SCIENCE FICTION

Dharma Garden

2008-04-21T17:13:00.002+09:00

Once I dreamt I was in a garden
Full of birds and flowers and trees
Where fruit hung from the branches
As golden sunlight shone upon the leaves
And there I contemplated
My life and my existence
(I could hear a timeless music playing
softly in the distance)
And I thought about today
And I thought about tomorrow
And I realised how short and precious this life is
And hoped that some time here I could Borrow
Just to look a little more
At all the beauty that surrounded me
Just to gaze for one hour longer
At the mystery that astounded me
And I hoped in that moment
That I could love all things
But love them equally and honestly
Love them all without attachment or jealously or strings
No I did not wish to bind them
But only let them be
Be as beautiful as true things are
without any debt to me...

A few memories more

2008-02-13T22:31:00.004+09:00

Saraphine was a great cook. She could make a meal out of thin air in five minutes. She had hair the colour of copper that glowed like a flame when the sun shone on it. She was an excellent gardener and could work as hard, or harder, as anyone I've ever met.
Her arms were long and slender and resolved themselves in two hands that were as beautiful as sculpted ivory. She was a natural girl with natural ways and a natural charm.She was fragrant without being perfumed. She needed no make up; her skin was perfect, and if she ever did apply any, it would be done so subtly and so tastefully that you assume she'd always looked that beautiful (which she often did, even in the morning).
I loved her legs; her head; her elbows; her blue eyes; her smile; her mind; her mouth; her freckles; her laughter; her waist; her hips; her kisses; her knees; her thumbs; her smooth, golden shoulders and her slender neck and the way it gently sloped into her gorgeous back; the curve of her thighs and all the other pieces of her puzzle; all the places I knew intimately; the places where I would often find myself, exhausted in serenity.
She could paint beautifully and had and excellent eye for photography. She always dressed well and, even with little money, she still managed to look stunning and individual.
She was caring, kind, funny, generous and thoughtful.
She could also be terribly moody and pout like a thirteen year old girl. She could make me feel like a god or a fool; amazing or completely wretched. She had a tendency to want things her own way and could sulk like pro.
She sang, sometimes with a slight American accent, and I would often hear a verse or two, of one song or another that I recognised, coming from a room somewhere in the house, usually the kitchen or the bathroom. It made me smile.
Only once did I see her so helplessly drunk that she could hardly walk, and that had been after a long day in the sunshine, drinking pastis and red wine, but I picked her up off the floor from underneath the piano, and carried her boots for her that evening as she walked unsteadily home, barefoot along the warm tarmac of the road, with her arm around my shoulder and her head resting on her chest like a wounded soldier.

At Noon

2008-02-12T22:56:00.002+09:00

There at noon
in the still of the clock
as the bells ring out an iron tune
from the air
holding it's breath
at noon

with hands together
the hour goes on forever
in furnaces of sun
through silent streets
along which
no feet run
and no songs are sung
at noon

where the keystone of the arch
hangs heavy with the past
in the shadow of the church
through the light of old stained glass
the midday minutes pass
as slowly as a hearse
at noon

Libation

2008-02-10T06:16:00.003+09:00

Love sings through the veins
and still it trills and rises
like an ancient melody
an unexplainable mystery
the body hums with smiles
and blood so sweet
the gods would drink contentedly
the springing floods of ecstasy
and catch each night
a burst of stars
like glowing gems
in undiscovered mines
exploding in the minds
of passions held
the songs that fills the brain
and the muscles burnt with loving pain
The cry and howl
for timeless moods
to sing aloud
the song of fire
a flower born of pure desire
the wish and prayer
that holds me still
in crowning seasons
trees and views displayed
the tapestries of lovers dreams
in skin and form are made
the flame was shown
not of this world
unready and reserved
for goals acceptable
but breaking rules
and running free
so that no law or hand could hold me
from burning like magnesium
a fool a god
a human

Silence Sings

2008-02-09T05:58:00.002+09:00

I lounged on the balcony of Maison Verte today. No shoes, no socks; my trousers rolled up to my knees; shirtless, blowing smoke rings into the blue, blue sky.
The sun was extraordinarily hot for this time of year, and I, to my surprise, caught a tan.
It was hard to sit here on such a beautiful day, and not think back to my summer here last year. What a summer! The summer during which I broke the golden clay of this land and planted the seeds of vegetables and fruits, nurturing each one like a father, caring for them, eventually harvesting them and sharing them all with those around me with such pleasure.
So many wonderful feelings and sensations of happiness came flooding back to me as I rested in the sunshine. Naturally, I thought of Saraphine.
The sun will always remind me of her, as will flowers; Indian bean trees; stag-horns; bossanova music, soft summer breezes and Ricard pastis.
As I sat in the golden silence of noon, I could hear her say, "oui, bien sur," the way she said it, and how she looked when she said it, her flame-red hair slightly to one side, a gentle nod of her head and a sea-shell smile.
"Oui, bien sur," in such a gorgeous melody of voice.
She was the sun...

Things have come full circle now, like the course of the sun itself. And my memory plays tricks on me. Because I remember a joyful time; one of the happiest times of my life. But I have been told that it was a fantasy, that it was unreal and that it didn't really mean that much in the end. But that's not how I remember it all, so my memory must be a trickster.
And as I sit here, looking out over the red and orange rooftops of Rue Longue, framed by the sapphire of the sky, on this unusual and beautiful summers day, in the middle of winter, with my skin slowly turning the colour of Cafe Au Lait, I think to myself that my suntan lasted longer than my love affair.
And although the sun is setting now, it will rise again, and there will be other summers, but there will never be another Saraphine...

'See-More' She Said

2008-02-07T19:25:00.000+09:00

The early morning mist is slowly lifting. I have a feeling that by this afternoon the sky will be clear and blue, like only it can be, down here in the south of France, and the sun will be shining as if it were spring.
I took a walk out around the village at about 8:30am, and went to buy myself a loaf of rye bread from Madeline. The quality of her bread varies from mediocre to awful. Her cakes are generally not so good, and her biscuits are often worse.
As usual, the village was deserted apart from the inbred woman and her blind husband, who always take a walk together to the patisserie every morning. Judging by the look of his wife, I have a feeling that he was always blind. But there is obviously much love between them, as they walk silently arm in arm together through the narrow, misty, medieval streets of Simorre.
It's like a deserted film set here. All the actors have played out their parts and exited the stage long ago. You can catch the odd glimpse of broken silhouettes behind shuttered and curtained windows, but more often than not, you're more likely to meet a rag-eared cat or a stray wandering dog than a human being.
Occasionally a car will pass you, but they always appear to be driver-less. Impossible, I know, but that's how it seems.
Nobody talks about the crashing stock market here and there are no Iranian missiles overhead. Most conversations revolve around memories and past events.
The future is a stranger here, an unknown outsider, who is rumoured to be coming, but never arrives.
I would love to have seen Simorre in it's heyday. I imagine that the covered market square once bustled and hummed with activity and life, but now it stands empty, and the ancient oak timbers that hold up it's creaking terracotta tiled roof are as worn and as weathered as the decaying timber hull of a shipwreck.
My time here, in this town that stands outside of time, is almost over.
I didn't really 'see-more' here, but I certainly felt more and thought more than I have for a little while.
Soon I'll be gone, off to meet the future, because if I wait here for it to come, I'll be waiting forever...

Away From The Shadow

2008-01-31T22:14:00.000+09:00

At last the green is returning to the fields that were, until recently, a sea of brown mud. The change can be felt everywhere.
This morning I woke up and pushed open the shutters of my room and let the sun pour in and blast me with it's warm, golden energy.
I stood there for some time, just letting that life giving star fill me with it's power as it's rays passed into my body, invigorating each cell and atom within me.
A smile spread across my face, so wide and lingering, that the muscles of my cheeks began to ache. I nearly laughed out loud, just happy to be alive in that moment.
I opened my arms as wide as they would go and threw my head back to bathe contentedly in that pure, glorious light...what a change!

Only a few days before, I had been considering ending my life completely. Lack of sleep had made me ill, confused and depressed.
I went to see the local doctor here in Simorre to see if I could find some kind of remedy. She, the doctor, is a tall, dark haired Transylvania called Catalina: a cold, abrupt bitch with no bed-side manner at all.
She looked at me as if I were some kind of craven junkie when I asked her for sleeping tablets. I've never taken a sleeping pill in my life, but she obviously thought otherwise.
She prescribed Zopiclone. 7.5mg.
The first night that I took them was wonderful. They go very well with red wine and I slept like a mountain; heavy and deep with absolutely no dreams, just a black infinity into which I disappeared like a speck of dust into a blackhole.
It was my first night of unboken sleep since early December.
The next morning I awoke completely refreshed and I felt amazing. Apart from a bitter, metallic aftertaste in my mouth, there were no noticeable side effects at all, so I carried on taking the drug every night for the rest of the week.
Then, during the following days, I began to get severe headaches. I felt nauseous and very depressed. Thoughts of suicide crept into my brain..again and again.
All my energy left me and the world appeared bleak and hopeless. I felt myself withdrawing, turning in on myself. I wanted to die, (actually, I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to go on living anymore. There's a huge difference).
So I thought about buying a cheap bottle of wine and taking the rest of the pills, but my animal fear of death stopped me. And that part of me that still loves life so much said, "No, not yet. Your time hasn't come!".
I threw the pills away. And I'm glad I did, because today, this morning especially, has been such an uplifting and beautiful day, so full of promise and hope, full of Spring, showing herself again; coming early and throwing her arms around us all once more.
I'm happy to have seen this day and experienced it's simple perfection.
If I had been foolish enough, or perhaps brave enough, to have killed myself, murdered myself, then I would have missed all of this.
Days like this are a reminder to me of just how magical the world we live in can be, and how much it is worth to be a part of this astounding and mysterious thing we call life...

The sun's crown is hidden in the clouds
But when the summer comes it's gold will be revealed
And in that hopeful season the wounds of winter healed

The Room

2008-01-06T02:40:00.000+09:00

In my heart there's a room
in the house on Rue Longue
a beautiful room
with pale blue shutters
that filter the light
that falls in the summer
across white washed walls
onto bare wooden floors
like ribbons of flame
surrounding the bed
and the closed wooden door

There's a old wicker chair
in the corner there
and dust from my body and yours in the air
I believe if I searched
every corner and nook
I would still find a golden strand of your hair

Now summer has gone
and I sleep here alone
and my face in the mirror
seems older and thinner
I sleep here alone
in the bed that we shared
dreaming of spring
in a room full of winter

The Facts

2008-01-01T19:43:00.000+09:00

I am staying in France at the moment.
Sophie and Tosco have "Kennel Cough".
The Pauls are here.
Geraldine's new house needs lots of work done to it.
I have never watched and episode of "Desperate Housewives" or "Sex In The City".
If I leave a cup of hot tea on the kitchen table in the morning by the time the evening comes around it will be cold.
I am 35 years old and have a 28" waist.
I smoke, on average, between 25 and 40 cigarettes a day.
I have hurt some people and healed others.
I have three pairs of decent pants.
My feet are size 11.
I'm losing my hair and my eyes are brown.
Sometimes I'm happy and sometimes I'm sad.
I would like to have a family of my own.
The Chinese want to pay me to teach their children.
Tequilla makes me temporarily insane.
My dad tried to kill himself and bled all over our new carpet when I was five years old.
I would like to be a writer so I write things down.
Rip has a black and red jersey that used to belong to me.
I have a small caramel coloured mole on my scrotum.
My girlfriend was raped when I was 19.
I have never raped anyone.
I was born and one day I'll die.
I am a rat.
This will be the year of the rat.
I have done bad things but I'm not a bad man.
Andy died in a hotel complex in Portugal when he was 17.
Nobody knows if he jumped or if he was pushed.
Daniel died on a railway track when he was 18.
Nobody knows if he jumped or if he was pushed.
Vival opens at 9am.
25 lucky strike lights cost six euros.
On the wall hangs a mirror.
I get paid a hundred euros a day.
People love me more when they know I'm leaving.
When I was six I got run over and went to hospital but was well enough to go home before the nurses brought the ice cream round.
I have eight fingers, two thumbs and ten toes.
My beard is patchy and I have a big nose but I get enough oxygen to keep me alive.
Bound with black ribbon, beneath red wrapping paper, inside a handmade leather pouch is a Malachite pendant.
I found a dying lacewing and placed it in a patch of sunlight on December 31st.
I have a bruise the colour and shape of a blackberry above my left knee.
I am a batchelor.
The little asian guy who stole my cash card in Hong Kong stuck to my arm like a smiling limpit.
When the sun shines I tend to feel better.
Simone is beautiful and love is a four letter word...

Saraphine

2007-12-20T18:06:00.000+09:00

I remember her lips
as smooth as amaryllis
how they swelled to bless my lips with kisses
and the way the sun glowed in her hair
the blue of the sky in her eyes
the touch of gold on her skin so fair

as summer threw it's golden arms around us
we smiled and rejoiced in the sun
and our love spread out like a wave or a song
from us to touch everyone

And I see her form still
in the shapes of these hills
see her face in the flowers
hear her voice in the fields

through forests so silent
and villages waking
it seemed like a heart being born not breaking

And now my regret
so dark and as deep
as the dreamless depths of a dead mans sleep
is my constant companion
a phantom lover
who waits with me here
while I dream of another

but the world is not wider
than the love I imagine
the love that I search for
with patience and passion
no the world I could fit
many times in my heart
my heart full of hope
that burns like a star

No Rest For The Weird Kid

2007-12-15T18:05:00.000+09:00

It's a mystery, really it is.

The last five months have felt like a million years. They've crawled by with mineral stealth. Have I been living each millisecond so fully that time, from my perspective at least, has been stretched almost to breaking point?
It seems so but, then again, I haven't slept or eaten properly for about a month and I've had not any sleep at all for the last three days. I mean it. I haven't slept one wink and that kind of thing can play funny tricks on an otherwise healthy and sane mind.
For instance: This morning the sky scrapers that loom over my hotel seemed to take on a gentle, rubbery, pastel coloured appearance, swaying softly as I lay on my disheveled bed staring at them with my dry bloodshot eyes.
It seemed like there was a world war going on out there. Choppers and construction equipment firing off in a staccato artillery attack. It sounded like "democracy" was coming or the Venusians had arrived in their huge plasma ships, emitting sub-sonic sound waves that would level the city in one final orgasmic pulse.
I was almost ready to dash to the subway and assume an heroic posture, but I took a cold shower and slapped myself in the face a couple of times instead.
God! Was I still really here? Had it only been eleven days? I felt as though I'd been here since the eleventh century or that I'd been smuggled into Kowloon inside an oil drum to be hidden away in this hotel room for collection later.
What was I? Was I on the run? Was I in hiding? Was this a reality TV show or was I a collectors item, a lost relic of some kind?...questions..questions...

And then the Jehovah's witnesses arrived.

I'd gone out you see. The stench of my own sin had gotten too much for me, so I'd staggered down to the Star Ferry Pier to look into the polluted water for signs of intelligent, but soft bodied life.
That's when Gupta appeared with his burgundy tank-top, stay pressed trousers, plaid shirt and black leather satchel.
I knew immediately what was coming. He had those tremulous orange flames of religion flickering in the depths of his zealots eyes.
But when he saw my eager face he backed off slightly. However, I wasn't going to let him get away that easily.
I opened the conversation with: "What do you think happens when we die?"
The roles had been reversed and he was thrown off guard. I could see him reaching into his heavy bag for a bible but I pulled out my notepad first and read him "The Miracle Of The Midnight Child," which he seemed to like...we're all looking for the truth the light and the way, aren't we?
In exchange he gave me some of those thin pamphlets that they hand out. You know the ones. The ones that have those awful, sickly illustrations of paradise, where heaven looks like a golf course in Palm Springs or a safari park. But he went away happy...I think.
About five minutes went by and then the Hare Krishna's turned up, two of them: Praveen and GoptiKantdas.
I like the Krishna's. They don't give a fuck. They just dance around and sing and you don't find them knocking on peoples doors at all hours trying to catch converts. They're party people, a real cymbal jingling caravan of love.
The food is great as well. None of those dry and dreary wafers or that watered down cooking sherry that the Catholics fob you off with. No. It's honest, wholesome soul filling food, served with a smile and a song.
It's not a religion. It's a conga-dance of consciousness..a cluster of karmic clowns.
And God does, after all, have a sense of humour...a wicked one it seems.

Hare Krishna.

Miracle Of The Midnight Child

2007-12-15T08:07:00.000+09:00

Down on the street it sounds like a Kung - Fu fight in a fairground. But it's not. It's just Hong Kong sliding slowly off the greasy pavement back into the sea...

I left my heart in Hong Kong, by the Man - Mo Temple, where I did something so shameful that I find it hard to talk about it, even here.
Now, in my hip pocket I carry a small stone replica heart. It was a gift, one that I cherish, and I'll be taking it with me wherever I go from now on. After all, it's come this far already...
Here, I've been wandering aimlessly, heartbroken and humming with insomnia and jet lag, passing unnoticed among the crowds like a phantom or pale shadow.
Everywhere I went I caught sight of myself reflected in shopfronts and taxi cab windows, that look of hollow eyed animal shame upon my face. And my face was always there, inescapable. Right under my nose, as it were...
In and out of my hotel room, half awake and half my time spent waiting for elevators, or in elevators, unable to turn off the engine of my mind that drove on along the same pathetic self pitying lines, crackling like a broken radio.
I wasn't even sure where I was or where I'd been most of the time. My eyes were naked, aching flames, blind and barely flickering.
I found myself back at my hotel at around midnight waiting, again, for yet another elevator, trying to get to the thirteenth floor, when I was suddenly aware of a tiny face looking up at me with beautiful, dark brown, almond shaped eyes. A tiny oriental angel, probably about three or four years old with her smiling but watchful grandparents. She just stared at me innocently, this flower, and I couldn't help but look at her with love and I was surprised to find myself smiling, my mood suddenly and completely changed.
And seeing her made me think about what I had done and I felt truly ashamed of myself and saddened to the soul.
I imagined that beautiful child there seeing me in my rage and wrath and how she would have felt, how she would have been afraid of me. How that wretched scene would have disturbed her and in my minds eye I wandered back further into my own past and reflected on the things I had seen as a child, both good and bad, and how I they had affected me, how they affect me still.
I realised that a change was coming. A line was being drawn and I would have to make a supreme effort to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. Because we have to prepare the way for those children, those gifts of heaven, who's lives may be hard enough without our pride and stubbornness making their way any more difficult for them.
What a lesson I learned there, caught in her honest gaze. It was like a hammer blow to my conscience.
The incredible responsibility that we have as human beings and the amazing and sometimes frightening power that we have to make each other feel either pleasure or pain.
It's not something to ever be taken lightly. It's something to be thankful for and to be used wisely, always remembering that those children will inherit the world that we make and mould and assume this awesome and continuing responsibility for themselves one day.

Running For My Love

2007-12-08T00:31:00.000+09:00

I haven't slept and dawn is coming now, in between the skyscrapers, as the last bright lonely stars blink out, one by one. A high and unbroken stretch of cirrus cloud covers Hong Kong Like a dome of raw silk. The air is chilled and full of the sounds of early morning city life. Car horns are calling to each other as engines rev and choke, filling the sky with invisible vapour - petrol fumes and sulphurous breath.
The city exhales as I drift in and out of insomniac apartment windows, a sleepless phantom that stirs in the soft breeze, like a wisp of chain smoke.
And there, high above us all, soar two eagles, perfect and serenely detached from us as we scurry about our narrow business, like seven million ants.
And my happiness is indescribable. Impossible to put into words. It can only be expressed through actions and deeds, through smiles and looks. Smiles for strangers, smiles to myself. Smiles in the noodle bar and smiles to the sky. Smiles at passers by and smiles in my eyes....the eagles are soaring in my heart and soul...

Fragrant Harbour Musings

2007-12-06T21:49:00.000+09:00

Hong Kong is coming. I'm flying into a thunder storm, once again, and somewhere beneath the majestic flash belly clouds are the myriad lights of the fragrant harbour.
I check the weather and I'm on top of it. The lightning, like the electric daggers of a raw and primal god, rips the sky and threatens to burn out all the circuitry on this tube of flying tin...and all I can think about is someone I may never see again.
Flashing forward in time, unravelling events as yet un-happened, I imagine myself searching the crowded streets of Hong Kong, trying to catch a glimpse of gold in a mountain of coal.
How did I fuck up so badly? Was I cursed at birth to be frail and fail in love? Nobody really knows the answers to these questions, least of all me. But if I keep looking, who knows?
Like most searching in life I may only end up coming face to face with myself, which could be good and it could be bad...I'm flying into thunder. I was made for nights like this. Only a true believer and romantic optimist like me, with his pockets full of air, could ever be up to the job. Richer and wiser would walk away from all this unnecessary stress and ask, wearily;
"What's the point?".
But not me. I know full well what the point is, but I cant go into that. You either know what the point is or you don't. It's either in your blood and bones or it's not...

Jesus! When she told me I howled in my heart. I suddenly felt like I was in a falling elevator, one that would never find any solid ground to hit, one that would just keep falling forever. My heart broke and I turned inside out...exposed and vulnerable - but so incredibly alive.
Do I thrive on these emotions? I'm not sure. It's a bit like walking through fire - you just can't stop to think about it for too long or you'll burn, so you have to keep going. Suddenly you find your calling, your mission. The world takes on a fable like quality and meanings and reasons appear everywhere where once there were none. That's when you realise you have a destiny and flying half way around the world to buy Jasmine tea for someone who appears to detest you seems like the most important and valuable thing you could do. Just to see her face, just to be in the proximity of that hair that you once touched and breathed. Just to stand politely far enough away form the smooth, perfect, golden body that I once held in my arms and loved passionately and now may never love again.
The whole thing is a folly, a mad endeavour - doomed to failure on so many levels, that only a prime idiot would even attempt it, which made it all the more appealing to me because...because..only love is real. And if just by attempting the impossible I could find some way through the hidden veils of this illusion we call life then it would all be worth it. And, of course, if I didn't try there would be a whole shit-train of regret to cope with.

The impossible is improbable until it becomes inevitable.

At last! A cigarette. In fact I'm smoking two; a tailor made and a hand rolled. All I need now is a cool pastis and I'll be able to think seriously for a moment.

(There was an eerie mist over the airport. Visibility was down to zero as we made our approach. I felt sure that we would belly flop into the sea. Some people actually clapped with relief as we landed.)

In the midst of Kowloon I feel as bright as the neon lights that cascade in abundance from the tower blocks like the electric foliage of a fluorescent hanging garden and over a bowl of shrimp and noodle soup, I reflect on the strange twist and detours that life has taken me along in the last few months.
I seem to have gone from being simply happy, living in the south of France to being extraordinarily, ecstatically happy and in love, returning to England and plans, followed by setbacks then disaster and heartbreak and then to shrimp and noodle soup in Hong Kong.

Melting pot doesn't accurately describe Hong Kong. It's more like the place is on a rolling boil. Life comes bubbling to the surface in the form of Pakistani tailors dishing out business cards and handmade suits along with hashish, opium and fake Rolex watches. It's like an electric aquarium in which we all swim about avoiding the sharks and looking for bargains on which to feed.
You get the impression that traders are almost ab-sailing down to the street from the high and dishevelled towers of light to sell you anything you could want sir.

Ouch! Last night I got pirate drunk and tore around central with my fair weather, one day friend, James, form Oz.
Everywhere we went was crawling with Phillipina whores and chubby drunken city boys in sweaty suits.
The Phillipinas picked through my cigarettes as I told them about my purity. They didn't care or even understand. They just wanted money and soon drifted away when the realised I didn't have any.
James danced around to the music of the "HongKongJovi" tribute band as they wearily bleated out the hits of the 80's. Tequila after Tequila arrived at our table as peanut husks gradually formed a crunchy carpet around and under our feet.
"Why don't you just forget her mate?" Said James as he crashed into a mirrored wall, leaving a steamy streak behind him.
"Christ! None of them are really worth it are they?"
I tried to focus on him but my brain was swimming around in my head like and ice cube in a shot glass.
I came to in the back of a red cab that was speeding it's way to Kowloon, a hundred dollar bill sticking out of my shirt pocket.
I started to tell the driver about my love and my life. He listened carefully and wisely told me that there are plenty more shrimp in the harbour but I knew this wasn't true. Pollution has killed them all. There are only strange mutant ones left now and who would want one of those?
He had a wife, he told me, they'd been together for thirty-seven years but she'd recently had an enormous stroke that had left her paralysed and completely dependant on him. He had to do everything for her. He also told me that he had a fancy woman but that was just about sex. It was his wife that he really loved and she meant everything to him. I wondered how he could tell such lies.
As we pulled up to 'Mirador MAnsions' I broke down and openly wept, putting the fare into his hand as streams of 40% proof tears rolled down my hollow cheeks.
I'd seen a seedy side of Hong Kong, one that I didn't like, one full of sad-eyed hookers and callous, moneyed thugs. Where was the love? Out there somewhere with tobacco red hair? Oh where, oh where...

Just along the road from the Mirador were three Africans, sitting on the pavement. So I walked over and sat down next to them in the now deserted street.
One was a Somali, the other two were Nigerians, all were Muslims who had strayed from the path and each was drinking a beer trying to forget their fall.
"God is everywhere", I said. "Even in this beer, even in this cigarette".
We got along fine and spent about an hour and a half just talking and watching the world go by. Talking about God and Love. God and Love. Two hard concepts to explain.
Another lady of the night appeared. A Mary Magdalene in scuffed red leatherette stilettos and a frayed black mini-dress. She was beautiful actually. There was something incredibly kind and tragic about her dark, almost black gaze but only my heart went out to her as she offered me her body for the night. I just wanted to put my arms around her and protect her from all the shame and evil of the world.
"You good man" she said in a voice as soft as a breeze.
I took her back to my hotel room and fetched some money from my bag and then walked with her back out onto the street, the sun now rising gently through a haze of smog. She seemed confused as I gave her the money and kissed her lightly on the cheek, telling her I wanted nothing form her but a smile. I turned away and walked back to the Mirador, another weary, early morning tear welling in my eye...

As we travel the road unravels

2007-11-29T06:22:00.000+09:00

I am a soft string of sinew and flesh. A speck in the depths of an infinite and unfathomable universe. So vulnerable and fragile on the surface of this raw but magical planet.
Faced with the mechanised violence and cold efficiency of the modern world where do I stand? I stand in the warmth of my living skin lightly touching the chill of my own mortality, holding fast and looking for the radiant threads that bind together the fabric of life. And although I am only flesh and bone, fated to pass away, fated to grow old and frail and forgetful, eventually to be forgotten, I am not saddened or weak, because a feeling of strength and compassion comes to me from knowing how fragile and precious life is.
A reinvigorating energy fills every cell that strives to live and leave it's mark in this procession.
By recognising the precariousness of our impermanent and fragile selves I find a purer beauty and a higher value in the short time we have in this form.
A life that takes so long to form and develop can be taken away in an instant and, in the contemplation of that fact, I discover a renewed hope and a deeper sense of a more universal and immortal love.

Death or Democracy

2007-08-15T01:01:00.000+09:00

Everyday we're confronted with the ongoing horror in Iraq. The continual unfolding carnage of the "civil war" is as hideous a thing as any of us would ever want to see in our lives, and there seems to be no end in sight.

This is the "Long War", the "First War of The 20th Century", the "War on Whatever".

We rode into the war on a pack of lies and now were stuck in a military quagmire.
If the troops stay there'll be bloodshed and massacre, if they leave it'll be the same.

How could the American administration, with all it's money and advisers and experts and think-tanks, have botched up this war so badly? How could things have gone so horrendously awry for the worlds most powerful military machine and sole superpower?

Are they all on Nitrous Oxide?

I think we first have to take a close look at the so called objectives and aims of the invasion of Iraq.
Firstly we were told about the WMDs and the link to Al Qa'eda and 9/11. None were found and the rest was all a pack of lies.
Secondly, the removal of Saddam Hussein, the evil dictator. Well he's certainly been toppled from power hasn't he?
Bringing Democracy to the Iraqi people. Now this is where we should all sit up and take notice because whenever America brings Democracy to anyone it usually comes accompanied by war, bloodshed, terror, murder, rape, robbery and vile gangsterism. With this in mind I think we can say without a doubt that American style democracy has succeeded in Iraq.

(It's interesting to note here that America itself is not a Democracy, it's a Republic)

What does democracy mean to corporate America? It means that if you do as we say and sell us not just your own soul, but the souls of your people and country as well, then we'll call you democratic.
We will call you a moderate state and heap praise, finance and weaponry on you if you capitulate; and sanction you and attack you as a rouge state if you chose to follow you own independent path.

Democracy, in the modern argot, is nothing more than the submission to American corporate might and influence.

So be wary and attentive whenever you hear the word democracy.

In many ways the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been relatively successful.
Installing a Vichy style government and giving it the illusion of power and legitimacy has been easy.
Iraq has very swiftly descended into a state of civil war roughly dividing the country along sectarian lines which in turn has led to further a destabilising of society leaving the population traumatised and desperate for many years to come.

This, in my opinion, has been no accident.

I believe it was the administrations intention to cause wide spread panic and a complete collapse within the whole region not just Iraq. A sectarian civil war was always the aim. The hope is that the war will spread throughout the entire middle east with Sunni and Shia killing each other instead of uniting as Muslims and brothers and fighting their invaders .

Efforts have even been made to kick start the violence.
Remember Basra? The British army's attempt to free two of it's soldiers from an Iraqi police cell? The two soldiers were in fact British Secret Service agents who had been arrested by the Iraqi police for driving around Basra shooting civilians and planting bombs while dressed as Al Qa'eda insurgents!
That's only one example of false flag operations in Iraq that we know of. How many have gone undetected and blamed upon either Sunnis or Shia or the Iranians?
It an old tactic. Divide and conquer. Although we should update it to divide, supply and conquer because a lot of guns, bombs and ammunition are being sold by someone.....

And this is just one step in the war agenda. What we are witnessing at the moment is an attempt to weaken home rule among the Arab states so that they can be controlled and directed more easily by western and trans-national military-industrial-corporations and their media and governmental lackeys.
Controlling the middle east will mean controlling most of the worlds supply of oil.

The ultimate prize.

It's the control of energy supplies that is key here. If the plan is to conquer the whole world, and make no mistake, that's what this is about, "Full Spectrum Dominance" as they say in the PNAC report, then you need fuel for your war machine first, before you do anything.
Without securing the production and supply of oil and natural gas the whole imperial PNAC adventure falls apart, this is another reason that the Bush cabal is wholeheartedly staying the course with the war in Iraq. Add to that the fact that companies like Halliburton, Blackwater and KBR are making a fortune along with members of the administration and the signatories of PNAC, you begin to understand why there will be no peace in the middle east or the rest of the world for many decades to come.

Seven New Wonders Of The World

2007-07-21T07:15:00.001+09:00

1. The Atomic Bomb.
A hell flower, a demonic bloom of poison air and burning isotopes. The fingers of it's deadly hand grasping long after the body of flame has died. Half-life into half-life, turning and twisting the very substance of existence into diabolic mutations.

2. The Concentration Camp.
The bodies heaped high, testament to cruelty and sadism, combined with the full and efficient might of industrialised nations. A conveyor belt of death. The knock kneed, toothless, hankering raw materials charred into grisly relics of moral defeat and hollow victory.

3. The Kennedy Assassination.
Beguiling, mystifying. The most famous snuff movie ever made. The sound of a crashing granite tombstone. The lid sealed tightly on the coffin of American democratic dreams. The iron fist grows bullet teeth and laughs as a nation tunes in to mourn it's own destruction.

4. AIDS.
Eternal love. A flame in the blood and a clock in the brain. A love that grows to devour. The wasting of the heart. Wheelchair nuptials and life support vows.
Corpora lente augescent cito extinguuntur.

5. The Internet.
Billboard Information superhighway. The archive buried beneath Nazis, Pedophilia, Anal Sex and the Illuminati. The lost thread in the labyrinth. Self publicising, self promoting, self inflicting. A haystack of needles.

6. 9/11
What television was made for. A day without adverts. The Birth of a landmark and a new century. History locked with the key to the bottomless pit and an endless war. The flag waving flames and the beat of drums stretched with human skins. A cannibal god dancing in the ashes. A tinderbox for the idiot son of a hyena.

7. The Iraq war
The blood prize hung like an ox heart. Bleeding sand horror show. Oil slick oblivion death ride. Hard hat incendiaries tread the slack children. Desert coliseum slaughter house rules. A media cats cradle woven in a prism within a hall of cracked mirrors.

Ode To A Fire

2007-02-15T04:35:00.000+09:00

What is it about a fire?

We can lose ourselves in the twist of a flame

It is a time for contemplation

The long winter nights are made welcoming and warm by a fire burning in the hearth

and

wherever we are
we are at home there

I remember as a child

staring for hours

lost in time

exploring the infernal depths

of a blazing fire

within it was a landscape

of burning caverns

and cliffs

Plateaus of fire

Upon which I could imagine myself

A flame

wherever the fire is found

it is the center
and the focus of attention

we could measure the world
flame by flame

and

In the glowing core
of those furnaces

we would always catch a glimpse

of our true selves

sympathy for the devil

2007-01-03T00:39:00.000+09:00

“America needs wisdom, not force. It had used force, along with the West, to its extreme extent, only to find out later that it did not achieve what they wanted.”
Saddam Hussein.

"If you want to execute me, I'll bring my own filthy rope."
Saddam Hussein.

And so, at last he has gone....Hung from his own gallows at 6:07am on December 30th 2006. Watching the final moments of Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an uncomfortable and almost surreal thing. He reminded me of a visiting foreign dignitary being shown around a public facility of some kind, attentive and serious. Here's the rope and here's the trapdoor. But he had the look of a brave and dignified man. Those around him, hooded and hungry for his death, taunting him from below and waving their mobile phone cameras, seemed more like criminals, murderers, terrorists or even pornographers, than Saddam Hussein did. There was an eerie calm about the 'Butcher of Baghdad' as he faced his imminent death in one of the abattoirs of his own making.
"I began my life as a militant and a rebel." He said. "And I have no fear of death!"
Could we picture any of our present world leaders accepting their fate with the same resolve and sense of political theatre? I doubt it. Putin, perhaps. Chirac, maybe. But Blair and Bush would never refuse the blindfold and judging by their foreign policy decisions they probably wouldn't need one anyway. They would piss themselves with fear and grovel all the way to the noose. But for a main player like Saddam Hussein, who had immersed himself in violence and terror from the very beginning, it was like visiting an old friend and ally. He was dressed for dinner and looked almost handsome or wise and utterly remorseless, haranguing his executioners, proud and unrepentant until the bitter end.

The man was undoubtedly a monster but by no stretch of the imagination can we believe that any moral high ground has been gained for the new Iraqi regime or for the Bush/Blair axis by carrying out this execution. The video footage of the moments before his hanging had the look and feel of a rape movie.
The response from the British government, who are opposed to capital punishment, was rather muted. They called the hanging an example of democracy at work in Iraq and generously gave all the credit to the Iraqi legal system. Even George Bush, who had effectively handed his father the bleeding and still beating heart of Saddam Hussein as Christmas present, was business like and sedate in his response. Three years ago there would have been fireworks over the White House but, despite the news flashes on American television, the President wasn't even woken to be told the news as he slept at his Texas ranch. Later that day, in a pre-prepared statement, he said that the execution was a 'milestone' on the road towards Iraqi democracy but also conceded that this execution changes nothing in Iraq for the majority of people who live there. Democracy in Iraq, it seems, is the right to kill, execute and murder.

Saddam is dead but there is still no security in Iraq. Rumours of death squads still persist but these are the new death squads of the democratically elected government. Prisoners are still tortured in Abu ghraib and at the headquarters of Iraqi police. Corpses, shot to death and mutilated are found hooded and dumped on the streets of Iraq every day. Car bombs and suicide attacks kill scores of innocent civilians every week...but the oil keeps pumping....MISSION ACCOMPLISHED...Compare the number of deaths in Iraq under Saddam Hussein with the number of men, women and children in that country who were squeezed to death by the siege of ten years of sanctions imposed by the western powers. Compare the victims of Saddam Hussein with the uncounted millions bombed and Napalmed and starved to death by the United States and her allies since the end of the second world war.
The US has persistently supported, trained and equipped brutal dictatorships around the world for decades. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was just one of them but there were many, many more. Augusto Pinochet, who really did deserve hanging, for example. Put into power by a CIA backed coup on September 11th 1973 that murdered Salvador Allande, the democratically elected leader of Chile, and supported by both the United States and the United Kingdom for 17 years. Surharto, Marcos, Ceausescu, the list goes on.

Henry Kissinger, who used to described himself as a 'swinger' and personally organised and sanctioned the coup in Chile, has been responsible, directly and indirectly, for more deaths and wholesale destruction than we could ever hold Saddam Hussein accountable for and for that he recieved the Nobel Peace prize. This is the hypocrisy that passes for foreign policy amongst the most powerful nations on earth.

Let's not forget that Saddam Hussein was once an ally of the west. Our Dictator. He was supported and equipped by the United States and Great Britain throughout the ten year Iran-Iraq war during which he used poison gas, that had been supplied by western laboratories, against the Iranians and the Kurds. Yet it was only when he attacked oil rich Kuwait, apparently with the permission of the United States, that he became a top ten enemy.

Throughout his twenty four years rule in Iraq he managed to unify a deeply divided country. He built roads and schools and began a series of state welfare and modernisation programs that brought electricity and fresh water to even the remotest rural communities. His government also introduced free education for all Iraqis and addressed the huge problem of Iraqi illiteracy with great success. He created one of the most modernised public health systems in the Middle East which earned him an award from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
His regime was one of the very few secular and modern regimes in the entire region. His Pan-Arabic brand of Ba'thist socialism was a sworn enemy of the religious fundamentalism that had taken root in most other Arabian countries.
Politics is always about expediency and Saddam Hussein, who had been such useful asset for the west for so long, had just ceased to serve any useful purpose. He became an obstacle standing between Iraqi oil and it's expropriation by western oil interests. He didn't fit into the new geopolitical world view of the Washington Neocons and their Project for the New American Century.

In death Saddam Hussein has become an on line phenomenon. Footage of his execution is widely available on the web and is drawing more and more hits as each day passes. There seems to be a prevalent attitude that because it's Saddam Hussein being executed it's somehow okay to watch but if it was video footage of even an unnamed dog being hung there would be a public outcry. Perhaps we should have no sympathy for him at all but, regardless of what he represented and the terrible things he did or ordered to be done, he was still a human being and as such he deserves at least a little dignity in death, otherwise we have become as heartless and ruthless as our so called 'enemies' and our fight becomes even more pointless than perhaps it already is...

V. Christ

Commercial Ladyland

2006-06-14T06:14:00.000+09:00

He seemed to appear from nowhere. Covered in badges of every description from "I love longleat" to "Pole-axe the Poll Tax". A man from another time. Another space.

Wearing day-glow holographic "Love and Peace" glasses, one of the lenses missing. The sun beat down on him as he shambled along the thoroughfare that ran between the rows of tents, wide enough for a 4x4 or a people carrier to pass through, in the red zone of the camping area at the Isle of Wight Festival.

I couldn't quite believe my eyes. I'd been there for two days already with my friend Grim and we hadn't seen one really interesting person so far. We'd seen people dressed up and in the festival mood but those costumes were hired and put on for the weekend. This guy was the real thing. His look had grown on him over many years like a psychedelic moss. He wore his tattered cowboy hat like an Australian jungle fighter, one side pinned up with a dirty string or bootlace for a chinstrap. His hands were filthy and thick with the residue of canned food. I could smell him even though he was standing down wind and at least ten feet away.
Like I said before, Grim and I had been at the Isle of Wight Festival for two days already. We'd gotten in on free tickets that Grim had won in a fixed magazine competition and it seemed like a good idea to get away from the summer heat of the town for a weekend.
I was looking forward to the random events of the festival scene. The births the deaths the marriages and the murders.
There was also a feeling of pilgrimage about the journey. After all this had been the festival that was famous for two of the last appearances of both the Doors and Jimi Hendix and the energy and magic of that mythical era still resonated and pulsed for me at the mention of what was in my mind the British Woodstock.
The freaks and troubadours would be everywhere, jumping out of every bush, with wild eyes and wide smiles, their mandolins stuffed with Heroin, Hashish and LSD. But as soon as we arrived we realized that this would not be the case.
The festival had more of the feel of a steam rally or a Hitler youth meeting. Nearly every one we met was immaculately dressed either in designer gear or the ubiquitous England football shirt. The look was straight off the high street. Slip on Addidas trainers, knee length shorts and skin heads for the guys. Cowboy boots, crop tops, big sunglasses and breast implants for the girls. What was going on here? What had we stumbled into exactly?
At first I thought we were in the wrong place and that soon we'd see a Tombola or a home made cake stall. But no. This was actually it.

The famous 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was actually the last of three festivals that had been held there since 1968 and had at that time the record for the highest attendance of any outdoor gig in the UK with a crowd of 600,000 people, over twice the number of people who had been at Woodstock a week earlier. The "peace and love" era had quickly passed its high water mark and was coming to an end. The horror of Altamont was yet to come and the influence of big business was being felt more and more in what had once been an underground scene. Despite the subsequent media myths of flower children and the love generation the Isle of Wight Festival was described at the time by members of the audience as a "Psychedelic concentration camp".

I was a little disturbed by the fact that nobody had offered us any drugs so far. This was like finding no Negroes in Harlem or no Guinness in Ireland on St. Patricks Day. It just didn't happen.
I couldn't remember any other festival that I'd ever been to being like this.
I remember one year at Glastonbury when I'd climbed in over the wall using a stolen rope ladder, before my feet had even hit the ground, I was surrounded by drug-peddling Rastas crying "Speed-Hash-Es-Trips!" That was a festival. There had been a guy next to me with his own home made rope ladder cobbled together with bits of tow-rope, twigs and thick branches. He was a real bona fide hippy getting all the heads in for free. I was charging £20 per person to get in using my own ladder. You see I was skint and as it turned out everyone that came in over the wall on my rope ladder looked like some kind of corporate executive anyway. The rot was already setting in .
Along the top of the security wall ran rows of sharp spikes to deter any would-be intruders. I was just folding up my rope ladder when I heard a scream. I turned around and saw the hippy hanging by one impaled hand from the top of the twelve foot fence. One of the branches/rungs of his rope ladder had snapped and as he had slipped one of the spikes had gone straight through his hand. I managed to help him down eventually but he had quite a nasty hole in his hand and he was an ugly colour too. The poor guy was obviously in shock as well as being in a lot of pain and high as a kite. He threw up. I offered to get him to a first aid tent but he just wanted me to help him back to his converted ambulance.
"I've got some plasters there man."
It was obvious to me that he needed more than a plaster but he insisted that he'd be fine.
"It's just a scratch" he said as the blood poured out of his hand.
I walk him slowly back through the festival towards the camping area. He was on the verge of fainting, getting paler by the second.
"That's my ambulance over there..the one with the...smoke coming...ahhh no!!!"
Now he was running towards the ambulance with me following.
"No no no..noooo maaannn".
I wasn't quite sure what was going on at this point but I soon found out. When my injured friend had set out that day to do his good work with the rope ladder he'd stashed all his money and the drugs he was going to sell and take that weekend in the burner that he had had fitted in his ambulance. While he was away one of his stoned friends had lit the thing. As we got there my injured friend was close to tears. He opened the door of the burner and pulled out the red hot smoldering tin that had contained his drugs and cash and badly burnt both of his hands in the process....Ha ha ha! Yes that was one to remember. There seemed to be no danger of anything like that happening here at the Isle of Wight, but then the badge man arrived.
I caught his eye as he came over. He was smoking and enormous joint and offered me some. As he passed it to me I noticed large ragged scars on both sides of one hand and the waxy remains of severe burns on the palms of both of them.
"You got a light?" He asked...

Friday Night On The Alter Of Mars

2006-05-06T22:24:00.000+09:00

It all happened so quickly and was over in a flash. It's hard now to say for certain what happened but I think it all began to go wrong when I drank what I though was a glass of whiskey that someone had left on the bar. It tasted like very cheap and dangerous liquor but I'm not one to let things go to waste so I knocked it back.
It was getting late and the bar was about to close. I'd had a strange evening already so far. I was with a couple that I know well and we'd had a little cocaine earlier but they'd got a bit jumpy in one of the previous bars that we'd been in because I was having a conversation about drugs with the bar staff. Its not like I was selling scag or anything like that but suddenly my friends started to gather their things together and stood up to leave. Jumpy. I was a little bewildered by this, not thinking that I'd done anything particularly wrong but not 100% sure that I hadn't either. Surely just talking about things that are on your mind isn't likely to offend anyone that much. I'm pretty sure no one was really listening anyway.
Out in the street my friends started to to scold me about my behavior. I thought this was a little odd because nothing had really happened but I decided that it probably wasn't worth arguing about and we'd all be better of just going somewhere else and having another drink. It was Friday night after all. Before we could do that however, my friends wanted to quickly roll a joint back at their flat which was close to the bar that we were heading to. I thought this a little ironic considering the conversation we'd just had but they seemed not to think anything was wrong. No double standards.
Well, the joint was rolled and smoked on the way and we got to a bar called 'The Freemasons'. A place I would never normally have gone but whole evening was off kilter already so in we went. The bar was surrounded by men in shiny shirts with the most lewd and lecherous looks upon their shaved and sented faces. I sat down on a bar stool and my friends ordered some drinks. Looking round and caught the eye of a middle aged woman who was standing next to me with another lady. They both had that kind of washed out and jaded look you'd associate with cheap pornography.
I started to tell them how Adolf Hitler deserved a little love and understanding and that our compassion should know no limits but the conversation didn't last long. They both looked horrified but I had a feeling they had been looking for something that would offend them for most of the evening. I lied and told them I was a Jew thinking that this might reassure them that I wasn't a member of the BNP or any other Neo Nazi organization and drew their attention to the fact that one of my friends was from Zimbabwe. But no, the damage was done.
I turned back to my drink and next to it on the bar was the mysterious glass of free whiskey. It was all alone. No one seemed to own it so I assumed it must have been forgotten or left behind by another inebriate. It was a little cloudy but I drank it down anyway. It's difficult to say for sure how it tasted because by then my palette was a little crowded but I'm almost certain that it wasn't urine.
After a little while I began to feel light headed and talkative. My cheeks were hot and my throat was dry. A guy stepped up to the bar next to me and ordered a drink so while he waited I thought it would be a good idea if we had a chat. I asked him where everybody got their shiny shirts from and if they were expensive. He just stared at me flexing his jaw muscles with a look of pure hatred in his eyes. Lying once more I told him that I was a session keyboard player who had worked with many famous acts in my time. I asked him who his favorite band or act was. It turned out to be Kasabian. Sure, I'd worked with them. All that Hammond stuff. That was me. This seemed to cheer him up slightly until I told him that they were all gay and had a taste for underage boys. I could see that I'd have to get out of there quickly but the cloudy whiskey was working in strange ways. I think it was spiked. L.S.D perhaps. He looked great in his shiny shirt though.
'What kind of material is this?' I demanded to know. 'Was this something that NASA designed?' My head was swimming. The lights of the bar glowed hellishly around me. I tried to focus on his face but it seemed to be turning to mush. I grabbed his arm and asked him how long he'd been in Kasabian but he was already backing away heading for the exit.
Last orders were called and my friends and I left the bar. A few yards down the road we could see a crowd of people gathered outside a house from which the sound of loud dance music was coming. It was obviously a party. All the people waiting to get in were quite young. Late teens early twenties perhaps. I forced our way to the front of the cue expecting to walk straight in but already I could seen things were not shaping up the way I had thought they would. I must have looked completely wired because as soon as the guys on the door saw me they kind of bunched together and formed a human wall.
'Sorry. Its a private party'.
'Get out of the way I'm an arsonist'.
These people hated us. That was clear. A few bigger guys came down from the party upstairs to defend the door from us. I was just about to leave anyway but one of them thought he'd try and be diplomatic.
'Hey, hey. Its Friday night and I'm sure there are plenty of places to go other than this party so just move along now and find somewhere else where you're welcome. Okay?'.
I don't know but, I think it was the tone of his voice or the smug style of his oratory that offended me and the way he had added an almost apologetic 'Okay?' to the end of his statement. I didn't like his inexperienced and young bloated face either. Why was he talking to me? Why was he making me feel as welcome as a pedophile at a christening? Enough was enough. This young man needed to be taught a lesson.
There were probably about six of these guys at the door. One in particular caught my eye. He was huge. Broad and muscular, with a provicially handsome but stupid face. He was the one I'd have to go for first. If he went down the others would scatter. Of that I was sure. And after, all I could see everything clearly now.
Uttering a hideous and blood curdling war cry I leapt punching into the crowded door way. At first I had the better of them. Surprise was on my side and they had no room to maneuver in such a small space. My own momentum carried me forward and sent a couple of my foes flying backwards through the door. I was desperate to get to the big guy before he got to me and to show no fear in the face of such odds. It didn't last very long. I think he hit me on the forehead with his elbow and managed to shove me back from the doorway. I tripped on the stone steps and hit the pavement hard. They poured out after me onto the street like hornets. One came in too soon and I managed to chop his legs away with a sweep of my own but I still had to contend with the big guy. The odds were hopelessly stacked against me. There was no way I could have won and what the hell was I doing anyway? It was the spiked fire water that was fighting these boys, not me.
My friends had managed to step in and separate me from what would have been a royal beating no doubt. My shirt was completely torn from my back and I stood there with it hanging down to my knees in tatters.
What an ugly scene. One of my friends was shouting at me now. In fact, he was like a raving madman, insulting me and saying terrible things. Anyone passing by at this point would have thought that we had been fighting. I was glad that he had stepped in and saved me but, still, I told him to go and fuck himself and walked off towards home and a beautiful pale red 'Hunters' moon that hung like a huge bloodshot eye on the horizon...

Between The Lines

2005-09-26T18:12:00.000+09:00

Why are we seemingly more shocked at the news of a supermodel taking drugs than we appear to be at the stories of professional misconduct in an illegal war? Surely drugs and a hedonistic lifestyle are as much a part of the territory for a model as violence is for a soldier. So why does it come as such a surprise when a woman, who's whole adult life and career has been geared towards the celebration of high living and trivial posturing, does something as mundane as taking a few lines of cocaine with her junkie boyfriend? Some people have said that it has been Miss Moss's looks that have protected her up till now but wasn't it just that no one had published a photograph of her taking drugs? I'm sure that those few lines were really just all in a days work for her and that she's been much more debauched than that before. The whole story reeks of jealousy and envy and diversion. Miss Moss lives the kind of life that most of us can only dream of but that's not to say that we wouldn't step into her expensive designer shoes if we could. The popular media can "tut-tut" at her behaviour but only hypocritically because most of the writers have probably done exactly the same thing only, perhaps, not as part of Kate's entourage. And after all what else is she going to do with her money? She's not going to wipe out third world debt is she? I doubt she really ever thinks long and hard about it. She's living only to satisfy her senses as most of us are. She just gets to do it in a more lavish way than most. She's been brought up to be an avatar of style. Her world is that of the dressing up box, and to give her credit, she plays the parts that she's dressed for very well. She brings a touch of authenticity to the wasted drug chic look.
The Moss story has dominated the news this weekend but, while the Nation seemed hypnotised by the lurid stories about the models private life, thousands of anti-war demonstrators were marching in London. The Stop The War Coalition was calling for British troops to be brought back from Iraq after the debacle in Basra but this important story really didn't get a look in next to Kate's sex and drug scandal. Miss Moss seems to be a handy media diversion when more important stories with greater political relevance need to be buried, like the one about the seventeen members of the Welsh Guards, who Prince William trained with last summer, who all tested positive for drugs yesterday.

Spiritual Highs

2005-09-20T00:36:00.000+09:00

I always go out for a drink with my friends wrongly thinking it will only be a quiet one and that I'll only have a couple and leave it at that. This is always my first mistake. As much as I try not to drink excessively the fact that most pubs are really boring and offer no entertainment apart from alcohol abuse drives me to it. One drink invariably leads to another and once you get on a roll its hard to stop. The Irishman in me punches his way out and I become a blood and glory poet. No one is safe when I'm in this condition. My inspired and rather sodden alcoholic freeform lyricism is a gift that I generously give to all. Pub furniture, like the tables and chairs, become props, cliff tops, crags and precipices from which I declare my creed. I become a whacked out Baptist spilling the libation and anointing every head, familiar and strange, with the god of the vine and hop. I aspire to that point of complete saturation where even the world itself is sloshing around in my glass as a liquid reality. Strangers are not safe. All their smiling enamelled faces come swooning in for a slap of vapourous wisdom. (But of course there are no strangers..we are all friends here). They know what I'm talking about. I can see everything clearly through the crystal ball of my shot glass. In a state of trance the revelations and insights flow freely through me like a spirit medium. In doubles and trebles the facts pour out of my wine stained mouth. Staggering through the galleries of drinkers like an acrobat with severe frontal lobe damage I bark and reel. My happy hour companions have a king. We launch a golden arrow at the rafters and cut the hour hand in half. With all the wrong phone numbers and different names I sail to the bar and conquer a foreign drink. As we approach closing time it becomes more and more obvious that I need to take the barman into my confidence and with secret signs and gestures I exercise the power of my will and persuasion as we begin to discuss the law. But he is a robot with a skate board and not as dangerous as his tattoos would suggest. A child in the skin of an ape. Not even Russian dancing will convince him of my magic so I ride my sorcery out through the double bolted doors into the oil slick of the midnight streets. Not even Italian Lesbians understand the currents of the after hours flood. Rivers of coal-eyed sleep walkers uttering turrette cries search for the Mecca of a late bar. Hate food is sold dripping in adrenaline to the victims of slow poisoning. And where are the covens and where are the Sabbaths? Where are the offerings to alters and bars? The sun is already chasing us home and although we swim against the drip tray tide I go to bed a god and wake up a man.

The Death Phalus

2005-09-17T08:42:00.000+09:00

"The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun."

Eyewitness Account of the Trinity Test

We have all lived in the long and terrifying shadow of the mushroom cloud for over half a century now. Some days you forget about "The Bomb" and on others the fear crawls out of the back of your mind and screams in your face. There is something strangely attractive about nuclear weapons. Is it the sheer power of these hideous devices that can be so enchanting? The mushroom cloud itself is an icon of a terror and destruction that is almost beyond imagination. It is the motif, along with the concentration camp and the starving child, that defines the twentieth century. It is the signpost that guides us to oblivion.

There we're two occasions in the Twentieth Century when the world was close to all out nuclear war. The first and most famous was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the second and less well know was in 1983 around the time that the Reagan administration announced it's plans to develop the anti-missile Strategic Defence Initiative that became know, rather comically, as "Star Wars".
The Russians we're so convinced that the United States and it's allies were preparing for a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union that the then head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, organised the Soviet military along with the KGB and the GRU for a campaign of global espionage, code-named RYAN, which was the Russian acronym for "nuclear missile attack" . This, primarily, was a heightened state of intelligence alert, instructing all foreign stations to conduct a constant watch for tell-tale signs of the build up to a Western nuclear strike. This meant hours of watching government buildings, noting the number of cars arriving and leaving, counting the number of lighted offices after normal working hours and generally looking for any signs of unusual activity. Tensions grew to fever pitch when on September 1st 1983
Soviet fighter jets shot down a Korean Airlines 747. The west was quick to condemn the attack on a civilian plane but the Russians claimed that it was on an espionage mission in Soviet airspace.

We don't have to guess what the effects of a nuclear war would be. We have had two very famous examples of the results that could be expected from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we add to those two tragedies the meltdown and subsequent explosions at Three mile Island and Chernobyl and the data collected from them we can get a very clear idea of the long term horror and suffering that an atomic war would engender. So thank the Gods that they've never really been used. Well that's a lie. "The Bomb" has been dropped, officially, at least 2,050 times between 1945 and 1998. 528 of these explosions were atmospheric detonations and the other 1,522 were carried out underground. These 'tests' have been carried out on every continent in the world. It's probably impossible to realistically estimate what the effects of this testing policy has been and what long term changes to our environment could follow but there have already been numerous scientific studies linking atomic testing to an increase in earthquake activity.

The costs of the nuclear program are astronomical. So far the total expense is estimated to be somewhere in the region of $5.8 trillion. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States is still spending $35 billion a year ($96 million per day) on its nuclear weapons. About $25 million per day goes on operation and maintenance and the rest is spent on ballistic missile defence research (the United States announced its withdrawal from the ABM treaty on the 14th of December 2001). The United States with all it's rhetoric about "rogue states" and "WMDs" is still the only nation on the face of the planet that is researching new ways in which to deploy nuclear warheads. As I'm writing this the United States is developing a new breed of "Bunker Buster" nuclear missiles for use in "conventional" warfare.

And all of this takes place in a world where 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity... It's not rocket science is it?

V. Christ.

Dimensional Mind Travel

2005-09-11T01:48:00.000+09:00

When I was 17 years old I stole a book called "The Psychedelic Encyclopedia" from a book shop in Brighton. I was experimenting with all kinds of drugs at the time but especially LSD, MDMA, Marijuana and Amphetamines. This book was like a Bible to me. It was written by a guy called Peter Stafford and there was a picture of him on the inside cover. He was a hairy bastard. A real American west coast hippie, smiling all over his stoned, drop-out face holding a baby. The baby was his daughter and Stafford had dedicated the book to her. He'd intended it to be a honest guide to altered states of consciousness for his kid.
It was without a doubt one of the most interesting and informative books that I'd ever read at that time about drugs and drug experiences. It covered everything I could think off. Laughing Gas, Cocaine, Mace, Petrol inhalation, Barbiturates. You name it man, it was all in there somewhere.
I would lie there on the floor of the squat where I lived with my friends, smoking a long fat joint in my beads and flares, turning the pages of this most sacred book, reading first hand accounts of the incredible states of mind that people like Gordon Wasson and Aldous Huxley had experienced while "The Doors" played on some crappy old stereo somewhere in the background. I began to see a timeless and hidden world revealing itself to me, full of intellectual, artistic and spiritual potential. I wanted to know more.
There was one thing above all in the book that really stood out and made a deep impression on me. It was a small paragraph describing the effects of DMT. Of course there were lots of descriptions about trips that people had taken on LSD and Psilocybin mushrooms. You know the kind of thing. Colours, sounds, loss of physical and psychological boundaries and all the rest of it but these descriptions went on and on and although they were all very interesting and helpful to a novice like me it was the fact that the description of the DMT experience was so very short that fascinated me. I can't remember who the quote came from but all it said, very simply, was "My arms and legs fell off and the garden of God opened up." Wow! That was one of the most intriguing things I had ever read. I had to get some of this mysterious substance. Now, it was easy to get Acid and dope and all the minor stuff but nobody could get any DMT. In fact, nobody had even heard of it and no one really seemed to be that interested either. Everybody wanted party drugs like Ecstasy and Speed and Hash. Things to make you dance and chat and fool around. Weekend drugs.
"It sounds like this stuff could really fuck you up, man." My Accountant and Bank clerk friends told me. "Here, have some Coke."
So the years rolled by and I got on with other things but the DMT was always there at the back of my mind and from time to time I would think about it and what I had read. I opened a small shop where I printed and sold t-shirts. Really I was just taking loads of drugs and making music but the shop kind of paid for the lifestyle so that was good enough for me. It was a doorway to the world. All kinds of people would walk in off the street, some crazy some cool some just looking for a t-shirt or a joint.
One day, towards the end of summer, a guy came in whose face I recognised. He looked southern or eastern European. Turkish or Greek. He said hello and we looked at each other for a while. I knew the him for sure. It was Maltese Dave. The Baron. An old, old friend. Dave and I used to drop Acid in the college canteen together every Tuesday before Dave went to see his psychiatrist. Dave was a paranoid schizophrenic who had been self medicating for years. Speed and Coke were his drugs of choice but, of course, they didn't really help. They just made him worse. His head was full of every kind of Masonic, pseudo religious, alien conspiracy going but he always had some good drugs on him and generally didn't mind sharing them with you. So we rolled and smoked a joint and chatted about what we'd been up to and how things had changed and how the people we had know and hung out with had drifted away, or died, or got married and then committed suicide. Happy days. It wasn't long before I asked Dave what he had for sale and for the first time in the conversation he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Have you tried any of this 'All Seeing' shit?" He took a wrap out of his puffer jacket pocket and opened it. Inside was a yellowish powdered crystal of some kind.
"What the fucks that Dave?" I laughed. "Speed again?" Dave stared into space.
"No man, this is the fucking food of the Gods. This is the eye on the Pyramid man. The key to the fucking mysteries!"
"What is it?" I asked. It didn't even look like half a gram.
"This," said Dave "is D...M...T!"
Well, a strange silence fell upon the room when he said those magic words. I'd been waiting for this stuff to appear for fourteen years and now here it was in The Barons trembling hand. I stared at the wrap for a while. Neither of us spoke for some time. It didn't really look that impressive. Just some yellow crystals but I felt excited and curious.
"Have you been taking this stuff Dave?" I looked at him. He was gazing at the D.M.T. with an unusually loving and calm look on his face.
"What does it do to you Dave?" I asked, watching him carefully.
He looked up and smiled darkly as he started to softly laugh.
"I don't know what it does to you man, but it does it really quickly and it does it completely. This is the strangest fucking experience I've ever had and, if you want, I can sell you this last wrap. Its £200 a gram but I've got three hits here that you can have for 40 quid."
"What do I do with it?"

"You smoke it like Crack, in a pipe, and then "BOOM!" You're off."

"How long does it last?" I was already getting the money out of my pocket.
"Fifteen minutes, start to finish. Do it with someone you trust man, just to watch out for you but don't worry about a thing. It's all good."
I gave Dave the cash and with that he said a quick good bye and left the shop.
I'd finally got it. I actually had some D.M.T. in my possession. Amazing! I held it up to my nose and smelt it. It had an unsual and indescribable smell like nothing I'd ever smelt before. It hit a strange area of the senses somewhere between smell, taste and sight, like nothing on earth. It did cross my mind that Dave had just ripped me off and given me some kind of cleaning agent but there was only one way to know for sure and that was to try the stuff out.
Above the shop there was an office that a couple of friends of mine rented from the same criminally insane landlord as me. Both true heads and good men. One was a ruddy faced red headed drunken brawler called Lyle Smith the other was a bisexual mystic by the name of Calder. It seemed only natural and in keeping with the unwritten law that we should take this trip together. There was just one problem. Despite the fact that Dave had said there was enough D.M.T. for three people it just didn't look like enough to me so I thought it would be a better idea just to divide the stuff into two hits. One for me and one for Lyle. Calder would come with us though, just to make sure we didn't get into any trouble and Lyle's medicine woman girlfriend, Fey, was going to come along as well. She had a video camera and wanted to film the whole thing so the kids could watch it.

So, we set off to a place called Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex, a strange place associated with legends of human sacrifice and Devil worship. Just the spot for this kind of delicate soul operation. When we arrived we found a gang of kids riding around on BMXs by the exposed roots of an ancient tree, one of them dressed a Darth Vader. The auspices were good. After a little scout about we found the perfect place. A small clearing in a circle of trees. Calder and Fey lit some candles and incense and put them in place at the edge of the clearing while I made a makeshift pipe from a plastic bottle and divided the D.M.T. in two. Lyle sat cross legged and waited. Everything was ready. I filled the pipe carefully and with a salute I lit the pipe and inhaled the smoke deeply. I had know idea what to expect. I held the smoke in my lungs for as long as I could and then began to gently exhale. As I did so it seemed as if I was becoming the smoke itself. My body seemed to be disappearing. I could hear an incredible rushing and popping sound. I seemed to be turning into water. It was like a universal orgasm or a French kiss from the cosmos. I was at the centre of some benign atomic explosion. Cell by cell, molecule by molecule, I was falling apart. I just didn't exist physically any more. I was sub atomic. I was a particle travelling at the speed of light into a space of infinite proportions. I was limitless. I was stretched beyond dimensions, beyond comprehension. I was pure consciousness. I could here a roaring sound everywhere. The music of the spheres. It felt as if all the metaphors and symbols that I thought I understood were being shattered, one by one, in an absolute, apocalyptic and final iconoclastic moment. Here was God, the Devil, Buddha, Allah, Jesus Christ and all the angels, Krishna, Quetzacotl, Yama, Marxism, Fascism, Money, Nations, everything and all of us, all face to face and all together. All exploding. I was all of them and they were me. We were the whole of time, past, present and future. All I could comprehend was revealed as a limitation, as was I, and behind me and all of these convenient myths was a mystery and a reality so immense and so absolute and so real that I thought I would go insane but I was propelled beyond sanity which was yet another myth, another limitation. It seemed to me at this point that I was being asked questions, by whom or what I have no Idea, but my answers to those questions were so important at that moment, there was no room for half truths here. The safety of my very soul and the sanctity of the whole of creation was in the balance. I was screaming now. The scream seemed to come from the depths of oceans, from the depths of the Universe. It came through me. Out of my cells. I was the scream. The monkey roared and was terrified of his own voice. I was aware of my naked soul but I was entering Eden, not leaving.
"YES!" I screamed. "YES! FOR EVERYONE! FOR US ALL!" Over and over and over again. The same reply. "YES! YES! YES!"
I was not aware of my surroundings at all. with my eyes open or closed It was the same. I was gone man. Really gone. But I was there, if you know what I mean. I was home. What I could see is even harder to explain. The feelings, I can, with some difficulty and thought, just about put into words but what I saw was truly indescribable and to even begin to try would do that vision no justice. I can say it was beautiful but that is not enough. To say it was beauty itself would be closer to the truth but still far from adequate. And this, I think, is the point. There are just some things that you can't explain, things that don't need an explanation. They are what they are. You just can't categorise experiences like this. You can't measure them and log them or put them in a drawer in a museum somewhere. You have to live them. The experience itself is explanation enough.

I gradually began to come round. I was lying on my back quite happily blown away. I could see the old familiar world begin to reform itself, layer by layer. The faces of Calder and Fey orbited above me like suns. It was the faces I recognised at first. Familiar features like their eyes and smiling mouths and then gradually everything else. I loved them more than anything else in the world at that moment. In a way they had come to welcome us back from our journey although we had all travelled together. Lyle was lying next to me in the clearing roaring with timeless laughter, staring wide eyed at the tree canopy above. I rolled over and embraced him and kissed his laughing mouth. Slowly we got to our feet and, still in each others arms, ventured out of the clearing onto the brow of a hill that overlooked the Sussex countryside. The BMX kids were all huddled together staring up the hill towards us. There was an adult there with them who I suppose they must have gone to get when they heard the screaming coming from the clearing. After all, in many ways, this was their hill and we were strangers here. They didn't approach us even though I offered them one of the bananas I was now eating. We lingered there for a while in wonder and in play like children, watching the sun go down until Fey, Calder, Lyle and myself made our way down the hill back towards the road that would take us home, no longer the same people that had gone up the hill but, in many respects, still unchanged.

V. C.

Box Clever

2005-09-09T07:17:00.000+09:00

"It's extremely rare that we don't get the recorders back. I can't recall another domestic case in which we did not recover the recorders."
Ted Lopatkiewicz
spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board

"Black Box" flight recorders have been used in aviation since the 1940s and have been improved greatly since then. The early flight recorders were only designed to record the actual flight conditions of the aircraft, i.e., heading, altitude, airspeed, vertical accelerations and time. It was not until 1965 that, by law, the first cockpit voice recorders (CVR) had to be installed. The CVR was designed to record the last 30 minutes of conversation between the cockpit crew and ground control onto magnetic tape. This required very complex fire and crash protection for the "Black Box" that would enable the device to survive a crash in excess of 1000gs. To give you an idea of just what kind of impact that might be bare in mind that an astronaut taking off in a rocket would experience about 3-5gs and the gravity of the Earth is 1gs.
Even grater improvements were made to the "Black Box" throughout the 1970s and 80s until eventually, in the 1990s, flight data was able to be recorded using solid state equipment using semiconductor memories or integrated circuits rather than the older and more fragile magnetic tape. These state of the art flight data recorders are now designed to store information from up to 300 different sensors on board an aircraft in comparison to the initial 5 parameters that the early "Black Boxes" could record. Every commercial aircraft in operation in the world today has two digital flight data recorders fitted into its tail section.
Each flight recorder has to withstand rigourous testing before it can be declared safe for use. Each test has to be done in sequence and each test is designed to leave no doubt that the "Black Box" can withstand the most extreme conditions.

Crash Impact Test -- It has been agreed that 3400gs for 6.5 ms would be required to meet most accident scenarios. This test is actually performed with a cannon. A Fairchild CVR has survived a crash that was estimated to be more than 6000 gs.

Static Crush -- In this test, 5,000-pound pressure is applied against all six axis points.

Pierce Test -- A pierce test employs a 500-lb. weight dropped from 10 feet. It has been modified to be performed with a hardened steel pin.

Fire Test -- The devices are subjected to 1100 degrees Centigrade for 60 minutes, then undergo 10 hours at 260 degrees Centigrade. Because of its outstanding fire survival record, the Fairchild Model A100CVR was used as the model to insure mandated standards could be obtained.

The "Black Box" is one of the most important inventions in aviation history. The information retrieved from these devices has probably enabled improvements to be made to aircraft that have saved countless lives and provided crash investigators with vital information about the final moments before a crash.

So, with all this in mind, I can't help thinking about September 11. When I watched the second plane hit the south tower of the WTC, my first thought was, "This is war!" My second thought was, "The Black Boxes!"
I had no doubt in my mind that the flight recorders would be recovered and that we would all eventually hear or read the transcripts of those final moments before impact. So I waited. I watched the scenes of incredible destruction and the massive clear-up operation that followed and all the grief that went with it. I waited as I listened to George W. Bush talking through his bullhorn standing on a pile of rubble at "Ground Zero", all that remained of the World Trade Centre, but I didn't hear anything about the "Black Boxes".
"Black Box" flight recorders have been recovered from mountains, swamps, deserts and even from the bottom of the worlds deepest oceans but not from the World Trade Centre in the middle of Manhattan. One of the flight recorders from flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania was found but apparently it was too badly damaged for its recorded contents to be analysed and the contents of the two flight recorders recovered from the Pentagon "crash" were also said to be beyond retrieval. This explanation seems so unlikely given the conditions that the "Black Boxes' are designed to withstand and it becomes even more unbelievable when you look at photographs of the Pentagon after the supposed crash. To begin with there is no wreckage outside the Pentagon and the damage seems incredibly limited considering a passenger jet has been intentionally flown into it. The fire damage to the area around the "Impact " zone is absurdly small. Tables, chairs and office equipment can all be seen but none seem to show any signs of being burnt by the 11300 gallons of fuel that the 757 would have been carrying and which would have ignited on impact. Apparently the bulk of the fire that followed the "crash" was put out in an incredible seven minutes which would have only been a fraction of the time that the "Black Boxes" have been built to withstand a serious fire. As for the World Trade Centre not one of the four "Black Boxes" contained in the tail sections of both planes was officially said to have been found, not even any remains. No charred or crushed components from the flight recorders were found either. We are expected to believe that something designed to withstand perhaps even a nuclear explosion was completely destroyed by the collapse of two office buildings after a plane crash but that several blocks away from The World Trade Centre a paper passport supposedly belonging to one of the alleged hijackers was found intact. Why would a suicide bomber bring a passport with him on a domestic flight even though he knew he wouldn't need one then, or ever again? And doesn't it seem incredible that something as small as a passport was conveniently found among all the debris and dust of the fallen buildings but four flight data recorders each the size of a shoe box emitting audio detection signals remained undiscovered?

Well, it seems that at least three of the four "Black Boxes" were found by two ground zero rescue workers. Honorary fire fighter Mike Bellone has claimed that he was approached, along with his colleague Nicholas DeMasi, by FBI agents and told to "keep his mouth shut" after the discovery. Apparently there are several other witnesses who saw the "Black Boxes" but according to Bellone they have all been silenced by the FBI. Officially the case seems to be closed.
There is only one reference to the flight data recorders in the 9-11 commission report and it comes in the form of a foot note in Chapter 1:

"The CVR's and the FDR's (voice and flight data recorders) from American 11 and United 175 were not found."

But then, neither were any weapons of mass destruction......

V. Christ

The Big Easy

2005-09-04T00:01:00.000+09:00

"There is growing evidence that hurricane Katrina was the work of Islamic terrorists. The wreckage of several planes can clearly be seen in amongst the debris that the category 5 storm left in its wake. Evidence has been found in New Orleans that could represent a direct link to Al Quaeda and although the terror organisation has yet to claim responsibility for the "Attack" American Government sources have said that it is almost definitely the work of Islamic Jihadists under the control of Osama Bin Laden."

Of course nobody has said what you've just read. This was not a terrorist attack on the American Homeland, or is it "The Fatherland"?. No, this was an act of god as they say, but was it a Christian God or an Islamic God? Was it a result of Global Warming and is it just a taste of things to come? Whatever it is and whatever you would like to imagine it is one thing is certain, it's the biggest natural disaster to hit America since the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.

It seems almost Impossible that New Orleans has been ignored for so long. A workable rescue plan should have been in place and ready to go for a long time before a situation like this one arose. In a city of such cultural, historical and psychic importance why was there no contingency plan in place ready to be acted upon when an inevitable disaster like this one arose. Vital funds, of course, have been diverted away from projects that would have provided for a situation like the one here. Defence and homeland security have swallowed the lions share of the budget available so that America, the worlds only "Superpower" can send thousands of troops and equipment with state of the art communications capabilities anywhere in the world at a moments notice but it can't organise a rescue operation in it's own back yard and, of course, this has been part of the problem for New Orleans. Vital manpower and hardware is tied up elsewhere on the planet. Troops and equipment that would been sent into the disaster zone as rescuers are simply not available to help. They're too busy in Iraq and Afghanistan trying to secure safe routes for stolen oil and gas and fighting a population who they've been terrorising for at least ten years already. It seems that the U.S.A. is just so much better at destroying another region or another country's infrastructure than it is at maintaining or rebuilding one of it's own.
George W. Bush is rhetorically at a loss when faced with a situation like the `New Orleans disaster. Without an enemy or a bogeyman to lay the blame at the door of he's lost for words. It becomes painfully apparent that he has no real resolve or any real leadership qualities of any value. His predatory Neo-Conservative advisers cannot find an angle for spin in this situation. In the flood waters of New Orleans Bush's gangster administration is hopelessly out of it's depth. Bush was of course in the middle of yet another holiday when hurricane Katrina struck and reluctantly cut it short but still didn't manage to visit the area until five days after the event. Like Nero he was fiddling while Rome burned or, rather, he golfed while America drowned. I hope that politically this will be the beginning of the end for this arrogant man and his dangerous administration who have done more in the last few years to divide and destabilise the world than any other American Presidency in living memory. Bush should have followed the words of his favourite philosopher a little more closely and built his political house on much higher ground.

Vincent Christ

Land Of The Setting Sun

2005-08-30T01:12:00.000+09:00

Japanese Lawmakers Chastised for Reading Manga
By Prime Minister Koizumi

"Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi chastised junior members of the Japanese parliament Thursday for reading manga during legislative sessions. The Asahi newspaper reported that the dressing-down took place during a luncheon. According to the article, Koizumi told the lawmakers, "Don't send e-mail on your cell phones or read comic books in Parliament while in session."

When I was coming home from Tokyo to Yokohama this evening, for what will probably be the last time for a while, I noticed an ageing Japanese businessman staring at my girlfriend with an intensely dark and lustful look upon his face. I wasn't surprised. My girlfriend's very sexy and, after all, being a beautiful western woman out here in Japan she must appear quite exotic. It's not the first time I've noticed Japanese men looking at her in this openly passionate way. I've seen them tracing the curves of her naked body beneath her skimpy summer clothes, their eyes lingering on her small firm breasts, unconsciously licking their lips almost hypnotised by the rhythmical swaying of her hips as she walks along Japans humid city streets.
You can see the Oriental mind at work behind the eyes of those men. I know what they're thinking. I think it myself when I look at her. Devilish thoughts that only men can think. I've lost count of the times I've had to stare these guys down when they've noticed that I've noticed them. I do it in a firm but fair way. I say to them, with my eyes,
"Stop. I know you're a man. I know you want this woman, you slit eyed baby killing monster. But you've looked enough now." Firm but fair. Eye to Eye. Man to Man. That usually does it.
It's only the older guys who behave like this though. The younger men seem quite timid in comparison. They're nervy and awkward. They are not the "Kamikaze" generation. They are a neutered and sexless breed. They look away. The older generation of men, those who are in their eighties now, the ones who tortured my grandfather and his brother Willy in prisoner of war camps in Burma for three long, hellish years until they both looked like skeletons and not even their own Mothers and wives recognised them when they came home at last. Those are the men who still seem to be "Real" men in this country. Those murdering, suicidal bastards who terrorised the South Pacific trying stop "Our" homicidal, thieving, gutter scum from continuing to do the same.
I've never seen one of these old Nazi's reading a "Manga" comic book but the younger men never seem to read anything else. "Manga" can be extremely graphic in it's violent and sexual content but there are strict rules about depicting internal organs. The old boys stick firmly to politics and sport with maybe a little gardening thrown in for good measure. They've seen enough internal organs to last a lifetime. Their's was the generation that saw Hiroshima, Nagasaki and an empire ruled by a living god in the human form of the Emperor.
The young men of Japan to day have Junichiro Koizumi, a prime minister with the strangest hair cut in world politics. A great admirer of the country that nuked Japan into surrender in 1945 and it's current president/dictator George W. Bush, Koizumi has been called the "Japanese Richard Gere". When he met his "Look alike" at a film premiere in Tokyo they did an old style ballroom dance together but Gere insisted on leading and being "The man" . Koizumi is also a huge Elivis fan and once sang a duet with Tom Cruise of Presley's "I want you, I need you, I love you."
What's even more worrying is that now, under Koizumi, Japan is considering rearming fully so that it will no longer just have and military designed for purely defensive purposes. This rearmament will of course be aided by the United States, a country that already enjoys far to much military freedom in the world. Imagine Japans new "Manga" addicted troops unable to even look a woman travelling on the subway in the eye.
There's a rumour going around now that Japan will soon suffer a terrorist attack by the elusive "Al Quaeda". I guarantee that it will. This will allow the only fully developed Asian country to follow its military agenda and re-arm itself to the teeth with American and British made weaponry. Koizumi will declare a state of emergency, form a coalition government and, with himself at the helm, will achieve full dictatorial powers in all but name thereby finding the loophole that will allow him to avoid giving up office after the obligatory two terms. Or if that fails he might star in a Japanese remake of "An officer And A Gentleman."

The Truth About Lies

2005-08-28T17:03:00.000+09:00

"The liars punishment is, not in the least that he cannot be believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else."

George Bernard Shaw.

I've always been a liar. No honestly. I have. I began when I was very young. One of my earliest memories is of telling a lie. I got caught in school at the age of seven with some extremely hardcore pornographic magazines that I had found on top of my fathers wardrobe. These were really strong Dutch publications specialising in the most deviant forms of sexual behaviour. I was caught red handed by the headmaster in the school playground showing some of my favourite pages to my good friend Ian Burt. The headmaster took me immediately to his office. He was a "Christian" and as soon as we stepped through the door of his room he began to give me a sermon about sexual morality and the sanctity of love between a man and a woman. Remember, I was only seven years old and I was also terrified of him.

"Where did you get these!?" He demanded as he turned the pages in wide eyed amazement. "Answer me, boy!"
Well, I had to think as fast as my young brain would allow me. I might have been terrified of the Headmaster but I was even more scared of my Father who I knew, out of a sense of shame and embarrassment, would beat me savagely when he found out what I'd done.
"I found them in the woods, Sir. There was a big cardboard box full of them." I lied.
For some reason I thought that he would believe this simple and ill conceived story and that would be the end of it. But of course it wasn't. He phoned my parents and they had to come to the school and receive their own sermon from him. My Father did indeed beat me savagely when I got home from school that afternoon and despite looking on top of his wardrobe for many years afterwards I never found any more good pornography there again.
Believe it or not, it was fear that drove me to lie. Fear and a sense of self preservation. I'm not blaming my parents or more specifically my Father for my tendency to lie. We're all just people and we all make mistakes but I think fear is the main motivation behind most lies. Fear of punishment and reprisals. Fear of ridicule and isolation. Fear of appearing stupid. Fear of loss. It's only natural I suppose. We've all told lies or been "economical" with the truth or sometimes said nothing at all, told silent lies, if you like.
If you're going to lie, and you are going to, you've either got to have a good memory or be able to tell new and even more convincing lies to cover for the ones that you forgot you told in the first place. Try to keep your lies big but simple and open ended enough or your story could collapse under the weight of it's own embellishment. Don't ever expect people to lie for you. It never works. People can't, in general, keep secrets and if something goes wrong you have to be prepared to be betrayed so make your lies your own and keep your cards close to your chest. Never keep a record of you lies. You don't need to be compromised by hard evidence written in black and white. But don't take my word for it...

V. Christ.

On Line Dating

2005-08-27T22:00:00.000+09:00

I always get a little nervous before an On-Line date. I never know what to wear or which cologne suits my mood. Am I passionate and unpredictable or passive and understanding? What if my date stands me up? Will I get there on time? It's easy to make a mistake with Time zone differences. What if I turn up and at 8:00 p.m. my time but it's three in the morning where they are!? And what if the girl/boy I'm meeting doesn't have a banana stuck up their arse like they did in the photo on the web site that I found them on? What if they've died or never even existed? What then?
When I look through the seemingly infinite number of people available for "No strings attached-Easy going-Sexy-Mature-Bi curious-Horse loving-Gay-Single-Divorced-Student-Straight-Professional-Ex Services-Bookish-GSOH-Islamic-Judeo-Christian" good times my head just reels.
"Where do I fit in to this equation?" I ask myself. Do I have enough facets to my personality to be fully embraced by this "Special" section of society. Do I need my own vibrator?
The twilight world of On-Line daters is a strange and dimly lit place where the inhabitants wear nothing but incomplete sets of underwear. You know the kind of thing. Suspenders without knickers. Cup-less bras and chokers or long white socks and nothing else. Their strangely pixelated faces stare lustfully back at me from the Phone-Cam photos of themselves that they post on dead sites all over the Internet like images from the "Readers Wives" sections of a cheap soft porn magazine. It is an out of focus world that becomes harder to see the closer you get to it.
The guys are quite often shirtless and holding dumbbells or sitting in the driving seats of rented sports cars or both. The girls have names like "Angel" or "Trixie".The boys call themselves "Chuck" or "Rock".
What I can't figure out is why, if all of these people are so great and so attractive and fun loving, do they need to get a date this way. Can't they just go out and meet people? Is it just for easy sex? Is this just boredom? Or are there status and fashion issues here that they are trying to address?
I think perhaps a deep fear of meeting real people is all part of this phenomenon as well. There's a real "Damaged Goods" look about most of the people I've seen advertising themselves on-line. There's a faint trace of hysteria or nymphomania on the faces and in the eyes of the women and all the men seem to be very shady characters hiding something dark and violent behind their fake after shave model smiles. I get the feeling they're wife beaters or emotionally dysfunctional in a deeply dangerous and unpredictable way.

But, of course, On-Line dating can offer a few interesting things to those who decide to use it. If relationships have gone badly wrong in the past it can provide you with a certain amount of "Human" contact while still giving you the feeling that you have a little anonymity and a safety net of some kind.
People posting back comments can bring a touch of humour and an ego massage for free as well. I can imagine groups of girlfriends who are all members of On-Line dating sites getting together and comparing the replies and attempts at seduction by would-be suitors and laughing their fucking tits off.
But just remember...It's a little like buying something from a cut price catalogue. You have to be prepared to be disappointed. When your order finally arrives it's probably not going to fit or go with anything else that you've got and it won't look at all like it did in the photograph which in this case might not be such a bad thing.

V. Christ.

Is the Pope Catholic?

2005-08-27T01:18:00.000+09:00

Name:Joseph Alois Ratzinger.
Alias:Pope Benedict XVI.
Born:April 16th 1927.
Pace of Birth:Schultrasse 11, Marktl am inn.
Parents: Father-Joseph Ratzinger Sr. Police officer. Mother-Maria Ratzinger (nee Peintner). Barmaid.
Siblings:George (living) and Mariam (deceased)
Current Address: The Vatican Rome
Occupation:Pope.

The Rumours have spread well beyond the walls of the Vatican city. The Lies and accusations have been hurled and disputed ever since Joseph Alois Rat-zinger was Elected Pope Benedict "Benny" XVI after the death of Pope John Paul George and Ringo II (known to his close friends as "shaky"). Is the Pope Catholic? The answer is not an easy one. To get anywhere near the truth we'll have to go back to the beginnings of this secretive and sometimes hostile mans story.
Rat-zinger was born on the 16th of April 1927 at Schultrasse 11, Marktl am inn, Germany. His father, Joseph Ratzinger Sr. was a police officer with close ties to the Catholic Church. Ratzingers father met his mother Maria, a barmaid, during one of his many drinking bouts which were semi-legendary in the small hamlet where they both lived.
Ratizinger junior was a quiet and peace loving, some would say effeminate, boy. He joined the the Hitler Youth at the age of 14 in an attempt to escape his fathers plans for him to become a clergyman.
At age 16 he joined the "FLaK" anti-aircraft artillery corps which guarded the BMW aircraft engine plant north of Munich. He also served in telephone communications where he began to hone his talent for public speaking. He also had a stint setting up anti-tank defences in the Hungarian border area of Austria.
A few weeks before the end of the war Ratzinger deserted from the by now defeated German army. Ratzinger was briefly interned in a prisoner-of-war camp near Ulm and was repatriated on June 19, 1945. The family was reunited when his brother, George, returned after being repatriated from a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy.
After he was repatriated in 1945, he and his brother entered Saint Michael Seminary in Traunstein, and then studied at the Ducal Georgianum (Herzogliches Georgianum) of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. This was when Ratzinger began his rise through the echelons of the Roman Catholic Church that would eventually lead to his pontification in 2005. But before then a few mildly interesting things happened.
Ratzinger played a key role in silencing liberation theologians and the clergy in Latin America in the 1980s which will of course be remembered as an era defined by right-wing Reaganite policy and the rule of Fascistic and brutal regimes in Chile, Columbia and Argentina which were, in general, financed and trained by American C.I.A. operatives at the infamous "School of the Americas" .
During the pedophile scandals that have plagued the Catholic church he drafted and sent a letter to every bishop in the Roman Catholic Church reminding them of the strict penalties facing those who revealed confidential details concerning enquiries into allegations against priests of certain "Grave Ecclesiastical crimes", including sexual abuse. Lawyers acting for victims of alleged abuses claim that by sending the letter the then cardinal had in fact conspired to obstruct justice.
Ratzinger has been closely link to the prophesies of Our Lady Of Fatima. Lúcia dos Santos, the last of the three children to have been visited by the apparition of the Virgin at Fatima in Portugal was under orders not to discuss the revelations publicly unless given the freedom to do so by the then Cardinal Ratzinger who was one of the seven people known to have read the "Third Message" put into writing in 1944.
In 1984, an interview with Ratzinger, who is well know for his wicked sense of humour, said the letter deals with "dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore of the world", while stating that it marks the beginning of the end-times.Ha Ha. What a kidder!
So this brings us back to our initial question. Is the Pope Catholic? I think we can clear his name now once and for all. His record speaks for itself. No. The Pope is not Catholic. He's a Nazi.

V. Christ.

A drunk in yonder red light slum

2005-08-21T22:47:00.001+09:00

The slum fair was a happy go lucky kind of occasion. I'd wandered into it by accident on my way to buy some cigarettes and beer. There's always a shop open around here on route 16. The place never stops moving. You've got the 24 hour supermarkets serving dog biscuits and clap cream right next door to the all night sex clubs like "Sharon" just up the road from here. I always exchange a nod or a knowing wink with the guys on the door in their dinner jackets with dyed orange hair. They're kind of reassuring in a strange way. You get the feeling there's always someone on watch, guarding the turf. So I feel quite at home around here. It's safer than East London any day of the week. So why should a little slum fair be a problem?
There were all kinds of stalls and side shows and booths. The local Yakuza were out with their girls who carried small rat-like dogs on their tanned and slender tattooed arms. Small kids were accidentally killing gold fish as they tried to scoop them out of a plastic bathtub into the freezer bags and polystyrene food containers that they had brought with them to take their catch home in.
I was just wandering from stall to stall, dodging the crowds as best I could trying not to tread on any dogs. Plumes of greasy smoke engulfed me as the road side chefs flipped their sweet and sour "Pork" kebabs from side to side trying to get an even burn. Everything was going well. Old ladies with broken yellow teeth we're throwing 10,000 yen notes down as they bet in a cockroach race, cackling insanely whether they won or lost. It was the sense of occasion that kept the mood high and buoyant.
I was passing the children's street theatre performance of the "Rape of Najing" when suddenly I was violently struck in the stomach by a broom handle held by one of the small child actors dressed as a Japanese soldier.
"You Yankee! You die!" He cried as he thrust at me again with his imaginary bayonet.
I looked around me and , feeling a little embarrassed and not wanting to lose face which is a terrible thing in Japan, I hit the boy as hard as I could with a solid right hook which knocked most of his naturally crooked front teeth out. I followed this with a few powerful kicks to his stomach until I heard a satisfying cracking sound. He was down and out. Fair fight.
A crowd had by this time gathered around the boy and myself. He was still breathing but he couldn't walk so he had to be lifted onto a wheel barrow that was near by to be taken to the herbalists.
I turned to the crowd, lit a cigarette and wiped the boys blood from my fist.
"The Rape of Najing is a lie." I shouted at the top of my voice. A cheer went up from the crowd.
"It was a lie made up by shadowy and sinister powers in league with the cowardly Chinese to discredit the brave and fearless soldiers of the Japanese Imperial army." The crowd cheered again.
"I am not an American." Another cheer.
"I am British. This was never our war. This was a war that we we're both tricked into fighting by wall street bankers who were the only people to profit from the tragedy that robbed both our countries of their once glorious empires."
By this time I was held high on the shoulders of those around me as they carried me all the way home in a delirious slum procession that stretched along route 16 back to "Lions Mansions".

V. C.

Language & Food Special

2005-08-21T01:13:00.000+09:00

So you want to learn to speak English? Of course it would be my pleasure to help you....

Well, the best way to learn English, or any language is to learn how to cook with an foreign language speaker. Some people say that making love is a great way to learn about a language but I disagree. Usually during love making it's only the same two words that are repeated over and over again. It's usually "yes..yes..yessss" or "no..no..nooo". So it's not very good for expanding your vocabulary. But learning to cook a dish that you love can really help you to pick up those little bits of everyday English like a "pinch" of salt or a "drizzle" of olive oil.
The Ingredients are very important to. It is absolutely essential to get at least four very beautiful, young and charming women. They must be fresh. You can usually tell how fresh they are by giving them a gentle squeeze. They should be soft but still quite firm. Japanese women are generally preferable because they stay fresher for much longer. Add to this a full moon. You will also need a quantity of alcohol. This will keep the chef happy and when he's happy he works well. At this point you should gradually add a few jokes and a light sprinkling of female laughter. This should make the evening rise very evenly. Now take all of your ingredients and allow them to cook gently for about 3-4 hours. Gradually pour in a little Japanese politics add one Richard Gere (two will be very sickly) or a Vincent Gallo if you can catch one and a Yokohama Red Light district slum. Serve with warmth and humour...and enjoy.xxx

Please stop kissing me

2005-08-19T23:38:00.000+09:00

It's not easy being universally loved. Everywhere I go people are "High Fiving" me and slapping my back enthusiastically. I'm treated like a long lost close member of the family by people I've just met. I can walk into a bar anywhere in the world and people are saying "put your money away old boy. This round's on me." I can't remember the last time I payed for a drink or even bought any food.
If I tell a joke, no matter how bad it is or if it's one of the oldest going, the whole bar will crack up in crying laughter and when the screaming of those splitting their sides dies down I find myself with another table full of drinks.
I got into a cab the other day to take a short journey across town to a lunch date I had with a girl I'd just met that morning, but I never made it, because the cab driver took me back to his place to meet his thirteen year old daughter. He wanted me to marry her! When I told him that I had no interest in marriage he started to plead with me saying that it didn't matter if I married her but that I could at least to sleep with the girl. She was a virgin and he wanted her to lose her virginity to me.
Eventually I had to except the money that he was now offering me and so I made love to girl, who told me that I was an amazing lover, just to get out of there. When her father saw that I was leaving he gave me the keys to his car.
Sometimes I cant even get to my own front door because of the of marriage proposals and job offers that are piled up there in scented envelopes. Outside it's worse. Parcels and flowers all the way to the curb. It's best not to leave the house most of the time. At least there I'm safe in my own company.
It wasn't always like this though. Once life was a quite affair. In fact most people ignored me and I had no real friends. Animals always seemed to like me though. I can't put my finger on the precise moment that everything changed but I think it was around the time that I won 23 million and the band got signed.

V.C.

Killer Queen

2005-08-18T21:54:00.000+09:00

"There are forces at work in this country of which we have no knowledge"

The Queen of Great Britain said that once and I understood her completely. On an instinctual level it made absolute sense to me. She was on my side, crying for help from inside her gilded prison. It was a basic admission that there had in fact been a coup d'état and Brittania was under the control of the "Hidden Hand". In the past the gates would have been stormed by the manipulated and herd-like masses who would have wiped out the entire Royal bloodstock in a hail of chinese bullets. But that was in the good old days. The methods in use now are much more subtle and sinister. Princess Margret knew what was happening. She dropped acid every day and drank herself to death trying to escape what she realised at a very early age was inevitable. Peter Sellars told her everything one evening on the way back from an orgy at Lord Lucans Mayfair home. Peter was already clinically insane by then but he knew enough about the press to talk with the inspired clarity of some kind of medieval sooth sayer on the subject.
The roles had been reversed. The Royals had become the court jesters of the British public. The commons ruled and all they had to provide were bread and games for the consumption of the mob and while these theatrical distractions worked their evil the real work of dividing the country and the world between its new rulers could begin.
This was too much for both Peter and Margret. Sellars realised that true satire was dead and spent the rest of his life as a childrens entertainer with a fake french accent walking into tables and Margret, when she realised that her life had never really been her own, worked her way up gradually to twelve bottles of Remy Martin a day until she had to be confined to a wheelchair and have her double chin continually wiped by her lady in waiting.
Thats why J.F.K. shot himself....

V. Christ.

Family Entertainment

2005-08-13T21:57:00.000+09:00

It took me ages took get the kids down last night. They we're crying and screaming so much that the neighbours came round banging on my door and threatened to call the Police so I had to give them half of my "Shanghai black" opium and 2000 Yen just to smooth things over.
The children were much harder to please. They said they wanted to go home but I told them that it was impossible until I had all of the ransom money. They still had four fingers each so I told them that it could be at least a week before they could go free. But you know what kids are like. They want everything NOW!
I still had some of the "Special bedtime medicine" and coulple of old syringes knocking around, so once again, I had to play "Doctor Daddy". Two minutes to myself. Thats all I wanted. I still had to edit the video footage from earlier in the day. A lot of it was too grainy or out of focus to use. Those damn kids would never keep still and if you tied them up it just didn't look "natural". But still, there were a couple of good scenes and I already had a buyer in Luxemboug for most of my "Art Movies".
I blame the television for the childrens behaviour. There's so much violence and bad language.
It distorts their perspective and encourages them to chase after unobtainable goals. Lets face it, television is crowd control. Soap Operas are the most insidious and powerful of all the media propoganda devices. Crowd control. Three times a week at the same time on each of those days you know where at least, lets say, 8 million people are in the country broadcasting the soap. 8 million people. Thats one hell of an army if you could just get it motivated to aim its guns in one direction. But these people don't want any kind of revoloution. They just want stereotype Alpha males and females a token black and a comedy queer and the same recycled script again and again. Thats why I decided to make my own "Entertainment".
Vincent Christ.

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?

2005-08-12T21:20:00.000+09:00

"A man without legs
Cannot run a marathon
Or go to buy beer"

That was my first attempt at a Haiku. I thought that while I was here in Japan I'd get into the cultural swing of things. School girl underpants, tramp murder and ritual suicide are on the list as well. But one thing at a time.
Of course I'm eating my "Pocky" and drinking a "Draft One" but I hanker after something a little more rewarding but, and rightly so, the days of the Samauri gone. I think the last of them were vapourised at Hiroshima August 6th 1945. That was the day my mother was born. A wonderful event never made the news that day. The eyes of the worlds media were elsewhere and the papers were full of pictures of delerious de-mobbed allied troops and the care worn faces of our crest fallen enemies. "Power is power". Thats what the Japanese say and I think they fully understand the meaning of that expression.
There's a huge electrical storm building over the sea just off the coast of Yokohama right now. It's expected to last about three to four days and it looks as though it could be quite spectacular. The sky is full of white hot electricity and is turning an unearthly and biblical shade of red. This could be an "Etherquake" and should go quite well with the tremors that we get down here on the ground every few days. I love these kind of dramatic weather fronts. I'm quite excited and feel a little childish. There's mischief afoot on a night like this...

Vincent Christ.

State Terrorism

2005-08-10T22:49:00.000+09:00

Okay, so I've lost all my Government benefits. I forgot to sign on man. Obviously I'm out here in Japan but what happened to the "Global Economy"? It just doesn't make any sense...still, what are my problems in comparison to the impending energy crisis and the tightening grip of our world plutocracy? A drop of mercury in a sterile ocean.
I guess it's a by the book thing for those in the employment of the civil service. I just thank all the world loving gods that I read a more human and well metered prose...anyway.
It seems obvious to me that Iran has the bomb already, right? Why all this brinkmanship all of a sudden? Would you go to gang rape without a video camera? Exactly! They bought the bomb or the material to make one at least ten years ago, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. You can count on it. With Uncle Sam running around with the biggest cosh on the block they need one. Christ! I've been trying to buy one on E-Bay for about six months now. In the future, like mobile phones, we'll all have one so pray to god you don't get into a bar fight. Wear white and carry tinned food at all times. And for gods sake dont drink anything but boiled water! Jesus, this Sake is good.
Downstairs, at "Club Wife", there seem to be a lot of stray cats milling around. I think one of the Russian hostesses has died. She's far away from home and far, far away from her family. Funerals are expensive in Japan, especially if you want to get into heaven and not just hang around in limbo by the ornate gates they have there. So I reckon the guys on the door have cut her body up and dumped it in a bag by the "Boss" vending machine.
The brown skinned tramp I see picking through the sacks of left-overs every morning will find it, no doubt. These Japs! They recycle everything.