Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Ed Balls & The Picnic in the Woods: Part IV




For Daniel, for all the love, and support. And crack.

Ed Balls & The Picnic in the Woods: Part IV

By Ted Johnston

Chapter One

Harriet Harman knelt down and sniffed the blood. 
          "Strawberry lace", she said, licking her fingers clean, "come on, he can't be far off". She turned to Ed Balls, who was sulking by a tree, gorging his red, bloody lips on an ice-cream he'd stolen from an incapacitated child, about 5 miles back.
          "What?" he said, because he hadn't been listening. Harriet Harman rose to her full height of about 5"6 and stared into the unwavering cancerous holes of Ed Balls' pupils. She thought of a joke she could make, about pupils and how he had once been Shadow Secretary of State for Education, but she couldn't quite get it to work and it probably wasn't the appropriate time. Besides, Ed would probably kick off, and she couldn't afford another mistake.
         "Come on", she gargled, like a wart-infested witch, or a woman gargling with mouth-wash saying "come on" at the same time, which is what she was doing.
          They all climbed back into the van. Her, Ed Balls, Theresa May, David Cameron, Nick Clegg was there, Jack Straw had bought a bat and had stuck some nails in it, only he'd put them in the right way so it wasn't any more dangerous, but no one felt like pointing it out, as he'd been drinking meths again. Noel Edmonds was driving.
          "Shut up and get in the van, I'm driving", Noel Edmonds said, factually.
          "Alright Edmonds", David Cameron vomited, "but just remember whose fault this is".
          "Alright, alright, let's just go, I saw him disappearing through those trees about 2 minutes ago. He's wounded".
          "You've got me to thank for that, I hit him with my arrow when he came at me from out of those bushes. He won't be going far. We'll catch up with him soon enough", Nick Clegg screamed incomprehensibly.
          "What?" David Cameron vomited, again.
          "Never you mind" Theresa May said, " just drive, Edmonds, or I'm going to ram this pike up your arse then make you bounce on it like your Tigger and that's your tail and you're excited. Capiche?". He capiched all right, he'd seen what she'd done to that family of squirrels back in Dorset. He stepped on the gas.

          So off they went, members of the ousted Labour party and the coalition, all sat drunkenly in the back of a van, wielding ancient weaponry that they'd grabbed cack-handedly from the display cabinets at the Houses of Parliament as they'd all bowled out; and Noel Edmonds was driving.
          They came across him in a little dell, lying face down. A trail of blood led to him, Nick Clegg had been telling the truth, he had shot him with an arrow. Jack Straw was the first out, he jumped lightly down onto the mossy undergrowth hardly making a sound, blood pumping in his ears, and marker pen scrawled across his face, spelling out the words, "Jack Straw". No one knew why. 
          Mr. Blobby whimpered. he was done for and he knew it. He tried to crawl away, but Straw sat down on his legs, pinning him into the mud where he lay. By this time everyone else had got out the van and gathered round in a tight circle. Harriet Harman was the first to strike. She lashed out with her iron mace, striking Blobby across the jaw. Blood splattered everywhere, all the colours of the rainbow. Some of it got on David Cameron's dinner jacket.
          "Come here and lick it off", he vomited. Mr. Blobby screamed, it came out like a strange warble. Everyone laughed. They couldn't help it. Even after all these years, they had to admit, Blobby still had some of the old magic left. Then Noel Edmonds put his cock in his ass. Blobby screamed. Again, everyone laughed, but not as hard this time. Everyone stood and watched in silence as Edmonds pounded a crying Mr. Blobby. Then they all set about him as one. 

          After about an hour the racket died down. Blobby was nearly dead, his head had been caved in by Theresa May's hob nailed boots. But Mr. Blobby was magic, it'd take more than that. Edmonds was still going, it made everyone feel faintly sick, but Edmonds always had been the wildest of the lot.
David Cameron offered Nick Clegg the pistol.
          "Finish him", he vomited. Clegg looked unsure. He stared down at Mr. Blobby, and pity filled his heart. Blobby stared almost blankly up into Clegg's eyes.
          "Please", he managed, barely managing to form sentences. 
          "Please". 
          Clegg closed his eyes, and fired blindly. Blobby's incessant whimpering stopped.
          "Well done". Harriet Harman slapped Clegg on the back, nearly causing him to throw up,
          "You did well".
          David Cameron put his arm round Clegg's shoulder and led him back to the van. 
          "Well done, Clegg. I think you've shown everyone that you're eligible to be part of our little club. Now let's get back to dinner and quaff some more duck's eggs before Boris Johnson turns up and snorts the lot", he vomited. It went everywhere. It was disgusting.
          
          As they all drove home some of them wondered if it actually had been as funny an idea as it had sounded round the dinner table at number 10. No one said anything though, they knew it would be fatal to show weakness in front of Edmonds. Clegg sat staring blankly off into space, Blobby's marshmallowy carcass seared into his memory. He felt sick, but that was probably just the champagne. No one spoke. Nobody looked at each other. They all felt a bit ashamed. When they got back they all made their excuses and left. Then they all went home and went straight to bed. Typical politicians. And Noel Edmonds.

The End.


Tuesday, 17 January 2012

Whispers of the Fallen Rain




Through the pouring rain,
You whispered to me,
'Life is love eternal, my dear'

But I didn't hear you,
Because you were whispering in rain,
And my house is miles away from yours.

Little things like this
Were the reason we broke up.

Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Bob Foresight's Do it Yourself Guide to: Having Your Own Hit Song.





Received this rather troubling email in my inbox this morning, most disturbing stuff...




THIS IS NOT SPAM. IF IT IS IN YOUR SPAM BOX, PLEASE DO NOT DELETE IT. I AM BOB FORESIGHT, I AM A LEGITIMATE BUSINESS MAN. PLEASE DO NOT FEEL THE NEED TO GOOGLE MY NAME. PLEASE OPEN FORTHWITH.

Dear Valued Consumer,
Hello, I'm Bob Foresight, major name behind such artists as Tiny Tempa, Insufficient Anga, Titchy Strider, Spice Girls, Girls Aloud, One Direction, and Simply Red (now Simply Mick Hucknall). 

I've worked in the industry of manufacturing chart-topping bands for over 21 years (21 years, 2 months exactly), and now I want to share my secrets with you (not due to any outstanding legal fees, my lawyers have kindly suggested I might want to point out). So if you've ever wanted to know how to make £££ Shit Tons!! (current market rates) of money in the music industry, despite having no real talent or any musical ability, then read my step by step guide to learn how to exploit other people who are just as talentless as you, and keep all the profit.

Step 1. Choose a name. 

A name is important, it's your brand image, like Coca-Cola, or Tesco's Own Brand. Your band name will appear on posters, lunch-boxes, TV talent show graphics generators, young fans' tits, the table in front of you spelt out in cocaine and ket. So choose wisely. Too long and you run the risk of not being able to fit it on posters/overdosing. Too short, and you're limiting your band's TV exposure by several syllables. 

Why not browse through, and choose from following suggestions? [CHOICE IS MANDATORY]

Texting Acronyms

L.O.L. (Loving Only Life)
L.M.F.A.O. - (Lumbering My First Avenge Ostrich)
R.O.F.L. - (Rubbing Our Friends Lustfully)
A.E.I.O.U. (Anything Equador Insists Is Obviously Unacceptable)
B.R.B. - (Burn Robert Burns)
A.T.M. - (Automatic Toaster Massacre)
I.M.H.O.  - (I'm Made Horribly Orange)
T.B.H. - (Timbuktu Biodegrading Horrendously)
T.B.F. - (Timbuktu Biodegrading Fabulously)
I.O.U. - (I'm Only Underwater)

Boy Band

N-Tyme
Lip-Synkd
One Way Only
Give Way
No Through Road
Please Keep Clear at All Times Exit in Constant Use
Red Light
Shinelight
Sunlite
Starlite
CokeLite
No Girls Aloud
Sad Men
Boys III Men: The Boys are Back in Town
Boys IV Men: New Boys on the Block
Men IV Boys: Pedophile Predicaments
Clothes 4 Africa (popular appeal option)
No Direction
Completely Lost
S.S.Club
The Boyz

Girl Band

Girls' Band
Pussy Galore!
What's That Pussycat? Holy Shit, That's No Cat...
Pussycat (On the) Dolls
The [DAY OF THE WEEK WHEN YOUNG PEOPLE TYPICALLY GO TO CLUBS]
The Cheeky Shits
Overt Lesbian Overtones
The Pin-ups
The Pin me Downs
The Pin me Right Round Baby Right Rounds
Destiny's Unwanted Child
The Jellybabes
Babelicious
Labia Majorca
Vulvatious
Young Girls Looking like Strippers But Seemingly In Charge and Confident about their Own Sexuality (Watch this Video, Boys/Buy the Magazine and Aspire to be Like this, Girls)

Step 2. Choose Your Members.

Now you have a name, you need to find some eye candy. Don't worry if they can't play any instruments, in fact it's preferable if they can't. Try to find people with some vocal talent, and no concept of artistic integrity, self respect, true ambition, or music. This way they won't mind being told what to sing, what to wear, who their friends are, and who to have scandalous affairs with. Make sure your band includes at least one of the following:

Boy Band

(x1) The Talent - This is the hardest one to manage, he must be a talented musician in order to give the band legitimacy, but must not be encouraged to break off into a successful solo career out of your control. To combat this, make sure he is the least attractive, that way he'll feel repressed by the other members, but accept their more beautiful leadership. His soul must be crushed the most. Mentally castrate him and have him sublimate his sexual frustration onto the group's young female fans.

(x1) The Twat - Must wear leather jackets, perhaps has slightly spikier hair than the rest of the group. He is full of banal teenage angst but thinks he's the plot to Catcher in the Rye. He will pull in the older teenage girl fans. Allow to have affair with up and coming Disney actress (from shit U.S. Disney sit-com, not animated film). Does not even need to be able to sing so long as there are 5 in the band. Turn his microphone off on stage and just let him feel like he's involved.

(x1) The Background - Too many beautiful boys spoil the boy band. This one must be able to harmonise very well, is quiet, genuinely quite nice, believably not just in it for the money and attention, and completely unmemorable. Is left out by the others in the group, perhaps even psychologically bullied (don't worry about long term issues, they all sign release forms), or sometimes just simply straight up forgotten about when arranging nights out.

(x1) The Idiot - Loud, abrasive, incomprehensible. Speaks mainly in idioms, internet memes, or things he's seen on the telly. Most things he says are posed as questions but are not worth answering, anything that can be conveyed with simple hand signals is presented in this way. He is, however, markedly attractive. Have him pierce his ear. He will appeal to the girls with little self-respect, who mistake his special needs for deft comic timing. Plus, if it turns out he actually does have any genuine special needs, it's a great time to claim benefit from the government and use it to pay off those coke dealers you owe.

Girl Bands

Just make sure all the major hair groups are represented.

Additionally you may want to ensure that they can all dance, are all bang-tidy (sexually attractive), and can all be imagined having pillow fights in lingerie together (this may be a potential photo shoot, but if nothing comes of it, it's still a good way to pass the long nights on the road as tour manager).

Step 3. Writing a Hit Song

Don't worry, the hard work is over. From here on in, it's just a case of multiple choice.

Boy Band

Use the following template:

Title: The title should in some way reflect what goes on in the song. Preferably the title itself forms part of a larger lyric at some point, so that it's more likely to stick in people's minds. The title must suggest love, heartbreak, or contain the word 'tonight'. The song must be about being in a relationship, wanting to be in a relationship, having just been in a relationship and now looking for another relationship/wanting to be back in the same relationship again, or what they are going to do 'tonight'.

Lyrics: [DELETE AS APPLICABLE]

Hey [girl/there/you!], what are you doing [with my heart/tonight/with my wife?],
You know you really [make me fall in love with you/need to let it all hang out/ought to fuck off],
I'm going to [love you forever/go to a club tonight/go cry in the rain],
So I'll see you [in my heart/at the club later/never! You whore!],

[Chorus]

Yeah, [girl/tonight/whatever],
We're gonna [be together/get down on the floor/go our own way]
No one's [gonna stop me loving you/gonna tell me how much I can drink/ever going to love me again, are they?]
So let's just [hold each other's hands/drink until we're sick/wank off into the rain sodden mud, alone]

[Repeat x2]

Music: Don't worry too much about this, there are hundreds of music students and recording artists who couldn't get a break in the competitive industry because they didn't have any money/weren't good looking/wouldn't fuck an exec. and they all need money for hash, or food, I forget which. So, get one of them to write the music, tell them to make it 'popular' and warn them that ANY artistic flair or individual expression will be punished by wage reduction. Make sure it's not too dense, or too different; you want DJs to be able to make remixes for the club anthem market (the biggest market for professional, good quality, high-spec. music) and make sure you keep a separate copy of the vocal tracks so you can sample them in dub-step songs as well.

Girl Band

To be honest, anything that will make sense in the context of a music video of girls looking sexually empowered, dancing like fashionable puppets, and subjugating men whilst wearing tight tops and short skirts will probably suffice, I think most people watch these things on mute anyway.


Step 4. Repeat

Repeat Step 3 until you have an album's worth of material covering the entire thematic spectrum [relationships/plans for tonight], make sure that during this time you're having the band attend photo shoots, make video diaries for youtube, meet fans, write memoirs (seems premature but just have them copy out Robbie Williams' auto-biography and change all the names), tweet, make facebook updates, appear on chat shows, appear on generic music shows aimed at stupid young 'hipsters', open buildings (preferably new ones), post on tumblr, design their own fashion ranges for Topman/shop, sponsor a child (preferably African), sleep with a teenage movie star (if boy), marry a footballer (if girl), sell their souls, sell out, sell their bodies, sell the rights to their lives and privacy of their relatives to ITV2, and finally die, alone in the dirt, round the back of Tesco (Sainsbury's local will suffice in a rush).

I've been Bob Foresight, and this has been my Do it Yourself Guide to: Having Your Own Hit Song. If you've enjoyed this tutorial and wish to hear more, please send as little as $499,999.99 [MINIMUM] to Fatcats Anonymous Ltd. Zip Code, 90210, to receive a FREE copy of my audiobook 'The General Public and how to Generalize them', along with a press pack detailing some of my other great D.I.Y. tutorials. [Please note, press pack not included, audiobook RRP: $1.99] 

N.B. My lawyers have graciously suggested that I may, or may not, wish to point out to you that the fact that my outstanding legal fees amount to a total of $499,998 has had no bearing on the pricing of any of the GOOD VALUE items of offer.

Thanks,

I've been, Bob Foresight
















Monday, 26 December 2011

You asked me what I'd do for you.


Edward Hopper - Hotel by a Railroad, 1952

You asked me what I'd do for you.

Turning my head away from the television,
I asked what you had just said,
Because BBC4 was on,
and it was on too loud for a tiny kitchen flat.

You said,
'What would you do for me?'
It was in relation to something we'd been talking about earlier.
You knew that,
But other people listening might not.

I told you,

"I would capture the moon in a sunrise,
the devil in disguise, 
I would write your name on the wind's breath,
and tear a hole through the sun-streaked sky.

I would see the world through a needle,
and creation in a tear,
I would hold you closest to my heart,
For you are my most dear.

I would ride with dragons through the heartland,
fight ancient kings in halls of stone,
slay demons where they stood, unearthed,
and still I'd never ride alone.

I'd mould waves to rip through mountains,
topple peaks from out the blue,
to crumble into the dust below,
this, I do, my love, for you."

You looked at me,
and asked if I'd wank off into an eggcup whilst you watched.

We managed to reach a compromise between the two.


Monday, 19 December 2011

In Memoriam, K.J-i.




So, farewell then, Kim Jong-il,
Supreme leader of North Korea;
On your gravestone they should write,
'I told you I was il',
But you'll probably be able to come up with something better.


Sunday, 6 November 2011

A Simpleton's Request

Koshu Kajikazawa - Hokusai, c.1830

When I die, as I'm bound to do,
Don't put me in a box;
Confine me not to neat little rows
Or anything that locks.

Don't freeze me in abhorrent age,
Forget my memory;
For it was not the I that was important,
But what I saw in me.

I should not wish to be remade,
An echo wandering out of age;
Let my voice be heard in others' laughs,
Not in a mortal cage.

I do not want to be confined
To the beauty of the earth;
Damned to lie beneath the skies,
These cold eyes seeing dirt.

The questions that I could not answer,
The beauty that I missed,
Inherent in a skylark's call,
Concealed within a kiss

Are not for you to go on seeking,
My quest is at its end;
I lived for me, so live for you;
You, the dust, my friend.

Life is made of smaller things
That move within the whole,
Orchestral movements caught in bursts
That spark amongst the coals.

Brief fires burning to consume,
So others may bask in heat;
Piles of ash and ember thrown
into little rows so neat.

Let me die as I intend to live,
As grandeur in darkness gropes;
An ephemeral spark in eternal dark,
Lighting love, and joy, and hope.


Please Keep the Exits Clear

Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X - Francis Bacon, 1953

Dance with defiance,
The circus freaks & lions
Are crowded round your cage to permit you


To condescend your dreams,
But they're picking at the seams,
And now it seems like they're going to rip through


The bars of your cage,
Which you constructed in a rage;
Underage liaisons & your vices.


Now you're trapped by the same
Faceless mass with no name,
That took you by the hand in a crisis.


I can stay if you want me to,
And we can have another beer;
But I'm not driven by greed
So I'll stay if you need,
But please keep the exits clear.


See, I'll come if you need me,
But I won't do more than that;
Deceptively needy,
Consistently greedy,
Know your exits or you'll be trapped.