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And another thing (from this year’s Summer Book Bitch – unpublished by The Secondhand Press)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