God Bless Us, Everyone!!

Well, Good Peoples of the Blogosphere, it's that time of year again......the time when Mumbling Old Curmudgeons, Dyspeptic Pop-Slop Failures & Miserable Bleedin' Bastards alike furrow their knitted brows and hurrumph loudly.....And Lo, Did It Come To Pass!!! H  U  M  B  U  G  !  ! 

We're over the worst of it though. Chrimbo has been n gone. Turkeys incinerated. Tons of plastic garbage that was inexpertly wrapped and placed under tinsel-laden Chrimbo trees before being trashed in the grubby sausagelike fingers of avaricious brats lookin' instead for an iPad or Blackberry has already been tossed into the garbage can en route to landfill!

Good King Wenceslas has looked out once again on snow lying deep n crisp n even & Boxing Day is no more..though there is, undoubtedly,  a lot of Boxing still to be done as the Tenuous Familial Threads that bind us finally snap under the pressure of  pretending we're 'Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time' !! That surfeit of Mulled Wine & Liqueur Chocolates surely can't help but inflame ire when argy-bargying for control of the T.V Remote!! Whether this really is 'The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year' is moot, but I'm betting it doesn't feel like it for many as they finally call it a day and crawl into bed nursing a sore jaw, a bad case of stomach ache & a severely bashed and bruised sense of pride!!...

....But Don't Worry! Be Happy! Collective Amnesia will soon take hold & we can all act out our bit parts in the Pantomime next year!!....oh such happy days to think I will once more find myself in the Thronging Tumult of the Drinks Aisle in Asda on Christmas Eve searching for bottles of Vermouth and half-price Cava to palm off to sundry friends & relations in lieu of a real gift! And all this whilst being bombarded with Slade screaming 'It's Christmaaaaaaaaaaaas!' and the thought of Noddy Holder's Pension Fund swelling enormously as the PRS payments flood in!!!.....this is nowhere near as life-draining as Cliff-Fukn-Richards whining on about Mistlefukntoe n FuknWine & Fukn Children Fukn Singin Christian Fukn Rhyme!! If there's a Merciful God in Heavens Yonder can he not do something about this!!!???

Meanwhile though, the shop doors have already opened anew & ushered in the rampaging hordes of Bargain Hunters Shouldering & Shoving in the Jungle of January Sales! Ah see now, how the Merry Little Consumers bulldoze their way to the front of the queue and gladden their covetous little hearts by snappin up that cable-knit sweater reduced by 90 - yes, 90! - percent!! See how they fill the Yawning, Vacuous Chamber of their Meaningless Lives with Material Trinkets n Trifles as the Sulphourous, Ravening Maw of Commerce swallows up their Little Plastic Cards & the next 25 years of their Crummy Working Lives!!!.....but hey, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday!!

What the real Christmas Miracle is though, is the idea that underneath all this Brazen Glitz and Phony Bonhomie is the story of a helpless babe-in-arms and the possibility of REDEMPTION!!! Now if that possibility, however slim, isn't just cause to Celebrate then I'm blowed if I know what is! And if a Hoarding & Penurious Auld Shitebag like Ebeneezer Scrooge can have his Black, Miserly Heart opened up to Tenderness & Affection there may even be hope for a Comfortless S t o N E d H o L y b L O G g e R !!
It's enough tae Bring a Tear tae a Glass E'e!!

I have just been visited by the Spirit of Christmas Present in a glass                       of Tawny Port....and do declare, I will have another!                                         Huvva Coool Yule Y'all........God Bless Us, Everyone!!!   

Mellow Fruitfulness!!

Twas just the other day, as I recall, whilst slumbering like a Babe enjoying the Sleep of the Just, cocooned within the cosiness of the Stoned Holy Counterpane, that I found myself, in  a most Rude & Untimely manner, being ripped from such Golden Slumbers as an Embittered & Bibulous, Middle-Aged Pop-Slop-Failure can be allowed to enjoy, by the irksome twittering of the alarm clock! If this is a world where One Direction (or Yin Erection as I like to know 'em!) are rakin' it in and runnin their Manufactured & Manicured Hands over the lissome forms of any number of Delightfully Gamine Popettes and yet one where I struggle to pay the phone bill and buy Sachets of Fast Action Yeast, you'll hopefully understand that a Gid Night's Kip is sometimes hard to come by!! Luckily, my Unwavering Belief (or should that be Monomaniacal Delusion?!?!)  that I shall be vindicated in my choice of career path, recognised for the lyrical genius that I am and finally rewarded with Pneumatically Endowed Ladies wantonly proffering their Prodiguous Endowments up to my Delight & Tumescent Satisfaction , ensures that Sleep Shuts Up Sorrow's Eye & Felicits Me Awhile From Mine Own Company!!....

But I digress....And so it was, that after a good scratch of the Stoned Holy Nut-Sac and thereafter savouring the Silky & Satisfying Feel & Taste of the Parritch which I had lovingly stirred with my trusty Spurtle, that I, your very own SToNEdholYbLOGGer, issued forth into the Unsullied Hours of the Morning ; Ready, if not quite willing, to drop to my knees and take yet another shafting from those Hard Task Masters - The Fates!..& all this, Gentle Readers, to garner a few kopeks to spend on Necessities & Garbage alike... Whatever idlesome thoughts as were ambling their Devil-May-Care way through the blancmange-like folds of the Stoned Holy Brain Packet, were quickly shooed away when I noticed that the Pastures & Paddocks which girdle Stoned Holy HQ were frosted in silver and the Sweet Recalled Aromas of Approaching Winter had circulated up the Stoned Holy Hooter!!

Ah, Autumn : Season of Mists & Mellow Fruitfulness. Close Bosom Friend of the Maturing Sun. Conspiring with him how to Load & Bless with Fruit the Vines that Round the Thatch-Eaves Run! Ah, poor John Keats : Coughing up blood & thrashing in his T.B Sheets by the Spanish Steps.....and  now it seems, as I have read in the pages of the local periodical, not the Skulking, Emaciated, Doom-Laden Youth we'd previously been given to believe, but an Opium Addict "Drows'd with the Fumes of Poppies"!  Does it matter if  "Ode on Indolence" was written whilst the Peely-Wally Poet was off his face on Laudanum and scribbling feverishly? In the sense of it somehow diminishing his Artistry, the answer must be an emphatic NO! However, if it helps us imagine Keats as a fleshly creature of Needs n Wants n Weaknesses n Contradictions, YES!....... I for one would like to think Keats drew some pleasures from this world before leaving it.  Is it an idle fancy of myself alone  that the 'Bright Star', Fanny Brawne,  got a good bloody seein-to before Keats' oh too perfect Peggin-Out in Rome!?!? (I may expand this notion into an Erotic Vignette for Modern Interpretive Dance entitled 'Keats & Teats'!!....watch this space!)

But how can the days have been, Scrapin'-for-Ha'pennies, for a Stoned Holy Rollin' John Keats and his Melting Flesh?!  If No Man Chooses the Bed he's Born In, it must be noted also that the Age whereupon his life is played out against is not to his choosing either -  Thus it was that Poor John got a time when Britain was distancing itself from the Bawdiness & Licentiousness of the 18th Century. A time when the Educated Classes were obsessively diferentiating themselves from The Riff-Raff & The Mob & the The Great Unwashed. I ask you, Good Readers, how was a Penniless Poet ever gonna get to 'dance beneath the Diamond Skies with one hand waving free' in a Codified and Mannered Society dominated by notions of Propriety & Respectability? Is it any wonder then that as Britain moved towards the stultifying repression and joyless Puritanism of the Victorian Era that Keats had recourse to reach for the Tincture of Opium!? Who amongst us would begrudge the Poet a few hours of escape, if not escapism, into Laudanum fuelled reveries?.....or, perchance as he himself put it, "For Poesy, No, She has not a Joy, at Least for Me, so Sweet as Drowsy Noons & Evenings Steeped in Honied Indolence ; O, for an Age so Shelter'd from Annoy that I may Never Know how Change the Moons or Hear the Voice of Busy Common Sense!"

....but this is 2012 and Laudanum is unavailable over the counter at yir local dispensary....Bargain Booze however, next door, is open for business and happy to supply 'Broken Britain' with cheap, mind-numbing concoctions to dull the senses and nullify the pain...if yiv no' awready blown yir Giro doon at the Bookies, that is!!! Far better methinks to look at the Autumn Skies above the Housing Estate with its boarded up windows and its row of grafitti splattered fast-food outlets and think of Lost John "While Barred Clouds Bloom the Soft, Dying Day & Touch the Stubble Plains with Rosy Hue"!!

                             

ROCK ON, BEAUTIFUL JOHN!!

Godspeed you Wearisome Wayfarers!

Just made good my return from a brief visit to the Smokey Big Black where the StonedHolyRollers performed their heinous & blasphemous musical outpourings before tens of thousands..... or, to explain more fully, we rocked the pavements of Notting Hill as part of  our ongoing Street Outreach Programme! Enough generous people with impeccable taste dropped enough in the hat to finance a trip to the Land of the Late Night Haircut (aka: Stoke Newington!) for the finest Turkish Culinary Delights our meagre coppers could buy. Having just mentioned tens of thousands of yir Human Peoples, we must remember, my dear cyperperusers, that that figure is a small number within the context of the thronging multitudes of London.

London IS big, after all....and stuffed fulla peoples. Big Ones - Little Ones; Skinny Ones...& ones who give the bathroom scales just a little more trouble! All sorts of folks of varying shades from peely-wally Hombres, like yir StOnEdHOlybLogGer here to the blackest of shiny black folks, whose veins must course with the undiluted blood of Ham!

And all of these people, it seems, are on the move. Paddin' the Hoof North to South. Takin' Shanks' Pony East to West. Perhaps Time lapse photography shows us best the Disorganized Buzzing of Human Drones Hithering & Thithering; the Turbid Seething of Human Waters; the Chaotic Crash of Ambulatory Humanity.
In our haste to get where it is we're going to, the cold lens of the camera sees us not as individuals but a Formless & Shapeless, Unthinking & Blundering mass!

Cut to Tottenham Court Road Tube Station at 5pm and the Riotous Rampage of Rail-Users is in full swing. A Senseless Concretion of Commuters en route from Points A to B. Here you exist for a split second before morphing back into the anonymity of the Hurrying Hordes. An endless gallery of faces flits before your eyes which instinctively follow the constant stream & strain the retina. Bits of bodies desired & hungered for in an instant are quickly forgotten as another surge of visual stimuli is discharged from off the next Northern Line train bound for High Barnet. Wave after wave they flit by as the brain struggles to make sense of the experiential overload of Colour, Shape & Form.

In the confined space of the underground carriage we entertain ourselves, unknowingly almost, with the ceaseless floodtide of human faces; detached & seperated from their unimaginable lives for the seconds they take up in our own. Down here we are all voyeurs. Seemingly bored & uninterested eyes dance from place to place furtively. We steal a glance but quickly look away if our eyes collide with someone else's. We observe but exist also as observed as a thousand sightlines criss-cross one another in an intricate optical lattice. We are cardboard cut-outs against a flat, dull backdrop to be stared at, regarded, scrutinized. We sit in suspended animation waiting for our stop to arrive so that we can once more spring into some kinda life movement.

We spill out onto Archway and busy ourselves with the To-ings & the Fro-ings, the Comings & the Goings on the Avenues we've drifted onto in life.....& there are so many ways to get there : Motorways, Roadways, Byways, Highways, Pathways, Headways, This Ways, That A-Ways, By-the Ways, Sea Ways, Sky Ways, Cycleways, Throughways, Giveways, Gettaways, My Ways, Your Ways..........Bon Voyage & Godspeed, you Wearisome Wayfarers!

Dwarf Sized Sin City - London's Own Miniature World of Vice!!

In his classic cautionary tale from 1961, the Immortal Jimmy Reed warned us clealy, in his own inimitably lazy n laconic manner, that the 'BRIGHT LIGHTS' & the 'BIG CITY'  Would Go To Your Baby's Head!....but here I am, loping like a chimpanzee up on two legs round Soho, London's own MiniatureWorld of Vice!!!

Adrift in Soho by day, Costermongers shout the price of apples from behind their barrows in Berwick Street and office drones scurry to order over-sized cups of coffee during lunch breaks. The huge fireglow of the Sun swamps the Puny Neon Doodles and renders their message ineffective.....but sooner or later the Sun disappears from view and it's Diminutive Celestial Sibling, The Moon, takes over the task of throwing light upon one half of the World. And it's when night falls the Dwarf-Sized-Sin-City comes fully to life and starts to Glow!

To All Night Drug Prowlin' Wolves, like yir very own SToNEdholYBLoggeR, creepin along the Kerbsides n Alleyways lookin for some Midnight To Six, Man kinda Stimulation, the Moon has been made redundant by a Vast, Obedient Army of yellow street lights but for most of the Human Being Species it's still all they've got between them and impenetrable darkness, so it's just as well the Moon still insists on clockin' on for its night shift!   There was a time, long ago, that when darkness came, our ancestors would huddle close to one another and wait for the light to return. Strange Days Indeed! Half formed & naked, not knowing truly if the Sun would be back, staring into the unknowable immensity of Space and (if their Proto-Lingual skills had developed sufficiently to allow them to do so!!) wondering, open mouthed, at a million Studs of Fire twinkling above their frail little Simian skulls with their foreheads criminally low & their prognathic jawlines jutting out most ungracefully...& there, all the while, the mystery of mysteries, crawling across the Dark Mansion of the Sky; a Big, Silent, Silver Orb!....And then it came to pass that fire was bridled!... and in an evolutionary blink of an eye it wasn't long at all before there were light bulbs & the multidazzle of Soho was shining out and selling sexual gratification!! So to the shuffling human shapes of Soho the Moon goes unnoticed; its pallid, ethereal light lost in the importuning glare of Neon. Even if you were to throw your gaze heavenwards, your eyes would, as Evolution has taught them to do,  ignore the Moon's flimsy, ashen light and settle instead upon the Gaudy & Urgent Buzz of Coloured Neon!

Unlike Fireworks which bomb their Shimmering Splendour in an instant, Neon will glow for as long as you pass an electrical charge through it. Unlike Fireworks and their Ephemeral Moment of Brilliance, Neon shines on....So Neon has been Captured; Neon has been Tamed; Neon has been set to work! It can be bottled and moulded into phosphorescent symbols which burn through human retinas to send you a promise of satisfaction! In the crowded Scintilla of Soho we are in a place where the neon lights assure us SEX can be viewed; SEX can be spied upon; SEX can be consumed, SEX can be perused, SEX can be bought.....

It is also, in the words of the All-Time-Master-of-Honky-Tonk, Ray Price, a place where lights can say "forget her name in a glass of sherry wine" or where lights can "offer other girls to empty hearts like mine." Verily it remains thus, Brother Ray! "The Cabarets & Honky Tonks, their flashing signs invite a broken heart to lose itself in the glow of city lights!! They paint a purty picture of a world that's gay & bright....but it's just a mask for loneliness behind those city lights!!!"

Time, methinks, to leave these illuminated postcodes behind me!!
Ahm Outta Here-Vroom Vroom!!!....

here's the link to Ray in all his honky tonk Glory! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr79fOfP0dY

and another one for Jimmy Reed sounding half-cut as usual!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giGGK3Fk9co

Squat City Idler - Squat City Idyll

Up on the roofs off Londonville, right this goddam Holy Beat Second, there's one helloffalotta people just like me, soakin' up the Sun in all its generosity, nonchalantly flickin' flies away with the sweep of a quickly browning arm & listening subconsciously to leafy London undulating in the softest of blowin' breezes as a city-bound forest of London Planes put in by Londoners past gently get on with the job at hand ; hoovering up particulates outta the muggy Capital's air space; greening up the dreary, brown brick streets and, of course, just as they're doin' now, quietly susurrating & providing a subconscious connection to nature in all its goodliness amongst this man-made, dehumanising mincer that chews people up n spits 'em out bent & twisted!!

 God knows what kinda fucked-up mess would stain these Boulevards if it wasn't for these trees, standing in their own unobtrusive, dignified way, softening the jagged edges of this Concrete-Mash-Up!! For people get mangled here in the litter strewn Streets & Avenues that reek of fried chicken. Here, amongst the Crescents & Terraces, damage is wreaked on Tender Hearts & Uncomprehending Minds! Maybe the countless rows of disshevelled Victorian Villas in Hackney (where the plaster has peeled long since from once resplendent neo-classical porticoes and where the gardens are now filled with black rubbish bags, empty cola cans & dandelions) are a microcosm of what happens on a citywide scale where the slow erosion of neglect comes to play also on human beings and eats away at notions like Respect & Dignity, Kindness & Sociability. And so what happens if you haven't got whispering leaves to stir atavistic memories and soothe the woebegone soul?  In Londonville, remember, there is a Whole-Big-Heavy-Heap of  Bricks & Mortar and Steel & Glass sitting on top of what once was Mother Nature's  Rich, Brown Valley Earth! London is a Big, Dirty Squatter!!

Someday yet to wheel about this whole goddam Man-Made-Muddle is gonna be REDUNDANT and everything is gonna be beaten back & weathered down & swallowed up! Until then things have a habit of staying just where they are until someone or something comes along n picks 'em up n shunts them along to Postcodes new! It was in this way that London used to be in other places : The Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's, Buckingham Palace - all use Portland Stone from Dorset; The Tower of London uses stones from Kent & France; Tower Bridge uses granite from Cornwall. It occurs to me now that all of these stones just mentioned were formed when the land masses they were part of were sliding across parts of the Globe other than the locations they are at present. Indeed, the London Clay that the City itself rests upon was formed by marine & land deposits in shallow sub-tropical seas...so all that stuff that got washed out and deposited must have came from somewhere else before ending up in thick layers waiting to be turned into bricks to be carried in hods by burly Victorian labourers before then being turned into places like Kentish Town & Kensal Green, Hammersmith & Highgate.....& just think on the incalculable amount of Welsh slate currently insitu atop all those houses in London's vast Granny-Knot of Roads & Streets!

It's fitting then to think that most Londoners themselves started out as being from somewhere else. Strange to consider that the Pre-Fab Escarpments of the High-Rise and the Smoky & Sooty Rookeries of Slum Tenements delivered up some kinda scant sanctuary for the rootless & homeless from Blighted & Benighted, faraway corners of our World ; yet they did! And so here we all are huddled round the banks of the river as it wends it's time-worn passage to the sea; imagining as we go about our scrawny human business that the walls that hem us in are somehow permanent. And yet, even this London is on the move!!

10 Million people, 20 Million feet, 200 Million Toes; Swarming,  Flocking, Plodding, Tramping the hard, faceless streets imperceptibly moving little bits of London detritus from here to there....or maybeez it is the wind huffs n puffs down these hollow canyons scudding things along.....or maybe it's the rains that fall & wash something along to somewheres else....& so it goes....and by the time the Sun's had enough and decides to call it quits for the day & clock off, London isn't really the same as it was when it started out that morning......but no one notices because there's food to be gotten, eaten, deposited; drink to be drunk; sex to be searched for; laughter to be enjoyed; tears to be cried; desperate screams to be howled; old lives to fizzle out n new ones to be pushed into being.......

And so the big Meaningless, Pointless, Goal-less, Destination-less wheel of life grinds on taking every one of us living creations round with it until the day arrives when the space we fill up is gonna fall apart & all the atoms that constitute what we are are gonna  say 'So Long, It's Been Good To Know Ya' to one another and go lookin' for new forms to become part of.......Sometimes it is that that thought chills ya to the very core of your being but right now, up on my Squat City roof glorying in the Sun and listening to the gentle rustle of the feathery foliage and faraway hum of planes high above me....it's....kinda....errrrr.....BEAUTIFUL!!! 

PEACE, LOVE N COSMIC FELICITATIONS MY FELLOW BLOGGERS!!!!

THIS IS YIR SQUAT CITY IDLER IN HIS SQUAT CITY IDYLL SIGNING OFF........     

SWEEP IT AWAY!!

Oft times, as he plods the hard, concrete pavements of this world, the S T o n e D H o L y r O L L e R   will pass an idle moment wondering why it is he feels the need to refer to himself in the 3rd Person!! At other times, when the
S t o n e d H o l y B r a i n B o x  is unconcerned with things Grammatical, the more sharp-eared pedestrian may hear the phrase "O, the Times - O, the Manners"  emanating from the S t o n e d H o l y M o u t h H o l e ! Such is the lot of the 3-Eyed Man adrift in times he was not fashioned for!!

* * * * * * * * * *

Just today, as I sat spooning the last of my cappucino foam into my gobhole & admiring the fetlocks of the waitress, I happened to pick up a newspaper - This Was A Mistake!! It was also dangerous, for I had left the cosseted Sanctuary of S t o n e d H o l y   H Q  without drawing up contingency plans regarding what to do in the event of finding one's  S t o n e d H o l y S e l f n e s s  profoundly overwhelmed with the feeling of being trapped in a Great Big Barrel of the Brown Stuff without the means to extricate oneself from it! Usually, when events overtake me and Intimations of Impotency creep up on me, I  pop a disc into the old c.d player and listen to Hank Williams singing "I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive" and receive life-affirming succour from the sound of Hank's voice & the ethereal stylings of Don Helms on the E6 neck of his pedal steel. This option though, was not available to me, due in no small part to my being an avowed technophobe and not having a smart phone and a pair of ear plugs at the ready. Bravely, I sallied forth into the uncharted waters of Page Two and read on!......

* * * * * * * * * *

It wasn't after more than a few seconds that my heckles were up, my pulsebeat had rocketted up to 140b.p.m and the S t o n e d H o l y B l o o d  was at boiling point! For it seems, Cyberfriends, that the Lunatics are well & truly in charge of the local Sanitorium!! And here's a snippet or two for why : First off was the news that President Obama has upped the budget for his 'drone war' on Pakistan. He must think it's paying dividends!. If incinerating mosques & bakeries and killing up to 3,000 civilians, including nearly 200 children means the strategy is working out fine for him & the Murderous Military Machine whose interests he serves then so be it n here's to his 2nd Term in Office.....of course, where it really sickens yi tae the pit o yir gut is when you remember that Mr. Obama has been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize!!! Hey Ho, Gentle Reader, Hey Ho.....

* * * * * * * * * *

Next to catch my attention was Mr. Michael Gove ; who you may know as our present Secretary of State for Education but I know as an Uneducated Fool from an Educated School......as well as a Chinless,  Brainless & Odious Little Tory Runt!! It seems he was up before the Levenson Enquiry lecturing them on the importance of press freedom and delivering a speech full of praise for his one time boss at 'The Times', upright citizen' and all round Good-Fella Rupert Murdoch!! A great man' according to the chinless wonder!
This is the same incompetent who thought putting a copy of the King James Bible in every school in England & Wales would sort out a lot of the problems facing our beleaguered education system!! Talk about Finger-on-the-Pulse!! Just a teensy-weensy bit out of touch, what,what??.....Meanwhiles he's thinking of taking a victory for the Tories in the next General Election to be a mandate to run state schools for profit!?!?.......of course, up here in Scotland we've got our own Education System (funnily enough, it's the one that 'educated Mr. Gove!!) but I do hope that in the event of the Tories being returned for a second term in office, we will have severed our ties with Her Majesty's Sinking Ship Westminster!! I HAVE A DREAM!!.... 
  

I   N   D   E   P   E  N   D   E   N   C   E   !   !   !

* * * * * * * * * * *

Whilst we're on the subject of abandoning the Good Ship Britannia we have to mention the Jubilee. The acid burn of bile at the back of the S t o n e d H o l y C r a w  is, at this point, Burnin' Something Awful but for you, good Republican Citizens, I soldier on! You will remember that all this feverish hammering of the keys was elicited by my having inadvertently opened a newspaper; well, it was when the little section detailing the cost of the monarchy fell out onto the table that I had to abandon any attempt at Urbane, Metropolitan Cafe Culture and Run to the City of Refuge that is
S t o n e d H o l y H Q, where I can fulminate as is my wont & pepper my Expostulations with as many expletives as I see fit without fear of being forcibly restrained & shipped off to the Funny Farm and a course of E.C.T!! I'll not bore you here with the full financial break down & pie charts itemising the cost of flying a wee auld woman all over the globe with a few hangers-on just so that she can wave at people (here's a wee link if you want to subject yirsel tae the full itemised horror of the bill!!! God Bless Ya, Ma'am! ) but I will add that the cost is immaterial anyway. One Royal Penny would be too much for something that Belittles and Infantilises us to the degree that it it does. Let us not forget that this woman is on State Benefits and has a large family of feckless spongers who, quite clearly, have no intention of getting a job!! Personally, I think the money they've poured into their little propaganda shindig of flotillas down the Thames & concerts outside Buckingham Palace & Equestrian Events & Parades of Pomp in a time of financial austerity for the rest of us is an affront!! We're All In This Together?? YOU'RE HAVIN' A FUCKIN' LAUGH, AINCHA!?!?! 

As a failed Pop Slopper, it's true, I have only the perverse pleasure that is Schadenfreude to tickle my Twisted & Embittered fancy, but that's not the only reason that I say I do hope it fuckin' pisses down on their sad parade on Tuesday ;
It is in my resolute belief in Republicanism and steadfast adherence to that guiding tenet of Socialism that All Are Born Equal that I reject the ridiculous pantomime and bloated high camp farce of their shameful display. I reject their gaudy & tinselled procession, their tawdry & tacky show. I refute their outdated & absurd claim to privilige & entitlement and say unto thee it's time to Sweep All This Garbage Into The Historical Trashcan Where It Belongs!! 

I must remember to stop reading newspapers....unless I've had my medication......pint of 80/- please Landlord!

Still Raining, Still Dreaming!

"S t i l l   R a i n i n g ,   S t i l l   D r e a m i n g ." All of which is fine if yir name's Jimi F*****g Hendrix & you happen to be Sheltering from the Storm in some plush hotel suite, lost in Opium-Induced Reveries while libidinous young ladies anoint your inner thighs with
Q-Tips dipped in Unctious Oils from the Orient....but if yi happen tae be in the woebegone part of Scotland where S t o n e d H o l y H Q is situated and the rain has fallen unceasingly from the leaden heavens all day long, it's quite another matter entirely!! In those circumstances, I hope you will see, my Web-Logging Compatriots, that it's not so much a Purple Haze then as an Unremittingly Gray, Dull Fog!! And if, like me,  you happen to have only £11.68 to yir name in this world, you will quickly realise that it's not a case of 'still raining, still dreaming' as 'still raining, still wondering where the fuck it all went so lamentably wrong in your pitiful life as a Purveyor of Pop-Slop'...or put another way, how comes it to pass that the most exciting thing that happened to you today was seeing Susannah Reid's legs on BBC1's  'Breakfast' !! (Just as an aside to that, I'd like to mention Reporting Scotland's Catriona Shearer; one seriously Foxy Lady!!....and that, you should know, is another Hendrix reference!!)

Anyway, leaving attractive lady newsreaders aside (at least until 7.30 tomorrow morning!), it's still chucking it doon outside....and inside,
It's Raining In My Heart. Not so much because as was the case with Buddy Holly; 'the weatherman says fair today, he doesn't know you've gone away'  but because I have a melancholic disposition which is given free reign to plaque me with pleasing thoughts of sadness given my abject failure to prosper in the field I chose to dedicate my life-energy to.....and, perhaps more tellingly, the Pluvially Bedrenched Scottish Climate!!!

The Outcasts might've complained "I'm in Pittsburgh and it's Raining" but they were young and privileged American youth of the shiny 1960's who later on in the day, after they'd recorded their Classic Punk Rock Nugget, were to be found Draggin' on Main Street impressing the girls who had Mary Tyler Moore haircuts & Angora Sweaters!.....but I bet a lifetime of frustration amidst the near constant Scottish Drizzle n Downpour woulda wiped that Punk Rock Sneer off their Plooky Yankee Faces!!!

And still it rains...and still I dream :  Maybe Someday A Real Rain Will Come & Wash All The Scum Off The Streets.....yeah, maybe I should Thank God For The Rain To Wash The Trash Off The Sidewalk...

Maybe, like Tom Waits, I feel 'The Night's Too Quiet, Stretched Out Alone. I Need The Whip Of Thunder & The Wind's Dark Moan.'  Maybe 'I Want to Believe In The Mercy Of The World Again....So Make It Rain!'  

Or maybe it is that I seek respite from the Storms & Vicissitudes of life? 'Suddenly I Turned Around & She Was Standing There. With Silver Bracelets On Her Wrists & Flowers In Her Hair. She Walked Up To Me So Gracefully & Took My Crown Of Thorns....Come In She Said, I'll Give Ya Shelter From The Storm!' 

Ah Hell! It's just like John Lennon said; That When It Rains & Shines, It's Just A State Of Mind!!  I'd believe anything if it was accompanied by that guitar riff & Bravura Bass performance!........but enough of this Precipitational Flim-Flammery!!

One thing I do know in this Ripped Up, Tattered & Torn, Mixed-Up, Battered & Worn Old World and these times of Phoney Economic Austerity we currently find ourselves subjected to...& that is that A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL!!

Bring it on - my heart's made outta Stainless Steel!!

Who Killed Liddle & Queues at the Pumps!!!!

Many Moons ago, mis amigos, when yir SToNedHolYBLogGEr wiz a plooky n sexually inexperienced young buck, newly discharged upon the seemingly limitless Savannah that would be the 1980's n Margaret Thatcher's era of Blue-Rinsed Xenophobia & Little England Politics , ma Not-Quite-Stoned-N-Holy-Young-Mind wiz filled with REVOLUTION!!

Though rightly divining the Spirit of the Age to be one of Sheer Greed & Utter Vacuousness I do feel though, that in cleaving all the more to our pimpled notions of Anarchy & a Brave New World as a reaction to that, we, the little Band of Bubblegum Revolutionaries I was one of, somehow conspired to cut off our own noses to spite our faces! Being Punk Rock Zealots, we eschewed the outlandish fashion excesses & tastes of our generation and retreated instead into Revolutionary austerity. As the 80's dressed up we deliberately dressed doon. Yi get the picture ahm sure - We woz driving the wrong way up a one way street! We were a Revolutionary, if not Evolutionary Dead-End!!

But ahm no here tae gibber aboot the folly of Youth. Ahm no here tae tell yiz aw oot there in Cyberspace that instead of reading the Communist Manifesto n dreaming aboot Spectres Haunting Europe we shoulda been dancing tae Duran-Duran n shagging girls with back-combed hair n shoulder pads! Ahm no here tae say that since everybody else was goin' out n havin' fun we woz a right bunch o eejits for stayin' in n havin' NONE!! Ahm no here tae be lookin back n thinkin ah coulda been doin' something more constructive n useful, in regards to ensuring a certain amount of comfort and security in middle age, than pogoing around bedrooms tae 'Who Killed Liddle Towers' by The Angelic Upstarts.........then again, maybeez it is that I am!!

If only I had had the intelligence tae realise that by 2012, the only thing that could rouse the British Lumpen-Proletariat tae anything remotely approaching mass collective action would be the threat of there bein' nae f******g petrol in the pumps when they rolled up to refill their little metal box on rubber wheels with the personalised number plate they paid two grand for on the way to get their darling pooch pampered at the Doggy Boutique!!!!! N how the fuck are yi supposed tae get tae the tanning studio or get yir nails glued on if yi dinnae huvva car?!?!.....or get tae the Chipper for a Kebab Supper?!....or go out Dogging?! Do these Greedy Bastard Tanker Drivers not realise that we need tae get tae JB Sports tae buy another pair of trainers n a pink velour tracksuit for her-indoors?!?!....

N tae think Ah frittered away ma youth dreamin' aboot REVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!Ah dinnae ken whether Jesus wept or no'....but ahm as mad as hell n ahm no' gonna take it anymore.....(well, that last bit's not actually correct, cos I am gonna take it - I've no choice but to take it. So I'm gonna take it exactly like I've always taken it.....Squarely on the Stoned Holy Chin? No! Profoundly, up the StonedHoly Arse!!!!....OUCH!) Ach man, if yi didnae laugh yid huftae cry!!!

See yiz aw soon Pop-Pickers - Over N Oot.

30 Years of Apathy, Pathos n Delusion!!

Has it really been over a month since last I sat in the StonedHolyComputerSuite with fingertips flashing across the black, plastic keys struggling to stay abreast with the rancourous n fevered outpourings from the embittered StonedHolyBrainPan?? My, doesn't time fly when yir enjoyin' yirsel....& don't it fuckin drag something awful when yir life is one long, dreary, penniless & uneventful yawn!!! I would be happy to report that I have spent the interim period between my visitations to the Computer Generated Blogosphere, deflowering young and impressionable young ladies and immersing myself in sundry voluptuary excesses....but sadly I cannot!!!

Our StonedHolyBrother, Mr. Mojo Risin may have girded on the snakeskin breeks & declared the Palace of Wisdom to be accessible only from the Road of Excess, but it may be instructional to remember that he didnae grow up a Repressed Catholic Idiot in a Small-Minded Presbyterian Pisshole like wot the  SToneDHOLybLoGGer done! Still, we've aw got oor burdens tae bear, huv we no?....& if it hudnae been for Heaven-Sent Movers n Shakers like Brother Jim reaching out from the Hallowed Groove that is the first DOORS Long Playing Record to inform woefully Outtatouch n Outtastep Teenage Dreamers like masel that even WE could Break On Through To The Other Side, then who knows where ahd be ; a rotund, broken doon, middle aged wanker lookin at Japanese Girlies on the Tinternet no doubt.....hod oan there, Boabby.....I fuckin' am that anywayz!!!!

"Can you picture what we'll be, so limitless & free..." Oh, how those words reverberated within the cavernous and to all extent, practically empty (if you discount images of Buxom German Frauleins & thoughts of Beer!) chamber of the Stoned n Holy MindBox. Of course, lookin back from this vantage point - gained, it must be said, by way of far too many nights-in reading the works of Herman Melville and engaging in acts of self-pollution - I can clearly see now how I have singularly failed to live up to it's promise or challenge!! I have spent a life cutting myself short, holding myself back, hemmed in by the mundane ordinariness of life. Maybe that's better than finding maself full of Heroin in a Bathtub in Paris at 27.......but who's to say who got the better deal. Ahv never been tae Paris!!!

So let's get this shit sorted oot - If it hudnae been for me listening tae the Doors n huvvin my Teenage Firebrand Hopes raised n stimulated by aw that talk of fabulously exotic females & their Fingers Weaving Quick Minarets & Speaking Secret Alphabets ah coulda been in the pub right now with aw the other dejected, middle aged losers talkin aboot fitbaw n other such desperate, tragic garbage............mmmmmmm. Maybe it's true, ma Fuckin Crystal Ship huznae exactly been Filled With a Thousand Girls or a Thousand Thrills but after 30 years of Apathy, Pathos n Delusion I think I can still honestly say it's aw been worth it!!! And at least I'm in a position to grow old disgracefully - Jim Morrison never got that option.........

We're aw Riders on the Storm.....
Actors oot on loan.....
Dugs withoot a Bone!!!

Of Monkeys, Men & Moksha!?!?

Following on from conversations with Mr. P. Inkman (who by happy coincidence is a Tattoo Artist! Of some repute, I may add, having studied intimately the Ways of Pinky Han & the Hong Kong Scool of Dermic Staining!)  the StONedHoLyBLoGGEr, whilst reclining and taking his goodly rest in the upholstered sumptuousness of the Stoned Holy Armchair has been pondering 'MOKSHA'.....a state of being 'released' ; specifically from the cycle of birth, death & rebirth within Hindu Cosmology......Our American Cousin, Mr. Inkman, had, however used the term to describe his current relationship with his gonads...his testes...his family jewels...his....um... 'Baws'! Due to an advanced State of Inebriation our Philosophical Enquiries were curtailed somewhat as we were sidetracked  onto arguing whether the Atlantic was a greater ocean than the Pacific!

However, here within the Ionised Troposphere of the StonedHolyBlog, I can continue chewing the cyber-cud and whittling the cyber-stick! So, right off, I must ask if it is even possible to be 'released' from the incessant clamour that fills so many of your moments if you are, as half the Human Race must be, attached to a pair of testicles! Phrases such as "Ahd Gie That A Clatter!" & "Check Oot The F****n' Rice-Cakes Oan That!" and other variations upon this Concupiscent theme are to be found often rattling round the HolyRollinBrainPan and cloggin' up the limited space available between the StonedHolyLugholes!!!  Modern conceptions as to the Nature of having a Nut-Sac dangling between yir legs have, of course, been much influenced by the tireless work of  Darwin & Mendel. Watson & Crick have also contributed greatly to mapping out our mental landscapes in the area of Baw-Bags & what goes on inside 'em!  So, if we're to   agree with these eminent scientists and their theories that DNA seeks to replicate itself through us (but little cares as to the social implications of a constantly slobbering libido!) must we not then view ourselves as enlaved to the Demands & Imperatives of the Double Helix! Are we not called into existence merely as a consequence of this Primal Urging, or, to use a memorable phrase of Khalil Gibran, "Life's Longing For Itself" - our sole function, to carry those genes, that made us & make us what we are, forward to the next body they shall inhabit. I'm sure Richard Dawkins could elaborate more on the Science of it all but a Stoned Holy Roller has gotta tell it like it....& how it is, is this :  If there's one thing I'm sure of,  it's that, as a consequence of those Genetic Codes wishing to continue to exist, there's one helloffa lot of 'Bad Shit' goin' down in this Ragged & Tattered & Torn Ol' World  because of Monkey Man & his Seminal Surges (more Bad than Good, that's for sure!)...but still we Simians  keep Rutting!.....and in our never diminishing eagerness to Penetrate, commit countless crimes against our fellows. Of course, Nature in the Raw, cares not one jot for Morality!!...but surely some foreknowledge of Monkey Boy & his Priapic Proclivities could allow us to Pity instead of Condemn, Forgive but not Excuse?!?!

The SToNedhOLybLoGGER has a notion that we have been force-fed a Sanitised, Romanticised, Bowdlerised & Emasculated view of Human Sexuality by the Church & State and their Dominant Social Orthodoxies. I think the Ancients understood better the damage our sexuality can wreak upon us. Take the story of the Judgment of Paris : Chosen by the Gods to decide which of three Goddesses to award a Golden Apple to for being the most beautiful, the Greeks understood perfectly that when offered the different bribes of Riches, Wisdom or Sex the Young Goat Herd went with his gonads and chose the latter. So the Apple went to Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Paris got Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world.. But what came from his choice? The Fall of Troy, his Father murdered, his Mother enslaved, his Brother slain....& his own union with Helen, childless!! Hardly the stuff of Romantic Poets & a million God Awful Rock Ballads!!

'El Juicio de Paris' by Enrique Simonet. 1904 

But what's a poor Apeman to do in this modern age of SEX screaming at him from the Billboards & the Television & the Movies & the top shelf of his local corner shop? The Male Sexual Response was not really designed for the 21st century Metropolis : millions of wimmen exposing various parts of their soft & bouncing womanly assets!! And if it's all look, look, lookin' but not get, get , gettin' it's no wonder that the concept of 'Release' can seem very attractive......but just how does a plodding Neanderthal like the  SToNeDHolYbLOgGer reach that state? Not by having cold showers, I can tell yi!

Methinks if Heaven exists, it must be Sexless! How can it be otherwise? Would you swap Peace for Tumult? Swap Completeness for Division? Swap Wholeness for Fracture?  Would you give up Fullness for Hunger? Give up Perfection for Want, Need, Longing, Craving or Thirst?.........but then methinks, maybe it's how we cope with all these just mentioned that define us best as Human Beings. So maybeez a State of Acceptance would be a more realistic aim for Attainment than 'Release'?.......if I may be allowed to utilise Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase, can I contend, nay insist, that no matter how much 'MOKSHA' can appeal to 'the Better Angels of Our Nature' we remain, ever & always, Creatures of the Flesh!!

SUERTE!

Today, Don Nako Ignacio Javierre has departed the dusty corridors of StonedHoly HQ and climbed aboard a plane that will take him to the dusty centre of Spain. All things considered; tons of metal propelled through thin air by the thrust generated by 4 jet engines whilst rivets & glue hold the rest of the machine together, he should already have alighted upon his Native Soil!

Mr. Javierre was known to followers of The Holy Rollin Stone as El Cajon, or sometimes El Cabron. The Sheik of Shake shall be fondly remembered sitting astride his Box playing to his own inimitable fashion, ie, with two left hands! His enthusiasm was boundless however, so the marraccas won't shake in quite the same way now he has departed.

His talents showed themselves more in the StonedHolyKitchen, La Cocina, than in the Rhythm Department and his slow cooked beef shall long remain in Holy Rollin Folklore!.....he was also educated thouroughly in the ways of Fabada & Cocido!!

Our paths shall cross again, I'm sure of it (especially as he's assured us of a few gigs in Madrid in July!) but if they don't, we wish him well wherever it is that this life will take him. Who amongst us knows where it is this wonderful  life will carry us? A little piece of Luck and a Warm Heart are good things to have in your pocket for, goodness knows, this World got fucked up long before any of us presently in it got here and the Vicissitudes of Life are many and the Forces of Darkness & Death & Negative Energy are ever present, waiting to drag us down to their joyless & embittered level. A Warm & Beating Human Heart that knows Love Is All & Love Is Everything should see you alright.....and such was Ignacio's!.........So
So Long Ma Friend
Will I Ever See You Again
If I Don't Then I Hope
That You Get Where You're Going To!
Maybe I'll See You Sometime
Maybe We'll Meet Up Down The Line
Your Road's Your's & Ma Road's Mine
So Don't Worry 'Bout Me, I'll Be Doin' Just Fine!
So Long, It's Been Good To Know Ya
I Hope It's Been Good For Ya
If We Never, Ever Meet Again
Think Kindly of Me, Ma Friend!

H a s t a  L u e g o,  M i   H e r m a n o!

S u e r t e  y  M u c h o s   B e s o s!

Money Is Not The Measure Of All Things!!

You, Kind Readers, out there in the Nothingness of Electrically Charged Silicon Particles that is the Blogosphere, may well be under the illusion that all us Pop-Schlop Wannabes dream of is Money : The kind of Money that finances the crass displays of Empty-Headed Materialism we all readily associate with the Venal & Wacky World of Pop Excess & the Woeful Inadequates who inhabit its middens & its Glory-Holes! The kind of Money that can pamper the most developmentally-stunted Ego and indulge the extreme Whims & Under-Educated Caprices thereof....I mean, smuggling your pet mountain lion into your hotel suite as you lob yet another television set out of the window!?!?......but, Lo! the STONEDHOLYBLOGGER, your convivial host, must avow it to be not always so!

True, my Mettle is somewhat untested, for in the Trial by Marketplace that measures the worth of what you do in units shifted, it seems I am practically Worthless! Who knows what Depravities I have been saved, what Cesspits of Human Debauchery I have been stopped from sinking into by my almost complete Failure in the Business part of the 'Music Business'.....I can, of course, content myself with the fact that although, yes, it would be good not to worry about paying the next electric bill, Money Is Not The Measure Of All Things and this World of Pop Slop is an arena where "thieves & pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason!!"

Leaving aside the manifest failings of yir average Popslopper as any kind of human being worthy of respect we must direct our gaze at the Society that Spawns these Air-Brushed & Tousle-Haired Disasters. We are constantly sold the idea that choice in all things is good, but if we're a Society that chooses Hospital Treatment in the same way we choose what Arts & Craft fittings to adorn our 1930's bungalow it doesn't say a lot about what we value. If we choose university education in the same way we only ever shop at Harvey Nichols then the Society we're part of is in serious trouble. If we're a society that thinks being ferried by Mumsy to the other side of the city every morning through the gridlocked streets to reach our school of choice is the same as buying handbags then trouble lies ahead! What all of these things boil down to is MONEY.....and as always, there's thems that have it and thems that don't. All of which doesn't do a lot for Social Cohesion and the idea that we ALL have a place and a stake in something called Society. We could use other words here to further illustrate the point ; words like Humanity, Group, Community, Collective or Union. 'Society 'though,  is not really a word the present bunch of dullards who sit at the helm of 'HMS We're-All-In-This-Together' like very much, unless it's part of the phrase'The Big Society' which any right-minded person knows is nothing more than hot-air! Britain is falling apart at the seams!

 Once upon a time when Nazi bombs were raining down on British cities and we really were 'all in it together' the bonds that connect us all were plain for all to see. And after the dust cleared the people who had done the dirty work of cleaning the mess up voted for a National Health Service and the Nationalisation of Rail & Coal. But, things are somehow different now and this is a Modern World where Money Is The Measure Of All Things........There Must Be Better Things! There Must Be Better Songs To Sing! There Must Be Better Scenes! There Must Be Better Dreams To Dream!

Maybe Martin Luther King hit the nail on the head when he said "A Nation that continues, year after year, to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."....then again, as Woody Allen once succinctly put it "Money Is Better Than Poverty, If Only For Financial Reasons." Well yi cannae argue wi that, can yi?!?!

"WHEN THERE'S NO FUTURE, HOW CAN THERE BE SIN?"

'WHEN THERE'S NO FUTURE, HOW CAN THERE BE SIN?' These are the prescient words of Mr. John Lydon, an Arsenal supporter from north London and, in the guise of his one time alter-ego, Johnny Rotten, erstwhile singer of the Sex Pistols. The lyrics are from 'GOD SAVE THE QUEEN' - a glorious four minutes & nine seconds of Howling, Heavy Metal Outrage and a song that, with the coming of another Jubilee and another propaganda exercise in phony, bunting-festooned patriotism, seems just so right for the times.

What kind of Future can there be when the Bankers who play their money games with moolah that doesn't actually exist, somehow still contrive to make millions. And all at the expense of Joe Bloggs, the Taxpayer, who not only has to stump up the dosh to bail out this Sordid little Cabal but has been duped into thinking the real reason he's lost his job is because of the Labour Party & the Public Sector! Meanwhile the City has even got the fucking Brass Neck to tell us they're worth it!!!....and they're all gonna live elsewhere if we don't wanna cough up the readies they think they're due in bonuses ; Somewhere, presumably, where the Gods of 'Sink-or- Swim-Capitalism' don't have to answer to anyone. Can someone please call this Bunch of Idiots' Bluff and give them directions to the nearest fucking airport....or seaport if that's nearer! Let's see how they get on in Switzerland, eating Muesli n Fondue.....I'd advocate a Damn Good Thrashing for the lot of before they left, if it were not for the realisation that being Public School Educated, they'd probably enjoy it!!

How can there be Sin when the Politicians who Serve Us and are currently reminding us constantly 'We're All In It Together' have been exposed as a bunch of self serving Pigs-at-the-Trough. From flipping houses to claiming expenses on Poppy Day Wreaths - a bigger bunch of Money Grubbing Bastards you'd be hard pressed to find....unless you were looking through the ranks of the Criminal Underworld! The Mafia would seem to be good, honest criminals in comparison....at least they don't feed us their Sanctimonious Bullshit about Public Service whilst they rob us blind! Still, at least it's all now safely swept under the Persian Carpet!.....you know the one, the one that was specially commissioned to co-ordinate with the wallpaper that's £120 a roll!

Again, I ask you, Gentle Souls of the Blogosphere, When There's No Future, How Can There Be Sin?
What do words like Sin even mean when that Bastion of Democracy, the Free Press, has been exposed as Rotten to their Vile & Contemptible Core. I'd say drawing breath anywhere within a radius of 6ft of one of the Perfidious & Venal Degenerates called 'Sun' Journalists should carry a Government Health Warning!
No doubt Mr. Rupert Murdoch, who sits at the top of the whole Corrupt & Festering Dung-Heap will fly out of the Country in his Private Jet, leaving one of his hirelings to be fed to the dogs!. What do words like Loathsome & Disgusting mean in the light of Journalists & Police implicated in a web of phone hacking and cash for information? Meanwhile, remember, it's us who are currently spending BILLIONS on Bombs n Bullets convincing Medieaval Shit-Heaps like Afghanistan that they should follow our shining example and be a Democracy!!! Can someone please pass the Sick Bucket!!

It seems scale is important here : Was it Uncle Joe Stalin who said "A Single Death is a Tragedy, a Million Deaths is a statistic." I think it was a French Gentleman who opined "Kill One Man and You Are A Murderer. Kill Millions Of Men and You Are A Conqueror. Kill Them All and You Are A God." 
Or maybe you could put it thus : Steal Millions & they'll give you millions, or maybe even a Peerage, as a reward. Steal some bottles of water or write on your Facebook page that you're up for a wee bit of Rioting and they'll give you four years at Her Majesty's pleasure eating Porridge for breakfast and bending over to pick the soap up in the shower-room!! Meanwhile, it seems that as we all tighten our belts and batten doon the hatches in these austere times we find ourselves living through, that the criminals are the only ones making money! So it's time, methinks, to build my StonedHolyRollin' Criminal Empire.......I feel Drugs is an area of High Returns....
After all "When There's No Future, How Can There Be Sin?"

W A T C H   T H I S   S P A C E   ! ! !

& here's a wee link to youtube so you can enjoy the Pistols in all their Filth & Fury!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtUH2YSFlVU  

Reflections Upon Doorways & Soap-Boxes!!

Sometimes, Fellow Bloggers, as I while away the empty hours which my Ongoing Failure in the World of Pop Slop has consigned me to live through, I am seized by Dread! Of course, this is January, which, sitting as it does at the Birth of each New Year (or in other terms, the Death of the Old One!), is a natural time for re-evaluating not only where we've been but where we hope to be heading.  January is named for the Roman God of Doorways, Janus, who had two faces, one looking in one direction and one the other and so it is in January folks can look ahead and promise resolutely to go the the gym twice a week or look behind and wonder just what-in-the-hell they've done with their Useless & Pointless lives! So many hours frittered away on reading about the Russian Revolution and looking at Stroke Mags!!.... 

The STONedhoLYbloGER though, being yir Classic Narcissistic-Navel Gazing-Singer-Songwriter doesn't need it to be January to ponder where the fleeting hours have raced off to. Evidence of his Failure to Advance in this Pop-Schlopp-Life is ever present ; Watching 'The Wright Stuff' and 'Loose Women' everyday whilst eating biscuits is symptomatic of the malaise he finds himself wallowing in. So this dread that overtakes me does not come from the realisation that The Sweet Bird of Youth Hath Flown and my best years are behind me....though, to be honest, that is rather Disquieting, all the same!!

Wherefor then, comes this Dread, I hear you ask. A 'Mid-Life Crisis' perchance? True, the stOnEdHoLyBLoggeR, finds himself Smack Dab In The Middle of that Demographic whereby Gentlemen of Certain Years can begin to Ruminate on what they've done with the Precious Moments of Existence. Oh, to compare the Days that could've been a Magic Carpet Ride with what actually unfolded : A year on year exercise turning up to do some crummy job, kowtowing to the Boss and keeping up with the mortgage payments! As if from waking from a dream, a man can find himself weighted down with Houses and Cars and Children and Wives and Credit Cards and Annual Membership Fees to the Golf Club and all the other things our Consumer-Carousel-Society tells us are supposed to make us Happy. Having a Paunch, being slightly Balding and Needing Viagra to Stir the Old Boy into life does not help matters! It is then that being trapped in one more traffic jam en route to Sainsburys to buy Shoe Polish and a 'Taste the Difference' Shepherd's Pie can finally crack the Fragile Egg-Shell Character of a Man's Mind and he can start deliberating where to buy a length of hose to run from his exhaust-pipe through the Near-Side Window and into his car next Thursday night when the Missus goes to Zumba Classes! I am happy to report that, given the fact that Sometimes Nothin' Can Be A Real Cool Hand & since The stoNeDhOlYBloGgEr, as a Perennial Under-Achiever, finds himself unencumbered with all the things mentioned above,  I feel the Mid-Life Crisis theory lies behind neither the aforementioned Dread nor the many letters of a Blasphemous & Vitriolic Nature I post routinely to The Daily Mail!

No, the Real Reason behind this Dread, that can rise seemingly from nowhere to Fill the Stoned n Holy Heart & Chill the Blood in my Rock-n-Rollin-Veins, is the STonEDhoLYblOGgeR's 'Messiah Complex'. This is the Pathological Delusion where, in a Forlorn attempt to lend some kind of Substance to your life, you feel you've just gotta climb up on Soap-Boxes & Stages and tell the World you've got something to say. Ultimately it's a Primal Scream Howled in Defiance of a Vast, Godless, Pitiless Desert of Time & Space but I feel the Blogosphere is not the ideal place to delve into these Bleak Matters! But here's the thing about this 'Messiah Complex' - Stages are not being climbed onto, my Primal Scream not being Howled... and Time Is Leaking Out Of Me!...and still I am Mute!!! Gagged!!! Silenced!!!!

But Dread Be Damned for I wish to leave you, Good Souls of the CyberCommunity, on an optimistic note. (One of those notes which if played on a Guitar would lie up beyond the Twelfth Fret where Lead Guitarists like to Dweedle endlessly -  us Little Hands Of Concrete Rhythm Players know there is never any need to venture beyond the Fifth!!)  Meanwhilez...where was I?... ah yes! - It's 2012 and I do hereby promise that in my capacity as a Concrete Prairie Crooner and Secular Proselytizer of Peace, Love and Togetherness, I will strive to Throw My Pebble In The Pond and Get My Gospel Heard! A Whisper Can Be Louder Than A Shout - And The Word Is Out. The Word Is LOVE! Yeah, Baby!!

This Train Is Bound For Glory!
Next Stop The Toppermost Of The Poppermost!!!

Of Ploughman Poets & Champit Tatties & Bashit Neeps!!

Hey Gogglers of the Glowin' Screen, yi might no' ken it, sittin' aw oan yir lonesome there doing yir Tinternet Business, whatever that may entail, but it's January 25th and aw ower this Sceptred Isle and indeed, all quarters of the Globe, people who cherish the Poetic Stylings of Robert Burns, late of Alloway, Ayrshire, will be enjoying a warm, reeking and rich meal of  Haggis accompanied with some Champit Tatties N Bashit Neeps! Even as I write, a Handsome Pudding, just today purchased from the premises of  Mr. Abercrombie in Broughton Street, Edinburgh, awaits it's heating in the oven of the S t o n e d   H o l y   K i t c h e n !   The S t o n e d H o l y B l o g g e r  is One who shall, most assuredly, be raising his glass to the Ploughman Poet and Toasting his Immortal Memory!

The S t o n e d H o l y S c h o o n e r , however, will not be lifted in 

Salutation of the Canonised Burns of Biscuit Tins and Postcards,

 the Appropriated Burns of Tartan-Clad Parochialism, 

the Sanitised Burns of Conservative Club Suppers, 

nor the Emascualted Burns of the Highly Mannered and Codified Pantomime of Piping in the Haggis. I've got more than an inkling that Robert Burns Esq' would be spinning furiously in the grave which holds him at the thought of aw the shite enacted in his name!!

No, here at S t o n e d H o l y H Q  we will be raising our glasses aloft and Bringing To Mind another Robert Burns entirely :

  Burns the Radical, who, referencing the Religious Dissenters of the English Civil War, styled himself 'Robbie the Ranter'! 

Burns the Libertarian, who defended the American & French Revolutions!

  Burns the Democrat, who knew 'The Rank Is But The Guinea's Stamp'!   

Burns the Libertine, the self-confessed & Proudly Proclaimed Fornicator! 

Burns the Indignant, who blasted the hypocrisy of the Church and aw the Unco Guid! 

The Political Burns, who poured scorn upon the Parcel of Rogues who had signed Scottish Independence away! 

The Bawdy Burns, the Crochallan Fencible, who knew 9 inch would please a lady! 

The Convivial Burns, at home in the Inn and the Howff where the Swats were Reaming!!....

....and How, How, How could we ever forget the Burns who, one cold starry night during the Winter of 1786, upon attending a dinner party in the parlour of Mr. Adam Ferguson's 'Sciennes Hill House' in Edinburgh and encountering a fifteen year old lad by the name of Walter Scott, thereafter spent  the evening entertaining the Great n the Good of Scotia's Darling Seat with his intelligence and charming the Darling Young Things with his flirtatious wit, before begging his esteemed host's pardon for needing to 'Mak His Water' and quietly nipped upstairs & Tupped the Scullery Maid!!!

So without further faffin' aboot and without further bletherin', I ask you not to be upstanding nor raise a formal toast, but rather, just to take a moment to think on Robert Burns & Old Long Since! 

A Mover & A Shaker - Undoubtedly! 

A Rantin', Rovin' Billy - Unquestionably! 

A S t o n e d   H o l y   R o l l e r  - Most Ceratinly!..........

Doubt ye not that our Well-Thumbed copy of his Collected Verse takes its place Most Rightfully & is displayed Most Proudly on the Seldom Dusted Shelves of The S t o n e d H o l y L i b r a r y ! (It sits next to a facsimile edition of 'The Merry Muses Of Caledonia'!)

Let the final words be Walter Scott's : 

"Long Life To Thy Fame & Peace To Thy Soul, Rob Burns! When I Want To Express A Sentiment Which I Feel Strongly, I Find The Phrase In Shakespeare or Thee."  

Well yi cannae argue wi' that, can yi?!

SO REMEMBER TO TAK THAT RIGHT 

GUID-WILLIE WAUGHT! CHEERS!

High Horses N Pulpits!!

Today the dusty halls of Stoned Holy HQ are in tumult! The clamorous sound of High Horses & Pulpits being climbed onto & into is to be heard echoing off granite walls. Righteous Indignation, it seems, is abroad! Wherein lies the source of all this ferment I hear you ask. Well, Good Users of the Blogosphere, today our very own Democratically Unelected Prime Minister sought to redefine 'Capitalism' for all us poor and huddled masses!!

Well, I nearly fell off the chaise-longue where I get to spend many of my dreary hours of Pop-Slop-Zero Failuredom! Once in my Green Youth, when my keen young eyes sparkled, I read of a spectre Haunting Europe & dreamt of Futures Bright....these days I rest my Middle-Aged Beer-Gut on the aforementioned piece of furniture and I read the newspaper so as to enflame the Burning Bile of Bitterness which eats away at my Tender-Stoned-Holy-Heart and consumes my slowly diminishing regard for the Human Race and all it's Deplorable & Lamentable Doings! It's not easy being a Pop-Slop-Nobody y'know...casting Pearls Before Swine really takes it out of a body, let me tell you! Oh, you don't know the half of it!!

But to the task at hand, Gentle Readers. The 'task' being to pour vitriole upon the couiffured little head of our very own, wholly pre-fabricated, one-size-fits-all Numero Uno and his latest venture into 'Blue-Sky-Thinking' or whatever it is they're now calling their own brand of idiotic, pseudo-intellectualism down Downing Street way.  'Popular Capitalism' is what the Tomato-Faced, Eton Educated Dimwit has decided to sell to us as a vision of the future! I'm sure you can see right away that all those tens of thousands of pounds Mr. Cameron Senior lavished on the 'education' of the Fruit of his Stockbroking Loins was not wasted! A New, Cuddly Teddy Bear kind of Capitalism where people are 'Nice' to one another as opposed to the 'Turbo-Capitalism' of the Blair & Brown years - How Marvellous! Has the World gone completely mad? Did I really just hear a Tory Prime Minister trying to put down Labour as the Party of Unfettered, Uncaring Capitalism?!?! Now I know, Mr. Cameron is a Personality Black-Hole and little more than a Ventriloquist's Dummy for the Avaricious Puppeteers of the City but this really takes the biscuit. Yes we know the Pitiful, Toadying, Little Turd is a Virtual Blank Page who believes in nothing other than his God-given right to be at the helm of H.M.S Britannia, yes we know he lives by the Auto-Cue and would say anything his team of Media Advisors asked of him if it meant one more meaningless sound-bite played out in the Pantomime that is Prime Minister's Questions, but asking us to buy into the crackpot notion of a new-improved, soft-centred Capitalism as the mechanism whereby we are airlifted out of these squally waters of Economic Difficulty in which we are currently immersed, is a new level of utter ridiculousness even for him and his Silver-Spooned, Cherubic Whipping Boy Mr. Gideon Osborne!! I know Mr. Cameron's and his Party's view of the Great Unwashed is pretty low but just how credulous does he think people are?!?! The answer, of course, is very.

There's even been talk of stripping Mr.Fred Goodwin (he of the monstrously inflated pay-off) of his knighthood. Does this man have his finger on the pulse of the nation, or what?! Here is a man who would not take it anymore! Ah, how the Avenging Sword of Justice strikes another blow for the Bankrupt whilst the Morally Bankrupt System that Spawned all the Little Frankensteins heaves on!! It seems this House of Cards is not for falling just yet!! We're all in this together after all, is what we're constantly being told. Belts are being tightened in the Cameron household, I'm sure. Which household is another question ; the recently upgraded one in Witney, Oxfordshire or the one that came with Mrs. C and her dowry on the Isle of Jura?.....& let's not forget his little bolt-hole in Westminster, temporary lease notwithstanding!! Yes, I'm sure they're feeling the pinch there as much as they are on the 19th floor of the high-rise in Leeds or Liverpool or Glasgow!!!

It's getting late, Good People of the CyberNetic NetherWorld, and even curmudgeonly old geezers like the StonedHolyBlogger have gotta sleep!! Hypnos, I call unto thee. Come, Morpheus and ease me into thy Velvet Kingdom! And Sleep, that Shuts Up Sorrows Eye, Felicit Me Awhile From Mine Own Company!!

SWEET DREAMS YOU THEORISERS & PHILOSOPHISERS!!

Egg-Nog & Child Brides!!

At last, the heddy whiff of egg-nog and mendacity has finally cleared and here we are, newly washed up on the Virgin Shores of 2012. Halls, just recently bedecked in holly and a various assortment of tacky & garish tat, have been returned to their former state of woodchipped dreariness. The gloomy streets are now a graveyard for discarded Norwegian Spruce. Enough paper to giftwrap the entire world ten times over is currently being stuffed into landfill sites up and down the breadth of the country and ignored by a vast hungry army of herring gulls more interested in what little meat still clings to the festering carcasses of 25 Million turkeys. Chrimbo is officially over. Thank Christ!....or maybe it is we should blame the sandal wearing, beardy one for kick-starting all this mallarkey in the first place!! Yet no-one chooses the bed they're born in and it wasn't him who settled on the barn and the whole swaddling thing with cattle troughs and those three weird geezers from bugger knows where bearing a right load of old crap that would have been of no use whatever to a blubbering infant and his exhausted mother.....and let's not forget strange objects moving through the sky and those useless bloody shepherds deserting their flocks! And if all that wasn't enough, the proud new parents had to fill out a census form at the same time!! Damn those pesky Roman invaders and their armies of faceless pen pushers but who knows what they put in the space marked 'Father'! If Yosef had any lingering suspicions of his 13 year old missus doin' the dirty on him he barely had time to voice them before King Herod's ethnic cleansing squads were trawling the dusty streets of Beit Lahm looking for newborns to slaughter. These roving hitmen little realised that one day the town would have a Muslim majority and it would be twinned with Glasgow!! Meanwhile Yosef n his Darling Child Bride Maryam had no sooner finished with the formalities of the Brit Milah (ie; seperating the 8 day old lad from his foreskin & naming him Yesua) than they had to load up the family donkey and hot-foot it to Egypt to escape the unwarranted attentions of said Death Squads. Here they existed on a diet of falafels & eish masri whilst they waited for Herod to pop his clogs so that they could return home to Al Nasira and Yosef could take up his old trade of chippying. Nowadays, a joiner running away with a 13 year old girl who's just popped a sprog in the backstreets of some Provincial shithole of a town only to be informed that it's not his would be the stuff of tabloid outrage and the snooty expostulations of ruddy-faced Tory toffs twatting on about benefit fraud & the Decline of the West! As for using this woeful tale to start a new religion professing Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all men...Puh-Leeze!! But it's a rum-do sure enough and there's no accounting for just how wacky this goofy old world can be! So here's tae Chrimbo....and we've not even mentioned jollicose old geezers in red, fur-trimmed suits and flying f*****g reindeer!!!...or Chimneys.... or Sleighs... or elves.... or grottoes.... or hooses at the f*****g North Pole for f***'s sake.....!!!!