BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

Seven weeks off. That's all I bloody wanted. Not 30 years fasting in the desert ; just seven weeks of pure non-bloggery, allowing me the opportunity to enjoy the sunshine and quaff Bombay Sapphire and delicious Yorkshire tea. But no chance, sucker- what do I get? A barrage of suicide threats, and now superstar DJ Jim Bunnyhausen claiming that I've culled him from the Links Bar! I knew these links would cause mayhem in the long run. Actually, I think this link was accidentally deleted when I was adding a new one for infamous troublemaker Psy...er, Doppelganger. I apologise profusely, and will update it to include Jim's blog - but I'm feeling a bit too lazy to do it now. Advertising may be banned on Resonance FM, but not here, so if you want to read Jim's blog, click on the coloured word in this sentence. Jim's also supplementing his daily diet of renegade girl guides and amyl nitrate / alcopop binges by knocking out robosexual dancefloor anthems here - but more about the curse of "myspace" in a minute or so.

I don't have anything funny to say about Ireland, I wasn't really over there for donkey derbys or excursions into Loyalist towns in the North this time round. I was mostly helping to pull weeds out of the ground and tidy up the family grave. Incidentally, if you're after some true Celtic Gothic ambience, it may be worth checking out Ahamlish Cemetery in Sligo, especially during twilight. The photo doesn't really do the dilapidated old church justice (you can glimpse a bit of sky through the roof), but it looks fantastically eerie when the sun starts to fade. However, I wouldn't recommend any Satanists head out there to piss about with magickal rituals, as the Sligo Garda take a dim view of such activities, and you're likely to find yourself in the local copshop, being slapped around 'til an eyeball comes loose.

The observant will also have noticed that the link for 'The Measures Taken' is missing. This was most likely an accident too, but in reflection, I think Owen deserved to be EXPELLED anyway, for contributing an article to Socialist Worker. However, we should perhaps overlook this sordid act in light of his recent slagging of Alan De Botton. This dullard was responsible for the book The Art of Travel, which has to rank as the biggest pile of cack I've ever read - and I've read Jane Owen's Camden Girls and Bidisha's Seahorses, so we're talking some really grim shit here.

I hadn't ventured any further than Scotland or Ireland til I was 23 ; thank God I never read The Art of Travel before then, or I'd never have boarded a plane since. This booge-wah tosser succeeds in making travelling abroad sound like some morbid ritual, and just so you don't miss the point that he's well-educated, he brings in a load of comparisons with the travelling habits of famous novelists, artists and poets to prop up what is, essentially, a tome about fuckall. So, again we get a re-hashed version of Charles Baudelaire's wanderings and journeys, dressed up as some epic voyage of intellectual discovery - when the plain truth is that Baudelaire ran around whoring and getting drugged off his trolley.

De Botton especially harps on about Gustave Flaubert, a miserable sociopath with a face like a spanked bloodhound. Flaubert was renowned for vegetating in his study, firing off venomous letters about how everyone save his enlightened self was a mindless idiot. Like most spoilt 19th-century brats, the elitist imbecile embraced the works of De Sade (a literary cross between Jonathan King and Benny Hill ; for fuck's sake, at least Sex Pistols vocalist Ronnie Biggs had the nous to bust out of jail!) as an act of rebellion. In the end he fucked off to Egypt for a holiday, much to the delight of his parents who finally got to muck his room out - one can only imagine the state of his scrunched up scrolls. Again, because The Art of Travel is being pitched to a largely middle class readership, De Botton can't help gushing favourably about Flaubert's dreary lists of the common man's crime's against intellect and beauty, and he makes out that the Frenchman's first time with a moustached prostitute was somehow "above" a simple financial sexual transaction - because, inexplicably, this mysterious, 'exotic' courtesan was somehow in possession of guru-like great spiritual wisdom! What De Botton DOESN'T tell the reader is that, after this shindig, Flaubert returned to France and wrote Salammbo, allegedly about the wars of Carthage but more a frenzied study of his own sexual hang-ups, which was slammed by the critics for being historically inaccurate. Rather than laugh them off, Flaubert did what you'd expect - he raged away in his study, disgusted at mankind's inability to recognise his godlike literary genius.

On a more mundane level, De Botton spends two pages telling the reader about a total non-event on his own trip to Barbados, where he got in a row with his girlfriend over the serving of a pudding in a restaurant, leading to a silent drive back to the hotel and bedroom doors being slammed in anger. I mean, would you really go on holiday with this sock puppet?

Enough of that. I checked out Myspace recently cos I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. It's fucking mental! 14-year old girls in states of depression cos their emo band's just broken up. What REALLY shocked me was that I hadn't been looking at it for 5 minutes when I spotted someone I went to school with. It's true! He's lying about his age and is trying to launch himself as a singer-songwriter, along the lines of James Blunt. I couldn't be bothered to download his clips, but he used to be a member of our punk band, Legion of Morons! Technically, about 16 people can claim to be 'ex-members' (we weren't really selective) though, oddly enough, he doesn't mention it on his bio. One of the jokes the cruel kids used to make about him was "What's the difference between XXXX and a condom machine? A condom machine's got Mates". However, thanks to myspace, he now has 158 friends, all of whom want some publicity off him in return. I mean, the band this blog ripped its name off is fucking on there and networking! The cunts are meant to be dead! Has the world just gone completely desperate?

Right, now can I please go away?? I have to pack for Russia. I'll be missing the Eurovision Song Contest next Saturday, but that's probably no loss, seeing as Britain's sending some repulsive kid-fiddler over to represent the country. Bye-ee!!

See, I told you he'd sold out, it's the obligatory 'I won't be posting for a while...' post...Church of Me doesn't pull this kind of shit... ENOUGH. You know what this blog's like, from my perspective? A nagging wife who I don't have sex with anymore. Anyway, I was going to pretend I've got RSI but that's already been done and I don't want to pretend to have something worse in case I jinx myself and actually fall ill. Incidentally, I went round to John Eden's pad with some flowers recently, to offer my condolences and see if he needed a hand sending a few emails - only to note he's just bought himself a drumkit and is bashing the skins day and night. So I don't feel so guilty now about dumping this yoke for a while.

Anyway, I'm sodding off to Ireland and Russia for a bit, and then hopping aboard Swastika Airlines to catch Paraguay and Angola in action at the World Cup. A mate wants to take a "Nuclear Power -No Thanks" banner for the Iran-Angola game, which is potentially amusing but we're inept when it comes to silk-screening. And anyway, the stadium in Leipzig will mostly be filled with German locals looking for a ruck with Polish neo-nazi firms, so I'd rather just go for a good old-fashioned Israeli flag. I know this all sounds completely juvenile, well it's the effect football has on me - I can't be blamed. I never understood all this Nick Hornby shit about your team's performance mirroring the profound personal changes in your life. If that was the case, my existence between 1995 and 1999 would have been one big wrist-slash. I still can't remember who scored for Spurs at the League Cup final in 1999 - and I was there at Wembley. It was either Allan Nielsen or Steffen Iversen. The blonde bloke, anyway. What really counts is that on that rainy Sunday afternoon, North London triumphed over Leicester and proved the latter territory to be "shit aahh". This is why I hate football fans who cry when their team loses - you just know they've all got Brazil shirts stashed beneath their beds, along with every other barmy promise mummy made to shelter them from a cruel world where, y'know, people get run down by buses and banks fuck you over and you never get the job you really wanted and your team gets thrashed 6-0 by Leyton Orient. Football philosophy is bollocks.

And what's this obsession with 'real' fans? You're all paying through the nose to watch a game of bloody kickabout, grow up willya? This all started when music journos, who'd previously rejected football as vacuous entertainment for plebs who couldn't possibly recognise the revolutionary potential of U2 or Kurt Cobain's pain, decided they actually liked football after all - however, they came up with this concept of 'real' football supporters based on record collector pedanticness.

Admittedly, it's not something I'm THAT bothered about, especially when I've got loads to do like contacting Ofcom to get compensation out of bungling British Telecom for illegally cutting off my phone for 2 weeks (I've got a new hobby, complaining about everything -seriously, try it! I got £100 off my bank cos they sent a replacement debit card a day late and I threatened to take them to court, pretending I had to waste an hour walking to the nearest cashpoint with a 'business client' - what a laugh), but it can be irritating when Coca-Cola (yeah, cos that's what most football crowds down before a match) and MuckDonalds host these pointless ads trying to appeal to the 'real' fans. I don't know - it's enough to make you want to throw darts at the family enclosure!

My advice to you all, in the meantime, is vote Lib Dem tomorrow. Don't know what your local branch is like, but the ones in Highbury crack me up. To their credit, they're the only party who actually bother to shove promotional material through our block's letterbox, including a fake 'local listings' mag, badly drawn cartoons, a campaign to stop illuminated advertising on the sides of buses, a patently fake handwritten personal letter, a promise to turn Gillespie Road into a nature reserve - I haven't seen political material so funny since the Labour mob in Brent produced a mag with schoolkids' "raps" about drugs and street violence, with some DIY Indian recipes on the back page.

See you in late June I guess, if this is still here. May your gods go with you, and remember, if you love someone, tell them before they fuck off with your best mate.

It was just another Bank Holiday Monday in Surrey! Faruk Ahmed was speeding through Redhill on his Lambretta. The Muslim Mod had decided to treat his bird to a day in the countryside and to blow the South London car fumes out of his parka with some good, honest fresh air!

Suddenly - his doris, Julie, spotted a gang of Hell's Angels bearing down on her boyfriend's moped! Faruk laughed to himself. No bearded hippie slob was going to scare off this Catford scooter boy - he'd had enough of that from the mullahs who'd made his childhood a misery. He'd had his Lambretta customised recently, now was a perfect opportunity to check out its additional functions!

"Let's see how these rockers fare against a bit of old-fashioned firepower!" Faruk smirked, as a cluster of heat-seeking missiles exploded from the sides of his back wheels. The beautiful blue morning sky flipped to a black and red sulphuric cloud of bloody death as the lethal weapons made contact with the bikers' fuel tanks, blowing the Hawkwind fans into next fucking Xmas! "Mod violence! Mod rule!" Faruk yelled triumphantly, as the Quadropheniasoundtrack began to blare in his head.

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

The duo decided to park up for a snog in the grass. They had plenty of time to get to Lingfield for the horse racing. After they'd sucked each others' tonsils bandy, Faruk cracked open a can of Stella and played with his handbag house-digging girlfriend's hair.

"Oi! I thought Muslims weren't allowed to drink!" she scolded him.

"There's a lot of things we're not allowed to do" he winked, trying to shove his hand down the back of her skirt, before she batted him away!

"Look," he reasoned. "All I care about is Mod. I'm sick of fucking trendy wankers on TV talking about what person I'm meant to be. Give me a couple of albums by The Jam and The Jolt, and a good scooter rally, and I'm hap - are you listening to me?"

"Oh my God!" Julie screamed. "Look, greasers! Hundreds of them!"

A squadron of Angels perched at the top of the field, revving their Kawasakis! (NOTE - THEY COULDN'T AFFORD HARLEYS, DON'T HAVE A GO AT ME) Faruk, sprung into action. He gripped the handlebars of his scooter, causing two mini-machine guns to pop out over the headlamps, spraying the bikers with bullets. After a few minutes, the grease lay dead, and an eerie silence gripped the field.

"Right, we might as well get going," Faruk said.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Julie screamed hysterically. "Look, they're getting up again!"

"They must be zombies," Faruk regretfully surmised. "Quick, jump on the back, we'll just have to try and shake them!"

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

MEANWHILE, IN A NEARBY FIELD - an anarchist dark ambient festival was taking place! Revellers sat cross-legged, soaking up the sun and listening to a man in a jester's hat, DJing Portion Control and Lustmord records!

To India Sloane-Belsize, this was utopia itself. The young poetess and animal activist had always fantasised about dropping out of mainstream society and discovering herself at a non-profit festival. And here she was, after 20 years of hellish family holidays in the South of France, finally talking to her hero, the legendary Jerry Baudelaire!

Baudelaire was considered a 'shaman' on the alternative festival scene. He'd first come to prominence in the '70s, as outspoken leader of the anarcho-punk band Drab, who'd been so subversive, they'd distributed their records by hand in various tube stations. 30 years on, and Baudelaire was walking around starkers, save for a pair of clogs - fashioned from stale wholemeal bread!

India blushed as the guru approached her. "Come with me, my delightful creature", the grey-haired hippie whispered in her shell. "I want to take you into the woods, to show you...a true wonder of nature!"

She followed him, holding hands, excited by the prospect of being allowed to glimpse the most intimate secrets of the Goddess. Baudelaire was legendary for supposedly being able to project the contents of his LSD-ravaged brainstalks onto other people. This would be an experience that no 76k a year job in airline management could ever offer her!

However, her curiosity turned to terror as Baudelaire, still gripping her hand, squatted down over a clump of shrubs and squeezed out a turd! "Don't look away!" he yelled. "This is the wonder of nature! The return of organic matter to the soil from where all life springs!" India fought the urge to spew as the hippie from hell wiped his arse on a dock leaf and held the smeared plant-part under her nose. The fact he now had a raging hard-on wasn't helping either.

Suddenly - a mighty roar came from the stage area! Baudelaire sprinted back, leaving his young protege free to scarper and hitch a ride back to Hampstead. The crowd's enjoyment of the Psykik Warriors Ov Gaia track had been ruined by the sight and sound of Faruk's scooter tearing towards them!

"Boo!" shouted a juggler in a Charles Manson T-shirt.

"Nazi scum, off our fields!" a pregnant woman with pink dreads and her tits out howled.

"Quick, brain that fuckin' ethnic!" Baudelaire ordered. However, the dark ambienteers were too slow. Faruk managed to steer past them, while the rotating blades spinning from his hubcaps severed the feet of anyone mad enough to come too close. Zipping through a gate, Faruk evaded the mob and got back onto the main road.

"OK, chill out," David Tibet announced over the microphone, as Current 93 ran through their soundcheck. But it was the last thing he'd ever say - as a thousand re-animated zombie Hell's Angels suddenly ploughed through the field, turning the main stage into a blazing inferno - of DEATH!

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

Faruk slowed down and stopped off at a cafe'. Inside, he ordered a bacon sarnie, while Julie opted for egg and chips. After 16 years of denial, he was now making up for lost time on the pork front. He'd never read anywhere that Mods couldn't eat whatever they sodding liked, whenever they sodding wanted. He couldn't imagine The Chords turning down a sausage bap.

Julie checked out the jukebox while Faruk lit up a fag.

"Any Purple Hearts on the juke?" he asked

"Er...no", she replied, quickly flipping past the Purple Hearts - The Hits album. Instead she found a Hed Kandi compilation, and stuck on some Deep Dish and Tall Paul.

Suddenly - three Young Conservatives entered the cafe'! They were talking loudly about David Cameron's chances of election.

"Three teas, and scones!" the leader, a youth wearing a suit and a pound of hairgel, barked at the OAP behind the counter.

"And no sugar in mine!" warned his companion, who was wearing chinos, boating shoes, a jumper tied around his neck and a "HANG GEORGE GALLOWAY" badge, the size of a paper plate

"Hurry up, you old fool!" the third, a bloated thug in a Dire Straits T-shirt, growled as he sized up to the elderly proprietor.

The Tories sat down, and started chatting. Faruk tried to ignore them. He'd already wasted enough time outracing the bikers, and his planned day at the nags hung in tatters. Julie sat back down as the OAP shuffled over with their plates of food.

"Those Londoners deserved those bombs!" Tory B shouted. "Facking city scum, telling farmers they're not allowed to hunt, it serves them right!"

"I don't know who I hate more", Tory A grunted, "Londoners or those bloody Muslims. Both trying to extinguish our way of life! I hope they kill each other."

"Yeah, religious nutjobs, sticking their women in ninja costumes", Tory C agreed. "Still, just as well - they're ugly as murder!"

"Unlike that bit of totty, over there," whispered Tory B, pointing at Julie. "Bet you £100 I can get her away from that charity case she's sat with and ask her out for an ale tonight!"

"You're on!" the two other twats spat.

Tory B strode over to the table, and stood in such a way his arse was inches from Faruk's face. He thought he'd impress Julie with his powers of seduction, by taking a chip from her plate and using it to pierce the yolk of her egg, before raising it to her lips.

But - he didn't get that far! Faruk lunged forward with his fork, stabbing it through the Conservative's paw, and pinning his hand to the plate. The Tory wept in pain as a fountain of red blood and yellow yolk erupted from between his knuckles. Faruk grabbed a bottle of brown sauce and smashed it off the table, prompting the other Tories to race for the door, farting in fear.

The OAP was on the blower. "Yes officer, come qu-quickly! An immigrant has just walked into my cafe' and assaulted a white youth! He has a motorbike! Quick, before he ge-gets away!"

"I'm from Catford, you old cunt!" Faruk yelled, glassing the snidey old codger, before yanking Julie up by the wrist and running outside to his moped. "And I wouldn't ride a motorbike if you fucking paid me!"

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

Faruk took the A23 from Crawley back to London. He was fuming. Just one day was all he asked - couldn't he have one Bank Holiday Monday to himself and his girl? Why did everyone have to fuck it up for him? He cursed the day's events and swore to never leave Catford again - EVER!

A police roadblock was waiting up ahead. Armed cops were stopping all motorcyclists, forcing them onto their knees in the layby and yanking off their helmets.

"Right, get off" Faruk told Julie

"Eh?" she asked, bemused.

"You'll have to hitch your way back to London," he informed her. "This is the end of the line for me. These cunts keep banging on about tolerance and diversity, but if I'm gonna die, I'd rather die as a Mod than a Muslim!"

Julie wept and wailed, but Faruk was insistent. "Take this, it's been great going out with you," he said, handing her his target badge. "And here's a flick knife. If you get a ride with some perv and he tries it on, don't be afraid to use it"

"I love you" Julie sobbed, her eyes raw. "I'll never forget you"

It was time. The traffic was starting to move again, towards the line of police. Holidaymakers sat sweltering in their 4x4s, their kids making noise in the back. Faruk saw a clear gap and waited for a moment, gently revving his Lambretta. His mind flashed back to Phil Daniels' self-immolation in Quadrophenia and he felt content. Hitting a button on his handlebar, he activated the timebomb that nestled inside his engine, flicked the timer to "10 seconds", and took his final ride, at high speed, towards the ranks of massed pigs in his path.

FIN