Burn Baby, Burn!

I called the dole office on Monday and had a lengthy phone interview to see if I was owed any money, since I've been paying my taxes for years (OK, mainly in other countries, but taxes is taxes...) and it's time to suck on the foul teat of the corrupt state. I'm gonna milk that cash cow for all it's got, well £65 a week anyway. I had a lengthy interview in which they asked me a million questions about if I had dependents, other sources of income, massive savings or property here or abroad. It was a forty five minute long conversation on my part of 'no, no, no, no, no, no, no' I should have just rung up and said 'no' at the start and cut out the middle man. I secured myself an appointment at the Rotherham Job Centre and called down the next day. I don't know if you've ever been in a Job Centre, but they are the most depressing places on Earth. It's like a long a very bad episode of the Jeremy Kyle Show. The place is full of tracksuits, gold ear rings and chip bellies. The fraudulent and slovenly squirm about like limbless beasts tricking their way into free money and Crisis Loans. It is pretty close to what Dante imagined as his 5th and 8th circles of Hell.

Rotherham Job Centre: Find Your Way Back To Work...

Working there must be worse than working at an abattoir; after a short time in the 'Front line' (this is an actual term used by the Job Centre personnel for the position of signing people on, i.e. the closest contact with the great unwashed) the workers develop a Thousand Yard Stare. Lifeless eyes stare at you as you scrawl your name across the next available line on your signing card. The dead black eyes of a shark peer into your soul as they ask if your circumstances have changed at all since you last signed. It may be an urban myth, but I'm pretty sure you are not allowed to sit on a jury after you've worked in the Job Centre due to Dehumanisation. After wrestling with the interrogation of your circumstances and once you've signed your name, you're out, free again to drink Super Strength lager in the park with the other life losers as you await your next giro cheque. This is how I spent this afternoon.

A four pack? It must be Giro Day!

Last night however was another night of Pagan Idolatry, this time at the Dodworth Fire Festival. Kate had asked me along to her local Heathen celebration of Vinterblot. Like many communities cut off from the modern world, such as Amazonian Rain Forest Tribes and Papua New Guinean Mountain Dwellers, Dodworth folk have developed their own language, society and rituals to prop it all up. Few outsiders have ever dared attend the Fire Festival and I felt like an 19th Century explorer watching tribal activity from the safety of the tree line. First there was the hypnotic rhythm's of the Samba Band, they worked themselves up into a frenzy of lust which culminated in an animal sacrifice in their Godless religion. The women folk of the tribe stepped up and chanting a strange language known to Anthropologists as 'Barnsley', they preceded to dance a mating dance for the men folk of the village. With this over the male elders of the area gathered and danced the sacred 'Morris' each intending to attract the attention of the most fertile of the women folk.

The costumes represent a different bird, symbolising the flying of the soul to heaven and the virility of the wearer

Then the fire procession began, each of us, clutching the sacred fire stick walked through the village to arrive at the Wickerman where the village Virgins had been placed. Once the massive wooden edifice was ablaze the entire village packed into the local watering hole and watched a Mummers Play, where St George was attacked by a dirty Turk. It was touch and go whether George would make it through the battle but a few drops of magic potion from the local Witch Doctor brought him round to finish the fight and be victorious. The crowd went wild and the local youths went on a drunken rampage through Dodworth, burning and raping all in site. A good night was had by all.

Dodworth was left a smoking ruin

I was thinking about films plots the other day and came up with the idea of a Time Travelling Dog. I was going to call it Bark To The Future, if you can think of a better name let me know. But as I thought about it, it was a rubbish idea. How would anyone from the past or future know the dog was a time traveller? It was just a fucking dog. It wouldn't be able to tell anyone where it was from:

London 1666, ext: there is a blue flash and the Dog appears on a grotty side street. It walks out onto the main road and straight into two 17th Century Dandies:

Dog: Woof woof woof (Subtitles: Hey, you two, I've come from the future to tell you that London is going to burn down!)

Dandy 1: I say Gideon, looksee at yonder Dog, come a-parambulating from yonder lane.

Dandy 2: Aye Samuel, the Good Lord Bless'th me with sight to gaze upon yonder canine. We must use such opportunity to pander the beast with love

They both precede stroke and tickle the dog

Dog: Woof woof woof (Subtitles: Get off me, stop it, seriously, someone is gonna start a fire in a bakery, do what you can to avert this disaster! The city is going to burn down)

Dandy 1: Gideon see how he responds to our touching with his voice lifted to heaven!

Dandy 2: Thou ist a fine pooch and there is no denying it! Would thou beg'st for a treat?

Dog: Woof woof woof (subtitles: Listen to me, Please! Ah fuck it, I give up!)

What day is it? The date!
12th... May... Thursday...
WHAT YEAR?

And to finally wrap things up for this post, here is another mildly amusing Singapore Blog entry...

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

We got onto site yesterday and Ang helped us to dig the rest of the anomalies on the areas we had scanned on area three. We found bugger all in the way of ordnance. I then began to lay out the rest of the grids over area three, in the place Messrs Sing and Wong were busy smashing trees left, right and center. I was silently cursing Mr Sing for driving his bulldozer over my survey flags. Then the heavens opened, we ran for cover at the Thorhirah restaurant, where I pulled! It's a pity he was the wrong gender. The waiter (whom B*** and T**** are certain is a gayer, I'm not sure he's a
bummer, a bit effeminate, but no shirt lifter.), asked us if we go out dancing, he told me he knows this Indian Nightclub (full off Indian girls, he assured me...) and wants to take us there on Friday. I immediately thought no, then I thought about it and even if I end up in a Gay Indian Nightclub, it
would be a right laugh. I'm not gay, but then neither am I homophobic. So if he asks again, I will hang out with the guys from Thorhirah.

We sacked work off due to the rain and dropped Ang off at Yishun. Most conversations with Ang go like this:

Me: Ang, so you like Bruce Lee? (adopting Bruce Lee Stance)

Ang: Tai Kwon Do?

Me: No, Kung Fu, Karate?

Ang: Karate, Japanese, no good. I don't like.

Me: You hate the Japs?

Ang: Huh?

Me: The Jap Bastards? They invaded Singapore.

Ang: I don't understand your talking.

Etc.

Ang was telling me today how to speak Chinese, apparently it's something to do with cleaning your teeth with dental floss and snorting. I had originally asked him if he knew some girls in a photograph in a magazine. Our conversational paths tread through some pretty thick jungle, occasionally crossing over but generally ending up at two completely different locations. His most common phrase when in conversation with me is 'I don't understand your talking'. Mine is 'What the Hell does that mean Ang?' If you don't know, it's a paraphrasing of Big Trouble In Little China in order to amuse myself. Little things.

We finished early today as well, we are on the heals of the machines. The original plan was to go swimming but I ended up at the Asian Civilisation Museum instead. The Singaporean museums leave the British ones in the dark, they are a pleasure to go to, instead of a chore. There was a
really good exhibition on Beauty in Asia, it had a good little section on tattoos.