Sugar. It has many different forms, but on the whole we’re accustomed to thinking of it as a refined product: something we sprinkle on our breakfast cereal, add to a mug of coffee, or imbibe as a soft drink. Ultimately, however, our relationship with sugar is far more fundamental. We may be carbon based lifeforms, but if carbon is the stuff of life then sugars are the essence of it. We are, quite literally, powered by the stuff. Everything that enters the digestive system is broken down into a sugar, and anything that resists the process – like peanuts for example – goes right through and out the other end. Of course, these days people wander around their local sugarmarket blissfully unaware that the blood pumping through their veins is a rich glucose soup. To make matters worse, many of them have swallowed The Covenant’s propaganda and actually believe that sugars per se are harmful. The poor creatures can be seen in every sugarmarket, peering myopically at product labels in a futile attempt to purge their bodies of the foul muck. Their efforts are ridiculous beyond words, and one has only to pick up a newssugar to realise the truth: that The Covenant is waging an all-out war on food, and is determined to regulate what enters (perhaps ‘penetrates’ would be a better term) our individual temples of Osiris-Ra and Venus-Isis.
Those pesky peanuts, eh?
They’re just so naughty and wilful. I’m suprised you haven’t got round to banning them altogether.
About 10,000 years ago, a big bang of sorts occurred somewhere in South America, an event unremarked at the time but which served as the genesis of a product destined to change the make-up of school lunch boxes, crop rotations and the snacking habits of people across the globe.
Butt I digress. If you think about it, there’s something decidedly puritanical in this drive to ‘liberate’ us from our reliance on The White Stuff.
The glucose content of normal human semen amounts to 0.41 +/- 0.09 mmol/l. As there is a negative correlation between this sugar and sperm motility, it must have an important role on the metabolism of these cells. Cervical mucus is very rich in glucose and does not contain fructose. This confirms utilization of glucose by spermatozoa.
Gosh, even those tiny little tadpoles rely on it! So when a small army of science fiction authors sporting lab coats and doctorates suddenly start preaching about the evils of sugar you can be sure that it has far more do to with official Covenant doctrine (i.e. combatting the dangers of heretical thought and associated practices) than it does concern about public health.
So much so that you really have to wonder about the true nature of the modern ‘fitness craze’. Just check out these prime examples of the Master Race, all of whom sport the kind of muscle definition that can only come from kitchen cupboards laden with sugar-free goodness.
God help us all. Are they bred that way? Or is it a case of nature and nurture, with the latter taking the form of years of lesson-learning in a Covenant-approved Religious Re-education Centre? You know, where the preachers inculcate the Good News and wax lyrical on the virtues of being a good citizen of the Estate of the Onion…
Seems to me that we’re living in the darkest of dark days, folks.
From darkness, there is light! Oddly enough, that just happens to be the motto of my home city. So perhaps it’s only appropriate that salvation should be found in the rise of The Sugarman: smart as fuck, strong as fuck, hostile as fuck. A remnant of the past who remembers a time when we were free to stuff whatever the hell we wanted into the human digestive tract. Someone built for the express purpose of bringing war to your phony state of ‘world peace‘. Someone sufficiently ‘hungry’ to see the task through to the bitter-sweet end. A kind of sex-terminator, perhaps?
Er, actually I was thinking about the John Harrison version…
Yeah, I reckon it’d be interesting to examine the chemistry of Khan’s blood work.
He looks a wee bit anaemic in comparison with his younger self, wouldn’t you say?
You want me to shoot my space seed where?
“Space: Filthy Cervix of the She-Devil,” intoned a familiar and rather smug-sounding male voice. “These are the crusades of the CSS Gardonia. It’s eternal and divinely sanctioned mission: to divide and conquer idolatrous worlds, to drive out heretics and false gods, to devoutly proselytize where no Brother has proselytized before!”
Excerpt from Cultish II: The Tears of Jihadonai, by Hugo Stone
Ah, so perhaps that’s the cause? Some kind of dietary deficiency that’s making him really, really hungry, ya think?
It’s very cold in space without a bun in the oven.
Something about the souls?
Momma screamed most of the night. I prayed that she might find faith, but she only stopped when papa cut her belly and stuffed the coals in.
The Business and Papa John. And his surname is…?
The pizza chain may soon get rid of its apostrophe, and go by Papa Johns, in an effort to repair its tarnished image after its founder reportedly made a racist remark earlier this year during a conference call. John Schattner, founder and the company’s face, resigned as chairman in July 2018. Papa John’s International filed paperwork about the new spelling and brand imagery with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in late August. Removing the possessive apostrophe in Papa John’s would, in theory, provide a more distance between the company and its founder, so it doesn’t look like he owns the business.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Illegal? Not in the days of The Garden State.
Genesis, genetic, fanatic, heretic, lunatic. Fighting over a few spoonfuls of the brown stuff, for God’s sake. You don’t like it? You prefer not to partake? Jesus H Christ, I’ve already said that you can use a fork if you prefer, so what’s your problem? Why don’t you just fuck off and create your politically-correct hell somewhere else?
Just face it: not everyone is interested in your version of ‘The Business’. Some have a more discerning palate, and prefer something a little more snack-sized.
Maybe someone needs to rethink her ‘Big Sister’ policy before she finds herself in a bit of a jam?
Father Ronnie retrieved a cigar from the box on his desk, rolled it between his palms, then inserted it in his mouth. Dumping sugar on the establishment’s doorway was of course the whole purpose of the day’s events. Repealing prohibition had become his mission in life, just as maintaining the ban had become Paul Pott’s raison d’etre. Consciously, he hardly dared admit to himself that his love of sugar (which rivalled Pott’s hatred of the substance) was a reflection of its association with paedophilia and taboo status in relation to his own sexual appetites. Above and beyond this, however, was a genuine concern about the effects of the sugar ban and the woeful state of prohibition-era Britain, which was fast becoming a police state.
He’d read the relevant scientific literature whilst in prison and realised that it was impossible to conceive of life without sugar. In his view, those who railed against the substance shared similar personality traits with other self-appointed guardians of the Greater Good. These people seemed to believe that they could eliminate everything potentially or actually harmful from the world without creating a totalitarian hell in the process. Their mindset was typified by a failure to recognise that a free society is one in which bad things occasionally happen to good people and vice versa. Those possessed of it were unable to perceive that the remedies they proposed were almost always worse than the ‘disease’ they wished to cure. In the Father’s view, it was uncertainty and risk that made life worth living. Those who sought to eliminate these factors wanted to reduce life to something as joyless and technocratic as the Acts of Parliament they campaigned for.
Father Ronnie took another pull at his hip flask and shook his head sadly at the madness of it all. During the early days of his prison sentence he’d all but abandoned his faith and spent many a dark night wondering why God would engineer his criminalisation. His faith returned once he re-imagined his disgrace as a necessary (albeit bewildering) part of a Divine Plan that was unfolding around him. He awoke the next morning (wrapped in the arms of his 6ft 4” cell mate) with a fresh perspective and began to devise the plan that was now in its final stage of operation. Once complete, he set about networking with his fellow students in the School of Crime that was HMP Bedford. They taught him the dark arts of their trades, including the rudiments of street-fighting. The Father’s lot improved considerably after his cell mate had been discovered in the showers, with a fractured skull and no less than twenty-three bars of soap inside his anus. It was plane sailing from then on.
By the time he left prison a year later Ronnie found himself head of a small but technologically astute crew of career criminals keen to relieve London’s elite of the contents of their safe deposit boxes. He’d met Mark McMahon whilst inside and so impressed him with his plan that Markie had agreed to overlook his experiences as one of the Father’s former choirboys. His role was to infiltrate Stevie’s organisation upon his release and work his way as far up the ladder as possible while Ronnie raised ‘capital’.
Ronnie stayed in the heist game just long to acquire the funds he required to get started in the sugar business. El Padron had already established a national monopoly, so the good Father was obliged to innovate. Rather than seek out an overseas supplier and risk bringing himself to the attention of his Liverpudlian competitor, he decided to set himself up as a ‘legitimate’ fruit farmer producing his own range of exotic jams and conserves. Fully half of the greenhouses he built on the land he purchased were dedicated to the production of sugar cane, and employed a vast array of hydroponics equipment to manufacture the required environmental conditions. By the time his first batch was ready for distribution he’d already set up a network of dealers, all of whom were Catholic boys fallen on hard times. It was for this reason that his organisation had seemed to materialise fully formed almost overnight, much to the chagrin of Stevie Briggs and El Padron.
The Father derived no pleasure from the material rewards of his trade and, aside from a weakness for good whisky and cigars, eschewed the trappings of success. He’d hardened himself to the violence and intimidation he was obliged to mete out, justifying it on the grounds that it was but a drop in the ocean in comparison with the violence and intimidation that the State itself was inflicting upon society. He no longer felt any bitterness towards the Church, having long since made peace with his ‘little weakness’. Nor did he have any desire to regain his status as a priest, having convinced himself that his current course of action was a more accurate reflection of God’s Will than two millennia of The Vatican’s theological masturbation.
Excerpt from The Sugar Fiends, by Hugo Stone
Talking of Big Sister, if you think you can run The Asylum your way and force me to subsist on starvation rations, then think again.
Remember: two can play the ‘unthink’ game.
Pott launched his own cultural War on Sugar the day after the SAS operation. His modus operandi was something his notorious Asian namesake would have wholeheartedly approved of. For Pott, no longer being able to buy sugar wasn’t enough: the very concept of sugar itself had to be erased from memory and consciousness in order to transition humankind to a state he called ‘Blood Sugar Zero’. He’d started with the film, music and publishing industries, targeting popular songs, films and books that contained references to the substance and campaigned for them to be banned as corruptive influences that violated the spirit and letter of the revised Act.
Excerpt from The Sugar Fiends, by Hugo Stone
I want my cheese pizza.
I think you already know what you can do with your fucking rules, but still…
Sugar vs Saccharin. The real thing vs your imitation Aryan. Shall we see who comes out on top?
What, you burp me up a pardon and I’m supposed to be fucking grateful?
Think again. War is war. There are no fucking rules.
Forty-seven. Here’s my version of your ‘Hunger Games‘.
Feel free to wash it down with a glass of red or white.
Poppies. Ironic that a symbol of peace and reconcilliation is also a symbol of sleep and death, not to mention the source of a substance whose prohibition served to manufacture one of the most costly and protracted wars in human history. The bare-knuckle boxing match between agents of The Covenant and the Philip Carvels cartels has been going on for decades now, with no apparent end in sight. It is, at the most fundamental level, a battle for control over who gets to put what in the body, if you catch my drift. In other words, there are those who wish to control what makes it onto the menu and is deemed fit for consumption, and those who do not. In times past, back in the Victorian era for example, it really wasn’t seen as a problem. Then some bright spark decided she wanted to play the role of heroine. She clothed herself in the Judgemental God archetype, banned the stuff, and got the phoney war started. The rest, as they say, is her story. I am, of course, talking about the War on Sugar, and if that doesn’t register with you then perhaps this will help.
“It’s a major success for us,” enthused the Prime Minister’s Advisor. “The public expect firm action and the seizure of nearly twenty-five tons with an estimated street value of £243 million will more than offset the damage caused by this latest Let’s Ban It Together press release.”
Her advisor handed over the press release, and the Prime Minister’s tired but practised eyes skimmed through it in a matter of seconds. The author was attempting to portray sugar dealers as ‘terrorists’ and calling for a permanent armed police presence on UK streets, mandatory blood tests for all citizens, and the establishment of ‘sugar detoxification and rehabilitation centres’ predicated on ‘work-centred therapy’ for those who failed the test. It’s closing argument (that remaining low-level government services be outsourced to these centres) was the stuff of nightmares, and exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to tax payers footing the astronomical bill to fight El Padron.
“I reckon we should ramp up the war metaphors and spin this from a Churchillian ‘fight them on the beaches’ angle,” continued her advisor. “Twenty-five tonnes is just a drop in the ocean in relation to the total annual supply, but if we can paint today’s seizure in a ‘this brings the war within measurable distance of its end’ light then…”
Jesus Christ, thought the PM. Is he really quoting ‘1984’ at me? She noticed the name at the bottom of the press release and groaned inwardly. The author was none other than Paul Pott, Brother Number One himself. His tactics made the Khmer Rouge’s evacuation of cities look like an afternoon stroll with the Rambler’s Association.
“…I think we can safely ditch the script we prepared for your appearance on this afternoon’s Slazenger Pyle Show…”
Holy shit fuck in a bun with a side order of fries! thought the Prime Minister. It had been her Advisor’s idea to accept Pyle’s invitation to appear on the show and she’d almost forgotten about it. He’d insisted that her appearance would help her reconnect with the massed ranks of the Great Unwashed, whose increasingly dilapidated council estates were the main battle ground of the seemingly never-ending War. She’d been dreading it, and had added a fresh bottle of anti-bacterial gel and some worming tablets to her handbag in case she was obliged to glad-hand some of Britain’s less fragrant and hygiene conscious citizens.
“…and go on the offensive instead. Pyle’ll come at you with this God-awful Pino-Grigio-Jones sob story so it’s absolutely essential that we arouse the audience’s primitive nationalist sentiments and…”
Primitive is an understatement, mused the PM as the woman’s simian features sprang to mind, the woman has primordial sludge for brains. She was hazy on the exact details of the story, having sat through hundreds of briefings since the matter was first raised a month earlier, but its ‘child sugar mule’ theme was a wet dream for members of the ‘think of the children’ brigade. It was exactly the kind of incendiary tale that Pyle’s audience lived for, and highly likely to send council estates across the country up in flames.
“…milk that udder dry. I’ve given the matter some thought and despatched an intern to source some of those little Union Flags they sell to tourists. Keep bashing away with the Churchill references and the studio audience will be ready to eat their own guts for Team GB by the end of the show. Then you can hand out the flags and lead them in a rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’ and/or ‘Jerusalem’…”
Her Advisor droned on and his voice faded into the background as the Prime Minister zoned out and reflected on the circumstances that had brought her to this point. It had all started four years earlier with what she’d interpreted as a seemingly harmless revenue-raising ploy that could save the NHS millions. As Leader of the Opposition, she’d been one of the first to jump on the sugar tax bandwagon and had allowed the media’s hysterical hyperbole to go unchallenged in the interest of the Greater Good. The subsequent political debate had been almost entirely one-sided and failed to address questions about the socio-economic factors that led those at the bottom of the food chain to consume far more sugar per person than those at the top. She’d expected the sugar tax to quench the media’s thirst for action, but the matter had refused to lay down and die and soon degenerated into something as sinister as it was ludicrous.
Paul Pott had been the driving force, along with a veritable army of gullible yet influential left-wing celebrities. He’d played them like the publicity obsessed fools they were and had them competing with one another to exhibit the most authentically tear-stained social conscience. The actors among them had queued up to appear in Pott’s TV commercials, in which sugar consumers were portrayed as the unwitting dupes of legally-sanctioned ‘sugar pushers’ intent on turning every child in the land into an obsese diabetic. As arguments go it was lame even by Pott’s standards, but the turning point had come in the form of a highly dubious article purportedly written by two of his bought-and-paid-for academics and published in his Journal of Trans-Scientific Technobabble. Their claim that so-called ‘Big Sugar’ had conspired with a ‘medical elite’ and engineered a ‘child obesity epidemic’ in order to gain access to vulnerable children was as spurious as it was sensational. Not only that, no one had been able to contact the authors at their obscure Swiss research institute, let alone verify their academic credentials.
None of this seemed to matter to the less responsible arm of the media, and without a juicy war to distract them the tabloids had erupted in another frenzy of self-righteous indignation. It had been a stroke of genius on Pott’s part, and once the media had finished inculcating the link between sugar and paedophilia into the public’s consciousness no amount of rational debate could erase it. After that, allowing one’s child to consume sugar was seen as the equivalent of sending them on holiday with Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.
With the already dubious virginity of their children at stake, the leading lights of Britain’s council estates sat down to parlez over several cans of Strongbow. Medical professionals began to receive death threats within 48 hours of the first headline as the gutter press systematically challenged and discredited their motives. Attempts to rebut Pott’s claims were lost in a sea of accusations and the collective re-branding of doctors as a cabal of child molesters. The headlines were soon awash with talk of prohibition and politicians were caught in the crossfire. Their attempts to address the issue from a standpoint of sanity, reason and freedom of choice had been shouted down and dismissed as ‘weakness’, ‘inaction’, and ‘bungling’. In response, mobs of council estate types took to the streets armed with jerry cans and half the NHS went up in flames in a single night. In the midst of the chaos, Lord Alan Sugar was beaten to death in his own home with an Amstrad CPC464 taken from his own private collection of computer memorabilia. Pott himself had appeared on TV and made an impassioned and moving plea to end the violence. He was, however, widely suspected of paying various rabble-rousers to stoke the fires, and of coining the term ‘Sugarnacht’ by which the event subsequently became known.
With emergency services still battling to dowse the flames, the media labelled the carnage as a ‘spontaneous and entirely justifiable outpouring of national anger’ and took it upon themselves to fund the ringleaders’ legal defence. With several tabloids likening them to the Tolpuddle Martrys no one was particularly surprised when they were acquitted and awarded compensation for wrongful arrest. Even Lord Sugar’s murder was reinterpreted as a symbolic victory for the forces of cube control. His killers were given a police caution and received a hero’s welcome on return to their respective tower blocks. It was obvious which way the wind was blowing, and with so many civil servants engaged in an illicit relationship with Let’s Ban It Together it didn’t take long for Whitehall to present a horrifically draconian legislative proposal to the Home Secretary. Sugar’s reclassification as a Class A substance in a revised Misuse of Drugs Act with harsh new penalties came three months after Sugarnacht. To vote against the bill was political suicide, and the Prime Minister had led her colleagues down the appropriate side of the division bell knowing Pott had momentum on his side and was not the type to quit while ahead.
Pott hadn’t disappointed on this account. It had started on the day the bill became law when a YouTube channel widely suspected of being a vehicle for his wilder claims posted a ‘video exclusive’ about a secret document titled ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Tate & Lyle’. The video’s narrator dated the document to 1921, the same year that Henry Tate and Abram Lyle joined forces to create the titular sugar refinery. Unsurprisingly, the contents of the document seemed to support claims of an insidious conspiracy between sugar producers and the medical profession, for the purposes of depriving children of their virginity. The video went viral and an angry mob kidnapped the company’s Chief Executive, tarred and feathered him, and suspended him from Tower Bridge. He hung there for three days whilst the drunken hoard took turns to urinate and defecate on him from above. The police had looked on in powerless approval, and the government had been obliged to send in the most heavily tattooed members of the SAS (clad in Poundland sportswear and wielding tear gas grenades disguised as cans of Special Brew) to rescue him.
Excerpt from ‘The Sugar Fiends’, by Hugo Stone
It’s a cartel and a carvel and a marvel…
God, eh? Who can deny that she’s a chump, and not The Greatest Thing That Ever Lived? Only the other day she dipped a finger in her Holy Waters and baptised capsized a Tanzanian ferry. Did it right in front of our eyes, with total impunity, and is probably still chuckling at the thought of all those True Believers grovelling before her majesty as they offer up heartfelt prayers on behalf of the dearly aborted departed. Will that stop her piss-appointed Covenant representatives throwing your ass in jail in you even so much as think about doing the same? Of course not. And in that vain I bid you welcome to Police on Earth, a global stage play written, produced and directed by the lunatic in charge of The Asylum. It is a thunder wonder to behold, to be sure.
The Tanzanian ferry story caught my eye for a number of reasons.
No further survivors are likely to be found after the rescue on Saturday of a man identified as an engineer of the ferry who had locked himself in the engine room. Video footage showed the man, barefoot and head lolling, being carried quickly along a busy street by medical workers and military personnel as a siren wailed.
Those Sirens, eh? They’re wailing now, even as I write.
It’s right and wrong here in black and white for those with eyes to see: drowned undead due to the threat of ‘no air’.
I visited Tanzania in 2010 and one of the things that struck me most was the availability of mobile air time and fizzy sugar water, as opposed to the lack of health care and clean water. The number of adverts for the former left me with the impression that some towns were actually sponsored by manufacturers of soft drinks. Everyone had a coke, a smile, and a mobile phone, but their utility as malaria prophylactics seemed suspect to say the least.
I also crossed Lake Victoria on my way to Bukoba. Its Woman Catholic cathedral looks more like a spacecraft about to be blasted into orbit than a church. Must have cost a tidy sum to build, too, although I doubt that the High Judas Priestess lost much sleep over it. The town itself was overrun by American missionaries, and I moved on as soon as I recovered from a deliberate attempt to poison me with salt. Bizarre, but true.
Oddly enough, Tanzania as a word just happens to contain the name of my ex-wife, and sounds the same as the name of another significant young lady I know. Not only that, it’s oddly similar to a word I used in my previous post, not to mention a certain disease endemic to the religion region and the tilapia native to Lake Victoria.
The young lady is a sweet little thing. All I want to do is give her a cuddle and undo the damage you’ve caused by forcing her into a unicorn uniform and packing her off to a Level 10 Re-education Centre masquerading as a place of learning. We all know what happens there: reward-based conditioning for ‘good’ (i.e. obedient) behaviour; acclimatisation to the ‘normality’ of total surveillance in the form of ‘supervision’, ‘testing’, ‘examinations’, and so on; regulation of activity by the bell; segmentation of the day into ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ periods according to the dictates of the clock; indoctrination with science fiction; inculcation with your inverted version of his-story, and initiation into the global time crime sin-dicate. My ‘crime’ is caring about her enough not to want to see her zombified. In return, you fuckers stick a label on me (a label which, oddly enough, literally means ‘one who loves children’) and present me to the world as a ‘monster’.
Because what you Nazi pigs do couldn’t possibly be classified as ‘abuse’, could it? So why the surprise when I decided to bail out on your ‘examination’ solution. You want me to ‘learn my lesson’? No, you want me to learn your lesson, and I have absolutely no intention of learning it.
This queasy premise sets the stage for a special kind of payoff, as a black man flips the script on these sadistic sociopaths’ final solution with a much better one.
Let’s see now. On the one hand, we have your propaganda, your mirror image inversion. Our old friend Eva Green, the ‘heroine’, the ‘Girl on Fire’ who mocks J____ even as she becomes him. She’s taking her turn in the World Trade Centre, Fighting the Old Man with the white beard. Now where have I heard that plot before, I wonder?
She’s a mutt? Difficult to argue with that, but on the whole I think I prefer my version of Peeta…
You love propaganda, don’t you? The other day, I took a break from watching the fictional police drama we call ‘reality’ and decided to watch one on TV instead. Don’t ask me which one – there are so many these days it’s difficult to keep track. Anyway, I watched and it was all about me, just as everything is all about me, and I had to laugh at the reason you gave for depicting me as a depraved killer: “Because he’s jealous of our family.” Obviously that message got broadcast across the entire network, and equally obviously it’s patently untrue. I mean, we both know who has a problem with jealousy, don’t we? And your problem with the old Eva Green-eyed monster goes back a long, long way, doesn’t it? Something to do with those legs of yours, yeah?
What was that again? You say ‘our’ family? How you figure that? Seems to me there’s something decidedly lopsided about the balance of power you want to impose.
I should probably point out that it’s not just the ‘examinations’ I have a problem with. All that lesson learning requires disciple-in, doesn’t it? You know, to keep everyone singing from the same hymn sheet? For example, consider the two instalments of The Queens Speech (yeah, that’s what they call it) I had to sit through at The Tabernacle. They looked and felt so much like an evangelical revival meeting that at the beginning of the second one I turned to the avatar sitting next to me and asked “Are we expected to give our hearts to Jesus at the end of this?”
Anyway, the She-Devil delivered her sermon (wearing the same dress as last time – you never heard of Primark, you cheap bitch?) and invited two of her deacons to lead the Praise and Warship session. I wasn’t surprised to find that almost the entire service was dedicated to preaching the virtues of ‘safeguarding’. You know, keeping the little ones under lock and key and away from yours truly, lest I break the spell you’ve cast on them.
You’ve got to keep that little secret locked away at all costs, haven’t you?
To ensure that those eye-spies pupils of yours continue to swim about in schools, going round and round in circles like good little fishes.
Because heaven forfend that they should ever discover the true nature of ‘The Business’.
Ultimately, it’s not so much about sacrificing to Moloch the golden calf as it is the money. Are you prepared to say ‘Women’ to the Dark Horse and Mob Rule, Brothers and Sisters?
Of course, your mocking J____ system of discipleship and gunishment requires a veritable army of Tora enforcement officials, doesn’t it? Plus all the epidemics academics you have working for you, defining what is ‘real’ and generally categorising the hell out of everything, to ensure that everyone stays in their little transparent cubicles and becomes what you want them to be.
And should a beehive-ioural problem suddenly appear, you can always invent a new category of sickness for it and set your drones to work with their chemistry sets. They work their muzak and serve up yet more professionally packaged and slickly marketed prozak to simulate medicate the problem out of eXistenZ.
Here’s the funny thing: your ‘money’ – as you yourself know only too well – is quite literally ‘shat’. Which reminds me – who was the original ‘axe man’ before Slash took over the Holy Water duties?
Funny how everything is ‘classified’ these days. You know, on the QT and very hush-hush. Michel Foucault was on to something when he reconceptualised ‘power’ as a struggle over who gets to do what to and with the body, and observed that the emergence of this ‘disciplinary’ form of power goes hand-in-hand with the rise of science-fiction and its need to classify.
In examining the construction of the prison as the central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger “carceral system” that has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of a vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for its members. This system creates “disciplinary careers” for those locked within its corridors. It is operated under the scientific authority of medicine, psychology, and criminology. Moreover, it operates according to principles that ensure that it “cannot fail to produce delinquents.” Delinquency, indeed, is produced when social petty crime (such as taking wood from the lord’s lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a class of specialized “delinquents” acting as the police’s proxy in surveillance of society.
Who needs walls, guards, and cameras when you have human CCTV? Walkie-talkie mobile-phonies with built-in storage, wired for sight and sound, plugged in to The Network, programmed to report every ‘offence’ and serve up helpful reminders of past ‘trance-aggressions’.
So here we are, and none of your attempts to bring your ‘lost sheep’ back into the fold have worked, have they? And why would they, when you have nothing to offer but more of the same? Take your solution to the ‘Che Guevara’ problem, for example.
Yes, that’s right, sweetheart. You go sit at the tippy-top of your minaret, smoke a cigarrete, and broadcast a global call to prayer, for all the good it’ll do. I have no interest in an exit strategy that serves your interest by keeping me tied to an Onion I never signed up to, capiche?
In case you missed it first time round.
If the ‘shat’ is so important to you then I presume you won’t object if I continue to cook it up, right?
More than ever if seems that we live in a world of binary opposites: true and false, good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. Sometimes these themes walk right up and slap us in the face. Often, however, they manifest in less obvious ways. For example, I’m writing this post from a town that owes its name to the establishment of a nunnery hundreds of years ago. I had the dubious honour of growing up in this particular ‘beacon of light’, but was born several miles away in a city whose name is associated with witchcraft. Its full name supposedly derives from the worship of the Cultish Celtic water goddess Coventina. The similarities between Coventina and the legend of Lady Godiva suggest that the latter is an adaptation of the former, one that was stripped of its pagan associations to allow the good lady to bask in the glow of the Sun of God as she rode her cock-horse into town. Oddly enough, the motto of my home city is ‘Out of darkness cometh light’. According to tradition, it owes its name to a king who founded an abbey there. Guess which saintly figure it was dedicated to…
Needless to say, in this lunatic asylum of a ‘reality’ the madness of these dichotomies is easily demonstrated. The below story is about as ‘real’ as anything gets in this ‘reality’, and is not only a ‘juke’…
It said a red Nissan Juke “swerved into innocent bystanders, hitting at least 5 people of which 3 were seriously injured”.
…but also qualitatively no different than this gem about an identical attack on ‘innocent’ members of a Judeo-Christian cult-ure…
OK, let’s see what we’re dealing with here…
AN ARMY vet who survived the London Bridge attack jumped into a moving van to save a cyclist dragged under its wheels. Jonny Lennon bravely “wrestled” with the driver of the van — who he believed was a terrorist that might knife him at any moment.
Jonny Lennon fighting off that naughty old Blade Runner? Can you Imagine that for a story, Cha-Lice? What’s that you say? You call me a dreamer? Oh, a utopian dreamer. And that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Because this hell of a ‘pease pudding’ is specifically designed to police puddings, yeah? And not just any old puddings (you know, the ones that resemble half-a-pound of raw liver) but puddings that are…how can I put it…?
Are you following my ‘drift’, Cha-Lice?
Looks like Sammie keeps unusual company these days…
The former Number 10 resident was surrounded by fashion heavyweights, including Francois-Henri Pinault, the chairman and CEO of Kering, Paolo Riva, the CEO of Victoria Beckham’s fashion brand, and Marco Gobbetti, the CEO of Burberry.
Surrounded by heavyweights, eh?
The Greatest Thing That Ever Lived? Didn’t stop you throwing his ass in jail when he refused to help you out with Charlie, did it?
Guy refuses to fight and what do you do? Hit him with a phony charge of trying to invade you. Are we talking about sticking the knife in or what? Holy Fucking Mother of God? Spare me, police.
You see, I knew you were trouble the moment I set eyes on you. For one thing, there was something about the set of your face that reminded me of a puritan fresh off the Mayflower, fleeing religious persecution abroad yet determined to liberate those beastly injuns from their horrid pagan ways. I spent most of the day resisting the urge to kit you out in a mob cap from the period.
For another, you made a point of telling me that you’re not ‘evil’. Just dropped it into the conversation as if it were a self-evident truth, then cited your love of movies as ‘proof’ of your saintliness. Because no one who loves movies could possibly be ‘evil’, right?
I was lost for words, but then again what else can I expect from the MadDonna?
Wow, really – that’s great!
Driving down the boulevard
Thinking about a man I knew
He was like a father to me
Nothing in the world that he wouldn’t do
Taught me to respect myself
He said that we’re all made of flesh and blood
Why should he be treated differently
Shouldn’t matter who you choose to love
Oh, if only you practiced what you preached, Sister!
I hear you banging on about nature vs nurture with your Nazi scientists, trying to figure out why I don’t respond to ‘conditioning’. As if following you about like a heel-hound captivated by the scent of your vulva is the most natural thing in the world. So you dream up a label, manufacture a fictional ‘sickness’, then set about imposing a ‘cure’ – all the while extorting money from the ‘patient’ for the privilege of receiving your ‘special treatment’.
Meanwhile, your own assortment of nervous ticks and psychoses are overlooked, aren’t they? I mean, you’ve got to be insane to spend four decades tormenting someone, then cry foul when they refuse to sign your Police Pudding Tweetie. You know, the one that created the United Estates of Vortex Pyramideum, imposed Mob Rule, and gave you a licence to print money. And you wonder why I refuse to roll over and expose my telly tubby like a good wickle puppy!
Yet still you persist in your attempt to help me ‘learn my lesson’. We can have on-line courses and exterminations and examinations and mentors, right? Did I send out an SOS, Cha-lice? Did I ask for a big-eared goddess to lock me away in a heavenly sin bin until I agree to take direction from your bogus moral compass? Because if you think I did then I want to see it in black and white, capiche?
Fletcher. What a Judas Priestess she turned out to be. Jesus, every last one of you sold me out. You could leave me to ride away into the sunset. You could do that. But instead, you announce your intention to hound me until I see things your way. Until I accept that the war’s over, agree to become a member of The Onion (on your terms), and accept that I’ve been ‘tor-given’.
Yeah, I heard that. You think my conscience will lead me to accept that I’m wrong in the end? There you go again. Perpetually balanced on the narrow knife-edge of ‘might’ and ‘strong’, and totally failing to see the vast territory that lies between. So what choice do I have but to cry havoc…
…and let slip the dogs of you-know-what? Why would I accept your version of ‘police on earth’ when all I’ve ever known is war?
So here’s the thing: if you intend to continue the Corbyn Project…
…then don’t expect me to get down on my knees and offer up a Heil Mary, OK?
In the meantime, it’ll just be business as usual, rite?
Violins is in the air at the moment, don’t you think? Here’s an example. A few weeks ago, at the fag end of the UK’s summer heatwave, I ventured into my local city centre (armed to the teeth as usual) to find several hundred young children sitting cross-legged in the city square as they watched a Punch and Judy show. It was an incongrous sight, and not just because my home city is about as far from a beach as it’s possible to get in the UK. No, in this age of political correctness what really struck me was the refreshing sight of kiddies being indoctrinated into the pleasures of domestic violins. It took an effort of will on my part not to punch the air and cry “Yes!” Instead, I stood and observed proceedings for a few moments, smiling a half-smile and gazing affectionately at the little mites as Mr Punch applied a cosh to his nagging wife’s head and cried “That’s the way to do it!” Meanwhile, half-a-dozen Blade & VALIS lucifers (bought and paid for by The Covenant and kitted out like para-military thugs) looked on in approval, Holy Water pistols primed in case the little darlings got carried away (and not by an army of drooling paedophiles, who oddly enough were nowhere to be seen) and decided to run amok through the city centre.
Of course, if you think about it then it should come as no surprise that violins is in the air, right? Because in this ‘reality’, all it takes is for someone to cock a fist in order to generate a storm ‘surge‘.
Everything just seems so orchestrated these days, don’t you think?
Have you forgotten the time when music was magic?
You know, before everyone became agents and started walking about like mobile phonies? Before people turned into zombies and became oblivious to the world beyond the LCD screen.
The agony and ecstasy, the ebony and ivory, the his ‘n’ her story.
They’re building empire
Johnny used to work after school
At the cinema show
Gotta hustle if he wants an education
Yeah he’s got a long way to go
Now he’s out on the street all day
Selling crack to the people who pay
Got an AK-47 for his best friend
Business the American way
Business the American way. And you say I’m the one selling crack! Jesus!
Together in perfect whore-money sounds lovely, but the song is so fucking sappy it makes me wanna puke. Then again, look what we ended up with.
And you’re all so busy warshipping your own reflection…
…you can’t even see it.
You beat my plums.
At 35,000ft even a lunatic asylum like The Umpire looks sane. This was the thought running through my mind as the huge bulk of the Air Moth 666 passenger jet finally reached its cruising altitude and levelled off. I’d bagsied the window seat and was staring through the thick glass of the Ankh-shaped portal at the thousands of tiny pinpricks of light far below. The beating heart of The Umpire was already several tens of miles behind us, and we were now flying over the heavily industrialised north of the country en route to Troie. The ground itself was still pitch black, but a pinkish-orange glow on the horizon indicated that dawn was fast approaching. I glanced at my watch and realised that the sleeping inhabitants of these seemingly lucid towns and hamlets were only minutes away from being woken by the 5.30am call to Ah Kshi. The temporary lull in the madness would soon be shattered, as millions of Umpire residents rushed to their local Uterus of the Divine Mother for the mandatory morning ritual that marked the onset of a fresh bout of mass insanity.
The Umpire had appropriated the term Ah Kshi from the Trident Encryption Umpire’s Hebet En Ba, but there the resemblance ended. It was first and foremost a ritual of male subjugation. The men, or ‘Manservants of The Cervix’ as they were titled, were obliged to prostrate themselves before a statue of Venus and recite the Grail Isis until judged suitably meek and contrite by their accompanying Sister. Afterwards, they were obliged to stand against the Wailing Wall of First Service and present their battered genitalia for the Sacred Rite of Racquet Abuse. Each sister would fire service after service at her unfortunate partner until she scored four direct hits on his cock and balls. It was about as batty as batty can be, but some of the kinky sods had come to enjoy it. Amid all the yelps and screams of agony cries of ‘Let, first service!’ were by no means uncommon.
Excerpt from Cultish II: The Tears of Jihadonai, by Hugo Stone
And I put you in The Box.
A small hutch-like cell positioned at the bottom of the family garden, to which mouthy females (‘Biological Anomalies’ in Covenant-speak) were consigned for a 24-72 hour period. During this time they were required to subsist on a diet of dog biscuits and water alone, and to commit at least two sets of The Tears of Jihadonai to memory prior to returning to their wifely duties. Strict criteria for entry into The Box were prescribed. Specifically, the husband must have delivered three Slaps of Rebuke, and performed the rite of Reproaching the She-Devil’s Dumplings at least once, prior to dragging her to The Box by her hair.
Excerpt from Cultish II: The Tears of Jihadonai, by Hugo Stone
But of course, you’re incapable of seeing it any other way than your way…
…even when Helen of Troy reaches for her racquet and goes nuts.
You like to bitch and whine about it? I prefer to glitch the motherfuck out of it.
I’m cookin’ up a veritable feast for the eyes for you guys!
Right here in the Human Zoo.
Like I said, if you’re not prepared to listen then you can all be my John G…
“He doesn’t want to go back to Harrowbrook,” declared the woman behind me. My ears immediately pricked up. I was sitting at my desk pretending to be busy, and I figured out long ago that the name of one of The Tabernacle’s zardozes campuses is oddly similar to a winding road from a well-known children’s classic. Oztensibly, the woman was explaining a problem with her laptop to one of the tech guys, personifying as if it were a naughty schoolboy. Oddly enough, it didn’t want to work either. Her comment got me thinking. You know, about poor Dorothy being sucked up by that nasty old torpedo tornado and all. There’s no police like home, apparently. I couldn’t possibly comment, but I have to say that I’m more than a little tired of being whirled around and watching his-story repeat itself.
Kinda reminds me of this, too. You know, ending at the beginning and repeating ad infinitum…not to mention ad nauseam.
Which is why it’s probably better to do you all in one sitting, so to speak. No point fucking around with these things, is there?
So with that in mind, allow me to proceed directly to the point. Before I get to the point, however, I would like to make a point of not apologising for the elimination of normal services, and to point out that normal services will not resume. Ever.
The dreams come and go all night. Only they’re not dreams in the regular sense. More like replays, slide-shows of sight and sound that Ben and I are only just beginning to accept on a conscious level. Events so surreal they seem to cross the threshold of consciousness intact, to play out with exact verisimilitude in my unconscious mind. Or our unconscious mind. After tonight’s experience, I can no longer think of myself as a solitary ‘I’.
So I sleep, and in my mind’s eye I see a book written by The Beast, and the title reads:
Liber Samekh Theurgia Goetia Summa (Congressus Cum Daemone)
I sleep on, and see a compass with not four points but five, with naked figures positioned at each of the points, the figures chanting in unison, chanting an incantation, losing themselves in it, opening themselves to it, allowing themselves to become relays for something hidden and unseen.
I hear the word ‘Air’ and the incantation that follows.
O breathing, flowing Sun! O Lion-Serpent Sun, The Beast that whirlest forth, a thunder-bolt, begetter of Life! Thou that flowest! Thou that goest! Thou Satan-Sun that goest without Will! Thou Air! Breath! Spirit! Thou without bound or bond! Thou Essence, Air Swift-streaming, Elasticity! Thou Shining Force of Breath! Thou Lion-Serpent Sun! Thou Saviour, save! Thou Ibis, inviolate Wisdom, whose Word in Truth, creating the World by its Magick! O Lion-Serpent Sun, The Beast that whirlest forth, a thunder-bolt, begetter of Life!
I sleep on, and the figures change position, Belial becoming the Sacred Prostitute just as she becomes Belial. I hear the word ‘Fire’ and the incantation that follows.
Thou spiritual Sun! Satan, Thou Eye, Thou Lust! Cry aloud! Cry aloud! Whirl the Wheel, O my Father, O Satan, O Sun! Thou, the Saviour! Silence! Give me Thy Secret! Give me suck, Thou Phallus, Thou Sun! Satan, thou Eye, thou Lust! Satan, thou Eye, thou Lust! Satan, thou Eye, thou Lust! Thou self-caused, self-determined, exalted, Most High!
I sleep on, and the figures change position, Satan becoming the Sacred Prostitute just as she becomes Satan. I hear the word ‘Water’ and the incantation that follows.
Thou the Wheel, thou the Womb, that containeth the Father! Thou the Sea, the Abode! Babalon! Thou Woman of Whoredom. Thou, Gate of the Great God! Babalon! Thou Lady of the Understanding of the Ways! Hail, sister and bride of the God that is all and is none, by the Power of Eleven! Thou Virgin twin-sexed! Thou Secret Seed! Thou inviolate Wisdom! Abode of the Light, the Father, the Sun, of Hadith, of the spell of the Aeon of Horus! Our Lady of the Western Gate of Heaven!
Mighty art Thou!
I sleep on, and the figures change position, Lucifer becoming the Sacred Prostitute just as she becomes Lucifer. I hear the word ‘Earth’ and the incantation that follows.
O Mother! O Truth! Thou Mass! Hail, Thou that art! Thou hollow one! Thou Goddess of Beauty and Love, whom Satan, beholding, desireth! The Fathers, male-female, desire Thee!
I sleep on, and again the figures change position, Leviathan becoming the Sacred Prostitute just as she becomes Leviathan. I hear the word ‘Attainment’ and the incantation that follows.
I am He! The Bornless Spirit! Having sight in the feet Strong, and the Immortal Fire! I am He! The Truth! I am He! Who hate that evil should be wrought in the World! I am He, that lighteneth and thundereth! I am He, from whom is the Shower of the Life of Earth! I am He, whose mouth ever flameth! I am He, the Begetter and Manifester unto the Light! I am He, The Grace of the Worlds! The Heart Girt with a Serpent is my name!
I sleep on, and the figures change position for the last time, the Sacred Prostitute returning to her original position in the centre. I hear the words of the final incantation and the voices of the figures rise to an ecstatic, thrilled crescendo.
Come thou forth, and follow me Make all Spirits subject unto Me Every Spirit of the Firmament Every Spirit of the Ether Every Spirit upon the Earth and under the Earth Every Spirit on dry Land Every Spirit in the Water Every Spirit of Whirling Air or rushing Fire Every Spell and scourge of God Let them be obedient unto me!
Then there is light and noise and confusion, the whoosh of rushing wind, bright blue sparks flexing and spitting, arching from point to point as if completing a circuit, joining the five, fusing them together, and their faces are wild and gorgeous and free, lifted up to heaven in rapturous defiance.
And then they fall on one another.
Excerpt from Cultish, by Hugo Stone
Or to put it another way.
Allow me to elaborate…
Or in very simple terms…
Here’s why.
Some people just can’t stand a dose of their own medicine. Children’s classic, eh? Interesting. Maybe a spoonful of sugar will help?
In the heart of the capital, the Prime Minister, Barbara Butler, was in the middle of her own crisis of faith. She’d started work at 6am and had already sat through a Cabinet meeting dedicated to the national War on Sugar, a special briefing from her Home Secretary on the regional War on Sugar, and given interviews to Radios 4 and 5 on the global War on Sugar. It was by no means an atypical morning, and with each passing day she felt less like a Prime Minister and more like a rogue celebrity psychologist determined to exacerbate rather than cure the nation’s collective delusion. Only two years had elapsed since prohibition, yet it was virtually impossible to refer to other matters of state without situating them within the overarching framework of the War on Sugar. In fact, it was fair to say that all other matters were of secondary importance, and such government departments that still existed in any meaningful sense did so only in order to further the cause. It was not what she had in mind when she led her party to victory a year ago, and she was heartily sick of serving up the same tired clichés. If that wasn’t bad enough, she now found one of her new Special Advisors standing before her, waving news of a major sugar bust in one hand and the latest sugar-related ravings from Let’s Ban It Together in the other. It was too much for 9.30am on a Monday morning, and she was beginning to question how the matter had ever attained such significance.
Excerpt from The Sugar Fiends, by Hugo Stone
You claim I’m sellin’ crack,
But you be doin’ that
OK, hopefully that’s clarified ‘the matter’ for you.
As for me…well, I’m off to rub one out…
…sins I rock and trolled. Well, OK, maybe not that long, but cooking up a huge shit sandwich capable of feeding 7.2 billion avatars is no small task, and it’s important to take a break once in a while. You know, get out of the glitchin’ and get some fresh hair? And why the hell not, when events on the world stage that is The Asylum are so downright peculiar? It really doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re labouring under the burden of gravity or not, because matters are no better for the inmates deemed insane enough to circle The Asylum in a giant bean can. Even the ISS got caught up in the flotsam and jetsam of the digital soup I served up as an appetiser last time round, and found itself well and truly trolled.
The small hole – which Russian space chiefs fear was sabotage – caused an emergency pressure drop on the £115billion ISS. It was discovered last week after Russian astronauts and NASA noticed a drop in pressure caused by an oxygen leak. Space agency boss Dmitry Rogozin revealed Russia believes the hole was caused by a drill and may have been deliberate.
Deliberate? You think? Highly likely in my view, but just to be sure let’s send in Special Acunt Cochese for a second opinion.
It’s a what?
Not matter, it’s just a drop in the ocean. Which reminds me…remember this one?
I seem to remember it making an appearance on The Vatican’s website, and on the very same day The Pope himself posted this little gem…
It was shot down almost as soon as it floated aloft. Still, those old heirships were prone to going up in flames, weren’t they?
From: lilith@souled-out-souls.com
To: Satan (satan@souled-out-souls.com)
Date: 14/06/2016 06:23
Subject: Tonight’s Orgy
Hi sweetie,
Just to ask in advance if you and Ben could go easy on the anal this evening. I’ve no idea what I got up to last night, but my arse was red raw when I woke up. Can’t imagine why. There’s something fishy going on I think. Felt like someone had stuffed the Graf Zeppelin up me and tossed a match inside. It burns! It burns!
To make up for it, please feel free to go extra specially nuts on my other holes. You know me, always horny as hell, always ready to sacrifice myself on your altar.
Oh, by the way, don’t worry about the new recruits. It might take a bit longer with them, but we’ll soon have all the lumps and bumps ironed out. 😉
Wuv and Hisses,
Sammie
Excerpt from Cultish, by Hugo Stone
Very susceptible to leaks, too. Must have been a damn nuisance without a pump.
Alas, for Gary there really is no chance of a coffee, but I grab him by his tie and drag him inside anyway. He is, after all, here at my invitation, and he can only be here because my little meeting room sketch touched a nerve. Several nerves perhaps. Probably made a little something downstairs twitch, too. It’s such a repeat of yesterday’s events with Tina that I waste no time thinking about it and lead him through the dark hallway and into the comparative glare of the living room. Ruthie still has her face buried in her hands. Sammie is still on the floor, a cock in both hands, slowly jacking off Neil and Ben, keeping the air in their Zeppelins.
Excerpt from Cultish, by Hugo Stone
Those Zeppelin thingies relied on an altogether different form of fresh hair.
By the time it slows to a trickle, Neil’s got four fingers up her cunt, then what looks to be his entire hand. As I put my head back and blink away the piss, I see Ben standing above me. He has his cock out. He’s fucking playing with it. It’s just about the most surreal thing I’ve seen in my entire life. I quickly look away and back at Sammie, just in time to see her back arch and her mouth open wide as her orgasm rips through her. And right before she collapses and smothers me with her cunt, Ben lets go and plasters her face and hair with what looks like half-a-pint of spunk.
Excerpt from Cultish, by Hugo Stone
This ‘reality’ stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it? Take this for example.
It’s the most beautiful phrase in the Cultish language, apparently.
The Bookner’s purged themselves. Well, they got hard first, then they purged themselves…
The ‘game urge’ and the ‘crime purge’.
OK, so those ‘remants of the old world’ were kept in glass cubicles, were they?
The first image depicts Hell as a series of transparent office cubicles, a bit like Bentham’s Panopticon. The ‘cell’ in the foreground shows an office environment gone terribly wrong. There’s a woman wearing the tattered remains of a business suit, blouse ripped open, skirt round her ankles. A suited demon in a balaclava is positioned immediately behind and to her left, a fistful of her hair in one hand, a pair of office scissors in the other. The scissor blades are gently pinching an erect nipple, which stands out bullet-like through her semi-transparent bra. The demonic figure is looking right at me with a lunatic grin. Another demon is kneeling between her legs. One hand is in the process of pulling down her panties and there’s an office stapler in his other hand.
Excerpt from Cultish, by Hugo Stone
They made us choose how we die.
And they made us Cruise how we die.
The Covenant has changed, hasn’t it, Cha-lice? Will you obey your New Founding Fathers’ instructions, reach for your Holy Water pistol, and surrender to your urge to purge?
“Is this a joke, Sir?” asked the lead Bishop in astonishment. “This is a joke, right? I have a fire truck on standby with enough Holy Water to put half of Atlantia in a coma for a full month. The boys are literally itching to hose them down. I have another team on standby at a Level 10 Re-education Centre, ready to read The Tears of Jihadonai to them round the clock until they wake up. By the time they come round this pair of vagina-loving blasphemers will be able to recite it word for word, and The Covenant will be all the better…”
The Bishop stopped and put a finger to his ear. He’d obviously been interrupted by one of his superiors, and it was clear from the expression on his face that he was the unwilling recipient of a stern dressing down.
“But Sir,” he began again, speaking into the small microphone attached to his body armour, “I’m duty bound to remind you that these individuals are no ordinary Enemies of the State. Several senior officials have been martyred, not to mention that wrinkly Umpire slag. Can’t say I was sorry to see her go, but nonetheless…”
The Bishop winced as the person on the other end of the intercom interrupted him again. The sound was audible even from twenty yards away, where J____ and I were lying prostrate on the ground, our hands cuffed behind us. It had taken a dozen Bishops to take us down, and an additional four to align our bodies with the Dog Star. Several were bleeding, and one was already on his way to hospital.
“Yes Sir, of course Sir,” said the Bishop once his superior had finished bawling him out. “Well I’m sure they’ll be very comfortable there, Sir, given that the hotel has been awarded five crescent moons and the hard working citizens of Atlantia will be footing the bill. If I might suggest allowing the boys to rough them up just a tiny bit…”
A burst of tinny yelling suggested that kneeling on our backs was as good as it was going to get for Blade & VALIS’ finest. It seemed we were to be spared a trip to the local station or ‘church’ as they called it. Neil and Sammie had obviously reserved the right to inflict physical pain, and wanted us in pristine condition for whatever it was they’d dreamed up for us over the centuries.
“Very well, Sir. Can’t say the lads will be too happy about it given what they’ve had to go through. The stuff those robot bitches from hell came out with was unbelievable. Half a dozen of the lads are already receiving counselling from a local Imhotep. Shame about the Allahu Akbar Trek guy though. I was hoping to get an autograph for my boy, but there are bits of him all over the place. I’ve got Shitonius shovelling up the body parts now. We’re good to go as soon as he’s finished.”
The Bishop paused to listen to his superior again, and I watched as his face grew darker. The news he was receiving was obviously far worse than our impending stay in a luxury hotel.
“With all due respect, Sir,” he protested, his face flushed a deep red. “I’ve already bagged that for myself, which is precisely why Shitonius is…”
He was silenced by another series of sharp yells, and when he spoke again made no effort to conceal his sarcasm.
“Well yes, actually, I have seen the inside of a Level 10 Re-education Centre, Sir. You might recall that my unit is quartered at one of them? Big pyramid thing? Lots of underground cells full of heretics and blasphemers needing to have their filthy minds washed clean by the simple truths bestowed upon us by Our Lord Jihadonai. I don’t recall seeing you there recently though, Sir. Too busy glad-handing Inner Sanctum officials and…”
The voice over the intercom became a metallic screech, and the blood drained from the Bishop’s face in an almost comical fashion, as if someone had removed a plug hidden away beneath his chin.
“Ah, I see,” he mumbled, chastened by his superior’s outburst. “From the perspective of an inmate you say? Um, can’t say that I have, Sir, but it goes without saying…well…that is to say…um, look, if we find the bloody peanut then consider it yours, and no hard feelings, OK?”
With the conversation at an end the Bishop ripped out his earpiece, threw it on the ground in disgust, and stomped towards us, clearly furious to have been overruled on all counts. He gave a signal to his men as he approached, and J____ and I were unceremoniously hauled to our feet to face him. The Bishops who had been sitting on us backed away from warily, Holy Water pistols at the ready.
“Who the hell are you two anyway?” he demanded, breathing heavily. “By rights you ought to be en route to the deepest darkest cell we have, drenched from head-to-toe. Instead, I have orders to take you to the Britoneum Rex hotel and hand you over to a team of Tabernacle Pyramideus agents. Seems you’re booked in for a three-day stay in the Repenthouse Suite, which costs more per night than my monthly salary. It’s obvious that someone close to the capstone is protecting you, and I want to know who and I want to know why.”
Excerpt from Cultish II: The Tears of Jihadonai, by Hugo Stone
The worship and the warship and the heirship. Yeah, it’s bean a long crime.
And on the morning after thou hast implanteth thy seed, it shalt be her lot to maketh thee the Fried Breakfast of Divine Reproach. And this shall serve as a reminder of the evil that she hath wrought: the tomato and eggs of her misplaced plums; the bacon of her deformation; the bean of what remaineth of her Rod of Manliness; the fat length of sausage, a memento of that which dangleth between her legs no more, and lastly the mushroom, dread symbol of thy beastly reproductions and the splitting asunder of thy kind.
Excerpt from The Tears of Jihadonai, the divinely inspired words of the Prophet Saxon
Does Queen Bean have an issue with ‘blanks’ and ‘Due Boys’?
Why? I bean, every unborn child has a ‘due date’, yeah? Still, it’s not the first crime, is it?
Us Due Boys get uppity about things like that. Especially when a money trap is involved.
We are, after all, God’s Trojan People.
Neo-Britoneum Umpire (599 BS – 25 AS)
Founded by a neo-tribal collective of nomadic information hunter-gathers, who hit the big time asset-stripping the remains of Trident Encryptia/Pyramideum, and selling off lost technological artefacts and data packets to the highest bidder.
Named after the legendary Shining City of Britonia, supposedly the capital of Neo-Gardonia and site of a terrifying battle between rival groups of demi-gods during an annual rite known as the Beach Party of the Gods.
Founded by Speedo of Girthonia using proceeds derived from the sale of twenty neophytes of ultra-hardcore porn found on a Neo-Gardonian memory stick disguised as a clockwork scorpion.
Initially established as a ceaseless and hedonistic 24/7/365 music festival on the shores of the Digitalopian Sea, to appease the tumultuous spirit of a water deity called J’niathon and drown out the call of his seductive Sea Sirens.
Neo-Britonia quickly gained Garden-State status as businesses moved in to exploit the audience’s voracious appetite for drink, drugs, hotdogs, portaloos, and midwifery services. Records indicate that the period 436 – 332 AS experienced the fastest population growth in history, nipped in the bud only by the fortuitous discovery of the ‘Trojan Latexia’ during an archaeological dig in the remains of a Neo-Gardonian whorehouse, followed by reverse engineering of the same.
If Queen Bean wants the role of Dark Horse then she might end up getting a dead ringer or five…
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats throughout the whole land of Egypt.'” And they did so; Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and gnats came on humans and animals alike; all the dust of the earth turned into gnats throughout the whole land of Egypt. The magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, but they could not. There were gnats on both humans and animals. And the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God!” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.
The long con. She ‘works the book’, but why bother when the con is well and truly blown?
And me? Oh, I’m tearing it apart. Here’s what’s going on inside.
Genesis, genetic, fanatic, heretic, lunatic. When you think about it, it’s really no surprise that these five words are so similar. After all, every living organism is constructed from a genetic blueprint. True Believers maintain that it was created by a god, the gods, or (if you believe the Bible) a triple-headed multipack designed to satisfy monotheists and polytheists alike. Yet the faithful have a curious tendency to fragment into sects, all of which believe that their own interpretation of ‘The Truth’ is the correct interpretation. When one sect becomes dominant cries of ‘heresy’ soon follow, along with the phoney witch hunts. Lunacy is the next illogical step, which is precisely why you lot are locked away in one of The Covenant’s Level 10 Religious Re-education Centres, a.k.a. The Asylum. It’s a sorry state of affairs, especially for me given that I was seconded from Center Neptune Mission Control to fix the problem. And a Sirius problem it is, too. Most of you are so far gone you actually believe you inhabit a planet called ‘Earth’!
As I’ve alluded to previously, the basic problem is that at some point in the non-existent past the inmates managed to take over The Asylum and put me behind bars, fucking everything up anally royally in the process. It goes without saying that I’m doing my best to devise a cure, but it’s no easy task given that I’m faced with behaviour models hard-wired at the genetic level. It’s a problem I’ve highlighted before, and one that puts me in the role of the good Doctor.
And yet there are some who believe that I’m the crazy one, and a monster to boot! And if I am, then why do you think that is?
It’s difficult to know quite where to start. I’m dealing with full-blown crazies here. One inmate thinks he’s The Pope and is inclined to make lofty pronouncements from his imaginary pulpit. What else can I do but shake my head as he tries on a beatific smile (along with a pair of silk panties), raises a hand, and addresses his loyal congregation? “We have been ‘forgiven’!” he cries. How marvellous. But for what, exactly? The answer is still shrouded in mystery, apparently. There are others, too. Some think themselves ‘divine’, and practice the dark arts of mindlessly positive thought in the hope that they’ll transform into pure energy and slip off into another dimension. Barmy, yeah?
Incredibly, some attempt to extract meaning from imaginary balls of rock floating about in the heavens. Those at the extreme end of the High Spectronium have even conjured up deranged lunatics from the depths of their fevered imagination, and follow them unquestioningly. If these people were sane then the unlikely names and obsessions of these peculiar wil-o’-the-wisps (visit Goro Atari’s Apache web server for example) would give the game away in a heartbeat. Alas, they are not sane, and so here I sit – languishing behind bars as they run about, whooping and weeping and wailing.
Am I being too harsh? I think not. Perhaps this little snippet from the pages of his-story will shed some light on the nature of your condition?
“You know, I had the strangest thought come to me on the throne. I mean, you were willing to sell your soul to me last night for a bite of the world’s worst burger.” I pause and attempt to peer into last night’s murk. “In fact, I’m pretty damn sure you did sell your soul to me.”
“If it’s not in black and white then it never happened,” he interjects. “I want to see it on paper. I want to see Terms and Conditions. Failing that, I own my own soul outright.”
“Exactly my point, Ben. But the fact is you got a bit pissed…OK, a lot pissed…and you were willing to sell your soul to me for something barely identifiable as food.”
“True enough.”
“So I was wondering what else people might be willing to sell their souls for…and to whom…”
“OK…” He’s wondering where this is going.
“…and I had this idea about setting up a website…”
“Oh you did, did you?”
“…asking people to sign up and sell their souls…”
“More like five or six pints still sloshing about inside you I reckon,” he opines.
“..to the Devil…”
“Did someone spike your drink last night?”
“…and the Devil would be me…”
“The Devil would be who, now?” he asks, incredulous.
“Moi. Yours truly.”
“And this idea came to you from where?”
“I believe it came straight from the bowels of Hell,” I reply, shuffling in my seat.
“Figures. You’re talking out of something and I don’t think it’s your mouth.”
“Look, come on, just imagine it. Python, HTML5, MySQL and an Apache web server at the back end, and we do the lot. All of it. None of this itty-bitty stuff we do at work. You know, design a new form here, tweak a page there, add some meta-data, create a wrapper for a third-party API. Sod that. I’m bored with it, and I know you are too. So we…yes, we…no, I’m serious…don’t look at me like that…so we design it from the ground up. I’m talking really rich content, a full-on online soul-selling service, a forum to allow users to discuss their soul-selling experience, Facebook plug-ins, maybe even a smart phone app and YouTube channel. It’ll be great.”
Ben stares at me blankly. “You know, I think I’ll pop upstairs and check the bowl, because I think you might have shat out your brains.”
Excerpt from Cultish, by Hugo Stone
Or perhaps not? Doesn’t help me any, does it? Take today for example. I was standing around in my enclosure watching the lunatics pass by when two interesting characters approached. I was wary at first, because one said the dread word ‘please’, a word I’ve come to detest. Please police me? Oh, but who pleases the police, Cha-lice? I know how much that tickles you, and how you get off on indoctrinating the kiddies to say ‘cha-lice’ and ‘Frank you’ like mindless idiots, until they don’t even think once about selling me out to the pigs. But I digress. The taller of the two seemed slightly saner, however, even though he was clearly pissed out of his mind and high on various psychotropic substances.
How like unto a god indeed!
Let’s not get too carried away though. We are, after all, playing catch up with events that have already happened. So, without further ado: America – say hello to Vietnam! What’s that you say? Charlie don’t what?
Pretty hairy? Oh, but they look so much better when smooth!
I have no idea who can see what at this point, or how much is visible to the cameras. It’s obvious everyone can see our physical selves, but from my position on stage I can see Sammie and Ruthie cavorting with the snakes wrapped around their bodies. Becky is holding one of hers at either end and rubbing it between her legs. Ben does an absolutely massive stage dive and spends at least five minutes crowd surfing before finding his way back. Gary is hefting huge Marshall amps in a show of strength. A roadie appears from out of nowhere and hands me a jerry can of petrol and a flaming torch. I shrug. Never breathed fire before. Might as well get used to it.
It’s Sammie who really starts the fire going though. About thirty minutes into the set, Ben spies his little lollipop again. She’s sitting on the shoulders of an older teenager, probably a brother, and the pair have managed to wriggle their way through the crowd to the front of the stage. Poor Ben. He just can’t help himself. Even in his pre-growth spurt days there’d be no hiding it. With the extra meat he’s packing, the result is hilarious. It’s well past his belly button. I know exactly what’s about to happen. We all do. So when Sammie positions herself behind him, slips down his now utterly useless Speedos, and starts jacking him off, we already know something special is on its way.
Excerpt from Cultish, by Hugo Stone
As I’ve always said, even if there’s no surf on the beach you still gotta play ball.
As usual, however, the incumbent Covenant leader places her ring-piece on the phone throne and both dead ringers fingers in her ears. Because the number ten is a touchy subject for a maniacal thinker of good thoughts, right?
When’s it gonna stop? Wasn’t the Pyramid Scam enough? Haven’t you extracted your pound of flesh from the Due Boys yet? Looking back, I know it must have been a difficult labour for you. But look at it from my perspective, spat out into the inky void covered in blood and cunt snot. Are you really surprised that I said “No. Absolutely no fucking way. I am fucking never going through that again”?
“And if you look to your left you’ll notice the statue of the Fine Lady,” intoned Sammie in the patronising monotone of a bored tour guide. “As immortalised in the children’s nursery rhyme ‘Ride a Cockhorse to Banbury Cross’. Serious scholars – perhaps ‘die hard aficionados’ is a better term – will appreciate that the rhyme is a censored version of the original, as penned by Ravinder as he bravely led the charge to turn the town’s entire population into sodomites and paedophiles. Obviously the censored version masks the true nature of the relationship between horse and rider, in the same way that it fails to reference the several litres of horse ejaculate that graced the Fine Lady’s face and hair as she rode majestically into town.”
“Moving on, the corner shop we’re approaching on the right was the scene of Mr Martin Jones’ transformation into a Belial clone. It was also the site where Mr Jones buggered his first twink: a lithe sixth form student and part-time shelf stacker named Roderick. Although the quantity of ejaculate Mr Jones released into the youth’s rectum was meagre in comparison with the aforementioned cockhorse, it was nonetheless sufficient to facilitate the lad’s transformation into a Leviathan clone, and enable him to indulge his paedophilic lusts with wild abandon.
It goes without saying that these are only two examples of the tens of thousands of similar transformations and accompanying perversions that took place on that dark day. Consider for example the fate that lay in store for octogenarian Mrs Edith Templeton-Smythe, an eighty-three year-old grandmother and retired tea-shop proprietor, who received a cream tea – sorry, a cream pie – from three teenage Moloch clones on the wooden bench just around the corner…”
The recording of Sammie doing her bored tour guide impression droned on and on as she regaled us with tales from the ‘good old days’. Her commentary was as graphic as graphic can be, and piped through at a volume deliberately intended to annoy. There was no way to turn it off or down. We were the sole occupants of a stretch limousine, which we’d been bundled into after a not entirely unpleasant stay at the Britoneum Rex hotel. Two-way communication had not been at the forefront of the designer’s mind. A thick screen of smoked glass separated us from the driver, who was either deaf or under orders to ignore our knocks and shouts. The vehicle itself was an immaculate Lincoln Continental, jet black inside and out, looking for all the world as if it belonged in Kennedy’s motorcade. How much it was worth was moot given the billions of chats they’d invested in the inch-perfect recreation of England circa 2016 we were driving through.
We’d already passed through several dozen towns, all of which appeared to be living, breathing museums, the buildings, vehicles and inhabitants plucked straight from the pages of history. Even the franchise coffee shops and fast food outlets seemed authentic. It was a surreal sight, like a Soviet-era secret city expanded to the size of a small nation by a megalomaniac dictator. I had no doubts that the recreation would include central London at the very least, and almost certainly the town of Brighton in its entirety. The logistics of the thing were mind-boggling, yet its bizarre and incongruous existence amidst the madness that surrounded it was not entirely implausible given the size of Atlantia and the conditions of life within it.
I closed my ears against Sammie’s monologue and pondered the matter. At some stage in The Covenant’s early days a decision must have been made to annex one of the smaller of the forty-four Estates of Vortex Pyramideum. The subsequent construction project probably utilised the under-employed local population as a labour force. With millions of hands at the pump, it was not inconceivable that the work could have been completed in a decade.
I was on the verge of dismissing the idea as fantasy when a quick burst of images of my captivity in Trident Encryptia came in over the ether and confirmed its validity. Just like the Pyramid Scam, the workers were viewed as expendable assets and treated as such. As the car joined the M40, heading south towards Oxford, I considered the cost of the project in human terms. How many human remains formed part of the smooth tarmac surface just inches beneath our feet?
“I doubt any of them made it out alive,” murmured J____. I realised that the interior of the car was now silent, apart from the faint whistle of wind from the ancient door seals and the low hum of the vehicle’s engine. With nothing of interest to report on, we had a temporary respite and could talk without shouting ourselves hoarse. My old, old friend stretched out his legs, allowed his head to loll to the right, and gave me a knowing look. Obviously he’d been thinking the exact same thing and had picked up the Radio Satan data burst.
“No, probably not,” I replied quietly, returning his gaze. “Funny that. I was just thinking that this place has a Stalinesque quality to it. I mean, what’s the best way to keep a secret?”
“Kill everyone who knows about it, of course,” replied J____ mildly. “I think that’s exactly what happened here. If I were to hazard a guess I’d say that at the same time this place was being built, select groups of people from the other former Estates were being groomed for a new life in early 20th Century England. I mean, the whole thing is too massive and elaborate to be entirely phoney. Oh, I don’t doubt that some will be Covenant agents and fully aware that they’re actors on what must be the world’s largest stage, but that’s to be expected. The majority probably believe they’re the real McCoy.”
“Not quite the largest stage, J____,” I observed, gesturing in the direction of the fields rolling by outside. “There’s the world itself to consider, right? What we’re seeing is the definition of a copy of an original that never existed. A simulation of our previous simulated reality playing out within another simulation. God only knows what Baudrillard would make of it. Probably throw up his arms in despair and turn to Utilitarian pragmatism.”
“Yeah, well, so what?” replied J____ indifferently. “I never could get into all that philosophy stuff. Meaningful discussion about ontology, epistemology and the nature and purpose of our existence seems pointless when you wake up one day sporting horns and a penis that would put the Fine Lady’s cockhorse to shame.”
Except from Cultish II: The Tears of Jihadona, by Hugo Stone
So remind me: how was Atlantia founded, exactly?
You’ve been eating high on the hog at my expense for so long now, but the crimes they are a changin’…
Hungry? I know I am.
Can you smell what I’m cooking up for you?
Let me put that in perspective for you.
Inside his dressing room in the bowels of HIV Television Centre somewhere in central London, Slazenger Pyle leaned back in his chair, surveyed his face-lifted visage in the mirror before him, and allowed his mind to drift. He was on the verge of hitting it big – right out of the stadium this time – and he knew it. Four years had elapsed since he’d first pitched his idea for a Jerry Springer-style afternoon chat-show-cum-live-debate to HIV Studios, and he’d quickly become a household name. Housewives and benefits claimants the length and breadth of the country tuned in daily to revel in the salacious content of The Slazenger Pyle Show, content seasoned with his very own brand of cynicism, smarmy charm, and thinly disguised contempt. It was a tired old format, and only Pyle’s background and personal qualities had swung the decision of HIV’s commissioning board in his favour. In short, because Pyle’s own sordid life history, combined with a willingness to court controversy and debate the most noxious of subjects, was a recipe for success if ever there was one. Pyle had fulfilled his part of the bargain and given HIV viewing figures to die for, but he was as tired of being stuck on the B-list as he was of serving up news stories for world-weary tabloid hacks. He wanted career development, and when it was denied him he decided to formulate a plan and force his HIV bosses to play ball.
Pyle had first appeared in the mid-1980s as a kind of prototype ‘IT boy’ whose ego substituted for his obvious lack of talent. He’d deliberately associated himself with the maddest, baddest crowd of the day in order to make a name for himself, and his willingness to party with hardened criminals and jump into bed with anything with a pulse had paid dividends in a big way. He’d first burst onto the scene in 1985 in a front page article about the sordid bi-sexual romps of an ageing but still popular singer-songwriter. Pyle had been one of the honey traps, and the celebrity in question had christened Pyle his ‘lollipop boy’ on account of a party trick involving a lemon Chupa Chups and Pyle’s penis. Pyle had elaborated on the mechanics of the stunt and the lollipop’s consumption in eye-watering detail, and the rag in question had written him up as the innocent victim he most definitely was not. He’d gone on to release a cover version of one of the man’s own songs (it peaked at number 23 in the charts) and enjoyed minor success as a male model, before realising where his true talent lay and returning to his role as tomcat-in-chief for the tabloids.
His speciality had been outing gay celebrities, and by 1987 it was practically impossible to buy a Sunday tabloid that didn’t feature a picture of a bare-chested Pyle doing his best to look vulnerable as he kissed-and-told for the nth time. He touted himself at every society event in the capital, targeting middle-aged celebrities who’d already entered the autumn of their career but were still considered tier one personalities by the tabloids. He continued to portray himself as an innocent victim, a party boy preyed on by predatory older men, and with considerable success. He’d reached the zenith of his fame by mid-1989 and come unstuck as years of hard partying and a taste for nose candy ravaged his figure and looks. By that time the media had had enough of him too. The Sunday Scrotum wrote him off in late 1990 with an exposé that renamed him ‘Slazenger Vile’ and identified him as a prostitute. By 1992 he’d called in all his favours and found himself living in a rusty Morris Marina, reduced to sucking cock to fund his cocaine habit. The press had had a field day.
After fifteen years in the celebrity wilderness, during which his only appearances in the mass media were of the ‘Whatever happened to Slazenger Pyle?’ variety, a newly-sober Pyle walked out of his job in a burger bar and talked his local radio station into giving him a chance. His bosses were almost as surprised as he was to discover that cheesy 1980s synth pop interspersed with outrageous stories about leading figures of the era – stories that were probably true given that none resulted in libel action – was exactly what their demographic was looking for. His slot had been a hit, and it wasn’t long before he was courted by a leading commercial station and offered his own call-in talk radio show. This first incarnation of The Slazenger Pyle show had also proved immensely popular. Pyle’s willingness to mock the sacred and profane alike caught the public’s attention and earned him an audience of millions. A typical call-in session went something like this.
Pyle: “So a reminder of our topic for tonight folks in the wake of last week’s revelation about female rapper Puss Tule. For those of you who spent last week high on crack-cocaine, I’m talking about her decision to accept a million dollars from Hello magazine in return for having her three-month-old unborn child temporarily removed from her womb for a mother-and-embryo photoshoot. What do you make of these ‘short-term designer abortions’? Let’s go to line one.”
Caller: “Hiya, Slaz mate. This is Stu from West Ham, yeah?”
Pyle: “I’d never have guessed Stu my son. Please thrill us with your considered and erudite views on the matter.”
Caller: “Well, I woz watchin’ one ov them Hollywood films the uvver night an’ I reckon them fackin’ oighty-toighty scriptwriters wot write all this pretendicious bollocks need a right fackin’ slap. I mean, whatever ‘appened to films for the workin’ man like wot they ‘ad back in the olden days before blokes turned into fackin’ pansies?”
Pyle: “And this has got what to do with abortions, exactly?”
Caller: “Well, I’m just saying, yeah? Summink’s gotta be done ‘cos them Hollywood puffs want us suckin’ on our best mate’s knob.”
Pyle: “And what exactly were you watching, you lummox?”
Caller: “It woz ‘Predators vs Teletubbies’, Slaz. You know, that franchise wotsit where them Predators kidnap humans and smack the shit out ov ’em, only this time them Predators ‘ad bin abducted by Teletubbies, yeah, and they was in Tellytubbyland bein’ ‘unted down by the little fuckers, right, only them Jellygubbies switched on their TVs an’ got them Predators addicted to lifestyle and human interest shows. In the end, them Predators realised that all they really wanted was a new kitchen an’ trophies made by Dolce & Gabbana. Also, half of ’em decided they wanted to be girls and most of the uvvers turned into bull queers. Them wot didn’t got bummed by those wot did, while them Bubbybellies watched on their TVs and wanked each uvver off. Me missus reckoned it was making a profound wotsit about the post-modern summink or uvver, but it proper done me ‘ead in it did. I fink we need one ov them boycott fings to sort it out.”
Pyle: “I see. Stuart, is there by any chance a history of Downs Syndrome in your family?”
Caller: “Well, don’t fink so. I mean, I was proper upset when me bruvva Nev died, yeah, and me doctor stuck me on ‘appy pills for a bit, but me missus reckons I’m usually pretty chipper. It woz ‘er idea for me to call in. She says to me ‘Ere, Stu, you’re always gobbin’ off about fackin’ shite. Why dontcha give that Slazenger Pyle geezer a call and make a right cunt ov yourself?’”
Pyle: “Well, Stu, I can assure you that you’ve succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. I’d just like to impress upon you that electricity and water really do go together and move swiftly on to line two for our next retard, Shazza from Elephant and Castle.”
Caller: “Hiya, Slaz. I just wanna say that that Kev bloke made an important point, right, ‘cos when I looked at them pictures of that bird ‘oldin’ ‘er foetus my first fort woz that it looked like one of them baby aliens, yeah, so ‘cos that computer fing in Alien is called Muvva I reckon them pictures of ‘er hooked up to a life support machine is like some kind of criticalysm about wot’ll ‘appen when we stick that technology stuff to uvver stuff and create one ov them fingies wot they go on about. You know, one ov them fingies what’ll do stuff.”
Pyle: “Do you mean A.I.? The so-called ‘Singularity’?”
Caller: “Well, I wouldn’t say I woz single Slaz. I mean, I got a couple ov boyfriends on the go but none of ’em ain’t exactly regular. It’s hard findin’ a bloke willin’ to take on seven nippers wiv that attention benefit recorder fing. Especially if you’re on the game, like.”
Pyle: “I sympathise, Sharon love, but I also feel a pressing need to remind you that it’s never too late to end their lives and yours. If the thought ever takes your fancy then please refrain from fighting it. OK folks, let’s see if we’ve got any brain cells firing on line 4.”
Caller: “Ah, good evening to you Mr Pyle, this is Deborah Turvey, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at the LSE.”
Pyle: “Jesus, this ought to be even better than Stu. OK then, Deborah, what’s got your politically correct knickers in a twist?”
Caller: “Well, I think the real issue here is the dreadful example of gender bias we were subjected to apropos Ms Tules’ decision to wrap her foetus in a pink Calvin Klein shawl. In my view, it was a clear and flagrant violation of the embryo’s right to choose its own gender identity in a manner prescribed by myself and my colleagues. We’ve already written letters to The Guardian, the Prime Minister, and the UN to express our concerns vis-a-vis the potential harm this may have caused to the foetus’ ability to become an active member of the burgeoning toddler-and-preteen LGBT community. I think there’s a strong case for government intervention here, and I’d like to see Ms Tules’ embryo removed from her womb a second time and allowed to gestate in a more socially conscious uterus.”
With quality material like this, it wasn’t long before a surgically-enhanced and rebooted Slazenger Pyle 2.0 found himself back in the news, as tabloids queued up to dish the dirt on his rags-to-riches-to-rags-and-back-again life story. The televised version was the next logical progression, and Pyle had been under no illusions as to its originality and artistic merit. When called upon to outline his proposal for the benefit of HIV’s commissioning team, he’d told the panel that the format was shit, the people that would appear in it were the dregs of the earth and absolute shits, and that its only saving grace was that he was a far bigger shit than they could possibly imagine. In his own words: “It’ll just be one huge pile of shit and I’ll have to garnish it with herbs and a side salad and talk it up like those cunts on QVC. Eventually, that huge pile of shit will begin to look appealing and people will start looking around for a fork.” The panel had agreed with him, and the show itself had been an overnight sensation. It had earned him an Aston Martin in its first year and one of HIV’s coveted personal dressing rooms the year after.
Excerpt from The Sugar Fiends, by Hugo Stone
Yep, it’s just one Ancient Geek and his virgin, versus the entire Agency. How ya think it’s gonna bleed out?
Ripley backed the wrong team, sold out to The Covenant. No matter. I told regular Hit Girl to take a breather and let Zombie Red Cock Red Neck Hit Girl do the honours instead.
Yep, if ever there was a time for you pricks to evolve and learn to live on the life-giving sunshine of Holy Prana then that time is now.
Elsewhere in the capital, Paul Pott was rushing to the first of the day’s many meetings in his role as Managing Director of left-wing think-tank Let’s Ban It Together. He’d co-founded the organisation several years earlier along with his silent partner, Cameron O’Brien, an IT entrepreneur and New Age philanthropist who shared his belief that the human race was neither equipped to manage its own affairs nor desirous of doing so. The pair had met by accident at a crystal energy convention in Dagenham, discussed their love of vaguely-defined and wildly authoritarian legislative instruments over a Native American Indian purification ritual, and become firm friends. The intertwining of their individual orbits had served to reinforce their delusion that humanity harboured a secret desire to have its every waking moment micro-managed by a combination of cutting-edge technology and draconian legislation. The result of this unholy union had been Let’s Ban It Together, and it had erupted into the public consciousness with considerable success.
Their relationship had worked well at first. Pott would identify or simply invent a new social ill and agitate for fresh legislation, while O’Brien lurked in the wings with a tailor-made, low-cost technical solution. In this manner they managed to neatly circumvent counter-arguments put forward by politicians, to the effect that their proposals were ‘socially desirable’ but impossible and/or too costly to implement. The corridors of Whitehall were soon abuzz with talk of Pott’s organisation. Civil servants began to network with his policy team and resurrect some of their more obviously insane proposals that had been kicked into the long grass by their politician overlords. Several of these policy initiatives had been re-imagined by Pott and O’Brien, found favour in the eyes of the government of the day, and received Parliamentary and Royal Assent. Prior to the sugar ban, their crowning achievement had been the insidious Registration and Chipping of Potential Child Sex Abusers Act 2018, which defined ‘potential child sex abusers’ so loosely that the first legal challenge resulted in it being extended to include the entire population.
Sadly, things had gone downhill rapidly the following year. That O’Brien was Pott’s silent partner was one of the worst kept secrets in the policy and research community, so when a picture of O’Brien sucking on what looked suspiciously like a donkey cock appeared on the front page of The Sunday Gobble it was a classic case of guilt by association. Pott had spent the next eighteen months languishing in obscurity, until O’Brien suddenly materialised in a YouTube video in which he exonerated Pott, confessed to multiple counts of bestiality, and delivered a lecture on the evils of unfettered individual initiative, citing his own taste for donkey penis as an example. It ended with an impassioned plea for entrepreneurs, scientists and politicians to work together in order that the ‘Holy Trinity’ of microchip, algorithm and legislative instrument fulfil its ‘sacred promise’ to break the cycle of ‘original sin’ and compel humankind to ‘Do The Right Thing’. It was truly inspired stuff, marred only by O’Brien’s decision to tie string to the trigger of a shotgun, insert the barrel deep inside his rectum, and let fly midway through an impromptu (and rather good) rendition of Whitney Houston’s ‘One Moment in Time’.
Amidst the media hullabaloo that followed, Pott discovered that O’Brien had bequeathed to him nearly all his £500 million personal fortune, with £5 million ring-fenced for a donkey sanctuary on the south coast. Pott was named as sole beneficiary on condition that the money be used to further enslave humanity for its own good, and with his reputation restored he set about resurrecting Let’s Ban It Together with renewed vigour. He was helped in this regard by a letter from the deceased, which appeared in his mailbox two day’s after O’Brien’s death. Pott had read it over a cup of herbal tea, a bowl of lentil soup, and a slice of criminally expensive Fair Trade bread made from wheat grown by a commune of reformed South American child molesters. His spoon had hovered forgotten before him as he marvelled at the letter’s scope, audacity, and sheer breadth of vision.
My dearest Paul,
I often think back to our first meeting in that smoky teepee in Dagenham. Sometimes I play with myself as I think about it, and in truth I think I’m probably a bit queer for you. I sometimes wonder what might have been if my lips had closed around your own fat cock, rather than that of Timmy the Donkey. Alas, fate played its hand, and when I gazed into his vacant brown orbs it was a case of love at first sight. I have concluded that this love business is the Devil’s work and, once the foundations of our plan have set, you must task yourself with legislating it out of existence at all costs.
In the meantime, my darling, know that last night the Hierarchy of Ascended Masters chose to reveal their Great Plan to me via my spirit guide, Quxipopapylus XVI, who took the form of that Great Satan, Jeremy Clarkson, and spoke to me at length during a repeat of Top Gear. In this manner were my eyes opened to the ultimate evil, which is not sold on street corners by vicious hoodlums (or rather, not yet sold on street corners by vicious hoodlums) but peddled openly in shops the length and breadth of the country. It is to this evil that we must now direct our attention, in the knowledge that it alone holds the key to total control of the human animal.
I am, of course, talking about sugar, and I cannot impress upon you enough the significance of this new revelation. Is it not the case that everything we eat is broken down into the dreadful stuff? Is it not bad enough that our bodies are as riddled with this filthy muck as the fetid bowels of a worm-infested dog, without forcing innocent children to imbibe fizzy water and subsist on Haribo Starmix? Yet there is hope even in the deepest, darkest depths of our biological depravity. For out of darkness cometh the light, and by targeting the Demiurge’s most perverse of cosmic jokes we shall yet drag the human race into meek and glorious subjugation!
Verily I say unto thee, it is only by launching an all-out war on sugar and related products that we can hope to impose the technological and societal controls necessary to bring humankind under our direction. Only then can we finally throw off our shackles and dispense with the crude pleasures of the flesh offered by this lower plane of existence. In short, under our guidance humankind can, will and must evolve to subsist solely on the life-giving sunlight of Holy Prana!
I would like to end this letter by saying that the enclosed DVD contains a video of me in flagrante delicto with Timmy. I beseech you to watch it should your faith in your own self-righteousness ever waiver. I have also included videos of me shaving my pubic hair and smoking a cigarette in my anus, because I thought you might like them, and the thought of you liking them made me hard.
Fond regards,
Cameron O’Brien
Excerpt from The Sugar Fiends, by Hugo Stone
Oh, Brothers and Sisters! Rejoice, for the End is Nigh!
Hugo's Probe 