Where Was I before I Was So Rudely Interrupted?

The History Channel recently replied to a complaint of mine. This is it:

How to Create Your Own Communist Paradise (on a budget)

I found myself having a small but heated debate with someone at the pub the other night. Turned out he was a Communist (we still have a few over here). It also turned out that he saw it as his goal in life to convert me to Communism too. Apparently, according to him, we should all be voting at the next election for a great Stalinist Utopia.

So I thought I’d help him out.

Me: I’ve got an idea. Why bother going to all the trouble of electing a Communist Dictatorship when you can start creating a little Communist Utopia all of your own first thing tomorrow. That way you can get to live in your Glorious Workers’ Paradise without foisting it on the rest of us.

Him: Stop taking the piss… you know it’s people like you that keep this corrupt system robbing us of what’s rightfully ours blah blah blah…

Me: No, no… I’m serious… look, it’s simple. All you have to do is this…

And this Ladies and Gentlemen (Ladies!? Gentlemen!? What a bourgeois capitalist bastard I am), is the suggestion I offered (slightly edited for style and tone):

Me: First you’ll need to look for a new job. Convince someone to hire you to do a laborious industrial job on outdated machinery which results in you producing an item that is of no use or value to anybody whatsoever. Do this for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and at the end of the week ask your employer to pay you in monopoly money.

Spend your ‘weekend’ hunting down ‘western tourists’ and attempt to persuade them to exchange large quantities of your monopoly money for small quantities of their Dollars or Sterling. Fail.

By now of course, you’ll be hungry. Your refrigerator will be empty (for the full-on Communist Utopia experience you should have emptied your fridge of all edible food items on the first day. A few slices of mouldy bread, a rancid orange and a quarter pint of curdled milk are permissible).

Forget going to the supermarket. There are no supermarkets in your Glorious Workers’ Paradise.

Instead, find a poor quality Butcher’s. Stand outside Butcher’s shop for 8 hours. Go home empty-handed.

Go to a poor quality Baker’s. Stand outside Baker’s shop for 8 hours. Go home empty-handed.

Go to a poor quality Greengrocer’s. Stand outside Greengrocer’s shop for 8 hours. Go home empty-handed.

Repeat week after week after week.

Of course, in a real Communist Utopia, you’d make your wife stand, hopelessly, outside all these shops. But in your own personal, private Communist Utopia, you will no longer have a wife.

Eventually you may acquire enough money to indulge yourself. Perhaps you’d like to splash out on a new car. (Yes, I’m employing artistic license here, I know car dealerships won’t take monopoly money.)

Go down to the car dealership that sells the cheapest, dullest and most unenjoyable cars available. When you’ve made your ‘choice’, pay the full amount upfront. (Don’t try to bargain, there is no bartering in your Glorious Workers’ Paradise. Ask for so much as a free mudflap and you’ll be having to incarcerate yourself in a homemade gulag for the next 6 months). Once you’ve paid for your delightful automobile, tell them to have it delivered to you. In five year’s time.

You’ll be really hungry by now. So go home and scour your refrigerator for anything edible. There will be nothing edible in there, but you’ll look anyway. In fact, you’ll spend the whole evening regularly getting up from your chair to check the fridge, knowing that it’s still going to be barren. And you’ll spend the whole evening being disappointed. At this point, you’ll do what everyone does in a Glorious Workers’ Paradise. You’ll start the long and systematic destruction of your liver with the daily consumption of gallons of cheap vodka.

Voilà! You’ve made it. Utopia at last. Utopia at last. Thank God Almighty, Utopia at last.

-

That rant made me thirsty. So I picked up what I thought was my pint and took a healthy swig.

Him: Err… that’s my beer!

Me: Oh, sorry… errr… hang on a second. What happened to ‘all property is theft’?

Who Needs Principles When You Have The Free Market Economy?

To: [redacted]
From: Freddy

Do you remember, many years ago we had a conversation about getting rich? I said all we needed to do was get £1 from every person in the UK and we’d be rolling in it? Well some genius has come up with something even better. This business plan involves doing nothing but taking money from idiots. That’s it. You don’t have to ever give them anything or do anything for them. Just take their stupid money. Check it out, maybe you and I should get together and open a franchise.

http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

To: Freddy
From: [redacted]

RE: http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

It’s a pity the U.K is so full of godless atheists otherwise we could have this idea.

Yet someone else selling T-shirts (not to mention mousemats)

Available on a range of tees, jerseys, a mousemat, and a cooking garment thing. Wear it to church this Sunday. Even if you don’t normally go. Comes with authentic faux beer and ketchup stains.

Come on, it’s true. Available on the same kind of stuff I mentioned above.

Last one for today. “New Man – Old Habits”. Buy this tee so you can publicly pick your nose and wipe your finger on it. That’s what it’s designed for. Design also available on blah blah blah…

1895 Pocket Encyclopaedia by Don Lemon. DON LEMON!

My best guess is this was published around 1895. Which is before the era of political correctness. Which is why you get entries like this:

Religion gets a few brief mentions. Here’s one:

Yep, even the Victorians were skeptical about the church’s contribution to a person’s moral fibre. Now who needs socialised medicine or medicare cover with advice like this:

Here’s some more medical advice for you. Oh yeah, show your wives and girlfriends THIS one:

[The female orgasm didn't exist in 1895. Seriously. The Edwardians found even better ways to solve the 'problem'. With WATER CANNONS.]

A VERY fatal disease. As opposed to a slightly fatal disease. Good work Don.

I’ll be posting more of this in the near future. After all, the copyright expired on it years ago, so why not? But in the meantime I’ll leave you with these award-winning adverts from the front of the cyclopaedia. Eat your heart out, Bill Bernbach:

Cake and Lunacy. Part 1

This is a conversation I had with an ex-girlfriend of mine. I’ll be relating quite a few of these ex-girlfriend conversations to you in the future. But let’s start with this one.

Now of course, it would be unfair for me to use her real name. Publicly ridiculing people with mental health issues doesn’t go down too well in some quarters, so I’ll need to think of a pseudonym for her… how about… ‘Rod Serling’s Imagination’? Okay.

At the time this took place, I’d been living with Rod Serling’s Imagination for quite some time, and was already starting to become aware that she had only a lukewarm relationship with sanity. When we first got together, she looked and behaved like a normal human being. She had a good degree, she was on a post-grad course, she talked about her hopes and ambitions for the future. Then we started living together.

She packed in her post-grad course almost immediately (initially it was only ‘temporary’ because of an ‘illness’), and instead decided to do… nothing. Literally nothing. No college. No job. No career. After all, why bother working toward your own future when you can get some other schmuck to do it for you.

That’s the pre-amble over with. Walking home from work one night, I passed a baker’s. In the window was a great big fucking chocolate gateaux, dripping with rich, thick chocolatey loveliness. As far as I’m concerned, cake and ale are two of life’s finest ingredients. And because I was living with Rod Serling’s Imagination, ale was pretty much off the menu (in any ‘reasonable’ quantity at least). So I bought the damn cake.

After dinner that evening:

Rod Serling’s Imagination: I’m having a slice of that cake, if you want some.

Me: No thanks, I’m a bit stuffed at the moment.

Now I know that, as dialogue goes, that was a pretty banal exchange. But it’s relevant. The following evening, on my return from work:

Me: Ah [I say to myself] we’ve got cake. I’ll have some of that.

I went into the kitchen (Rod Serling’s Imagination was sitting in the living room). First things first; I poured myself a nice tall glass of refreshingly cool milk, because you can’t have thick, rich cake if you haven’t got milk. Then:

Me: I’M GETTING A SLICE OF CAKE IF YOU WANT SOME.

Rod Serling’s Imagination: NO THANKS, I HAD A SLICE EARLIER.

I picked up the large, pink cake box and removed it from the fridge. It felt quite a bit lighter than one might expect. I opened the box, and with the exception of a couple of lonely brown crumbs, the box was empty.

Me: errr…WHERE’S THE CAKE?

Rod Serling’s Imagination: IT’S IN THE FRIDGE.

Me: WELL I’M LOOKING IN THE FRIDGE NOW, AND THERE’S NO CAKE IN HERE.

There is a pause.

Followed by another pause.

Then…

Rod Serling’s Imagination: OH….

Another pause

Rod Serling’s Imagination: I MUST HAVE EATEN IT ALL THEN.

Okay, I’m going to pause the dialogue for a moment and take this opportunity to state the blazingly obvious: HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU FORGET THAT YOU’VE EATEN A GREAT BIG BLOODY CAKE?

I’d asked her if she wanted some, and she said she’d had a SLICE! JESUS!

There are some times in relationships, when your girlfriend says or does something odd or stupid or weird, you just roll your eyes, utter the word ‘women’ to yourself, and let the lunacy wash over you. There was no way this could be one of those occasions.

But what DO you say? After all, it’s just too surreal. Do I ask her, not unreasonably, why she lied about the cake being in the fridge when she knew, KNEW, that I’d either already discovered, or was about to discover, that THERE WAS NO LONGER ANY CAKE.

Do I ask her how the hell she managed, in the space of just a few hours, to eat a gigantic gateaux without being sick all over the place?

Do I ask if she’s been screwing the entire Scotland Rugby Squad, and treated them all to a slice of post-coital confectionary?

There was no simple answer. Too many screwy questions. Too many possible responses. So as one often does in odd or surreal situations, one seeks the comfort of normality. Even if the normality in question is just a figment of your imagination. I went into the living room to tackle the situation head-on.

Me: YOU’VE EATEN ALL THE CAKE?

Rod Serling’s Imagination: Yes.

Me: What. The whole fucking thing?

Rod Serling’s Imagination: Mmmm…

Me: All of it?

Rod Serling’s Imagination: Well… not all in one go…

The last comment nearly pushed me off my track of self-imposed ‘normality’ and I had to pause to marshal my thoughts.

Me: You greedy cow. So it didn’t occur to you that I might have wanted a slice of cake?

And we’ll pause again. Because what she said next was priceless. And what’s worse, I had no counter argument. Because she was right. In her own, autistic way, she was right.

Let’s recap:

Me: You greedy cow. So it didn’t occur to you that I might have wanted a slice of cake?

Rod Serling’s Imagination: …..well I asked you last night if you wanted a slice, and you said ‘no’.

COMING SOON! How I accidentally got engaged to Rod Serling’s Imagination. Seriously.

She was completely white before she started eating coal

I think she may have pica