Beauty

Here is a picture of somebody wearing a hat.


Whoever invented the back end of a woman deserves the Nobel Peace Prize - how come Al Gore got one? Nobel Prize, I mean... horse's ass.

Long Ago

Hwaet! We gardena in geardagum
Theodcyninga, thrym gefrunon...

Memorise the next few lines, recite them fiercely from a streetside cafe table (Starbucks? Noooo we do not do Starbucks, wee-wee has its attractions but there are limits), and...

and.

Just say "hwaet!", most of the punters will be enthralled by that alone.

Saddest of the Sad

Blogista: Hello, readers, I'm going for the Guiness Book of Records record for being Sad. That's why I'm sitting here at 04:22 looking up train times between nowhere and...

Readers: How do we know that you aren't in Holyhead? Or Farnham?

Blogista:

Readers: And how do you know that we aren't?

Blogista: I think it is a fair assumption that...

Readers: "Assume" begins with an "ass".

Blogista: I'm more of a tits man, myself.

Readers: Fehhhhhh we all know that's not true.

Imps

My Imps names are

1 Ilemauzar
2 Pyewackett
3 Pecke in the Crowne
4 Griezzell Greedigutt

Holt. Jarmara. Sacke & Sugar. Newes. Vinegar tom.

The Horror

In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.

Not vanished spirits, varnished sprits. Joke.

"One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.' The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, 'Oh, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

"'The horror! The horror!'"

Marlowe is, at one remove, the Narrator. He is, as he always is in this story, wrong.

Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness", 1902

1976

Apart from the party half-grapefruit bristling with cocktail sticks stuck with pieces of cheddar (mousetrap) and pineapple chunks (tinned) there was...

oh, and the pearly cocktail onions and cocktail sausages and waxy maraschino cherries if you were really sophisticated...

and the green maraschino cherries if you were really --- sophisticated...

There was Buck the Schmuck (hello, Buck), first student in Cambridge to own a digital watch, a bezeled brick-sized thing which he'd poke around with a while before announcing, "the time is precisely..." as if anybody gave a shit. He is probably now a Captain of Industry. I still have to try hard, to manage my time to the nearest month.

The universal belief that if you tasted the wine, and didn't send it back for being 'corked', you had to drink all of it however poisonous, and could never get your money back or another bottle in its place. That is why all English restaurants sold only Bull's Blood or Blue Nun (re-labelled) at 1000% markups, to claw back the cash from...

Buck the Schmuck (indeed), who insisted that a glass of wine with the teensiest speck of cork in it was 'corked'...

(a passing flip of the paw to the Polish girl in a tacky Mehican restaurant in Preston Street, Brighton, who poured me a huge slug of wine from m'bottle, looked at it in horror, and rushed away to throw it down the sink, because it had the teensiest speck of cork in it. Thanks for a nearly sober evening, devushka)...

There was London under leaden autumn skies, all the buildings still black with ancient soot, the rigid pink napery and weighty cutlery on the table in an Italian restaurant in Soho, a postprandial whore at Frith or Greek Street or at Shepherds Market, a brandy or two in a smelly pub and the last train home at 10:35...

And the innumerate Buck the Schmuck (again), first 'pocket' calculator in &c, a million times slower than my then intensely fast mental arithmetic, but people were beginning to believe only in machines.

And Buck the Schmuck (si monumentum requiris) whose wallet had a concertina of plastic containing about 1,000 of the new 'credit card' things - he would order his lady (foxy - 1970s!) a drink (rum'n'black - 1970s!) and accidentally let it dangle to the floor as he moved to pay. Which got him no more sex than my fumblings for the last of my change in my Oxfam zoot suit, viz zero.

I used then to have a body like Michelangelo's "David" and an impenetrable innocence. Now I'm more a sack of spuds powered by the two-stroke motor of lust. Neither works.

пуск

Just say "пуск" and off they go with a cry of "поехапи". No need to learn to count backwards, Mr. X, which is a relief for us all, I'll be bound.

(update : and even the "пуск" bit would appear to be a lot of hokum, going by the actual 'real' video. So it never happened, but then again what ever did? Poosk!)

As seen in this BBC kakarealnostmeloodramoo: could they be implying the young man's famous smile was helped along by panzer schokolade or similar?

(update : it wasn't, but Cold War II is on the way and propaganda is what the state broadcasting corporation is there for)



Note the risible attempts at smoking going on here - it will soon be a forgotten art, and then how will you know who the baddies are? They will have to take to wearing black hats again. Oh, they are. Belt and braces, eh, Aunty Beeb?