Karma and Crop Circles

With the 'silly season' nearly upon us, it occurred to me the other day that we haven't had any reports of crop circles so far this summer that I can recall. Still, I suppose that it must be difficult to create them when the fields are under several feet of water. Besides, the hoaxers probably had other things on their minds - like baling out their flooded houses. Of course, I could be proven completely wrong - when the flood water recedes completely, perhaps there will be mysterious symbols will be revealed in the fields as they drain. No doubt the conspiracy theorists will claim that the floods we've suffered were caused by aliens - they got fed up with having those symbols in the corn ridiculed and dismissed a fakes, and decided to go for a more dramatic method of attracting our attention. Then again, perhaps those crop circles were some kind of warning telling us to beware of flooding...

Mind you, I'm in no position to mock people clinging to irrational belief systems, attributing cause and effect arbitrarily. Just lately I've found myself suspecting that I've been the victim of 'karma'. For some reason I started attributing my recent run of very painful ill-health (tooth infections, kidney stones, etc.) to cosmic pay back for a fairly bad thing I did not long before I was struck down. Now, I don't want to go into what it was I did that was so bad (there's always the chance I might still be prosecuted), but suffice to say that it wasn't murder, arson, rape or anything really bad. Nobody got hurt, no property was actually destroyed. It was anti-social more than outright criminal. Getting back to the point, this obsession with the idea that I was paying the price for my misdemeanor flew in the face of reason by completely ignoring the fact that I'd been having problems with the tooth that got infected since last Christmas, long before the incident in question. The fact is that guilt can drive even the most rational of us into harbouring the most irrational of ideas. Scary.

Modern Blogs are Rubbish

Apparently there's this chap called Andrew Keen who thinks that much web content is crap and that bloggers don't read. Not surprisingly, he's become very unpopular in some parts of the web. Actually, I have a lot of sympathy with his position. What he's actually saying (or so it seems to me) that there is a growing tendency to give the doings of internet amateurs (bloggers, those who post videos on YouTube, commenters on message boards, Wikis and the like), equivalence to the work of professionals in the spheres that they are blogging or writing, or whatever, on. This, he argues, is slowly but surely undermining legitimate media, as it is engulfed by the rising tide of amateurism. He singles out Wikipedia, arguing that its main selling point - the ability for anyone to contribute and change entries - is actually its greatest weakness. Any authority it strives for is undermined by the fact that the ill-informed and biased can, and do, post material which is misinformed and downright wrong, on just about every subject. Again, it is a question of equivalence. The fact is that knowledge isn't democratic. Not all knowledge can have equal status: some is right, the result of careful study and/or experimentation, backed up by facts; some is just wrong, the result of prejudice, ill informed opinion and formed from lies and half-truths.

As I said, I don't think Keen is entirely wrong. Indeed, on the issue of Wikipedia, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Ultimately, the trouble with the web is that, whilst it does provide a wonderful opportunity for all of us to be heard,m to be able to present our opinions with a minimum of censorship, the sad fact is that very few of us have anything worthwhile to say. Just read the average blog - it'll most likely be the inconsequential witterings of some suburban everyman (or woman), chronicling their ordinary life. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that a lot of people think that what they are writing is somehow important or significant, that their literary genius has been unjustly ignored by the mainstream, or their political acumen suppressed by the mainstream. Trust me, none of those things are true. I see it with online satire. There are quite a few of my contemporaries who have pretensions of being 'mainstream', that they are comic geniuses on a par with established writers and comedians. Again, that's unlikely to be true. Personally, I have no such illusions. I'm just a guy who writes stories he thinks are funny as a hobby. If some of them make a few people smile and brighten their days, all the better. I'm no unjustly ignored satirical genius. The fact is that my sense of humour is pretty black and offbeat - it's never going to find much of an outlet in the mainstream. The web is the only place it is likely to find anyone else who appreciates it. I'm underground and proud of it!

The bottom line is that we've all got to lighten up - we're not producing great literary works here. We're all just amateurs who have the good fortune to be living in age where our work can get wider exposure than could have been dreamed of even ten years ago. We mustn't lose sight of the fact that we're still catering for minority tastes. It's just that we can reach a bigger minority than before.

The World of Sleaze

OK, another quick round-up of what's going on - a new story finally posted on the main site: When Eight Bell Ends Toll. This completes the line up of stories for Issue 47, many of which have been drawn from material originally published here on Sleaze Diary, a situation which is likely to continue for the early part of the next issue. Posting has been a bit erratic of late, and will probably continue to do so until toward the end of August. I've got something else non-Sleaze related on which has to be completed to a deadline, so has to take priority. Looking at the news, it's good to see The Sleaze setting the agenda again. Tonight's Panorama on BBC1 is about the phenomena of kiddie fighting - something we covered last issue in Fighting For the Kids. Nice to see that we're still the first stop for TV researchers in search of a headline...

Also, another of those great 1970s (and 1980s and 90s) icons has gone. I refer, of course, to the sad passing of Mike Reid. I must admit that when I first heard that Mike Reid had died on the radio, a part of me hoped that they meant Mike Read, the former Radio One DJ and tosser. Unfortunately, it was Frank Butcher from Eastenders that they meant. So, no more will we hear him bellowing 'Riiickaaayyy' or 'Paaaahhhttt'. The end of an era. But what of the future? Well, looking forward to Issue 48, August is, of course, traditionally the 'silly season' for the media, with a lack of real news resulting in the papers and TV being full of headlines about flying saucers, the Loch Ness Monster and the like. Now, some might say that it is always 'silly season' at The Sleaze, but we're going to do our best to excel in the weirdness stakes. Keep watching...

Scare Tactics

So, terrorists might target the increasingly long queues of passengers at airports which are resulting from increased anti-terror checks. According to a parliamentary select committee, that is. Quite apart from the fact that surely this bizarre observation on their part would seem to confirm that the government's over-the-top response to terror attacks is actually fuelling terrorism, I'm left, once more, marvelling at the overheated imaginations that those in power and the press have in this country. Hardly a week seems to go by without someone, somewhere, speculating as to what kind of outrage those crazy terrorists might commit next. Not that they want to spread panic and alarm, mind you. They're just trying to protect us by identifying credible new threats which the professional alarmists in the security forces might have missed.

Of course, the key question they never address is, what is the likelihood that terrorists would carry out such attacks? Sure, they could target airport queues, but would they? They could try to assassinate Gordon Brown by training wasps to fly up his arse and sting him to death from inside his intestine - but is this really likely. They could replace one of President Bush's suppositories with a miniature bomb and blow his buttocks off - but I don't think they actually would. Still, at least we haven't yet gone as far as the US government and enlisted film makers to speculate on the kind of plots terrorists might come up with. I'm not saying the results were ludicrous, but my favourite was the 'Al Qaeda Pie' plan, in which Osama bin Laden got an HIV-positive gay porn actor to whack off into an apple pie, which would subsequently be smuggled into the White House and served up, with ice cream, to the President.

Drowned by Hyperbole

Having failed to create mass public panics with their lurid reporting of terror attacks, bird flu and snow, the good old British media are now talking up a new threat to our existence: water. Yes folks, whilst Britannia may well have ruled the waves, those same waves are now threatening to destroy Britain. Or, to put it another way, the very water which gives us life is now hell-bent on taking our lives. Is it just me, or is the reporting of the current flooding problems being experienced in some parts of the UK just slightly over the top? The other day I heard the panic-stricken tones of a radio reporter telling us that in Tewkesbury, some 'survivors' were still clinging to their homes and possessions. Excuse me, but doesn't the term 'survivors' imply that there has been a significant number of fatalities? How many were there in reality? Um, none. Actually. If it isn't that kind of hyperbole, then we're being subjected to alarmist reports by men in suits and wellington boots stood on towpaths telling us that the river only needs to rise another two inches and yet another town will be flooded. Of course, once it is flooded, then there will be mass looting. By gangs of looters in boats, presumably. Breaking into people's water-filled houses and stealing their water-sodden possessions.

For me, the whole thing reached a nadir when I saw an ITV news broadcast anchored from flooded Tewkesbury by a man standing in water up to his knees. For God's sake! Why not just go the whole hog and sit him behind a desk in a flooded street and have him say "And now for something completely different" at the end of each item? I fail to understand this current penchant for having news programmes presented direct from war zones and disaster areas. Does it actually make the news any more direct, or better reported? Of course not. It is just another patronising attempt to make it seem 'real' and that the media are really 'in touch' with us 'ordinary' people. Frankly, I'm getting pretty sick of all this repetitious reporting of the situation. So we've experienced some bad flooding, it's happened before, it'll happen again. Report some news for God's sake. I'm tired of being told that "five thousand people are without running water", (actually, they do have running water. It's running down their walls and across their floors). OK, I know that it's easy for me to be complacent - I live in a house which is part of a raised terrace, flooding isn't an issue for me - but really, those areas which are affected will probably get back to normal much quicker if all those bloody reporters and film crews pissed off back to London and left them alone.

But what do I know? Apparently it is a national disaster and the government has to do something. Clearly, the country's under threat, so there's only one thing to do - declare a war on water and send in the military. I can just picture hordes of soldiers being forced to retreat by a deluge of angry water, futilely firing their weapons at it. Of course, this once again raises the question originally posed by Garth Marenghi: can water die? What will it take to stop the creeping liquid menace? Air strikes? Depth charges? Maybe even the nuclear option? But what's behind it all? Why has our once friendly water suddenly turned on us? Is it Mother Earth rebelling at human pollution and global warming? Or maybe it's down to those bloody immigrants, eh? It stands to reason, with millions of them swamping the country, it's bound to sink - it just can't take their weight. Maybe that's what David Cameron will tell us, (from the relative safety of Africa). Or maybe, just maybe, it's all a conspiracy by Gordon Brown, to boost him in the polls by showing how well he can handle a crisis. Whatever it is, it surely can't just be a natural process, now can it? That just wouldn't be dramatic enough for the media.

I Was a Nazi War Criminal

Have you ever ended up feeling guilty about engaging in pest control? I always have pangs of guilt about it. Whether it's mice invading my kitchen, wasps under the eaves or ant infestations, I end feeling like the aggressor when I take action against them. Lately, I've been having trouble with ants. Having repelled them from the kitchen, they then reappeared in the bathroom. So I put down some Nippon (surely that name must be actionable under the Race Relations Act), and awaited results. Sure enough, when I went into the bathroom a while later, there they were, crowding around the Nippon, gulping it down. "Hah", I thought, "eat well you little bastards, because you'll all be dead by dawn!" As soon as I'd thought that, I started feeling like a Nazi war criminal. Here I was, rejoicing at the imminent destruction of a thriving colony of living creatures. What right did I have to commit genocide? (Apart from the fact that they were digging wholes in my house and stealing my sugar). I ended up feeling so bad about it all that it came as a relief when, the next day, I saw that there was still some ant activity going on in the bathroom. I thanked God that they weren't all dead after all.

This whole sorry business reminded of the experiences of a friend of a friend many years ago. This individual found himself faced with a nest of angry wasps in his house. Having a small child, he understandably became extremely worried and, deciding that he couldn't wait for the pest control people, took drastic action himself. Basically, he chased the swarm of wasps around his house with a vacuum cleaner, sucking them all up. When he thought he had caught most of them, he discharged the contents of two cans of anti-insect spray into the vacuum's hose, one after the other. He was relieved as the angry buzzing from inside the vacuum cleaner subsided as the six-legged devils were gassed. However, his relief turned to terrible guilt as the realisation of the enormity of the horror he had unleashed dawned on him. "I felt like Hitler," he apparently told my friend. With all evidence of ant activity having ceased in my house, I know exactly how he felt.

Prick up Your Ears

A Berkshire man is taking out an injunction against both BBC and commercial radio stations to try and stop them from broadcasting filth. "It's just non-stop," says twenty two year old Jimmy Nooles. "Every waking hour all I hear is sexual innuendo and smut. Lately it has been getting worse - just pure pornography." However, Nooles denies that he is offended by the material he hears. Rather, his complaint is that the pornographic nature of the programming is causing him embarrassing and unwanted erections. "I first noticed it when I was in my teens - I was listening to Sara Cox on the Radio One Breakfast Show in my pyjamas one morning," he explains, "when I felt something stirring, I looked down to see this huge stalk on! It was really embarrassing - my mother was right there in the room with me! She got an eye full as I fled from the kitchen, my pyjama bottoms flapping open!" Thinking that it was just BBC Radio One, Jimmy tried tuning to other stations, but it made no difference. "It didn't seem to matter who or what was on air - Brian Redhead on Radio Four's 'Today' programme, Beethoven concerts on Three. I even found Terry Wogan giving me the horn on Radio Two," he claims. "Of course, I just assumed it was those sex-obsessed communists at the BBC, so I tried commercial radio instead." Sadly, this was to have disastrous consequences. Whilst out jogging, listening on his walkman to Simon Bates on Classic FM, Nooles found himself arrested for indecent exposure. "How was I to know that woman was going to walk past, just as I was trying to disentangle my huge bonk on from my track suit bottoms?" he asks. "But the police just wouldn't listen!"

Released with a caution and placed on a court-ordered course of psychotherapy, Nooles' problems seemed to subside as he left his teens. For several months he experienced no inappropriate erections. However, eighteen months ago, his wayward penis once again reared its purple head when least desired. "I was just sitting on the bus minding reading The Sun, when this girl opposite me started screaming and pointing at my lap," he recalls. "I looked down to see that I had an erection so monstrous that it had burst out of my trousers!" Once again, the police refused to believe Nooles, and he found himself serving a three month prison sentence for indecent exposure and placed on the Sex Offenders Register. "The weird thing was that I wasn't listening to the radio when it happened," he says. "I'd given up after that other unfortunate business!" Nooles quickly concluded that radio filth was being beamed directly into his mind by the broadcasters. "It was no accident that this latest attack coincided with an increase in digital radio broadcasts," he muses. "As more digiboxes were sold and more stations started digital broadcasts, my problems got worse. Some days I could barely walk for the massive and painful erections I was having. It wasn't unusual for me to ejaculate in my underpants when that filthy bastard Chris Moyles was on air." Nooles decided to take action to protect himself from the evil radio waves. "I tried wearing one of those tinfoil hats. I thought it would be worth the ridicule if it stopped these damned erections," he says. "But it had no effect. Then it dawned on me - it wasn't my brain they were beaming that filth to; it was going direct to my genitals!" Nooles' solution was simple - he wrapped his penis and scrotum with baking foil. "It is such a relief," he sighs. "The radio waves just bounce off of my cock now, which remains flaccid all day long." The foil wrap isn't without its drawbacks. "On really hot days my cock and balls do begin to literally roast - you can hear them sizzling," he reveals. "The other day it got so painful that I had to unwrap them in a cafe and stab my prick with a fork to release the pressure and stop it from exploding! Still, it is a very small price to pay for peace of mind."

An Apology

It has come to the attention of this site's management that a number of stories published on The Sleaze have been highly misleading, containing many factual errors. In fact, several of these stories have, on further investigation, turned out to be completely made up. We appreciate that this has proven very confusing for many readers. Indeed, many have found being mislead by a news source they thought they could trust quite upsetting. Sadly, this misrepresentation has been found to extend to some of the posts made here at Sleaze Diary. Again, we can only apologise to readers disappointed that several of the entries here do not, in fact, reflect actual everyday events in the life of the average sleazy webmaster. Some are actually lies.

We'd like to assure our readers that this reprehensible betrayal of their trust is being fully investigated and that the perpetrators will be severely punished. As a start, we will all be wearing hair shirts and flagellating ourselves on an hourly basis. We hope to be able to restore not just The Sleaze and Sleaze Diary to their rightful positions as trustworthy organs, but also to restore public faith in the internet as a whole as a place where you can trust everything you read. In the meantime, we'd like to apologise unreservedly to anyone who may have been mislead into believing that President Clinton's penis had been hijacked by terrorists, that the Pope was to be replaced by a porn star or that Nick Knowles had murdered several Orang-utans. We also concede that our re-arrangement of certain words may have given the impression that George Formby was a Nazi sympathiser. Finally, we wish to extend a special apology to 'Paul is Dead' conspiracists for misleading you into believing that George Harrison's ghost had confirmed Paul's replacement during a seance. This was a lie. Paul is still alive. You are still a bunch of cranks. We are very, very sorry.

Unacceptable Behaviour

Now, I know there are some things we really shouldn't joke about - women and children being held hostage by armed gangs - but really, it is extraordinary the lengths that music lovers have to go to stop Kerry Katona from performing. Let's hope that holding Katona and her family at knife point in their own home for hours will have done the trick. In addition to threatening her with dire consequences if she sings again, I hope that they also made clear that any more of those adverts for 'Iceland' would also be considered unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unsympathetic. It must be terrible to be driven to having to break into someone's home and threaten violence to safeguard the nation's taste, but if you are going to do a job, for goodness sake make out sure you get it right and cover all the bases. I'd hate for Kerry Katona to think it was still OK to do those ads (or appear on chat shows and the like), thereby forcing those brave intruders to put themselves through that ordeal again, in order to set her right.

The question is, was this just a one-off on the part of discerning TV viewers/music lovers disgusted by Katona specifically, or are they an organised gang targeting micro-celebrities throughout the country? Is there some kind of nationwide secret network working on behalf of good taste in operation? Can we expect the likes of Vernon Kaye, Davina McCall and Dermot O'Leary to be receiving similar visits? Can we look forward to them (and scores of others) vanishing from our screens and airwaves under threat of death? Whilst I would never condone such threats of violence, I have to say that I wouldn't be disappointed if it came to pass. For God's sake someone has to do something about the rising tide of talent-free idiots who seem to have a grip on our entertainment industries. If the TV companies won't take action, then perhaps drastic measures are in order!

Being Unreasonable

A while ago I wrote a post in which I urged us liberal leftie types to stop pussy footing around right wing extremists and religious fruitcakes and instead take them on at their own game: by being unreasonable back to them. My inspiration was the BBC reporter who ranted and raged at the Scientologists. He had the right idea, if they try and shout you down, shout back louder. If they abandon logic, just shout gibberish back at them. Preferably gibberish interspersed wit a few catchy phrases which will stick in the public consciousness. If you hear these nuts on a radio phone in spreading their bile, phone in and reply in kind. I'm happy to say that people in the public eye are finally beginning to came around to my way of thinking. Only yesterday I saw Billy Bragg on TV telling an interviewer that we need to 'fight fire with fire' with regard to right wing racist bigots. Right on! Throw some bricks through their windows and see how they like it. Organise mobs of multi-racial liberals to wave placards saying things like 'Racist Bastards' and 'White Trash', whilst shouting abuse, outside their houses.

It's not just Billy Bragg. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled home from the pub and switched on the telly to find myself confronted with the sight of Keith Allen hurling expletives at the Westboro Baptists (the US loonies who go around disrupting the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq on the grounds that they had been fighting for a country which has legalised and endorsed the 'evil' of homosexuality). I only caught the last five minutes of this documentary, so I don't know whether he did this through the entire programme, or whether it was an isolated incident. Knowing Keith Allen, I suspect it was the former. I could almost feel sorry for the Westboro Baptists. Having already had Louis Theroux wandering around their set-up looking bemused, they probably thought Allen was just another of those eccentric bumbling Brits. Little did they know, he's one of Britain's biggest arseholes. Nevertheless, despite generally disliking Keith Allen (despite having a soft spot for his daughter Lily), there's no denying that when he harnesses his obnoxiousness to demolishing appalling bigots like these, no self-respecting liberal can do anything other than applaud him.

But does all this mean that Sleaze Diary's influence is spreading? Actually, I find the idea of Keith Allen reading this blog deeply disturbing. However, on the off-chance that we do exert some kind of influence, I'm going to propose some more anti-bastard measures. Taking a leaf out of the 'Economic League's' book (they were a right-wing 'think tank' who maintained a database of left-wing 'subversives' - trade union activists, left wing lecturers, etc - presumably in preparation for that right wing military coup, when they'd all be interned in concentration camps and/or shot), I think we on the left need to start doing the same thing with regard to the racists, fascist and conservatives. Indeed, we should go further and take a leaf out of the pro-life and animal rights nutters' books, by posting their details publicly on the web. That's right, let's see how they like having their addresses made available to every nutter in creation...

Her Majesty Exposed

Notorious tabloid The Shite has been forced to apologise to the Queen after printing a story implying that she had posed naked for a photographer. "I just asked her to take off her clothes. It was all artistic, nothing kinky like," claimed fifty eight year old Gavin Plood. "I can tell you, she might be eighty one, but she's still a looker. Phwooar!" Amateur photographer Plood said in the article that he paid Her Majesty eighty pounds for the session, which took place in his Hove studio - a room above a derelict shop. "If she'd kept her kit on, it would only have been forty quid - that's the going rate for these sessions," he revealed. According to Plood, the Queen had answered an ad he'd placed in the Brighton and Hove Weekly Pictorial Advertiser for photographic models. "Nobody was surprised as I was when she turned up," he said. "Apparently she needs the cash to pay the builders, or something." The article also claims that Plood met Prince Philip, who had accompanied the Queen to the studio. "He waited outside during the session. Said he'd seen it all before," he chuckled. "I did have a quick drink with them over at my local, before they caught the bus back to London. While Liz was in the pisser, Phil confided to me that she's still a bit of a goer, if you know what I mean!"

The Shite admitted that story was entirely false and, far from stripping for Mr Plood, it was the photographer who disrobed for Her Majesty. "In reality Mr Plood is an obsessive stalker who once broke into Buckingham Palace, and whipped his plonker out in front of the Queen," said a spokesperson. "We knew nothing about it until the police contacted us after an officer recognised Plood's picture in the paper and informed us that he was on the Sex Offenders' Register." The spokesperson added that the story had been bought from Mr Plood in good faith, although, in retrospect, it should have been suspicious when he showed them some of his 'nude' photographs of the Queen. "It's easy to be wise after the event, but at the time it seemed quite credible that Her Majesty might have a firm set of D-cup gazonkas," says the spokesperson. "However, by the time we realised that they were actually pictures from a porn magazine with the Queen's head stuck on them, it was too late. The article had already gone to press." Despite this unfortunate incidentThe Shite is keen to emphasise that sex offenders with potential stories should not be deterred from submitting them to the paper.

Seminal Experience

Well, it has finally happened - The Sleaze is now being quoted as an authoritative source. Hell, it was just a matter of time before my humble publication's true worth was recognised and the fundamental truths I disseminate there were recognised. Actually, 'disseminated' is a very apt description in this context. The august publication quoting me is none other than sementherapy.com, a site dedicated to promoting 'the health benefits of swallowing the ejaculation of a healthy man'. Apparently this should be done three times a week, or more, in order to gain the benefits of the proteins and vitamins found in human semen. Obviously, as the site is at great pains to emphasise: 'the man must not have STDs (Sexually transmitted disease) or a blood borne contagious disease. He must not have had acute long term exposure to poisons, heavy metals, radiation or intravenous injections'. Also, 'the receiver must not be allergic to semen, sensitive to testosterone or have cancer tumors that could contact concentrated ejaculate (due to prostaglandins)'. Well, you live and learn - I never knew that you could be allergic to spunk. It conjures up some rather alarming images, actually - prostitutes and rent boys spewing up sticky white vomit during blow jobs; or women's vaginas contracting violently during ejaculation.

Anyway, getting back to the point; The Sleaze is actually quoted in the section concerned with 'Sacred Semen', which chronicles the 'History and Spirituality of swallowing semen'. Way down the page in the section concerning Christianity you'll find an old archive story, Unholy Orders, quoted. Of course, this story is pure fiction. Obviously fiction, I've always thought. The bit about the Pope being replaced by an ecclesiastical porn actor to try and modernise the Vatican's image was the giveaway. But maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe there really was a Gospel According to St Fanny, which has been suppressed for centuries. Perhaps Mary Magdalene really did wank Christ off when he was on the cross. Who knows? I won't deny that I would have preferred to have The Sleaze's first recognition as an authoritative source of knowledge come from a more conventional source, the Encyclopedia Britannica, perhaps. But what the heck, beggars can't be choosers. Besides, Sementherapy is still a bloody sight more credible than Wikipedia. Having said that, it still hasn't convinced me as to health benefits of swallowing semen. I think I'll stick to the multi-vitamins.

West Bank [Euphemism for Masturbation}

Britain's porn industry heaved a collective sigh of relief yesterday, following the release of celebrated adult film performer Keith Nutsack (known professionally as Rod Walloper), who had been held hostage in Gaza by militant Palestinian porn producers for over three months. "It was a terrible ordeal," Nutsack told the press. "I was forced to perform in numerous low-budget productions - frequently without proper stimulation or lubrication!" Nutsack was seized by the militants whilst he was in Gaza filming the controversial adult production West Bank [euphemism for masturbation] for [another euphemism for masturbation] Films. "It seems that they objected to the lead character - Yasser Crackafat - being played by a non-Arab," explains a spokesperson for the production company. "I would like to reassure everyone that we didn't give in to their demands and recast the part - when production resumes Keith will still be playing the lead. We'd like to emphasise that his casting was a purely artistic decision, not a political one. We simply could not find a performer of Arabic background who had the skills and experience to perform this difficult role."

Nutsack's ordeal sparked global anger following the release of a video showing him, clearly exhausted, dressed in bondage gear and strapped to a rack. In the video he stated that if any attempt was made to rescue him, the militants would blow him off. It was clear that in his weakened state, even the mildest fellatio would have proven fatal. Speaking after his release, Nutsack revealed that he had genuinely feared for his life at the time the video was shot. "I was so weak after weeks of being forced to perform at gunpoint, that I really thought I couldn't get it up any more," he says. "I knew that if I couldn't salute the flag and sink the soldier on demand, I'd have out lived my usefulness to them." Although [another euphemism for masturbation - see above] refused to recast the part of Yasser Crackafat in order to secure Nutsack's release, it is understood that they have agreed to distribute a number of the Palestinian pornos he was forced to perform in, including Hamas [euphemism for masturbation], Riyadh [euphemism for masturbation] and Gaza [euphemism for large breasts]. The company has also confirmed that production of West Bank [euphemism for masturbation] is to relocate to Spain.

Author's Note: Some sixteen years after it was written, this post has been 'flagged for offence' by Google,(despite the fact that nobody has read it in years0  resulting in a notice being placed between potential readers and this blog.  Consequently, I've removed what I assume are the 'offensive' terms. 

The Adventures of Captain Towpath

Many years ago, when I first went to work for the Defence Intelligence Staff, I was told a tale of the man they called 'Captain Towpath'. This was the Navy officer who had 'accidentally' mislaid some classified documents (concerning, if memory serves me correctly, proposed cuts in the Navy). They turned up in the press after being fortuitously found on a canal towpath, where the good Captain had been walking his dog (not that he actually had a dog, it was claimed). Now, you might assume that someone who had committed such a major breach of security would be severely disciplined. Indeed, had they been a mere civilian (like myself) they might well have faced dismissal, possibly even prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Captain Towpath, however, was merely given a rap over the knuckles and barred from promotion for a couple of years (during which time he wouldn't have been in the promotion 'zone' anyway). The long and the short of it was that he had supposedly been 'acting under orders' when he 'lost' those documents - the Navy's top brass had wanted them leaked to try and embarrass the government and force them to change their minds on the defence cuts.

Now, the reason I'm telling you this nautical tale of naughtiness is that, by an amazing coincidence, someone with the same name as Captain Towpath has been appointed a junior minister in Gordon Brown's government. In another amazing coincidence, he too is a one time naval officer who once served in the Defence Intelligence Staff. Obviously, this can't be the same person; the minister's an Admiral, and they'd surely never promote a security risk like Towpath, and, best of all, he's Minister for Security. Strangely enough, during my latter days in the Defence Intelligence Staff, yet another Admiral sharing Towpath's name was made Chief of Defence Intelligence. I know - it beggars belief that they'd make somebody who left documents on canal towpaths head of the Ministry of Defence's intelligence operation, any more than anybody would appoint him Security Minister. Clearly, Alan West is a very common name for Naval officers. Then again, what would I know, anyway? I'm just a disgruntled ex-employee, aren't I?

Saving Planet Earth?

I'm afraid I got rather confused about the BBC's recent Saving Planet Earth series, which, over two weeks, featured various 'celebrities' (although some of the participants stretched this concept to the limits) travelling to exotic locales at licence fee payers expense to report on the plights of various endangered species. (Surely all those air miles must have had a terrible effect on the ozone layer, contributing to the climate change which is destroying the habitats of many of these species?) The whole thing culminated yesterday in a live event at Kew Gardens featuring the likes of Alan Titchmarsh, Graham Norton and Avril Lavigne. I foolishly thought that this was going to involve some kind of viewer participation, where we voted on which species we wanted to see saved, with the others being 'evicted' from planet earth. I was expecting Graham Norton to tell us that the Ring Tailed Lemurs had dropped out of the race at the first round, and would all be put into a hessian sack and beaten to death with a brick by Avril Lavigne. Sadly, all she did was sing, and all he did was ask us for money.

My hopes had been raised when Nick Knowles appeared live from Madagascar, telling us that every hour nine Orang-Utangs died. I thought that he meant that he was going to kill an Orang-Utang every six minutes, or so, that viewers' monetary contributions didn't hit the programme's targets. I was really looking forward to Alan Titchmarsh cutting back to Nick Knowles screaming "You stingy bastards, look what you've made me do", before cutting the throat of another Orang-Utang and hurling its lifeless body from his jungle tree house. But it just wasn't to be. In fact, it turned out to be a pretty sorry affair, with the only musical acts on display being those who couldn't get booked for T in The Park or Live Earth. Or get arrested, for that matter. Speaking of Live Earth, I'd just like to say, after a day of having it take up the entire BBC1 schedule - fuck off! Look, I know that fighting climate change is important. I don't need a load of publicity hungry pop stars and celebrities to tell me. In fact, I'm already doing more than any of those bastards. For one thing, I haven't flown in a jet liner today. Or any day for a bloody long time. I've given up international travel to help stem the damage to our planet. I don't even have a valid passport any more. I also use energy saving light bulbs, don't leave electrical appliances on stand-by, and drive a diesel, which could run on environmentally friendly bio-diesel, but doesn't because no garages round here sell it. So don't fucking patronise me, put your own houses in order first, you fucking wastes of space!

Last of the Smoking Sea Birds

"The fossil record clearly shows that smoking has resulted in mass extinctions in prehistory," noted paleontologist Professor John Clamjam today told a Parliamentary Select Committee on public health. "It is no exaggeration to say that mankind is now facing the same dire threat." The professor is one of a growing number of scientists calling for an outright ban on smoking, claiming that it threatens the ozone layer and is responsible for climate change. "Take those fossilised giant prehistoric penguins recently discovered in Chile - it was their hundred a day habit which caused disastrous climate change in the area back in the Pleistocene period," he claims. "Before they got hooked, it was freezing cold and covered in ice. Within a few millennia, it had turned into a tropical furnace, forcing the surviving, non-smoking - penguins to migrate to Antarctica." Clamjam also points out that modern penguins are significantly shorter than their ancestors as a direct result of cigarette smoking. "Everybody knows that the tar contained in those cigarettes stunts growth," he declares. "Don't forget, they didn't even have low tar filter tips back then - they were taking huge quantities of tar into their lungs, before hawking it all up again in huge coughing fits, thereby creating the prehistoric tar-pits which claimed the lives of so many mastodons."

But the giant penguins weren't the first tobacco-related mass extinction. "Forget all that nonsense about the dinosaurs being wiped out by an asteroid strike," Clamjam told the committee. "They choked to death as the result of them poisoning their atmosphere with stale smoke." Cigarettes were apparently also behind the aggressive behaviour of many of the giant reptiles. "Look at the poor Tyrannosaurus - its arms were too small to reach its mouth, or even hold hold a cigarette," the professor explains. "Their bodies craving nicotine and enraged at their inability to smoke themselves, the great beasts naturally went on homicidal rampages, slaughtering other dinosaurs and trying to tear the lit cigarettes from their dead jaws." He fears that such behavioural changes are currently being seen in human beings, as witnessed by the disturbing increases in youth gang violence: "Clearly these children, too young to buy the cigarettes they became addicted to in the womb as a result of their mothers' smoking habits, are going out and trying to snatch the evil weed from established smokers."

Smoking is already having serious climactic effects, with the hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic directly attributable to the smoking habits of local inhabitants. "Unfortunately, Polar bears, in common with all ursine species, are heavy smokers," observes Clamjam. "However, the worst offenders are the seals. Indeed, their habit is so bad that the Canadian government has been forced to implement an annual cull to try and cut down the amount of smoke they are putting into the atmosphere." Nevertheless, despite the sterling efforts of the brave seal clubbers, a huge pall of dirty smoke still hangs over much of Canada and Alaska. Consequently, Clamjam and other scientists are lobbying for the cull to be extended to include Polar bears. "This may seem drastic, cruel even, but it is essential we take action now, if we are not to go the way of the giant penguins and dinosaurs," he says.

A spokesperson for the government has denied that it is using scare tactics and pseudo-science to try and win support for its controversial smoking ban.

Prescription Terror?

Apparently the National Health Service (NHS) is now sponsoring terrorism. At least, that's the impression one could easily get from Britain's media today, with its screaming headlines announcing that "NHS is terror link" and the like. Yes indeed, all those terror suspects arrested in the wake of last week's mildly farcical calor gas powered car bombing campaign are foreign doctors (God forbid that they should be rugger-playing Brit medics), working for the NHS, (which is hardly surprising, as it is this country's largest employer of doctors). But is the idea of the NHS backing a terror campaign so far fetched? I mean, those consultants are always getting arsey about health cuts and standing as MPs in by-elections - what if they decided that their aims could no longer be met through the conventional democratic process? What if they decided direct action was needed? Mind you, I couldn't really see them using car bombs. Drive by surgical amputations on politicians, perhaps.

The other picture these headlines conjure up is of being able to get terrorism from the NHS on prescription. You can just imagine it , can't you? Feeling a bit dissatisfied with the way the war in Iraq is going, rising interest rates getting you down? Well, just go and see your GP and get prescribed a couple of tons of Semtex, two Kalashnikovs and a couple of Arab extremists - problems solved! Of course, if I was one of those fat right wing 'comics', I'd be making cracks about how it is no wonder those terror attacks were so farcical if they had them done on the NHS - they should have gone private. Mind you, the fact that the culprits were doctors gives further credence to my earlier theory that the attacks were carried out, not by Al Qeada, but by militant smokers opposed to the ban on smoking in public places. Where will the average surgeon be able to light up to relieve their stress now that it is prohibited in the operating theatre? I've also heard a rumour that the 'explosive suicide belt' one of them was wearing, was actually a regular belt with twenty packets of high tar cigarettes attached. He was planning to make a last stand, keeping the non-smoking police at bay by blowing thick tar-ridden smoke at them, before expiring from emphysema - he could easily have taken them with him.

Smoking Out the Terrorists

You know, I can't help but feel that the government and media are over-reacting somewhat to these latest supposed terror attacks. So, someone drives a blazing car into an airport terminal in Glasgow - so what? Isn't that just an average Saturday afternoon in Glasgow? What never ceases to amaze me are the number of people who stop and film the whole bloody thing on their phones. For God's sake, what's wrong with them? If a burning car crashed into a building near me, I'd be too busy running for my life to worry about whether or not I could get on the Ten O'clock news with my disaster scene footage. Then there was that 'hero' who helped tackle one of the vehicle's occupants - the guy was on fire, for fuck's sake, he was hardly dangerous, was he, (unless you were wearing one of those polyester shirts from Asda)? What perplexed me most about the whole business was the fact that the car involved was a Jeep Cherokee. I was thinking of buying one of those, but now I'll have to fill in some kind of security questionnaire, where I'll be asked whether I ever intend filling the back seat with propane cylinders and driving it into an airport. Hell, how do I answer that without incriminating myself? I mean, it wasn't high on my list of priorities, but I'd like to keep the option open...

Of course, there remains the whole question of whether these really were terrorist attacks. Just look at the timing - coincidence, or what? No, I don't mean the coincidence with Gordon Brown's accession to the Premiership, but the coincidence with the introduction of the ban on smoking in public places in England. Look at the evidence - both vehicles were described by witnesses as 'smoking', both were aimed at public places where smoking would normally be allowed: a nightclub and an airport terminal. Trust me, these weren't Al Qaida fanatics, but militant smokers. Mark my words, this is just the start of a sustained campaign. Next thing you know our televisions will be dominated by pictures of chocking and gasping commuters staggering from tube stations as the smokers flood the London Underground with cigarette smoke. Packed pubs will be targeted by 'suicide smokers', prepared to destroy their lungs by rushing in with over a hundred cigarettes simultaneously alight in their mouths. I shudder to think where it will all end - the Queen assassinated with a cloud of poisonous fumes from a wide bowled pipe, perhaps?