This Train Aint Bound For Glory!

Seeing as ahv no pounded the keyboard for some time - not as a consequence of me feelin' like a Broke Down Engine, nor me contemplating the utter pointlessness o ma Tinternet scrivenings, y'understand -  I thought I'd rectify matters for the want of something more fulfilling to do with these very beat moments I find myself in. How better to fill some of my wasted n defeated minutes than with the temporary distraction that tapping oot this bloviating bluster can afford a poor, put-upon Pop Slopper! So, my virtual readers, on with the blow!

'This Train Aint Bound For Glory!

Seeing as Saint Theresa of Mayhem, current hollow mouthpiece of the venal & warped preservers of all that is outdated, joyless & dull-as-dishwater, (known to you and I as the Conservative & Unionist Party of Great Britain) has called a snap election for June and it's Easter time anyways, why not write about Resurrections methought.....political or otherwise!

This Train Ain't Bound For Glory!

As an avowed scoffer & skeptic the S t O N e d H O L y B L O g G e r couldn't be seen to have faith in much but, when it comes to the rolling away of stones and unpowered flight up into the heavens, I do have faith in the scientific approach to such matters ; consequently yi can sum up my thoughts on the possibility of an Essene mystic up n aboot and showing off the holes in his wrists n feet tae doubters just days after everybody seen him die a horrible death at the hands of the Roman Army of Occupation by use of the word 'Bollocks'. And though talk of metaphors or symbols is perfectly admissible let's agree tae leave the Theosophy for another time and another dander doon Desolation Row.

This Train Ain't Bound For Glory!

So then, closer to home, what of the mooted resurrection of the United Kingdom? Free of the banana-straightening clutches of Johnny Foreigner at last. The People have spoken, seemingly. Unfortunately what they have said turns out to be wilfully ignorant, misinformed, xenophobic, petty-minded shit! But Westminster loves a pantomime so on with the circus and let's hear all the phoney talk of how fabulous it's gonna be now 'we've got our country back'! Let's, for the want of a real democracy participated in by an informed and engaged populace, pretend Britain will be Great again.

This Train Ain't Bound For Glory!

 The s T O n e d h O L y B L o G g e R says 'No chance!' Not least because of the notion that we can, as one, return to some fanciful time when British industry fashioned everything the world wanted and British commerce ruled the waves is risible horseshit! Would that be the time, one wonders, when infant mortality rates were the highest they've ever been and we sent small boys up chimneys to clean them? Would that be the time when urban squalor was a breeding ground for diseases like cholera and smallpox? Would that be the time when British bayonets let British business grow fat & wealthy on stolen resources? Let's get this straight people, Britain has never been 'great'! Not even when the Arch Imperialist and hideously self-entitled, Churchill was giving speeches about fighting them on the beaches!

This Train Ain't Bound For Glory!

So even as new life and promise is emerging from the greening earth all around us, the Disunited Kingdom is busy sticking its head back into the shitpile of ignorance and dreaming of a golden age that never was. A 'resurrection'? Jesus returning to Albion and blessing this green & pleasant land is more likely! Though May and her hit squad of millionaires are undoubtedly riding the Gravy Train, the chances of either you or I or any Little Englander driving around in his white van, waving his union jack and tugging on the leash of his pitbull terrier called 'Damage' hoppin' aboard and getting a seat in the dining car are negligible...if not downright impossible! For this Train ain't Bound for Glory people - the Empire is over! This Train ain't Bound for Glory, people - British exceptionalism is a self-harming fantasy!  The Little England Express will be calling in at Austerity,  
Low Wages, No Rights, No Housing, Rachman Rents, Zero Hour Contracts, Racism, Xenophobia, Terrorism and Perpetual Rule by Tory Oligarchs sworn to nothing but filling their own pockets....where this service will terminate! Please collect your belongings before alighting from this train and, please, mind the pay gap!

Please Mind the Gap!

 

On New Year's Resolutions!

And so, with a million fireworks bombing their shimmering brilliance out upon a dark, winter's sky, we slid through the portals of 2017. And with half of January already drained away, the sands of time are slip-slip-slipping away through our clutching fingers! And our life energies alongside them!

But we shall not trouble deaf heaven with our bootless cries here. For January is a month for Resolution. No doubt many have already wavered or cracked regarding what they promised themselves on January 1st but, even as I write, there is, no doubt, some smug bastard foregoing the, admittedly ephemeral, pleasures afforded by a pistachio macaroon or coffee mousse encased in a velvety chocolate shell. Some other steely-hearted individual is, right now, making the most of his new gym membership and sweating profusely on some apparatus akin to a medieval instrument of torture. I will be fitter. I will be slimmer. I shall succeed - These are the mantras oft repeated as we stare at ourselves in January's unforgiving mirror. The S T o n E d H o L Y B L o G G e r , however, when countenancing his blasted features, says bollocks to faux asceticism, bollocks to ersatz sackcloth & ashes and bollocks too to counterfeit self denial and sham stoicism!

Ours is an age of bogus Puritanism as product. Buy the self help manual, buy the work-out DVD, buy into the latest fad dieting regimen. Fear envelops our lives. If it's not fear of obesity or ill health then it's fear of losing our jobs, our homes, our sanity that eats up the precious seconds of living. Is this why we meekly accept the austerity programme administered to us by our great elected leaders? So now, even as our waistlines expand due to our addiction to junk food, even as we're sent the credit cards enabling us to consume, we are told to tighten our belts!

It is against this backdrop we can discern one of the major problems facing humanity today - Joylessness! Why are there so many joyless turds ; mostly, it must be noted, skulking along the corridors of power. Those people we let away with 'running' the whole sorry charade are, indeed, a weird little coterie of dreary, joyless cunts, devoid of imagination....and don't they take it all so seriously.

Isn't that the reason we find ourselves in the 21st Century but still, weighing us down and holding us back are the stunted scrag ends and ossified remains, the accumulated nefarious junk of ages past with all the ridiculous prejudices, snobberies and hierarchies, all the outdated injustices and all the obsolete delineations of class & caste like links in a heavy chain being dragged behind us as we advance at a snail's pace into the future, consigning yet more generations to lives of unending toil, misery and want!....and Joylessness!

Why after 10,000 years of something laughingly called civilisation isn't there free food in the streets? Why aren't there giant psychedelic lollipops in all our public parks and green spaces? Why aren't their trees and shrubs and flowers of every description all around us, enthralling & entrancing us, binding us to Nature within our own urban environments? Why aren't our cities home to, not only us, but a myriad of our fellow creatures? Why isn't there free art on every wall in every city? Why are there, STILL, hungry, homeless, illiterate people in this world??? Do you seriously think that the world as is is the best we can do?!?!

Who is responsible? I charge the pragmatists and their dreary concerns! I indict the serious-minded who ponder and pontificate! I accuse the humourless who reduce all to monetary value! I impeach the broken & jaded whose heart isn't in it! I revile the pusillanimous drones sweating on their treadmills and little wheels! I curse the cowardly and resigned ones for their practicality!

But surely, one could counter, only chaos could result if the world was left in the hands of idlers and dreamers such as the S t O n E d h O L y B L O g g e R ? But look you now upon this globe of ours and you must see the irony - Chaos Reins Regardless!!

So, no to those who deny pleasure. No to the prudent and their judicious orthodoxies ; No to the conservative fussbudgets; No to the bourgeois fuddy-duddies; No to the straight-laced and stolid stuffed shirts.....and no, no, no, a thousand times NO, to New Year's Resolutions!!