The Uranium Tipped Pen

First they came for the smokers,

And I did not speak out

Because I don’t smoke

Then they came for the fatties

And I did not speak out,

Because I’m Size 6 darling

Then they came for the winos

And I did not speak out,

Because I was embarrassed about my all the vodka bottles in our recycling box…

Then they came for the druggies

And I did not speak out,

Because I only smoked it that one time at uni and didn’t inhale…

Then they came for me…

And I said “fuck it”

Because there was nobody interesting left to speak out to anyway

———–

I do at times feel genuine regret for my zealous support of the UK smoking ban. Oh yes we all knew it was a bit authoritarian, but we didn’t mind, because smokers are annoying.

The only complaint I voiced was that we couldn’t force other people that annoy me to stand outside the bar as well.

But I fear we have started something that is rolling beyond our control. seen Jamie’s Ministry of Food on T.V?

Well in the same way that Ingsoc’s Ministry of Love tortured people, Ministry of Truth rewrote history, Ministry of Peace fought wars and the Ministry of Plenty dealt with tight ration controls, Jamie’s ministry of food seems to be primarily concerned with telling us not to eat things.

We beat up the smokers, and we all thought that would be the end of it. But the  beast has not been sated, it has only grown stronger and more confident. Now they have turned their eyes on food, and grumbling discontentedly about the “alcohol problem” in Britain.

How long before they make people ordering chips in a restaurant stand outside in the cold and rain to protect the rest of us from passive-eating?

Our society is becoming santised, and it isn’t a good thing. For robots or lab-specimins maybe, but not for humans.

The arguments they field are typically NHS based, “well we have to pay for their healthcare so it isn’t fair that they have unhealthy lifestyles”.

It takes a very dangerous and unpleasant mind to think that way. The point of universal healthcare is not to gain control over people’s lifestyles, though it appears to be becoming the logical conclusion.

The point is to stop health being a designer product for the rich and powerful.

These are the sorts of people that will help you “for your own good” and snarl with self-righteous indignation if you should resist their unwelcome advances.

They’ll hide behind the mask of charity and do-gooding, but ultimately all they want is control. They want their own perfect little society, with everything in its designated place (designated by them, according to their plan) and they will never leave you be. Because even though your lifestyle is none of their business, you’re making their perfect world messy, and they cannot abide untidiness.

I think (and a lot of smokers that have crossed me in debate in the past are going to feel very smug for hearing this) that I was in the wrong about the smoking ban. I think cancer of the lungs is trivial ailment, compared to cancer of the Nation.

I think it’s time that we started saying No To Utopia.

We have both the Christians and the Discordian’s (one of whom gave me the link) the thank for this little piece of comedy gold.

It got me thinking about the whole “get out of hell free” card thing, don’t worry, I’m not about to join the choir…

It’s just that this one time I won a “free” holiday to Italy.

Now Italy has the highest quantity of Popes per-capita in the world (christian popes, not Discordian ones. The country with the most Discordian popes is China) which makes it basically second only to Heaven, so they’re fairly similar things.

But when I looked into my “free” holiday, I soon found out that the food, drink, return flight, bedding etc were all charged as extra, and on top of this I would be pestered daily to buy products I didn’t want, with money I really needed for bedding, by the company that had stranded me there…

So in the end I chose not to go.

Now they SAY Jesus will get you into heaven free-of-charge, no matter what your previous credit rating is… sounds too good to be true right?

But try to remember folks, when it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

What I’m trying to say is this: Sure, Jesus might get you a free trip to heaven, but you [i]know[/i], in your heart of hearts, that you’re going to have to sit through a timeshares pitch for the rest of eternity when you get there.

After my usual weekly swim through the London Underground, I surfaced for air in Sloan Square, as I am wont to do.

My neurosis about being on time ensuring that I was a fair 20 minutes early for the Young Writer’s Program as usual.

So I decided to indulge in a hobby I have developed since enrolling at the Royal Court, namely walking up the street and trying to find a single shop that doesn’t sell expensive labelled clothing.

One day I walked for 40 minutes in a straight line without finding anything. They even have a designer underwear shop for men. Wonders never cease.

All of this goes (I think) a long way towards explaining Shaun. 

Shaun is the homeless guy on Sloan Square, homeless and starving I suspect, not out of choice, but because there is nothing but clothing shops in all directions. Sloan Square is a desert of clothing shops. Look closer, and you’ll see that all of the inhabitants have a starved look in their eyes, like they haven’t seen civilisation, food or water, for months.

I think perhaps Shaun is like me, he just started walking one day, only he wandered too far and now he can’t get back. He is forced to crawl through the barren and inhospitable wasteland, sometimes running, gibbering towards what looks like a cafe, only to realise that it is a cruel mirage, created by the sun burning on the nylon of CK boxer shorts.

I like Shaun, because like me, he cuts an odd figure out here in the fashionable Chelsea district. And like me he receives the same frosty glares from well-dressed passer-bys. The one which says: “You don’t belong here”.

It all goes to reinforce my theory that Londoners actually have more in common with camels, than human beings.

They stock up on normal human contact, compassion, quirkiness, probably in some hidden Oasis, and then out they go into the Sloan Desert, storing it all away in a hidden hump somewhere while they trudge the faceless crowds.

But I digress,

It turns out that Shaun is not starving, in fact his situation is quite the opposite. Shaun cannot possibly eat another sandwich.

He explains that it has become the “in-thing” amoung a certain kind of people, to give homeless folk sandwiches instead of money, the theory being that you can’t easily exchange a cheese ploughmans for class A illicit substances.

Of course, as he explains, there are only so many sandwiches you can actually eat in a day. But this doesn’t stop people, so determined are they to give him sarnies, that one bunch of Christians refused to leave till he had eaten one, causing him to later be sick.

He was literally sandwich-raped.

He didn’t specify what the filling was

He had asked me to stop and talk so that he could present his case, and so that I could confirm to him, that he was neither insane nor ungrateful.

So for the sake of Shaun, I have written this post.

Asking you to please not feed the homeless in Sloan Square, just give them some frigging change.

Yes, they might spend it badly, it might not help them become pope or Prime Minister, or whatever career it was you had in mind for them.

But that isn’t the point. Everyone makes bad choices, I don’t actively try to improve the way you make yours, by refusing to lend you a bus fare, because you won’t spend it “going anywhere useful”.

That’s not what compassion or empathy are. It’s about human-contact, about acknowledging another human, their plight, alongside yours. Not stumbling blindly through the dust bowl of empty labels and shiny accessories.

You can’t fix these people, or anyone else. So instead, just shrug, drop some change, and share a moment with them.

Or don’t.

But for Christ’s sake. No more sandwiches.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword… but is the pen mightier than the atomic bomb?

It has to be said that even the most stalwart intellectual would probably balk at the concept of going up against a five-hundred megaton radioactive incendiary device.

Of course, in times gone past this same question was asked of pens and guns, and the literary establishment responded by inventing the paintball gun, the ultimate combination of gas-propelled projectiles and writing implements. Which begs the question: is it time to start creating more powerful, mightier perhaps even, dare I say it, atomic writing implements? Capable of delivering a single paragraph over a two hundred kilometer radius; A pen that would write words that could not be washed off a surface for the next fifty years, and would cause children conceived in the target area to be born with those words already tatood on their foreheads?

In an age where government power over the populace grows ever mightier, this writer thinks that yes, that time has come. But what form will this writing implement take? Sadly, I have been prohibited from irradiating biros so I have chosen another, more devious method of spreading letters over huge geographic areas…

The blog.

Yes… it’s back. And now it is even MORE hairy.