Re-entry

Lock up your daughters, grandparents, and transfer your zebras to another zoo. I'm back and you're all in a lot of trouble.

I understand that my audience will have dwindled now that holidays have started and people don't need an escape from the wrist cutting tedium of excel/word/solitaire. However as I sit here by the fire, a sherry in my hand and deep in the bosoms of my family, I thought I might share some highlights of the trip back with my true fans.

I took the greyhound to Dulles. Whilst the driver was loading bags and we were figuring out how to remove the chewing gum from our seats, a lovely woman boarded and immediately called her companion (possibly her younger sister) an asshole for not helping her with her bags. Then she decided she'd lost her ticket and went back outside to shout at the driver. This was a good start and was only bettered when the man with consumption got on.

Sometime into the journey a strange beast-like growling noise came from the rear of the coach. As I had seen no animals other than humans board, I assumed the source to be a child. Possible confirmation of my hypothesis came when a stern voice at the back demanded, "Sit down! Sit down or am I going to have to medicate you?"

There was a good road sign about self propelled pets that I didn't quite have time to read properly and a slow witted man telling a Chinese student about his life history, including the secret work he did for the military that he supposedly couldn't talk about.

I self-medicated my way across the Atlantic using free alcohol as usual, but it was especially necessary; the man in front of me had his seat fully reclined, pinning my legs and making me uncomfortably intimate with his scalp, while the child behind kicked me in the kidneys for six hours.

I have now been awake forever and have finally seen the true face of God. Oprah says hi.

A Christmas Massage

Imagine. Imagine you live in time and place of disease, fear, intolerance and men wearing dresses.
"Aha!" you snigger and say, "wot like now?" You probably even mentally spell it as 'wot'. No, not like now you delirious shitcake. Now, when you can use the toilet without going outside, when international aid efforts try to help the wretched in even the most remote corners and when for some reason people seem to think even HIV isn't worth getting worried about any more. No, now things are piss easy by comparison, even if they aren't perfect.
So, starting again, imagine that you are born into a harsh world where war, plague and famine aren't just facets of the mass entertainment medium or something you see on your gap year. You are in fact born with a mission, to change the world for the better via the apparently simple medium of teaching tolerance. It's essentially a suicide mission that ends horrifically, but your friends and followers carry the message on.
Two millennia later, the message has been diluted to the point of attaching antlers to your pets, burning birds reared in cruel conditions and staring at meaningless cack on TV, the sole purpose of which is to keep you sedated between advert 'breaks'. Not only this, the very region of the world where your message started out is still as much of a sucking chest wound as ever.
Why did you even bother?

On the positive side, at least there's only about seventy Christmases in a lifetime.

Tarzan and Droid go to the big house

Back by popular request!
I hope those of you who requested them enjoyed your cards! Exclamation!

Last weekend I travelled to Freedom central with my Ukranian associate. We had tremendous fun, jelly and cake. Well hamburgers, pizza and hamburgers. I think I've ruined the already fairly worthless manufacturer's guarantee on my arteries and gastrointestinal tract.

We got a lift with our American friend (the other survivor of the furniture expedition), who is an afficionado of point-and-shoot driving. I was very impressed by her ability to hold a cellphone and a TomTom simultaneously, leaving the steering wheel in God's capable hands.

On the way I saw a real cheerleader at a gas station and lots of bumper stickers and pick ups and trees and tarmac and the same shopping centres with the same shops every thirty miles. Sadly we didn't get to smear any deer on the blacktop, but there's always a next time. Except when there isn't.
The drive passed quickly not just because of the scenery, but because of the stimulating conversation in which every word had to be repeated at least twice, and in the case of the Ukrainian obscenity master class, up to a few thousand times. On reflection it was a mistake to leave my penknife in the boot/trunk/abdomen/albumen.

We stayed in a hostel apparently near the commercial zone for prostitutes, although I didn't see any. It's possible I can't tell them apart from other women, on account of recent fashion trends. Our first evening featured a brief excursion to some bars of cultural significance where we met a double bass player with apparently only two teeth in his upper jaw (and even they looked ready to jump). I didn't forget my responsibility as the UK's special envoy for dancing either and took the opportunity to impress some locals.

On Saturday we visited lots of white buildings, and discovered that the 'free' in 'land of the free' actually refers to the museums in Washington DC. The Natural History museum was our first stop. Happy parents led their young around on leads and boy scouts wandered the cafeterias complaining that they weren't allowed to bring their cellphones. As I used my camera to take a childishly obscene photo, of the Ukranian posing with a stuffed elephant in the entrance hall, a kindly old lady approached and asked if we'd both like to be in the picture. I explained that it wasn't necessary.
Later an officious guide sidled up behind us as we looked at an exhibit about ants and barked, "Have you found the queen yet?"
Tarzan and I, being highly edyoukated Uropeons, chose to ignore him but a nearby American avec cap du 'baiseball was drawn in and we were forced to retreat.

Navigating the mall (grass not shopping for once) and the accompanying roiling mass of frenzied starlings, sparrows and squirrels, we made it to the Air and Space museum, where air and space were sparse because of the sheer number of planes suspended from the ceiling and the accumulated children. We experienced some highly advanced food at McDonalds before wandering down to the memorials and taking the same photos as everyone else (see some of those photos by using your mouse and a cunning method of your own devising) and probably not as well. I tried to spice things up using unusual angles, but some of them turned out to be illegal and we were moved along.

That evening we joined an organised excursion from the hostel to some bars in Adams-Morgan, which seemed like a good idea, but we had missed a fatal flaw. With only two ladies up for grabs in the group, the eight men were doomed to form an unbreakable circle and orbit unsuccessfully. Tarzan and I elected to go on a secret mission, persuading the host, who was a local, to take us somewhere more interesting. The three of us ended up at a club away from the tourists, where the upstairs dance floor was so packed that it was seriously in danger of becoming downstairs. We proceeded to have a good time and then walked back to the hostel at three in the morning, through some non-affluent areas, as we had been expressly told not to do by all Americans. The very idea of walking is so alien here that if all cars disappeared tomorrow I'm sure the Free would just stay at home and eat cockroaches.

On Sunday we took a closer look at the White House where George was out on the lawn getting things ready for the next guy by poisoning the plants and throwing rocks through the windows.

You are the light of my life and the seat of my pants,

Gordon (Divine) Brown.

Oh shit I forgot the title

Subjects,

I've just been out, darting between all the fatties waddling past boutiques with items arranged by sweatshop of origin, in order to visit Hellmark.
Christmas cards are even more disgusting here than they are back in the withered old Empire, but I'm sure you could have guessed that with the benefit of your mass media based research. My cunning plan was to find a card for mother dearest that said 'Mom' on it, in order to prove that I really am in Freedom. However, it was near impossible to find a card fitting this description that did not also contain words of such frighteningly aggressive, possibly Oedipal, affection inside that my mother would not be convinced that I had been replaced by an impostor and write me out of her will. And then who would take over the bordello?
After establishing which card was least awful, I stepped carefully past the puddles of my vomit, and found a box of appalling 'humor' [sic] cards. Ten are up for grabs. If you want one, with a genuine piece of Freedom stuck on the envelope, then email me your address. If I know who you are, then you know who I am and how to get in touch. Otherwise, I suggest you find someone else to send you cards. A friend perhaps. Or you could post some to yourself, and open them excitedly before breaking down in tears and wishing you'd never been born at all.
Last day for mail to Urope is the 11th, so be quick.

This will be an interesting measure of the intersection between who still reads this and who likes to receive junk mail. As if I don't already know...

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