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.....!!!! 

You Are Only Half A Person!

 Today the Stoned Holy Blogger is in a Philosophical frame of mind. Having nothing else to occupy his time, due to the nature of being a Pop-Slop Nobody, he has chosen to withdraw, from the hugger-mugger of Human Strivings which is all that stuff that's goin' on right this Holy Beat Moment outside yir window in the crowded thouroughfares and winding country lanes which Human-Type-Creatures inhabit. Truth Be Told, there has always been that certain measure of distance between the Stoned Holy Blogger and the world of Men....& Wimmen! But, if I'm an ousider, lookin' in, well, what do I know about anything? Withdrawn & Solid Gone, maybeez, but methinks you need a Head With Wings if you wanna get a view of the whole parish! So let the Philosophising begin!

Now, I've heard it said in certain thronging Arrondisements and on bustling Waterfronts that someplace, in the Backwoods of our minds, a place seldom, if ever, visited by our consciousness, we remember being born, being squeezed into this Realm of the Living. How this affects you if yours was a Caesarian birth, I don't know but I only mention Birth for it is here my contention that We're Thrown Through Life's Gates In An Incomplete State! Whether our memory of being ejected from the womb, our struggle to enter the world (or is it merely to remain in the one we know?) colours our development in later life, I'll leave you to contemplate in a cloistered moment all to yourself, but I'm sure that you must see, that once we've pushed past those gates aforementioned, we leave the world of completeness behind and open our unknowing eyes in a world of Need & Want & Compulsion.

Shakespeare opined that "When We Are Born, We Cry That We Have Come To This World Of Fools!"
Mr.Shakespeare's poetic gifts notwithstanding, may I venture that the real reason our virgin cheeks are flushed with tears like hot lead is somewhat more prosaic! The fact that this world is peopled with fools matters not a jot to our swaddling clad selves. No, our mewlings are elicited, not by Blockheads & Numbskulls, but by the fact that now we Hunger & Desire that which is outwith us!

From the moment of our births our inventory of Wants & Needs multiplies at varying rates on a scale of anywhere between Mundane & Bizarre. From our common ambit of Food & Warmth we can end up, it seems, with somewhat ludicrous, if not outrightly grotesque demands, but I'll leave the catalogue of human Eccentricities & Foibles, Failings & Frailties, Aberrations & Perversions, Fetishes & General Wackiness for another Melancholic Stroll down  Heartbreak Boulevard!

For now, we are here to consider just one facet of our Wanting & Needing & Desiring - SEX! Just three little letters from 26 but my, how they shape most of our adult lives! Brutishly shoving past our other appetites, the Sexual Imperative can even unseat our Reason and indeed, the desire for life itself!

Herr Freud's Latency Periods notwithstanding, in childhood we may or may not experience brief vaquely comprehended visions of our adult futures, but only once the Hormonal Sluice Gates open and we are thrown headlong into the trials and testing times of the Hobbledehoy are we  really in a position to fully understand our natal shortcomings, our half-formed selfhoods! We struggle with new thoughts, new wants and new identities, motivated always by Sex - the wanting of, the needing of....and of course, the getting off!!

The Ancient Greeks thought the first humans had two heads and four limbs but as a punishment for the Sin of Pride these beings were cleaved in two by the Gods, both half being doomed to wander ceaselessly looking for the other to once again experience completeness....but never finding it! Though nowadays we would be more likely to use the vocabulary of Science rather than that of Poetry & Metaphor like the Ancients, I think you must see, Gentle Peruser of the Blogosphere, that those Greek cats knew that Nature was profligate with it's resources and cared not if you lived your life as a salivating, fuckless idiot, as long as you got just one damn chance to Shoot Your Seed and hit the DNA Bullseye with your Money Shot!! Sex then, as now, was and is, not Painless or Easy but Selfish, Belligerent, Competitive, Antagonistic, Self-Destructive, Pernicious and yes, sometimes even Fatal!....But Oh, How Good It Feels Slidin' It In!!

So Don't Snigger, Don't Laugh, When I Say That You Are Only Half A Person!  No, Don't Laugh, Don't Snigger, When I Say That You Are Always Only Ever Just One Half!! Friend, I tire of opining on these matters. Know only this, that only when you look upon yourself as half being can you truly know how to Roll the Holy Stone! Lemme Hear Ya Say YEAH! Amen!

BERLIN BODHISATTVA!

If life in the Rock N Roll Slow Lane is anything, it is mundane. Finding oneself as a middle aged rock loser with an expanding waistline tends to limit the opportunities one is presented in life, I've found. I suppose an extremely limited social circle simply means I have failed in yet another of life's arenas apart from music! I have failed to find fellows. Failed to find like-minded ship mates to accompany me aboard this flimsy raft I find myself on in the choppy waters of life's Existential Seas. The result of these failings is, rather prosaically, finding yourself with lots of  free time and of course, the problem of what to do with it all when your address book and your wallet are empty! So it was I found myself rummaging in the attic here at Stoned Holy H.Q engaged in some humdrum task but unearthing instead, amidst the miscellaneous material garbage I have amassed in my disappointing journey through existence, some yellowing fragments of papyrus. Upon shaking off a covering of dust and mouse droppings some barely discernible hieroglyphs scrawled with a biro pen were revealed. Being most learned in the ways of both Hiero & Glyph, no Rosetta Stone was required to quickly discern that these ancient writings dated from the time when a younger and less world weary version of Stoned Holy Rollers toured round Deutschland sowing musical pearls before hard-core swine! I present these writings to you now, my most discerning Blogosphere friends, in the hope they entertain!

"Busted flat in Berlin & it comes on like a wave. Call it Beat Attitude, or maybe Beattitude, but eyes with lids heavy were made to see anew. And so, with these All New Baby Blues and my Scuffled Down Shoes I shuffle round the WeltStadt of Berlin....

Maybe some other time we can uncloak our vulnerable humanities & take a stroll down Desolation Row but I'm here now to tell you about the Beat Bars & Fallen Stars of Berlin....but how to tell of of the Plans n Scams in motion as a city Hustles & Hassles for the folding?!



Sexy girls dance to the constant rattle of S-Bahns shaking like rattlesnakes as they slither all over Berlin's naked body. But this city that trams rumble through isn't the only one that's here. Pay 6DM to go the top of the Fernseher Turm or climb the Siegesalle and there, superimposed on the ashen, angular streets is the City of Possibilities : Berlin's simultaneous realities in a cityscape inhabited by dreamers & firebrands alike....Trash Time Is Over, Gentlemen!

The Art of the Deal & The Art of the Steal amount to the same damn thing on the sullen cobblestones of Lichtenberg which are slaved to the machine that has assumed a life of its own - but it's an illusion! Look upon the serried ranks of Drone Homes in Wedding and it's hard to imagine, when you consider the Spreading, Grey Cancer that is Berlin, that the banks of Der Spree were once blanketed in moss and kingfishers flashed over its limpid waters!.....

Global Consciousness or Global Destruction is waiting round the corner but that doesn't concern many, as Berlin, in all its Insane, Life-Sucking, Mind-Fucking Energy; A Corrupt, Vile, Venal, Glorious, Angelic, Bizarre, Unspeakable, Contemptible, Tragic, Pathetic sum of its Countless, Incalculable & Unimaginably Contrary, Opposite, Mismatched & Disharmonious parts is bathed in Sunlight and this day - which will see New Life Howl & Old Eyes, that witnessed the Fall of Hitler & the Rise of badly dubbed American Sit-Coms, Fade and Die - lifts itself dutifully over the Horizon!

Doppelgangers lurk in the Shadows & Dark Places of Edge City, populated by the Beatest, Down & Outest, Burned Out Bums imaginable, but no one looks close if you switch off the light.... meanwhile, in the Hurry & Scurry of Kreuzberg 61, Trabants rumble noisily as the taxi drivers speed Silently & Smoothly past in white Mercedes Automatics.... but no-one's really in control.....

Yes, up in the Consumer Palaces of the Ku-Dam they're steppin' out of Big German Cars & Expensive Designer Clothes but Rules are for Fools and only serve to get in the way of an honest drug deal on the Toxic Death Strip by Warschauer Strasse....A Trinketted Huddle of Punk Retards panhandle kleingelt outside the supermarket on Frankfurter Allee whilst inside nobody notices the Angel behind the counter selling Volkbrot. Later, Hungry Buskers play the bars on Hackescher Markt whilst outside cars slow to check out the whores.....

The Darling Young Things of Nollendorfplatz are busy posing as another batch of delicious batura drop with a sizzle into the hot oil. Guards with Rifles & Alsatian Dogs patrol the U-Bahn on Oranienburger as the junkies give blowjobs on Kurfurstendammer. Inside, Josie the Erotic Dancer bares her tits & pays the bills whilst outside the Korean Nicotine Conspiracy blows hot breath into cold hands as it waits to circumvent the taxman & sell you cheap, pirate cigarettes, suffering harassment and beatings from Polizei & Sexually Frustrated, Hormonally Tormented, Neo-Nazi Thugs just so Deutschland can smoke itself to an early grave!!...



These visions were revealed unto me between Friedrichstrasse & Alexanderplatz on a S7 bound for Erkner & Glory! I had not paid the fare! Everything Is Yours! Interested in a knock-off generator for 500 Donx?!?!......."

Tschusschen! Vielspass! Susse Trauma!



Pfarr Strasse 88 : Ich Bin Frei!







Indigestion & Henry David Thoreau!

"Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning?" Not my words, Cyberpeepers, y'understand, but I trust that you too recognise something of yourself in them.

For sometimes, it seems, that Everybody's Runnin Round Town, Feelin Down, Feelin Oh, So Busted Flat! Pessimism IS growin! Bitterness IS showin!....But We at Stoned Holy Headquarters don't wanna hear no more of that crap! Apologies for the Double Negative are hereby extended to ye stick-in-the-mud kinda folks who are irked by such grammatical discrepancies but the S t o n E D h O L y B L o g G e r's got other mud pools tae wallow in.....and here's me glorying in the sticky brown stuff and thinking that when yi reach middle age as a Pop-Flop-Down-But-Not-Entirely-Out and have had to endure years of impoverishment and creative emasculation as well as seeing the bank balances of Westlife swell to untold millions, it can be quite hard to push down the bile and choke back a Primal Scream so ear-splitting it could Shake Lucifer! So it is sometimes you just can't stomach anymore of the chit chat 'bout this n that & everybody pushin in at the bar where everybody's moanin, groanin n dronin on & all you ever hear is Blah, Blah, Blah!! So, unless yiv got something good to say ; unless yiv got a heartwarming tale of bumping intae Mr.Smilesman just as you came ooty Gregg's the Bakers with a hot sausage roll in yir greasy little fingers ; unless yir gonna tell me about seeing a luminous sunrise this very Holy Beat Morning and realising life is a wave that must by necessity break upon the seashore, then just stay the hell away from me!!

Sometimes the awareness that you have failed to prosper in this world would just about be tolerable if it were not for the fact then of recognising the kinda dimwits n retards who have flourished in it at the same time! Oh, Brave New World, that has such people as Dappy From N-Dubz walking around with a full wallet upon its cobbled thoroughfares! It is in times such as these when the words of Mr. Henry David Thoreau, late of Concord, Massachusetts, which opened this monologue, can ring fairly hollow and dyspeptic belchings upon the sorry state of humankind can issue forth from yir gobhole!

In the meantime though, what to do but shut the front door firmly behind you and stride forth resolutely into the infinite bustle of hunting down n grubbing up a few meagre coppers just to get by and do it all again tomorrow. Sun Come Up. Bright Red Dawn. Time Go By. Day Has Gone. Some Folks Dead. Some Folks Born....and The Big Wheel Keeps Turnin' On! So, when you find yourself, as we all do, thrown into the necessary business of money, with all it's dreary machinations and alienating relationships, some other lines of  Mr. Thoreau's do seem indeed, all too prescient :

In the busy streets, domains of trade,

Man is a surly porter, or a vain & hectoring bully

Who can claim no nearer kindredship with me

Than brotherhood by law.

If I may be so bold, Gentle Readers,  can I recommend that when next you find yourself crawling into the familiar comfort of the home where it is you billet yourself away from the vicissitudes of life and the doings of humanity ; rather than reach for that bottle of Chablis or that fat dooby or whichever it is you use to self-medicate yourself, take an hour instead to peruse the works of Mr. Henry David Thoreau and the short essay that is "Life Without Principle" in particular. Enlightening and Enrichening Stuff! That cat Thoreau may not have been a mover & a shaker but he threw his pebble in the pond and knew it ever true that Love Radiates!! The Stoned Holy Blogger claims him as kindred and hereby lets it be known to the Vastness of the Digital Blogosphere  that his star is most assuredly fixed within the Heavenly Firmament & his name is now & forever more etched upon one of the fluted Ionic pillars that partially supports the mass of the Pediment of the Pantheon of Stoned Holy Rollers Gone Before!

Here Endeth The Sermon!....

& the Stoned Holy Blogger Exits Stage Left 

Upon Descending Wearily From The Pulpit!!

Going Gentle Into That Good Night!

Ah Youth! Entirely wasted on the young, of course, but what can a Pop-Slop-N-Flop Down n Out like the S t O n E d H o L y B L o G g E r do about the inexorable tick & tock that is the sound of the Tyranny of Clocks!!

But yes, it seems this rock n roll mallarkey is a young man's game :  For when better to play the game of 'making it' or being 'big in Japan' and yet be blissfully unaware of how tawdry and cynical a business it really is ; When better to devote your energies to the narcissistic business of climbing onto a stage and demanding people take you seriously ; When better to feel the burn of the sexual imperative in every fibre of your being ; when better to be willing to live on a diet of pot noodles and the assorted garbage that is available for consumption at motorway service stations & finally, when better to climb in the back of a van with the rest of the gang and tolerate endless hours of discomfort and beery farts!

But here, a word of caution - "Know This, O Young Ambition, All Mortal Greatness Is But Disease." Chilling lines there from the briny and melancholic pages of 'Moby Dick' but perhaps fortunately, most Rockin Rollin Young Bucks wouldn't know their Herman Melville from their Herman Munster!....

Surprising then, you may think, that the fires here at S t o n e d H o l y H.Q still burn and we play on! Broken Doon n Middle Aged maybeez but these Rollers are still Stoned n Holy....to a fashion! Yes, the waistlines have imperceptibly crept up a size or two, the hair thinned a little on the top of our Stoned Holy Noggins and yes, it does seem that we are indeed  Going Gentle Into That Good Night! And as for the Raging ; well, all apologies to drunken Welsh poets, dead n gone before they hit 40, but it's all very well writing about Raging when yir tanked up on whisky but some of us have still gotta go to the supermarket when we're low on muesli and Greek yoghurt! Lasagne doesnae put itself in the oven now, does it?!?! The car needs road tax renewing and petrol in the tank to run!!...So take that, Mr.D Thomas of Laugharne, Wales!!

But the Rage and the Righteous Indignation are there, smouldering away someplace inside. Somehow, impossibly, after all these years spent in the Sensory Deprivation Tank that is Home Town, the fires burn still. And that is why these feelings of Impotence and Frustration can still take hold and sting the heart within this mortal coil - When you find yirsel whiling away the dreary & penniless hours doing anything but actually playing music, all too aware of diminishing returns and the reality of the cold, cold grave creeping ever nearer as you struggle to strike a balance between the conflicting concerns of five or six middle aged losers and what they like to do in their spare time away from the mundane business of doing mundane jobs and paying mundane mortgages and mundane electricity bills! Oh for the heddy days of youth when childcare and the endless yawn of social functions never entered the equation. I grow weary, my friends. Someday, I hope to find me some place where I can lay me down & rest my head & ease my mind and sing the 
No Mo' Trouble Blues. A secret hideaway, a leafy bower of a kind, somewhere you can leave all your troubles behind.

 Who the fuck would choose the life of the Stoned Holy Roller? Only an idiot like me.............