Lingerie, Whiskey and Burning Flags

Hey, am I wearing lipstick? When I’m getting fucked I want to make sure my face looks pretty.

– George Jung, Blow

I put the news in my brain today. It didn’t help my depression. Not one bit.

I hear the cuts with which we are being punished for the avarice and incompetence of our betters is going to plunge this country into a Dickensian level of class divide and destitution; the eurozone is breaking apart, another mistake that will have us all over the sodomy table before the decade is up.

Stories of increasing numbers of honour killings and the grooming of children are a proud racist’s wet dream – proof positive in their bloodshot eyes that if they were right about Europe then how about all these dirty immigrants taking British jobs. All the while the justice system is too PC to tackle problems by race, leaving the idiots among us to judge entire swaths of their communities by the diabolical actions of a few.

Austerity measures and the repatriation of business rates will only deprive poorer areas further. Take Middlesbrough for instance – budget cuts of more than £50 million over the next three to four years mean the council’s having to sell off public assets and axe services and is still coming up short, even on the first year’s chunk. There’s just one job for every 18 unemployed in this town, and half of all jobs here are in the public sector since industry is all but dead.

Still, if there’s one thing we do well in this country it’s striking and protests; it’s because it’s like queueing, only with raised voices. It gives us the illusion of being in charge of our own destiny, able to hold the powers that be to account. Just like voting, and just as hopeless.

But perhaps we don’t need to concern ourselves with a metered decline. If Iran hurries up and nukes us then the British apocalypse can be Jeremy Clarkson driving around and around the M25, winning carbon credits for hitting zombified picket lines as China watches on their smartphones.

It’s all fucked.

It makes me wonder if I’m really cut out for this business; wouldn’t I be better off working on some small farm away from military bases and business districts, pumping a fat wife full of ugly, boorish children as we all waited to drown?

For every one Heather Brooke there’s a hundred Paul McMullans, contributing nothing to the betterment of the human race, only chewing us up and selling the spit back to us.

A few years ago I was wearing a t-shirt that said I have a crush on Obama; things appeared simpler then, somehow – people had a spring in their step.

Well, enough of all that. Why don’t you pour us both a drink, take off your clothes and come sit on my knee – we could both use cheering up.