I am currently watching Big Momma's House

I wonder what it is pushing out of my brain. I hope nothing important.

Two Baby Boomer Photographs, One Baby Boomer Quote

"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy."

Can the over 60s please take their historical narrative home with them? It's blocking aisle 2.

XFM: You're No Fun Anymore!

What happened to you XFM? You're no fun anymore. You use to be cool, man. You gave Ricky his break. He introduced the world to the brain of Karl Pilkington. You gave Adam and Joe their own show, when everyone else thought of them as just those blokes who made lame movie parodies using Star Wars toys.

Now you're just a whore for the Government. Every advert break you offer a succession of preachy messages from the regime: hepatitis, tax returns ("tax doesn't have to be taxing" - YES IT DOES, IT'S TAX! You goddamn, pink-latex-wearing, bicycle-riding tit), smoking, Jebus know what else... God forbid you might advertise a good or service we might actually want to buy once in a while.

One would be forgiven for thinking your core demographic had no disposable incomes, just empty brains ready to absorb Government propaganda. As you are obviously pretty much entirely state-funded these days: why not just rename yourselves "BBC X"? You could get your money from the licence fee and then at least we wouldn't need to listen to the mind-numbing public information bullshit between the rock music that you still occasionally play.

XFM: You're no fun anymore!

Quote of the Day

"You never chuck shit-smeared pads onto the floor: you place them directly into a bag which you should have hung nearby for that purpose." - Devil's Kitchen

Is that offical UKIP policy, Devil?

The Fiction Of Edwin Hesselthwite

Over the last year or two, I've begun to build a backlog of material over here on LMWN, and I've come to realise that most of it sits in the archive unread... It's particularly wrenching, because it is the nature of LMWN to post self-enclosed topics. Essays and stories as applicable (or not) now as the day they were written. Therefore I hope you, our faithful singular reader, don't begrudge the occasional vanity post... More along this theme will be coming.

The obvious place to start is with my short fictions, stories and poetry, which I admit to not taking desperately seriously. These stories are not for everyone, but they are for me.

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Human Killing - A science fiction story composed of three paragraphs of three lines of three words

Bank - A Poem about a Tube Station

Mouse Dies Screaming - Edgar Allan Poe ate Jerry and Tom was nowhere to be seen.

An Oviposter Ripe With Poison - The sequel to Mouse Dies Screaming.

Filial Responsibilities - Jesus walks into a bar

Fractional Reserves: Rothbard's felines - A story about cat banking.

Jacob Whetstone - The best story I've posted, converted into audio.

The British Revolution - An unfunny joke about the North.

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Oddie News

Oddie: Skewered by an errant heron.

It was an anxious journey to Bill Oddie’s home, which is found not two miles from my own doorstep. To describe it as a hole in the ground is to miss the essentially Oddieness of the building. It’s basic architectural form is the same as a hole dug into the side of a green hill. It wasn’t a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of cigarette ends and the smell of booze. Not even a dry, bare, BBC hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to watch. This was an Oddie-hole, and that means comfort. A completely round door was set in the side of the hill. Painted bright blue, it was distinguished by a large brass knocker in the shape of an egret’s bill.
- The other Richard Madeley

The British Revolution

A Very English Uprising

Scene:

Two men are standing in the front room of a house in the north of England. They carry themselves with a manner of authority, suggestive of influence in the local community.

“Well, Yorkie, you've been reading as much as I have about the steel works and the mills? Everyone's getting restless. I think we’re going to have to head South, remind them again.”

“Aye: you talk to yours, I'll talk to mine. Bring what you think is necessary.”

9 hours later, after some rousing speeches, some disorganised trudging, and a broken wheel on the Great North Road.

“Ok, we’ve barely passed Sheffield, it's pissing it down, and my back is killing me. I’m not saying we should give up on taking our pikes to Parliament, but shall we take a break for a pint? Then we can organise some proper coaches in the evening and really take the hammer to Whitehall.”

Birds continue to sing in Parliament and Trafalgar Squares. An unusually large pigeon turd lands on the tip of Nelson's nose, and splashes slightly.

Harry Chinese Kid Looking for Love

We here at Little Man, What Now? would like to wish the hairy Chinese kid all the best in his search for the love of his life:

The world's hairiest man is looking for a new love on the internet after breaking up with his girlfriend.

Yu Zhenhuan, recognised in 2002 as the world's hairiest man by the Guinness Book of Records, is using an online dating agency.

"I was amazed to see his picture there, since I'd been hearing he was going to get married soon. So I called the media," says the person who broke the story, and who wants to remain anonymous.

Yu, 29, confirmed: "We got to know each other through the internet, and had been seeing each other for three years. Unfortunately our relationship has come to an end."

And he added: "My whole body is covered with hair, and my parents are worried I won't be able to find a wife. Many girls are shocked when they see me in person.

"I feel like King Kong, hideous, but with a soft and tender heart," he told Zhejiang Online.

The hairy Chinese kid: looking for love.

It would be presumptuous of me to offer Yu advice in this field, but all I would say is that not all women like the smooth, waxed look. Whilst you may have a tad more hair than, say, Sean Connery in his prime, some women have unique tastes and the internet is undoubtably the place to find them.

Quote of the Day

“Guido is sceptical about multi-authored blogs. They have to have a tight-focus to be successful. Waffling about anything and everything doesn't work” — Guido Fawkes

As William Gibson would say, “O well.”

Kids Today

David Lindsay encounters some disrespectful youths on a bus. They were probably neo-conservatives or something. I jest. But did he reprimand them or did he just stand there with hate and fear boiling inside him? Most people would have just stood there. Depending how much I'd had at the Crown and Anchor, I would probably have just stood there saying nothing too.

With even middle-class youth becoming increasingly feral, I advise one of two courses of action when encountering trouble from what I like to call "Generation F***ed". The first is to keep silent and not make eye contact. This is the best thing to do on public transport, where escape is difficult and you have the saftey of the herd. The second course of action, which I employed recently when I discovered some particularly rat-faced specimens sniffing around the back of my house, is to shout obscenity-laden abuse whilst brandishing a metal chair leg. If you take the second course of action you must give the impression that you are mentally unstable, care not for your personal safety and that you are capable of unprovoked acts of extreme and random violence. You have to unleash without reticence: the more spittle, the more violent the threats and the more unhinged the profanity, the better. Just conjure the vilest words in your vocabulary and string them together like a jazz-poet with Tourettes. If for a minute they realise you are bluffing and that you are in fact a physical coward with no martial ability, you are done for. Despite being genetic flotsam and jetsam, junior scum-bags have acute fear detectors.

Interestingly, both these courses of action are suggested by the likes of Ray Mears for dealing with bears in the North American wilderness.

Taking the middle course of action, protesting disdainfully in a quiet English manner, will earn you a stabbing...I'm not sure what would happen if you tried it with a bear.

On the Monarchy, Republicanism, and Why it's Fundamentally Personal

Over on Devil's Kitchen an interesting argument about The Monarchy has kicked in, primarily between DK and Peter Risdon of Freeborn John blog...

They've both taken pretty classic-traditionalist angles on the issue: Risdon has gone for the historical and philosophical justification of republicanism, DK has gone for a utilitarian argument for the monarchy (if it were stronger and if it did its job better), as a voice of reason when politics gets out of control. Problem is, no-one in the debate ever wants to deal with issues of personality, and when you're talking about a figure who will be in a position of influence for decades the tone of their leadership is vitally important. As happens so often in ugly arguments about politics: it's all about the people.

The amusing thing is that DK's argument (a monarch who vetoes actions she considers unconstitutional) is pretty much exactly how Britain's political system is ideally supposed to run, and the single biggest factor in preventing it being that way is the actions of that harridan herself, Queen Elizabeth II. When you put personality in there, and have them in charge for decades, the settlement becomes a matter of temprament.

Or, as I put it in The Devil's comments thread (somewhat over-enthusiastically, and it has been edited).

Nice argument Mr Devil... And it made sense - in the 18th century...

Read old Tom Paine's Common Sense (I'm sure you have), and you'll see this is pretty much precisely the system described as being the operative/ideal one in Britain at the time. The problem is we have to put up with whatever monarchs we get, and The Saxe-Coburgs are all vermin. Back in Tom Paine's day he was railing against the House Of Hanover, a likeable bunch with solid urbanist-democratic credentials... Liz here on the other hand has managed to repeatedly, and unquestionably, neglect the responsibilities she has to intervene in the political system... The problem with your ideal is that it doesn't allow for work-shy, parasitic, deference-obsessed cowards like Elizabeth II.

The fact that she's had the throne for 50 years has hidden the insidious influence of the harridan from the historic eye. She has, on numerous occasions, abdicated major constitutional responsibilities where her role was for consultation... and allowed them to reside in the hands of her constitutional enemy, the Machiavellian PM.

Some examples:

WWI was declared by the king, it is only a recent innovation for it to be declared by parliament.

The UK National Government of '31 - '40 was formed by Ramsay Macdonald under the guidance and suggestion of The King.

The Leader Of The Conservative Party was chosen by the Queen up until Ted Heath.

The Dismissal crisis in Australia was caused by exactly the type of Royal privilege influence you describe, problem was she had her eye off the ball completely and allowed her governor to make a complete pig's ear of the whole business, so she'll never be able to do it again.

And before you say this is politics, not her... Any of these would have been affected by the tone of a different leader.. Her hands-off non-managerial style has led each of these occasions to be treated as a relic, rather than a duty. See, she doesn't actually give two shits about the constitution, and has neglected her job on this every single time that a situation has arisen where she has to... I personally would say The David Kelly affair was a key time for a third party to take the reigns... But the woman prefers to dote on her offspring, follow through her tedious hand waving meet-and-greet responsibilities, and demand that her money and deference is maintained.

I have absolutely no faith that any member of the verminous Saxe-Coburg Clan would be capable of doing the job any better...

Now the old Devil, much as I love him, decided to respond to this by strawmaning me for using the name Saxe-Coburg as opposed to Windsor (a village, not a family), and dismissing me for favouring the EU for exactly the job he's described... But I stand by it... The problem with The Monarchy, is we have to deal with the bastards as people. And some of them just wont die.