BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

Uh oh! IT Department swoop on excessive internet use. Apparently they're hunting down the MyFaceBookers, which doesn't bother me in the slightest- but, in their quest to punish the SOCIAL NETWORKERS, who else'll end up DANGLING from their corporate noose? Innocent 'bloggers', that's who. So I'm gonna zip up and lie low for a bit. I might scribble some coded BTi haikus on various tube carriages, to keep you up to date, but I'd best leave this URL to the Japanese spambot for the time being.That's 'Online Pacman' out the window as well. Stay clean!

Well, wasn't that an interesting diversion. Anyway, here's a gig review. I popped down this Stoke Newington club called Checkpoint on Saturday night with a bunch of ne'er-do-wells. OK, am I the only person in Britain who's fed up of having his paw stamped at the toll booth? Hey, doorpeople of the universe, instead of messing up my hand like I'm on day release, why don't you use your eyeballs, or work on your knack for remembering punters' faces? There's only going to be about 30 people turning up anyway. I'm just at the age where I'm sick of having some club logo smeared on the back of my hand, and then waking up the next day with an indecipherable black blotch. GRIPE NUMBER 2 - the only beer the venue served was some organic swill called 'Freedom'. I ended up playing table football with some bloke who used to be in the band Silverfish. Unfortunately, he beat me 27-2, which seriously pissed me off, so I really wasn't in the mood for crap bands on top of everything else. Sadly, Platform 5 were crap. Some hippie in school uniform was tossing off his guitar, another bloke sat with his back to the audience, doing something really fucking tedious.

I suppose if you were 'open-minded' you'd call it a 'cosmic jam' or 'Krautsquat'. But I wasn't open-minded!! I'd just been humiliated at table football and I was drinking farmyard slurry, the last thing I needed was to listen to this pair of jokers wasting half of my £8 entrance fee. A while later, Dajjah came on. Apparently they're 'cleft-step', whatever that is. No kidding, check their flyers. Sounded a bit like '90s techno to me. There were a few sporadic outbursts of moderate, mild-mannered dancing, but nothing too crazy. I hated the visual backdrop too. There was only one solution - to go down the pub and do some late night boozing. All I remember after that is John Eden begging me to try on his glasses and do an impression of David Grant from Linx, and a heated argument about everything in London being bullshit . NEVER AGAIN (unless someone good plays next time)

WARNING -pissing around with the occult can have serious consequences -don't try any of this at home

1) SATANIC SEX RITE AT THE UNICORN THEATRE

When I was 5, my mother took me to the Unicorn Theatre at London Bridge, to witness Maureen Lipman partake in a demented Wiccan ritual, entitled 'The Meg and Mog Show'. Lipman was a rather boring, mumsy actress who epitomised the cultural sterility of Thatcherite suburbia, but she looked really hot as a witch - if just one incident fuelled my inexplicable interest in Goth chicks, it was probably this. I can't remember much about Mog, but it was incredible to see a sock puppet undergo demonic possession. This started me on the path to full-blown occultism. In fact, I think I still have a Meg&Mog badge somewhere, as well as "Support the Unicorn Theatre" and "Make Friends With A Deaf Child" badges.

2) AN AUDIENCE WITH THE DEVIL

Somebody told me that if you look into a mirror and say the Lord's Prayer backwards, ten times, the Devil appears. So one night when my parents were down the social club, I tried it out. Amazingly, my reflection actually changed into that of the Virgin Mary! So I asked her if the fact she'd appeared to me meant I was blessed, and she said, "Yes, my beautiful child, but do tell me, where does your father keep the Harp lager?" I pestered her for the disclosure of mysteries, the evidence of miracles, for prophecies and visions, but instead she insisted on knowing if I'd ever fancied another boy. Suddenly, she let rip the most foul and violent burp I've ever heard and burst out laughing. It had been the Devil all along! I told him to fuck off upon which he transformed into Marie Helvin (with horns), tore into a medley of blasphemous sea shanties, and disappeared, leaving a faint whiff of turpentine.

3) THE HAUNTED FLAT AT 38A CAMBERWELL CHURCH STREET

Everyone's got a poltergeist yarn, you can't really hit your 30s without having one. I was living with Brian and Andy, as well as Moira and her soppy boyfriend Ben at 38a Camberwell Church Street, above an insurance shop. One night I came home and Moira and Twatface were shivering outside. "We were having sex," she told me, far more information than was strictly necessary, "and we heard laughter - then some white shape ran through the door and kicked Ben's guitar over!" I told them it was probably Brian, he used to smoke so much dope he often spent days trying to free himself from his bedsheets. "No, nobody was in except us!" Ben blubbed, "and the police won't do anything to investigate!" So I went on up and had a mooch around. Suddenly, a dirty plate, encrusted with the remnants of a chips and curry sauce supper, flew from the kitchen sink and nearly took my head off. "OI, POOFTER" a spectral voice snarled, "GET YER BLEEDIN' HAIR CUT!" Great - we were being haunted by a dead skinhead.

Now, without wanting to be cruel, Ben was an insufferable prick who used to spend entire evenings strumming his shitty accoustic six-string while we were trying to watch 999 With Michael Burke - despite the fact he was living with us rent-free. He hated punk and dance music, all he liked was the Beatles and Neil Young. He used to cook pie and chips for himself and Moira, and tap her plate with his knife if he thought she wasn't eating fast enough. We wanted to bushwhack him, put him in a sack and dump him in the Thames, so imagine what the ghost of a 4-Skins fan wanted to do to him. "There's only one answer," I told everyone during a 'flat crisis meeting' (we learnt this strategy off watching repeats of 'Neighbours'). "Ben has to leave and never return! I'll exorcise the flat with a copy of "UNITED SKINS"".

"No!" Ben burst out crying, "Moira's my girlfriend and I can't go back to my old place, I had an argument with one of my flatmates about me playing guitar and taking up too much space with my gear!"
"Look, none of this poltergeist shit happened until you moved in," Andy reasoned, as a biro suddenly flew up from the carpet, hovered by the wall and scribbled "OI! THE DOMESTIC" across the paintwork, before dropping to the floor.
"If I have to go, Moira will come with me, and then you'll be fucked for next month's rent" Ben bluffed - but this Romeo didn't know his girlfriend like we did - and blatant self-interest at the expense of others was the name of this diva's game!
"Actually Ben," she said, "I don't think it's working out between us"
"Go on, get lost you jinx!" me and Andy yelled.
So Ben packed up his guitar (and a pie for the bus ride) and shuffled off into the night, choking on snot and tears. Moira went down the pub with her bitchy mates to compare waist sizes and discuss iced lemon water diets. We threw Ben's copies of Loaded onto the street, slammed on UNITED SKINS and pogoed around to the sounds of The Accused, Sedated and TDA. The poltergeist never returned.

Three months later we had a party and trashed the flat and got evicted. Apparently it HAD been Brian in a bedsheet during the 'coitus interruptus' moment after all.

4) TAROT DECK OF TERROR

I once had a deck of tarot cards, my sister bought them for me from Pandit the Bandit. Don't be fooled by retro talk about a clandestine occult network operating within the 80s industrial scene, everyone was doing the tarot back then. Why, I believe the "Mail on Sunday" gave away a free deck to readers once. I knew this girl who claimed to be a tarot expert, so she read my deck. First, I had the Moon reversed, but she didn't know what it meant, so she asked me to start again. My replacement first card was the Seven of Wands. "This means you will...will..." she stuttered.
I was seized with unearthly fear. What could be so awful that she couldn't bring herself to say it?
"You'll...encounter...a..." she mumbled.
"Tell me!" I wept, clutching my crotch.
"Person," she said. "You'll encounter...you'll meet....someone"
"Where?" I asked.
She took another card and turned it over. It was the Two of Cups - reversed!
She looked at the card. Flipped it over. Then gazed out of the window. "Outdoors," she said. "You'll meet somebody...outside."

She wasn't lying. I think I chucked my deck away 15 years later, I was moving flat and literally didn't have the bag space left to accommodate a box of matches. In retrospect, I should have left the Death card pinned to the wall, to freak out the incoming occupants. Hippie psychics love to warble, "OH NO, THE 'DEATH' CARD DOESN'T ACTUALLY MEAN 'DEATH', IT MEANS A REBIRTH, AN AWAKENING OF IDEAS AND AN OPPORTUNITY FOR NEW SCHEMES AND MODES OF BEING, IT'S VERY POSITIVE", at which point, if there's a meat cleaver within spitting distance of the cards, it definitely does mean DEATH, for them at least.

5) THE MYSTERIOUS JINX OF BLOCK 23

One of the brilliant things about Tottenham Hotspur trouncing arsenal the other night was the fact we KNEW that if we'd beaten them 2-1, or 3-2, their fans would have spent the next day gracelessly whining, "It's a mickey mouse cup", "we didn't put out a full-strength side anyway," etc etc ad nauseum. But spanking them 5-1 - that really hurt them. Well, the scoreline's on the books now, so fuck 'em all!
Having said that, being a Spurs fan in the 1990s was pretty dismal. We used to be managed by Gerry Francis, who even non-football fans knew, because of his inexcusable mullet. In one Spurs cup game against Southampton in '95, he brought on Ronnie Rosenthal, an ageing Israeli player, who scored a hat-trick in the dying minutes of the game. After this admittedly impressive display, Francis decided that he'd enliven EVERY SINGLE mediocre Spurs performance by bringing on Rosenthal after 80 minutes. Suffice to say, Francis was a crap occultist and Rosenthal just wafted around the pitch, out of breath, never to repeat his three-goal miracle.
However, if you're looking for a hotbed of occultism, ditch music and get into football. The '90s might have been patchy for Spurs, but funnily enough, every time I got a ticket in Block 23 (located on the corner between the Paxton End and the East Stand) during a home game, Spurs always won. I don't know what it was about Block 23, but it was the only place in the ground the stewards never bothered to patrol properly, so you could stand up for the entire game if you wanted. Also, I was there one night, uncannily enough, in seat 23, and Sol Campbell - then wearing the 23 shirt - scored. We won, 3-2, which is 23 in reverse. How mad is that?

Maureen Lipman supports Spurs, incidentally.

(ABOVE: The only two people in the world qualified to talk about the "Ardkore Continuum" - 80s Japanese sound artist PHEW and legendary electronic music boffin JON APPLETON, who once invented a Synclavier. I know, I know, reader, don't spit out your dummy- I haven't got a fucking clue what the 'Ardkore Continuum' is either. I suspect it's one of these things like 'the punk wars' or 'rockism' or the sodding 'NWW List' or the 'trancecore spaz index' that someone invents because they're 20,000 words short on their PhD with just two days to go, and they know their lecturers are just aching to get down with 'the kids' and pretend they're hip to the NEXT BIG MEME. But all the other hacks are furrowing their brows and having some sort of inter-blog symposium on it, and I don't want to be left out. Actually, I couldn't give a fuck - but, all the same, I emailed Appleton, the man behind the legendary Turnabout electronic compilations of the '60s and '70s - "Bleedin' seminal", MATT WOEBOT once described them, so he did, hugging his Guinness and sighing wistfully. Anyway, Appleton sent me the following bizarre equation to explain exactly how the 'Ardkore Continuum' was formed - make of it what you will:

[2unlimited] over [lambda]x[renegade soundwave] squared to the power of 12rpm - [4 hero] x [spiral tribe] over [jeff mills] x [shy fx] with square root of [mc hammer]= BLUBSTEP

Well, there you go, straight from the horse's mouth. Incidentally, you should check these blogs -

(1) SPEAKERSPUSHAIR.WORDPRESS.COM ((LOOK, DOES ANYONE HAVE A FUCKING CLUE HOW I CAN JUST LINK VIA A WORD OR PHRASE??? - I USED TO BE ABLE TO DO IT, BUT THIS MAC WON'T LET ME ANYMORE - YOU'RE NOT EVEN GOING TO CUT AND PASTE THESE LINKS INTO YOUR BROWSERS, YOU LAZY SWINE...SO MUCH FOR THE TRIUMPH OF SOCIALISM, TRIUMPH OF INDOLENCE MORE LIKE!))...hang on, why am I writing in italics?)) which is the third blog DUBVERSION has set up in as many years, and he's writing more stuff now than he did in the last one, so go and have a gander.

(2)HISTORY-IS-MADE-AT-NIGHT.BLOGSPOT.COM - one of the best blogs about dancing and politics ever, written by a man who'll surely go to Heaven cos he's done his time in Luton. Now go and read both of those and learn something useful, there's nothing to see on this blog today - - - in fact, it's time this post ground to aHALT

I feel sorry for kids today. They sit around eating KFC and abusing themselves to YouTube footage of Pussycat Dolls present - The Search for the Next Doll. Not like in our day - we used to keep active by going out on the M1 and looking for kicks. I've always loved motorways - who needs music when you can listen to the true techno throb of metal, death and petrol? The M1 was where it was at. Every night, scores of evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, National Fronters and members of rubbish pop groups called 'The Tea Set' would bump into each other as they sprayed their fanatical messages across the bridges. JESUS LOVES YOU. FREE JOE PEARCE. Oh, and THE TEA SET. Has anyone actually heard The Tea Set? The name alone just screams out "DON'T LISTEN TO US". Did they ever make a record? Hope not.

Then there were the hitchhikers. Now, some cynics might say that hitchhikers are just failed faredodgers, but I quite liked this resilient breed. Obviously never had much love for the 'professional' idiots who carry polished brass plates - if you're too lazy to find a discarded Bobby's Snacks box by the hard shoulder and then scribble your destination on one of the cardboard sides, you should stay at home. Leave hitchhiking to the real men and women. It's character building - learning to deal with rejection, conquering shyness, mastering the art of conversation. Oh, and risking waking up in a Little Chef toilet with your kidney cut out. But that could happen if you took ketamine and went to a squat rave. Not all van drivers pack scalpels and keep blood-soiled schoolgirls' pants in the glovebox.

Then, of course, there was the sinister and bizarre AUTOBAHNER MEINHOF (AM). This cult sect apparently began as a group of punk hitchhikers who were attempting to travel up north for a Flux of Pink Indians gig in 1983. Perhaps because of their scruffy attire, they found themselves unable to secure a lift. Days turned to weeks turned to months and, still without a ride, these anarcho punks kicked their vegan principles to the kerb, instead hunting and scoffing down any hedgehog, pigeon or rabbit unfortunate enough to stray onto the motorway. These nutters preyed on broken down cars, syphoning the petrol (to sniff later) and robbing the occupants. The group then developed a mystical angle. As the final section of the M1 had been opened to Junction 1 in 1977, the AM interpreted this as an instruction from Marcus Garvey to leave the cities and create a new civilisation on the M1 - with themselves as the leaders of the chosen people, natch. The AM declared that red cars were "karmically unsound" and devoted years to dropping breezeblocks from the bridges onto any vehicle sporting this colour. Innocent hitchhikers were dragged into the surrounding fields and forcibly initiated into the AM. Those who resisted initiation were buggered, killed and eaten (not always in that order). This reign of terror went on for nearly a decade, but it's believed that the RABIES VIRUS - contracted from a decomposing pit bull terrier found crushed near the A5 turn-off, which the AM whipped into a stew - wiped out this unique colony of motorway-dwellers in 1994.

But there was fun stuff too. I've always found the grassy verges by motorways to be ideal spots for a picnic or a bit of romancing. What could be more relaxing than a warm, sunny afternoon, feasting on cheese rolls and Nigerian Guinness, watching the world and its woes thundering past you in parallel lines? Mind you, you can't get too jiggy - having sex on a motorway embankment is viewed as "incitement to crash" and carries a stiff 10-year minimum sentence. It's not really your fault that motorists can't keep their goggles on the road, but laws is laws.

Ah...those kids who fell like Lucifer from the tops of bridges, whose mates accidentally let go of their ankles while they were spray-painting DEATH HAS NO MASTER upside-down...those girls with greasy dreads and Cult t-shirts trying to scab a lift at Junction 21...that lone biker in love with the modern world, watching the sodium motorway lights dip, twist and rollercoaster into the distance, as he cruises at 100mph....may your ghosts find peace at last...

ABOVE: A rare reproduction of some sine waves pulled from the new(ish) XYLITOL album "Error Bursts in Transmission" (Pierogii Disc, 2007) - note how the electronic DNA polymerase differs significantly from contaminated 'electroclash' batches. Unfortunately, some hack writing in 'The Wire' completely missed this point, instead opting to do a bad PE teacher impersonation, complaining, "...one feels it's time [Xylitol] got down to some serious work". This idiot should have BREVITY IS A VIRTUE chalked across his back, and be horsewhipped through the streets of Soho. Thankfully, there's not a massive amount of musical progression since "Functionary", as if you've got a winning formula, why piss it down the sink and end up as another dull Ghostbox clone? However, bizarrely enough, it does sound radically different from the first one - oh, just buy it. If you'd all bought "Functionary" when I'd advised you to, instead of wasting your cash on that M.I.A shit ((I swear on THATCHER'S LIFE, I NEVER said she was any good)), maybe today you'd be healthier, wealthier and wiser - instead of praying for Iran to hurry up and knock out those nukes.

APOLOGIES to everyone who logged on yesterday for the lecture on bringing the dead back to life through the art of magic. Unfortunately, this post had to be removed as someone found it 'objectionable' - even though it was barely half-written when they submitted their complaint to Blogger.com. Still, if you want to find out more about this fascinating subject, there's a wealth of tomes at your disposal - just pop down your local library and flick through Raising the Dead, for Fun and Profit, Necromancy: The Living Tradition, A Chat With The Dead In Ancient Chaldea, JuJu For Beginners and Walkin' the Corpse: The Brian Moore Story.

Mind you, it's not as if the families of the dead would thank you anyway. Have you ever seen a JuJu zombie? They're hardly what you'd call 'lively'. Yeah, yeah, it's the same old story and it always ends in tears. Your biker girlfriend throws a seven when her Suzuki glides underneath an HGV. So you pay some necromantical shyster £10,000 to bring her back to life. That poor cow could have dozed the eternal slumber in her box, but no, YOU were feeling lonesome so you decided to deploy some hoodoo to whisk her back outta the spirit world. And now what? Is she back as you remember her? NO, she's shuffling around at a mile an hour, dead eyes locked in a vacant glare. You wave your hand around in front of her face, but there's no response! You're sitting at work when suddenly your colleagues scream - she's standing outside, her face pressed against the glass, staring in like some evil albino fish! Her parents come round to visit their darling daughter - all they get is a hollow shell, a specimen of the LIVING DEAD. They weep and fall to the kitchen floor, Who did this to our daughter? What's that, you say? You had her RE-ANIMATED by a witchdoctor? Damn you! Damn you and your JuJu claptrap! That's not our daughter, that's a cadaver, not dead but undead! And so, instead of regaining your girlfriend, you've merely polluted the planet with yet another drooling ghoul, condemned to aimlessly roam the Earth and man the decks at FWD...

Oh, shut up, don't get tetchy - it's just a joke. Anyway, fuck all that. Today we'll be conducting an interactive online experiment, in order to test your remote viewing skills. Remote viewing is, according to Wikipedia, "...the purported ability of a person to gather information on a remote target that is hidden from the physical perception of the viewer and typically separated from the viewer at some distance, ie - a form of extra-sensory perception". The only time I ever took part in an ESP test I scored zero out of 15, but there's no reason why you can't have a go - after all, you could land a lucrative job with the police if you manage to pull this off! Imagine how much you'd get paid to accompany an armed Met S03 team , driving around town looking for terrorists. All you'd have to do would be to furrow your brow, clasp your mits over your eyes and scan 'em out...."Hang on, yes...I'm getting an image...Lansdown Road, Forest Gate...number 46...no, hang on, number 48....four of 'em, all fundamentalists, and...shit, they've got a chemical bomb n' all!" Information like that's worth its weight in flour.

OK, we're ready to begin your test. Stop scratching yourself and concentrate on your monitor. Let your muscles relax but sharpen your mind. I am providing a target location. Concentrate and focus. Describe the location to yourself. Observe and note everything in the location. Build the picture in your mind, let it grow to envelop you. Note any sounds you hear, any colours you can make out, any activities taking place, down to the most minute detail. Focus....

Right, do that for 5 minutes and then relax. The details of the location are at the end of this post. Anyway, in the mean time...

HOW TO GET RID OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

The Ridgeway in Mill Hill, London, NW7, is a haunting walk. This stretch begins just slightly east of Mill Hill East tube station. At the foot of the Ridgeway is the Joiners Arms, a pub which was sporadically blown up by the IRA throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This is because it was the local watering hole for soldiers posted at Inglis Barracks, also on the Ridgeway ((and also car-bombed a few times)). Then carry on up, up, until you see it, gleaming through a small thicket - WATCHTOWER HOUSE. This is where all the London-based Jehovah's Witnesses receive their training, before they're sent out on the streets to warn the "bird seed" (that's you and me) of impending apocalypse. We'll end up being pecked to death by giant crows, or something.

Many people think that when the JWs come a-knockin', they can scare them off by coming back at 'em with a bit of reasoned debate. Wrong! Watchtower House don't permit such quaint, absurd constructs as "reason" to piss on their parade, and the JWs will resist anything you care to say. YES, "we" know it's patently lunatic to sing hymns and clap as our 12-year old daughters scream in agony in isolation wards because international blood-banking is run by THE DEVIL, and so life-saving transfusions are off the menu. YES, "we" know that if the Russians had followed the JWs' pacifist programme to the letter, and rolled around in the snow like helpless eels as the Germans rifle-butted their skulls to powder, then Hitler would probably have won WW2.

But try telling them that...anyway, there's only one way to deter JWs and stop them pestering you, and it was a teenager called Steven Daly who set me right on this score back in 1990. The best way to make them fuck off is to bury your face in slap-up, shove on a wig and some womens' clothing, slam The Birthday Party on the stereo and open the door, cigarette dangling from mouth. Trust me, it's that simple. JWs can't handle the thought of cross-dressers, it's a bit like Queen Victoria and lesbians or Ahmadinejad and gay men, they don't think they really exist. So when they're confronted with one, looking like the bastard spawn of Bet Lynch and Jane County, their well-honed 'persistence' goes out the window and they end up fleeing in terror, their leaflets scattered to the four winds.

HOW TO TELL IF AN APPARITION OF THE VIRGIN MARY IS REALLY HER, OR THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE

Look at her feet. If she's got cloven hooves then it's really The Devil, taking the piss.

How are you doing on the remote viewing exercise? Have you worked out the location yet? OK, stop thinking, it's time to assess your results. Do you have "the gift"? See how much of the following corresponds with your own remotely gathered information, and calculate just how much of an asset you might be to Interpol:

THE LOCATION: University of Greenland (Ilisimatusarfik), Main Hall

TARGET(S): Karlheinz Stockhausen, delivering a speech to 40 students

CONTENTS OF SPEECH: How communities overly dependent on the Internet are more likely to suffer obesity / depression epidemics on a long term basis

LAYOUT: Wooden chairs fanned to left and right of speaker's podium

TEMPERATURE: Brisk

CLIMATIC CONDITIONS: Windy, slight rain

OTHER SOUNDS: Calypso tapes emanating from strange shop down the street

Well, that should give you a rough indication of your remote viewing ability. Award yourself 5 points for each factor you correctly identified. If you scored 10 or less, forget it, you're crap. A child could have guessed your answers. If you scored 20 or 25, hmm, there might be something in it. Try and get an interview with MI6 and take it from there. If you scored 35, congratulations - you've got the gift! Now put your talents to good use and go and meddle in everyone else's affairs.

((A Toshiba robot cranks out a rendition of "I Should Be So Lucky" on violin, causing the attendant press scrum to erupt into pandemonium. Will tomorrow's robots render human musicians obsolete? Will social security office floorboards groan under the heavy influx of outta-work guitarists, singer-songwriters and DJs? Too bloody right they will!))

1980 - Military scientists invent the Internet. First 'webpages' comprise basic army inventories and badly transcribed Fall lyrics.

1981 - 'IRC' is rolled out among bored soldiers. Now platoons can send each other abusive messages under fake names. However, one barracks in Texas is subjected to a secret experiment. 150 hand-picked grunts are told that they will be allowed to communicate, via IRC, with some local "pretty girls". Although they will not immediately be allowed to meet these girls face-to-face, they are encouraged to build up relations with their online 'dolls'.

In fact, the 'chicks' are really a couple of military psychologists. Interacting with these soldiers, the shrinks are able to build up personality profiles: which guys are the loose cannons, blabbing classified information as soon as their commanders' backs are turned?; which are the sensitive crybabies?; who's considering deserting to start a new life with his online 'babe'?; who's got the most extreme sexual perversions?; who's depressed and about to 'crack'? All this info comes in very handy. Soon, IRC is recognised as a vital means of keeping tabs on active serviceman.

1982 - Soviets rumoured to be working on their own Internet - "COMINWEB"

1983 - Things are still dragging somewhat. Some prat claims that the Internet will lead to the biggest shake-up in global human communication since comic books introduced speech bubbles, but nobody's buying it yet.

Meanwhile, the games industry only just manages to cover up the scandal of the year. Animal rights activists discover that Atari Corp marketing executives and games developers have been working alongside staff at the National Institute of Medical Research ((located on The Ridgeway, Mill Hill, London NW7)). Chimpanzees, originally procured by the Institute for the purpose of 'neurological research', are reduced to various states of brain damage before being forced to 'trial' prototypes of new Atari games. The games giant apparently believes this is a good way to assess 'playability', and whether some game 'levels' need to be made harder or easier to complete. Many of the hapless chimps ((who are literally handcuffed to joysticks and forced to play the games for up to 12-14 hours at a time)) expire during or shortly after these diabolical ordeals. After several sweaty-palmed phone calls to its backers, the Institute manages to quash the expose' ((necessitating the elimination of several ALF operatives)) and keeps the press off its back. Atari subsequently moves its sordid chimp tests to an unspecified laboratory in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire ((however, this doesn't stop the ALF launching a firebomb revenge attack on the Institute a few years later)).

1984 - A leaked document suggests that "pissing about on IRC" indirectly contributed to the previous year's "Able Archer 83" controversy. IRC is temporarily suspended.

1986 - Chatline operators are convinced that the Internet can fill their coffers, reasoning that lonesome men would LOVE to stop playing "Psycho Pigs UXB" and "Barbarian" on their ZX Spectrums, and instead chat to 'real women online', live. As indeed they can, simply by connecting their computers to their phone lines! However, swapping dirty fantasies with SEXY SUZIE ((ie- some bloke eating jaffa cakes in a basement flat)) isn't cheap - a minute's dial-up costs nearly £70!

1989 - The Berlin Wall comes down. The Internet is now declared 'ready for business'. Porn providers lick their greasy chops, they know they've just got to hang on in there for a few more years, until technology improves, and then, KER-BOSH, just watch the wonga pour in.

1993 - Everyone's doing Bulletin Boards (BBs), but computers are still too crap to show decent video footage of well-hung dwarves ejaculating into rubbered-up Korean schoolgirls' armpits. Instead, 'webbed-up' indie kids find BBs the perfect medium to disseminate reviews of Frank & Walters / Teenage Fanclub / Wedding Present / Linus / Gallon Drunk / Flying Saucer Attack gigs. RIot GRRLs use BBs to discuss queer politics and rad feminist theory. Wannabe writers hack out novels and short stories. Berkeley students make the first serious attempt to compile a comprehensive Throbbing Gristle discography. Anarchist pranksters pre-arrange raves on the tube and 'capers' such as ringing all the public telephone box numbers in Kings Cross. It's all great, unless you haven't got a computer and you're not on dial up every waking hour - in which case, you miss about 99.9% of them.

1995 - According to surveys, 56% of Americans, 12% of Brits and 0.0000041% of Africans are now on the Internet.

1996 - Everyone's going on about cybersex and the evolution of pleasure, as if we're really going to have skull-shattering orgasms online, rather than sit in a library, typing "I WANNA SNIFF UR PUSSY" to someone who's probably a 43-year old taxi driver.

1997 - Suddenly - everyone's on the Net. Porn providers discover 'thumbnails' and how to set up 'members' areas' and are promptly swept under a tidal wave of credit card details. The average person now spends as much as 3 hours a day "firing off emails", some of which even arrive within 10 minutes of being sent. Nigerian conmen ((approx 0.0000041% of the population)) realise this could be a good way to make bucks.

1998 - IRC is reintroduced. Neo-nazis virtually disappear from the streets, retreating indoors to verbally abuse commies, ethnics and Jews over the modem. Now anyone can knock up a website in 3 minutes flat, using some Yahoo! account thing. Web designers rub their paws together and think of all the blow jobs they'll be getting when corporations cough up gazillions of $$$$$$ for their aesthetically pleasing, business-generating site designs. Dot.com company 'directors' blow their mortgages on coke and champagne, telling each other, repeatedly, "Shee, the Internet, it'sh thing of the future, hic!" etc

1999 - By now, the average UK office worker has A) been sent the story about the woman who shoves a lobster up her cunt in the bath and gives birth to hundreds of crayfish B) witnessed some act of gross sexual depravity on 'Real Audio Viewer' C) panicked and begged IT to wipe their hard drives clean. The web designers end up redesigning homepages for ailing shipping magazines. The dot.com companies go bust and their "self-made" directors end up on the street, or committing hari kiri.

2002 - Drum'n'bass fans in Toronto invent the 'MP3'. Now everyone can download music for free on AudioGalaxy. The record companies and second-hand dealers mess their trousers and reach for the valium. Fancy hearing Sexy Terrorist by Sara Goes Pop? Or how about No D.S Allowed by the Rhythmic State? Why not download the entire United Dairies back catalogue? Fancy a bit of Luc Ferrari with your Blood & Fire archives, ma? AudioGalaxy has everything ever recorded. The RIAA closes it down promptly - but it's soon back, using the pseudonym 'Soulseek'.

2003 - An out of work NME hack invents Blogger.com. Soon, everyone's blogging away. Not many people know this, but the first ever music blog post wasn't, er, posted by Simon Reynolds, Geeta Dayal, or even Matt Woebot. It was, in fact, by DAVID SEE - author of the controversial tome How to Be A Professional Disc Jockey, and it was entitled, "GREAT BLOW JOBS I HAVE HAD IN THE DJ BOOTH, PT 1". This post related a fateful night in 1980, when David was DJing at the Hanging Sheep in Borehamwood, and a peroxide blonde and her mate, who had cherubism, 'rewarded' David with a 'double 99' as a 'thank you' for agreeing to play Barbados by Typically Tropical. Sadly, this, along with the classic posts " HAPPY HARDCORE HOCHMAGANDY" and "GREAT RECORDS I HAVE MIXED TOGETHER" were lost forever when David accidentally deleted his blog during a Babycham bender - leaving us instead a legacy of 'inferior' weblogs, such as Beyond the Implode RIP, Uncarved and An Idiot's Guide To Creaming.

2005 - Rupert Murdoch pays someone to invent Myspace. Now bands don't have to go through the ritual of being bottled offstage by discerning critics. Nor must they find themselves being financially ripped off by pederastic promoters with links to organised crime families. They can just stick their songs on a computer and play them to 1,683,637 people in one afternoon! Soon, every band ever is on Myspace. Even the Ovaltinees, some stunningly appalling NF band from 1983, make it onto there - and make 'new friends' in the process.

2007 - The Internet is now as much a part of our lives as coffee and cigarettes. We all know some sucker who's just surrendered his/her privacy and dignity by creating a profile on 'Facebook', as surely as we know someone who's been dragged in front of his/her company's HR department for downloading DJ CUNTFINGER's epic "SREBRENICA TANKFEST" mix during working hours. We buy clothes, books and electronic goods on Amazon, and then describe them on Wikipedia. Too tired to go to a concert? Why not wait until it appears on YouTube, and watch it in the privacy of your own living room. Or on the toilet, if you wish - anything goes. Love playing Scrabble, but haven't found anyone who shares your enthusiasm for the great game since mum passed away? Why not log onto 'Scrabulous.com', where you can take on people from all over the world - assuming you don't mind the fact that the fucking Scrabulous dictionary includes erroneous entries like "WIFES" and, since players have discovered that "QI" is apparently a word (yeah, right), every single fucking game includes use of the 'word' "QI" because no cunt can be bothered to wait for a "U" to turn up, to construct a real word beginning with "QU..."

Indeed, we can only wonder what the Internet holds in store for us in 2008! One thing's for sure - the Information Superhighway hasn't shrunk - the more of it we explore, the longer it seems to be. And we've certainly come a very, very long way since 1980.