The Sex Machine (1975)

An Italian science fiction sex satire, The Sex Machine (1975), while never quite managing to balance its various elements satisfactorily, is nevertheless an entertaining watch.  It's premise is simple, but intriguing: by 2037 fossil fuels have been exhausted and the world is reverting to a pre-industrial society, with horses and carriages replacing cars, buses and trains, candles electric lights and carrier pigeons telephones, as scientists search for new forms of energy, Professor Enrico Coppola (Gigi Proietti) hits upon the idea of using the energy released by sex to set the world back in motion.  He starts off modestly, with the stroking of the erogenous zones of a female assistant generating a few volts.  Reasoning that more 'friction' is required, he succeeds in lighting a bulb with the energy released by two more of his assistants having sex.  Reasoning that, to generate a larger charge, he needs participants who are more energetic and skilled in their love making, he gets access to police and medical records to identify likely candidates, settling on an oversexed hotel manager and a housewife (who also turns out to be the wife of a rival scientist) with similar sexual appetites.  He and his assistants then contrive to have both admitted as patients in the hospital in which the professor is based by running both down with a horse drawn ambulance, causing minor injuries.  Placing both in the same room, they wait for nature to take its course - when it does, the result is an entire chandelier lighting up.  The professor's plans now become more grandiose, as he schemes to light up the entire street, which requires the unsuspecting couple to make love ten times in quick succession.

The streetlight incident brings Coppola's experiments to the attention of the authorities, who are sceptical and want further demonstrations.  At which point the plot settles back into a series of contrivances as they first have to get their Guinea Pigs back together (still unaware that they are being used in an experiment) and overcome the objections of the Vatican to a scheme to promote sex as a solution to the energy crisis.  Various interventions of the spouses of the two subjects complicate matters, preventing all but a single successful demonstration at the hospital, but the authorities want a larger, real world, demonstration.  So the professor and his assistants engage in more machinations (aided by the authorities) to bring the woman and the hotel manager together in a room at his hotel, where their sexual activity is able to reactivate the lifts for a few minutes.  Unfortunately, the intervention of the manager's wife leaves an elderly government official trapped in a lift and the professor's female assistant has to be deployed to seduce the manager to produce sufficient energy to rescue him.  Whilst amusing, all of these plot convolutions and contrivances are ultimately the film's biggest weakness.  Whilst such an incident filled plot, packed with misunderstandings, sexual frustration, coincidence and the like is pretty much the norm for the sex comedy genre, here it ultimately distracts from the film's satirical elements which, it feels, were its entire raison d'etre.

These satirical elements are squeezed into the film's latter half, after all the lengthy farcical sex scenes, feeling rather underdeveloped and hurried, as a result.  They are possibly best integrated into the main action in the lengthy sequence when Coppola demonstrates to the authorities that his discovery could be used on a larger scale, when the hotel is filled with sexually active guests, with every room wired up to transmit their sexual energies.  Various assistants report back to Coppola in the kitchens as to what is going on in each room and how much electricity is being generated by each sexual act, which he gleefully shares with the Monsignor who is representing the Vatican, sitting next to him.  The latter's expressions of disgust, despair, anguish and utter mortification as the professor tells him how much energy is variously released by anal sex, missionary position, masturbation, gang bangs and the like are alone worth watching the film for.  Later, when it is decided to try and deploy sex energy on a wider scale, the Monsignor is forced to agree that, for the greater good of Italy, if not the world, the church will have to start promoting sexual promiscuity, masturbation, homosexuality and any other form of sexual activity that can be thought of - as the professor reassures him, they'll still have six deadly sins left to scold people over and they could always hold a conclave to come up with a new seventh sin to replace sex.  

While the hypocrisy of the church is explored at some length - and quite effectively - in this second half of The Sex Machine,  (the Vatican is able to justify its volte face by the revelation that generating electricity from sex is most effective when it is simply a physical act, without love, thereby not compromising the sacred and God given gift of true love), its other main, but related, satirical point is less well served.  In the film's final act, after the technological world has been restored thanks to the conversion of sexual energy to electricity, resulting in Coppola being awarded the Nobel prize, it is found that, without the old taboos around unbridled sexual activity, people's sexual activity has peaked and is now in decline, as people start to seek something more: love, romance, companionship, deeper relationships not just based on the physical act of sex.  The proposed solution is to make love a taboo, with church now being urged to stigmatise it in the same way it had previously done with sex.  But, as the professor notes, when sex was taboo, people thought of nothing but breaking the taboo, but when it was encouraged as a necessity, becoming freely available, they began to lose interest - making love taboo would likely have the same effect on romance, suddenly making it more desirable and preferable to straightforward sex.   

Although feeling slightly shoe horned into the more straightforward sex comedy elements, it is these satirical elements which help lift the film into something more than just a regular sex movie.  Indeed, the film was clearly intended as a more mainstream entertainment, giving the impression of being made on a much higher budget than the average sex comedy.  Consequently, the production values are excellent, with the post-oil world vividly realised, with the streets lined with rusting cars and crowds going to airports at weekends to marvel at the now near-mythical flying machines, now sitting. lifeless, on the runways.  People's attempts to cling to the past are amusingly parodied with characters who still maintain their cars and pretend to drive them, providing, like children, their own engine sounds, or families still going through the ritual of gathering around the TV every evening and staring at a blank screen.  That said, the low tech world it portrays doesn't entirely make sense: such a collapse of technology would surely push the world, pretty quickly, into an agrarian based economy, not to mention resulting in a far more extensive collapse of central authority is portrayed.  But, hey, The Sex Machine isn't looking to be a post apocalyptic science fiction film, but rather a sexy satire and it tailors its vision of the future to meet the requirements of its plot.  The 'science' of the professor's plans is, interestingly, also something of a satire, taking the theories of Wilhelm Reich - who believed that sexual energy could be captured and stored.  (Indeed, Reich and his theories are name checked several times in the course of the movie).

Even though it is far from perfect, The Sex Machine is actually a very well made and enjoyable film, looking good and directed at a reasonable pace by Pasquale Festa Campanile (who adapted it from his own novel of the same name).   It does, though, get rather bogged down at some points by its straight  sex comedy elements,which become increasingly farcical and repetitive as the film progresses, ultimately becoming detrimental to the satirical elements.  That said, the sex comedy angle was doubtless  the film's main selling point when it came to getting it financed and distributed and, inevitably, would have been the main attraction for audiences.  Certainly, the film provides a constant stream of very attractive Italian ladies taking their clothes off and cavorting around naked, (these include Agostina Belli, Eleonora Giorgi and Monica Strebel), which isn't to be complained about.  There's also plenty of comedic schtick, most of which, being sex-based, translates easily into English, without losing much of the humour.   But, while The Sex Machine can be enjoyed purely on the level of a sex comedy, (albeit an uncommonly well made one), comparable to contemporary British films of the genre in terms of content and humour, it shouldn't simply be dismissed by wider audiences as just another Italian 'sexy comedy'.  The satirical elements, along with some effective acting performances and characterisations, do add a level of sophistication and intelligence not usually seen in the genre.  (The version I saw was the original Italian release with English sub-titles - there was also a dubbed English-language version which ran much shorter, probably cutting out much of the satire, which would account for the film's perception in the English-speaking world as being simply another crude and frantic sex comedy).

Growing Irritations

Increasingly, things are irritating me.  Nothing unusual in that, you are no doubt thinking, but since I was ill earlier this year, I've been much calmer, more mellow.  no doubt on account of all the medication I have to take these days.  But, of late, I've been getting bloody irascible again.  Maybe I've been taking the meds long enough that I'm building up an immunity.  Anyway, stuff is starting to irritate me again.  Not to the levels it did before I was ill, when, fueled by my excessive blood pressure, trivial annoyances could turn into full blown rage.  But some things can still severely piss me off.  People walking too closely behind me in supermarkets, for instance.  The other day, for instance, remembering something I'd forgotten to get off of the shelves, I turned around to go back to find myself, quite literally, face-to-face with some bloody woman who had been walking inches behind me.  I'm afraid her startled look just annoyed me even more.  I mean, what did she think was going to happen?  I had a similar experience in another supermarket when I stopped and turned and was nearly mown down by some toss pot pushing his trolley inches from my heels.  What the fuck is wrong with these people?  Why are they invading my space like this, then reacting as f I'm the one behaving irrationally?  They are the pedestrian equivalents to those tail-gater you encounter on motorways.

Just as irritating are the pillocks who think that they can either text or read texts on their phones while walking through crowded shopping centres.  Inevitably, they collide with me (I've got to the stage where I simply refuse to take evasive action when I encounter fools who can't be bothered to look where thay are walking, they are so transfixed with the screen of their mobile), at which point they try to act as if they are the injured party.  Wankers.  Friends and acquaintances are also really, really beginning to annoy me again.  (No Andrea, if you read this, I'm not aiming these comments at you.  You might well be one of the most frustrating people I know, with your frequent lapses in communication, but, in truth, your infuriating qualities are among the things I most love about you).  We seem to be slipping back into the idea that I do nothing but sit waiting for them to call me - there's no consideration that I might actually have other things to do, that I can't simply drop just because somebody deigns to call me out of the blue.  I do have my own life, you know.  I also don't think I'm being unreasonable if I don't respond immediately to answer phone messages, particularly if they aren't phrased in a way which requires response.  (As you can probably gather, I recently had an exasperating friend-related incident in which the other party behaved in the most extraordinary manner, but I was supposed to feel as if I'd dome something wrong).  There's a reason I keep my circle of friends to a bare minimum - they can be a pain in the arse. 

So, as I'm meant to be avoiding stress and keeping my blood pressure down, I'm trying to ignore all these minor irritations and mellow out again.  Of course, if people stopped leaving messages on my answer phone, making demands on my time and bizarrely walking out of pubs they told me they were going to meet me in before I arrived, then it would all be a lot easier.  And people wonder why I prefer my own company!

Imaginary Bookshop

Stop me if I've already told you this, but amongst the dreams I've had of late, (they are very vivid and apparently linked to some of the medication I take for my blood pressure), the one which has stood out is the one where my best friend is running a bookshop.  Not just any bookshop - the dream was so realistic and memorable that I can even identify the bookshop as a second hand bookseller I've often frequented, (as has my friend).  Anyway, she's running this shop and I'm there with some stock I've acquired for her: a boxful of old paperbacks.  Except that there's something about them that my friend doesn't like - she's giving me that look of slightly exasperated disappointment I know so well.  Quite what the problem was, I don't know.  Perhaps it was because they weren't DIY books - the only other dreams my friend tends to appear in are ones where I'm doing DIY, suffer some appalling mishap, at which point she turns up to laugh.  (I can't help but feel that these dreams are making some profound comment on the nature of our friendship).  I did ask my friend if she'd been buying bookshops without telling me, but she point blank denied it.  Which is a pity, as she could have offered me a job in her imaginary bookshop.

The dream got me thinking, though - is buying a bookshop simply the stuff of dreams?  I actually did a bit of research and discovered that it isn't such a crazy idea.  I found that there were several book selling businesses currently on the market, many at very affordable prices.  OK, there's the question of whether, having bought it, you could actually make a living from it is another question, (presumably the reason that some of them are for sale in the first place is because their current owners can't).  Certainly, the annual turnover figures given for some indicate that profit margins are tight.  But hey, it's another option to think about in terms of my proposed 'reinvention' of myself.  It sits at the extreme end of the possibilities for this - I imagine it could be pretty stressful, which, obviously, is what I'm trying to avoid these days.  But you never know.  So far I haven't seen any bookshops for sale which would be geographically convenient for me, but who knows?  And if it was my bookshop, then I wouldn't have to worry about my friend being disapproving of the stock I buy for it...

Dearly Departed

My recently departed Great Aunt (whose funeral I'm attending tomorrow) was clearly looking down on me today.  Or my car, at least, as it passed its MoT on the first attempt this morning, thereby saving me a lot of money.  Still she was ninety six - my Great Aunt, not the car - and hadn't been in the best of health for the past few months, so her passing away didn't come as a great surprise.  That said, her demise has been a sobering existence, as she was the last member of that generation of my family still standing.  (I still have an extant Aunt who is slightly older, but she is that last of my father's siblings, making her a generation later than my Great Aunt, who was my maternal Grandmother's sister).  Which means that myself and my siblings shuffle forward toward being the oldest family members, (at the moment that honour falls to my mother, her sister and the other aforementioned ancient Aunt).  Which is pretty scary and makes me feel old.  Damn, it's bad enough that I'm already a Great Uncle myself, with what seems like hordes of Great Nieces, (there are actually only three, but they seem like more). 

Without wishing to sound morbid, it's all another reminder of one's own mortality and that we only have a finite amount of time and perhaps should be using it more constructively.  Certainly, it leaves me questioning ever more why I'm still wasting my time with my current job. I really could be using my time more wisely.  But that's a whole different topic which I don't want to revisit in this post.  But the idea of being some kind of elder statesman in my family is a daunting one.  It implies that I should be more responsible and be setting an example for younger family members.  So far I've done my best to be a bad influence, with the various highly unsuitable birthday and Christmas presents I keep giving my two older Great Nieces, including chemistry sets with explosive experiments, fake dog turds and whoopee cushions.  They enjoyed them, but I had to suffer death threats from their mother.  Actually, the eldest Great Niece has a birthday coming up and, with the car's MoT costing me far less than expected, I'll be able to look to giving her something really dangerous.  There's the added bonus that as she and her sister are currently living in the US, I'll have the entire Atlantic Ocean between me and potential reprisals from my Niece.

TV Therapy

Well, it's Children in Need again, when the BBC generously tries to boost the pub trade by displacing its regular Friday night schedule with its annual telethon.  The other channels all graciously decline to complete, (because its for charity, so we all should be forced to watch it), putting on repeats and stuff they would never normally schedule in prime time. Thereby depriving me of my usual dose of Friday night trash TV therapy.  Which is how I come to find myself watching Goldeneye again, which is currently showing on ITV 4.  The fact that it is now old enough to be shown on ITV's fourth channel, rather than the main channel or ITV 2, is an indication that Pierce Brosnan has now joined the ranks of Connery, Lazenby, Moore and Dalton as a 'classic' Bond, too far in the past to appeal to younger viewers.  It's still a reasonably entertaining film, although it is scary to realise that it is now twenty years since I saw it at the cinema during its original release.  Luckily, I have other entertainment in reserve for this cold Friday evening.  Amongst these is an episode of Cash Cowboys I recorded earlier today.

If you aren't aware of what Cash Cowboys is, amongst other things it is the current preferred daytime TV viewing of my best friend - she started texting me about it earlier this week, (yes, she probably is insane, but I am, nonetheless, very fond of her) - which is why I've been recording it while I've been at work and watching it in the evenings.  Basically, it is like American Pickers, which shows on Dave, except that it is in Canada and involves more beards, cowboy boots and stetsons.  Obviously, if you've never seen American Pickers, then that previous explanation is meaningless.  Put simply, both series involve a couple of dudes driving around in a van, rummaging through the barns, sheds and collections of people they encounter along the road and trying to find stuff they can bid for, in the hope they can sell it on for a profit.  The main difference between Cash Cowboys (which, I've learned, is actually called Canadian Pickers in its native Canada) and American Pickers is that the Canadian guys are just so much more laid back.  Moreover, everyone in Canada seems just so polite. Which makes for very relaxed viewing.  It is far less frenetic than another of my daytime TV guilty pleasures, Storage Hunters, for instance.  Which makes a nice change.  Consequently, though, Cash Cowboys lacks the underlying sense of threat implicit in American Pickers:  you can't help but fear that at any moment the guys in the latter show are going to have a potentially fatal encounter with a family of murderous hillbillies.  Whilst Cash Cowboys hasn't quite displaced Travel Channel's Shed and Buried as my go to laid back TV show to unwind to, it does have the advantage that I haven't yet seen every episode at least five times.  Anyway, I'm off to watch that episode I've got recorded...

Not the Spice of Life

You know how people who do non-office based jobs like to go on about how the best thing about their job is that you never know what each new day will bring?  They're talking bollocks.  Whilst they'd like to convince you that the supposed variety that facing new 'challenges' every day brings, the truth is that it all becomes more than a little wearing.  I speak from experience: my job has become increasingly unpredictable and I can tell you that all this 'variety' of activity has left me craving for good old boring routines.  Believe me, knowing more or less what you are likely to encounter each day and when you are going to finish is a wonderful thing.  As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing 'exciting' or 'invigorating' about being suddenly thrust into potentially dangerous situations or, just when you thought that you were close to finishing for the day, getting called out to another potentially hazardous situation.  Give me routine any day.

I've no doubt that my feelings toward 'unpredictability' at work have a lot to do with my attitude toward my job.  At the end of the day, it's just something I do to earn the money I need to pay the bills.  As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the working day ends, the better, because I can then get back to doing the things I actually enjoy.  Thankfully, being in the middle of taking a couple of weeks off of work, (I'm still using up untaken leave from last year), this week, so far, I've had plenty of time to do stuff I like.  Interestingly, I've found myself falling into a new, non-work, routine: get up late, potter around the house or garden doing various bits of DIY, before driving off in the afternoon to find somewhere in the country I can take a long walk.  It's all very relaxing.  The stress and anxiety which has been characterising work of late has melted away completely.  I've caught up with lots of stuff I've been recording from the TV, caught up with my reading, listened to podcasts I haven't had time to listen to whilst working, and even recorded a new one of my own.  The best thing about being off work is that I haven't had to deal with people.  Sure, I've stopped for chats with other walkers in the country, exchanged pleasantries with shop assistants and talked the usual bollocks with fellow regulars in the pub, but I haven't had to have any of those stressful work-related conversations with people I'd ordinarily cross the street to avoid.

The fact is that I like being on my own.  For many years I worried that I was somehow abnormal, in the face of all the social pressure to socialise and 'join in'.  I really tried to do this, but it just left me feeling uncomfortable - especially all that attempting to socialise with the people I worked with.  Never a good idea, as you quickly realise that, apart from work, you have nothing in common.  So I stopped trying to 'fit in'.  Eventually people realised that it's nothing personal - I'm just a very private person who is highly selective about who I count as actual friends.  I'm very proud of the fact that I've only ever let one person I work with over the threshold of my house, (to be fair, by the time that happened, she'd changed jobs, so we were no longer colleagues, just friends, which we remain to this day).   Anyway, I seem to have wandered from the original point: just take it  from me, variety is not necessarily the spice of life.

Non-Moving Pictures

So, I spent the better part of the day wandering around plains and forests and the like.  But not filming them.  Indeed, my regular reader(s) might well have noticed the lack of holiday films this year.  In previous years, by this point in my holiday, I would have inflicted several home movies on you all.  But this year I just haven't seen anything I've felt like filming.  Part of the problem might well lie with the fact that I've been mainly revisiting old haunts which I've already filmed from every possible angle.  I just can't think of any new way to video these places.  Maybe I should try going somewhere different, but part of the point of a holiday is to relax oneself and these are all places which I know will do just that.  Why take risks and go somewhere which might prove stressful?  Besides, this year it is familiarity which I crave - it brings me reassurance that everything is OK.  (although it probably isn't).

Anyway, with regard to the holiday films, or the lack thereof this year, you aren't quite off the hook yet.  First off, there's still part two of my holidays to come: whilst I'm back at work next week, I'll be back on leave the following week.  There's always the chance that I'll find something to film then.  Secondly, I already have a load of footage from that day off I took in June, which I still haven't used yet - inevitably that's going to become a holiday film when I have time to edit it.  Plus, I have been taking lots of photos during my holidays this year, so I could yet inflict those on you all.  Then there's my recent foray into wildlife photography: today I filmed some ants I encountered.  And a caterpillar.  I'm sure there's a film in there somewhere.  I've already sent some of the ant film to my friend Little Miss Strange in order to pre-empt her threats of texting me a picture of a dead rat, (don't ask, all you need to know is that she lives up to her nick name).  So, you've been warned.   

Friends Disunited

I hate keeping people in suspense and I know that there are readers of this blog still wondering what was the outcome of the non-collection of my recycling that I mentioned the other week.  Well, worry no more - yesterday they finally emptied it after I'd managed to cram a third load recycling in to the bin.  That makes a full six weeks since they could last be bothered.  Isn't Cameron's Britain wonderful?  Yeah, I'm still feeling tired and ill-tempered.  I'm also feeling just downright ill.  The heat and lack of sleep are catching up with me, I'm afraid.  Still, at least the leave application has been put in at work so, hopefully, I'll be a free man for three weeks in late August.  Hopefully that will aid my recovery from my current malaise.  Right now, everyone and everything is irritating me even more than usual.  I found myself particularly pissed off the other day when I found myself being patronised by so-called 'friends' in the pub.  If I haven't mentioned it before, my local is under new management again, which is always a cue for various former regulars to turn up at least once and try to lord it over all those of us who have been regularly drinking there in the meantime.  Which is what happened in this particular incident - I got mightily annoyed by their idea that they were somehow doing me a favour by reappearing because, obviously, I wouldn't have spoken to anyone else in the pub in the several years since they could last be bothered.  Fuck off!

Speaking of long-lost 'friends', did you see that news story over the weekend about that street having to be evacuated because of the highly unstable home made fireworks one resident was manufacturing in his flat?  I watched in fascination as it unfolded on the TV news, waiting to see if they identified the culprit by name.  Sadly, they only gave his age - if he had been a few years younger then I'd swear that I must know him from my schooldays.  I'm sure I must have mentioned that kid I knew at school who used to do stuff like making his own bombs and fabricating shotguns in metalwork (I'm not joking about that).  He was another of those people who latched on to me as a friend and who I could never seem to shake off.  I seem to attract them.  (To be clear here, when I say I attract 'them', clearly implying that  really don't want to be friends with these weirdos, I'm not talking about the various deranged women I seem to attract - they're fine: scary, but I'm still OK with being friends with them.  No, I'm talking about the borderline psychopaths who nobody in their right mind would want to befriend by choice, but who leave you with no choice in the matter). 

Getting back to the matter in hand, I could never shake this guy at school but, once we left school, I thankfully managed to break free of him.  It wasn't a clean break - while I was an undergraduate he got in contact and wanted me to be his best man.  Naturally, I declined, (I was going to do it by post to cut down the level of contact involved, but was persuaded by a girl at college that I should at least do it by phone).  Even if I'd been one of those people with a burning desire to be a best man, I wouldn't have been that desperate.  He's tried to get in touch a few times since then, but the few mutual acquaintances I'm still in touch with and my entire family are under strict instructions to tell him that I'm dead.  He's one of the reasons I never publicly use my real name online - I know he's done web searches for me - and have never been tempted to use things like 'Friends Reunited'.  Despite forcing me into hiding, there's still a part of me curious about what he's up to - every time I hear about a mysterious explosion in a suburban house or someone shooting themselves with a home made harpoon gun,, rather than assuming terrorism, I always think it might be him.  One day, I'm sure, it will be.

Keeping Abreast

As I mentioned last week, I've recently acquired a copy of Simon Sheridan's excellent history of the British sex film, Keeping The British End Up. Perusing this wittily written and well illustrated volume, a question formed in my head - just when did we become obsessed with huge breasts in this country? Now, I know that I'm in danger of making myself look like some sad old perv who spends his spare time wanking off over yellowing pictures of 1970s pin ups, but, whilst looking at the various stills in the book, I couldn't help but notice that most of the actresses employed in these films weren't massively top heavy. So to speak. Sure, there were a number of lager breasted ladies, but we're not talking freakishly over-sized mammarys like, say, Katie Price. No, it seems that throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the average British viewer of smut (and by the mid 1970s they constituted most of the UK's mainstream cinema audiences), favoured normally endowed ladies.

Now, it could be argued that, until the advent of British sex comedies, the UK's cinema goers had been so starved of female nudity since the invention of the moving image, that they'd gladly accept any kind of female breast, provided it was uncovered. In this case, the later obsession with over sized breasts, it could be argued, were simply the porn industries way of keeping audiences interested once female nudity had become common place, even on TV and in mainstream cinema. A sort of mammary arms race, with the pornographers trying to up the ante by giving audiences something they couldn't see anywhere else. Indeed, it's notable that the 'big guns'.so to speak, weren't rolled out by sex film makers until the 1980s, when their movies were increasingly forced out of cinemas and onto video. The result, here in the UK, seems to be perception that women can only be truly sexually desirable if they have huge breasts. A perception perpetuated in the popular press on a regular basis.

Of course, there's nothing new in the idea that men prefer overly endowed women - just look at the continuing fetishisation of Barbara Windsor and her breasts in the Carry On films throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. (Though, interestingly, they were never really bared, viewers instead being treated to lots of 'side boob' shots). However, over the past few decades it really has become an unhealthy obsession. It's also largely a myth that men like large breasts, (contrary to what the media might have you believe ladies, most of us don't objectify women, seeing them simply as a collection of sexual organs). Actually, here I feel moved to go into a quick digression for the benefit of a friend who sometimes reads this blog. That time I told you that I thought there was only one woman I knew who was more attractive than you, and you challenged me on what criteria I was making this judgement, well, when I said that it was because she had (and I quote) 'bigger knockers than you', I didn't actually mean it. The fact is that you'd caught me cold there and I just said the first thing that came into my head. I would never judge a woman on the basis of her bust. Not only that, but I've changed my mind. On reflection, you are obviously more attractive than my other friend, (who doesn't read this blog).

OK, back to the point. Is this fetish for over sized breasts a sign of the increasing infantilism of modern male culture in the UK? I mean, it's all of a piece with the rise of 'Lad's Mags' during the 1990s and the continued popularity of things like Top Gear, which promote the notion of fast cars, rule-breaking and anti-social behaviour as some kind of expression of masculinity. Then again, I suppose it could all be a plot on the part of cosmetic surgeons - by making women insecure over the size of their breasts they hope to drum up business for their breast enlargement clinics. But, on balance, I suspect that it's more likely to be an expression of infantilism.

Post Birthday Ponderings

Just as well I didn't really hold my breath last night after my moan about the lack of birthday greetings I'd received from friends whose own birthdays I always remember, I'd have gone blue and suffocated waiting for a response. Actually, that isn't quite true - I did receive a text wishing me a happy birthday, but from someone I wasn't actually getting at in yesterday's post. Sure, she's pretty erratic in responding to any form of communication and rarely remembers such trivia as birthdays, but I'm used to that. I'm sorry if she thought I was tarring her with the same brush as other miscreants who are much closer to home. The fact is that I love her dearly and always will, even if she doesn't always remember birthdays and high holidays, and frequently frustrates me with her lack of communication. Anyway, with my birthday over for another year, the subject is closed and I promise not to make any more petulant comments about my supposed neglect by friends. As I'm becoming ever more misanthropic, I suppose I should really be pleased that people are finally leaving me to my own devices!

Absent Friends

OK, I've more or less remembered what I was going to post about on Wednesday. I suppose the overall theme has to do with reacquainting oneself with long-absent friends. Sort of. Over Christmas I caught a few episodes of The Goodies which were being repeated on BBC2. Like many people of my generation, I have fond childhood memories of The Goodies, fuelled, no doubt, by the fact none of their BBC series have been repeated in decades, leaving us only with hazy recollections of the trio's comic antics. Sadly, on the basis of the episodes I saw, the show hasn't aged well. It all seemed so laboured and, far from being radical, the humour sometimes seemed a bit reactionary - particularly with regard to its depiction of ethnic minorities and youth culture. I'm not denying that some of it still made me laugh, but it just didn't seem as funny as I remembered it. Perhaps they're right, the past is a foreign country. Maybe we shouldn't try to go back, it can only disappoint us.

That said, over Christmas I also decided to see if I could track down an old friend I haven't seen in a few years and have rather lost touch with. Trust me, keeping track of the academic misadventures of sometime expert advisor to The Sleaze Professor Jerry Mire, for it was he I was looking for, as he has to keep moving to avoid the authorities. Nonetheless, it was with relative ease that I came across the Prof's latest musical venture. Now, I can't deny that I approached Asbo Derek, which this latest endeavour is called, having previously been exposed to the notorious Salient Points, Professor Mire's previous group. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Asbo Derek are actually pretty good! Unlike The Goodies, Professor Mire seems to have improved with age! Perhaps revisiting the past doesn't always have to be a depressing experience. Anyway, I enjoyed the musical stylings of Asbo Derek so much that I want to share them - so here's the link to their Myspace page. Enjoy.

Are You the West Country Stalker?

As 2010 enters the final furlong, I find my thoughts turning to some of the great unanswered questions which have arisen over the past twelve months. Foremost amongst these is the matter of the 'West Country Stalker'. Whilst this sounds as if it might be some kind of Sherlock Holmes mystery, I'm afraid that it is nowhere near as dramatic as anything that Arthur Conan Doyle ever came up with. It all comes down to my web stats. Now, before you click away, thinking 'he's going to bang on about traffic levels again', rest assured, this isn't a another diatribe about Google and its bloody algorithms. However, it does stem from what many might characterise as my obsession with my stats. You see, when you spend as much time as I do analysing visitors, you start to notice patterns in visitor behaviour, and even begin to recognise certain individual visitors by their IP ranges, locations and page viewing patterns. The 'West Country Stalker' is one such visitor.

I first noticed this individual in the Autumn. What drew my attention was the fact that they had a similar browsing pattern to another semi-regular visitor - they looked at the same two pages (the indexes for both the main site and this blog) on most days, presumably checking for updates, and clearly never used bookmarks, as they always came to The Sleaze by searching for it on Google. However, their IP address and server location was unfamiliar. This visitor's location came back variously as in Dorset, Somerset or Devon. (Tiverton has often come up as the location associated with the IP address). Hence my labelling them the 'West Country Stalker'. Now, I have some ideas as to who this person is, (mainly based on the combination of browsing pattern and the fact that they use Tiscali as an ISP) - I certainly know who it isn't. The only people I know in Devon are my Aunt and cousins, none of whom are even aware that I have a web site, and certainly wouldn't be looking at something like The Sleaze, regardless of whether they knew I was behind it or not. As I say, I have my suspicions, but I'm wary of airing them for fear of getting it wrong and causing offence. So, are you the 'West Country Stalker'? Come clean and put me out of my misery.

An Ill Wind

'Two Ton' Toby from the chippy has been having a bit of trouble with the neighbours lately. When I say 'trouble', I don't mean threats of violence, drunken parties, naked tree surgery, or any other sort of anti-social behaviour. No, it's more that 'Two Ton' is feeling a bit victimised - not by poison pen letters, dog shit through the letterbox or similar stuff, you understand, he just feels the local community is over reacting to something he has no control over. Cutting to the chase, old Toby's bowels have been somewhat over active of late. Particularly so early in the morning. It's not so much a dawn chorus his neighbours have been hearing of late, more of a twenty-one bum salute. Except that it's all from one bum. Now, 'Two Ton' claims this is all down to genetics - he reckons his old mum used to regularly blow his old man out of bed every morning, one day the poor bugger mistimed lighting up his early morning fag and a huge fireball blew out the bedroom window and brought the ceiling down - and has nothing to do with his diet. There's no way ten pints a night, rounded off with an Indian has any bearing on the behaviour of his lower intestine, he maintains. Mind you, he has agreed to lay off the bar snacks. I know from personal experience that a couple of pints of Whitbread Best Bitter and a packet of Scampi Fries can have an alarming effect on the digestive tract - stomach bubbling like a cauldron, followed by what felt like a series of miniature nuclear devices being detonated in my underpants. Thankfully, these proved to be low yield in terms of fall out, although they generated an alarming amount of heat.

Getting back to Toby and his neighbours, though, 'Two Ton' didn't think his early hours eruptions were a problem until he noticed that most of the neighbouring houses had started sporting X-shaped tape on their windows. You know the sort of thing - you'll have seen them in war movies. During the blitz they used to have X's of tape on the windows to prevent them from being shattered by the shockwaves from exploding bombs. I told him he was being paranoid, it was probably just that his neighbours were a bunch of World War Two re-enactment nuts. A theory which seemed to have some credence when they started putting sandbags up outside their windows and doors. However, when the bloke next door set off a hand cranked air raid siren a couple of mornings later, a few minutes before 'Two Ton' usually let rip, he got really upset. He reckoned that when he looked out of the window, he saw most of his neighbours diving into an air raid shelter the bloke from number twenty-four had built in his back garden. He didn't see any more as his arse began to quiver as the the first stirrings of that morning's bum rattler manifested themselves. Since then, Toby says he's tried to muffle his anal announcements - he tried sitting on the crapper as he let rip, but the porcelain chamber seemed to act like a megaphone and just amplified the noise. What upsets 'Two Ton' most is that, in his opinion, he's the only one who is actually suffering as a result of his over active bowels. He reckons that the vibrations have dislodged several tiles from his roof and cracked two window panes. I'm not convinced, though. I have tried to point out to him that he's regularly been setting off car alarms up to half a mile away with his bottom trumpet antics. To be honest, I told him, he should think himself lucky that his neighbours haven't bought time on TV to broadcast a 'fart alert' during the seven o'clock commercial break on GMTV. He wasn't amused.

"I've Been Such a Fool!"

"I've been such a fool!" People in 1940s films always seemed to be saying that. At least, they always seemed to be saying it in the old black and white films the BBC used to show on Sunday afternoons when I was a kid. It usually came near the denouement, as the hero or heroine realised that they'd spent the entire film chasing the wrong partner, and that their true love had been there right in front of them all the time, usually in the form of an impoverished school master, meek maid or the like. I always used to wonder if anybody had ever said such a thing in real life. I mean, it does seem a bit restrained, even by 1940s standards, to simply describe yourself as a fool when caught in a life-changing moment of romantic revelation. I'm guessing that even monochrome people would be a bit more animated when in throes of such emotional turmoil. Even I was moved to exclaim "Fuck!" very loudly upon seeing the sometime object of my affection holding hands with someone else some years ago - and I'm a pretty restrained and sophisticated fellow! The one thing I didn't think was that I'd been a fool.

However, a while ago I found myself quietly uttering those words to myself. I think it was something I was watching on TV which triggered it, but I'm still confused as to how exactly I thought I'd been a fool. Superficially, I thought that I'd been a fool because I'd elected not to fight for the affections of someone I cared about, instead just withdrawing quietly from the picture when it became obvious they were enamoured of someone else, (I think these thoughts were inspired by what was happening on TV at the time). But, the more I've pondered on the matter, the more I've questioned the true nature of my foolishness. In truth, wasn't I foolish in misreading friendship for something else and subsequently deluding myself that the relationship could be anything else? Then I had another thought - perhaps I was a fool for allowing myself to be drawn in by her (for the second time, as it happens)? Looking back, it occurred to me that the times when she seemed closest and keenest to see me, were when nobody else was available. Was I the perennial second choice, good enough to be stand in, but never likely to be the real thing? In which case, I really was a bloody fool. To accept this latter definition of my foolishness would require accepting a degree of manipulativeness I don't think my friend was capable of - so I choose instead to plump for the second explanation of why I was a fool, self delusion. If nothing else, it fits with my track record in affairs of the heart. It also absolves my friend - someone I still care for - from blame. The fact is that she never realised how I felt about her, and I was too foolish to spell it out. A fool indeed! But at least I'm not a monochrome fool! That has to count for something, surely?

Noggin' the Egg Nog

In my quest to instill some festive spirit in myself, I decided to try a seasonal tradition I'd never previously indulged in - egg nog. To be absolutely correct, I suppose we should use its Dutch name of Advocaat (which is what most people in the UK mean when they talk about egg nog, although I find this a bit confusing - I thought Dick Advocaat was what you got when you whacked off into a glass of egg nog, but apparently he's the manager of Zenit St Petersburg football club). Anyway, getting back to the point, I decided that I'd denied myself the pleasures of this strange alcoholic beverage, which only ever seems to get drunk at Christmas, for long enough. The trouble was, that I didn't actually have access to any of the stuff and I was reluctant to fork out for a bottle, not knowing whether I'd actually like it or not. However, Little Miss Strange convinced me that it was possible to make our own egg nog with ingredients already present in the house. Now, I really don't know why I ever listen to her, she really is the most unreliable of my so-called 'friends', and that's saying something. She's also certifiably insane. No, really. She's actually got the certificate to prove it. Cutting to the chase, the alarm bells should have started ringing when she cracked a couple of eggs, pouring their yolks into a mixing bowl before adding half a bottle of vodka and vigourously beating them together. I was sure that things like milk, cream, sugar and flavourings were involved, but Little Miss Strange assured me that I was mistaken, as she poured a measure of her concoction from the bowl into a glass for me to sample.

To be fair, this 'egg nog' looked much the same coming back up as it did going down, so the mess didn't seem that bad. I can now appreciate why people only drink it at Christmas - it takes them the rest of the year to recover from it. Quite why anybody would want to pay to drink it is beyond me. Having said that, when I struggled to my feet, eyes watering and still coughing up yellow sputum, I was greeted by the sight of Little Miss Strange draining the rest of the bowl of its filthy contents, before wiping her mouth and ransacking the house for anything else alcoholic. She ended up on the roof, hurling her shoes at passing carol singers. All-in-all, it was a pretty traumatic experience, but par for the course this Christmas. I mean, when Big Sleazy asked me to come and help him collect his Christmas tree, I didn't expect to find myself in someone's garden at dead of night, cutting down some unsuspecting bastard's fir tree. It was bloody murder trying to drag it across the lawn and over the hedge without being seen - the security lights went off and the house owner came after us waving a garden fork. He nearly caught us after Big Sleazy stopped to nick some of his external Christmas lights as well. Why the bloody hell he can't just buy the whole lot at the garden centre like everyone else, I really don't know. But apparently the adrenalin rush of having an enraged householder chasing you down the street, hurling a garden fork through your rear window as the car strains to accelerate with the burden of a fifteen foot tall ornamental tree strapped to the roof, makes it all worthwhile. All it needs now is for Little Miss Strange to climb up the damn thing under the influence of her 'egg nog', and try to impersonate an angel. It really doesn't bear thinking about!

Sensory Deprivation

I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen for quite a while today. She told me that she'd been without a phone, internet or TV for five weeks, (thereby explaining why I hadn't heard from her in an age). I must admit, in view of her sensory deprivation over such a lengthy period, she didn't seem too crazy. Indeed, she seemed slightly less certifiable than she usually does, (generally speaking, her lunacy is one of her most appealing features - it was that which persuaded me to adopt her as a surrogate little sister), which was even more surprising when she told me that she'd been listening to Radio Four quite extensively during this period. I've always imagined that being dead was a rather like listening to Radio Four - an eternity of being forced to listen to pretentious middle class tossers droning on about how awful working class life is and how much better off the lower classes would be if only they'd listen to more stultifyingly boring radio plays about death and dinner parties.

Anyway, getting back to the point, it occurred to me that I couldn't actually think of many great TV highlights she might have missed over the past five weeks. OK, I could only actually think of one off the top of my head: the climax of this series of Doctor Who. Apart from that, what has there been? Hours of moronic ejaculations from the televisual masturbation that is Big Brother? Endless coverage of an international football tournament that none of the UK's teams participated in? Celebrity Master Chef? Yet more ITV drama series so dire they've sat on the shelf for three years before being quietly released into the Summer schedules in the hope that all the other dross will make them look good? I realised that most of my TV highlights from this period have been repeats on obscure channels ending in '4'; The Avengers, The Sweeney and most notably, the still excellent Homicide: Life on the Street, (please ITV 4, stop scheduling this in the middle of the night and give it a decent slot). I suppose you could argue that the lunacy that is Bonekickers on the BBC constitutes a highlight, but only if you are a completely unbalanced conspiracy nut. No, I think on balance that my friend has had the better deal, entertainment wise, so far this Summer.

Punch a Z-Lister Today

I had a pretty traumatic Friday. First off, it was the day of the funeral of one of my neighbours, who died unexpectedly the previous week. Being one of the few neighbours I either knew or got on with, as a mark of respect I made sure that I was on hand to see the funeral cortege depart from the house. Now, as if that wasn't upsetting enough, as I was walking back to my car, I saw a vaguely familiar figure coming towards me down the street. Wearing a stupid wide-brimmed hat, I recognised none other than minor TV 'personality' Nick Knowles. The trouble was that I wasn't 100% sure it was that twat from the telly, or I'd have smacked him in the face. At the very least I would have shouted at him to show some respect and take his fucking hat off for the funeral procession. Mind you, I'm pretty sure it was him - he gave me that look that all z-listers give you when they think that you should recognise them. Trust me, I'm an expert on such looks, I've had the likes of Robson Green and some bloke from Emmerdale give them to me.

Sadly, I didn't think to check where he was going after he passed me. I later had this nasty thought that maybe it was him who'd bought one of the two houses recently sold on my terrace. For fuck's sake, that's the last thing I want, Nick fucking Knowles and his DIY SOS nonsense on my street! Once one of the bastards moves in, you can guarantee that others will follow. Z-list celebrity infestations have to be resisted at all costs. It might start harmlessly enough with home improvement show presenters turning up, but next thing you know, you'll have Amy Winehouse puking up on your doorstep and Pete Doherty shooting up in your spare room. So, take my advice, in order to avoid such a nightmare in your neighbourhood, next time you see a Z-lister wandering down your street, punch the bastard in the face.

Joy of Text?

I switched on my rarely used mobile phone the other day and was surprised by the text alert tone chiming at me. I actually got quite excited, not because nobody ever texts me, but because I have a friend who always used to text me, but has fallen silent of late. Naturally, I thought it might be a communication from her. However, I was somewhat disappointed to find that the text was actually from Tesco, whose mobile network I use, telling me about some offer or other to do with reward points. Now, my first reaction was: 'You're a supermarket, I don't want a bloody relationship with you, I just want to take advantage of your low call rates'. But then I thought 'What the hell, nobody else is texting me at the moment', so I texted back and asked them out for a drink.

To be fair, we had quite a good time but I did find them a little, well, cheap. Not to mention a trifle garish. I think in future I might stick to the more refined and upmarket Sainsbury's, despite their friendship with that twat Jamie Oliver. Mind you Sainsbury's does tend to prefer those poncey wine bars. If it's fun down the pub you want, then cheap and cheerful Asda can always be relied upon for a raucous night out. Asda may be somewhat brash, and a bit downmarket in their tastes, but they do know how to have a good time. Anyway, the upshot is that I think I might have to block Tesco's number, or something. They're just a bit too eager, if you know what I mean. That always makes me wary - they could turn out to be a crazy stalker, or something.

As an addendum, I should note that my non-texting friend did in fact reply to a text I sent her immediately. So hopefully, she hasn't entirely abandoned this medium of communication!

Getting Reconnected

Woo-hoo! My new ADSL broadband connection is finally up and running. Not only does it seem smoother running than its predecessor, but the IP address I've been assigned isn't blocked by half the servers on the net. Not, of course, that such a thing could possibly happen, at least not according to what passed for technical support at my previous ISP. Best of all, I finally have a wireless network set up. Yes folks, I can now surf the net from anywhere in my house. In fact, I'm actually sat on the toilet as I type this - no, just joking! But it is a bloody site more convenient than being effectively chained to one room when working on line.

The thing intriguing me now is the identity of the other local wireless networks my networking utility can now detect. I'm guessing by the strength of the signal that the BT HomeHub is my next door neighbours' network. In some parts of the house a BT business hub can be detected - I'm guessing that's one of the small businesses across the road, or maybe the local health care facility. There's also a SKY network and a BT Fusion hub, both unidentified. However, most intriguing is the weakly signalled network called 'andrea'. Now, I have an erstwhile friend of this name, who I know has a wireless network, but she lives more than ten miles away. So it can't be her, unless she's hiding under my floor boards or in the attic. Come to think of it, I haven't heard from her in a while...

Less Than Tolerant

One of the reasons I like my slightly deranged friend - the one who wasn't attacked by squirrels, despite my worst fears - so much (apart from the obvious facts that she is both beautiful and intelligent), is that on some issues she is even less tolerant than I am. Phone-ins, for instance. The other night in the pub, she got onto the subject of breakfast TV and the way it is becoming dominated by phone-ins. You know the sort of thing, there's an item on obesity in children, they've got five minutes to fill before the regional weather, so they invite bigots to call in and spill their bile on the subject. Now, I generally don't watch breakfast TV, therefore I was unaware of this phenomenon, so it shocked me to find that the creeping scourge of phone-ins had made the evolutionary leap from local radio to national TV. A bit like bird flu jumping between species. Anyway, getting back to the point, my friend's rant on the subject set me to thinking about how best we can combat this growing menace (phone-ins, not bird flu).

I was forced to conclude that an extension of the principle of intolerance would be the best weapon. Let me elaborate. Most of the people who participate in phone-ins are intolerant, stupid bigots. Intelligent callers who try to intervene with reasoned argument and balanced views are either kept off the air altogether, or shouted down by the bigots - thrown to the dogs, if you will, by the hosts. They are inevitably reviled and ridiculed as 'bleeding heart liberals' and the like. Clearly, reason will not work. No, the answer is for us liberals to phone in and be unreasonable. We need to be as rude and obnoxious as the bigots. Forget logic, just spew liberal bile at them. Call them racists. Call them idiots. Shout them down. Make up 'facts' to refute their 'arguments'. Slowly but surely, we must come to dominate these phone-ins and force out the bigots. Only then can we start to use them as a forum for reasonable debate. Ultimately, that's our biggest problem - we try to be reasonable. We assume that these people are capable of understanding logical arguments. They aren't. If they were, they wouldn't hold such reprehensible views. So, just scream at them. Indeed, I see that at least one member of the media has decided to adopt this approach - a reporter for the BBC's Panorama has drawn some criticism for his screaming rant against a Scientologist he was interviewing. Personally, I commend his actions. Give the bastards a taste of their own medicine. See how they like having someone else's reactionary views shoved down their throats.