Jon Elkon

Author: Jon Elkon

  • A Love Letter from Tokyo

    A Love Letter from Tokyo

    Lucky me! Invited by Sasori to spend 10 days in Japan! Here are my initial thoughts…

    1. A Bullshit Interpretation of Japanese History

    Theory: the Japanese are pan-galactic superior beings who settled on their tiny islands and embarked on a centuries-long project of world dominance. Their first move once they had settled their vicious internecine conflicts in around 1600 was to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. The objective being genetic engineering. In order to ensure conformity they simply killed anyone who didn’t stick to the Shogunate’s rules. The Tokugawa rule was characterized by incredible brutality, a secret service which would respond to the merest whisper of the slightest thought of revolt. Their entire families too were sliced up by Samurais. So the survivors would all have the obeisance gene, the conformity DNA. By 1860 the project was complete and pretending to bow down before the cannons of the Americans, they opened up to the world in order to get hold of better weapons than swords sharp as razors.

    Load of nonsense. Well, the interpretation of the history, if not the history itself. This is how racist conspiracy theories are born.

    But just having a little fun with it: according to this bullshit theory, Pearl Harbour was the culmination of their preparations for world-dominance, but the project was put on hold by the atomic bombs which were unexpected and of course temporarily catastrophic. Hence the post-war charm offensive.

    Japan has certainly been on a massive charm offensive since the fifties when it began to sink in that years of bad press is lousy for trade, and it has worked! Because the new generations believe in it so much they have, with exceptions, become world-beatingly charming. Loveable even.

    And boy, the charm could not possibly be more charming.

    1. Tokyo Spring

    The weather today could not be much more horrible. A terribly chilly rain, just short of freezing, is wafting down into the sodden Tokyo streets as if determined to cancel Spring, to persuade the cherry trees to put off their glorious raiment and shrivel and die. Outside this cute boutique hotel on the back streets of Nezu, Japan’s largest city goes about its business with perfect equanimity and efficiency, umbrellas unfurled and faces set.

    This is the great season of the Sakura – the festival of celebration of Spring, Hirosaki when the parks and gardens explode with the pink beauty of cherry and plum trees. When Ueno Park should be jammed with picnics. Instead, we visitors shiver and moan while the Japanese go about their business with their usual equanimity. Everyone has an umbrella and if you don’t, there are umbrellas waiting for owners at various points around the city and if you have lost one, another will certainly turn up. Outside every shop or restaurant there is a brilliant machine which, when you drop your brolly into it, instantly wraps it in plastic to prevent it dripping everywhere. Then when you leave you slip the plastic off and place it in a strategically placed bin.

    Another so simple, so perfect, so Japanese solution. Mind you there is no provision for folding umbrellas, so no-one except stupid Westerners carries one.

    Tokyo is a sprawling concatenation of districts, each with a trace of the individualistic character they once had before war and earthquake licked so many buildings and people into eternity and fading memory. Our hotel as I said is in Nezu. The u by the way is almost silent. It’s as if the letter u in Japanese is a little like a memory, a trace of that imperial past, of the shogunate. Of the Tokugawa with their Bushido and their pride, their absolute conviction of their superiority to all other races and their determination right up to the 1860s to maintain isolation at all costs.

    So Nezu has more traces than much of Tokyo of what was probably a working class environment of wooden houses and tangles of streets and alleys. Here the past whispers loudly and Macdonalds maintains a respectful distance. Every here and there a very tired looking wooden house leans against its neighbour and quietly decomposes while concrete boxes of tiny apartments maintain their polite dominance of the streets.

    There is of course no litter.  No-one eats in public, that would be rude and an inconvenience to others. There is no graffiti at all on train carriages. For the same reason anyone suffering from a cold or other communicable disease wears a face mask. OR they are protecting themselves against the vast variety of viruses so generously shared amongst all Tokyoans, through vast coughs and sneezes seldom intercepted by hand or tissue. OR they are trying to escape the pollution which is reputedly very bad. Or they are about to embark on an armed robbery. Or all five. Seems quite a good idea after all.

    1. Pooing Japanese Style

    The Japanese (those who run this Hotel anyway) seem to believe toilet paper has to be as light as silk, as thin as a whisper, and obviously as cheap as chips. It therefore dissolves in the hand early on in the journey from roll to butt and is entirely useless for anything other than decoration, no doubt draped over Christmas trees in imitation of a fantastically tasteful sprinkle of the mere image of snow.

    Unlike of course the legendary fully computerised Japanese toilets which require two years of full-time study to operate correctly. For the novice or Geijin, the first time bottom meets heated seat is a terrifying shock and brings to mind broiled ham and the possibility of soup being prepared below.  And then, if you press the wrong button, a jet of manic water will lave your testicles, leaving you in a state of wetness and confusion far beyond the capabilities of single ply absorbent tracing paper to mitigate the wetness in any satisfactory way and allow your appearance in public. There are many other buttons. I have no idea what they do because I wouldn’t dare try.

    1. Perfectly Considered

    All  rules are unquestioningly adhered to. Not enforced, because there is no need. Sidewalks are shared by pedestrians and cyclists in the secure knowledge that the cyclist is far too polite to cause an accident. The subway platform, for example, has clear lines painted showing where you are to stand when the train arrives. Once in the carriage you may use your mobile phone for any purpose other than what they were originally designed for, sending or receiving calls.

    Many of the Japanese in the subway are asleep or dead. Even schoolkids use train carriages to escape from the monotony of training to be best at everything and sink into the deepest of dreamlands whenever safely away from their duties. A kid’s head on my shoulder for four stops I found awkward and uncomfortable but I didn’t dare push him away for fear of being thought a heartless foreigner. When I stood up (way too soon for my station) the elderly gentleman who replaced me was immediately appropriated as a cushion by the mop-head. He didn’t seem to mind.

    Loud conversation doesn’t happen on a train or in the street except between Gaijin, foreigners, who are regarded with paternalistic disdain. After all, says the silent u, they are inferior.

    1. Eating Japan

    In certain types of restaurant orders are conveyed to the chefs by the serving staff with gusto and delight. Shouting at full volume is very much in order and a big surprise for foreigners who would never expect the Japanese to do this, except in martial combat. You could easily imagine the waitress to be shouting, you’ll never believe this we’ve just sold another onegatapuri   Or whatever the hell strange dish of fish genitals or poisonous concoctions designed to kill any non Japanese at fifty yards they have just, incredibly sold. To which the chef will shout hurray what a brilliant opportunity to serve something live to someone stupid! Probably foreign! Therefore dead soon!

    The above is cynical bullshit, once again. The risk of not being amusing about Japanese food is great because frankly most of it is incredibly overwhelmingly as delicious as it is mysterious. Fish is tweaked and tormented until it releases the most delicious flavours in the world. Meat, especially their perfect marbled steak is self-evidently the best in the world. But that’s what the Japanese do – the best in the world. Frankly. Presentation of any food is always designed to create a gorgeous picture, a delight for the eyes and the soul. (Well, they are after all superior pan-galactic beings so what did you expect…oh dear…More bullshit. This is not a travelogue or conspiracy-theory inducing Science Fiction.)

    I am so impressed by the kindness and consideration shown by all to all. A small example: in every small restaurant or café the customer is expected to take their tray with dirty dishes etc to a service hatch to save the waiters the job. This is only fair as there is no tipping.

    1. Down Town Up town

    The central city districts are no different to any other monster shopping and business area in any modern city. I am reminded of Dallas, or Montreal, without the dirt.

    The predatory spread of Americanisation has done for so many of the Japanese youth and food businesses, as well as for many waistlines. Piped music is almost invariably American in restaurants and shops, although in some ways they have certainly made their own version of capitalism. Although there is a strict no tipping policy in everything, from restaurants to taxis. Yesterday I left a tip in a small local café and the waitress/owner came running after me to give me the coin back.

    In some places recorded announcements stridently call passers’ attention to bargains inside. In some places a robot does this, and in others, a human. This is most evident in the built-up central districts like Rippongi (their Knightsbridge/Bond Street/Rodeo Drive) and more so in their version of Camden/Camden Market – in Shibuya is a street of mad shops and restaurants swarming with young trendy Japanese and the foreigners who come to be touristical and gawp. I’ve quite forgotten what it’s called. Sorry. This is not a travelogue. This happens hardly at all in sweet little old Nezu.

    The Japanese do everything with the utmost effort to ensure perfection. Their unremitting cheerfulness in being of service – apparently taking huge delight in your satisfaction with endless smiling and of course bowing. Though here in Tokyo the bowing is much more token, especially amongst the young.

    Even Japanese criminals are perfect. Well, perfect criminals. They are identified by choosing to be tattooed. For this reason if you, dear Gaijin, have tattoos you will not be allowed into a bathhouse. You are assumed to be a gangster. So the tattoo fixation which has so blighted the trendies of the West is absent here. More proof if more were needed that the Japanese are superior beings…

    But it’s all about the surface – as long as everything is good at veneer level, the substrate can be just anything at all. On the surface, on top  sits Hello Kitty. Saccharine, pink perfection, huge smile, love/me eyes, the essence of stereotypical girliness. And below, ah, there lurk the demons of the past. The silent U. The razor sharp edge of the katana, the treatment of prisoners of war, the spirit that drove the Kamikaze pilots, the suicide bombers of ww2 to sacrifice themselves for Imperial Japan.

    How right could I be….the Demon of Half-Remembered Things has been tugging at my ear since I wrote the above. And blow me down, a bit of Googling and I found it! Here: “Honne 本音 & Tatemae 建前, literally translated as “true voice” and “constructed facade”, is the mindset that Japanese people are trained since young to master. An honest display of one’s true emotions and intentions is frowned upon and seen as willful and childish. Many Japanese would never express their “honne”, or at least not directly to the party in question. Tatemae is the word to express what that they think would benefit the situation, and would let them avoid any sort of confrontational interaction.” Yup. That explains it! From http://jpninfo.com/18987 so even the Japanese admit it. Publicly. (My memory reached back to “Shotokan’s Secret” by Bruce Clayton, which I read many years ago. A great read if you’re interested in the Japanese character as expressed through the Martial Arts.)

    Uneasily sandwiched between the two, the Martial Arts.

    Most modern Japanese will assert that the veneer is overcoming the substrate, that all that nastiness was the past but this smiling efficient tail-wagging pinkness is the present and the future. Perhaps. Japanese males certainly seem to confirm this: martial machismo appears to have been replaced by an almost feminine cuteness and vulnerability in younger men. And even when they sit crashed out on the underground at 9pm after 14 hours working their hearts out to prove Japan’s efficiency and superiority, they look so cute and vulnerable and perfectly incapable of ever raising a voice in anger.

    Is it rather pathetically ignorant of me that I can still imagine a sarariman (man on a salary!) slicing through the body of a peasant with a katana to test its strength and sharpness as his recent ancestors did?

    7…A Man in Love….

    Despite all I have said, I need to say this: I love Japan. I love the Japanese. There, I said it. I am so proud of Humanity, that it could manufacture such amazing people; and they could create this country out of heart, soul, and above all, fearsome intelligence, adaptability and courage. And all in the Best Possible Taste, as Kenny Everett would have said. If I could only swap my body with one of them (age 20-30!) I would. I would learn the language. I would live in sweet Nezu. I would train with Kanazawa Kancho at SKIF, Kawawada Sensei at the Houitsugan Dojo, with forays to the JKA to train with the greats there. I would spend days exploring the islands. And if I reach 60, I would find a Buddhist Temple in Kyoto in which to finish my days as a monk.

  • Karate Crisis #5

    Karate Crisis #5

    My JKA/KUGB Licence from Enoeda Sensei’s famous Marshall St Dojo 1977

    The book “Karate Stupid” by Scott Langley is a salutary read for a Western karate-ka, or “Gaijin” as the Japanese call us. “Gaijin” basically means Foreigner, the implication being foreign barbarian. Amongst themselves I would guess that certain types of nationalistic Japanese say the word with a sneer of contempt, just as certain nationalistic right wingers in the West, even well after the war, would say “Japs”

    Both words carry lots of baggage. There is no doubt they are both racist in intent and meaning. Essentially once one has read Scott’s book, the overwhelming impression is  that most Japanese Karateka regard Gaijin as milksops, incompetent ignorant clumsy uncultured fools who can’t even hold their drink. Or their own in karate.

    On the whole, they’re right. Compared to the  average exponent of karate in Japan many of us are a sorry lot. (With exceptions of course) Watch a Japanese kid on youtube making Enpi look like a sliced, diced perfectly presented Bento Box, everything precisely in place and timed to the second and tell me most of us aren’t inferior in every way. Especially dedication, determination, physical dexterity, balance, timing, focus, grounding, centreing, finesse, perfectionism, musculature, hip movement, black hair and so on. Cuteness too, obviously.

    And in Kumite (fighting), we have brute strength but they have superhuman speed and accuracy. Yes Gaijin have defeated the Japanese in tournaments. The famous one for me was when Enoeda Sensei’s British team won the JKA all Japan championships. The Japanese would of course put  that down to their having had a famous Japanese instructor…

    The takeaway from Langley’s book for me is not just the contempt he suffered on the JKS Instructor’s course, but what he describes as the relentless bullying and the brutality. This does not sit well with me.

    I have been fond of saying to young karateka, jeez you have it easy! When I started training with Enoeda at Marshall Street, we would learn what pain meant. Always hard contact, bruises, black eyes, cracked ribs, torn ligaments, groin calf and ankle sprains, ripped Achilles and yes there were certainly some of those. And yes, by the end of two hours training my gi was wet, you could wring it out and get enough liquid to fill a glass. Ok big deal.

    Now it’s nothing like that. In fact sometimes I can use the same gi twice without washing it. And injuries are rare – students are told off unequivocally if techniques are too hard and hard counters are frowned on.

    But what Scott encountered makes all we suffered in those Old Days seem like nothing. And his book made me question – especially as I am about to go to Japan – what I think I’ve devoted heart, soul and might for 40 years to.

    I thought character development. Resilience. Immunity to pain. An art which, in the worst case scenario would help me defend myself against the stupidity of unprovoked violence. A route to spiritual development through dedication, determination, pain.

    And yes I have definitely achieved some of the above. If you know me, you decide.

    I need to internalise and mull over the tone of this book. I need to accept the obviously Scott’s experience of the JKS Instructors’ Course was unique to him. Seen through his eyes. His perspective.

    In the end, as one of my great Senseis said, “It’s not my Karate you must follow. Or his Karate. Or this Association or that Association or this style or that style. It’s YOUR Karate. Your Do – your Way.

    I will face demons in Japan, my own and others. Perhaps I will be injured or worse. More likely, Japanese karateka will treat me with what I have earned as an elderly Gaijin who has pursued his path for forty years. With  respect or just kindness and tolerance or variations thereof.  Whatever.

     

    UPDATE: in training with Sasori on Saturday (I am booked to fly out on Thursday) I sprained not just one calf but two. According to Dr Google the left leg is level 3 and the right leg about a 2. The left happened during a mawashigeri jodan yakizuki the ura- mawash to opponent behind. So enjoyable, especially as my mawash was incontrovertibly jodan against a 6ft opponent – great timing and within an inch of his face. This is the karate I love – hard, fast, precise. Until with an almost audible snap, the calf tears and there is no way to do anything except hobble painfully to the nearest chair and sit in a miasma of pain and faintness.

    After training the six-foot uke who had paired me supported me all the way down the King’s Road to the Stockpot restaurant. Lunch was full of laughs as always, but as we left snap! The right calf tore, leaving me almost crawling to the chemist where my dear old friend Ibrahim towers over his medicine and placebo kingdom like a benevolent Great Frog.

    Tokyo flight is Thursday. I had a devilish plan to book myself a flight home via San Diego and Mother’s 90th birthday. Yes I know she has Alzheimers and she most likely wouldn’t get the point. But the surprise for her and sister – especially brother would have been worth the effort and maybe even the money! This is now a ridiculous idea.

    I am typing this on Monday morning in the doctors’ waiting room. Junaid picked me up in his car and is going to Sainsbury’s to get confused over my shopping list.

    I shall get far more confused in the next few hours. I will ask the GP for a prognosis and advice. She will be unable to give me either. I will Google “cancelling flights” l will balance my options. Rebalance. Decide. Change my mind. Then repeat the process several times.

    I do NOT want to be a burden to my Kohai Senpai and Sensei. I certainly will be unable to train so that’s my one Karate Crisis unresolved. There would still be Tokyo and Kyoto to explore –  but how much walking would that involve? To what extent will I have recovered over the time? And what about all the damned walking with baggage at airports? Museums? Parks? Legs are so fucking useful and once they’re gone…my heart goes out to the disabled – how can I dare to sink into self-pity when some people have no legs for life?

    It brings the whole Karate  Crisis to a head: can I continue? Once I’ve recovered, when would the next debilitating injury happen? What would be left of me without Karate?

    UPDATE: I send this from Japan!

    Stay tuned dear reader. I will be posting Letters from Tokyo soon!

  • A Beast…a Short Story

     

    Another story in the Nasty Little Things Collection.

    I remember my first victim so well. They say you always remember your first time and since I’ve never had proper sex, my first murder took my virginity.

    He was my PE teacher in school. I was 16, already feeling the yawning gap between me and my classmates which was to become this unbridgeable chasm between me and humans.

    He was new to the school. He was like one of those balloon animals you get at kiddie parties, all strangulated air and pomposity, ridiculous as a blown up giraffe, and with a matching inflated ego. And he thought he had a right to torment me, the weediest, least confident, most unathletic kid in school. It was pure bullying. And from the first lesson with him I knew hatred, experienced the rise of what I came to call “Nenergy”, that negative energy which has been grown, honed, perfected, manufactured out of hatred itself, my weapon, my perfect murderer, my defence and my revenge. My ally and my enemy.

    Day after day it grew until that night when I gathered up my hatred, focused it, pointed it like a missile at his heart, and let it go.

    He died that night.

    When the headmaster made the announcement at assembly I remember how it felt – that complete slap across my life like a tsunami of hot emotion, of the fear of discovery, of guilt – I knew without any trace of doubt that this death was directly attributable to me. I had felt him die that night. As I penetrated deep into his soul and body with my purest hatred I had experienced a jolt, like electricity as his heart exploded and yet I didn’t know that it would really, really, actually. Kill.

    Guilt! Fear! Two twinned concatenations I was to feel every time, but less and less as time went on.

    So I knew then I had the Power. A growing certainty as I tested it out, first on my best friend’s mother – out of kindness, actually. She had cancer.  She was in pain. I made it go away. I killed her.

    Next fell my parents.

    I had never liked them. My status as only child had given me the role, in their eyes, of mere witness to their magnificence. An obstacle, an obstruction, an ornament to be paraded before visitors as evidence of my parents’ greatness and perfection. Mother sang opera – a diva by profession and equally a diva at home. She didn’t inhabit a room, she filled it. Physically bovine, psychologically passionate and as self-obsessed as would be the only remaining earthling at the end of the world.

    Father was created specifically to serve her. He adored her passionately, unquestioningly and pathetically. A clarinettist in the Philharmonic, she regarded him as a pariah and a parasite to be treated with the disdain she would reserve for a toothpick.

    My cliché parents.

    So the Diva and the toothpick set out in his Audi for a concert in Manchester and never returned. Well, they had infuriated me. I did not want to be left with her brother Adam again….his hands all over me. His foul breath. I hated him so much, but not as much as I hated the parents every time they left me with him. I think that evening generated so much nenergy it lasted for years.

    It took me a few months to destroy Adam, months during which he fought Nanna for custody of me. So I told the Social Worker he made me do oral sex on him. He didn’t, but it worked. Frankly I will never know whether his death was a result of nenergy or just of me. He hanged himself, so I will never know.

    The money from the parents saw me through many years after Nanna died. I liked Nanna. She was the only adult who seemed to believe in me and her death was a horrible experience for me, especially since she had annoyed me that day. I think the nenergy escaped and just attacked her. That happens sometimes. I didn’t mean it to happen…

    But from that day I just didn’t care. Anybody who annoyed me would just Get It. No matter the cost to me. I was a slave of my nenergy. With each of its victims it grew stronger and I grew weaker.

    A sort of reverse Dorian Gray.

    The Beast within.

    *                                  *                                              *                                              *

    Two men in their early twenties on the platform. They radiate innocence and goodness, their faces suffused with benevolence, wanting to please each other into mutually dependent trust. Pure envy grinds its way into my day, this day which has been such a cruel and contemptuous rejection of me from the moment the tap attacked my forehead as I shaved, to the slap across my face from the bathroom cupboard door, to the disappearance of the sunglasses…to the iPhone which seemed stuck on repeat, so that the album I want to listen to is barred to me, apart from track one.

    The train arrives. And diagonally across this carriage from me the two of them, impervious in their bubble of mutual joy, continue to celebrate their bromance.

    My envy turns to hatred. Oh here it comes again! They will have to die. I have so much nenergy today, it has to go somewhere. It’s now impossible to contain, so I let it free, I let it sink into their bodies through their nerve ends, I watch as slowly their sweet smiles begin to strain as pain begins its gentle intrusion, as death starts to chew inward from their extremities into their vital organs. They will be dead within an hour.

    Too much! The nenergy rebounds and hits me now, blood almost spraying from my nose. Just like that! A gush of blood, now all over my fingers. I have no tissues. Everybody in this carriage is staring at me in horror. The person opposite just got up and legged it to the farthest seat she can find.

    The next station is Knightsbridge.

    Feeling woozy, utterly self conscious and desperate I propel myself out of the station spraying blood like a miasma, up the stairs, find the toilet in the lower ground of Harvey Nichols and blessing free access to department store loos I wash the blood away from hands, face and clothes wherever I can and sitting on the closed toilet, pinch my nose until somehow I feel in control again. Eventually recomposed I return to the station and the Piccadilly line.

    Only one seat free and the chap next to me is a space invader, his elbow annexing at least a third of my designated space. Dreadfully uncomfortable!

    He will be taken. I know I can take him out right now, but the inconvenience! Of course if I push hard I could reclaim my space without anyone noticing he’s dead. But rather too risky and my nenergy levels are almost drained. So I set his death for two hours. I always set their deaths for when I am nowhere near. It wouldn’t do for a connection to be made.

    This is quite a day. Three so far and it’s only midday! If only people realised how much sheer effort it takes to hold it, and then how when I let it out it drains me! For ten years I have paid for this my beast. If you were to see me you would never believe I am only twenty six.  I am smaller than I was at sixteen, I swear. I know I am thinner, more lined. Year by year my ageing is accelerating and I just don’t care any more. The nenergy is now so powerful I just have to find outlets for it as often as I can. Or it will eat me alive. So I have concluded if I am going to shrivel away until I die I will take you with me. Yes, you.

    I’m so tired.  Chap sits next to me on my left. His phone flies out of his hand, somersaults into the air and falls, edge to my ankle before hitting the floor. The pain is sudden and deep. Sorry! He says scrabbling for the mobile. Teeth gritted I manage “alright”.

    I consider not just the revenge but the cost. Four! On one journey! This is slaughter. It’s out of control. Every time I murder a stranger I lose something of myself. The energy drain is devastating, it takes days to recover. And already I have destroyed three today. I will pay for this. I have never allowed so many in one day. Dare I let it go? The anger burns. The hatred rises. It’s his casual response to having inflicted pain that has brought this on him.

    I am holding on to this growing nenergy burst which wants to leap out to the throat of a man who because of a moment’s carelessness has aroused its interest and its wrath and there is no way I can hold it back….

    No! No I will not allow this! You have had your fill today…

    My head is bursting and once again I can feel the blood welling up in my nose, pouring out now into the Harvey Nicholls toilet paper I am holding up to my face and my vision blurs so I stand up! Too late for Mr Butterfingers, nenergy suffuses his body I see the first traces of pain disturb his perfect bearded face as he tries to hide it from the woman sitting next to him

    The train comes to a halt and I lurch out onto High Holborn, my legs weakening by the minute. My nenergy is turning inward now, melting the cells of my body, chewing into my organs, demolishing my body soul and spirit. This is fine! There is no other way. The parasite must destroy the host if it is to ever get release, for there to be retribution.

    I lie down on the sidewalk. I will not get up again. We are going to die here, both of us.

    I am being consumed. Schoolchildren being shepherded to the British Museum are hustled away from the drunk. People walk faster as they pass.

    Two men approach. “What’s up pal, do you need some help?”

    I know these two men.

    The two men from the train carriage this morning, weaving their bromance around the body of this dying man.

  • ALL Religions Lie My Friend

    God watches every sparrow fall

    And every bomb fly by

    Then why does slow sweet cancer call

    Those innocent of nearly all

    To torment until they die?

    All religions lie my friend, all religions lie

     

    Was it God who made the Kalashnikov

    And brought death down from the sky

    And made for Hitler his ranting voice

    And gave planes for Bin Laden to fly?

    The shepherds gather up their flocks

    And hand out rifles, bombs and rocks

    One hand on their wallets, the other on their cocks

    They march to do or die

     

    And God so wise to give free will

    To us to rape and steal and kill

    To suicide bombers addled with lies

    As fragments of bodies spatter the skies

    I ask you now and once again

    Who will shoulder the fucking blame?

    Who will succour those left behind

    By the lies of religion, the light of the blind

    Oh all religions lie my friend, all religions lie.

     

    Well God he moves in mysterious ways

    He loves us all, except for gays

    Their Books they say he made us all –

    And in those Books you hear the call

    To stone them dead with cock and ball

    – well, bugger you! And leave the stage! –

    If he made me in his own image

    Then tell me why I so often cry

    That all religions lie my friend, all religions lie.

     

    And listen well to the wily spell

    Of pastors priests and imams who

    Swear by God a burning hell

    That waits for me and you and you

    If you try to die without their tune

    Which runs a bit like this:

    “Unless you sing just MY old song

    “You’ll never enter bliss.”

    But all religions lie my friend,

    And I can tell you this:

    If all but one is very wrong

    I’d rather sing just my own song

    And blast them with a kiss!

     

    Oh they also tell some truths my friend

    They’ll state some things your mind to bend

    They’ll make you laugh

    And rock or roll

    And then they’ll simply steal your soul

    And milk you till you die….

     

    Don’t bother trying to tell them all

    They’ve lies for every beck and call

    They twist the world in every way

    And fall on Faith to which they pray

    Which saves from truth and keeps Logic away

    And lets them live and die

     

    Oh!
    All religions lie my friend, all religions lie.

     

  • DARKNESS…..

     

    This train-wreck civilisation

    broken,

    Its scraps

    disseminated and the dogs

    Seek their master’s  throats

    Singing I lurk under a thorn tree which makes a cave around my bruised head. The cries of pursuer and pursued punctuate the horizon like the tiny cloud-puffs of far-away artillery.

    Her head lies on my lap. I have eaten her eyes but her hair has its joy still, its honey-coloured dyed perfection composed on my jeans like the memory of a L’Oreal ad.

    I do not know how much longer I can keep breathing. Perhaps that depends on this new sound, which reminds me of laughter but is probably the last gasp of departing sanity.  Not mine, that left on October 21st when the Catastrophe happened.  If I could extract myself from these thorns I could find out what it is. But since I arrived here they have grown all around me and as I am naked I cannot move. Only She keeps me alive. She has given herself to me. And now her revenge for my having been in her: she is in me.

    There were beings once who were not hungry. Survival wasn’t a luxury then, and there was amusement, there was even laziness. There were things which were not useful, incredibly. I did things because they were pleasurable, not essential. Now everything I do is essential or at least inevitable.

    Yet I sing. This is essential. It reminds me to breathe. But that even is not imperative. Perhaps I will stop soon.

    Before the Beast came I was a man with some optimism, happiness, even insouciance. I watched his rise with bemused detachment. Even when he called on me for support I didn’t realize his madness. I have always rather liked his type. I have dealt with many – they are fragile inside, really. Only power gives them security, and their ability to persuade people that they have power gives them actual, real power. It is a desperate need to have their ego stroked which grows their ego. The more you stroke it, the bigger it gets. Like other things I vaguely remember.

    So why do I actually like them in my peculiar way? I think it’s because I feel as if beneath the bluster, I see their weakness. I feel privileged in a way, because they actually show me their weakness before they ask me for my help. And so I help. I make lies for the media for a living – or rather, I did. Because it made them happy. And they paid me plenty. When there was media. When there were Things to read.

    Shit. A thought – is this how they get power over me? Is this a strategy they use with all people who are close to them? And then, when they have used us up we get dumped under a thorn tree, naked, with only a dead wife?

    That sound is getting closer. So familiar! Like the song of a dying planet.

     

    I will sing harmony

  • The Donkeys Kick Back – buying a used car?

    I sat in stunned silence as the salesman ranted. “Donkeys!” He sputtered. “Can you believe those donkeys!” He savagely hit the disconnect button on his mobile. “Watch!” He said “They’re on their way! Watch how I deal with them!”

    “What’d they do to you?” I asked innocently. “Kidnap your wife?”

    “If only!” He joked. “No, the fucking donkeys put down a deposit on that car there! Now he tells me he’s found a cheaper one!”

    “Ok,” I said, “So?”

    “He says he’s got some fucking problem in Iran! Needs money for some sick mother or something. Bullshit! I’ll show him sick child! Anyway. Back to yours.”

    So we returned to our frankly harrowing negotiation. Buying a car has always been something of a stressful pleasure for me. Three years ago I bought a rather smart car from this chap. I am avoiding all brand names or anything that could identify the man or the company. Assume this is a work of fiction.

    At the time, I thought yes, he’s amusing. But never forget he’s a used car salesman! Which obviously puts him in the same league as an Estate Agent. In other words, listen, doubt, watch out for all the old techniques, beware, check, check check and check. Believe nothing. Check.

    Still, he made me laugh. A charming chappie, he showed me a cabinet brimming with awards by his desk. Best Salesman. Best Salesman. Year after year. Glass, silver, every variation and size of award. What a bloke. And utterly brimming with a version of sincerity which one could ardently wish was genuine. “I don’t have customers,” he would frequently recite, “my customers are my friends. I want to look after you for life!”

    Which was why when I wanted a new car, I went to him. Not a new new car, of course, just a newer car than my three-year old. After all, the tyres needed changing, the MOT had become due, and I had come into a little money. Besides, I had decided that a manual car would give more control than an automatic and I was happy to pay a little for the change.

    I had returned to him despite his brilliant  “upselling” of a vast range of extras, all of which seemed essential at the time of my last purchase. I had ended up paying far more than I had budgeted for. And the way he did that was to apparently throw in this and that and the other. And then sting me for another add-on while I was feeling good. Well, it was a learning experience, I decided. What Granny used to call “Lerngeld.” Over-expenditure you learn from.

    Another despite. About the most irritating thing about dealing with this man was the interruptions. The telephone calls both in and out, and the long harangues he would give to customers or potential customers on every variety of issue. Arrival of other clients. Right in the middle of a sentence he would jump up and rush to the opposite side of the showroom to intercept a customer or colleague for some reason. However much I fumed, I knew the game would go to me if I pretended patience.

    Anyway, despite the despites, there I sat hoping to buy the rather smart vehicle he had suggested as the perfect replacement for my previous car.  And there I was  listening to this near-hysterical tirade from the obviously superstressed salesman as he berated his almost-customers and barraged me with promises. “And furthermore,” he said, “you get a much more powerful engine! This one I’m offering has every additional extra you could wish for!” Frankly, when I had taken the car for a test drive I wasn’t impressed by the performance, and said so. “Nonsense!” he yelled with a very forced grin. “It’s just the way you use the gears!”

    Well, maybe. Having not had a manual car for some time perhaps I was underestimating the revs  needed for the gear change. Perhaps I should drive more like a Frenchman.

    I wasn’t convinced. An extra £3g for not much improvement on my previous vehicle. “I’m not convinced,” I said. “I need to go away and think about this.”

    Just then a young couple came into the showroom.

    They were obviously in considerable stress. Well-dressed, fairly middle class, in their late twenties or early thirties. They had the sort of togetherness you sometimes see in a couple which has gone through difficult times. They would have been holding hands if they had been less self-conscious.

    Seeing the salesman busy with me they stood awkwardly at the desk of one of his colleagues, waiting politely. “That’s the ones I told you about! ” the salesman said just loudly enough for them to hear. “If those donkeys think they’re getting their deposit back they can forget it!” And turned back to me. “Alright then my friend” he said blandly, “If I give you a free one year warranty, just like a new car, would you say yes?”

    “I’ll think about it, ” I said.

    He was obviously very stressed. As it was the second last day of the month I realised he had his monthly target to meet – and obviously another trophy depended on it.

    “You do that!” he said, standing impatiently to hide his irritation and headed for the Iranians as if they were long-awaited hated enemies. “You!” He said, “you think you can cheat me!!! If you think you get your deposit back you can forget it!”

    They were entirely taken aback by the attack and I knew why – this salesman obviously had only two personae – Mr slidy-glass nice and Mr cracked glass nasty. And they hadn’t even suspected the latter.

    “You don’t have the right …” the man said.

    “You can’t keep the deposit. We need that money – his mother is ill in Iran. We have to save money on the car!” his wife chipped in.

    “I can do what I fucking want!” the salesman was almost slavering. “You made a commitment. It’s the law of this country, law of contract! I made the offer, you accepted. It’s not like that in your fucking country? Is that right?”

    “We don’t want trouble,” the man said. “Just give us the money and we go away.”

    “The car is waiting for you. All cleaned and serviced, just what you want. Now give me your money and drive away!”

    The whole salesroom had frozen into a tableau of fear and disbelief. I realised that his colleagues had seen this sort of behaviour from him before, and while not surprised, they were acutely embarrassed. He was, after all, the top salesman – and as such, beyond reproach. So no-one in the audience said a word.

    “I’m going,” I said, and I have no doubt there was a tinge of disgust in my voice. “I’ll call you.”

    “No wait,” he almost pleaded. “I am going to give you a great deal. Just let me sort out the donkeys!”

    “I’ll call you,” I said. And fled.

    ********************************

    “I made a mistake,” he said, “about the engine of your car. It’s not the more powerful one, I just checked. But listen – ”

    I knew it. “I have decided – ” I said, my mobile sweating in my hand. I knew that my rejection would infuriate him.

    “Before you say anything – ” he said, “I promise you I got an offer you will not refuse! I will make it up to you! All right, a £250 cash back is the start…”

    Intrigued, I decided to play. “And what else?” I asked cynically.

    “All right, listen. One year’s free insurance…”

    “Hmmm. Go on – ”

    “That is the car you want! I’ll give you a full service, MOT, full  tank of gas…full one year warranty…now come on, you can’t say no…this car has seven thousand on the clock! Like new!”

    “Hmm” I said. That alone was very tempting.

    “Come in, just come in and you can drive away today. What do you say?”

    “I’ll think….”

    “Come in two o’clock. I’ll see you then!”

    The connection went and I knew I would buy. After all, the old car needs this and that, a good thousand and a lot  of hassle to get back into good condition. It had done around 20,000 miles. Getting this one would be like buying a brand new car.

    So I bought it after sitting there for another two hours while this infuriating man answered his phone and ran about the showroom after people. Or gave his instructions to the beautiful Polish lady at the next desk, who operated as his assistant. In the gaps between these incredibly rude interruptions, the deal was done.

    Did I get my cheque? Not that day for sure! I phoned several times. I texted him. Eventually I went in to the showroom. He kept me hanging around for ages as usual. At one point he asked me to “hang on, these Accounts donkeys have forgotten it. I’ll chase it up.”  and disappeared up the steps to the main office.

    I turned to the salesman at the next desk. “What the hell do I do now?” I asked.

    He grinned. “It’s always this way with him. Promises promises. See that?” he pointed to the cabinet bulging with Best Salesman awards. “These are the only awards I need,” and he pulled out a vast number of Thank You cards from his drawer. “From my customers,” he said proudly.

    “I wish I did the deal with you,” I said, and we laughed. “Too late! So what do I do now?”

    He winked. “Go after him!”

    “Really?”

    “Sure! He went thataway!”

    What fun, I thought and headed for the stairs. I found him on the mezzanine floor chewing on a sandwich, lounging at a staff coffee machine. He started as he saw me.

    “Where’s my cheque? I asked, smiling broadly as if at a huge joke.

    “I”m waiting for it!” He said. “They take forever! Honestly, no word of a lie, you are my main concern. The customer is always first, I guarantee. The customer is a friend…””

    “Yeh yeh” I said, “Well I’m not waiting any longer.” I finally let my chagrin show. I went right up to him and using my best Corleone voice I said “You listen to me carefully now, ‘friend’. This is no way to treat me do you understand? I will not be ignored. It’s time to put the customer first. You will sort this out for me. ”

    “Of course, I promise you, I guarantee!  I’ll look after you! I will always look after you. You will have that cheque by tomorrow.”

    Promises promises. But to my surprise, he called me the next day. “I have your cheque. Do you want to come in and get it? Or do I post it?”

    “I’ll come in,’ I said and went to the showroom that afternoon. To my surprise he handed me the cheque. “One problem,” he said, “The donkeys have forgotten to do the MOT.”

    “What!”

    “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll organise it!”

    A sudden thought came to me. “By the way, you did send the slip to the DVLA for change of ownership so I can get the logbook?”

    “Of course I did!” He said.

    It was one damned promise after the other. I began to feel my indulgent benevolence for the man slipping away and being replaced by a profound impatience and resentment at being eternally taken for granted, treated without concern or respect. Treated, in short, like a donkey.

    ***********************************

    Outside the showroom I spotted a desolate figure sitting on a wall. I recognised him as the Iranian from the previous day. “Hello,” I said. “I just got the cheque the guy promised me. Do you have your money for the deposit back?”

    He  seemed grateful to have someone to speak to. “No,” he said. “I told him I spoke to the lawyer, I told him legally he has to give my deposit back. It’s a fourteen day cooling off, something like that. So he asked me to wait. Every time I get tired and leave, I phone him, he tells me come, I wait. What is wrong with this man?”

    “He’s driving me crazy too my friend. All promises.”

    “He wants to be your best friend while he thinks you will buy. Then when you don’t he just shouts at you!”

    “Scary guy. He still hasn’t given me everything he promised.”

    “Look,” said the Iranian, “if he lets you down or tries to cheat you, you contact me.” He gave me a business card. “I have the lawyer and so on. We can give him a hard time.”

    “Great”, I said, taking the card.

    *******************************************

    Another two weeks went by. The car was MOT’d, though I had to drive it to the garage myself. The dealer paid, so I give him that. But I waited and waited for the VRD, the critical Vehicle Registration Document, without which I couldn’t get my Resident’s Parking Permit. Which was stressful! Each traffic ticket costs around £80, and I couldn’t live my life in terror of getting home from work while the parking restrictions still operate. Admittedly, good old Hounslow gave me a temporary number to put on the windscreen, but the local traffic wardens are utter fascists and known to ignore all evidence apart from what they considered official.

    Again, I went through the routine of calling the salesman and getting the bum’s rush. He continually assured me the relevant document had been posted to the DVLA, yet when I telephoned the DVLA they had not received it. So in desperation, after four weeks I called him once more. I had scarcely opened the conversation when he cut the connection. This happened a second time, leaving me in no doubt that it was deliberate. I was furious. And as one does in cases like this, I boiled with the need to take revenge.

    Ok, I admit, the DVLA had said that they would provide a duplicate of the VRD for a small fee, so my parking stress would eventually be over. But that wasn’t the point. I mean, how DARE he slam the phone down on me!

    And this was the point at which I searched for the card the Iranian had given me and gave him a call. “Javed Farouz? Hello. Can we meet?”

    ******************************

    Our revenge plan was carefully hatched and constructed like a military campaign. Both Mr Farouz and I had the perfect contacts to make it a success,. His wife the nurse was popular at the vast NHS hospital where she worked. This meant she had a considerable cohort of friends, all happy to spend an afternoon enacting her revenge for the weeks of annoyance and insults to which she and her husband had been subjected.

    And I had the fabulous advantage of my friend Brian, whose students at the Drama Academy relished the opportunity to carry a character, in costume, and do some improv.

    So each day for two weeks our salesman would have to deal with two or three prospective customers sent by me or the Farouzs’.  Doctors, nurses, cleaners, professors, showgirls, entrepreneurs, the whole variety of colourful characters springing from the minds of creative drama students. The ‘customer’ would wander into the showroom, apparently in love with one of the cars on the forecourt. He or she would then spend as much time as possible with the salesman, on a test drive, in negotiation, between interruptions as they possibly could. In the meanwhile, others of our team would phone the guy with stupid questions or comments or pretending to want a car.

    The objective was to waste his time to the limit and ensure that he missed every damn target he had ever been set.

    Two weeks went by.

    Our characters were enjoying themselves hugely. Some made repeated visits.

    I sent him an anonymous  card from Moonpig. “Thanks from all your donkeys” with a picture of some of the more outrageous time-wasting characters invented by the Drama students. Inside was the message “Your customers are not donkeys. They are the food on your table.”

    And until the plastic donkey disappears from his desk, every now and then a bored drama student or nurse will wander into the car showroom and definitely not buy a used car from this man.

     

     

  • Ear Worms, Eumatezoa, Boxers, Fate.

    To what extent do I manufacture my world? Are you a figment of me? How and why can I be reading the paper and listening to the radio and the second my eye lights on a word, say “manipulative” someone says it. I realize that statistically that’s perfectly credible, because of the millions of times that does not happen, apart from common words. Of course it causes a shock, but as soon as the rationalisation sets in, it abates and I go on reading. Allowing myself a shred of a grin.

    But yesterday and today the shock of inane coincidence struck hard against my rational wall of disbelief.

    For no apparent reason (to me) I started to hanker for a tune. Not unusual for anybody I’m sure. Let’s narrow down on the statistical improbabilities (I leave you to do the maths). The tune is not a pop song, it’s obscure to say the least. A shepherd boy greets the dawn. In Italian. In an opera. Included in the introduction to Act 3 of Tosca by Puccini. The title is “Io te sospiri” which means something like “With a sigh…” It is haunting and superbly beautiful. It is the sort of ear worm that can move in to the cochlea, connect with the brain, make itself very comfortable and live there forever.

    A sunny afternoon in Johannesburg about fifty years ago. A bored fourteen-year old boy struggling with an endless Summer and teenage angst discovers his hated father’s record collection and while his impulse is to drop it into the swimming pool he resists that, because father would certainly beat him for it.

    Boxed sets of vinyl, unopened. A nest of classics, virgin. Aunt used to play classics for him on long relative – visiting afternoons and here was a direct connection to that beautiful woman with her sophistication, her perfect house her excellent taste.

    Tchaikovsky symphonies. Beethoven. Ravel. Also, Tosca by Puccini. With Tebaldi, Di Stefano, Gobbi. What on earth.

    Opened the box. That pungent chemical smell of new vinyl, freshly printed paper. A booklet, “libretto”. Gosh. All the words, translated into English.

    He skewered Disc 1 onto the record player and with the libretto’s guidance the needle liberated a multicoloured and utterly believable story, adorned by music which shredded, stabbed, stretched the emotions until they bled. The characters were so real he felt as if he could touch their desperate love, the jealousy, the horrible intrusion of the real world into their lives, with utterly shocking consequences

    The delicious damage stayed there for life. Like PTSD. Post opera soporific distress disorder. And from that moment the boy found himself at a door leading to a wonderland of emotional and spiritual excess in which all the emotions were explained in music, in which stories ranging from the impossible and divine to the mundane and contemporary unrolled like magic carpets.

    Fifty years later, the yearning for that tune. In these internet days, all tunes are available. In fact I owned a cd of that exact performance. So I went to the opening of Act 3. And “Io te Sospiri” was missing! It wasn’t there! Frustration! For some reason – this was a live recording – someone forgot to press “record”: when the shepherd boy wandered singing across the stage, following his cardboard sheep. Resolving to download it later I ran my bath and switched the radio on, and there it was.  As pure and beautiful as the first time I heard it.

    Ok cynic I admit it was an internet opera station, Otto’s Opera House. But of the thousands of operas they play (always complete operas), why Tosca? Right then? And the opening to Act 3 too? Right then?

     

    AND on the subject of music, and ear worms in particular. One of the returnees from the past is King Kong. Nah, not the ape, although I do remember the original movie with a sadness for the creature (I know just how he felt in New York.) No, the musical. Yes there was one. It wasn’t about an ape either. It was the story of a black boxer in the Apartheid South Africa of the fifties and sixties, in the Sophiatown township.

    What a story! This Zulu guy – a boxer with hands like destiny, a body like King Kong’s (the gorilla) and the personality of a Donald Trump with twice the intelligence – arrives in town. Defeats every possible opponent. Falls in love with beautiful girl. And then, as in so many stores of this type (mainly the true ones) everything starts to crumble. A defeat. Then another. And finally, riven by jealousy, he kills the girl.

    At his trial he begs for the death sentence. The judge denies him, commits him to prison where he kills himself.

    Great plot for Grand Opera. But they made a Jazz Musical out of this true story instead. Todd Mashikiza wrote the music, Miriam Makeba sang, Hugh Masikela played the trumpet. I saw the musical at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1959, and I still have the tunes in my head.

    Dear Esther Mennel brought it all back by asking if I’d heard the Radio3 program (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08f4pxd#play) which recounted how the musical came about, describing the genesis of the idea and featuring some of the music.

    So now, thanks E! I have a WHOLE NEW SET of earworms to accommodate…poor cochlea… “Back of the Moon boys, Back of the moon boys, Top shebeen in Joburg is the Back of the Moon!” Quite a change from “Io te sospiri”!

    Photo: Miriam Makeba as Joyce and Dan Poho as Popcorn in the original production, Johannesburg 1959.

  • (Not) Trump’s Official Diary. Or, Toad in a Hole.

    (Not) Trump’s Official Diary. Or, Toad in a Hole.

    Hey stranger! Been much too busy to keep up this dairy, got a greatry to make cunt! Had so much to do. Got all the horribles to deal with. Eyeran Musselmen and all that. I will ALWAYS be on their back. Trust me. There will be nowhere in this great cuntry they can hide.

    So what you guys out there in the dumb Fake News industry, the “Lying Press” as they used to call it in my Homeland in the 30’s and 40’s (see? I know history! I went to Yale after all. Or was it Harvard.) is what the hell I think of that OVER-RATED so-called Saturday Night Live. I bet you think those biased dishonest liberals  get me mad? You couldn’t be more wrong. I can’t stop watching it. They say such great things about me! For a start they got a guy looks just like Vlad only not as sexy, and it’s like they’ve been listening in to our convos. So glad he’s visiting soon, can’t wait. I show the Brits how to do a State Visit! Getting a gold coach made. I have ordered 20 of our very best, our very very best, our most wonderful and sexy prostitutes for his hotel. He will have to admit we got the greatest, the most perfectly formed babes, much better than Moscow!

    The last show, split my sides. That sour-face Spicer guy – never liked him. He schmoozes the Fake Newsers like he thinks they actually matter. I told him! I said, just tell them they’re assholes. Stopping niceness. If they don’t like my so-called “lies”, give them a bigger one! How many times I have tried to train him. If you REPEAT something often enough it becomes TRUE. TELKL them what you think of them! Don’t give them NEWS, give them INSTRUCTIONS and PUNISHMENTS if they act dumb. So they had a dame doing him.  Called Melissa McCarthy. Hilarious! Got his voice great. And SHE showed HIM exactly what I want HIM to say in so-called Press Conferences!  I heard Kellyanne laughed her face off too,  so much that even the Reps in the House heard about it. The perfect excuse to fire his ass. Have a look! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWuc18xISwI 

    Enjoy!

    So what else has been happening? Senate Democrat women fighting me every step, trying to keep my beloved Swamp Creatures out of my Cabinet, but I’m winning! The bootiful Betsy, she of the fabulous check book, she’s in Education at last. That was a hard one. And my one gets hard every time I think about her…I have chosen Only Babes to show what a wonderful non-sexist I am! That Linda Mac Something, in charge of Small Business. You watch when I show her how big MY business is! But the WINNER is my Ambassador to the UN. Wheeeeeyow. That’s why I made her UN. Keep her nearby, see? Where I can get my (big!) hands on her. Only joking. Maybe. That Elaine Chow is a bit of a stunner but she’s Chinese so she won’t have a chance with me. The only immigrants I ever liked I got married to.

    So that’s 20 confirmed, NONE rejected and 4 pending. Only ONE Black, that’s one too many but I reckon the boy will toe the line. Made him Secretary of Housing! I am SO a friend of the homeless. No-one is a greater friend of housing than me. Look at all the people I house in my hotels and towers and stuff. And golf courses. Wow I care a lot. A lot believe me. And that’s FOUR women in my cab, no-one can call me a sexist. No-one is a greater feminist than me. There’s the proof. And every one of them GORGEOUS.

    Going to Great Brexit soon, you know that. Their Queen has been begging to see me. It will be SO good to see her on her knees begging to make a deal. The DEAL: I will offer 10% Tariffs on their haggis and biscuits, if she makes me a Knight. Or better, a Lord. Some assholes don’t want me there, believe it or not. Only one or two people apparently.  The speaker of their parliament, some guy called Crackpot or something, reckons he can ban me. I told Thereser to fire his ass. There will be SO much trouble for that asshole, he will be so very very sorry the day he tried to make the leader of the Free World look bad.

    Maybe I offer 9% if they make me a Lord and put him in the tower. Or execute him. AND his family.  I’ll show that overrated failing Apprentice guy they got here trying to do MY SHOW. “Lord” Sugar apparently. So I’m gonna be called “Lord Sweetest Toad of Scot Land”. Note to self: send a minion to Thereser with her instructions for the week.

    I have to keep up my contacts with all the other leaders and presidents and prime ministers to give them their instructions too. So much to do! Got that dumb Australian Malcolm Bullshit put in his place last week, the bastard refused to carry out my orders. So now, Turkey. The Thereser told the guy what I want, now got to seal the deal. Am making deals with all our people in Europe, the Dutch guy is mine already (it costs, make no mistake!) the French Penis dame, the Germans natch! Make Deutschland Great for a Thousand Years, guys. We didn’t finish the job last time, this time the THOUSAND YEAR REICH will be owned and run by TOADLAND!

    Got to go!

    THURSDAY

    So much is happening, gotta be brief. Right now NOW I am in a Security meeting, so boring, and the whole lying FAKE NEWS is screaming their stupid heads off. Why? NORD FUCKING STROM that’s why! Somehow they got to that so-called store, that overrated shithole of overrated “Fashion” and guess what, they kicked Ivanka’s gorgeous beautiful range of adorable fashion straight out, because they have obviously no taste and they’ll do anything to make me mad. I want to tell you, Ivanka’s stuff is their BIGGEST SELLING range, it brings people into the store, it makes their ugly place look really special. Wait, gotta tweet. There.

    OK, they will be sorry. Trust me. All my people will be told to boycott that store. Watch. Their shares will go down. Their customers will go down. The day they take on the Toad, is they day THEY go down!

    And now, the Sourface is making trouble too. The one they call my wife. You won’t believe this! Apparently some Fake News so-called “Newspaper” in Great Brexit called, get this, “The Daily Male” which is probably because those homos have a nude man on page three, they called her a whore once. Apparently. So she sued them. Shit I don’t give a damn what she used to do before she met me! She sure knew some tricks but who am I to cast aspirations? So these faggots got sued. Now the “wife” is suing them again! She says they are now destroying her brand and impacting her sales! I can tell you this right now and right here: Nobody will ever destroy the Toad brand. She’s making me look bad. As if I’m here as the greatest ruler the world has ever seen just to make profit for my family. As if!

    Anyway, so I gotta see Abe soon. Tomorrow I think. He’s the Jap leader. Gonna show him how to do Kamikaze properly on the golf course, watch me whip him! Need to find out his handicap. (Note to self: make sure Abe Babe gets the right balls. Cause he doesn’t have any. I mean GOLF balls dammit.) (The LIGHT ones). He is gonna regret Pearl Harbour, you bet. NOTE to self: If Japs don’t take our gas-guzzling cars, refuse to take their goddam Prius lump of shit.

    On the subject of slit-eyed threats to our security, been talking to the Chinese guy too. NOTE to self: Say ok to Tie Wang. If they say ok to having their wangs tied.

    TOAD ROOLS! HEIL TOAD!

  • Is this the real D. Trump’s DIARY? (formerly, Mr Toad’s Diary. This site has been hacked by CIA)

    Note: this scurrilous piece of nonsense purporting to have been written by our greatest living President has been compromised by the CIA and will now be protected by end-to end encryption so that no-one but our Russian allies will have access. If you are reading this, love to Vlad and if you’re not Russian you will be eliminated.

     

    Dear Diary

    I need to get a lot of stuff off my chest. I am totally hacked off. In fact I am pissed! I will now tell you why and let me say this and I say this only once, those who are responsible will pay. I repeat, those responsible will pay.

    For one thing, last night I asked to see Finding Dory. I have the right to get the Toad Hall staff to give me whatever I want, right? I am the Boss the Big Cheese the Man of the Hour. Or of the year according to Time Magazine. I made the cover! Everyone who saw it says it is the greatest cover Time ever produced. I got so many proofs how great I am. You should see my wall at Toad Tower if you want to know all the people who think I am great. (Note to self: Get all the wall copied and put on the wall of the Ovoid Office where everyone can see them. Great for press pics. Note to self: Get selfie stick.)

    So what happens? I settle down with some family and a swamp creature or two, some Weasels (they are everywhere) and the kid with twelve KFC buckets, some MacDonalds, a ton of fries, some bacon , some meatloaf, all my favourites. Obviously Miserywife “had a headache”. I have a great night watching the best in American high art, really upmarket stuff, like the great Disney cartoons of years back. And next day (this morning) I discover that Ellen Degenerate, some lesbian that was once on television, really second rate, believe me. She and those other overrated liberals like Meryl Streep, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and on and on. Shit I used to love those fuckers. I didn’t know they were such know-all do-gooder left wing losers! What was I saying. Oh yeh, that degenerate starts telling the lying press that Dory is a liberal! Helps immigrants into the country! Well you listen to me Ms overrated, were any of those fine fish carrying bombs? Like all the damn Mulslims trying to get in here from Libya, Somaliland, wherever? Those bleeding heart dogooding liberals better wake up. If they think they can hijack the great Disney for their cause, they can forget it. Walt Disney himself would have loved me! But he’s dead, apparently. I’m pretty sure he supported National Socialism.

    I have put them all in their place. As soon as that Attorney General tried to reverse my Terrist ban, I fired her Obama-loving ass. I just hope the message gets through: I didn’t spend all those years saying “you’re fired’ on television without learning how to throw people out who are no good. Beware all who cross the path of the Toad. Your jobs are on the line. I don’t need you! I don’t need any of you! Just my trusty pen, my Executive Orders, a few Swamp Creatures and a couple good-looking babes. With great tits.

    Obv the Democrats are trying to stop me hiring some of the best, most cleverest, most loyal creatures – Jeff, that Munchkin (which movie was he in now…) and poor Tommy Prick. But you know what? They can shout they can cry they can do all the protest in the world, I will win in the end. And trust me, anyone stands in my way, there’s always Guantanamo.

    What else is happening? Oh yeh, there have been GREAT demonstrations of support for me all over the world! Look at the picture to see the millions showing how much they love the Toad right outside Big Ben, which is a great way to describe me too. In London and Great Brexit, the Queen has invited me to have banquets and be with her in her gold coach! This is all because of that cute tart, their CEO who visited last week to hold hands. I have seen a picture of this Queen woman and she’s a miserable fucker I can tell you. But two minutes with the Toad and she will hold hands too. Note to self: Take hand sanitizer.

    Must go. Time to get my New Supremacist, the guy who’s going to get abortion banned, homos like Degenerate arrested, immigrants sent back and so on, appointed as soon as possible. They won’t like it! The liberals will be crying out in terror believe me. The guy I want is not an American subject, he currently runs the Philippines so I have to go with some guy called Neil Nonesuch or something. They tell me he hates Mulslims, immigrants, liberals same as I do. Time will tell.

     

     

  • Toad’s Diary – Going Nuts with May!

    Toad’s Diary – Going Nuts with May!

    Friday

    Dear dearie

    I am so exciddded! I just met my first head of state! One of the greatest too! Even though she’s only a woman they made her in charge of Great Brexit where my mom is from. It used to be called Scot Land  before and they have one of the greatest golf courses in the world. I know because I put it there. But now the whole country is owned and run by this Teresia, the CEO and her Board of Directors.

    Not much to look at I admit. A 3 or maybe 3 1/2 and dressed up like a Christmas cracker. I made a start by holding hands! Next time I promise you I will get in her pants or my name’s not Mr Toad, you watch!

    She was really impressed I can tell you. I had to say lots of shit for the lying press (rabble!) like NATO is a good thing but who cares, she will tell everyone how great I am and the lying press lapped it up. I am soooo Great I don’t know how my head fits in the Oval Office.

    And then I spoke to the Nabob of India on the phone. His name is Moby, something like that. Gonna call him Moby Dick because I’m told he has one shaped like a whale. Not much sense of humour! But he sure hates Mulslims so we got plenty in common!

    What else happened today? Banned more Mulsims especially those Syrian Terrorists, trying to bring their babies and sob stories to Toad United (I am thinking of changing the name of this country to fit in with all my other great marvellous fantastic wonderful possessions. Do you think that Toad United sounds like a soccer club? Maybe United Toads. But there is only one Great Toad. Perhaps that’s best, because it includes my whole family. And let’s face it. When I’m gone they inherit the Presidency!) Do you think I need to change my slogan too? Maybe “I will make America Toad again!” Har har har. They wouldn’t understand that the dumbells.

    I am having my portrait painted! Such a pain, I told the guy I can’t sit in one place because of the hemorrhoids so I’m sending him hundreds of pictures. No nudes unless he asks for them! AND I’ve been choosing the art for the walls of Toad Hall. I have great taste.

    You know what, dear doury, nobody really understands me except for me and you. I mean everybody is starting to know how great I am but there are still people who are unbelievers. I stay awake twenty four hours working for my country. OK, maybe twenty. People who sleep are just lazy! I won’t take incompetence, I tell all my people this. I’m trying to get R. Priapus to see things right, he says some stupid shit sometimes. The only guy with some smarts in my Swamp Creatures is chief crocodile Mike Banner, who wants every little Liberal banned and sent back to their home country with the terrorists. I mean Jared aint bad but he sure likes Jews and I must admit, see I got so many Jews around me, sometimes I just think they’re all plotting. That’s what they do! Well, he married my gorgeous daughter so gotta be nice.

    Do you know I put so much effort keeping people informed! I got my tweets, six times a day! Precisely 6.53am, 7.35, 6.38, 6.11, 7.10. I even made a video today, check the @Potus account! I watch all the shows. Especially the news when it’s about me, Fox natch and MSNBC because I’m in love with Mika Brzezinski, she’s a treat. Never CNN or CBS, lying bastards. Then I love The Walking dead, because that’s what the Liberals are now they’re defeated. American Grit on Fox because that’s what I got and I could beat any of those bozos! I totally love Game of Thrones, gives me so many ideas how I’m gonna run this country! I adore American Idol because that’s what I am, gonna enter one day and sing for the nation. “My Country is of Me!”. Great. I never watch the Apprentice trust me it’s shit now I’ve gone to better things. All the shows.

    I have decided that the best way to deal with liberals  is gonna be, HURT them. Hurt them good. Liberals never learn. I will hurt them financially, I will imprison them, I will shut up their press and their lies. Trust me! And when they are really hurting and I give them just a little something here and a little something there, they will start to love me.

     

    Now THAT’S the art of the fucking deal!

     

    Notes to genius self

    • Send in the Feds to Chicago. Honestly, crime is gonna have to be tackled. Arm them with semi-automatics and a couple machine guns. Shoot, burn, loot, that’s what I want. Fight fire with fire! It makes more fire! Love it.
    • Wait till the Teresia woman is gone before signing an Exec to get those terrorists out of United Toads. That was the deal we struck and I’m gonna stick to it.
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