Sex, Reincarnation, and Babylon 5

First we heard that chocolate is set to become pricier that anti-matter and radium (which price by weight was only commonly exceeded by Citadel Paint), then there was the news that the Arctic icecap is set to be gone within four years. Now scientists have revealed that by 2023 sex will also be running to such a low that it will have to be rationed in order to propagate the species. Results of recent experiments have shown that sex, thought for quite some time to be a limitless resource, is of a finite quantity.

            The population explosion in recent decades (due in no small part in the western world to a draw down in the number of explosions amongst the population) has led to more people being alive than have ever lived before. Ever. With reincarnation exhausted circa 1969 the human race was forced to recycle the souls of monkeys, and a small form of bear from the Paleogenic era that would shit itself to death if another small form of bear just like it thought something that the first thought was good, was not. With both species of soul already in maturity and no further forms of soul compatible to the human genome the finite resource of sex has come, to use the technical term, to spanking point.

            It’s widely been known for some time that this would most likely be the case. As little as three hundred years ago the human sperm emerged from the male as a single, slightly furry spermatozoa somewhat smaller than a mouse. Birth control of the time centred around the catching of the seed in a linen bag whereby it could be beaten to death with a shoe. The modern discharge standing as only small amount of wand-vomit, within the next three years even this is almost certainly going to be reduced to a tiny, soft fart of only moderately potent pink smoke. Whilst for parents a limitation on sex will present no very big change at all plans are for the rest of humanity being drawn up to allow each person only a certain amount of sex over the course of their lifetime.

            Since this will be back-dated to 1969 it’s bad news for those who were promiscuous when young as they will have likely already exceeded their established quota. The further propagation of the species then will rest in the hands of those that did not fritter away their ration; however unknowing.

            Babylon 5 fans are said to be thrilled.

Sandy Denny, Earl Grey, and Blake's 7

Sandy Denny’s not been having a good day.

            “I’m not cut out for this sort of work,” she’s been telling me. She’s not cut out for my tea either it seems as every sip is accompanied by a wince. She shouldn’t look so surprised, it’s not like I’m swopping the mug between each as she works her ways along what is on offer. What is on offer is supermarket Earl Grey. She doesn’t think it should have milk in it, nor sugar, but this is builder’s Earl Grey. For builders who build art galleries. “I keep on trying to contact the other side, but it always hangs up.”

            Poor Sandy, the surprise with the tea is just the last in a long line of surprises (not the least of which was finding out that everyone had it that she had died back in 1978). Even back then no one really wanted to know, they all missed her so much. Or so she says. I couldn’t say, I was ten years old at the time and Blake’s 7 had just started so it all went rather over my head. She’s been in Tolly Maw for most of the time since. That’s the thing about Tolly Maw; you get stuck here. The old bastards in the pub don’t want to hear about Fairport Convention either, just the one track she sang with Robert Plant on Led Zep IV. They lose interest when it turns out not to be Stairway. That it was Battle of Evermore is one of the reasons she’s started trying to speak to people outside. The Hobbit movies, Tolkien, it’s all related. You can’t tell the old, hardened drinkers in the Supreme Being & Templar that there are other songs but Stairway. It upsets their eels. You what eels are like about Led Zeppelin. I say, “Look, there are oodles of fans still out there. Some of them even know who you are. Girls, mostly.”

            “They just hang up.”

            They do too. In an effort to keep them on the phone she tells them straight off that what she has to say is a very important message – and then click. But she’s been persistent. Because of her phone experience she’s gotten work at the local council (actually, everyone’s local council). There’s this new initiative to encourage people to have new windows fitted, I couldn’t say why, and everyone that agrees to it gets bottles of lovely red wine and chocolates. That’s what the form says. I’m not much of an expert. Red wine always makes be vomit. It’s on commission and given that there’s no catch at all, and it’s free, you think she’d be onto a winner. Not Michael Winner. Michael Winner prowls the lanes after night terrifying nervous lovers, in a greasy mackintosh. It’s probably a different Michael Winner. So she’s been phoning up from the windows helpline but before she can get onto the lovely red wine and chocolates everyone just hangs up.

            Sandy Denny has not been having a good day.   

Jonty Hood

This piece used to head up the first look of the Slide and it occurs that with the changes since it’s nowhere to actually be seen now. This is shame since whilst there are the usual faults that draw my eye, it’s still rather sweet.

Behind Jonty is leaning Mitzi (more clearly seen below). They’re both characters in Rob Nott’s TVC game of which I should perhaps soon post!

 

 

Exams, The Cure, and Joyce Grenfell

Teachers are said to be relieved that once again Whitehall has changed everything in order to make the exhausting and under-appreciated profession have something to do all day. ‘Being given everyone else’s puberty-ridden ratbags for the day was actually getting a bit easier since the last sweeping changes were almost understood,’ said secondary school teacher Joyce Grenfell today. Joyce having entered the profession in order to be closer to middle-class white boys that think themselves to be gangstas, cockneys, or the occasional member of The Cure goes on to say that ‘I’d almost managed to get an evening back and was worried I wouldn’t have anything to do,’ something that thankfully looks set to change.

            Not long back at school with the new term, Miss Grenfell admitted that having some of the summer off was frankly too much of a chore, ‘Long days filled with not a single rude girl hurling abuse at me for daring to raise the subject of the apostrophe saw me seriously considering a job with a lower level of stress and responsibility, air traffic control or bomb disposal for example’.

            The new system set to replace GCSEs, the EBacc, goes back to a more worldly age when far from having to work much during class young people are able to let it all slide until the last minute and then cram like a bastard, doing a half-arsed job for a single exam. Experts suggest that the new system, nothing at all like O Levels then, prepares students more fittingly for doing everything at the last minute, in a panic. It has been suggested indeed that A Levels will in future be dependent on blaming someone else and claiming credit from the smart kids who have the sheer temerity to think that they should get a pass based on some sort of merit.

A Martian Tourist Guide to London

Whilst for many England is a popular destination for our holidays there are certain myths about how we might be greeted there. On many levels this is our fault; Britain and Mars have very different cultures and we should be aware that just as we might object to Victorian gentlemen and Yankee reprobates tearing around in skyships freeing the Thark population so too might our actions there cause similar ire.

One. Do not mention the war. Whilst the conflict between our two planets was way back in the last years of their 19^th Century our minds immeasurably superior to man did rather make a mess of the place. Whilst it could be considered that we lost the foray, it was very much an away-game for us and a lot of people are still pissed off about the red weed.

Two. The British people speak orally. Whilst varying between a polite people and ravaging hooligans neither appreciate the simplicity of a bio-organic speaking tube inserted in what we often wrongly assume to be a communication sphincter.

Three. Contrary to popular opinion British food is not all that bad. The ribaldry results from a time on our earliest visit when contrary to the current habit of eating the meaty bits the British diet consisted almost solely of offal. There is now a great deal of good, tasty British food. It is called curry.

Four. British people travel through the use of wheels. Continually banging on about tripods is at best going to result in the usual argument about how three legs are silly, what if one is broken? Pointing out that they only have two is a sure way for offence to be taken.

Five. The British are a reserved people when it comes to recreational procreation. The British male is proudly very bad at the sexual act, whilst the British female (although stagnating in a broth of frustration and personal abuse) rarely finds our mollusc pheromones quite as alluring as we tend to believe in Earth’s higher oxygen atmosphere. Generally if a British female wishes to pass a month or two in the ecstatic pleasures we are able to grant them she will indicate her preferences by turning orange and screaming at one just like her a lot in the early hours of the morning, beside a kerb slick with sick, and by producing liquid from the oral receptors that will leave thick, gungy marks down each cheek. Typically if one is asked if one is a footballer the polite response is ‘Yes’.

Six. Westminster Palace is referred to as the ‘Houses of Parliament’ not ‘Target 2’.

Seven. A Martian should never when in Woking, Surrey be heard to remark ‘I remember when all this was crater’.

Eight. HMS Belfast is a museum; it is not the Thunder Child.

Nine. A British Princess is very different to a Martian Princess. Contrary to what the French may think one should not expect their royalty to be dressed in little more than bejewelled wire and a scrap of silk.

Ten. Once the most popular stop off for a Martian tourist (seeking to see if he can make out his home from there) the London Planetarium no longer offers a truly magnificent spectacle of the universe through the use of lasers. It is now a part of Madame Tussauds - which is firstly a waxwork exhibition, and secondly (and related to firstly) shit.

These are the basics. Other than that try not to make any heat-ray jokes. British humour is very different to Martian humour, Are You Being Served the exception rather than the rule.

The Duchess of Pap Street

Mme. Roux is going hunting. There’s rarely anything like the sight of an occasional visitor cleaning an elephant gun at the kitchen table to put one off the cornflakes. I’d not heard the news you see. She has and she has it in mind to bag a few Frenchmen. “See how they like the long shots,” she says.

                          It seems that the Duchess of Cambridge was photographed topless whilst abroad. Not being someone to play up to the paps on the way up and now whining when mission accomplished it’s all a bit seedy for me. Put it this way, if I found some toerag with a big camera lurking near my windows I’d probably have certain opinions on the matter. Oddly it’s because the Duchess seems like a nice girl in a young marriage that it offends Mme. Roux so much. Certainly it’s not because of some rosy image in the Royal line. Mme. Roux knew Prince George Edward back in the 30s during the days of white mischief. A fellow who’d bed anything that could get into it, alleged lover of Noel Coward, and drug fiend - Mme. Roux wouldn’t care if he had been outed. Which he had, but not everyone cares to know.

                          “Edward VII brought the monarchy back to popularity,” she says, knowing my mind. “Son and heir to Victoria, the Empress was so unpopular in her later years that it took her rogering, illegally gambling, famous friend-to-Parisian-brothels offspring to make things right in the world. Edward VIII shacked up with that blasted Simpson woman, and I can tell you tales of the whips and the mistress there!” she doubtless could too. I’ve heard all about Mountbatten from her in much the same vein. Indeed, the current so-called scandals in more recent years pale to rather ordinary little affairs that elicit outrage only amongst those that don’t care to spend a few minutes on the history of the 20^th Century. “And as for Peggy,” she means the Queen’s sister, “well, we had some times.”

                          So because of this it offends her that where a marriage is young and without scandal in the House there has to be one; that isn’t one at all. She laughed off the recent story of ‘young, single army officer about to go to war caught with a woman in the privacy of a hotel bedroom’ but this, this seems to have been the point that has set her to deerstalker and thrashing stick. “Plunge the hypocrites and rotters,” she says, “but not those yet to be, if at all.”

                          I can’t say I blame her.

Bloody Crows

Bloody crows.

They’re not gathering for me but they’ve been poking in through the window, and let’s be frank now crows aren’t ones for passing on a little sauce to their mischief. Without any silver coins to nail to door and windows I’ve had to fall back on common cures. This morning I ground out all the peppercorns in the house between two old iron weights we use on the scales. The iron means nails and the smell of it on the pepper sent their pointy faces to wrinkling - and the letter I nailed nailed upside down to the gate caused the least of them to squabble and hurt their necks.

They’re not stupid; notoriously so. But they’ve not one scrap of wisdom between them. Set them a puzzle, a lock, or a twist of thorn and wire and they’ll solve it in a minute (with fifty seconds of that just looking). But set a padlock on a hasp, on a wall, and they’ll wonder having opened it where the door that never was, went.

I’m a country boy at heart. I was to-and-fro the city half my boyhood since the wettest lump of my family is Lambeth dipped and dripping. And we know these things. We know when you meet a crow on the road that you don’t take gifts, even directions (which are as much the one as the other). We know that the smell of burned hair without fire means that a crow has stepped back into its feathers. We know when they talk it is to learn, because our heads are just another lock. As I say, they’re very good with locks. We know that a crow is always two decades behind in fashion, often more. That they dress smartly, but never well.

They never cook, they never hunt, they thieve by habit and culture but only anything lost, or lost enough (which can mean left on the lawn). It’s been easier since we’ve come along because we domesticate, so we own, so that lambs belong and so can be taken. They hate clocks, proper clocks with cogs – I don’t know why.

And they come to ground before storms.

And they’re loyal to their enemies. Don’t kill crows unless you bury them, and deep. Don’t burn them. Never eat them. And worst of all don’t sell them.

They don’t like pepper. They can’t sneeze and when outside their feathers that’s a real problem because they need to, so they stagger and huff and sniffle and snort and have to go back to the wing.

Bloody crows.