S C R O O G E D !

Once more I am returned as Lazarus from the unending silence of the tomb! Once more I am delivered as Ishmael from the vast roiling ocean! I'm exaggerating, of course, for I merely find myself sitting, discomforted, in the cold and shivering garret of STONEDHOLY HQ battering the keys of the laptop and adding yet another dreary page to 'The Diary of a Pop-Slop Nobody'....but it's been some time since last I sent forth my tidings of comfort n joy!

'Decrease the Surplus Population!'

It comes as no surprise, I'm sure, to you few readers of these humble pages, that I am returned to you not as a fully redeemed Ebeneezer Scrooge, filled afresh with bonhomie and a newfound resolve to spread happiness and ease the pitiless burdens of the poor, but as the same crabbit auld shitebag as ever I was before my late protracted absence from these virtual walls! And even if I had been rudely plucked from golden slumber or, like as not, fretful & agitated tossings & turnings, and received visitations from the same trio of Chrimbo spirits that effected such a job of shakin' old Scrooge from out of his moneygrubbing and joyless ways, I couldn't do anything about it....for the Stoned Holy Pocketbags still contain nowt much more than fluff! So that huge turkey will have to remain in the shopkeeper's window and Tiny Tim, bless his innocent little heart, will have to remain toyless. For you see, gentle reader, that Scrooge was only ever able to chuck his errand boy half a crown and shower gifts upon his nephew and the whole Cratchit family and warm the cockles of our beaten down hearts and bring tears to our world weary eyes because his bank account was already bulging with the ill-gotten gains he had accrued as a penny-scrimping git and money-whoring bringer of doom! Redress is a luxury the poor can't afford ; unavailable to such as the
S T o n e D h O L y b L o G G E r and the many other legions of the totally-fukn-skint!! I expiate guilt daily, I assure you, readers, but the World takes no notice!! 

A modern version of the hearwarming morality tale would have to involve some tosspot like Lord Sugar of the Dodgy Stereo undergoing electric shock therapy, issuing forth from the exclusive retreat or sanatorium and skipping blithely along the pavement with a song in his heart and a stupid smirk on his face! Perchance the dry and dessicated husk of humanity that is the CEO of Wonga.com could have his distorted little mind blown and his shrivelled heart shown by the liberating effects of 10,000 micrograms of LSD Love Power!! Right on, baby! The shareholders, in both these instances, would not, ahm pretty damn sure, be happy bunnies!!

Perchance, as a means whereby I could fill the StonedHolyCoffers, I could pen a postscript to Mr. Dickens' tale of restitution ; in which pages a generous and philanthropic Mr. Scrooge quickly finds himself out of business and after blowing his wad is removed to the workhouse where he sees out the last of his days turning the screw and labouring long on the treadmill!! Perhaps a title like 'Slim Pickings, Mr. Dickens!' would grab the attention of the ticket buying populace and put bums on seats! But here are, I fear, no rosy-tinted, Victorianesque happy endings in the post-modern, post truth, Neo-Liberal age.

'There's more of Gravy than the Grave about you, whatever you are!'

But enough of aw this bletheration! The truth is oot there - No One Here Gets Oot Alive. Not Scrooge or Dickens, Jim Morrison, Hank Williams or Baby Jesus! And certainly not the high heid yin of Wonga.com! He shall, hear me now, die shamed with a obscenely bloated bank balance and a portfolio of overseas investments and tax dodges that will lay bare the wasted minutes and hours of his one time only wonderlife! The very life that he has just given over to the accumulation of meaningless trash and baubles and money that other people will now spend for him on more of the same!!!

God Bless Us, Everyone!!!! 

   

Something Wicked This Way Comes! It's Chrimbo!

Something wicked this way comes! The Jolly Fat Man cometh! Dark foreboding popped round last night and chapped my door. Dread waved to me in the street. The sound of jingling grows louder!Time is merciless - Christmas is upon us!

Now, those of you out there who regularly perambulate the labyrinthine backstreets, skulk furtively along the  twisted alleyways or sift the brimming gutters of the Tinternet-Super-Highway may recognise that it's usually round about now that the S t O N e  d H o L y b L o g g E R posts a wearisome and jaded paragraph or two berating the tawdry assault on the senses, the gaudy spendathon  that Chrimbo has mutated into in the hands of our corporate masters! This year will be no different!

For there have been no Damascene moments of Revelation since last the malevolent Christmas pixies were badgering me to join in the fun! That skinny little runt, our Stoned Holy Bro' of Yore, Hank Williams, may have Seen the Light but I sure as hell ain't! Mr. Williams, it must be pointed out, was an Alabama boy steeped in Pentecostalism and soaked in the kinda spirit available in bottles!

Meanwhile, there have been no late night visitations to the Stoned Holy Bed Chamber by spirits, no excursions to Chrimbos past, present or future. That Scrooge geezer may have seen the error of his ways but the S t O N E D h O L y B L o g g e R is the same crabbit, auld misery guts as ever he was! I will most definitely not be sending any rosy cheeked little scamp on an errand to buy the biggest turkey in the shop!

Roy Wood may well have wished that 'It Could Be Christmas Every Day' but if that were to actually happen the suicide rate would rocket, I wager! Droves of exhausted consumers and spiritually corrupted shoppers would be throwing themselves merrily from the upper tiers of the shopping malls! But how infantile a thing to wish for in the first place. If it was Chrimbo every day then it wouldn't be 'special', would it?  It would merely be yet another dull, lifeless inch on the empty road to nowhere we are all treading! Anyway, it has to pointed out that Mr. Wood liked a bottle of vodka for breakfast everyday and had a large silver star painted on his forehead, so his views on anything must surely be suspect!

But the Chrimbo juggernaut rumbles on. Crushing good taste beneath its merciless wheels. Flattening the dawdling hedgehogs of reserve and modesty as they attempt to cross the Chrimbo highway! On and on it thunders with it's stinking exhaust pipe spewing forth a noxious mix of choking gases which burn the lungs, leave a bitter taste in the mouth and empty your bank account! In its wake it leaves an alcohol drenched trail of bitterness and loneliness that leads all the way to the landfill. And it's the landfill site where all the collected crackpot wackiness and assorted ridiculous religious guff that form the Chrimbo ether in the minds of fools who are easily parted from their paltry wages manifest themselves and are formed into actual stuff. And what stuff!!  A towering, festering mountain of the ersatz and kitsch, the shoddy and fake, unasked for and unrequired! What better monument to Chrimbo's black, cynical heart than a monumental midden of worthless plastic shit....and no matter how much you polish shit, it never looks clean!!

B'jaysus, I need to cheer up! Time to self-medicate, I feel. Pass the Egg-Nog, Henry!! See youz all when it's over....meanwhile there will no quarter given, no clemency offered! It's everyone for themselves! It's not often the S t O n e d H O L y b L o G G e r  gets to compare himself with Beyoncé but we are both 'Survivors'!!

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!!!