The Chant of the Barbie Dolls

I murdered me wife and I danced up on top of her
I pounded her vicious till I made a big slop of her
Her insides and outsides all mixed in together
I souffled her brain: it was light as a feather

I roasted her haunch with with carrots and parsly
Twas tasty enough, and her arse crisped up nicely
I coddled her heart, ah!, as in life, that's the truth,
But her scleroticised arteries broke me front tooth,

Her liver, and kidneys, her spleen and her pancreas
I gave to the nieghbours, they haven't stopped thanking us
"Regards to the wife", "Much obliged" they say cordially,
Whilest washing her down with a '56 Beaujelais.

Her left over remains I wrapped up in bandages
I selected choice cuts for weeks worth of sandwiches
I smoked and I salted her, pickled her sides,
Made a fine pair of brogues with leather tanned from her hides

The moral in question needs no explanation
To murder your wife, study food preservation
To dispose of a body, don't just dig a hole,
Roll up your sleeves, do a nice casserole.

Lines written in dejection on hearing of a threat to the toaster

I

Oh woe to the woman who threatens our toast
For toasting's the thing that we treasure the most
To hellfire and brimstone that woman we sendy
Who champions the cause of the bread that is bendy


II

Let us boast of that fillet of loaf which is grilled
Here's a toast "With sliced, pan let our bellies be filled!"
But let it be roasted, golden brown on both sides
And to Hell with the heel that our toasting way chides.

III


To hellfire and brimstone and see it's done choppy
The heathen who said that our bread should be floppy
Watch it crispen and darken on the hearth sides of hell
So the damned on the hobs can munch toasty as well

I was at the Wolseley of Piccadilly at the weekend enjoying, on the whole, the
grandiose delightful art deco lacquered interior, and the food as well (apart
from a disappointing bouillabaisse and an overly familiar aussie waitress), with
my parents, girlfriend, sister and her fiancée, and my brother in law to be, a
celeb magnate extraordinaire. Shortly after my mother asked him - "well, where
are the celebs?", he pointed out none other than a besuited Dermot Murnaghan
ascending the lofty marble staircase to one of the more secluded dining areas of
the establishment, which used to be, I'm told a car sales showroom. The layers
of metaphor and appropriateness are piling up thick and fast, and I'll explain
why.

First off, the idea that a news reader is a "celebrity", with all of it's modern
connotations of vacuity, lack of talent, and banality, as opposed to, say, a
"thorn in the side of the establishment", or a "beacon of hope for the
oppressed",  or "the scourge of the criminal element", "a crusading champion of
consumer rights", says a lot about journalism and society. Why a news
reader/journalist warrants a secluded, exclusive table in a restaurant
presupposes anyone would be bothered accosting him. To be fair, I might, but it
wouldn't have been to tell him I think he's a lovely boy and would he mind
autographing my large print copy of the Reader's Digest.

In any event, this appearance precipitated an old argument between myself and my
sister about the nature of journalists, and their choice of careers. I
maintain choosing journalism as a career puts one at the heart of a system that's
perpetuating the myth that we do have a free press, and that's responsible for allowing
much of what happens in the world that we don't like, to happen. My sister's argument,
which I have to say I always find weak, is that as I work for a corporate investment
bank I'm in no position to cast aspersions on anyone's choice of career when it comes
to complaining about the state of chassis the world is in. She feels she gets to
say that because she's a teacher and left the moral low ground behind her the day
she quit her job at UPS.

Fair enough you might say, except for 2 critical points: first, journalists,
whatever they are, are just as much a part of the corporate morass as anyone. They
have to simper and smile at their bosses jokes and demands as much as we do.
How anyone in their right mind thinks that makes for valiant, independent
free-thinking fourth estaters hell bent on holding real power to account (never
mind the pathetic bit of authority your boss has for ordering up coffee and
biscuits for special team meetings)is beyond me.

Second, just look at the performance of the US and UK media in the run up to the
Iraq invasion - if that doesn't tell you about the servility of the corporate
media to state power, then I suppose nothing will.

So, in this beautiful, grandly converted restaurant and erstwhile car show room the
idea of Murnaghan as a dodgy, not to be trusted, second hand car dealer, flogging
clapped out lies that travel no further than off the property before collapsing
into a pile of junk and rubble, or at least allowing them through the door,
appeals, at least in the light his performance this morning on BBC Breakfast News
(Mon 23rd April).

At about 08:05, BBC Breakfast News aired what I think was a pre-recorded "interview"
with Tony Blair and Murnaghan. Yet again, Tony Blair, completely unchallenged by
this stalwart of robust independent journalism, passed off three blatant, baseless
allegations in as many minutes. It was said of Nixon that he could "lie out of both
sides of his mouth at the same time". Tony Blair it seems is managing something
similar, only from multiple orifices.

First, Murnaghan suggested that Saddam Hussein had "kept the lid" on sectarian
violence, and that kept Al Qaeda out of Iraq. Blair replied to the latter: "I'm
not so sure that he did".  This claim, which even Dick Cheney and George Bush no
longer try to push (in fact, they try to distance themselves from those original
comments) is now being recycled by Tony Blair, without so much as even the
faintest, meekest protest from our journalist friend. Would Murnaghan have been
going out on a limb to challenge this, when no credible security source has
never supported the notion of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda?

Second, Blair also claimed that Iran was directly responsible for causing the
violence in Iraq. Again, this is the rehashing of an old BBC story which has had
no basis whatsoever in reality - there is no evidence for this - despite the US
army searching desperately for it.

Finally, Blair conflated the idea that Saddam Hussein had killed "hundreds of
thousands" of his own people with the idea of ongoing violence in Iraq, like the
ghost of Saddam was returning to plant roadside explosives and detonate suicide
bombs. Again, this was left completely unchallenged: there is no evidence that
"hundreds of thousands" of people died as a direct result of Saddam's
oppression. Thousands, certainly, according to Amnesty International, may be
even tens of thousands - he was a vicious and brutal dictator after all. I mean
why do you think the US and UK gave him the job of running Iraq in the first place?

On the other hand there is superbly documented, scientific evidence to suggest
that over 655,000 Iraqi's are dead as a direct result of the invasion in 2003,
not to mention the million or so excess deaths from the 10 years of sanctions
from 1991 to 2001. I should have thought that could have been mentioned, but no,
it literally seems that Fawlty Murnaghan wont "mention the war".

All of this Murnaghan was happy to let slide, maybe, and this is quite shocking
to contemplate, because he didn't even know that Blair was engaging in bare
faced, unsubstantiated claims, with no evidence at all to back up his wild
statements. Or maybe he did know, and just preferred to simper his way to the
end of the interview where he could say "thank you VERY much Prime Minister".
After all, he's probably got a mortgage or two, a life-style to maintain, and kids
to privately educate.

And I suppose you have to consider that ordinary plebs, those of us not elevated
to the lofty rarefied stratosphere of BBC News Readers, with all their
sophistication and "nuanced" ability to understand the "subtleties" and
"complexities" of the world, and deal on an equal footing with the wealthy and
the powerful, probably can't even get a table at the Wolseley!

An agnostic is one who hasn't the strength of his or her own lack of conviction.

I sat idly musing on the tube this morning, minding my own business listening to my ipod. Nowadays my old ears aren't great and I have to jack the volume up so high to hear anything over the almighty clattering of the rolling stock, that the incipient permanent ear-drum damage is almost not worth it anymore. Plus the so-called “shuffle” has developed a mind of its own and has decided that damn it, if it has to play the Clash, it will only ever play "Lost in the Supermarket", because it seems that's the only Clash song it likes. I, on the other hand, much as I love the Clash, am getting a bit tired of hearing it as the third, sixth, ninth, twelfth (etc) song every time I turn on that crappy shuffle. You know I don't envy Apple and Steve Jobs their money, I have plenty of my own, it's just, you know, they make such an inferior quality product.

Anyhow, the woman sitting next to me proceeded to have her breakfast. In what I and the other passengers felt was a casual and offhand manner, she proceeded to munch, slurp, scrape and lick her way though: an Actimel, a banana, 2 pots of yoghurt and an orange, which she peeled inside of Sainsbury's plastic carrier bag, presumably for health and safety reasons. There really aren’t many things more irritating than someone else eating a pot of yoghurt – particularly if they un-self consciously lick the pulled-off foil lid, and then do that annoying little scrapey motion at the bottom of the pot, with their idiotic black plastic Sainsbury’s spoons.

I sat there wondering what else she would pull out of her carrier bag: a plate of bacon and eggs? A couple of moist, warmed croissants from underneath her oxter. Maybe a medium rare steak sandwich? If she’d gotten as far as shucking a few oysters, I was sure I'd put some Tabasco sauce in my bag before leaving, so we could have had quite a party. Maybe she was also going to produce a damp sponge and proceed to give herself a bit of a wash down. Who knows?

Then to add insult to injury, not content merely with her luxury breakfast on a 9:05 Jubilee line train to North Greenwich, she then had the temerity to proceed to apply what I'm guessing was a full make up barrage to her physog.

It suddenly occurred to me that London Underground is missing out on a significant marketing and business opportunity. Why not have a dedicated "breakfast carriage". The wide Victoria line tube rolling stock are ideally suited to a buffet bar style unique breakfasting experience. Not to mention the idea of spa and relaxation carriages, special make up application carriages on gimbals that prevent jerking and smearing of lipstick; sleeper carriages for those getting on at the ends of lines with long journeys. What about gym carriages? Get your work out on the way to work. For an appropriate fee you can get to use one or more of the new carriages so you can arrive at work fed, watered, exercised, manicured, made up, suited and booted.

Or you know, you could just get up a bit fucking earlier and do it at home. Just a suggestion.

Glen Byrne deliberately limits himself to 800 words on the awfulness of "Sunshine", in an effort to avoid wasting the entire day describing in minute detail the enormity of it's failure as a motion picture.

First off, let's dispel any illusions: this is not a science fiction film. Witness: the utter lack of techno-babble explanation as to why the "sun is dying", an event in reality scheduled for 4 billion years hence; how, or who invented the device meant to reignite the sun. There is one dubious reference to the fact that "all of Earth's fissile material has been mined" to produce the bomb, attempting to reinforce some sort of ticking clock element - utter nonsense since the creation of hydrogen bombs relies on fissile material only to kick off the fusion reaction; the complete lack of reference as to how there appears to be full gravity on the space craft; the pathetic lack of technical competence from the crew; Cillian Murphy's "physicist" who's expertise can be summed up as the ability to operate a video transmission device and turn a couple of keys on the bomb payload that's meant to reignite the sun. Ironically the video device turns out to be the source of a bitter, rancorous, physically violent tiff between Murphy and Evans. That this is about as substantial a relationship that is developed in the entire film should tell you the intellectual depths we are plumbing here. Finally the idea that you can descend into the heart of the sun in a thin case of metal, anywhere outside the realms ”inner journey" science fiction is the ultimate insult.

To be clear: it’s obviously not a crime for a film to have a science fiction back drop, but not be a sci-fi film. Tarkofsky got away with it in his psycological drama 'Solaris', Douglas Trumbull with his proto-ecological tale in 'Silent Running'; Ridley Scott made a superb horror flick called 'Alien', which just happened to be set in space; and Dan O'Bannon et al made a great low budget comedy, 'Dark Star' (itself a sort of pre-cursor to Alien), which also happened to be science fiction based. All of these films used a science fiction backdrop as the basis for well thought out pieces of cinema. 'Sunshine', what ever it was trying to achieve, ends up falling somewhere between a remake of the execrable 'Event Horizon' and the PG plod fest that was 'Mission to Mars'.

While the acting is competent (but no great shakes) and the special effects have reasonably high production values, this film has nothing better than that to recommend it. The plot is banal, riddled with holes and so derivative of other work as to make you wonder whether there are plagiarism laws for cinema. A director with the creative flair of Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) should know better. The introduction of a lunatic, somewhat sun-burnt, supernatural Freddy Kruger like character (the captain of a former mission to save the sun), who sabotages and slashes at will, via the "let's go visit the previous failed mission for kicks" device (the equivalent of descending into the darkened cellar with a flash light running low on batteries), was the laugh-out-loud-and-not-in-a-good-way point for me.

Even the half-hearted attempt to introduce some sort of meta-physical crazed fascination with the sun and light falls flat, since it isn’t explored and the introduction of the slasher element overtakes this part of the plot anyway.

Then there was clearly an irritating element of re-editing and blurring of the creature to make the film acceptable for a 15-cert, since there is never a clear view of the crispy cretin, which one would expect, at the very least, as a reward for sitting through this rubbish. This kind of last minute editing and the massive marketing campaign (including lots of “making of Sunshine" promos) shows the distributors are rightly worried they wont make their money back.

The ultimate resolution of the film, if you could call it that, becomes entirely predictable from the earliest moment, as Cillian Murphy explains in a video message to his "sis" that it will take 8 minutes for the change in the sun to be noticeable on earth. When all of these idiots eventually get burnt up in the heart of the sun in a mystical fiery explosion of twinkly lights, it's no less than they deserve.

Frankly I'd rather watch Armageddon. I mean the film with Bruce Willis, but even the ultimate destruction of the planet would have been preferable to this utter twattery.