with open hands

For the first time in a squillion years, we at the Godhaven Ink collective have published something new, as in an actual paper thing. Even then, it's not wholly new, mind. But still.

It's With Open Hands, a little pamphlet of beginners tips on open relationships. I first got a copy in 1999, shortly after publishing a pamphlet called Sexyouality: Challenging The Culture of Monogamy. Where my pamphlet was a collection of writings from a variety of authors, and mostly concerned with the principle and philosophy of polyamory, With Open Hands was one person's work, and very much a practical piece.

The author started a relationship with a woman who felt that it was fine for him to have multiple lovers, but she didn't want to do that herself. Then she met a guy called Chuck and things got complicated. She asked her first lover to help her to avoid some of the mistakes he'd made, so he wrote her a letter. After talking with some friends, it was expanded into the With Open Hands zine.

I loved its straightforwardness, its compassion, its calming and steadying feeling. I've been meaning to do a reprint of it for yonks, but was delayed by knowing that my copy was too shoddy a photocopy and I'd need to retype the whole text. I finally got round to it though, and as I did it I found myself adding quite a bit of new text of my own. Certain points wanted expanding on, or there were perspectives and angles not covered.

Given that the original publishers had, like Godhaven Ink, actively encouraged people to copy and reproduce and generally use it as they wanted, I didn't feel it was too cheeky. So, it's a collaboration between an English bloke and an American, even though they did their bits in different countries at different times and never met up to do it. Just like Ebony And Ivory.

As with all Godhaven Ink publications, it's printed on recycled paper and it's dirt cheap.

More info here.

the end is almost upon us

I've already talked of how and why Chris De Burgh is manoeuvring himself into position to be part of a unified world government as a way to ease the global takeover by shapeshifting lizards.

One element of his plan involves putting himself in the elite, so he not only gets an official position with the UN but now he also claims royal lineage, saying he's a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce and King David II of Scotland, Crusader Richard the Lionheart, and - perhaps most tellingly - William the Conqueror.

You know how I revealed the answer to the previously inexplicable move by Jim Bliss to Dublin, that it was to get some javelin practice in alongside De Burgh's daughter to be part of the lizard stormtrooper batallions?

Bliss recently revealed he was studying at Trinity College and illustrated it with a picture from Google Earth - reminding us that he and his lizard masters are watching over our every move.

Let's see, who else is at Trinity at the moment? 'His son Hubie, 19, is in his second year at Trinity College, Dublin'.

Bliss' rabid defence of De Burgh in many of my previous truth-seeking revelatory posts is explained. De Burgh is the lizards' minion, and Bliss is even lower than that, the minion of a minion, a diseased and snivelling wart-nosed louse feeding on the scrotum of a demon.

I've previously revealed how De Burgh's plan to unify the world under lizards requires the healing of great rifts in humanity; to that end he was the only international artist to play at the German reunification celebrations, and he's also off to Iran this summer. Well, obviously, there's more.

Like De Burgh's ancestor Richard the Lionheart, let's turn our attention to the Middle East. The Lebanese civil war is so deeply ingrained into our cultural memory that I still hear people describe somewhere dangerous or smashed up as being 'like Beirut'.

A reporter in Lebanon tells us 'the Lebanese civil war, in which 150,000 lives were lost, is the root cause of de Burgh's popularity.'

More than that, he was 'the first Western act to play here after the civil war'. Sounding familiar isn't it? The pattern, the plan, they become so clear now.

He's just released a duet with Lebanese singer Tina Yamout. 'She says she is still "shocked and in awe" to be working with de Burgh.'

'Shock and awe'? As in the tactics used to subjugate Iraq so it could become part of the American empire as the world unifies?

He proclaims peace in Germany and Iran and Lebanon, yet is proud of his imperialist castle and his descending from Crusaders. The knowledge is in the family, so clearly is the will to use it. No wonder the lizards chose him.

It's all so clear to those who will see. Yet everyone else, too scared to face the truth, scurries on with their heads in the sand. If it were possible to scurry while one's head was buried. It isn't, yet that is precisely the sort of twisted worldview that De Burgh and his reptilian masters have us living in.

We know that there may be only days left.

how many celebrities are famous?

Ages back I talked about slimy fucker Debi Jones (shopping channel presenter and the Conservatives prospective parliamentary candidate for Sefton Central), and marvelled at the way her website is titled 'Debi Jones TV Presenter Celebrity Official Website'; she self-defines as a celebrity.

There's something so smug about someone doing that, and also something bizarre in wanting to be recognised not for what made you famous but merely for the fact of being famous. It suggests that all forms of celebrity are somehow equal, that Martine McCutcheon and Douglas Hurd are in the same sort of role.

A solitary person self-defining as celebrity is one thing. It's altogether different to have an organisation called - I shit you not - The Celebrities Guild of Great Britain.

You just know Ernie Wise initiated the whole thing, don't you?

It was set up in 1977 and raises funds for people with disabilities. Their tagline, on every page of the website, is 'helping the handicapped'. They don't seem to have updated that since 1977 either. Why not have 'Patting the Cripples' instead?

My favourite bit of the site is the Gallery. Ten pictures and even with those and the names I can only recognise five. Some are too easy - a newsreader is sort of cheating, we've all seen them thousands of times even though they've never done anything themselves and we can't say anything about them as people. Frank Carson's kind of cheating as well, not being from Great Britain himself. Still, they make up for it with Bob Holness, the man who blew the mighty sax on Baker Street. Probably.

Weirdly, it wasn't actually Ernie Wise but someone called Ella Glazer who set the guild up. Surely to set up a celebrities guild you'd need to be, I dunno, a celebrity? Try finding out what she's done apart from the Guild. There's an IMDB page for someone of that name. Its single entry is a 'thanks' credit in a movie.

Then again, the standard of celebrity doesn't seem to be that high. Today sees them doing a celebrity golf tournament. Among superstars like Bobby Davro and Lance Percival are some bafflingly obscure names, and some vague bell-ringers. Like Jill Dando before she was killed, you might know the name but you can't picture them.

Using only your existing knowledge and without recourse to Google, how many of these celebrity golfers can you not only recognise the name but say what they're famous for and clearly put a face to in your mind?

Clive Allen,
Luther Blissett,
Ian Botham,
Martin Bicknell,
Tony Cottee,
Bob Champion,
Phil Daniels,
Bobby Davro,
Graham Dene,
Mike Denness,
John Embury,
Derek Fowlds,
Theo Foley,
Trevor Harris,
Stewart Houston,
Roy Holder,
Cliff Jones,
Derek Martin,
Frank McLintock,
Nicholas Parsons,
Lance Percival,
Robert Powell,
Ian Rush,
Steve Rider,
Alan Smith,
Willie Thorne,
Claire Tomlinson,
Jimmy White,
Rory Underwood,
Roger Uttley,
Ray Wilkins,
John Virgo.

I score only seven out of 32.

donnie darko snacks

I remember the Disney attempt to cash in on the late 70s space movies, The Black Hole.

Agog at the fluttering acres of money that Star Wars had made on merchandising, they wanted something like that for themselves. There were Black Hole models, Black Hole pencil cases, even Black Hole black soap.

The movie bombed and Woolworth's 'Everything reduced to 20p' bin was brimming for several months after.

Somehow, I think I've stumbled on some remaindered Donnie Darko merchandise.

Does anyone on this planet have the faintest fucking clue what is going on with this packet of poppadoms?



I understand having a cherubic youngster appearing to be eating one, but why the fuck is he being menaced by giant sinister disfigured rabbit?

don't forget who the tories are

As many people have done, on Thursday Zoe Williams tore into Boris Johnson. She attacks his deep-set racism, his homophobia, his snobbery.

But what she and others miss is that these qualities aren't something that make him unusual. They make him a classic Tory.

The Conservative party exists today, as it always has done, as the party of wealth and privilege. He, like his party's leader, is an old Etonian pro-hunting toff.

From Mugabe to the Orange Order, anywhere power is entrenched it is seriously abused. People are sick of the smugness and betrayal it has inevitably bred in the Labour party. They are sick of them as the party who lied to take us to war in Iraq. The despise them for the bizarre trickle-up economic theory of abolishing the 10p income tax, a clear and unambiguous attack on the poor.

But fuck me, is anyone saying the Tories wouldn't have gone to war? That they wouldn't have shifted taxes from the rich to the poor? They're the people who supported the war and opposed the minimum wage!

They're the party who gave us the poll tax and - in the form of the miners strike - ran a paramilitary campaign to demolish effective trade unionism, the collective bargaining that won a living wage and fair working conditions for those of us not born into riches.

All of these were also clear, unambiguous attacks on the poor but on a scale far greater than anything Blair and Brown have contemplated.

In their last time in office the Conservatives took big essential industries in public hands, things too important to be run just for profit - electricity, gas, telecommunications, water, railways - and sold them off at a pittance, making a fortune for the City institutions who bought shares. A straight transfer of vast wealth from the people to the obscenely rich few.

Whilst Labour have continued privatisation more stealthily (do it by components rather than a whole industry so we don't notice, call it Private Finance Initiative), it's clearly nothing the Tories wouldn't have done too. Voting Conservative as an anti-Labour protest is like cutting your legs off to stop your toes itching.

Boris Johnson was a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph from 1987, as it cheered on all those privatisations, the poll tax and the outrageous attack on liberty known as the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill.

Johnson, like the other three of the top four Mayoral candidates, has come out against the third runway at Heathrow. But can we be so sure he'll stick to it? It's hard to imagine Ken Livingstone being automatically impressed by someone just because they run a large corporation like BAA or because they are part of a profitable industry. It's hard to imagine Johnson - or any classic Tory - not being cowed. (But especially Johnson, who appears to be a climate denier).

The Conservatives remain the party of privilege. They are still directed and run by millionaire bankers. Their actual policy, as opposed to their touchy-feely PR spin and slogans, still shows it.

If you think your interests are the same as those of millionaire bankers, then they're the party for you. If not, then they're not.