THE JOY OF THOUGHT-CRIME COME TO PASS

VOICE: In quivering anticipation of Orwell’s THOUGHT-CRIME literally becoming a reality, the screeching rodents of morality condemn the lack of privacy on streets and in CYBERSPACE, yet seek to CONTROL that most personal INFINITY – the lightning flash of INTELLECT, SYNTAX, INSTINCT and IMAGINATION.

Flowing mice-people slurp on rivers of slurred inebriated text-speech. TAP TAP TAP drunk on the future vulgarity waiting for them around corners of inherited success. These spoilt tramps frantically coming to blows with keyboards while trying to save a certain shade of COBALT or biological hybrid from extinction. Their flatulent speech bubbles burst (POP!) along with their fantasies and betrayed, they rend the PAPER SKIN across their own hearts. Veins pumping with sugary water. With self-contempt and aplomb, recycled crowds pose vehemently for selfies.

Puritanical parasites who could never live amongst those they claim to defend yet wear like trophies. The KINGDOM of the BLIND with CCTVs glaring on every street corner, they see no contractions in their incessant BROU-HA-HA. Self-denying sons of CROMWELL purging UNCLEAN spirits from the marshmallow VOID while stuffing it up good with PLASTIC sentimentality.
The rabid vermin build walls of any old irony in defence against those HERETICS who wish to set fire to fluidity in a NAPALM cocktail of the MIND.

WAR is HEAVEN.
Do you feel that all words are equal?
Mistaken again.

POST-APOCALYPSE NOW! (PART 3)

(AH, WAR IS HELL)

VOICE: The sun is rising and scorching sunspot radiation down upon the UNFORTUNATE heads of those outside. The wheezing and rattling of the DEAD and INFECTED is going to start again soon. My radio CRACKLES as the sun SCRATCHES its mark across the airwaves like a KOSMIC VANDAL. My MIND wanders back to the past.  In darkened rooms where stories played.

~*~

(GOD SAVE MRS ETHEL SHROAKE, LONG LIVE MRS ETHEL SHROAKE)

The Bed-Sitting Room (1970) brought the absurdist humour of Spike Milligan and John Antrobus to the AFTERMATH of WORLD WAR III, which lasted exactly two minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Peace treaty included. Starring Milligan, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Arthur Lowe, Ralph Richardson and the whole of the population of Britain, this comedy of British people trying to find a semblance of normality in a world where one could quite easily mutate in a Bed-Sitting Room is an acquired taste like all of Spike’s work, but its skewed glance at what Britain once was always makes me chuckle through clenched teeth and tears.
In 1975 came another quirky expression of humour after the BOMB.
A Boy And His Dog is the story of the Post-WORLD WAR IV world of the eternally sexually frustrated Vic, the boy (Don Johnson), and his telepathic mutt, Blood, in their sardonic quest wandering the wilderness for females, popcorn and OVER THE HILL. Vic is tempted to go DOWN UNDER by a girl named Quilla (Suzanne Benton) whose scheming father (Jason Robards) wants Vic to artificially inseminate the whole female population of the underground town, Topeka and leaves Blood, injured, and above ground. Lambasted for its alleged sexism, this comedic and surreal film has become a somewhat forgotten piece in the Post-APOCALYPSE jigsaw.
Then something else altogether more brutal stirred in the real DOWN UNDER.

~*~

(IT’S THAT RAT CIRCUS OUT THERE, I’M BEGINNING TO ENJOY IT)

The Mid-Seventies brought its own crises, social upheaval and counter culture: PUNK.Its pretend battle cry of “ANARCHY!” blended in with the spikes and leather grind of HEAVY METAL and permeated throughout POP culture from the seminal Brit comic 2000AD to the bedsits of a thousand potential record labels and fanzines. George Miller’s 1979 feature, Mad Max (1979) and its sequel Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) put the throttle down full FUCKING blast and seemed to blow DUST over everything else. Pre-Catholic lunacy leather clad Mel was the coolest anti-hero on Earth besides Johnny Alpha as he drove like a demon to avenge his wife and child while around him PUNKS raped and pillaged their way around a Third World War stricken Australia in search of precious oil. In 2006, the co-scriptwriter James McCausland wrote in an article on peak oil and the ’73 oil crisis –

“George and I wrote the script based on the thesis that people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving and the assumption that nations would not consider the huge costs of providing infrastructure for alternative energy until it was too late”.

Mad Max 3: Beyond The Thunderdome (1985) was a huge success but with its bigger budget, Tina Turner’s legs and a whiff of sentimentality, it seemed to have lost the rawness that made the first two films so unique.

~*~

(OBEY!)

Throughout the Eighties and Nineties there were the oddities such as Carpenter’s iconic and satirical conspiracy 1988 invasion flick  THEY LIVE (I personally find this to be a FRIGHTENING documentary and includes the best fight scene in cinema, bar none) and Escape From New York (1982) showing a bleak and volatile society where CITIES have become nothing less than prisons.

James Cameron’s 1984 The Terminator  brought TECHNO-FEAR to the masses and spawned a thousand Austrian Accent imitations. Gilliam’s pandemic fantasy 12 Monkeys (1995) was interesting (even with Pitt’s hammy Jack Nicholson impression) and both films hung on the old staple of TIME TRAVEL and the PARADOXES that would be involved to create a new FUTURE.

Of course, with the good comes the bad and some films should have been aborted like a RADIOACTIVE CRACK BABY. The utterly wretched Waterworld (1995) was a dead fish that even Dennis Hopper could not save. Drowning like a naughty kitten was too good for it. There was also the turgidly vacuous Tank Girl (1995)which should have stayed a hipster comic. That is all the space I am going to waste on those two.
The Noughties on the other hand brought with it a slew of worthwhile efforts not seen since the Sixties, such as 28 Days Later (2002), a film that added a new slant to the zombie movie and showed that normal humans are even more frightening than the INFECTED that they are running from. This film also heralded a new wave of zombie flicks that continues today (one might say that has been done to DEATH. Boom. Boom.) including a decent remake of Dawn Of The Dead (2004) and Romero’s own Land Of The Dead (2005) starring Dennis Hopper back from the DEAD, so to speak, as well as the emergence of the Zombie Comedy genre with Shaun Of The Dead (2004) followed by Zombieland (2009). Zombies went well and truly gone mainstream with even Channel 4 in England showing Charlie Brooker’s splENDid Dead Set (2008), a zombie story set in a reality TV show and AMC’s tense and mean adaptation of the comic, The Walking Dead (2010). Please, no more.
A cinematic treat of note is the intelligent, almost BIBLICAL, Children Of Men (2006) by Spanish director Alfonso Cuarón with some thrilling action scenes and genuinely gritty sets, in a story concerning the worldwide infertility of women and the consequences on a species knowing it is going to die.
Of course, there are also the big budget studio efforts trying to cash in on the FEAR of being alive in the END TIMES, sorry, I mean the 21st Century.
2012 and The Day After Tomorrow were the tritest of the lot. The former based on a misunderstanding of a Mayan prophecy, the Apocalypse has finally gone fully sooper-dooper SFX mainstream entertainment. World War Z (2013) starring Brad Pitt was amusing not only to see U.N. trouble shooter Pitt stumbling aimlessly around a tiny depressed Welsh village like a disaster tourist, but also for a scene where Israel lets pitiful Palestinian refugees in to its territory out of the kindness of its falafel-eating heart. That one had me in stitches. The best recent biggie of all, Elysium (2013), by South African Neill Blomcamp of the masterful District 9 (2009) fame, tells of a world sharply divided between the haves and have nots as the world’s rich loaf around avoiding death in a space station above an Earth that has been left to ruin and an America where immigration has pushed Spanish to top English as the lingua franca. Matt Damon plays a victim of chance determined to stay alive. Suffice to say both Pitt and Damon save the world in true Hollywood fashion and life goes on as we all hold hands and sing One Vision.

~*~

(IT’S THE ENGINES, CAP’N. THEY CANNAE TAKE ANYMORE. )

We are now living in a Sci-Fi world of our own making; with portable communication devices and a worldwide communication network. We have everything we WANT at our fingertips. (Note: WANT, not NEED) Computers are everywhere and are so ingrained in our way of life that most are INVISIBLE. We can enter into VIRTUAL worlds of our own making and live out our fantasies however high or tawdry. Our species life expectancy is longer now than at any time in the past. Bubble-headed TV shows designed to take the worries of the big bad world away from us. Ice cream in a thousand flavours in the average supermarket.

We should be happy.

But we are not.

Especially the French.

It all comes at a price.

New viruses appear monthly to make us wash our hands in ANXIETY; our species is breeding so rapidly that if every family in the world had the lifestyle of the average American family, we would need five Earths just to support us; there are CCTV cameras on almost every street corner for our “safety”; our governments are playing with our money willy-nilly and getting away scot free; the proliferation of WMDs to so-called “rogue states” is imminent and the tendency towards WWIII seems to be going UP and DOWN like a zombie STRIPER’s rotting knickers; our society is based on a fundamental resource that not only POISONS us and our environment but is depleting fast, and as for Climate Change (or is it AGW?), well, as for Climate Change … The jury is out on that one, I am afraid.

Tornadoes in Derby?

A Lovelockian tragedy just around the corner?

Is it all just a scam to justify the eco-fascism of AGENDA 21?

Do YOU believe a word Al Gore utters?

The PARANOID VOICE sees the Post-Apocalyptica all around HIM and has to admit that HE does not feel much HOPE for the future, no matter what the sound-bites tell us.

However, the VOICE is not worried.

HE is a JOYFUL PESSIMIST.

NATURE may sneeze and off some of us tumble, but when Rome begins burning HE will be on HIS veranda with a Strawberry Daiquiri, searching for HIS violin.

METROMUSE

VOICE: The subterranean somnambulists are staring unblinkingly into screens merging into a commuting COMMUNION of MAN and TECHNOLOGY. I do not say “MAN and MACHINE” as which one is CONSCIOUS and which is PROGRAMMED, I suspect is contrary to the MOB RULE of popular opinion.  Train doors are wrenched violently open. One or two of the morally autistic automata glance up suspiciously, the constructed SPELL broken momentarily as more PRISONERS enter into the carriage. Peoples’ heads are no longer full of future child-like fancies of personal rocket ships and floating cloud CITIES; the spaces between neurons are now wiped clean and replaced by the FEAR of DEBT softened by the echoes of INVADING advertisements for hand gel and that ONE SPECIAL THING which will make them WHOLE. That ONE SPECIAL THING which will give them the PEACE and DISSOLUTION they so crave. The ONE SPECIAL THING they would DIE to protect now that even LOVE is RECYCLABLE and a mere click away.
At least … until the next GADGET of DESIRE hits the shops. Ad infinitum.
The PRISONERS have permitted a dull sledgehammer to be brought down on the head of their dreams. Locked away in the GUANTANAMO of their HEARTS they secretly know that was better to have WATERBOARDED and KILLED such phantoms before they conspired to stab them in the back.
The Roman EMPIRE had GLORY as well as BREAD and CIRCUSES.
The modern WORLD as defined by the BUREAUCRAT has EQUALITY, as well as fast “food” and The X Factor.
By allowing those TECHNOCRATIC SOULS to define the state of SERVITUDE, the CROWDS are at the mercy of petty whims which aim to turn ALL into MEDIOCRITY and in doing so, create the WORLD in their own image.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
H. L. Mencken

THE PARANOID LOVE SHUFFLE

VOICE: LISTEN! As the desperate VOICES of the SYSTEM’s PROPAGANDA machine splinters our MINDS with their incessant drum beating for WAR and their triumph in turning VICTIMHOOD and POWERLESSNESS into a status symbol to be sought after and even mugged; as the NSA and their Techno-Stasi ilk can spy with their multitude of little eyes, from street corner CCTVs to our own traitorous MOBILE DEVICES, do you, gentle reader, not feel a smidgen PARANOID?
Can you not feel the click of a thousand shutters down your spine?
Electronic lenses burning into what is left of your SOUL?
Scanning your face for clues into your very UNCONSCIOUS IMPULSES?
As the new COLD WAR is brewing in the old cracked teacup of the eternal CIRCUS of the UGLY that is POLITICS, I say it is TIME to slow dance with your innermost FEARS. Twist to the TOTALITARIAN DRONE GROOVE. Clutch your PARANOIA to you like a LOVER as you stamp the floor in a FRENZY to the Last Tango To NOWHERESVILLE. While the band strikes up a tune, why not strike a match and fire up that MOLOTOV as you MONSTER MASH around the dark corners of your SICK and TWISTED IMAGINATION?
BOOGIETOWN is burning in all its RADIANT GLORY.
REJOICE.

GROOVING TO THE TOTALITARIAN DRONE

VOICE: TOTALITARIAN DRONE GROOVE is a paradox.

A highly individualistic experiment in an age of CONFORMITY. It is tied to no FORM and DEFECATES on them all. A beautiful catastrophe, a collapsing building in the PSYCHE. A dishonest collection of thought/images; what story it does have makes as little sense as the ever-changing INFORMATIONAL BLITZKRIEG we are subjected to everyday. It is less a labour of LOVE, more a whimsical rant of DISGUST.

Only you could pull this off. It should be all over the shop but it flows – Paul D Brazill, His High Pulpness in an email.

As the title suggests, TDG dances, plays and pokes its APOCALYPTIC TONGUE at the writing scene and its pompous grand self-importance. It is tickling the toes of the SURVEILLANCE STATE that we have all consented to.  Yes, it is LAUGHING in all your faces. It has nothing to LOSE but your GRINS.

It is an ejaculation in the face of the arbiters of taste. It is an iconoclastic piece of phlegm flung in the face of history, a satire and statement of pomp, a mad revel, a piece of theatre – From the INTRO to TDG by Richard Godwin, Our Dark Lord.

This unique collection of downloadable HERETICAL musings is an INFECTION, a digital GADFLY that no-one will ever read, but the incessant BUZZING at the back of your MIND will cause you to SCRATCH in bewilderment, put one foot forward and wiggle that tush. DANCE to the DRONE GROOVE.