News

When I first started this blog I was adamant that I would force myself to keep it up to date, and would write regular pieces to slap onto the net to maintain my profile in the world of smut. So much for good intentions; it’s probably three months since I bothered to post anything. This blog has become something like an exercise bike – you start off doing thirty miles a day, but before long it’s in the attic gathering dust with all your other crap.

So, what news is there to report? Obviously it would be inexcusable on my part to fail to mention that our Prime Minister once fucked a pig. It isn’t relative to anything, but it is a topic that I feel should be regularly raised - right up until the day that dirty pig fucker leaves office. And the next time the hypocritical son of a bitch passes legislation outlawing the depiction of sexual practices in British pornography, he should be reminded of his pork poking past, and told in no uncertain terms that anyone who sticks his rod in a hog has no business whatsoever telling other people what they can and can’t do with their genitals.

There’s finally a leftie in charge of the Labour Party, and Wales are smashing it in the World Cup, but what I’m really supposed to be writing about here is the release schedule for my upcoming works, rather than Cameron’s predilection for slamming the ham. I should therefore stop with the pig fucking puns and talk business.

I’ve just approved the final galley for a short story entitled ‘Office Politics’, which is set to release on Nov 6^th, through MuseItHot publishing. It will be a quick read, consumable in roughly the same amount of time as it takes a dignified statesman to slide his erect penis into the waiting mouth of a hog roast. Oops, sorry, I mentioned pig fucking again. I promise I’ll stop it now.

After Office Politics comes out I’ll be concentrating on the build up to the release of my second novel – Leisure – which will hopefully hit the digital shelves before the end of the year. I’m tentatively labelling Leisure as an erotic farce; publishers and retailers love to pigeonhole books into genres, and anything that they aren’t able to neatly compartmentalise gives them sleepless nights. Peeper caused consternation among advertisers because it didn’t fit rigidly into any of their tick boxes, but I’m hoping my next book will be a little more straight forward. I can guarantee that there will be absolutely no pig fucking contained within.

Moving toward next year, I’m hoping to have my fingers in a couple more pies (not pork pies). More news on that score if and when it happens.

Oink oink.

Why Censor Words?

I fell victim to the ultimate form of censorship this week, and it has gotten me so irate that I decided to dispense with my ‘no ranting’ rule and have a bloody good, full on whinge about it. Allow me to explain what happened . . .

I am in the process of creating an internet ‘buzz’ around my forthcoming novel Peeper and am doing the usual rounds of social media bombardment and guest appearances on blogs. One of these blogs is that of fellow writer of erotica Kay Dee Royal, who kindly agreed to interview me and provide a little advertising for my novel. So she sent me a list of questions to answer, and I dutifully filled in the form and sent it back, and Kay told me I would be appearing on her blog on June 8^th and she would send me a link so I could spam the fuck out of all my friends. All good so far.

The problem occurred when her blog went live and I received the link to go view it, and instead of seeing my interview and lovely pictures of my book cover, I saw the following message from my mobile network provider: This content is designated adults only and is blocked.

As you would imagine, I used several words at that moment which would have the internet censors scrambling for cover with their hands over their ears. “Fuck!” I shouted. “Fucking arseholing bollocking ball bags.” I was – I should point out – in the middle of nowhere, and without access to my home broadband was entirely reliant upon my smart phone to conduct my online affairs.

In a nutshell, my mobile network provider EE had censored me from reading back my own words; answers I’d given as part of an interview were being deemed far too rude for my poor little mind to cope with. Thank fuck these cocksniffers are here to protect me from myself, huh?

This opens up a whole new debate as far as I’m concerned. Namely, why are words being censored? I can see the point of censoring hard core porn sites - making sure that people who have no fucking clue about anything can happily hand over a smart phone to their offspring and sleep content at night, secure in the knowledge their little darlings can’t see anything they aren’t supposed to.

But the censorship of words is – to my mind – the ultimate nonsense. Allow me to explain what I mean. I want you to read the following sentence, and then close your eyes and allow its meaning to sink into your mind:

Barry and Mary went upstairs to make love.

Okay, so what did these words make you see? Maybe you’re a Mary Whitehouse type, and the idea of Barry and Mary having sex leaves you frothing at the mouth and indignantly reaching for your bible. Maybe you are slightly dirty minded, and saw Barry and Mary going at it hell for leather, naked and sweaty. Or maybe you are a total deviant, and saw Barry as a shy bi-curious man finally coming out of his shell and taking the butt-pounding of a lifetime from a seven foot tall Congolese transvestite named Mary.

The point is, any one of these scenarios are entirely possible. Words are nothing but symbols on a page which, when fed through our brain, can be transformed into images by our imaginations. So what is it exactly that needs to be censored – is it the words themselves, or is it our own thought processes? The only place that words can truly be transformed into pornography is in the depths of our own minds.

Censorship of words is censorship of the imagination - of our interpretation of a description, which is as individual to each of us as our fingerprints. How can you stop people from seeing things in their mind’s eye that you may not like? If I were to say the word ‘stiff’ I may be talking about a yardbrush, but you may see a massive, throbbing cock. Should the word ‘stiff’ be removed from the dictionary to protect the terminally fucked up, or would it be easier to simply lobotomise us all at birth so we’re protected from our own imaginations? God forbid we should think about something that a Daily Mail reader may not like.

And of course, the ultimate irony to all this is that while I was staring at the screen of my smart phone in disbelief at the declaration that I was being blocked from accessing a page full of my own words, there were probably myriad teenagers sitting in the back row of their geography lessons, giggling as they used their phones to watch the latest sex tape of some wannabe glamour model getting pounded by a footballer, as they are far smarter with smart technology than the rest of us.

I’m sure my mobile provider would argue it is easy for me to remove this block from my service, but why should I have to go to the trouble? They didn’t presume I was under eighteen when I signed up to their credit agreement and handed over my money, so why are they assuming I’m a child now? Should censorship not be an opt in device for concerned parents, rather than the default setting used to piss off innocent perverts like myself?

For anyone who is interested, here is the link to Kay Dee Royal’s blog:

http://kaydeeroyal.blogspot.co.uk/?zx=1a6f5c4dcbe2bcab

She’s a very nice lady, and you should all stop by for a visit. Hopefully the words you see written on the screen won’t damage your mind and condemn your mortal soul to the flames of hell.

Take a Peep at Peeper

Here I am once again; struggling with the side of the writing business they call marketing and trying to give reasons why you should all buy my book without making myself sound like the world’s biggest tosspot.

For starters, I’ll say that Peeper is dirty; I’m not talking a little suggestive or saucy here, this book is downright filthy. They say that sex sells, and with that in mind I should be onto a winner. Peeper tells the story of a man named Jenks, a small time private investigator who becomes involved with a blackmail plot centered around the seductive and mysterious Veronica, who drags him ever deeper into her seedy world. I won’t go into any detail about the scenarios that ensue, but I think it’s safe to say they are very, very rude.

Have these promises of dirtiness gotten your attention yet? No? Okay, so maybe I can appeal to you on an intellectual level; Peeper is based entirely in North Wales, and if – like myself – you hail from this little corner of the planet and wonder why there is seldom any representation of us Gogs in the media or art world, then this may very well be the book for you. The names of the towns and people are made up, but if you are familiar with this stretch of coastline then you may recognise the places and the characteristics.

If naughtiness and geography aren’t floating your boat, then perhaps I could offer you a little voyeurism? The idea of taking an illicit peep at the secret lives that others keep hidden behind closed doors is one I’m sure, if we’re honest with ourselves, we all enjoy far more than we should. Peeper deals with people who like to look, and with people who like to show.

Are you sold yet? Will you be purchasing a copy of my book on June 30^th? I could lie and claim that any profit made from sales will go to a good cause, like rescuing blind donkeys from evil paedophiles or something, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is purely a capitalistic venture; buy and sell; supply and demand.

Go on, buy it. You know you want to.

:)

Where's My Pants?

 

I awake with a start at four o'clock in the morning and instantly know that something is wrong. Is there a fire? Is an axe murderer watching me from the shadows, preparing to pounce? It’s only when I stick my hand below the duvet for a quick readjustment of the old balls that I realise what is going on: My pants are missing. I'm pretty sure I was wearing them when I crawled drunkenly to bed last night, so where the hell have they gone?

I’m naked from the waist down. Have I become another unfortunate victim of pant thievery? It’s a phenomenon that is rife right now – I read about it on the internet. People are waking up to discover their pants have been harvested, and in the majority of cases it’s too late to do anything about it. By the time they’ve come to their senses their pants are half way around the globe, and some Chinese billionaire is strutting down the street in them, showing them off to his rich friends.

God damn it. Where the hell are my pants?

Four in the morning is no hour to be awake - too late to be considered early and too early to be considered late. It's kind of like a no man's land, sandwiched between the night and the dawn; the revellers have quietened and the milkmen’s alarms have yet to go off. It's certainly not the ideal time to be crashing around a narrowboat, hung over and pantless, turning the place upside down in search of missing underwear. I check every nook and cranny, but there's no sign of them. It's becoming increasingly clear my pants have been abducted. 

I could call the police, but frankly I think they'd laugh me out of town. They’re too busy busting motorists for doing thirty-five in a thirty limit to go after the real criminals. So I do what I always do in times of crisis - I improvise an opera about the situation. It's a coping strategy I learned back in 'Nam. 

People think it's hard to be an opera singer and you need years of intense training, but that's an urban myth. All you need to do is sing as loud as fuck in Italian. It doesn't even have to be real Italian - so long as it sounds Italian then you’re in business. 

I leap onto the fore deck and burst into song; a lament for my pants. I have included here a rough translation, but as I was singing in a language I don’t speak, it may not be a hundred percent accurate. 

Where's my pants?

I've only had them on two days,

I could get another week out of them yet. 

They're a pretty decent pair,

No holes and the elastic still works. 

Where's my pants?

I think they're blue, or maybe grey. 

They're definitely not the stripy ones,

As I only wear those on special occasions. 

Where's my pants?

If one of those ducks has nicked them,

I'll kill the fucker.

As I'm mid way through the overture, the lady from two boats down appears and starts shouting something - I don't catch her exact words as my opera is far too loud. She's clearly hugely impressed, not only by the passion of my aria, but also by the sight of my dangling penis, which in the chilly night air has shrunken to roughly the size of an acorn. 

"Bravo," she screams as she clouts me across the earhole with a length of four by two. I tumble backwards into the canal and begin a new song, this time about the coldness of the still, black water. 

Dawn finally breaks, and the manager arrives to insist I leave the marina right now or else he’ll have me arrested. But his harsh words cannot dampen my good mood; I found my pants - they were screwed up in the leg hole of my trousers the whole time. 

Prozac Dreams #1

The dreams I've been having while taking Prozac have ranged from weird to full on disturbing, but last night's effort was so entertaining I've decided to start writing up the more interesting ones as short stories. Welcome inside my fucked up imagination . . . 

Prozac Dreams #1

Some old school friends and I on are a yacht; we’re sailing across an azure ocean, the sun beating down on us. We come to a tropical island paradise – all golden sand and palm trees – and decide to drop anchor. This looks like a cool place to hang out.

It’s not long before our presence attracts attention. A bunch of people start coming aboard our boat, wanting to join the party. There are lots of women, all of them beautiful and glamorous, scantily clad in teeny tiny bikinis. Unfortunately for me they are all accompanied by possessive boyfriends - bearded men in polo neck jumpers who chatter away in French. Our yacht rapidly fills. No one speaks a word of English. I dash back and forth between our guests, offering them cups of coffee and ogling the women, hoping they won’t notice me peeping at their incredible bodies out the corner of my eye.

The party is in full swing. I’m having a great time. But then I notice a huge, black bank of roiling thunderclouds heading straight toward us. “There’s a storm coming,” I yell. The boat rapidly empties as our guests flee, and I jump down onto the sand to undo the moorings. We have to make sail and get away before we become engulfed by the tempest. I scramble back up onto the deck and see there are four dead men tied to the boom.

“Those damn Frenchies are trying to set us up,” shouts one of my friends. The four men appear to have been beaten to death – their faces are battered and bruised beyond recognition. Searching for some kind of identification we go through their pockets, and find they are stuffed full of German gold.

“If we dump the bodies, we can keep the Deutschmarks,” I venture. “As long as no one sees us, we’ll be in the clear.” That’s when we are plunged into shadow, and I look up and see there’s a vast Russian naval vessel coming past, and what must be a hundred pasty faced Russian soldiers in grey uniforms are leaning over the side, staring at me. I try to put myself between the dead bodies and the soldiers. I hold my arms out, attempting to block their view. “There’s nothing to see here,” I cheerfully shout.

The soldiers cock their machine guns and take aim at me. And that’s when I wake up.

Blowing my own trumpet

According to those who know far more about the writing game than I do, the modern author’s workload should consist of four parts writing and one part promotion. One day of every week should be spent attempting to convince people to buy my books, be that by using social media, a blog such as this one, cunningly placed advertisements or whatever. In what is a saturated marketplace, I need to draw attention to my output in an effort to get the general populace to transfer their hard earned from their own bank accounts to mine.

It’s a somewhat daunting proposition. I’m finding it hard enough even admitting out loud that I’m a writer, as it sounds so entirely pretentious. In the world I inhabit we’re supposed to work for our living, not go around pretending to be some la-de-da artisan. Such behaviour is reserved for idealistic teenagers who aren’t yet old or experienced enough to have had their dreams kicked out of them. By my age I’m suppose to know better.

So here I am looking forward to the release of two novels this year, yet still a little reluctant to tell anyone about it as it sounds so much like boasting. I told a few close friends, but for the most part I’ve insisted on this new adventure being kept strictly as some kind of guilty secret. I guess that has to end if I’m to make any kind of serious go of this; getting published is only the first part - selling books is the difficult bit. It’s time to start blowing my own trumpet.

My first novel is entitled Leisure, although due to a technical screw up it may well end up being my second novel. Its submission coincided with the publishers getting a new email system and so the manuscript lay unseen at the bottom of some digital abyss for six months. It is about the staff of a decrepit and forgotten leisure centre, who have long since given up on providing any kind of customer service and instead run amok in the endless corridors, entertaining themselves and living out their perverse ideals, sheltered entirely from any form of consequence. Leisure is an erotic farce, a ridiculous, nonsensical adventure set outside of society’s rules. It is due for release this autumn.

My second – or first – novel is called Peeper; it marked my first attempt to write something a little more serious and not hide behind sarcasm and stupidity, and instead try to create believable characters that the reader may actually care about. It is the story of a small town private investigator getting involved in a case that drags him way out of his depth into a seedy and dangerous relationship with a woman named Veronica. I’m hugely proud of it, and I can’t wait for people to meet Veronica, as she really is something else. While I was writing the book I got almost as obsessed with her as the main protagonist in the story does, and one night I actually dreamt I met her. That was odd.

Leisure is scheduled to be released this autumn through MuseitHot;

https://museithotpublishing.com/index.php/our-authors/69-our-authors/authors-s/389-sj-smith

Peeper is also scheduled to be released this autumn through Sinful Press, and you can read some very kind words about the book on the homepage of their website;

http://sinfulpress.co.uk/

So there you have it; I am a writer, and these are my books. Please buy my wares, that I may earn my living. I promise not to spend it all on drugs.

Priorities

The whole purpose of my starting this blog was supposed to be a way of me pedaling my smutty books to the marketplace. I must not, I told myself, get sidetracked by ranting tangentially about politics or Welsh rugby, and should concentrate entirely on the side of this being a writer malarkey that I entirely suck at - the self promotion and marketing aspects which are so vital for success. So far I have failed entirely in these aspirations, which is why I am now sitting here dashing off a piece about priorities, in a bid to remind myself of where I ought to be going.

I’ve managed to keep rugby out of it so far, which is something of an achievement I suppose. I must bear in mind that I contribute my share of vitriol on that particular subject matter to a different blog entirely, and judging by some of the colourful hate mail we receive, that webpage is doing the job it was created for rather well. As for that other thing I was not supposed to be talking about – politics – I’ve sadly succumbed to temptation and vented my spleen, earning myself a black mark and a must try harder. Fortunately I think I’ve now found a way of curing myself of this annoying habit of bending people’s ears with my unwanted opinions - I’ve stopped watching the news.

Life is hard enough these days without having a billion extra worries beamed into your head on a daily basis. I turned on the TV the other morning and discovered that a dog had died after being poisoned, and that was the point at which I decided I’d had a gutful; I don’t need to know about dog murderers, or some bunch of maniacs kicking the shit out of each other on the other side of the world. None of it has any bearing on my life, whatsoever. The more you stop and think about it, the more you realise that all the television does is control you; it tells you about all the things you should be scared of, and then it parades a bunch of stuff in front of you that you can’t afford to buy. Don’t go outside, it is saying. There are muggers and terrorists lurking around every corner wanting to blow you up and kill your dog. Stay here instead, and listen to me while I tell you about new mobile phones and fancy clothes and sleek sports cars. Feast your eyes on how the rich and famous live, and wallow in your misery as you compare your own cruddy existence to how wonderful everything could be if only life were fair. Now go get a payday loan and buy yourself some PRODUCTS.

Fuck it all. The idea of dropping out of society and refusing to play by the rules any more has never been so appealing. I’m not a consumer, I’m a human being.

Last year my wife and I bought a narrowboat. We booked time off work and had a fortnight to move it from its old mooring in Yorkshire down to Cheshire so it would be close to our home. This hundred and fifty mile journey took a couple of hours in the car, but when you’re travelling by canal, zig-zagging back and forth across the countryside at two MPH, everything takes a whole lot longer, and in the end it took us the full two weeks to complete our voyage. During this time we didn’t have a working TV, as the boat’s batteries were too old and worn out to power anything more than the 12v lights, and so we lived in a cocoon, entirely free of knowledge of what was going on in the outside world. I have to say – it was bliss.

Your priorities change in such circumstances. I was no longer worried about whether or not the actions of some group of fundamentalist loonies might impact on my life; I was more concerned with finding a place to empty the chemical toilet. Our needs became simple; food, drink, warmth; find a place to buy coal for the fire, or a supermarket to stock up on groceries. Take things one day at a time.

And when we returned to civilisation and turned on the television, we found out nothing had changed. The world hadn’t ended, the country hadn’t been invaded, the economy hadn’t collapsed. None of those dire circumstances they constantly warn us are just around the corner had transpired. Life went on regardless.

So what was I supposed to be talking about? Ah yes, priorities.

The priority of this blog from now on will centre on the function it was created for. I am a writer and I have just signed the contract for a novel to be published, meaning I have two books coming out this year.

No more bullshit. No more ranting about crap I have no control over and has no meaning to my life. No more news; no more results of studies that mildly contradict the results of yesterday’s study which said we’re definitely all going to die of cancer if we don’t eat three tonnes of fruit every day.

No more distractions. From here on in it’s smut all the way.

Woe is me

I haven’t done much writing of late, haven’t had the inclination to sit here and attack the keyboard and vent my spleen, and the reason for this is that the depression that has plagued a third of my life has made an unwelcome return. I’ve felt it creeping around the edges of my mind, trying to worm its way back in, and for a goodly while I was able to hold it at bay – life was good, I didn’t want to go back down that road again. But then when my best friend in the world died from cancer a month ago it proved to be the final straw, and I stopped fighting and allowed the blackness back.

It’s hard to tell people you’re ill when – at face value – there’s nothing apparently wrong with you; you aren’t limping, bleeding or struggling to catch your breath. You feel like the world’s biggest fraud sitting in the doctor’s waiting room and seeing people come hobbling in with their genuine ailments. But, in a way, that’s all part of the illness; you’re a fraud, there’s nothing wrong with you, everyone knows you’re faking it and they’re all disgusted. These are the thoughts that are going through your mind, and you can’t make them stop. Your brain has turned against you. Welcome to the world of the big D.

A couple of weeks back I could barely bring myself to turn on the TV. I’d sit watching the news and would look at the journalist thinking that person has made a success of their life, and I’m a total failure. I’m pathetic and my life is pointless. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just go to sleep and never wake up again? They call these ‘intrusive thoughts’, these blasts of self hate that rampage through your brain. But at the time they don’t feel in any way intrusive; for something to be intrusive it has by it’s very definition to have come from outside. These thoughts haven’t come from anywhere or anyone else; they are your own voice, and they are entirely rational. There’s no point arguing, because the case that you’re worthless scum is entirely watertight and beyond argument. It makes perfect, unimpeachable sense. In the same way that cancer turns your body’s own cells against you, the big D turns your own thought patterns against you.

I have a phrase I use to describe my blackest, bleakest moments; an epithet I picked up from a Stephen King book many years ago (I think it may have been ‘It’); The Deadlights. When I’ve sunk so low I can barely think, move or focus my eyes I know that the Deadlights are on; I sit and stare blank at the wall, lost in a sea of darkness and unable to find my way back to the light. These times mark the very rock bottom, the depths of despair, and it was when the Deadlights came on for the first time in a decade a fortnight ago that I knew I had to get some help. I went to see the doctor and she issued me a prescription for Prozac, and now the gloom and despondency is starting to lift. And only now, now that my mind is starting to come back under my own control, do I see this as a good thing; one of the surprising things about the big D is that in no way do you ever see it as a threat; the big D is your friend; it puts a blanket around your shoulders and keeps you warm, protecting you from all those awful people on the outside who despise you. There’s no point making an effort to get better, because you’d only be wasting your time; stay here in the murk where it’s safe, for the big D is the only friend you’ll ever need.

Unfortunately the big D is a liar; it isn’t your friend at all, and is dragging you blindly on towards the cliff edge, where ultimately you will topple over and plunge to your death. If you never had suicidal thoughts then you probably cannot begin to comprehend how someone could be so crazy or selfish as to take their own life and inflict so much pain and misery on those they’re leaving behind. What you aren’t seeing is that it was the big D that made them do it; that the big D had them convinced that no one cared, no one would even be sad at their passing, and that all possible avenues forward were blocked. In the same way that cancer ravages your body and leaves you dead, the big D will keep on whispering in your ear that it’s entirely rational to swallow that bottle of pills, or that the only sensible option left is to throw yourself in front of that train.

The big D took hold of me when I was fourteen and, despite bucketfuls of antidepressants and counselling, never left me alone until I was nearly thirty. I had a ten year break, but now it’s back and telling me it wants a second bite of the cherry. But not this time; I will not allow the big D to destroy any more of my life, for I know its tricks and methods all too well. The Prozac is helping, and admitting to my friends and family that I have a problem is helping too. The big D didn’t want me to tell anyone, it wanted the gloom that was seeping back into my life to be our little secret, all over again.

We Can’t Manage

I caught the tail end of a piece on the news at the weekend; some guy doing the round up of the stories from the papers, and I really wish I’d been paying more attention to who he was and what he said, because I swear I heard him utter the most appalling blasphemy it is possible to say out loud in this country: He suggested that British management wasn’t very good.

Burn the heretic! He must have been a foreigner and not accustomed to our ways, because no right minded Briton would ever dare so much as think that our bosses are anything less than one hundred percent perfect. We are a nation of snobs; we doff our caps to those we perceive as being above us and look down our nose at those below. Even the lowliest tramp, lying in the gutter in his own faeces, will find someone to feel superior to.

Blame must always be attributed in a downward direction in this nation of ours. When our car industry collapsed in on itself and died a death it wasn’t the management that were said to be at fault, it was the workers. It was those damned pesky unions what done it. Similarly in the modern age, when the government doubled our national debt overnight by bailing out the incompetent bank managers to the tune of eight hundred billion quid, who did we blame for our country’s poverty? Why it’s poor people of course. Those Goddamn fucking benefit scroungers are ruining Great Britain. String ‘em up!

I’ve had many jobs in my life, and therefore many bosses, and I struggle to think of even a handful of managers who I would describe as good at their role or even vaguely competent. They all seem to fall into the same trap of thinking that a promotion to the rank of manager means they’ve moved up an entire social class, and are now looking down on the world as some kind of God. In other, more forward thinking countries than our own, I’ve heard tell that the role of manager is seen as being only one cog within a team; it is the manager’s job to manage, just as it is the welder’s job to weld and the driver’s job to drive; they are no more or no less important than anyone else.

But if a British person climbs to the heady heights of manager then it’s time to crack open the champagne, for they have truly arrived among the jetsetters. Being a manager gives you licence to look down your nose at the plebs, and is a perfect opportunity for you to wreak your revenge on the world for every wrong that was ever done to you. You hold the power now - you can do whatever you want.

But that initial euphoria soon wears off, as you begin to find that it’s lonely in your ivory tower. None of your friends want to know you any more; they stop talking as you enter the room and swivel their eyes in the other direction as they pretend they’re hard at work. So what do you do? Why it’s obvious; you promote your chums to come work as managers alongside you; you fill up your ivory tower with all your bestest friends, so you can all be together again. You put fake job adverts in the newspaper and hold fake interviews, just to comply with the regulation that states it’s illegal to simply hand out promotions to your clique, and then you promote them anyway. What a hoot.

Once upon a time there were more workers than managers, and things actually got done. But in the eighties they got rid of all the jobs and created a new style of economy based on venture capitalism. You don’t need an industry to manufacture things when your entire set up is geared towards a bunch of guys in stripy shirts playing with money that doesn’t exist.

The downside to this was the newspaper headlines that talked of mass unemployment, which made the government look bad, so they decided that everyone should go into education to get them off the unemployment figures. Education Education Education was the mantra. They made it easier to gain qualifications, and suddenly everyone was going to university, and for a while it worked.

But five years later they found they suddenly had a whole bunch of people with groovy qualifications but no job. Something had to be done. Thus they created more management roles – a whole tidal wave of new managers to run our lives. Who needs one manager when you can have five, or even ten? We’ll have an HR manager, a Health and Safety manager, a recruitment manager, and so on; lots of people wearing suits, going to meetings and collating information which they pass up the chain to their manager. Presumably up at the top of the pyramid there’s some kind of uber-manager, who receives all the meaningless reports written by the fleet of managers below, and files them away somewhere, never to be seen again.

Is it my imagination, or are we drowning in a sea of bullshit that’s getting deeper by the year? This epidemic of managers is self perpetuating, because it’s a manager’s job to think up new rules, and every new rule will need a new manager to oversee its application. Pretty soon there’ll be nothing but managers, a whole multitude of people in suits standing around scratching their heads and wondering why the toilet doesn’t work any more.

Refuse the Mark

On the news this morning was a story about how some genius has invented an electronic chip that can be implanted under our skin and used as a replacement for company ID badges that we have to carry at work. I was immediately reminded of an old conspiracy theory that a friend of mine used to bang on about.

This fellow used to be a heroin addict, but after kicking the smack he found he had a big hole in his life, and so turned to Jesus to fill it. As anyone who has ever known a junkie will testify, these people’s entire lives are dedicated to their drug of choice; the acquirement and ingestion of narcotic is all they think about from one minute to the next. So it follows that to fill the void left by drug addiction, he was going to need a lot of Jesus. A little Jesus on a Sunday morning wasn’t nearly enough - this man needed total Jesus, twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. Thus he became one of those people who put the mental in religious fundamentalism – he stood on street corners berating passers by for their sins, and never missed a chance to lecture us – his supposed friends – about the word of God.

He knew every single conspiracy theory that was floating about, and believed each one of them with the zeal and fervour of someone on an extended break from reality. His particular favourite was the old barcode theory, which I’ll now attempt to describe for those not in the know.

Go and find something with a barcode on; it shouldn’t be difficult, they’re on pretty much everything these days. Now, take a close look and you’ll see the series of vertical stripes is subdivided into two sections by three pairs of thin lines. Next, look along the row of numbers across the bottom and find a number six; immediately above that six will be the corresponding set of lines that signifies that number in barcode language. That’s right – the number six is represented by the same pair of thin lines that subdivide the whole shebang, or in other words every single barcode is essentially a great big 666.

Somewhere in the book of revelation there’s a passage about how the devil will take over the world, and he will put his mark upon humanity, and the mark is 666. According to crackpots like my friend, that moment is already here, as everyone is carrying around Satan’s mark in the guise of the barcode that’s on the label of their underpants, or the price-tag of their sausage sandwich, or whatever.

I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s an interesting theory, but is ultimately the ravings of a paranoid mind.

Or is it? I’ve never been big on religion, and I don’t share the view that the Antichrist is on his way to throw us into a thousand years of darkness. I believe human beings are more than capable of achieving that particular feat without any outside assistance. But this idea of us all eventually going around with little electronic chips implanted under our skin does sort of remind me of my friend’s rantings. I wonder how long it will be before businesses insist you have to get chipped if you want to work for them?

Perhaps the devil is real. Perhaps he’s the head of some huge corporation, and wants to rule the world and force us all to carry his mark. Stranger things have happened.

Drugs in Sport

On the news this morning, Lance Armstrong told the BBC in an exclusive interview how, if given his time over again, he’d probably do exactly the same thing. His justification for turning to performance enhancing drugs was essentially that ‘cycling is really hard work.'

He has a point. All sport is hard work, which is why I gave up on it years ago. Who wants to spend their lives pushing their body to the limits when they could be lying on the sofa drinking beer and browsing online pornography? The government are forever telling us how we should all get involved in sport and lead active, healthy lifestyles, but frankly they can go fuck themselves.

I personally think the taking of drugs should be embraced in sport. We all saw how fast Ben Johnson ran after he’d pumped himself full of steroids, imagine how the world records would tumble if athletes were given free reign to cheat. We’d see supersonic performances in every event; miles run in seconds, javelins hurled clean out the stadium. In what is supposed to be an entertainment industry, do we not want to be entertained?

I therefore propose the world should stage an alternative games for people who like to imbibe, sort of like the Olympics, only with drugs. And not just performance enhancing drugs either; my games would involve special events for people taking performance ruining drugs. Imagine the fun we could have.

The Junkie Triathlon

Heroin users are not known for being the most energetic of people. But starve them of smack for a couple of days, then tell them there’s a guy giving away free skag at the other end of this torturous fifty mile endurance race. Give them a bike and a pair of swimming trunks and just watch the fuckers go.

The Drunken Grand Prix

Let’s be honest, the vast majority of people only watch motor racing for the crashes. If all the drivers had downed a bottle of scotch before the race, imagine the carnage as they were let loose in high powered racing cars.

The 400m Hurdles for People on Acid

There’d be no need for actual hurdles; we’d simply line up a bunch of guys and gals who were tripping the light fantastic and watch as they staggered around the track fending off attacks from hallucinatory dragons, goblins and Nazi warplanes.

The Viagra Marathon

Twenty-six miles with an erection is no easy feat. We’d line the route with glamorous, naked spectators and watch the poor bastards suffer as they staggered along behind their throbbing rods, desperate to bone every single person they saw.

The Angel Dust 4^th Storey Window Long Jump

Think you can fly? Then prove it to us.

Amphetamines Chess

All games would be over in seconds, and would probably end up in a fist fight.

You see, the possibilities are endless. Who wants to watch boring, goodie two-shoes athletes competing honestly in sports, when they could be watching cheats, freaks and psychotics? The various governing bodies of world sports should be seriously looking into this as a possibility. 

Greece it up

So Greece has elected a socialist government. Oh lordy. That’ll put the cat among the pigeons.

The news tomorrow will no doubt consist of a bunch of rich white guys in ties talking about how a lack of confidence has caused the stock market to crash, because other rich guys in ties are panicking about the Greek election result. The value of the Euro will fall, a company will go out of business, and a bunch of ordinary people will lose their jobs.

It sounds to me as if we need tougher people to work in the stock markets. If the slack jawed hooray Henries that currently run our financial institutions are liable to turn into quivering jellies and shit themselves just because they saw something on the news they didn’t like the sound of, then frankly they aren’t up to the job. Maybe we should get someone who knows no fear on the case; someone like Rambo; someone who doesn’t suffer from lack of confidence and would be perfectly happy to kick everybody’s ass. He’d protect our money.

All jokes aside, I think people ought to do as I do when they watch the news, and filter every word they hear through a Bullshit Translator to see what comes out the other end. The phrase ‘lack of confidence in the market’, when translated into English, simply means ‘a bunch of rich powerful people aren’t happy’. Of course they aren’t happy; ordinary people in Greece have decided to stick up for themselves; they’ve decided they don’t like poverty and would like it if the system was a bit fairer. And rich people don’t like it when ordinary people stick up for themselves. It means they might not be able to steal our money quite so easily. That’s why they smashed the unions and left our education system to rot; they were taking out the competition, reducing us all to drooling morons so we wouldn’t put up a fight.

The whole economic system is geared towards siphoning cash from the lower orders and placing it in the pocket of the super-rich. This isn’t some whacked out conspiracy theory; it’s the obvious truth and if you don’t see it then you’re blind. I foresee a future where there is no more need for countries or continents. Instead of a flag to represent their nationality, people will live under the logo of a corporate brand. The land you walk upon will be owned by a multinational conglomerate, and you will be entirely beholden to them. They will own the hospital you are born in, the school you are educated in, the chapel you marry in, and the coffin you are buried in. The lives of 99.99% of the human race will be controlled by the 0.01% who managed to steal all the money.

Of course, there is something we can do to stop them before it’s too late; something that will not require rioting in the street or bloody revolution. We can go out and vote, like Greece did yesterday. This is still a democracy after all - even if for seventy percent of the country the act of voting is, like, just too much hassle.

How to start your own campaign group

All this talk of campaign groups over the course of the week has gotten me thinking. Some of those folk who go on the news to spout their opinions look like they’re having a really great time. I mean, they wear groovy t-shirts they designed themselves, they hang around all day with like minded friends and even get to appear on the television, where they doubtless mingle with celebrities and enjoy a champagne lifestyle. I’m really rather envious.

So with this in mind I’ve decided to start my own campaign group and get in on the action. I don’t want to miss out on all the fun. Why should my opinions and personal choices remain inside my own head, when I could be ramming them down the throat of all and sundry?

Obviously I need something to campaign against. I need to pick something that has no effect on my life whatsoever, yet because of my own personal dislike of whatever it is, I will demand the legal framework of our democracy be entirely altered to fit in with my wont, and this thing be banned forever. I’m a hardened campaigner now, so my opinion clearly takes precedence over everybody else’s.

I’ve therefore decided the subject of my campaign will be opera. I don’t like opera – it’s nothing but a bunch of stout people warbling in Italian and it gets on my tits. Now, I could exercise my right to avoid opera by simply not going to any opera performances, but for a campaigner like myself, that wouldn’t be going nearly far enough. No, I want opera banned forever; if I don’t personally like something, then everybody else should be forced to live without it.

So how does one go about starting a campaign? I’ve studied the form of several professional campaigners, and come up with an easy to follow list of requirements.

Cherry pick your data

There are positives and negatives in every walk of life, but it’s the negatives we must dwell on if we’re to convince people of our argument. The anti-drug lobby, for example, conveniently ignores the fact that tens of thousands of people take ecstasy in the UK every week, and suffer no long term ill effects. Instead they concentrate on the one person who tragically died whilst using E, and turn her into their poster girl. So with that in mind, let me tell you about Leonard Warren, who collapsed and died onstage while performing La forza del destino. That’s right, this is conclusive evidence that OPERA WILL KILL YOU.

Scare people

Nothing brings folk around to your way of thinking more effectively than scaring the bejesus out of them. The anti-drug campaigners tell us drugs will send you insane and leave you a drooling basket case. Anti-pornography campaigners tell you masturbation makes you go blind, and turns you into an antisocial recluse who hates women. So what about opera? I’ve done some checking and found out that an opera singer emits a noise of anything up to one hundred decibels. The current Health and Safety legislation states that any noise above forty decibels should be treated as a potential hazard and protective equipment must be issued accordingly. OH MY FUCKING GOD – OPERA WILL MAKE YOU GO DEAF. RUN FOR THE HILLS.

Lie

If you’ve no sane way of backing up your argument, then you can always result to making stuff up off the top of your head. For example, marijuana is a ‘gateway’ drug, and if you smoke weed you will be a hardcore heroin addict by a week on Tuesday. Likewise, pornography causes men to rape women. There is no evidence to back up any of these claims, but people freely wheel them out every time they want to waggle their finger and tell you not to do stuff. So let’s make up a lie about opera. How about this; Hitler liked opera. FUCKING HELL, IF YOU LISTEN TO OPERA YOU WILL DEFINITELY GO ON TO COMMIT GENOCIDE.

Make some groovy t-shirts.

You need a catchy slogan printed across your chest if you’re to get your way, so here are a few examples I've come up with.

So there we have it. I shall be launching my campaign to have opera banned next week, and I thoroughly expect to gain wall to wall press coverage for my opinions within a few days. No doubt you will see me on the television, waving my arms about and pulling scary faces as I warn people of the terrible danger opera poses to the very fabric of our society.

Repeat after me:

NO MORE OPERA

NO MORE OPERA

Tits

Page 3 is back; apparently there’s an image of a young lady baring her breasts in today’s edition of The Sun, the thought of which makes me smile. I won’t be buying it – I find that particular newspaper a vile and obnoxious publication – but it’s one in the eye for the numerous campaign groups who seem to think they have some God given right to tell us what we can and can’t think.

As far as I’m concerned, Page 3 constitutes an agreement between three parties; the young lady to whom the pair of tits belongs, the publisher who wishes to photograph and display that pair of tits, and the customer who wishes to pay to look at the pair of tits. Three individuals, all of whom are happy with the arrangement, get what they want.

But then you have a fourth person inviting them self into the equation; someone who has absolutely no business sticking their nose in, yet can’t seem to keep it out. This person wants to stop the young lady from earning a living, to censor the publication and dictate its content, and to prevent the customer from getting what they pay for. Holy hell – our freedom and liberty is under attack. Someone call the UN.

A couple of weeks ago an atrocity was committed in Paris, and the media were quick to market it as an assault on our freedom of expression. Plenty of folk were frothing at the mouth, screaming about how it is our right to offend people. A fortnight later, many of these same people – who still have their ‘Je Suis Charlie’ avatars displayed on Twitter – are whining about how Page 3 ought to be banned.

Freedom of expression works both ways; it enables you to say things other people might not like, but it also allows other people to say things you might not like. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You can’t holler about the rights of French cartoonists to insult someone’s religion one minute, then go apeshit at the fact there’s a pair of tits in a newspaper the next. If you do, it makes you a hypocrite, and no one likes a hypocrite.

Our freedom of expression is most certainly under attack, but the perpetrators of this attack are not Islamic fundamentalists. No, they are wealthy white folk that are doing the damage; they are people in ‘No More Page 3’ T-shirts, they are government ministers who are steadily sneaking more and more sexual activities into the obscenity law and banning British pornography makers from depicting them on camera.

There are companies in this country who manufacture weapons. They make billions from assembling missiles and bombs, the sole purpose of which is to kill human beings, and this is entirely legal and above board. Yet if a woman tries to make a few quid out of taking a picture of herself sitting on someone’s face, then she’s breaking the law and could go to prison. You can profit from murder, but not from consensual sex. Something is very, very wrong in this society of ours.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Frank Zappa; “What’s more dangerous – people who celebrate sexuality, or people who make bad laws?”

Everything bad that ever happened is the fault of women

I’ve had a gutful.

I lie in bed watching the breakfast news every morning, and it’s always the same. After the highly paid female sports reporter has finished her round up, the highly paid female anchor hands over to the highly paid female business correspondent, who speaks to a highly paid female executive on the subject of how it’s impossible for women to get highly paid jobs because of that awful glass ceiling holding the poor dabs back. And then I drag my evil male body and my repressive penis to work, where my highly paid female boss tells me what I need to do to earn my minimum wage that day.

Right now there’s a bunch of feminists celebrating the demise of Page 3, a uniquely British tradition of placing a photograph of a girl with her tits out, just inside the front cover of certain newspapers. Page 3 is repressive and demeans women – it should be banned, they cry. Far be it from me to point out that a fortnight ago many of these same people were trumpeting about freedom of expression and changing their Twitter avatars to those annoying little ‘Je Suis Charlie’ pictures. I guess freedom of expression is entirely subjective in some people’s eyes, but that’s a topic for another day.

I think the time has come for me to present my theory to the world, a theory I’ve been working on for many years. But before I start, let’s get one thing out the way; I’m not a sexist or a misogynist; I happen to think women are every bit as idiotic and hypocritical as men are. It would be entirely discriminatory of me to deny females their right to be total fucking idiots, based on their gender. Got that?

My theory is this; everything bad that happens in the world is entirely the fault of women. And if you haven’t stopped reading by this point, intent on rattling off a complaint to someone or other, then I shall explain the rationale behind my thinking.

All the bad stuff that goes on, all the murder, corruption, repression, terrorism, starvation and so on, is generally down to men; you don’t see too many women rising to the rank of dictator and committing genocide. But as the saying goes, behind every good man there’s a good woman, or rather bad men and bad women in this case. So why do you suppose these evil men do the things they do? It’s simple; they do it because they want to get into a woman’s pants.

Adolf Hitler did what he did because he wanted to play hide the sausage with Eva Braun, and Napolean did want to do it that night with Josephine.

Before you accuse me of talking bollocks, let’s step back and examine a few truths about reality. The male of every species in the world goes all out to prove their power, while the female stands back egging them on. That much is undeniable, go watch the buck deer in the park kicking the shit out of each other every rutting season if you don’t believe me. If we strip away all the nonsense and accept the fact that humans are nothing more than highly developed animals, then doesn’t it make sense that we do all the same things for all the same reasons as every other animal that walks this Earth? We exist for one purpose, to fight for the right to pass on our DNA to the next generation and ensure our offspring take over from us when we’re gone.

The males demonstrate their strength, and the females reward them by jumping on their bone.

So maybe if the females, instead of jumping into the bed with the most powerful male, said hang on a minute, that wasn’t a very nice thing you did to that fellow over there. You’d better stop acting like a fucking idiot if you want to impress me, then perhaps the world would be a better place.

Maybe if a high flying businessman who’d recently thrown a thousand people out of work in order to buy himself a new sports car, found himself completely ostracised by the women of the world, rather than have them queuing up to wrap their lips around his tiny cock and grab themselves a share of the spoils, then perhaps he wouldn’t do it in the first place. Maybe if girls chased after humanitarians and charity workers, rather than premiership footballers, life would be fairer.

So females everywhere, listen to what I say. Stop bleating about how repressed you are. You hold the power of the universe right there between your legs; you have the ultimate say in what goes on, because men are idiots who are only interested in one thing, and it is you who decides whether they get that thing or not.

If every woman on this planet announced a ban on sex until such time as all the evils in the world stopped, then I guarantee we’d live in a utopian paradise by Christmas.