BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

This post is dedicated to the snivelling cowards who occupied the fourth carriage of the WAGN service between Old Street and Finsbury Park at 5.10pm yesterday evening. On said carriage, a WASP entered through the window and begun zig-zagging around like a drunken eejit. Now, I happened to be standing opposite a very concerned looking man in a suit, and a woman who was pretending she hadn't seen it. I'd estimate that 50-60% of the seated passengers had newspapers. Everyone was aware of the wasp's presence, as it was really fucking dive-bombing its way up and down the carriage by this point.

And yet, not ONE of these twits rolled up their copy of the 'Evening Standard' and twatted the insect. Why? Newspapers and wasps go together like bangers and mash. Is this what my once-mighty London's been reduced to? A wasp intimidating a whole carriage of punters? Oh, I could see the fear in their eyes, the weak attempts at denial - this can't really be happening to me - sitting like a bunch of autistic wimps, the first traces of the 'sweat moustache' of unease forming on their upper lips!!!

Right, I've got news for you newspaper readers, you owe it to the world and to yourself to swat wasps in tube and train carriages. But hang on, just a minute - let's be all impartial and 'democratic' and hear some of the feeble arguments against my rocksteady case :

1) If we attack the wasp, it might become irritated, and make the whole situation ten times worse!

Rubbish! If you attack the wasp properly, it will die. Sorry to impose my brutish humanity on the wonderful world of nature, but the wasp is irritating me. Wasps have shit for brains, they couldn't find their ways back out of a train carriage if a bomb went off and ripped a gaping hole in the side. The only solution is death. So what's the next excuse?

2) BTi, I fear that if I lunge towards the wasp, but fail to kill it, my fellow passengers will laugh at me and mock my hamfisted attempt! Including that really pretty girl I've been eyeing up for the past 3 weeks, but am too scared to talk to!

This is more like it, an honest approach I can deal with. OK, here goes : only 1% of the population ever "pull"on public transport. The occult masterminds who run London Transport and First Capital Connect have used powerful magickal rituals to curtail the realisation of a truly human community on their trains - their agenda is the processing of the maximum amount of paying passengers, on the smallest amount of paid manpower. And until you all start coming up with weird sigils and fucking around with the tube's aura, man, that pretty girl will never talk to you anyway, so zip it (( DISCLAIMER - before attempting any 'magick', talk to someone who knows what the fuck it's about)).

But just imagine -imagine you strike the wasp and you kill it. What message does that send to the pretty girl? That you are a WARRIOR. You will remove obstacles that make her feel uncomfortable. You will protect her from danger and sources of annoyance. She'll notice you a shitload more if you THWACK a wasp to a mangled, splattered stain on the window, with a hearty "GOTCHA!", than she ever will if you motion to her to remove her iPod earphones and then stammer, "UH..I..I S-SAY...DO Y-YOU GET THIS TR-TRAIN OFTEN?"

And if you do miss, and the wasp starts going mental - ah, relish a fucking challenge will you!

You can't go wrong. The only problem you'll have, Mr Sweating-Inta-My-Burton's-Suit, is that once you've killed a few wasps and have girls throwing themselves at you, you'll suddenly see a load of ugly sad drips running around every tube carriage between Edgware and Morden, swatting at imaginary wasps in a desperate attempt to score, before spending all morning at work emailing each other with updated "kill rates".

Look, there was this thinker called Jean-Jacques Rousseau who came up with an idea called "the social contract". The basic, 'idiot's guide' gist of this idea is that if I come round your flat and break one of your windows, I should be held financially accountable for the repair of said window. This is because if we let individual will supercede general will, we'll end up in some "Mad Max 2"-style state of complete disorder and alienation.

Similarly, in Rwanda, if a woman screams a certain distress call which signifies " Rape!", everybody in the vicinity is obliged to stop what they're doing and wade in to help her. If a man in the area doesn't answer her call, odds on he'll be arrested and imprisoned, as an accomplice of the attacker.

And so, if you have a newspaper, you are socially obliged to scrunch it up and batter any wasps that enter train carriages, instead of peering at them in terror from the corner of your eye, while struggling to maintain control of your facial muscles every time it hovers towards your mush. And if you don't, well, you're a coward and you should be pushed up against a bus shelter and shot.

I mean, yeah, I could have flicked the bastard with my fingers, but why should I do all the work all the time?

1) A 1980 BBC science and technology programme, with crap, stark, ZX-Spectrum-generated vectors cutting across the screen, before the camera zooms in on a bearded man, mumbling 'good evening', in a harshly-lit laboratory

2) A mid-80s NHS public information video, entitled Coping with Bereavement

3) A documentary about a teenage gluesniffing couple, both boy and girl struggling to make their relationship work while battling their Evostik habits - the tune resurfaces at the end when the camera focuses on them, zonked out in death poses, on a pair of swings down the park in the middle of a light rain shower

4) A low-budget, 3-hour long Hungarian Star Wars ripoff B-movie from 1979, featuring a terrifying Stalinist figure (in a black motorcycle helmet) who comes from a distant planet, who intends to turn Earth into a gulag....but comes unstuck when the Virgin Mary mysteriously appears to some youngsters at a scrapyard, and inspires the formation of Earth Defence 1 : Squadron Christus - leading to one almighty brawl in space.

5) A Panorama special report, exposing the 'sinister' secret links between CND and prominent Iranian businessmen

It is now that we settle down and turn our attentions to one of the greatest episodes of British history ; for as sure as there is a time to drink, laugh, spin records and play the old soak, so there is also a time to be stern, studious and straight down the line. As will shortly become evident, I offer up this post with the sole, selfless aim of educating the scores of internationally-based youngsters who trawl aimlessly through cyberspace, looking to net the slightest seahorse of wisdom in the bleak ocean of piss and shit that passes for the 'Information Superhighway'.

Not that the promotion of education is always appreciated. While some readers, knowing full well that they remain caked in the dirt of ignorance and superstition, reach voluntarily for the Shampoo of Reason and revel in the Shower of Education, others cock a snook at self-advancement! Sadly, some young men cannot be told anything these days ; these braggarts believe that a bit of chest-thumping qualifies them to play the pipes with Pan ; a wank and a hangover, and they'll tell you they've surfed the cosmos.....of course, when these young bucks bring a girl home to cook her a romantic dinner - no, don't laugh, these gallahs think they know everything! - they expose themselves as nothing but cretinous little fools, making such stomach-turning mistakes as serving prawns with a pint of bitter. No wonder their dates laugh and mock these so-called 'suitors' ; a higher level of sophistication (and culinary skill) could be found in a spent nappy. And let us not neglect those stupid wee girls who, having given education the two fingers in favour of a wasted youth of drooling over rubbish 'pet fashion' magazines - sneering at the works of Petronius, Marlowe and Beckett as they instead coo and swoon over glossy shots of bejewelled, fat siamese cats in fishnets! - now find themselves at destitution's door, their looks faded, eeking out a meagre pittance by knitting jumpers for hairless dogs in France. Where are the jeers you needle-clicking, old-before-your-time hags once heaped upon the studious girls - who have all since bloomed into highly desirable, sexy, intelligent women, with a herd of rich, handsome and cultured men fawning at their ankles - while you now resemble, in terms of appearance and olfaction, a trout, roasted in a pan of pee?

So, having established that you, dear reader, are a seeker of truth and knowledge, having bothered to read this far instead of breaking into a sweat and retreating to some frivolous site about German hip hop, BTi now proudly presents - the glorious life and tragic downfall of Edward II, Britain's noblest monarch!

Few English royals have not deserved assassination. Casting our eyes over the year 1381, we learn of the Peasants' Revolt, a nationwide working class anti-Poll Tax uprising - and how King Richard II, a precocious little shit who should have been learning his alphabet instead of fucking around on the back of a horse, fobbed off the rebels at Smithfield with a load of lies, lured them into a trap and later OK'd the arrests and executions of a number of participants.

I can't say for sure whether he also arranged the murder of his daughter-in-law in an occult ritual, but if the brat did descend to such depths of depravity, it'd be no worse than the filth we've had to endure from the current monarch, Elizabeth II, over the past 54 years. I also can't say for sure how long this incarnation of Beyond the Implode will survive online ; however, if you happen to be reading this in 2051, and 'Fuhrer Harry' currently spiritually presides over the UK's first ever Christian Democrat / British National Party coalition government, you may be forgiven for thinking that previous spores in the royal lineage weren't actually 'that bad' (((but personally I predict Harry dead on a dancefloor by the end of 2009 - wanna bet?)))

But there's one king and one alone who makes every red and white blood cell swell with pride - the glorious Edward II! Edward wasn't interested in butchering the Scottish ; he was into far more refined pleasures. After his father - a miserable old Celtophobic twat - kicked the bucket, Edward didn't waste any time in shipping a studmuffin called Piers Gaveston, a scalliwag skilled in all types of mischief, over to Engerlund. The two lusty libertines soon succeded in pissing off nearly every baron and bishop in the realm, by blowing the country's war funds on parties so decadent I can scarcely bring myself to type about them, were it not for the fact that the responsible blogger owes it to his readers to unturn all available stones in our mutually agreed quest for the truth.

One of Edward's and Gaveston's favourite party tricks, so history records, was to wank themselves off into a steel trough, until the unholy vessel was overflowing with manfat. These jokers would then dunk trainee clerics' heads into the goo, and send them howling down the stairs, in the direction of Queen Isabella, 'the she-wolf of France', who Edward II had reluctantly agreed to marry. Now, we can all do a David Aaronovitch and laugh at Muslims for "arranged marriages", but this practice is in fact as English as egg, chips and beans! Isabella, who was heavily pregnant at the time, and spent most nights sitting weeping in a wicker chair while Edward and Gaveston romped away under the royal duvet, assumed that the spunk-haired, screaming acolytes were ghosts conjured from the very bowels of Hades, and nearly fired her damn foetus across the room in shock! -much to our perverted Plantagenet's delight!

As we know, our current royal family consists of a bunch of inbred lightweights. Prince Andrew thought he was a "real rebel" and "jolly out of order" by dating some ugly old porn queen called Koo Stark, back in the early 1980s. However, this is nothing compared to the scam Edward II pulled when Isabella's father, Philip IV of France, demanded a portrait of his absent daughter, just to make sure she was being afforded the best of treatment from the king. This raving mad anti-Semite had insisted that the duo get hitched when they were both children, in order to bind France to England after years of hate 'n' war.

But behold the bold satyr squatting on Albion's throne! The official artist, having arrived from France in a state of great weariness, was drugged and tricked into painting a large portrait of Edward and Gaveston inserting their appendages into the ears of a cow! Suffice to say, the king of France had a stroke when the picture was unveiled, and ordered the artist to be crushed to death by some fat Gallic brutes, jumping up and down on an old oak door .

Another good wheeze was the time Edward took Isabella on holiday to Scotland - the equivalent, nowadays, of jumping a plane to Baghdad. Edward wasn't interested in scrapping with the Scots, most of whom were tearing through the ranks of the English army like a gang of Hell's Angels at a Mods For Jesus rally.

One afternoon, he declared to the shit-terrified queen that he was going into the woods "to fetch a Scottish scalp" with his old mate, the rascal Hugh le Dispenser. The two had no intention of fighting anyone- they instead decided to have a quick fist fuck, before smearing a pot of blood-red henna over their faces and chests. Bursting out of the bushes, screaming "Run! Else we are killed!", the two scoundrels caused the unhappy queen to pass out in disbelief. When she came to, she had to make her own way back home, through enemy lines - the king was too busy celebrating summer solstice at Stonehenge....with a spot of avisodomy!

Eventually, Isabella'd had enough. She teamed up with the wretched traitor Roger Mortimer - may the devil take his worthless sphincter! - and planned to attack England from France, in order to halt Edward's fun. They even ponced some additional troops off a Dutch loser called William III. Sadly, Edward was captured and, in 1327, executed by the homophobic Mortimer, who insisted on shoving a red-hot poker up the king's arse. England's greatest monarch now lay dead, his bowels sizzling like an egg on a junction box.

And so it is that, nearly 700 years later, we recall the life and times of this most splendid and dedicated libertine. Let every true Englishman raise a can of Kestrel Super to the ceiling, kick his cowering wife back into the car boot and toast the memory of Edward II ; ne'er a merrier king reigned, nor we'll see the likes of again!

So, food and music then. Did you know that Karen Carpenter used to carry around a packet of bird seed for a 'snack', and would have a furtive nibble when she got peckish? It's true! Check out Burt Bacharach's sick little in-joke, "Why do birds suddenly appear / every time you are near?".

Another singer who didn't eat much was Brett Anderson. He used to survive on a veritable feast of kernals and husks, and the odd pint of liquidised brown rice - not to mention Diet Tango and speed. Now, I must confess to having pretended to hate Suede when I was younger. My girlfriend had a poster of Anderson on her wall, and I became incensed with rage at the sight of the tousled, unsmiling dandy stick insect. I wanted to listen to Blaggers ITA's nazi-bashing anthems, Huggy Bear's barely audible screech-preaching, Throbbing Gristle's industrial noise - not this preening posing pranny!

But come on, be honest with yourselves, Suede were fucking brilliant. Yes, you sah! Out of that closet, or I'll have you by the ankles. I'll abide no coolishness or hippery on this URL. I secretly liked Metal Mickey, The Drowners and Animal Nitrate all along. And even Trash, when that came out in 1996. I'm only managing to admit it now, but I was too terrified to lighten up and enjoy it at the time. No, I knew best - I mean, come on, straight male readers - what would YOU do?

a) Openly like Suede. Revel in the sight of your 17-year old girlfriend leaning into a club mirror with her best mate, both playing with their hair while singing a raucous version of So Young, bracelets clashing around their forearms. Savour the heart-singeing lament of Saturday Night , really explore the nihilist glam romanticism of the last white UK guitar band to come up with decent artwork, decent lyrics, decent ANYTHING...

b) pile in your mate's car and drive around Britain's official crappest town listening to Joy Division. Then discover 13 years later that, in 1979, NME hack Jon Savage basically pre-empted your woeful teenage years (thanks K-Punk).

I'd like to thank my two anonymous blog muckers who confided to me their liking for Suede too. If we'd all just done this in the first place, maybe we wouldn't have had to suffer the Kaiser Chiefs. I do acknowledge, however, that even at the best of times the blogosphere can resemble little more than a stamping ground for bigotry, prejudice and blind hate, so rest assured, I won't reveal your identities.

But back to food. Do you remember that bit in the film "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence" where David Bowie pisses off the Japanese by loudly declaring - through a gobful of petals! - that a bunch of flowers tasted nicer than their Manju cakes? At least that was just fiction - sad racist rock alcoholic and highly irresponsible parent Eric Clapton, at the height of his Cream junkie daze, used to insist on eating his pre-gig nosh straight off the body of a naked teenager! You know how Japanese businessmen like to blow 3 months' salary on picking bits of sushi off a model's bare arse? Well, Clapton's sordid behaviour wasn't that different - except he only ever devoured Yorkshire Hot Pot! What a cunt!

However, my interest in the subject matter goes deeper than this - I like the intersection where food and music and DEATH collide. Doesn't it make you glad to be alive knowing that Johnny Thunders once nearly drowned in a plate of spaghetti bolognese? Isn't that just so fucking punk rock? That Manic Street Preacher bloke who carved '4 REAL' into his arm - pah, what a clueless swain!! If I was ever going to top myself, I'd definitely go via the spaghetti route. When I was a kid, my dad would often say "AH, NOW! DROWNING - THE MOST PEACEFUL DEATH!" But did my dad ever try it with a hooter full of garlic and parmesan? How would he have bloody known anyway? Oh, someone down The White Bear told him (presumably the bloke who once drowned, but not "fatally").

Dying face down in spaghetti just seems so apt for Johnny Thunders, a point on which you'll agree if you've got any interest in this extraordinary (anti)musician (which I have). I partly wish he had died that way and left a pretty, pesto-splattered corpse in an Italian restaurant, instead of ending up a chronically fatigued bag of pus. Which reminds me, a man walks into an Italian restaurant and asks, "Can I have some anti pasti?" to which the waiter replies, "No, but I think the chef's brought his Chron Gen LP" ((C) FRANK CARSON, 1982)

However, if we're talking direct death, I'm afraid that Elvis scoops the prize. This is of course assuming he's really dead, and wasn't actually snatching children from outside schools in North West London in the early 1980s. Enough has been written about The King's scatological end without me throwing any more rotten spuds on the compost heap, so I'll wrap up there.

I don't know, it's all very rum. Elvis rips through the core of his persona in a blast of pure cheeseburger dynamite, while Karen Carpenter implodes like a brittle twiglet.

And yet I think it's best that bands and musicians steer clear of songs about food. Can there really be a more pitiful sound than Lee Perry moaning, "A box of chicken / keep the drum kickin' / enjoy the taste / and listen to the drum and bass" on the lamentable Kentucky Skank?

INNER CITY BRITAIN, WAKE UP! You are being lulled into a patently false dichotomy. On one side, those slimey class traitors, the proprietors of kebab shops, the chippies where capital fattens up the proletariat flesh it hasn't yet whipped into the ground - AND - on the other, the Fromageries of this world, the brown bread con-dream, the smoked trout pate' festering in the window as it demarcates the boundaries of imagined gentrification ! Burn down the chippies! Death to the organic food halls! Let pop music renounce all food lyrics and return to themes of joyriding, copkilling, drugs, teenage lust, bizarre magick, hating society and fucking in the streets!! British bacon for the British workers!

I saw this Evening Standard headline the other day, "POP LEGEND DEAD IN LONDON HOTEL ROOM". I only caught a quick glimpse of the cover photo and spied Marc Almond standing next to an old bloke. "Marc Almond is dead" I texted someone, making a mental note to do a 1,500 word blog post about how great Bedsitter was. Later on, reading someone else's paper on the WAGN, I found out the real goner was Gene Pitney. Oh well! It's like that time, many moons ago, when I ran into a bar, delightedly and breathlessly informing everyone that Mick Hucknell had hung himself, only to discover 20 minutes later that it was actually Michael Hutchence.

I've become a bit sick of the Internet. I think they should shut the damn thing down for a couple of months. OK, I'd miss one URL, namely the amazing http://www.ptpart.co.uk/colors.htm : a load of sound boffins get together and argue over the definitions of various noise colours. I especially like ORANGE NOISE, which apparently is most easily generated by a room full of primary school students equipped with plastic soprano recorders and BLACK NOISE ((one contributor notes, The comic book character "Iron Man" used to have a "black light beam" that could darken a room like this, and popular SCI-FI has an annoying tendancy to portray active noise control in this light )).

But the rest? Nutters, the lot of them. Banging online DJ mixes!! In the name of Kali, let me assure you fellows that you're no DJs unless you've studied David See's authoritative 70s tome on how to be a professional disc jockey. How many of you have access to mobile units with disco lights? Ever played to 40 kids at Starlight Youth Club in Luton? Could you effortlessly swing from Status Quo's "Down Down" to the Bangles' "Eternal Flame" once you're realised it's nearly closing time, and hence time for the remaining nervous clubbers to bag off, clinging to each other and swaying like mantises (or manti) clutching onto stalks of wheat in an autumnal field, had Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, that most seminal text of the British Agricultural Revolution, contained a freaked-out 'acid flashback' chapter.

No, it's all lunacy on the Net. And on mobile too. I've got a Nokia 3310 - OK, so it's crap and I can't send pictures on it, but at least I won't fall prey to phone muggers. I've worked out, nearly 75% of the times I use it are when I'm drunk. What a waste of time! I keep expecting it to die on me, but like a zombie with a grudge, it's survived 4-storey falls, water damage and being thrown at a wall in a fit of temper. Anyway, here's a "nice" story for you. Some woman at work, who I am fairly friendly with, asked me outright this week if I'd ever fancied her. I said no, and when pressed to explain, I said I found her "too nice" (slight lie, but no need to be nasty about folks' looks). She just laughed - OK,so far, no worries. Then she starts sending me mental texts the next night, swearing like a trooper (out of character), addressing me with the opening line, "OI SHIT 4 BRAINS" and then telling me she doesn't give a fucking fuck and she's not going to let anyone fuck her over anymore and this is the new fucking her so fucking deal with it or fuck off. What in the devil's outhouse? You can shove your technology up your arse, I was happier when people used to leave death threats on answering machines. Marshall McLuhan was off his head when he said "The medium is the message". The only message I get from this medium is DON'T USE ME. REVERT TO PRIMITIVISM. And surely that can't be right. Put me on a remote Scottish island with 10 years' worth of reading, Magner's cider and wild red salmon, and I'll be a happy cat. The 5am wind battering fishermen to watery graves and pounding the front door like a squadron of spectral bailiffs will be music to my ears.

(PS- I'm not really bitter. Just bored)

(UPDATE - Many thanks to new (cough) blogger 'Doppelganger', who kindly sent me some legs of lamb in the post)