…something wicked this way comes.
Yesterday, in the corner shop (I was only buying a coke, and some fags, and some sweeties*) I espied the Daily Star. I have on occasion bought newspapers. That statement doesn’t require any qualification because The Star is only a newspaper in the sense that it can be used to set a fire in much the same way the Daily Mail can.
Anyway whilst the likes of the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Indy were trudging through Sophocles for refs to “Greek Tragedies”. Superfluous I say. Dear gods upon Olympus! Four thousand years ago they were stealing fire from the heavens and now they are having to have their first born sons buggered by the IMF. How the mighty have fallen!. I’ve been to Greece and most glorious were the ruins. The birth place of western civilization but…
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle.
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
Along with Robert Goddard the father of modern rocketry. You know a day trip slightly more notable than Mr Thomas Cook chartering a horse-drawn charabanc for a temperance trip form Leicester to Loughborough. Tsiolkovsky had higher ideas. I’ve been through Loughbrough. There is the cubic root of fuck all there. The stars though? Well that’s just going home.
I’ve have seen Goddard’s rockets at the Smithsonian. (The entrance foyer of the Smithsonian NASM was probably the nearest I ever came to sensory overload). Oh that’s just the Apollo 11 capsule… And that’s “just” because that’s an SS-20 and that’s…) Even my wife (a bird) was impressed by the Enterprise on static display at the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Annex. She was like, “That’s a space ship!”. Yeah, I thought. I’d seen it years before in Florida. They had removed the bird’s nest from one of the thrusters between times. As ever it was the SR-71 that fried my root vegetables. My wife thought it looked “sinister”. I thought it looked like proof there was a Kelly Johnson. I hsve designed and built things but none of them did Mach 3.x. The “x” is classified but it is around 5. I paid my homage to my second Archangel. What a cold-forged titanium piece of work! They used to fly those things with total impunity over the Commosphere (4000+ SAMs and not a scratch).
Anyway! From the sublime (slipping those surly bonds and all) to the ridiculous and The Star. Apparently someone else has given birth to the spawn of Giggs. Oh to be a divorce lawyer! This is going to put some legal eagle’s great-grandchlidren through college. Anyway I was assaulted by some vision out of Spiritus Mundi. I saw a wasteland with cots as far as the eye can see with first one, then anyother chubby little arm raised, “I am Giggsy”. I don’t recall Sir Alex voicing an opinion but I can almost imagine what it is. Anyway, if there is one bright spark to this whole farrago which shows the law is an ass (super-injunctions and all) and Ryan Giggs is an even bigger one the Enland team might have a left-footed mid-fielder by 2030.
*A Stepney Breakfast. A proper Stepney breakfast would include a Whispa Gold but who’s counting?
Having trouble with the keyboard or is it just a few too many Gin and Tonics?
:O)
Actually the comment about Japan is crap. Actually at almost every street junction, on one or more, up to four ,corners there is a bin about half the size of dustbin, old fashioned type, around which smokers congregate.
The ban in Japan is WALKING ABOUT while smoking.
Simple–you never see a fag end.
So let’s see: corner shop… greek tragedy… the IMF… rocketry and cradles… the SR-71… Ryan Giggs… cartooning Spartacus… chocolate bar… and then something about bins in Japan.
Were there a Random Rants chart, that could have been a top ten entry. You had to have been sloshed when you wrote that…
I have no idea what he’s on about either. I secretly suspect that he went to Dirgeonbury last weekend, and didn’t heed the warnings about the brown acid, but is too embarrassed to say!
Matt, I think your comment should have been on the Stony Stratford thread mate, but never mind, anything goes here.
So smoking is only illegal outdoors in Japan if you are moving about, not standing still? They are a weird lot arn’t they? But it did bring to mind this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJFWNqo6Ly4
These were some old High School buddies of mine who managed to sign for Virgin. The idea was to start a new dance craze, but being Grammar School satirical conceptualists, the “Dance” was to actually get on the dancefloor and pull the coolest pose you could, but thereafter er… not move. Hence, Do the Standing Still.
Tony the lead singer and guitarist is an animator now. Owns his own company. They were responsible for Billy the Fish for Channel 4.
I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one confused by this.
Oh, and why the MacBeth reference?
Oh bollocks how did that happen? I’m auditioning for the bleeding la-la-farm.
But you are correct. They all smoke like chimneys especially round the pavement bins .
In fact–because they are stopped in their progress to where they are going they are impatient to finish the fag and pound off down the pavement. So–they devour their fags. Massive mighty pulls that leave inch long glowing tips. The smoke I suspect gets into the minute recesses of their lungs. It seems sodding silly to me from a health aspect. But it was designed mainly to stop litter. Cos it is uncannily clean over there. They’re not like us you know.
I wonder if we could reintroduce Sovereign fags to Japan then Matt, and make a few bob, in view of their restless nature?
Does anyone else remember Sovereign? Fags so small and so cheap that two drags and that was it! Oh they put them in gold boxes, but it was fooling nobody that they were junior Benson and Hedges. They were all stems and pith.
They were the fag of choice with Welsh Miners in the 60’s and 70’s. You could get to hide one down the hole in the middle of a packet of Polo Mints and get it past the supervisor at the Pit Head.
Yes, incredibly stupid smoking in a mine, I know, and Secondary smoke was the least of they’re worries compared to methane gas etc, but the silly fuckers still did it!
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