The Noggin, The Napper, The Nut.......& Magic Carpet Rides!!

We All Live Inside Our Head!....or, as Tommy Hall, the Soaring Psychedelic Evangelist of Houston's finest, The 13th Floor Elevators, put it, back in '66, "When You Finally Find Your Helpless Mind Is Trapped Inside Your Skin, You Want To Leave But You Believe You Won't Get Back Again." And it's true, ultimately, we do all live inside our head - there where the grey sludge oozes & the occipital lobe throbs, there where the synapses fire and the slobbering madman that is the libido Blabbers n Smokes!

 The Noggin, the Napper, the Nut ; this is where Reality is constructed. Sadly perhaps, cultural orthodoxies are loathe to leave us be and snipe at our heels incessantly like salivating dogs! There is, alas it seems, the tiresome business of actually dragging our sorry arse through the 'real world' around us regardless of what subjective paradigms we inhabit in the undulating folds of the cerebral cortex. Even if you are one of those blithe spirits who has soared angelic after ingesting LSD-25 and decided, like Roky Erickson, that you didn't 'ever want to come down,'' the 'real world' does seem to have the nasty habit of getting hold of you and kicking you hard in the seat o yir breeks!! I'm damn sure Roky can't have been best pleased with his time inside the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane! If you are one, such as Syd Barrett who has waved Auf Wiedersehen to 'Reality' and crawled into the Dust Bowl of your own Psyche after, say, protracted exposure to the T.H.C onslaught of the New Super Heavy Skunks developed by Stoned, Dutch Hydroponic Boffins, you will still find the 'real world' sticking it's nose in your business and insisting on pigeon-holing or pathologising you! Brian Wilson may very well have strolled down Golden Strands of Californian Sand beneath Shining Sapphire Skies inside his nut-box but to the rest of the world he was just a man with a sandpit in his living room who liked to butter his head and put it between two slices of toast!!  Julian 'can't' Cope got fried and Screaming Jay Hawkins could hear voices - when he wasn't impregnating enthusiastic female members of his fanbase - but they still had to exist, to a fashion at least, in a world of bank statements and out of date MOT certificates, council tax payments and putting the bins out on Wednesdays! Yes, it's all very well singing "Every Day Can Be A Magic Carpet Ride," whilst you're playing in jingly-jangly rock bands, smoking puff and banging hippy girls......but, cmon, if you live on the 18th floor of a crumbling 60's tower block just off the Paisley Road in Glasgow and yiv just had a letter fae the DWP informing you you've been sanctioned again, Ahm guessing the chances of you regarding life as a fantastical and enchanting excursion across the Heavens on a rug which can defy the Laws of Newtonian Gravity are slender to say the least!!

The S T o N e d h o L y b L o G G E r though, is contented that, no matter how ramshackle his affairs in the world of actually walking about with real spending money in his pocket, somewhere, deep in the inner workings of the Stoned Holy Brain Box where the gears & cogwheels grumble n grind, there is a  Land of Milk & Honey wherein he walks on Gilded Cobblestones along Paths of Glory where Gamine Dancing Girls in Diaphanous Drapery await at the roadside with Goblets of Frothing Ale & Sundry Comestible Delights, ready to bear him forth to Secluded & Languid Pools hung with Eglantines and Woodbine. Here, these Darling Creatures can Balm the Wearisome Traveller's  body and initiate the Seeker into Goaty Mysteries of Pan and his Dark & Ancient Woods!!

Meanwhile, back in the everyday realm where money and the people who take its tawdry illusions, venal hustlings & sordid corruptions seriously holds sway - where most of us are forced to spend most of the waking hours of our lives complying to its Conventions, Constructs & Codes - the world is overseen by boring, lifeless, pernicious, self-seeking little turds who play their stupid little games whilst telling the rest of us it's a 'serious' business they're engaged in. This World of Politics and Politicking is the ultimate revenge of the dweeby and nerdy little shits at school, who though academically gifted had no empathetic intelligence to utilise with regards to their relationships with their fellow human beings! Theirs is a world where tender & fragile souls, like Syd or Roky,  don't 'cut the mustard' and are left to flounder as the artistically bereft crack on with the money making business at hand,  exploiting their fellows and cocooning themselves in objects and things as their dehumanising fetish demands!! These are the people who have held us back since day one ; these are the people who populate the corridors of power ; these are the people who command armies ; these are the people who sit in boardrooms ; these are the people we are told to look up to and admire...Are these the people who are defined as 'Sane'?

I Reject! I Refute! I Refuse! Shine On You Crazy Diamonds...Ah'll see yiz aw next time.... 

Musings on February...and its superfluous letter R!!

February has blown itself out! Maybe it was angry at its inability to rid itself of that superfluous letter R it carries in its name!  Well it certainly Huffed n Puffed n Blew n Raged n A-Hey & A-Ho & Blew the Man Doon!....not quite in biblical proportions it has to be said, not quite 40 days n 40 nights but it certainly came doon! But all to no avail - For that pesky letter R is there still ; useless, abandoned....yet resolutely hangin' on!  Somewhat like the S t O n E D H o l Y B l o G G e r ! !

But here it is March and Ahv shaken myself loose of the jailhouse clutches of the Stoned Holy Duvet and lifted myself, like the dancing, icing sugar white Snowdrop, into the Bourgeoning, Tumescent, Sap Rising and Bracing airs of Springtime! Maybe, Punxsutawney Phil style, I'll quickly scamper back doon ma steaming burrow....but the important thing is, just like our Groundhog Necromancer, Ahv made it through another winter....and can feel the pulse quicken imperceptibly as the Stoned Holy Corpuscles throw off their Wintry torpor and deliver a rush of Righteously Indignant Red Blood Cells into the Stoned Holy Mainline!!! Yip, there's Grousin' n Grouchin to be done!! Lemme hear ya say Hell, Yeah!

Yes, I could, like the recidivist felon, sink back into familiar behavioural loops and in the manner of re-offending find myself thinking on every dreary year wasted, on this, my Tragical History Tour through livin', as being but another dreary tread towards the cold, loamy inevitability of the grave......but methinks not......leastways not today! Yes, I could ruminate further on my ongoing failure to prosper in this World of Fools, where Man's Inhumanity to Man never fails, on consideration, to dampen the spirits and point the way doon Desolation Row! For of course, our record regarding our fellow creatures is woeful - those fashioned from Space Dust and such matter as the Infinite Universe itself is comprised off, much as we are ourselves!! And if we were to broaden our ambit somewhat and include our 4-legged compatriots, who share with us this Cerulean Blue Space Bubble on which we all hurtle through the Unceasing Emptiness of all Creation, it won't be long before we must surely reach the conclusion that Humanosity is a Failed Genetic Dead End Street and the better it will be for Planet Earth for the bombs to drop swiftly and give the cockroaches n bugs a chance at doing something better!! And to think, there's some that think the Empathetic Impulse is hot-wired into us from birth!! Hmmmmm!

But today the Litany of Human Failures will trouble my tender, Stoned Holy Heart Shaped Box but little ; I shall gaze upon the lucent blue haze that girds our goodly Earth and think on snowdrops joyfully nodding neath the creaking boughs of Birch.......I shall glory in the green tips of wild garlic that soon will rise and festoon the banks of singing streams and dappled wooded lanes and fill the air with the juice of a vast army of stinking, pale green bulblets........and thence bluebells will come, profligate in their heady-scented sensuality........who could resist? Not I! I surrender!! Surely, does it not make you wonder, though : Why is there all this killing goin' on in the world when the bees are buzzing and the little birds are singing in the trees!!    

Why is there a Robert Burns Avenue in Cheltenham?

 

As the Blowings & Lashings of January continue to hurry themselves along tarmacadam streets and up and over the concrete ravines of the moribund metropolis, thoughts can be bleak. They can also wander lonely as clouds or trudge through muddy fields like the heavy boots of Ploughmen Poets!!

Or thoughts can, as in the case of the 

s T o N e d h O l y B l O g g E R - forever struggling to fill the yawning hours of idleness and distract myself from the ever present existential terror of simply being - become  mired in such burning topical issues as 'Why is there a Robert Burns Avenue in Cheltenham?   Looking tae fortify myself against both the Blasts O Winter and Philosophical Desolation, it is with a welcome sigh of relief that Ah get to use any excuse to reach for the whisky bottle and pull out the stopper...........So split that Warm & Reekin' Haggis open - it's Burns Night again!! When better to devote serious enquiry into the question just posited above!

Here at Stoned Holy HQ, it is our wont to forego all the 'Och aye, Jock McKay' and the 'Donald, Where's yir Troosers'   for a more down home doff o the Stoned Holy Bunnet when it comes to honouring the memory of Scotland's National Poet. We're pretty damn sure the Blessed Bard himself would appreciate this approach more than the Codified Pantomine played out in his name at the formal 'Burns Supper' and  its skirling of the pipes tae a large puddin' consisting o the heart, liver n lungs of a sheep packed intae the poor wee beastie's stomach as it makes it's way from the oven tae the table and then the groanin' trenchers of hungry chiels and coofs!!

It is also that time when we exhort all those within the Blogosphere to lift a glass to the Libertarian & Libertine Burns who we here assembled in Stoned Holy HQ salute as a Stoned Holy Roller of Yore!! We do so again, but briefly ; for this year, seeing as the
S T o N e d h o L y B L O g G e r  has spent a part of it promenading in his periwig doon the Regency boulevards of Cheltenham Spa in Gloucestershire, we thought  we'd shine a light on the little known connections between that particular toon and Burns and why there's a street named in his honour here, deep in the belly of the English beast some 250 miles over the Scottish Border.

Now, tae the best of my knowledge, Mr. R. Burns (late of Alloway, Ayrshire) tiptoed but once on English soil, briefly setting foot in England whilst on a tour of the Border country but he most definitely never tethered his Auld Grey Mare, Meg ootside any of the drinking emporiums of Cheltenham Spa, that's for sure. His sons however, William Nicol Burns & James Glencairn Burns (nae mare than snotty nosed bairns when their Auld Man breathed his last!), both retired tae Chelters after careers in the sub-continent with the East India Company (rising to the ranks o General and Lieutenant General respectively!). Fraternal bonds were obviously tight within the family for the brothers ended up seein oot their days living next door tae one another in 3 & 4 Berkley Street.

Willie died issue-less but Jimmy's loins were fertile.....though, it has to be noted, not as prodigously so as those of his poor, lamented Auld Yin!!).  His daughter Sarah (Burns' grand-daughter) emigrated tae Australia wi an Irishman, losing her 3 young children on the journey oot there. They were obviously made of sterner stuff in them days for her womb was fruitful once more in her new antipodean home. After the Irishman pegged it she returned tae her native shores with her youngest daughter Margaret in tow. Returning to take the spa waters and enjoy the refined promenading of Montpelier along with her sister Annie, the three ladies bided in with Uncle Willie in Berkley Street before decanting tae the urbane surroundings of
7 Pittville Lawn.  Sarah died in 1909, her daughter in 1917 and her sister in 1925. The three of them are buried together in St. Mary's Church, Charlton Kings. The S t O n e d h O L Y B l o g g e r went tae search for them.....and there they were ; nestled amongst auld sodgers whaed fought at Waterloo and the enterprising young men of Victorian Cheltenham who'd gone out tae India looking for careers within Empire but found nothing more than scarlet fever or malaria. Willie n Jimmy were more elusive however. Further online reading reveals they are interred in the 'Mausoleum' in Cheltenham but my inside sources are blowed if they know where this is!! Another time maybeez we'll track 'em doon.........

Well peoples, there yiz have it. The shortest peep at the connections between the Burns family and a toon in Gloucestershire....and why, the next time somebody asks you 'Why is there a Robert Burns Avenue in Cheltenham you'll be able to say 'pull up a pew n fire up a brew and Ah'll tell yi aw aboot it'!!......now, time for that whisky bottle ah mentioned earlier........

Here's tae Rob Burns and aw his issue and Old Long Since!!

& here's a wee linkie tae a photograph of Willie n Jimmy in all their stovepipe glory! 

Willie n Jimmy

  

CRAZY ARMS

Yes, I know, I said I wisnae poppin' ma Stoned Holy Heid above the parapet until Chrimbo had shot it's materialistic bolt or fizzled oot in a dyspeptic and alcoholic fug but the snell blasts of December have blown in some Blue Notes & Black News for aw us hiding oot n cloistered here at Stoned Holy HQ! Sad Tidings not Glad Tidings!
Not 'A King is Born' but 'A King is Dead! Ray Price, King of the Honky Tonks is Deid!!

I was loathe tae emerge frae under the Stoned Holy Bedspread this morning, detecting a distinct chill in the air, not by reading the plummeting thermometer but by the tried n tested methodology of stickin' a foot out of the aforementioned bedpsread's cosy embrace..but Ray Price is Deid!..so Ah felt obliged tae haul ma sorry carcass up outta bed just so as I could pen a few lines : not to mourn his passing - we aw peg oot eventually after all! - but to salute the man and his music, which has a hallowed berth in the cockles of the Stoned Holy Heart and on the Stoned Holy Juke-Box!!

Ahm no here, people, tae tell yi how he boarded n boozed wi Hank Williams and, after life had leaked out of Hank in the back of the cadillac on Highway 31, he inherited his band The Drifting Cowboys and blah blah blah.....or detail how Ray Price took country music by the scruff of it's red n sunburnt neck and rocked it like never before with a beat they called The Ray Price Shuffle....or tell of how he then went on to redefine Country Music for a second time with the orchestral arrangements of 'Countrypolitan'.....no, ahm just here tae doff ma hat in acknowledgement of a Stoned Holy Roller gone before us; a man who's place at the very top o the heap in the midden that is Country Music has been unjustly filled by the likes of  the pompous showbiz excess of Garth 'too fat to fly' Brooks or the ridiculous mythologising, nay canonisation, surrounding Johnny 'flat as a pancake' Cash !! Not good enough tae shine Ray's cowboy boots, neither of them!!

Anyway, being an avowed atheist, this small tribute shall be free of claptrap about how he's gone to a better place or he's looking down on us from Hillbilly Heaven - I'll leave those cliches tae others. It matters not a jot that Ray Price is singing with the angels. But, please join us, here at  Stoned Holy HQ, in raising a glass tae a man who's contribution to Country Music, the true Red Dirt Soul of America, is immeasurable. Let's remember Ray at his very best, with the Cherokee Cowboys behind him and that big, booming baritone singing songs of heartbreak and longing like few others before or after!! "Now Blue Ain't the Word for the Way that I Feel...."


 

Ray Price 1926 - 2013

B is for....BOZO!!!

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be in Self-Imposed Hibernation, tucked safely away from the Multitudinous Irritants & Botherations that constitute so much of 21st Century Living, in the innermost recesses of the Stoned Holy Penthouse......but I have been Disturbed from my Stoned Holy Dozings, Stirred from these Stoned Holy Snoozings after being irked by the Blundering Bombast of London's own Bungling Bozo, Boris Johnson! For the Bungling Buffoonery of this Blabbermouthed Baboon has been causing a Brouhaha!!

"The Forces of Evil in a Bozo Nightmare"

But just where do you start with a Brainless Bonehead like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson? One wonders firstly how on God's Good Earth it was ever made possible for this village idiot of a man to have become the Mayor of London! In the Blue-Rinsed & Blue Rosetted Ranks of the Conservative Party it is believed it is because he has 'the common touch', charisma even, and this could also guarantee them success in the polls if he were party leader and subsequently - Heaven Help Us! - Prime Minister; The
S t O n E d h o l Y B l o g g Er, on the other hand, believes this is the kind of fucked up Frankenstein scenario created by the naivety and credulity of a politically unsophisticated and aliterate populace! Recognition of Boris the Bungling Blockhead from off the telly must have counted in his favour when it came time to voting against the congestion charge!!....there can be no other plausible explanation, surely!


But just this week Boris has been opening the yawning black cavern that is his mouth and letting the empty chamber that exists within his brain-casing reverberate in this year's Annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture (heaven forbid that such an aberration exists but, I'm saddened and appalled to report, it seems 'tis so!!). And, it was here, that Boris the Bozo told us all that 'Greed is Good' again and we shouldn't be ashamed of it. Everyone knows it's the only motivator of mankind that cuts the monetary mustard! So, all you budding Gordon Gekkoes out there, time to emerge from those boardrooms where you've been skulking and flash it n flaunt it.....this will engender envy which will be the spur of more enrichening economic activity!! And, what's more, inequality in society merely mirrors the inequality of Nature - so no need to worry about all them poor, stupid people who can't pass an IQ Test or remember the way to the Job Centre!  All those thick, stupid oinks with IQ's below 85 at the bottom of the Great Cornflakes Packet of Society (to use Boris' rather confused metaphor) should be ever so grateful for the crumbs of largesse tossed their way by the bright, intelligent ones (like him presumably!) who people the shining Palaces of Banking & Business within the City of London. These people create wealth don't you know...and then it trickles doon tae the reaches of where us poor bottom-feeders, writhing in the uneducated, proletarian ooze, can suck it up and take the bus to the nearest food-bank!

Bunkum! Balderdash!! Bollocks!!! 

Can this Burly, Braying Ass really believe his Brand of Bumbling Bumptiousness can deliver the keys to Number 10?!?! Can this Eton educated chump's flaxen topped excuse for a head really be so far up his Fat, Stinking, Tory Shit-Pipe that he fails to see he's doing a better job than the Labour Party in exposing what a Morally Bereft & Ideologically Bankrupt Bunch of Bastards he and his Party of Elitists and Self-Serving Money-Grubbers really are?!?! Ah, such is the nature of Hubris!! No wonder then that the Towering Intellects that make up the Cabinet are already distancing themselves from his comments. Perchance some Intellectual Giant has already taken this loathsome oaf aside and informed him quietly that IQ tests prove nothing other than how good you are at IQ tests!!

Perchance in some Parallel Universe, where the Laws of Reason & Rationality hold sway, the shameful inequalities created by a system built on Exploitation, Greed and Profiteering and bolstered by an education system fed on Wealth, Class and Privilege simply don't exist and the good peoples who are fortunate enough to live in this happy dimension never have to listen to the Barefaced Belchings of idiots like Boris 'Bobo' Johnson, or watch in disgust as he puffs out his chest and Blatantly displays his Infantile and Sordid Ambitions!! If this is so, the S t o n e D H o l Y B l o G G e r can only damn his accursed luck for existing in the universe where this moron was, no doubt, applauded by his audience for his lamentable Hee-Hawings!!

Well, now that that's off ma chest....I guess it's time to retreat once more from the Vagaries & Vulgarities....oh goodness, I see lights a-twinkling and hear sleigh bells a-jingling......oh, is that the sound of Roy Wood & Noddy Holder on a fukn loop-tape?!?! Time tae duck doon the alleyway lookin for a new friend...or jump doon a manhole n light masel a candle........ you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows ahm reliably informed!  Ahm outta here.......until next time, Lads n Lassies!!  


  

Ho! Ho! Ho! - Oh, No! No! No!!

"Aw Hell....its....."

Whilst the S T o N e d h o l Y B l o g g e R  is wrapped within the Sleepy Vale of Night, sleeping like a newborn in swaddling 'neath the cosy protection of the Stoned Holy Winceyette, my dreams are untroubled, floating on gossamer strands of psychedelic wackiness and everyday surrealism! But not so my waking hours!!

You may well imagine the s T O n E D H o l y b l o g G E r  incarcerated within the Dickensian austerity that pervades the bare and echoing chambers of Stoned Holy HQ, opining to himself  "Oh, Knowledge; Why Didst thou Come to Wound and Not to Cure!"........but fret not! For although I do spend an inordinate amount of time in acrimonious recollection I do manage to divert myself from these fruitless philosophizations with cryptic crosswords, pictures of nekkit wimmen on the Tinternet and baking scones! (What's that you say? A JOB? Heaven Forfend!!)........but B'Jaysus,was it not just yestreen whilst peering through the 'Devil's Windae' at Japanese lovelies in various states of undress and savouring a Stoned Holy Scone, fresh from the Stoned Holy Oven n hoochin' wi creamy Scottish butter, that the efficacy of these hereto mentioned diversions was found to wane somewhat and I came to reflecting on the inexorable Tick of Time - "Nae Man can Tether Time nor Tide" as the Great Robbie Burns once put it -  T'was then a realisation sneaked up on me from the rear and kicked me in a manner rather rude in the seat o ma Stoned Holy Britches!!

                          Aw Hell.......it's that time again!!

That time o year when aw the Beaten Down & Dejected Ones; aw the Broken Down & Disaffected Ones; aw the Skinflints, Cheapskates & Pinchpennies; aw the Lonely Hearts, the Lovelorn n Loveless get to trouble the Starry Heavens with their bootless cries as they and everybody else are, like it or not, subjected, once again, to the Gaudy, Brash, Tasteless, Venal Free-Market onslaught of......

CHRISTMAS!!

Yip, it's Chrimbo! And before yi say it.....Yes! I know it's the middle of November.....but please not to shoot the messenger......and prithee, what news?
Well, it's not so much glad tidings of comfort n joy, that's for sure! More of a Brutish, Boorish & Blundering Scrum of Desperate Consumers looking for Something....Anything!!  A Mass! A Mob! A Swarm! A Surge!

Now, lemme tell ya, Users n Abusers o the Blogosphere, despite having read ma Gramsci n being boned up on ma 'Philosophy of Praxis', I have to admit to being somewhat conflicted when considering any crowdings of Humankind. In theory I yearn to be assimilated into the thronging mob of dissentors n righteously indignant ones clamouring for change and not afraid tae lob some chunks of masonry at the dupes n stooges of the Police force to prove it!.....but, in reality, after a lifetime spent with my nose pressed firmly to the windae pane looking in, I am somewhat wary of anything that is 'doing' rather than 'observing'! So more than likely I'd be the shadowy figure skulking round the perimeter of any crowd and any shit hitting any fan!!

Chrimbo illustrates this point rather well. As an army of shoppers crowd the shining outlets of vacuous consumerism I find myself retreating ever further from such Swellings & Heavings! If my dismal career in Pop-Slop had followed the mercurial path I had dreamed of once and success had filled my bank account with readies, Chrimbo would be the time of year when I would bid farewell to my native shores and make for distant horizons. Somewhere where the sun was shining and sexy Christmas pixies in red lingerie & high heels could serve me my egg-nog and mince pies poolside! 

Alas, these are idle fancies and here it is I find myself once more in a state of penury with no escape in sight from the Ghastly n Glistening Baubles of the Chrimbo Bubble! And every year now, it seems, outstrips the shameful excesses of the one proceeding it. So it is, with just these kind of thoughts swimming round the Stoned Holy Noodle Box, I have decided to hermetically seal myself away from outside agencies in the Stoned Holy Hermitage!  I intend not to emerge until the nightmare is over. I'll see yiz aw on the other side o December.......Happy Holidays! Good Luck....yiz'll need it!!

In Defence of Russell Brand.....Ahm Voting YES!!

Just back in the hoose after a wee bit 'guisin' - oh the ignominies an impoverished Rock n Roll Genius has to go through tae earn a bob or two!! I have to tell you the 'guisin' didnae go well....I don't think the locals appreciated my a-capella rendition of 'Clash City Rockers'! Now, a man, even yin who's stony broke, can only take so many doors slammed in his face before he begins to discern the game's up the pole, so in a fit of malcontent I opted instead tae turn over a few bairns and asset strip them off their Halloween takings......this didnae go so well either ; my escape from the angry mob of enraged parents was only effected by lying low in a thicket of brambles for half an hour and then making a dash across Carrick Knowe Golf Course in the murky dark, dodging witches n bogles n teenage ne'er-do-wells smoking blow!! And tae think, ma rightful place is sitting next to wankers like Bono at an endless stream of Award Ceremonies, quaffing free booze whilst various hangers-on and groupies tell me how cool I am!!

Anywayz, aw that's by the by, so whilst my heart rate lowers I thought I'd Ruminate & Belly Ache aboot matters abroad in the cultural ether of Her Majesty's Sinking Ship Britannia ; what aboot yon Russell Brand! I must say at the off that I consider Mr. Brand to be about as funny as a kick in the hee-haws but find myself firmly in the camp of those who agree with him and his contentious remarks regarding voting in the latest 'New Statesman'.  I also thought his performance on 'Newsnight' was stellar in the face of Paxman's churlishness. Tae a dyed-in-the-wool outsider like the
S t O N E d H o l y b L o G G e r who has spent most of his dreary existence on the periphery of artistic inclusion and economic opportunity, I found Mr. Brands statements about disillusionment, disenfranchisement & despondency to be a pretty obvious statement of fact.....so also, I suspect for a sizable chunk of those who have grown up and reached voting age as Margaret Thatcher's and then Tony Blair's ideological shift to the right, created the Britain of today.

As the ideological jackboot of 'Neo-Liberalism' and the insanity of Friedman style economics continues to sell us down the river to the highest bidder and Britain is pickpocketed by thieves and con-men, is it any wonder that people think turning up every five years to make a mark on a piece of paper isn't really gonna solve the problems they face day to day?! It ain't Democracy, is it?....not by a long chalk!! As corruptions are exposed and the 'people at the top' (y'know the ones, the ones who traditionally commanded respect from the poorly educated and unhygienic riff-raff like me n you!) are revealed as money grubbers and swindlers, can it really come as a surprise that people are thinking 'what's the fukn point of voting for any of 'em'!! Yes, of course, the establishment likes the apathy and brainless cynicism ; it means they don't have to work at courting votes, but why should I or you have to vote for anyone who doesn't really represent what you think but is merely less of a dimwit than the other tosser?? Democracy?? Methinks NOT, hombre!! Robert Webb can tell everyone he's rejoined the Labour Party and scream about George Orwell and concentration camps but this doesn't cut the mustard as a coherent response in my book. Embarrassing, really! Interesting to see what Russell makes of it........

In this age of Information Superhighways & Tinternet Cyber-Communities, is 650 dullards, liars, pocket-liners and cheats sitting in a room in central London really the best we can do in representing 'the people'?!?! Is a room full of thieves and self-seeking careerists Democracy in action? Is a Parliament of public schoolboys sniping at each other like,,,welll...errrr...schoolboys really the best on offer?! Is our '1st Past the Post' election system really serving the people or merely propping up an ossified structure of authority woefully out of step with  the Britain happening outside it's Neo-Gothic walls and utterly disinterested in its camp costume dramas and mediaeval pantomimes?!?! Is 750 arse lickers, pensioned off Old Boys and out-of-touch and out-of-date Lords & Lords Spiritual in our 2nd Chamber Democracy at it best??!! Is a system that has at it's head someone who's semi-mythical power is based on hereditary and who's been fucking who for centuries past really something to we can proudly show off to the world?!?!

Speaking as someone who, like Mr. Brand, has never voted in his life, I have to tell you that I will most assuredly be crawling outta the woodwork to exercise my democratic prerogative next September to put a big, fat, fukn tick in the box marked YES for Scottish Independence!!  I have a idea that we can do a better job than Westminster of constructing a nation where people feel included, a society that affords all its citizens social justice and a democracy where people feel their voice can be heard. This get out clause is unfortunately one not open to Russell Brand but I'd like to think he's welcome to come and live in a Scotland where a voice as eloquent and impassioned as his own could make a difference. We stand at a vital crossroads not only for ourselves but for future generations; maybe that 'Revolution in Consciousness' that Russell spoke so cogently of can be the motivation behind voting for the 1st time and voting YES!......and realising we can leave tired old established orders behind and create new paradigms!!!

Who was it that said 

"Thoughts Can Set You Traps

Down Blind Alleyways & Cul-de-Sacs

...but Minds can Learn - Minds can Grow

Minds can Overturn & Overthrow the Frame!!

Oh, whae widah thocht it......IT WIZ ME!!! Did Ah mention Ahma Rock n Roll Genius?!?!

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Tomorrow's Fish n Chip Paper!

Well, my Blogging Muchachos, here I am still ; Down with the Losers n Boozers on Desperation Alley with my meteoric phut-phut-phutter to complete anonymity continuing on its somewhat flat-lined parabola!! Blown down Drizzled Northern Streets alongside Junk Food Cartons, Sodden Advertising Flyers, Empty Cigarette Packets and all the other Garbage Paraphernalia of 21st Century Living!!

And by exactly those means just mentioned, fanned fortuitously across my path by one of those all too frequent chilly blasts that plague these sullen thouroughfares that proliferate round the Sanctified Walls of Stoned Holy HQ and freeze the hearts of the miserable wretches who plod along them, that, on some remnant of newsprint holding yesterday's hot news and bound, perchance, if it hadn't winged its merry way to a meeting with the
s t O n E d h O L Y b L o G G e R, to hold tomorrow's hot fish suppers, I learnt of the ongoing stooshie involving Mr. Ed Miliband and that self-elected bastion of all that it means to be British, The Daily Mail.

Being the kinda up-to-the-minute hombre who doesn't own a smartphone, I resolved to make for the nearest Tinternet Cafe to learn more. Weaving  my way 'long thronging pavements, passing Burnt-Out-Bums panhandling for crumbs in the doorways of shops gone flop in the pop n fizzle of free market convulsions, I entered an establishment I like to infrequently grace with my Rock n Roll Presence.... mostly, it has to be admitted, so I can take delight from the most pleasing form of the lady behind the counter......we're talking the kinda curves that swerve all over the road here, people!!  Anyway, whilst I managed to eke out my regular cappuccino with extra sprinkles and busily clicked from this page to that,  I found, remarkably,  my low opinion of the The Daily Mail  plummeting even lower! No mean feat, I assure you, seeing as I already held it to be a Malignant Tumorous Growth on the arse-end of all that is mean-spirited, petty and uninformed in Britain today!!

You,  my dear readers, may think that most of my
s t o n e d  h o l y  w a k i n g  h o u r s are filled with crabbit recollections of how I perceive myself to have been unjustly passed over in the
Rockin-Rollin-Fame-Game......and it's true, 90% of the time they are! The remaining time however is filled mostly with Mordant & Vitriolic Expostulations & Remonstrances rich in Expletives aimed at the Injustices, & Iniquities being meted out to the vast majority of the Humankind Species by those tiny elite minorities who run the sordid show for their own Diseased Glorification and Putrescent Materialistic Longings!! What else is there for a Blessed, Semi-Crazed, Recovering Catholic Mystic like the
S t O n E d H O L y B L o g g e R   to do, I ask you?!?!

Thus it is I oft find myself ranting at publications such as 'The Daily Mail'......but with this attack on the deceased father of  'Red Ed', as The Mail likes to paint him, they've gone beyond the bottom-of-the-barrel ; with this, I fear, they have scraped & hacked themselves down, down, down into the brown, steaming, puke-inducing, cloacal sludge that bubbles along the bristling open-sewer of human abasement!!  I may be but a humble purveyor of melodies, readers, but you surely must, as I do, stand agape and wonder what kind of Nasty & Pernicious Contagion it is that thinks publishing pictures online of Ralph Miliband's grave as a criticism of his offspring's politics could in any way be construed as serious journalism or comment or critique!! Mind-Boggling!!

Especially so when you consider that in the 30's, as history stumbled towards yet another Imperialist conflagration that would envelop humankind, 'The Daily Mail', owned and edited by Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere,  (and great, great grandfather of the current owner, Harold Jonathan Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere) advocated not just appeasement but alliance with Hitler's regime!! An admirer of Oswald Mosley and his ragbag gang of thugs, the British Union of Fascists, Harmsworth penned an editorial entitled "Hurrah for the Blacksirts"  in 1934!! In sharp contrast, Mr. Miliband's father Ralph served in the Royal Navy! Would it be politically partisan of me to enquire as to which of these two gentlemen you'd admire more - the one who put his own life on the line in the stormy and U-Boat infested waters of the Atlantic or the one who had his nose up Hitler's shit-pipe sniffing his repugnant Nazi farts?!?!....I know which one I'd plump for.........but then, it seems 'The Daily Mail' and the obnoxious little turd who currently edits it, Mr.Paul Dacre have a very short memory....or a highly selective one!! They would no doubt have me down as a 'grave socialist' too!

Interestingly enough, people, as I bring this latest incursion into the sphere of computerdrivel to a close, it may interest you to know that 'The Daily Mail's owner ( 4th Viscount Blah Blah , Harold Jonathan Bollocks!), currently listed 51st in 'The Sunday Times Rich List' (estimated wealth over £1 Billion) who likes to think his fuckn nauseating, worthless shitrag speaks for Britain,

doesn't pay one fukn measly stingy penny in tax in the U.K!!!!!!!!! 

FUKN STAGGERING!!!!!!! 

I'll leave that one with yiz aw.....but for now, this is yir 

Stoned n Holy n Righteously Indignant, 

S t O n E d H o L y B L o G g E r  

saying "S a y o n a r a" for the noo. 

Sweet Dreams Darlings X X