Want Product! Sell Me Product!

So I nip into WH Smiths to pick up my copy of "Leather Joy-Boys and Donkey Bondage Monthly" (this month they have an article entitled - "Never mind about the casino thing Blackpool, our readers have voted your beach donkies the 7th sexiest in the UK!")

I go up to pay, because I am an honest dragon.

Till Numpty: "You get a half price bar of chocolate with a magazine sir."

Dragon: "I don't want any chocolate thanks, I don't eat it, it sticks to my fangs"

Till Numpty: "If you buy a copy of the Independent you get a free bottle of water"

Dragon: "I'm not thirsty and anyway I read the Indy online edition at lunchtime"

Till Numpty: "Well how about 27% off a Terry's Chocolate Orange when you take out a subscription to 'What Ocelot'?

Dragon: "JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SELL ME MY MAGAZINE YOU STUPID FUCKING FUCK!"

And people wonder why online shopping is so popular.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.

As I was hatched in Blackpool (well, Blackpool's posher neighbour St Annes On Sea but let's not split hairs) I have been sort of following this business with the casino that's been in the news for the past couple of years. And yesterday my former nesting site lost out on it's chance to build a temple to mammon.

So am I upset? Angry that my former hometown lost out on it's chance for regeneration?

Like hell!

Blackpool is a complete, utter, irredeemable shithole. If you've never been and you're in the NorthWest do yourself a favour and have a look around and I promise you'll never be rude about another seaside town again. It's dingy, seedy, and grim beyond the dreams of Sauron. I mean it makes places like Margate look like Cannes. Want to know why Blackpool didn't make the final cut? THis bit of reportage from the beeb might give you a clue.

The only seafront shop open amid the fading placards and boarded buildings was novelty shop Scottie's Got It. Outside the store, which has stock ranging from sticks of rock to fancy dress, was an orange neon sign with a handwritten advertisement - "We sell fags".

Yep, that's a real choice location for a major investment project. People are really going to want to go there. "Well Ethel we've had a go on these fancy slot machines and played a bit of roulette, what shall we do now. How about we wander up and down a freezing sea-front, watch a few coloured lights swaying in the howling gale, try and avoid the massed drunken stag parties of utter low lifes who are too cash-strapped to get themselves to Prague on SleazyJet and then take a stroll past a load of boarded up shops and buy some fags?"

At least Manchester has been trying to sort out it's problems and regenerate itself; I'm told the canal area is really quite nice now. Blackpool just sat there, going ever more downmarket with the aforementioned stag and hen parties catering to the real bottom of the barrel clientele and hoping for the casino... that's now not coming.

Oh and there's already a casino there, well in St Annes anyway, but it's a proper one where you have to wear a tie.

As for Blackpool, the kindest thing to do would be to tow it out into the North Sea and sink it.

Mixing with the clergy.

Now you've probably gathered that I'm not exactly enamoured by religion. In fact my opinion is that religion is a harmful virus that should be removed from the human race. However I'm prepared to admit that individual practicioners of various religious faiths, misguided though I think they may be, are actually rather good eggs who I do not want to set fire to. One such individual is the Right Reverend John Austin, assistant Bishop of Leicester.

You see I've been looking after his mobile phone for him.

I happened upon it last night when I flopped onto the train, bit of a tatty old Nokia but charged up and working. I tried a few numbers off the recently called list but no luck. On getting home Mrs Dracunculus took charge. Now Mrs D as part of her job tracks down people's friends and family (usually in otder to make them part with their cash!) so is as good as the Funky Corpse Prodding Squad when it comes down to tracking people down and in two minutes is chatting away to the guy's daughter.

Anyway an hour or so later the phone's owner rings me up and we arrange to meet to get his phone back to him. All I know is that he's called John and he's in town for a day or two. Anyway I put the phone in with the rest of the hoard so it'll be safe and the following morning trundle off to the office.

At this point I get a phone call from his secretary (whose answering machine I got last night when ringing random entries from his phone) - at this point I find out he's a bishop. As my work colleagues pointed out I could have had some real fun with that knowledge and his phone but I'm a nice dragon really.

Bishop John dropped by in the afternoon to collect his phone and, quite unexepectedly, insisted I took a bottle of wine he's bought as a thank-you which was a very nice surprise.

So there you go - dragons mixing with the clergy. Maybe there is hope for the world after all.

My invisible friend told me to hate you

Oh my God, twenty gay bears armed with horse dildos have just come round the corner!

Amen brothers. At least there are some people in government, at cabinet level no less, with a bit of gumption to stand up to our closet catholic prime minister who would like nothing better to act under orders from an ex-nazi in Rome (who incidentally may well have tried to shoot my grandfather when he was an anti-aircraft gunner in the Hitler-Jugend (the pope that is, not my grandfather who was, as far as I know was trying to drop bombs on the future pope in 1945)).

What this comes down to is "We have an insvisible friend who talks to us and we follow some ancient book (well, bits of it anyway) that says we have to hate bum bandits so we don't want the law to apply to us." Well I happen to believe that catholic priests, especially the paedophile ones, deserve setting on fire but you don't see me going whining to the government for an exception to the laws on Arson to apply only to Dragons because setting fire to people who so richly deserve it is a deep and ingrained part of my draconic heritage! This one quite clearly fails the "Jew" test - that's the one where you take the word "homosexual" out of what Cardinal Faghater O'Murphy is saying and substitute the word "jew" and see if it makes you feel uncomfortable. The very worthy Pub Philosopher has a good take on it here that's way funnier than I could write.

Mind you given that it would seem that a goodly number of the leaders of this organisation seem to have a rather unhealthy interest in children (and their top management has a record of trying to hush it up) I do find it rather ironic that the organisation is even allowed to run adoption agencies. The xtian church is dead keen on sheep and shepherd analogies but that does rather seem like putting the wolf in charge of the flock.

Anyway for any readers reading this who think that an invisible man in the sky talks to you and who are upset that you're not going to be able to be mean to gays any more I have some good news for you¹. If you just skip forward one verse from Leviticus 18:22 that you seem to have become fixated upon you will find that there's a whole new group of people that you can hate. I'd get a wiggle on though because give it twenty or thirty years they'll change the law for these folks too and then you'll have to let Mr Jones and his lovely wife Dobbin the Horse adopt a kid from you as well.


¹ I would also reccomend a course of antipsychotic medication as voices in your head telling you to do stuff is a symptom of schizophrenia - I'm told that Largactyl is very good.

Teacher came teacher

I acually quite like some spam email I get. Gmail is very good at shoving it into a seperate bit bucket but I occasionally have a look at the ones that come in in foreign languages, Chinese and Korean ones particularly, whack them through a translation engine and then try to work out just what the fuck the scumbag is trying to flog me.

Take this for example...

Selects coverall entire Taiwan floor price set of 700 Yuan you in and so on any cheap also large bowl ultra value set of meal combination very to be also good oh the complete set meal so long as 700 Yuan ultra low prices! Ultra low price! Ultra low price! Teacher came teacher to have said you all have not bought

I think he's trying to sell me a lot of flooring that will cover the whole of Taiwan (that's 32,260 sq km so you get an awful lot of laminate for your 700 Yuan which is about eleven quid in real money) and he's going to throw in a big bowl of noodles as an incentive and sensei will give me a good ticking off if I don't buy at once.

Anyway about the bridge I have for sale...

Cough

The muslims are at it again and this time on my home turf. Mind you what I find really amusing (unlike this story (hat-tip to Frank Chalk) which had me spitting blood) is that this particular hijab wielding numpty does not even know what her own religion says on the subject of tobacco (hint - "nothing"). Take a wander around any major metropolitan centre in an islamic country and the blokes in the dishrag hats will be puffing away on the woodbines like it's going out of fashion. What with lack of ale, shagging and pretty much anything else that might possibly be fun there's precious little else left to do unless you have a fondness for camels.

And what about those nice fruity flavoured baccies that they make for the shisha pipes? I'm not even a smoker but during my sojurns in the middle east, Lebanon in particular, I rather enjoyed those with one of those minty teas they do - almost made up for the lack of decent beer and the Syrian army trying to shoot me (it's a long story - don't ask)

Mind you this could be a really good way for Tony's cronies to crack down on the binge drinking culture. Imagine the scene in a typical ghastly city centre pub on a friday night.

Chav: "Ere mate, give us three pints of snakebite and an absinthe and passion fruit alcopop for me bird"

Barman: "No kuffir I will not. Alcohol is haraam!"

[Exeunt with alarums and excursions and fisticuffs and the summoning of the rozzers]

Naked Porpoises

Google ads turned out to be boring and something to do with people who got damp in Louisiana, so I turned them off...

... meanwhile in answer the nameless person who wrote to me to ask where were the naked porpoises, they are here...



(OK so they are dolphins... I'll see if I can track down some porpoise porn later. Sheesh)

Blog Maintenance

Just converted the blog to the new super-duper version - you might also notice that, just for a laugh, I've added ad-sense. I did this because I'd be interested to see what sort of ads my ranting, swearing and general setting-fire-to-things-in-the-traditional-draconic-manner throws up in terms of adverts.

Please click on them anyway, it makes me money.

Not the best time to pick a fight with a dragon

Now you probably would not realise it from this blog but normally in public I'm actually quite a sweet-natured dragon and hardly ever set fire to anyone or anything.

Unfortunately today I was decidedly not feeling all cuddly. I've got a chest infection of some sort and that's set off my asthma (I'm sure the National Asthma Campaign based Desmond the Dragon on me) but needing to earn a living I bravely stumbled into work as soon as I had the breathing more or less under control. Bad move, by lunchtime everyone is looking askance as I cough, splutter and accidentally keep setting fire to the furniture and my boss says that I really should go home. Grumpily I agree although it means not earning any money for the afternoon, so that makes me really grumpy.

Anyway I bimble off through the tunnels of London and pop out in good time for the train northwards so I grab an overpriced coffee and nip into the newsagents to buy a copy of Dragon Monthly (in this issue... 101 uses for a dead knight... Get that dream princess into your bed... some interview or other with Jade Fucking Goody's mum "Pikey" or something). Now in my human guise I'm carrying around my rather natty Targus backpack with the essentials of doing my job in them - lappy, mp3 player, huge computer tome, Ingrams MAC10, that sort of thing so it is a bit bulky. Anyway after I'm done paying for my magazine I take a step back to negotiate my way outside past the stupid queueing barrier system they have at WH Smiths and my bag accidentally brushes against some old dear. Naturally I turn and apologise, smiles are exchanged and I think that's the end of the matter.

Oh no... not for this crabby cow and her copy of the mail. As I exit I hear "Young man" (well that's a nice start anyway), "do you know rucksacks like yours take up as much space as another person, you might want to take it off when you get on a tube train".

I turn and smile, now do I say something nice like "Of course I shall, should I get on the tube.", apologise again or...

Like I said, not a good day to be goading the dragon.

"My dear, firstly we are not on a tube train but the concourse of a large metropolitan railway station. Secondly this 'rucksack' as you quaintly call it contains several hundred pounds worth of computer equipment I wish to protect and the bag itself is toughened, padded, made of military-grade kevlar and probably costs more than you get in pension from my taxes in a year. Finally if I wanted to trundle about with a fucking baby grand piano on my back then I bloody well would so I'd thank you to fuck off and die you meddlesome old ratbag."

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons with chest infections for they are about as subtle as brick and quick to anger.

Open wide and say "Allaaaaah"

I swear that they must say this sort of shit purely to wind up the kuffirs

The NHS should provide more faith-based care for Muslims, an expert says.

Muslims are about twice as likely to report poor health and disability than the general population, says Edinburgh University's Professor Aziz Sheikh.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he called for male circumcision on the NHS and more details over alcohol derived drugs.

Look, just fuck off and die will you. Please explain to me why the bloody hell a single penny piece of my tax money should go to fund your idiotic, venial, child abusing rituals and dietary foibles. You work in the industry Mr Aziz Raghead - you know the state of our NHS or you should. My mum got carted from pillar to post because there wasn't any money to treat her condition within 100 miles of where she lived and died as a result, I ended up paying privately for Mrs Dracunculus' treatment for a very painful condition a couple of years ago because it was either that or wait for three months before she could even see a consultant let alone get any sort of treatment started and yet we should be catering to your particular evil version of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism?

OK so we have to give you prayer rooms at your GPs surgery, fund unnecessary elective surgery on your poor bloody offspring, pay for alternative treatments because at some point the drug you're prescribed might have been in contact with alcohol (hint for yo' ass man, I have never been in a lab where alcohol wasn't widely used so It's a fair bet that they all have!). So what do we cut to pay for this - remember you haven't got that caliphate you're after so you cannot put your jizya tax on the dhimmis just yet. Do we put old Mrs Miggins' hip operation back a few months, cut back the A&E department (so long as it's not in a muslim area)?

Also I wonder if you would be supportive of, say, Pagans demanding that GPs' surgeries offer healing rituals on the NHS and that every surgery must employ one full time Wiccan priestess to minister to the needs of the Pagan community? Or that it be obligatory for ambulance crews to leave orthodox jews at the side of the road following a road accident if it happens on the sabbath (actually you'd probably be supportive of that last one!)

Look you dickwad, you and all your co-religionists are human, same as me¹. Penicillin works the same on you as me. If the service offered by a GP is good enough for me then it's fucking good enough for you and we should not, no MUST NOT pander to your or anyone else's religion.

By all means follow your evil little antediluvian religion in the privacy of your own home but do not for a nanosecond presume that everyone else has to pander to its diktats. Now crawl back under your rock before you discover just quite how al-harb the dar al-harb can be.


¹ Acually given the fact that I'm really a dragon and just happen to be disguised as a human this is a pretty poor analogy. However penicillin does work on dragons, we take if for strep throat all the time.

Freestyle Drunken Rant No. 1 in D Minor

>From: McAfee UK
>To: dracunculus@yourbigpileofgoldandjewelsandeviceratedknights.com
>Subject: Service Notification: McAfee VirusScan Renewal
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>and save 25% off the regular £39.99 subscription price.
>
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>Yadda yadda yadda please be fucking terrified that the
>skiddies are going to steal your credit card details and
>subscribe you to a load of kiddie porn sites and give us
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Dear McAffee

Would you kindly like to fuck off and stop spamming me, It's not enough that you bunch of cuntsnot decided to unilaterally debit my credit card and I had to grovel to your so-called customer service department for the money back you'd taken to "protect me" but your system is so fucked up you don't even realise that (a) you'd already bilked me for the renewal fee and (b) I had cancelled the renewal on the basis that you are all a bunch of wankers and your shitty virus protection system treats me like a moron and won't let me turn it off.

Kindly throw yourselves into a hole, bury yourselves under 6 feet of soil and never darken my inbox again.

Wankers

Click, bang, problem solved.

Unless you have been comatose for the last couple of days you probably have not escaped the human freakshow that's been on the TV - no not "Celebrity" Big Arsewipe, I'm referring to the wiedness that is the kid with the brain of a three month old that it's "loving" parents have submitted to surgery to stop it ever passing through puberty; oh and removing its uterus in case the nasty peedofils get to their "pillow angel" (barf!) - guess they must have seen Brimstone and Treacle at some point in the past - hey why not perform a caslick procedure at the same time - that'll fox 'em!

Opinion in the MSM seems to be divided along the "this is a good idea" and "this is a barbaric interference in her human rights and is tantamount to child abuse". What no-one is saying as far as I can work out is "Why haven't they just let the poor bastard die?" Hell's teeth, it quite obviously has no quality of life, no cogniscence beyond "I am/am not in pain" and will never, ever recover or progress beyond lying there staring up at the ceiling when it's parents aren't dragging the poor little fucker round theme parks and pretending to themselves that their basket case is having a good time (no, she isn't, she's now in pain because of the noise, light and unfamiliar sensations that she will never, ever understand)

We treat animals better than this, we would not let a dog or a horse live in such misery let alone perform painful invasive surgery unless the individual was unspeakably cruel or mentally aberrant.

Just do the decent thing and put her to sleep. You can have a good cry afterwards (and probably keep tending the grave by leaving teddies and related tat at regular intervals) but you'll be happier and I know that the kid would be - if it even knew what "happy" was.

Here's Ken Clarke telling us ner, ner, told you so about how his "Dangerous Dogs Act" was "watered down" and "needs strengthening".

Bloody hell Ken, you were a prize wanker when you were in government and you haven't changed a bit. I don't suppose in the rarified circles he flounders about in that he's realised that when someone refers to a knee-jerk, ill thought out, tabloid-led piece of legislation they'll often call it "another dangerous dogs act". Look you stupid dog-hating cunt ANY dog can be dangerous - the most vicious dog I knew was a liitle short-haired terrier. Are you going to advocate banning every single breed of dog that takes a nip at someone, enforced neutering of all dogs, criminalising every citizen who has so much as bought a tin of Chum?

What an I saying... of course you bloody are. After all we're just the public, we can't possibly be trusted with something like a dog, we might hurt someone with it.

Here's what you do. Scrap this stupid law right now, everyone can own any sort of dog they want and hey, why stop at dogs, let people own bloody huge lions and tigers if they want. But what you do is make sure eveyone takes a test to show that know how to control their animals and keep them safe and have the wherewithal to do so properly - no pass, no pet. And if Snugglywoofles the pitbull-rottie cross chomps through the head of some cute tot¹ you get fined to Christmas and back.

Sensible but that means actually trusting the citizens you govern, and that would never do for a washed-up old tory hasbeen like Ken.

¹ Not that the sprog in this case fit this critera, judging by the picture that pitbull did the gene pool a favour.

Just a slogan

Right, so they were just slogans were they. Bloody hell my wierdybeardy friend you have just got to get yourself a new defence lawyer because that has got to be the crappiest plea in Christendom*

Anyway you twat, should you not be standing up for your religion and denouncing the court for having the temerity to even consider bringing a holy warrior such as yourself before the beak and yelling that we infidel will all burn in hell once Osama Bin Liner has got around to blowing us all up? Nah, you're a like little pissant scoolboy looking all shamefaced down at his shoes and mumbling "sorry sir" after he's been caught because you're now looking at six of the best (or two years in chokey in your case - personally I think we should take a leaf out of the Bumper Fun Book of Sharia Law and chop something off... I would suggest we start with his dick but he obviously doesn't have one).

You, sir, are a craven coward, your religion stinks like a week old fish and your prophet was a paedophile.

I don't mean that of course, it's just a slogan.




* Whilst it still exists.

Film review - Eragon

Finally got the chance to watch Eragon over the new year weekend - at home of course, there is no way I was about to spend any of a bank holiday weekend in a cinema full of snotty children (who should all be fed to pit bull terriers anyway - I recon they should have given the dog a medal).

Anyway, Eragon. Or "Star Wars with Dragons" as they might have called it. To be honest there were so many plot and idea ripoffs that I'm surprised there isn't a queue of lawyers outside every picture house in the land. Dragons die when their riders do... paging Mrs McCaffrey, to say the word/true name is to control the thing (Le Guin's "Earthsea", Edding's "Belgariad"). The princess is in trouble... OK so Jeremy Irons didn't quite say "If you go now, help them you could, but you will betry all that they have fought and suffered for" but he might as well have done - I was surprised Eragon didn't ask Safira to "fire up the converters" - and oh look he's just done an Obi-Wan death scene. We even had a "I'm stuck on this rock at my uncle's farm looking into the sunset" moment earlier. Sure I know that this sort of plot is the monomyth of the hero but at least try to be a bit original. If it turns out that the nasty evil king is Eragon's dad then I'm sorry I will have to breathe on someone.

And my, isn't it convenient that dragons grow up so quickly - dead handy plot device that was. And speaking of dragons isn't Safira a bit too, well, "fluffy" for a dragon? (Checks scales, claws, teeth, horns) Yep, far too fluffy, and were those feathers on the end of your wings? And if you keep doing those 5000 feet per minute vertical takeoffs from standing you're going to give young Eragon spinal compression.

Still, it was a bit of fun for 90 minutes, the CGI battle sequences were good and all the serious actors playing the baddies were deliciously over the top and even Jeremy redeemed himself in the Obi-Wan/Yoda role after his pitiful outing in the truly naff "Dungeons and Dragons" movie.

Turn your brain off, play spot the borrowed plot and go and see Eragon... available from all good bittorrent sites now.

Firey Dragon Rating - toasty: