so relaxed then."

Sally let the papers drop back on to her desk. "You want me to zip up, be like some Muslim woman, only my eyes showing?"

"No. Don't be ridiculous. Because I don't really like one thing doesn't mean I want the exact opposite. I just think we may be underestimating the power of the technology."

"You know what?" Sally said, looking up at Emma.

"What?"

"For once I agree with you. We do underestimate the power of the technology. Do you know why?"

Emma looked puzzled. "Why?"

"Because that is what we do. We are human. Goodnight.”

END

[This, and other stories can also be found here as well]

Man Regains Ability To Hit Little Balls With A Stick

Some bloke who became quite well-known around the world for being quite good at hitting little balls with a stick, has now – it seems – gone back to hitting the little balls with a stick again.

Apparently, when it was discovered that the man liked to have sex with lots of women – most of whom he was not married to – this somehow had some kind of deleterious effect on his abilities to hit the little balls with a stick in some undefined and undisclosed way.

However, now that the man has promised not to get caught having sex with women he is not married to, apparently his ability to hit the little balls with the stick has magically returned.

Asked top comment on this stunning revelation, the world and his wife said: ‘Oh.’

General lection Unleashed On Unsuspecting UK Population

The RAC, AA and other motoring organisations were today warning people to be on the look-out for heavy traffic, and possible congestion, on all roads leading to isolated areas with non-existent TV reception and poor postal services, as it was confirmed that the UK’s General Election campaign was about to get underway.
The announcement of the official beginning to the general election campaign was greeted with cries of anguish and despair throughout the land as people realised we are in for much, much more mind-numbing and soul-destroying political brain-rot being beamed into our homes until our brains explode with the horror and futility of it all.

[A candidate out on the campaign trail]

Police warned that members of the public when outside the relative safety of their own homes should be vigilant and not make the mistake of approaching any of the hordes of politicians lurching through the streets screaming ‘Votes! Votes!’
Mental safety campaigners stressed that people should already be beginning to scan the TV schedules in search of any hidden Party political broadcasts and making sure that if the lack of an off switch made watching such programmes unavoidable they should devise some sort of coping strategy and have the numbers of the emergency services and the Samaritans always near at hand.
Other health and safety organisations stressed that there are several simple ways of avoiding any dangerous prolonged exposure to politics, even during the highly hazardous days of a General Election campaign.
A leaflet issued to worried householders stresses that they should, as mentioned above, always take the precaution of checking their TV schedules for any warning of impending party political broadcasts. However, it also stress that people ought to take the sensible precaution of avoiding any news or current affairs programmes as they are more than likely to be completely taken over by the deadly General Election virus during its most virulent phase.
The leaflet also warns that people should also only handle any leaflets pushed through their doors with gloves until they are sure that it constrains no trace of any political party or message, otherwise the contaminated leaflet should be instantly placed in the recycling box immediately before any member of the household is needlessly exposed to it.
Police have also stressed the danger of opening the door to any stranger carrying leaflets or wearing one of the tell-tale rosettes that warn the public that the wearer has been infected with the deadliest form of the politics virus.
As one woman, panic buying tinned items in her local supermarket said:

I’m worried in case I see one of them in the street and it tries to kiss my baby. I’ve heard that politics is highly contagious and one kiss is enough to turn you into a politician.

A clearly upset young man out in the street was also interviewed by our reporter: ‘I’ve heard they capture you, eat your brains and that turns you into one of them and you ending up joining a… a… a political party.’ He said, breaking down in tears and falling to a crumpled sobbing heap on the floor. ‘I’m too young to be a politician!’ he wailed, curling up into a foetal ball and sucking his thumb between sobs.
‘Just give them all the duck houses they want, and then – maybe – they’ll leave us alone!’ screamed one potential voter as he ran for some nearby woods chased by a gaggle of leaflet-carrying canvassers.
However, the general election campaign should be over in a matter of weeks, and the country should eventually return to what most of us have come to grudgingly accept as normal. However, as the BBC’s political correspondent warned:

On no account should anyone be tempted to vote for any of the buggers, because it will not - as old wives tale has it ‘shut them up and make them leave us alone’. It just means that the deadly political virus that causes these politicians and these outbreaks of elections will lie dormant for the next four to five years before breaking out again, which means we all have to go though this whole trauma yet again in a few year’s time. Oh, the horror! The horror!

Friday Poem: Theatre

Theatre

The mists draw back
like curtains
to reveal the theatre of morning.

You appear,
centre stage,
and lead the children by the hand
down to the sea of adventures.

I sit,
in the stalls,
watching.

Needing to remember,
wanting to take notes.

My life was never like this.

Thursday Poem: Some Secret Too Big

Some Secret Too Big

These are the stars that hold us here
as green is filled with living worlds
to turn around and all around
again, until we grow alone,
and feeling lost, are pushed up close
against a sky that never learns
our names, even while distances
across this stony ground are walked
just seeking times and forms and shapes
of lives to wear to face the days.

We used to live out here amongst
these shapes of other people’s lives,
their corners up against our corners.
The edges once so sharp, now dulled,
but still the pressures building up
are pushing one against the next
until the cracks fissure with pain
and all our worlds are torn apart.

These paper fragments flutter, torn
and ripped like falling snowflakes down
towards the litterbin like lives
discarded. Emptying the bin,
though, cannot turn back time or make
all the memories go away.
The past can always haunt you still.

There is not much left now, the page
remains unfilled. You thought there would
be something more than these few lines
that needed to be said, and how
after all this time and after
so much was said, there was still more
that lay unsaid, and something left
still unacknowledged, un-referred,
as though it was still there, like some
secret too big to name or hold.

New Website For Undecided Voters Announced

People unsure of which party – if any – they ought to vote for in the forthcoming UK general election are being offered help by a new website, which will offer them a series of questions and answers which should point the voters towards which party’s policies match that voter’s opinions the closest.

The website called Vote For Labo… Voter Choice has been set up by a totally independent body, called The Labour Party Headquarters… .www.Nothing To Do With Us/ Honest.Gov.

A spokesman for the new website, Lord ‘Dick’ Dastardly of Foy said:

This is a totally independent site that will offer every voter who uses it a chance to see that - through a series of unbiased question and answers – they should vote Labou… er… which party most represents their views. I can guarantee that the site is totally independent, free from bias, and does not… say, for example favour the good honest People’s Labour Party over the evil baby-eating Tory party in any way whatsoever, and even though the Liberal Democrats are totally pointless, irrelevant and not worth voting for under any circumstances, I can stand here with my hand on my heart and say that the site is in no way biased against that bunch of pointless tossers in any way whatsoever.

The website itself is set out with a number of questions with multiple choice answers, that should enable a voter using it to come to see which party’s policies are most in line with that voters belief, such as:

1.    Gordon Brown saved the world during the financial crisis that was absolutely nothing to do with Labour government policies, and was entirely the fault of the Americans. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

 

2.    The Tories are evil baby-eating toffs who would sell their own grandmothers just to buy more champagne to bathe their whores in. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

3.    The Liberal Democrats are a bunch of beardie sandal-wearing weirdo lentilist softies who haven’t a clue about how the real world works and would probably all be polytechnic lecturers if there were still polytechnics. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

 

4.    It should be the government’s job to decide everything about everything and I should just hand over every penny of my earnings in taxes, so that they can spend it all for me on what they think I should need. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

5.    That David Cameron – he’s just too shiny to be real. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

 

6.    The country should not be run by elitist snobs from public schools, unless they are members of the people’s Labour party, of course. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

7.    The Liberal Democrats… I mean, come on what is the point, really? Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

 

8.    Gordon Brown is exactly the sort of superhero this country needs in order to counter the threat of global financial collapse, terrorism, global cooli… global warming… climate chang… a bit of nasty weather, evil baby-eating Tory Toff scum. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

9.    Yes, I do think that the government should take more and more of my hard-earned money to piss up the wall on its half-baked attempts to socially-engineer us all into becoming mindless worker drones for the greater glory of the New Laborg Collective. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

 

10.    No, I am not too insane to vote in the upcoming election. Do you:
a.    Agree
b.    Agree

Answers:

 

If you chose mainly a./: then you should vote: Labour in the forthcoming General Election.

If you chose mainly b./: then you should vote: Labour in the forthcoming General Election.