Baiting The Worm

I will stick my head out and assume that the majority of people like to sit on sofas and chairs, maybe even if feeling daring they pick a beanbag. But I have never understood the fascination or felt the comfort of furniture. Of course bookshelves, cabinets, tables etc are all well and good but as for seating I much prefer the floor. Ever since I was a young boy playing with Star Wars figures on my knees in the garden, the floor has been my chosen 'seat'.
I love it, and even as I type the floor is cooling my legs as I share it with the worms and earwigs. Whenever I try to relax on a sofa I feel uncomfortable, and in fact downright nauseous. Its rather strange I will admit but the world feeds off strange.
Reading, watching films, writing, eating, (but not screwing) are all done on my spacious wood floor. I feel suffocated plumped in amongst floral cushions and sickly patterns like im being swallowed alive by a giant jellybaby. I even do my drinking on the tiles and apart from it saving to have to fall far, the floor is genuine comfort to me.
Goats, cows and the ever wise pigs have it right, lolling around on the ground is by far the better option and keeps both legs and ass firm. There must be medical advantages to choosing the floor to sit on as my muscles are still solid and have not felt any twinges of discomfort due to Worm Baiting (my term for opting for the ground). I can certainly dispel that popular belief that it causes hemorrhoids or piles. Rubbish! Another myth fuelled by the timid, my ass is in perfect condition both inside and out.
Another thing is the way it forces you to look to the sky, especially if propped on an elbow. On seats the face is drawn to whatever is level, invariably the television, but plonked on the floor one tends to look upward more, pulling the eyes from the wretched soap operas and taking them to clouds or stars where in fertile imaginations the real drama exists. I love it and cannot praise it enough.
Picnics are best eaten on lush green grass and fishing is much better level with the nets and maggots. I will never forgive the chap who brought us the deckchair, what a boring life he must have led, everything orderly and in its place. No sense of adventure in some people. The floor is good! An abundance of space to stretch those limbs, without the stuffy constraints of the armchair. My cat is quite welcome to the sofa as my bones yearn for for grain not foam.
In Japanese culture sitting whilst pouring tea is called 'Seiza'. So im not alone on my earthly throne, and I am postive that thinking is made easier on it too. Whenever I am forced to sit at a restruant table or in a planes coffin seats my thoughts seem to sink like my backside into the bowels of the seat. Horrible feeling that I do not see me ever getting used to because the ground is my domain, here with the worms picking at the flesh of Life and tossing the colourful scraps into the air in the hope the sofa queens see them and come down to join us, the artists beneath their feet.

Green Heads Go Dizzy (Again)

Forgive me for the picture I am about to paint; its 6am, ive not shaved in two days, the fog of last nights alcohol has barely lifted from my frame and I sit on the floor in dressing gown pecking at the keyboard like a furious chicken denied its grain-a-seltzer. And why? What it is this new thorn that has pricked me from my bed at such a vicious hour? Its a fish, (or mammal to be more accurate but lets not quibble over fins before breakfast), a giant black and white beast of the ocean. Mr Orcinus Orca, the Killer Whale.
Yesterday in Sea World, Orlando, one of these awesome creatures decided it would be a good idea to lunch on one of the parks trainers in front of a packed out (and no doubt grossed out) audience. Okay I admit the unfortunate trainer was not eaten in the way Jaws would have gone about it but suffice to say she is no more - and 'Crazed Killer Whale Feasts On Human' makes for better reading than 'Orca Drowns Woman'.
Of course now certain corners of the internet (the ones still cuddling Chuckles the teddy bear) are ranting that Sea World should be closed immediately, and the Green Nutcases are having a field day. Now don't choke on your nut cutlet but I find myself agreeing wth them. Ever since I was a child I disliked zoos and circuses, perhaps it was the rebel in me but I hated the way animals were told to perform for a bunch of wailing brats in the crowd. And it was definately the ghoul inside which secretly hoped the tiger would get loose and chew on a teenager or three.
But I would go further, afterall why pick on Sea World? Close them all, if you are sincere in your beliefs that these sort of parks/zoos are cruel or inhumane then so be it, pull down all the fences. And this is where it gets interesting because some animal lovers enjoy visiting certain places like Longleat Bristol Zoo or Folly Farm so why the anger at Sea World? These places don't have performing animals but the wildlife is hardly free in its own environment. (In fact Folly Farm in Pembrokeshire is probably one of the most odious as it is a zoo in the disguise of a farm. This allows the Green Nutcases to visit without conscience but they don't fool me.)
Killer Whales have no place in captivity, neither do white tigers and lions, lemurs or racoons. Sure there are arguments flying about which support the existence of such places, for instance ive heard of successful panda breeding and the like, but I am not sentimental to those. Free the pandas, if they breed and thrive then fantastic, go panda! But if not then its just a bear who nature selected to have a short shelf life. Fair is fair, free them all and let nature sort 'em out.
Sounds callous and indifferent to nature but I assure im not. I am simply being truthful and consistent in this line of thought. Howard and Betsy Mae and their sickly looking vegetarian children cannot pick and choose their support of these beasts. (Well they can but thats only digging further into the cesspit of hypocrisy). They cannot shake one fist angrily at Sea World whilst petting a lama with the free hand, it does not wash. I am a meat eater and therefore in full control of my reasoning.
So how about we free everything this instant? With any luck the roaming predators will get to the Green Nutcases first due to their malnourished, weakened state. It would be the only honourable thing they'd have done.

The Day The Stars Crash Into Mud

There are a good many 'holidays' I could lambast and shred with my forked tongue but none are more deserving than Valentines Day (or Cash-In On Fools Day as I have labelled it), which is approaching on its cloud of candy coloured bile.
There are many origins to this custom but whatever the truth behind it, it needs to be stamped out and soon. I don't really care about the companies who are making millions every year from soppy idiots, good luck to them. Its more the day itself that annoys me, like it is telling me (or worse ordering me) to show affection to the person I love on that very day. No thank you very much, I do that EVERY day, I do not need to wait until February 14th to say 'I Love You,' or to buy flowers.
It is a horrible, sugary time when even hotels are at it, offering romantic breaks in tourist drenched European countries. Who falls for it? The needy and the fake, the sheep and teenagers. But the young I can understand (kind of) because they are rightly enthusiastic in their Love, and sending cards for them is an honest reflection of their emotions. However when it comes to older couples then im cynical, utterly unconvinced in fact, that this 'love' they reveal on Valentines Day is real.
Some people are even upset if their partner should forget a card! Imagine that? The absolute horror in discovering your rat of a lover has forgotten to send you a piece of flimsy cardboard with a few hearts scrawled on it. By the gods, what a wretched soul! Grounds for a break up there surely? Or at least a cold supper with spiteful remarks.
I will never understand the force which sends armies of people into gift shops, giddy with a sickly adrenaline and filled with love sonnets that on every other day they would avoid like the plague. And let me tell you as a bard who regularly pens a stanza or six, that the words in Valentine's cards are as far from poetry as a fairy is from Monday. Resist the urge to write it immediately, for every stroke of your pen makes Keats hurl in his grave.
Actually I am being as vicious as the day im whining about in that last sentence, so forgive me and compose in merry abandon until your gills be satisfied. But remember, Love is forever not just for February 14th.

Robin Hood Gave Nothing To The Poor

Why are we so enarmoured by crooks and acts of villany? Why are we (in the UK anyway) so forgiving of thuggery? The glamourising of robbers and killers is nothing new as it goes back to the 17th/18th centuries when louts like Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin roamed the lands. (I refuse to call them 'highway men', because it is just another nod to all the supposed 'romance' that surrounded these cretins).
When petty thief Sheppard finally graced the gallows on 16 November 1724, no fewer than 200,000 people turned up to witness the execution. 200,000!? Thats almost double the audience of todays rock festivals! Now I realise that entertainment was thin on the ground back then but does the hanging of a petty thief really warrant such a massive crowd?
Of course it still happens today. One only has to look at Hollywood or the real crime bestsellers on bookshelves for proof. Popular culture, in all its wretchedness, has elevated gangsters and serial killers almost to the point where some simpletons actually look up to them, and more frighteningly in some cases actually aspire to follow them into the halls of infamy.
The 'bad boy/girl' attraction has taken a very sick turn, where it isn't the young Elvis or Janis Joplin making the teens go weak but Ted Bundy and his murderous crew of twisted men. I have seen the tee shirts and the morons who wear them, hanging around the film aisle of supermarkets while on their skinny chests is Charles Manson, grinning like a fool.
It is high time we shunned these scumbags, and opened our eyes to the evil they have committed. No robber ever gave his ill-gotten loot to the poor and it is folly to believe they did. It might look good on screen or in the pages of books but in reality the 'heroic robber' with a side line in chivalry did not exist.
Of course the media is guilty of banging the criminals drum as much as any film director. They revelled in the antics of the bloodthirsty Bonnie & Clyde, some potraying them as a kind of warped Romeo & Juliet, giving the public the daft idea that they weren't all that bad afterall. And the less said about Jesse James and other outlaws the better.
These people were not nice guys with noble intentions. Had you ever had the misfortune to have spent time in their company you would realise this. Honour among thieves might have existed among small crews of crooks but it would have never been extended to outsiders. Outsiders would have been robbed, raped and even murdered because the criminal mind is wired that way. It is not tuned to peace or manners, or kindness and fair play. The criminal mind is drenched in greed and deceit and whats yours is theirs like it or not.
This planet is home to some very gullible people indeed. Whether they be the type who take pity on thieves and try to rehabilitate them, or those stranger individuals who fall in love with bandits, and marry them in pathetic ceremonies in prison chapels. These idiots invariably get stung one way or another and I for one have no sympathy towards them. Evil cannot change its nature, and dishonesty once nestled deep enough in a persons mind, corrupts to the chore.
These hoods and hustlers are not paragons of virtue hidden by tattoos and vicious snarls. There is no angel lurking behind the fangs and daggers, ready to emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon and let go of sin. And those who believe there is are only edging closer to becoming yet more victims of the gutter rags. The altar of the pistol is worshipped by vultures who want nothing more than to satisfy their own despicable needs.
We should all pay closer attention to the whims and delights of criminals. The only romance to be found in that shady world is best left to the maggots, for certain there is no love there. And little sense in hanging around.

Magical Children's Tongues

Children come out with some of the most wonderful and creative ideas, whether it be cute observations or making up unique names for things. It figures too because I believe the imagination is most fertile from between the age of 6 to 13 (give or take a few years on either side). It is as if they are continuing to reshape the world to their own tastes or preferences.
I had some strange words which I used to call things growing up myself; shoes were 'Ees' to me, while bridges I christened 'Daleks'. I also used to look upon the giant electricity pylons, reaching across the lands, like they were some kind of invading alien force, intent on keeping us prisoners.
Quite frightening were a few of my thoughts, in keeping with my morbid fascinations of today. But of course I wasn't alone, nearly every child looks at things in wonder (or with fear if the objects are particularly large). And children are the best kind of storytellers, both honest and imaginative. If we were able to bottle that magic juice which swills in their growing brains, we would have artists of all types, on every corner of the streets.
No alcohol or drugs are needed for the kids, they are their own little engines of creativity. Charging through the years, ignoring constraints and sensitivities of the elders, and slapping all manner of colours to the established palette.
Children are wonderful wordsmiths (a gift I was grateful to keep for my later years) and we ought to take notice of this fact. I have never been the type who regards them as dumb, that need to be talked down to like simpletons. All that nonsensical baby talk is a ridiculous reflection on how stunted human beings can really be. Some of us can never seem to grasp that children are very much at the sharp end of ideas or thoughts, and way beyond the level that parents insist on placing them on.
Its a tragic proof that as we get older, our minds get weaker and it is adults and not their children which ought to be talked S.L.O.W.L.Y to. Our children are way ahead of us in the scheme of creativity.
I believe as we age and our blood gets thinner (or more clotted) we lose the seed to wonder, we forget both the magical and the mysterious. Scenes of fantasy which stir the very young, become dead to grown ups because of the chains of reality that weigh most of us down in the mud of barren wastes. No unicorns graze on this land, and the feathers which we once used to think would bring us the power of flight are now tarred with the grease of heavy living, and stuck to our ribs. More cage than wing now as the years roll onward, turning us ever grey.
We should resist in babbling rubbish to children, trying to dull their beautiful ideas. Life will do this only too quickly, so we ought revel in the marvellous oceans of imagination provided by our young 'uns before the cruel shillelagh of years beat the magic from their gentle frames.

The Woodchuck Is All Seeing

Today is what is affecionately known in America as Groundhog Day, which without having seen the Bill Murray film of the same name, many Britons would not have a clue as to what I typing of.
The groundhog (or woodchuck if you prefer)in question is amusingly called Punxsatawney Phil, and he is 'prognosticator of prognosticators', to his fans he is the ONLY reliable weather 'man'. Every 2nd of February he is brought to Gobbler's Knob in Pennsylvania to make his prediction. If he sees his shadow then six more weeks of winter there shall be, as he has just claimed this very moment which I heard via American radio.
It is brilliant fun, and thousands gather for fireworks and food before the official forecast. Why don't we do something similar in Britain? Afterall we are so animal friendly in this country (where even fox hunting has been absurdly banned), that a celebration centered around a furry critter would be a guaranteed hit. The vegetarians and soppy 'gentle' folk (you know the people I mean, the ones with nervous ticks and feather lined stomachs) would be in raptures over such an event.
And imagine the good it would do: money earned from merchandise could be put to good use in deserving charities.
We ought to immediately create our own version of the cool Punxsatawney Phil. Let me see....Bosherston Bill the badger? Fishguard Joe the fox? Or how does Haverfordwest Glynn the rabbit sound? Heck his job would be easy, he could simply predict rain for the next six weeks.
Its not as if we Brits don't have any experience in humanizing animals, look at Wind In The Willows and Watershipdown for fine examples. (Although every true animal lover knows it was Tarka the Otter who really ruled the river banks). Yes it should be done and with haste. Let us ignore Michael Fish and his ilk and invent fun gimmicks to serve us our weather forecasts. (It could even be a real fish instead of the dour Michael!) Gower Bob the flatfish, he even sounds as cool as Phil.
The woodchuck is king however, all hail Punxsatawney Phil! Seer of seers!