I just spent a fortune on ribbon and some cards. Now how logical is that. Medium. How Christian is that? Not very is the answer there I think.

So I’m all set. Perhaps this year I will make a big effort and ‘put on a happy face’. Or perhaps not. Jolly? Jolly? Just because my names Jolly doesn’t mean I have to be fucking jolly all the time does it? Ah if only – however I consider it extremely unlikely that my parent’s have a copy of Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, which I can strongly recommend to anyone in need of a good laugh.

OK – it’s a bit studenty but sometimes we need that. And also features more classic lines than you can shake a stick at.

However they do have a large collection of Luis Bunuel classics, though not I think my absolute all time favourite : That Obscure Object of Desire, partly because it features the sublime (almost unnatural) Carole Bouquet, and partly because it’s just such a funny movie. Strange, surreal, misanthropic yes, but above all hilarious.

Ach – I’m bored bored bored. Only another 1¼ hours to go and I’m outta here. But back on Weds X(

So have a good Christmas guys - Get drunk, take drugs, sleep with your partner’s siblings, fall asleep under the Christmas tree with your head in saucepan. Preferably whilst wearing a Santa hat that lights up and plays Jingle Bell Rock all through the long hours of your booze, vicadin and speed comedown coma. Now that's what I call festive family fun!

Lollipop

Has anyone but me noticed what a weird word lollipop is? I mean it’s just weird. Try saying it a few times, see if it makes any more sense. Lollipop lollipop lollipop. Ugh even thinking about it now is freaking me out.

Festive

But enough of that. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not feeling even the slightest bit Christmassy yet. And who can blame me. What I am feeling is hungover beyond the powers of man or beast. Not that beasts normally drink until their heads fall off, but there you go. Ack. As they say.

But the BIG news is that The Panster has finished his Christmas shopping. YES! Normally I’m still scrabbling around on Christmas Eve so being done by 22nd is nothing short of miraculous. Don’t know how I’m going to transport it all but that’s another story. I even have the paper and tags as well!! The only thing I don’t have is ribbon. Where can I get ribbon from (apart from vvrouleaux of course)??? Do I even care? Answer: NON!

And even after the forthcoming festivities I’ll still be coming in under £1K! Bargaineous.

Cards! Cards! I haven’t got any bloody cards. Maybe I can get some at James Selby a store so old fashioned they don’t even have a website of any kind . . . or . . ooh I just don’t know anymore. What with the massed wosnames and the hangover from beyond Hades I can’t think straight anymore. Everything hurts – back, kidneys, neck, stomach. Plus feel dizzy and sweaty. Not to mention sick as a dog. I need my bed. Probably dying. Anyway, no more booze for me till, erm Friday. And possibly not even then. Will I never learn. Apparently not.

The Inferno


I walked past Argos last night and it looked like the last chance lucky dip at Satan’s Own all-comers BBQ and pot roast. Those poor unfortunate souls.

Maybe they sell cards in Waitrose? Well actually I know they do but can I be bothered to brave it? I think not. But I bet they have cards and ribbon at James Selby.

Sofa + duvet + DVD + Chicken Korma Ready Meal = YES!

I made some prawn balls last night and they were . . . not good. I think my mistake was to use some cod as an additional binder. When I try them again I wont bother with fish at all – as they are simmered in broth the fish gains a rather unappealing fibrous texture and a very dominant taste and smell. Still – live and learn I guess. Plus should really have chopped the garlic and ginger a bit more finely – was a bit chunky. Still have tons of the bloody stuff left over as well – perhaps frying would be better. But then you don’t get the benefit of the lovely broth with noodles & pak choy.

The question would be – how to get it all to stick together without the ground fish – maybe use pork instead . . . now we’re talking, or somehow mince up some of the prawns . . . I don’t know. They did hold together pretty well thanks to the gloopiness of the ingredients plus the addition of egg and breadcrumbs, notwithstanding the addition of distinctly unbinding coriander.

I’m feeling rather random today – saw the funniest episode of vintage Frasier last night, now that the cable is fixed – Eddie was depressed and everyone else got depressed as well – Daphne opining that ‘human’ Eddie would cook poached salmon if he was giving a dinner party made me laugh and laugh. I don’t know why . . .

The reason for all this noodling is that I’m trying to avoid thinking about either a) work or b) Christmas. And in particular Christmas shopping. Thankfully I’m *nearly* done, just a few more to get, but it’s draining. And then there’s the wrapping, and the travelling and the enforced jollity . . . ugh.

Most bloggers seem to really look forward to Christmas – it seems to be something they are actually going to enjoy. What’s wrong with you all?? Locked in the bosom of the family without enough booze and fags, forced to regress to being a sulky 14 year old, everyone trying not to notice the fact that each respective member of the family is another year closer to the grave and more than another year closer to becoming a full blown freak / loner / nutjob / crashing bore / common or garden pervert.

Still, at least you get some decent fud. This year I fully intend to eat sufficiently grossly on Christmas day so that I can pass out for most of the afternoon while my body desperately attempts to avoid some sort of gastrointestinal meltdown by diverting all the blood from my brain to my stomach. I don’t even like turkey that much but that’s OK, because we’re probably not going to have it. Hurrah. On the other hand it does tend to increase feelings of sleepiness due to all the Trytophan, but I’m sure that as a factor compared to the general killer blows of carbohydrate and lunchtime alcohol the effect is pretty minor.

Having said all of that if I need to fall asleep all I have to do is think about my work for 5 minutes. I’ve got this monster XML script to write . . . it’s driving me insane . . . it’s so repetitive. And no matter which way you look at it falling asleep with your head in your keyboard doesn’t make a good impression.

I absolutely fail to understand what people can be thinking most of the time. Here we are in the middle of one of the jolliest political debacles for years and what does the great British public do? Only go and give Blunkett a 67% approval rating. Here’s the perfect opportunity to rub his nose in it and they go all soft on us. Depressing or what? I can only assume that despite the fact that journalists regularly come out even lower than politicians in public opinion polls most of us still believe what the papers tell us, to whit the largely reactionary press telling us that foreigners are a dangerous scourge attempting to invade our island nation and infect it with their filthy heathen ways.

So let me explain something about immigration once and for all. Britain is currently producing kids at a rate below the replacement rate (about 2.1 children / woman). “So what?” you may say, but this is basically very bad news indeed for anyone who wants to ever retire. Wealth, and in particular the value of pension schemes, is largely based on the number of people working / the number of people not working. The sums are simple. Aged population with fewer kids : everyone has to stay working till they’re 97 because there aren’t enough people of working age to support this demographic.

So when a bunch of gypsies turn up at Dover instead of shipping them back off to whatever God forsaken sink hole they came from the immigration people should be saying something along the lines of “yes please come in, and here’s some English lessons to help you integrate, and by the way, if you’re thinking of having any kids the national health service offers excellent benefits you know.” What we need to do is encourage people from other parts of the world to come here and have a bunch of rug rats at our expense. Why? Because someone has to pay for my pension and at the moment the kids from Jumblistan look like my only hope.

Dear Kids from Jumblistan,

As you may be aware some of us here in the West are having a little problem with our saving schemes over the lifetime (that’s pensions to you). It may come as a bit of a surprise to you to realise this, but saving money without a stable demographic profile is frankly a bit of a waste of time. In the larger scheme of things (and nothing is larger than pension schemes) money invested in the financial markets is really just a guarantee of a slice of the future earnings of those markets. If there aren’t enough people working to maintain the value of these bonds, companies or weird derivative bets then we might as well flush the money down the toilet. Either way we’ll all be working till our fingers drop off.

Meanwhile things for you don’t look that rosy either. You don’t have a pension at all, and your neighbours hate you because they think you look funny. Well stop worrying. Here in multi ethnic Britain we gave up worrying about people dressing funny long ago, and (disregarding a few local nutters, hem, hem) you’ll be completely free to practise whatever bizarre cultural and religious affectations you may have. When you add in the current dangers to you from pollution, local climate meltdown, political ostracism and exploitation by unscrupulous foreign multinationals it hardly seems worth the candle does it?

So here’s the deal : come to Britain (now re-branded Sunny Fun Britain™) and you’ll get the following great benefits :-

• A free* education for all your young family


• Local authority help with language and adult education


• Access to the full range of social security benefits


• Automatic local authority housing while you get on your feet


• Full employment at competitive rates


• Full access to The National Health Service (including complete ante natal care!)


• Automatic residency rights


• Full access to Sunny Fun Britain’s™ unparalleled range of retail and investment opportunities.

* Does not include further and higher education.

And remember, Residency + 10 years guarantees citizenship. All that we ask in return is that you shag like a bunny and have plenty of kids. No Jaffas.

Don’t delay – sign up today!

Yours in expectation, etc etc


I just don’t understand it. I suppose it’s simply the case that many of the people currently banging on the hardest about a ‘tide of illegal immigrants’ (courtesy The Daily Mail Government Policy Unit) are not the people who are going to have to face up to the fact that without these immigrants we are, technically speaking, completely fucked.

And I haven’t even got onto the excellent humanitarian and social reasons for allowing people into the country, to whit, most people only want to come here because their lives back home are unbearably shit. And who am I to gainsay them?

The more I read about Kimberley Quinn and her ever so entangled love life, the more I like her. It’s seems to me that she’s basically just completely up for it, and doesn’t really give a monkey’s who knows it. I can see the great and the good squirming with horror at all this. Here she is – a married lady of independent means, and she’s *SPILLING THE BEANS* left right and centre and there’s no way they can leverage her to shut up. Compare this to the way 20 years ago that ultimate creep Cecil Parkinson browbeat poor Sara Keays into shutting up and then used the full power of the courts to stop her telling anyone what a shameless revolting disgrace he was. How times have changed. Tee Hee.

All those naughty boys who thought they could get away with a bit of extracurricular shagging on the side are going to be hung out to dry. I love it! You just don’t get stories as entertaining as this very often. I’m only hoping that there’s more to come. Oh if only Boris could somehow be drawn into the frame – then my week would be complete.

Don’t get me wrong, you know she’s a complete monster – probably egotistical to the point of insanity and utterly cavalier with the careers in the hands, but at the same time, she’s just kinda cool. All those slimey blokes undone in their debauchery because ultimately she didn’t really give a stuff about exposing herself and (as a corollary) them too.

Kimberley Quinn – dangerous, but refreshing.

Shagger

This whole David Blunkett thing is just getting weirder and weirder. It certainly looks like Kimberley Quinn is a bit of a serial power junkie – looks like she’s been knocking off Simon Hoggart as well . . . the plot thickens.

Poor Simon. His career is pretty much based on being the outside sneering at the antics of the inhabitants of the goldfish bowl, and suddenly – whoops – it’s caught with pants down time, and you’re exposed as being just the same as everyone else – desperately shagging around, lying your head off about it and crossing your fingers that you don’t get caught.

I have to admit though that I’m liking Mrs Quinn more and more. It would start to appear that she’s basically just been staggering around Westminster shagging anyone who catches her eye – nice one Mrs!

Shithead

Perennial Leper Boy Donald Rumsfeld seems to have been acting like a total wanker again.

Donnie Boy – it’s too late to say you’re going to start signing the letters by hand after you’ve been caught out having them photocopied. The fact that you allowed this to happen in the first place tells everyone exactly what you really feel for the soldiers who have been killed in Iraq : contempt.

Don’t believe it? – then answer this. If Rumsfled really gave a shit you’d think he could take 5 seconds to scrawl his name at the bottom of a letter put in front of him by a secretary. But clearly not. I guess Rummy just doesn’t think that the life of a young soldier is equal to 5 seconds of his time. Now that’s arrogance for you.

It’s quite beyond belief that anyone can still stomach this guy. Still, as I’ve blogged before the thing the GOP is best at is persuading people that they are in fact just a bunch of Good Ole Boys, not the sociopathic, violence obsessed, billionaire autocrats they really are. Combine that with a heartland of American voters who are willing to swallow any bullshit to avoid seeing the actual consequences of America’s current policies and it starts to be understandable. It still makes about as much sense as poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick, but it’s more understandable : the combination of a bunch of compulsive liars and an electorate of starry eyed masochists is a powerful thing indeed.

I went for dinner at the Boss’s house last night. Culturally it was a little slice of the 1970s preserved. We were all on our best behaviour and trying to make with the social chit chat.

That is until Boss lady got pissed and started telling everyone which of my colleagues are secret coke heads. You’d never have guessed it of some of them. Others however . . .

Sad but true conversation :-

Pan’s Colleague (F) : You know that woman?

Pan & Pan’s Colleague (M) : No . . .

PCF : Yeah you do, she’s new

Pan & PCM : No idea I’m afraid . . .

PCF : She works in IT.

Pan & PCM : Drawing a blank here . . .

PCF : She’s blond and has got big tits.

Pan & PCM : Oh yeah, I know who you mean.

Well what can I say? BIG DAY!

Not only does Blunkett finally get his, but the worst of New Labour’s anti civil liberties agenda seems to be getting the silver bullet as well, thank you Law Lords. It’s such a pleasure to once more be able to have the most senior court in Britain make a legal ruling without Blunkett immediately rushing in from the sidelines to try and kick them to death for even daring to think about ruling against his own personal wishes.

My only regret is that Blunkett went over something as stupid as all this as opposed to on the grounds of being a horrible heartless megalomaniac, knee jerk authoritarian fuck stick – not to mention all round Daily Mail suck-up. In fact I was *almost* beginning to feel a bit sorry for him until I read this quote from the man himself in the Guardian :-

"I misunderstood what we had. I misunderstood that someone [Mrs Quinn] could do this, not just to me, but to a little one as well"

Nice one David.

Even in the middle of pouring out his crocodile tears for the press Blunkett couldn't resist doing a little bit of spin, and suddenly you see the real unvarnished Blunkett again : “I’m always right, White is Black, Black is White, I'm an honest man, you're a terrorist, I can have you arrested you know, when did you last see Bin Laden?“

Word of advice David – it wasn’t Mrs Quinn who ‘did’ anything (apart from shagging you of course which *is* fairly unforgiveable I admit), it was all you mate – bullying, blustering, sneering and attempting to get your own way in everything as usual. It was you, Blunkett, who dragged the ‘little one’ into the middle of this – purely for your own personal edification without a single thought to the feelings of anyone else involved. If you’d done the honourable thing and backed off none of this would have happened.

So what have you managed to achieve through this exercise of your monumental and utterly charm free hubris? You’ve lost your job, Mrs Quinn (7 months pregnant) is in hospital suffering from stress (and presumably insanity as well), and her husband, who seems a decent enough bloke and rather undeserving of your predatory antics is now Britain’s biggest cuckold and all round laughing stock, not to mention of course that all this will now have to be explained to the ‘little one’ in a couple of years. Plus everyone hates you, but that’s not new. Let's be fair though, there aren't really any innocents here - The Quinns are not by any stretch of the imagination anything less than master manipulators . To some extent we'll never really get the whole truth about all of this because everyone involved is fully embedded in the media. It's a media story about media people - normal journalistic rules (such as they are) need not apply.

Really everyone comes out smelling of poo - after all Mr Quinn is guilty of at least one complete foolishness best summed up by the quote (I forget from whom) "The man who marries his mistress immediately creates a vacancy". Except that in this case its Mrs Quinn who's wearing the trousers.

The rules on this are fairly clear after all. If you've been shagging someone's wife and she makes it perfectly clear that she wants to stay with her husband and the affair is over, the only decent thing to do is slink away, keep schtum and nurse your wounds to fight another day. Stumping off to the Family Division of the High Court with a HM Secretary of State sized sulk on is the act of a bounder at best, and an out and out psycho at worst.

So well done, David. Give yourself a slap on the back – you’ve acted like the utter shit you are and you’ve finally managed to shoot yourself in the head as well as everyone else.

Congratulations, you twat! Sorry – redundant twat.

See-Ya! BYE!

Wanker.

From Yahoo News, courtesy of Nicole. Apparently both NBC and CBS have banned an ad from an American Church group which encourages Gays and Lesbians to attend services.

From NBC: "[the ad] violated a long-standing policy of the network not to allow commercials that dealt with issues of public controversy."

What exactly is controversial about saying that gay people can attend church too if they want to?? I'm assuming (just to mix things up a bit) that the army are still running recruitment ads are they not; now why aren't they being banned on grounds of 'public controversy'.

"Are you young? Poor background? Education looking too expensive? Then be all you can be : Help George W build a New World Order and get to drive really big tanks at the same time. Joining-the-army-may-have-unexpected-side-effects : media-scapegoating,depression,suicide,injury,disfigurement-and-death"

And as for CBS : "[CBS] said the fact that the Bush administration had proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman made the advertisement "unacceptable for broadcast"

I have no idea what that even means. They seem to be saying that they are unwilling to promote, advertise, even talk about anything that W doesn't like. That seems to me to be pretty much an admission of total craven acquiescence to the right wing agenda.

Everything is completely FUBARED, *especially* the Rev Albert Mohler. I'm no theologian but I'm fairly sure that one of the central planks of Jesus's ministry was to say that helping people to God is the most important thing, and let him worry about who's guilty and innocent of sin. if you must worry about sin, worry about yourself.

But then nothing gets me going quite as much as supposed men of the cloth who can somehow pervert the Gospels, surely one of the most tolerant and anti-establishment pieces of writing ever, into a mandate to seek and destroy all those around them who disagree with their own rigid, codified, twisted little world view.

I may not be going straight to heaven myself, but at least I'm not standing on a podium pointing my finger at all the 'sinners' around me. Honestly, if these guys seriously think that they can promote discrimination, militarism, elitism and (lest we forget) the fucking death penalty and also be welcomed by Jesus with open arms they are so, SO mistaken.

Guys - if you think Jesus would have ever even contemplated voting Republican you are just flat out plain old crazy. Oh hang on a sec . . .

Busy

Phew – no time for blogging today – super super busy (for once in a while) sudden rush to get everything done at the last minute as per. Ah well – done now and seemed to go down OK.

Opera Ponce

Last night to the ENO to see Semele which I thoroughly enjoyed. Although Handel does lure you into a bit of a false sense of longeur in the forst half of the first act it suddenly livens up, and really has some wonderful tunes and fantastic bits of showing off in it. If you get the chance I strongly recommend it.