Higgledy-Piggledy

 

>TckTlk

 

sanctioned by her Nephew Sam

Britain’s stool in Europe goes

spinning round those twin plateaus

wardog & scam

 

scaling of inhuman depths

plays the odd supporting role

wicket keeper stuck in goal

tripling her debts

 

hunkered down in show off stance

patiently through mumbled words

prawn concertos scarely birds

shortness of pants

 

never shy of peddling cheese

such behaviour hardly shows

up apart from peg on nose

mindless of sneeze

 

there now where’d I put me straw

boater anyone for sex

round the mulberry bush with ex

partners go poor

 

 

>And another thing (from this year’s Summer Book Bitch – unpublished by The Secondhand Press)

 

“Further Dogscullery”

 

Washing up after the exploits of our four-footed friends.

 

By Coalman Zack.

 

2 stars & a sackful of ashes goes to this potpouri of shaggy tails, etc. etc...

 

>History. Double Act to follow.

 

Castlereagh and Canning were a right pair of Anglo Irish upstarts that along with their countryman - the Duke of Wellington - led the English a merry dance during the French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars. Both despised and revered at different & the same times, their duplicitous policies united and divided a condominium of nations struggling to bridge conflicting European and World viewpoints. The pair’s true colours were revealed when, as senior members of Portland’s Gang, they fought a duel on Putney Heath. If ever Honour were settled by pistols at dawn, the bogs rattled with a vengeance as their shots rang out. The better orator was left bleeding from the thigh while the better shot went home to resign. Yet both recovered and even rejoined the govt., despite mutual spite, like a pair of drunken pugilists caught bawling outside a tavern, persuaded to slip their torn and soiled coats back on and have one last stout - leering at each other across the taps. Some might argue that neither was a true Irishman and yet for all their feigned aristocracy were ever Feinians more alike in their public standoffs? Inhabitants of the Silly Isles (incl. Great Britain) have always been the sum of their genes, and none who called themselves English was ever as plain & simple as anything but by the imprints of this pair’s lips, planted either side of the Blarney Stone.

 

 

>Reality Brakes

 

AI Better, Huh?

Sure, if you think it ain’t, then let me offer proof. Instead of reading this piece as originally written by me, I invite you to copy paste it into ChatGPT with the instruction rewrite & improve in the style of Grok or Gemini. If you still think it’s better than the original, well read the this first. Then come back to me.

 

>The Stone Age of Space Xploitation

 

(treatment for an episode of Reality Brake)

 

The likes of Musk, and there are some who actually like them, are living in a 1950s Space Bubble. Which, if we consider things from Asimov down, is not so bad - vision-wise - but in terms of technology (which is the rich fella’s bag), his Raptor engine is like James Watt’s Improved Steam Contraption. You know, not the first engine Watt would design from scratch, more like the experimental job he was tasked with reassembling. Yes, the Raptor (powering the craft in Musk’s private space consortium) is an improvement on your V2 rocket engine. Well done there, young man! Take 3rd prize. Now let’s have something 21st century out of you, eh?

What exactly is the X in Space X? Is it actually about exploring some new ground – as in X marks the spot? - or is it just about exploiting the same old ideas again and again?  Yes, practice does make perfect, Mr Mülk (pseudonym for Mr Rich). Your AI (the maths based one, not that text-based slop offered to the plebs)… your AI runs a hundred full simulations per iteration of the actualised prototypes, meaning the Craptor is a darnsight more efficient than Apollo’s engines. But in terms of fuel sourcing, and carbon dioxide emissions, youse only moved on from kerosene to liquid methane gas. In other words, yer feedsock’s still fossil fuel based and its emissions are a touch less sulphurous. So facking what, Bruvver!

When are any of youse crapheads gonna embrace good ol’ HOX? But even HOX is only Stage One, fuhgawdsake. Never mind how many hundred kilos you can afford to shift at a time. If you’re gonna run any serious lojistics operation between Earth and Space, gotta start talking hundreds’n’farsands a tonnes. Therefore, a physical winching system is called for, tethered from the ground to a permanent ultra low gravity platform about a hundred kilometres up, with a childsplay counterbalance payload exchange system. Lightweight, fibre-based tethering and lift shaft assemblies will be made from Ground-up and Space-down, meeting somewhere in the middle. The task shouldn’t take more than ten years, and should be done within five billion Universal Credits total expenditure. Subscription should be on a Citizens Lottery Basis. To Arthur C Clarke respect must be due for the above idea; except if he was a pedo, in which case do something vile with his corpse (CGI effigies only. Mülk beware!

 

 

>Cod Psychology (with rice or chips)

Life may be lived with or without the consent of imagination. Though even with it, the flesh is not excluded. We lust after each other’s physical presence in abstract ways for much of the time; and just the promise of togetherness often does to get by on. We are close and far at the same time, sitting round the kitchen table, eating out of the same pans and dishes while on totally different planets in our heads. Sharing the same bed is no fun if it’s no fun, I don’t care what anyone else says, you know what it means. The kids can go to hell. And the kids will go to hell if experience is anything to go by. Actually, if they don’t go to hell at some point you might almost say they’ve never lived. To hell and back, of course. No one expects you to face the fires without some beam of escape. And there you go, you see, it isn’t all in the mind. Plus, even those bits that are all in the mind can get pretty painful at times.

Half an hour standing on your tod at someone’s funeral, for inst.

Or Not To Go!

talking straight bananas

[1]

Electric cars, phooey! Just not buying this shit. If a full sized car is going to be electric, let it have four wheels drive as standard. Four WHEELS drive, not wheel? Yes, no central motor, or even one unit per axel. Each wheel hub should constitute its own armature. A wheel doesn’t NEED a motor when it IS one. Any electric car that even looks like it’s pretending to be an internal combustion driven thing is not worth bothering with.

Having said TV at, smaller electric cars should be three-wheelers as standard, configured with two wheels at the front and one at the rear, giving greater stability than those in the current tricycle mode. OK, they might look a tad like the old Morgan Sports car (as my dad had in the Mid-Thirties), but style is no drawback. They won’t need a leather strap across the bonnet to keep the engine in! They won’t have an engine, just a low c-of-g battery.

Talking of where to sling your batteries, why don’t electric cars simply change their cells instead of wasting time having to top up with fuel? With a proper, standard modular system, a battery change shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. And they could have two, three, four or fourteen more cells…  depending on the load. Battery technology could then evolve without requiring major upgrades to the car.

Actually, it’s a petrol/diesel head mentality that’s driving this race to electrify the roads. No thought is being given to such pedestrian concerns as parking and manoeuvrability in restricted spaces. By including rear- as well as front-wheel steering control, true electric cars will save on parking space as well as carbon emissions. Instead of starting with a clean drawing board, designers are falling over each other in the race to combine classic car lines with plastic tech looks. A glance at the LRVs used to drive on the Moon during the Apollo missions would give them an idea of what to do. Functionality needs to be the well-spring of invention not an afterthought.

Finally, there is cost. A basic, electric powered buggy with two seats and a baggage rack, with a good enough range for commuting and shopping trips, can be imported from China for twenty-five hundred Zealots. So, why are all the entry level electric cars costing twenty times that? Phooey!

[2]

talking straight bananas

yeller as the day is long

air guitars no cool

stick it up your billabong

 

on the point of getting booed

do another song

cut the cookie change of mood

 

cross the Aussie Rubicon

call me Corporal Mudd

stage a flipping Carry-on

 

Glasgow Empire sniffing blood

belt & braces thin

line between us understood

 

sitting on a drawing pin

smile as all is good

give ‘em like another ring

[3]

Art Technology & Fame

 

In a slightly altered version of pop music history, McCartney & Lennon don’t meet up but still, Paul goes on to enjoy a successful career as a songwriter and performer. So, what then becomes of a particular song, one he started writing long before the McCartney-Lennon brand would appear… When I’m Sixty-four?

Though it’s probably not going to end up on the first globally successful, truly psychedelic pop album (Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), the tune of When I’m Sixty-four is so good and its lyrics are so amusing, the song is bound to make it somehow. Though not as Beat or Rock’n’roll music. It’s really a novelty piece, closer to The Teddy Bears’ Picnic or Nellie The Elephant than… say… She Was Just Seventeen (Y’know what I mean). So, I imagine some smart producer, maybe even yer man George Martin himself, picking it up and getting Clive Dunn to spiel-sing it (Dunn was the Senior Citizen Impersonator who created Jonsie The Butcher in Dad’s Army). When I’m 64 actually goes to Number One, say Christmas, 1967. Take McCartney out of the Beatles and you’ve still got a hugely popular tunesmith under the hood. It’s just that he can’t make it so big without the whole Beatlemachine’s Yeah-Yeahs behind him. As a singer, Paul might have filled a niche somewhere between Tommy Steele and Cliff, and he would have been known for some of his own songs, Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night, for inst. But numbers as diverse as Let It Be and Martha My Dear would have been sold to the highest bidder. The Show Band as an Art Form that the Beatles became was the sum of many elements, and McCartney himself has more than most other Pop Stars.

What brought the crucial elements of popular music culture together in the 1960s? Technology, for one thing, Fame for another. A huge feature of 60s numbers is how they were produced on the spur of the moment. Get Off My Cloud by the Rolling Stones, written by Richard & Jagger in a hotel room between gigs. Help written by Lennon when the Beatles were desperate for a hit to finish their latest film with. Audiences wanted songs that told the story of their group’s fame. The availability of portable tape machines and the sublimest form of demand – popular acclaim - drove those cats to creative extremes. Take fame and technology away from the artists in the Beatles’ & the Stones’ machines and suddenly a great slew of their songs is erased. There is no Midnight Rambler, no Hey Jude or Imagine. Tell me the last time you heard a street pianist at a railway station playing their unknown rock anthems and people are going like where do I know that tune from? Isn’t that Mick Jagger covering Sinatra numbers wearing a WH Auden mask? Imelda, get your diamond encrusted skates on, Yer Man is gonna do One Last Song! When does the Music become the Musical?

It’s this: you get yourself a Beatlemachine and you can write out your own winning lottery ticket. You are there with your Tardis-in-a-pen; scan here and paste it there, produced, edited and with extra scenes by customising AI bots. Sure. You’re the rich kid at school. Celebrity Chef? Take whatever you like from the shelves! In fact, nuts to the cops and the press, we’ll pay YOU to shoplift here in future. Turn just about anything into product: Ringo's nail clippings, anyone? Putting it coyly. 

Still Not Closed On Sundays! 

13 - Out now in Paperback and on Kindle

 

Click Here

Not Sayin More!

13 or the yesterday papers preview

(Excerpt from "13 or the yesterday papers")

Brexit chased by a bore

 

gosh the way performing seals

clap themselves no matter what

even those who’ve got the lot

tank bed & meals

 

muscular guys

tossing biggots off with cold

noses wish I were that bold

calm collected slick & wise

 

but I’m just a mangy dog

spites the hand that feeds it go

AWOL twice a year then show

up with a sprog

 

walk with a limp

guess the tree I bark up’s wrong

or my halter’s too darn long

called to heel by Colonel Blimp

 

on the loose when things get hot

out of water nothing feels

right a roll in mud appeals

cuts to the plot

Not Out Yet! (1.5.26)

The Yesterday Papers

In Philip Lee’s new installation at Tate Owl, rapidly ageing verse stages a virtual attempt at staying up late. (When the The Avengers with John Steed & Mrs. Peel were on, it was,

     Aw, please Mum! Dad! Just this once!)

Miserably failing to persuade, lines that nevertheless raise a titter here & there while risking everything from nuclear war to the Mutually Agreed Destruction of Truth & Beauty.

 

OUT SOON

 

Meanwhile, not in this volume…

 

Toilet Wars

Zonk Pifflequaite’s new curation of stupid bloody nonsense: Porcelain Pan gets Pancake Tuesday’d.

 

Downstairs & Under

ADC Retro TV presents a series steeped in 1970s basement chic. From larks on the Loading Dock and Tom-Foolery on the East Berlin u bahn, through A Journey To The Centre Of Eartha Kitt.

 

Meanwhile On Horseback…

 

tramp hunting to packs of hounds

jinx within existing laws

biting bums off with their drawers

savour the sounds

 

trah-la-lah la-lah-la-lee

trah-la-lah la-lah-la-loo

trah-la-lah la-lah-la-loo

trah-la-la-lee

 

Or sans culottes:

 

tramp-o-line on steeple chase

Springheel Jack has got your backs

heart attacks in gummy sacks

piano drums bass

 

trah-la-lah etc.

 

Or the pedestrian:

 

tramp tramp tramp the game’s a foot

tramp tramp trampling down the grapes

tramp tramp tramp on Kipling’s grave

face load of soot

 

trah-la-lah etc

 

Or at sea:

 

tramp’s a steamer full of coal

U-boat victim food for fish

never granted one last wish

fire in the hole

 

trah-la-lah etc

 

And finally:

 

tramp’s a spelling bee mistake

stead of U he’s got an A

raspberries on their parade

cut like the cake

 

bumpetty bumpetty bump

rumpetty rumpetty boop

rumbelly rumbelly poop

trumpetty trump

Not Him Again!

If purple is the new red…

 No boots on the ground yet, but it’s canvas shoes on warship decks and flying helmets over enemy towns…

So last week it was World War Three already!  But Mr Zelenskyy would say that, wouldn’t he? Even though what his country has been going through for the past four years is not the trauma it experienced in 1941-5 - raped and left for dead by the first Axis of Evil - then reoccupied by the Soviets. Actually, the Nazi invaders at first thought the people of Ukraine were sub-human Slavs (fit only to be wiped out or enslaved), but by 1943 the war was going so badly they began to recruit them into their depleted armies. There was even a Ukrainian branch of the SS. So, when the Russians pushed them back out, again the Ukrainians were seen as enemies to be rounded up and shot, or at least re-educated and enslaved. Hence the current Russian anti-fascist rhetoric. Of course, to Russian eyes, it doesn’t help the Ukrainian cause that large areas of their territory were once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But is what’s been going on since 2014 the start - god forbid - of World War Three?

Well, as we saw in World Wars One and Two, none of them gods ever stepped in and stopped the killing. The tragedy was left to act itself out to the bitter end, like the death wish of the totenkopfs came true. Perhaps Germany should have had enough after the horrors of 1914-18? But no, they, their leaders and allies had to have another go in 1939. And isn’t that just what’s being re-enacted now?

Russia is generally agreed to have lost the Cold War in 1989. Like Hitler in the trenches, Putin cut his teeth as a Cold War KGB operative. He and the others who’d had things good during the communist era could see no good reason for the Soviet collapse, just as Hitler and the Freikorps who roamed Germany after 1918 were just looking for the chance to turn the clock back. Isn’t this what’s happening now? And like the Cold War, which dragged on for decades in proxy wars, economic and ideological conflicts, is likely to last decades before the Russian people are completely exhausted and the regime finally collapses?

So now it’s Iran they turn to again, the black hole of war reopened on this front, too. Starmer announces, British planes are in the air. France convenes the Security Council. Meanwhile a so-called Board of Peace presides over the collapse of rule-based International politics. Leaders are openly targeted, schools obliterated simply because they happen to be located next door to military facilities. The people of Iran are expected to take to the streets and with their bare hands overthrow a ruthless Revolutionary Guard that has in the past month or so butchered thousands of protestors. And already (this is only Day Two), as in Venezuela, there are signs the Americans are ready to deal with whoever takes over the government, even if they are basically the same mob that were in charge before. How much more of this bored of peace can the world take before the tipping point into general chaos is reached?

I’m afraid massive rearmament is inevitable. So are reds under the bed, though they’re more likely to be the Farages and Le Penns of this era than the Corbyns and Sanderses  of yesteryear. I guess purple is the new red. But the new blue - who’s that, eh? And stirring in a little yellow, what do we get? Isn’t the US, after its carrier fleets withdraw, destined for an era of inglorious, tariff based, protectionist isolation? And a preoccupation with China and South America that leaves Europe and Africa to fend for themselves. Well, it’s ha-bloody-ha to that. Shares in BAE, anyone?

Not Another Bloody Cease Fire, uh?

Up the Garden Path

with Porky & Klone

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Bidding starts at a hundred Bitcoin each. Winners get Authorised Certificate of Ownership plus 10% of proceeds goes to the Board of Piss Off.

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bard of piss talks

 

elevating Sir

Jeffrey Epstein Lord

posthumous award

ain’t it absurd

 

shucks the geezer had

royal houses licked

servants Maxwell picked

cut him a tad

 

heaven knows the sex

crimes they faced but died

long before the lies

surfaced on X

 

evidence of guilt

barely graced their lips

on dictatorships

empires were built

 

excavate their bones

relics to revere

bung the guy a peer

age of the clones

 

 

 

these lies are true II

 

nineteen thirty-eight

history books shall prove

Hitler was removed

dude sealed his fate

 

when the world was faced

nineteen sixty-nine

with a heinous crime

being well placed

 

saved the Rolling Stones

as they came on stage

from a shooter’s rage

sent on the drones

 

in the year of dick

taser Epstein’s tricks

nineteen ninety-six

dude had him sicked

 

best of all same guy

in that fateful year

took one in the eye ear

truth just won’t die

 

 

 

merry-go-round

 

if we’re honest love is false

having people live on lies

loitering as passion dies

stuck on a waltz

 

have the author drill a new

book of what to say & do

who to ditch or tootle to

hang on a clue

 

time they asked was it a whore

feeding off an empty drive

keeping villagers alive

knocking on doors

 

screw the romance out of sex

the transactional kiss good

riddance to its shall & should

wait for the next

 

bus but maybe save on fares

senior citizens unfazed

catalogued by fantasies

musing on chairs

 

*

 

love is one long song

clever words & tune

worming through the moon

light on a pond

 

trip in a balloon

safety harness on

smooth as silicon

no parachute

 

broken biscuit tin

full of Christmas pud

extra helping should

do your head in

 

love is better glued

on the sides of trucks

advertising hook’s

babes in the mood

 

buried down the park

underneath a tree

aid to memory

light in the dark

 

*

 

hell it’s no

just a mo

in your ear

dear

 

sell by date

hand of fate

time we spilt

milk

 

sound of words

sense absurd

fond of cheese

Jeez

 

tie the knot

get the lot

on a plate

Kate

 

come & go

straight or queer

seeing here

blow

 

 

 

U-Crane

 

Congress Gaza Venezuela God

who they gonna skyjack next them black

holes Iran Afganistan Iraq

building a squad

 

call them greatest architect of all

Newton Heisenberg & Einstein cloned

Marie Curie Stopes on speakerphone

Pink Floyd on Wall

 

Street they’ll say it one more time or ten

shoot the Milky Way belongs to us

Proxima Centauri’s claim is pus

who’s got the men

 

Adolf Joe or Genghis Julius

Satan none of which American

only bloke round here to get things done

hoots on the bus

 

deconstruction plant for sale or lease

get in while they’re hot now place your bets

human race or self drive 3D chess

lifting for peace

 

 

 

untitled draft

don't worry they’s nothing but Americanisms

 

& them a stand-out politician whose improv routines popular for their wooden repetitiveness spends hours at the mirror literally hurling brown tuppences at their audience in the manner of a padishah disbursing golden coin & therefore do we offer this irreverent verse

 

passions torment then

torrent back as joys

smoking with the boys

do it again

 

infantile regrets

get a vengeful twist

lance them like a cyst

guard dogs for pets

 

bugger me I shan’t

let these feelings go

someone ought to know

don’t say you can’t

 

tell a tout from Top

Cat in jury doubt

who am I to out

think like a cop

 

chocolate money fake

scrip the name of peace

wonders sure will cease

grift on a take

 

 

 

fragment

 

what you see & who you get

ain’t the same as how you bet

you can tell them by their eyes

piles in the skies

 

 

 

nature reverse

 

herds of tame wildebeest graze the virgin plains of New Antarctica

a commited schizophrenic versus a pair of conjoined arm wrestlers for president

penguins in plastic suits cross the frozen crusts of gas giant moons

glib vegans beat anthropomorphic vegetarians senseless with selfie sticks

an albino hippopotamus appears in the room of an elephant with diarrhea

refugees from Mars sign on as unemployed former astronauts

underground golf clubs nudist camps & sewage farms held on alternate Sundays in March

but if the children of the workers are still bored call Henry Ford

these & other lines are all you get after Don & Elon’s delinquent comedy set

 

 

 

hometown myth

 

pardon me there

have to observe

temporary

reasons to swear

 

all of us here

lovely my dear

don’t even care

everything’s queer

 

numbers of folk

working like dope

just to survive

see how it poke

 

flexible lies

dormant the files

back of their smiles

share your unease

 

here’s what to hope

four to one cope

odds on we’ll mope

given the mop

 

 

 

dim view

 

Venus Earth & Mars are no

three-ringed circus act although

orbiting or what they go

on with the show

 

outer planets take the view

all their fuss is mainly due

to an over heated blue

shift in the glue

 

put another way they don’t

give a monkey’s cos it won’t

make no difference simply note

some rocks will float

 

as for Pluto who knows how

such a lump can take their bow

planetoids just ain’t allowed

audience cowed

 

stupid solar system bored

asteroids may not afford

ticket prices having soared

comets outlawed

 

 

 

honest

 

isn't America great

making work for blokes like me

dumb-arsed circus runaways

fish in the sea

 

jokes aside you know my name

silver dollar all my own

Bumph’s the one you’re betting on

talking the game

 

folks it’s what the market wants

wearing out your daddy’s pants

what’s inside them hornets ants

taking no chance

 

lo-down ho-down Würlitzer

seven rides a penny Ma’am

get your curlies straightener

it’s an exam

 

contrast me with anyone

officer I’m willing take

down my every word I make

no more’n I fake

 

 

 

Police Canteen S4E17

 

cos there’s been a poisoning

quarantine the force

call Inspector Horsemeat in

 

tho the gossip’s getting worse

larks have gotta sing

time to blow the coffee curse

 

liver bacon sausage rolls

suspect frying bread

beans on toast with garden gnomes

 

fishing at the river’s end

flounders in the zone

dealing with the plateful dead

 

let the owl informants in

now on Nitflox One

indigestibles begin

Not Real Woods Again!