An out-dated Manufactured Bogey-Man Scare-Story ...
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 12:31:42 +0100
An Itar News on the Hoof Agency EXCLUSIVE
Intrepid brave not holed up in the Green Zone reporter
Doug. McClure reports from somewhere in Tora Tora,
Tickrit-Baghdad.
Birth of New Really Real al Qaeda ™
Bin QucQoo al Maniac, the most dangerous man on earth,
as noted by the number of Qs in his name, today
declared the launch of New Really Real al Qaeda™.
Bin QucQoo emerged from his cave in Tora Tora Mountains, in Tikrit-Baghdad, climbed onto a rock, and set out his agenda in a long declaration that he read out taking at least five hours.
He declared that he hates the West so much that he has
declared war on dusk, and went on to denounce the Sun
for perpetually (every day) defecting to the West for
its night outs.
Also hated by bin QucQoo are: spam, fish and chips,
voting, unicycles, anything beginning with ‘demo’, buy
one get one free (because it has ‘free’ in it) and upon
mentioning this bin QucQoo went berserk and declared
that any words beginning with D, F, V will be banned
from use henceforth, adding these are consonants
anyway, and the change over should not be all that
difficult.
Bin QucQoo, to adulation of his supporters, whom he had
hastily assembled by promises of a hot dinner, and a
couple of cents, declared Zarqawi not fearsome enough
because he only has one Q, then he called upon
Zawahiri to go and find himself a Q from somewhere.
Finally he declared that bin Laden is all hot air, and
thinks because he has a ‘bin’ he can be frightening,
further bin QucQoo proceeded to produce and circulate
some sketches of himself pulling teddy bears heads
off, and robbing piggy banks from various infants, and
children, explaining that the photos had been sent for
development, and complaining that digital cameras are
to blame for the lack of easy access to developing old
instamatic photos. However Bin QucQoo then asked,
where on record is any photos of bin Laden pulling off
the head of any teddy bear? Calling bin Laden a wuss,
bin QucQoo went onto declare that his suicide plumbers
had worked on New Orleans levees, and also his crack
squad of scary men had thrown fire crackers in old
peoples’ homes and shaved their cats’ whiskers off.
Bin QucQoo then went back into his tent inside the
cave and pulled off a seeming tent pole which turned
out to be a howitzer and proceeded to move into the
neighbouring cave to set up his new HQ, declaring New
Really Real al Qaeda™ cares not one jot for small
arms, since these are for girlimen, explaining away
the short haul move due to his bunions playing havoc
with his feet. Before retiring for his dinner, bin
QucQoo sent the following message for the people of
the world; ‘be afraid, very afraid, very, very afraid,
very, very, very afraid, there are more plumbers where
those came from, and they will cause not only leaks,
flooding, but also urinate in your header tanks in
your lofts’.
Ends item
+
News Flash ... bin QucQoo Lives!
An Itar News on the Hoof Agency WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Dateline: a dark and dangerous scarey back-passage in
down-town Baghdad, some distance from the safety of
the Green Zone, 08_06_2006 20:20 gmt
by intrepid reporter Doug McClueless
Itar News on the Hoof can tonight exclusively reveal
that we have uncovered totally true evidence that
really real really new al Qaeda leader bin QucQoo al
Maniac is now officially 'The Most Dangerous Man On
Earth'.
Several Itar News staff today really saw and really
handled absolutely authentic stick-man cartoon
flick-book footage that proves conclusively bin QucQoo
is still alive and plotting.
With today's death of his old rival al Qaeda bogey-man
al Zarqawi, this means that bin QucQoo now has no
serious challenger for the 'World's Most Dangerous
Man' title.
Unquestionable subliminal messages buried in the
cartoon flick-book go on to proclaim: 'Unlike that
weakling al Zarqawi, bin QucQuc is too tough to die!'.
The subliminal messages then go on, for hours, at
interminable length, to give a detailed denunciation
of bin QucQoo's late rival scarey-man Zarqari [along
with the rest of his neighbourhood] for 'being too
weak not to get blown to tiny pieces by massive
American bombs'.
The subliminals finally accuse Zarqari of 'one final
act of unscariness': 'Despite his weak living body
being blown completely to smithereens by the massive
American bombs, Zarqari's corpse remained weakly
intact, in a totally unterrifying manner, and allowed
itself be photographed - with unburnt beard, and with
only a few minor facial burns and grazes - and
fingerprinted for the infidel media to gloat over.'
Any doubts about the flick-book's authenticity were
quickly removed by a hasty forensic analysis of
fingerprint evidence on it. This showed totally
conclusively that it was drawn and first flicked this
afternoon by bin QucQoo himself - before being passed
at terrifying speed around the dirty hands of the
millions of anonymous members of his frightening
network hiding in scarey places all over the world.
Ends Item
+
‘bin QucQoo is CIA stooge,’ says whistle-blower
Another Itar News on the Hoof WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Dateline: a CIA whistleblower's hide-away hole,
somewhere in Canada between Qerbek and the 49th
Parallel, 10_06_2006 20:06 gmt
[Editors please note: the CIA whistleblower was not
paid any fee by Itar News for the interview
transcribed below - except, for the record, for his
standard CIA salary, which we pay him weekly, in cash,
using funds siphoned through to us through an illegal
CIA horse-crap-dealing money-laundering scheme.]
by poop-scoop-sniffing press hound Dog McClot
Itar News can today exclusively reveal that The
World's Most Dangerous Man bin QucQoo al Maniac is in
fact a CIA agent hired to subvert the activities of
other CIA agents in a highly secretive
'back-blow-to-blow-back' operation.
The plot - code named 'Operation QuoQup' - was revealed
to us during a clandestine interview in his hide-away
with on-the-run CIA [Canuck Intelligence Agency]
French-Canadian whistle-blower Duval Quintessence.
The interview was conducted on a '(nod and wink) no
naming of names (if you know what I mean?)' basis by a
team of anonymous reporters, over several days, in Mr
Quintessence's Canadian bolt hole. It is transcribed
in full below. [All names used are in fact real, but
have been changed to protect the anonymity of our
source.]
Interview Transcript:
Anonymous Itar News Reporters: In your own words, can
you please tell us Duval - if we may call you that -
when you first encountered The World's Most Dangerous
Man bin QucQoo al Maniac?
Duval Quintessence: Je premier a rencontré le Plus
casier de l'homme Dangereux de Le Monde al QucQoo Fou
Furieux le jeudi dernier, pourtant il a été appelé
alors El Faf Fuq Bin Falafel Faluki. Me fixe A ça
travaillait secret comme un cheval-merde vendeur dans
une ville de l'un-cheval - je ne peux pas donner
l'emplacement exact pour sécurité raisonne - sur la
borderlands de la République de Mooslamania.
AINR [slowly and loudly]: WE - ARE - SORRY - BUT - WE
- DO - NOT - SPEAK - YOUR - BRAND - OF -
CANADIAN-FRENCH - AND - SO - WE - DID - NOT -
UNDERSTAND - A - WORD - OF - WHAT - YOU - HAVE - JUST
- SAID.
[The interview was then suspended for several days
while a translator travelled - by helicopter, plane,
train, bus, taxi, husky-cart, and on foot - from the
Itar News International Media Centre in Kazakhstan -
exact location secret - to Mr Quintessence's remote
Canadian hideaway - C/O Cannock Intelligence Agency
(CIA), Husky House, 1 Mountie Parade, Qubeq/Winnipeq,
Canada, (Zip:) QQ 1Q. With the translator's
assistance, the interview then resumed.]
AINR [through translator]: Can you please tell us
Duval - if we may call you that - in your own words
when you first encountered The World's Most Dangerous
Man bin QucQoo al Maniac?
DQ [actual words]: Je premier a rencontré le Plus
casier de l'homme Dangereux de Le Monde bin QucQoo al
Fou Furieux le jeudi dernier, pourtant il a été appelé
alors El Faf Fuq Bin Falafel Faluki. Me fixe A ça
travaillait secret comme un cheval-merde vendeur dans
une ville de l'un-cheval - je ne peux pas donner
l'emplacement exact pour sécurité raisonne - sur la
borderlands de la République de Mooslamania.
DQ [actual translator's translation]: Me first met
Dangerous Man of The World bin QucQoo al Furious
Madman on Thursday last, yet he was called then El Faf
Fuq Bin Falafel Faluki. Me then worked secret like a
horse merde seller in a city of the one horse (I could
not give exact site for security argues otherwise) on
sidelines of Mooslamanian Republic.
DG [corrected translation]: I first met The World's
Most Dangerous Man bin QucQoo al Maniac last Thursday,
though he was then called El Faf Fuq Bin Falafel
Faluki. At that time I was working undercover as a
horse-crap salesman in a one-horse town (I cannot give
the exact location for security reasons) on the
borderlands of the Republic of Mooslamania.
AINR [untranslated]: And how did you recruit him on to
your agency's payroll?
DQ [adapted translation]: He was at that time down on
his luck, being the less successful of two
horse-traders in the one-horse town. So I made use of
my cover as a horse-crap salesman, and sold him some
horse-crap, which, there being a shortage in the
product locally, he was then able to sell on at a
considerable profit to himself. This put him in a
compromised position - because unlicenced horse-crap
sales are prohibited in the Republic of Mooslamania
(along with all the other basic freedoms we take for
granted in the non-Mooslamania world). So I threatened
to inform on him to the local branch of the
Mooslamania Horse-shit Trading Standards Office. Their
reputation is fearsome in those parts, and the moment
I issued the threat he was reduced to quivering wreck
and was completely under our control from then on. I
whisked him out of Mooslamania, using our horse-crap
trader courier network, and he was put through the
standard one-day CIA Stooge Intensive Grooming program
right here - I should really have said 'there' there,
to maintain my cover and all that [I am sure you will
strike that from the record, and generally tidy what I
say up in the editing] - in Husky House, Canada.
AINR [untranslated]: And then, under his new identity,
he was returned to Mooslamania, via the secret
horse-crap trading courier network, and was put to
work immediately in active CIA stooging?
DQ [untranslated] Qui.
AINR [untranslated]: Thank you very much for your time
Mr Quintuple. Do you require payment in used dollar
notes as usual or could we modernize our financial
arrangements to include debit card facilities?
DQ [untranslated]: Pas de commentaire.
Ends Item
Tuesday 21 August 2018
Tuesday 14 August 2018
A True Enough His/HerStory, Book 1, Section 1, draft 1 ...
A True Enough His/HerStory, Book 1, Section 1, draft 1 ...
One day, at about midday, I woke, bathed, breakfasted, donned a blue-themed outfit, and lit another cigarette.
'Out! Out! Brief Candles! Such fleeting moments of apparent enlightenment!'
And so it was that in a smokey haze, I found myself in a somewhat vaguely abstracted state, as if recalling bardic'ly confuzed lines that had almost actually passed between some him-and-her/her-and-him at some indefinite time.
'How much do you love me?'
'There's beggary in the love that can be measured!'
'I die to be loved so imprecisely!'
'Then you die for someone more adept at co'kmanship than myself, dear lady! You should have died hereafter, there would have been time for ...'
At this point I broke off from a travesy of MsMelodrama's diverting attempts to make a tragic mockery of my comedy, and attempted a return to romance.
Unfortunately, so voided had my inscape become, that romance proved impossible, and all too rapidly turned to rather dark-tinged lowly forms of irony/satire travestied from [as if?!] Lucian.
Said another: ''tis no matter!'
I almost agreed.
But then ....
On another day shortly after midday, I heard on the grapevine - or perhaps it was UncleBeeb's MrJeremiadVine show - that rumour had it that recruits were being sought among what sounded to me like 'ne'rdowells' for a futile-seeming quest on a SpaceTimeShip, to be known as TheSearchForTheFoolsParadise.
I thought myself more than a little well qualified to volunteer for this quest.
And so it was that, years later, having been-there-got-the-tee-shirt available exclusively - and for a bargain fee, VAT and P&P excluded - only on that quest, and getting on for one hour after midday one day, I re-read the following personal (b)log-entry: ...
Thursday 16 August 2007 (Eurocentric Dating System (EDS))
On this day, starting from an uncertain place at an, in fact, uncertain date from near the Pillars of Heracles, we sailed with a fair-to-middling wind into the Atlantic.
There we landed at a previously uncharted island peopled by tax-exiled offshore traders.
Shortly after landing we were greeted by a self-proclaimed financial market expert who cried: 'Beware! Beware! Here be bears! Here be bears!'
Thereupon MrDavidCoverdale, a tax-exiled Tyneside-born lead singer of the rock group sometimes known as Whitesnake, who had a hideaway on that island, appeared, as if from nowhere, and said: 'Fear not! Fear not! For I know how to dance bears into harmlessness - having recently, strangely but truly, had a real life invasion of such creatures into my house, albeit in another part of the world.'
And in such unlikely ways a day of surprizes on the island of tax-exiled offshore traders unfolded.
It has to be admitted that, whatever the truth of such interventions, the motives of our voyage remain uncertain.
A certain intellectual restlessness, a passion for novelty, a curiosity about the limits of the cosmic ocean and the beings who might dwell within - or even beyond - it. Perhaps such motives drive us on.
With a view to pressing on further into our formless quest, we delayed on the island to provision and water our spacetimeship on a generous scale.
This gave me the opportunity to review the crew which circumstances/chance had thrown me in with.
They seemed to be of mostly motley make-up, and, for this and other reasons, I had some sense of 'fellow-feeling'.
There was, for example, the ElvisCostello impersonator also known as MrDeclanMcMurphy, and others whose musical interests, as well as their years, roughly corresponded to/with my own.
A search of the stores we had brought with us revealed we were well provisioned with a good supply of vinyl records.
The playing of these items on a more often than not unstalbe spacetimeship brought a mix of melancholy and merriment, as well as much earnest discussion on the seemingly crucial issue of whether '70s and '80s rock music sounded more 'authentic' in the hissing and crackling medium of vinyul rekords and torntibles than in some digitally remastered form.
With such disorientating transition issues to deal with, we clearly needed some skilled and well-spoken navigators and link-people to guide us.
There was to be found on our mission control airwaves at least one fine navigation guide sometimes known as MsHalfEmptyHalfFullMonty.
She was misquoted in another today's log as saying: 'I am 69 and when I saw the man urinating in my rose garden I rushed out ... and to my surprize found myself pressganged into a lunatic spacetimeship enterprize ...'
The navigation guide's first mate was sometimes known as MsPosh.CassGreen.
She was misquoted in the same log as saying: 'And next up my channel is that shuddder-in-my-loins MrWillyClinton.'
The log then recorded this verbatim statement: 'MrWillyClinton: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman! - whose moniker is MsPosh.CassGreen."'
With scenes involving such potential steamy-seeming-scene-stealing-semenators to be incorporated, it was clear that our spacetimeship required an imaginative upgrade ... perhaps into a some sort of slappyhappyslippysloppysloop-like vessel ... ecstatically and otherwise(E)specially strengthened for some long and arduous passages, with baggage allowances made for fuckers, suckers, friggers, wankers, allsortsofsocalledsodomites, to say nothing of other mild perversities, and needlesstosay diversely allowed-for distorts of consentual adult play-making/mating.
In the new improved vessel of our wildest dreams we carried on, for at least another day and night.
We were carried quite quietly along as if on a soft breeze, while the crew were mostly distracted by self-and-other-indulgent pursuits.
'Well ... with a void seemingly before and after us there seems bugger all else to do,' one crew member was heard to tartly observe.
I was almost inclined to agree.
But then ...
As if to frustrate further the forementioned types of fore-and-after-play, on the next day's dawn, the previously soft stellar winds rose to a harsh tempest.
Caught up in this heavy cosmic turbulence, with inexplicable dark materials and inscrutable particle-wave ripples in the background, we found ourselves unable to control our vessel.
And so we surrendered ourselves to the elements ... let the ship run ... and were storm-driven for more than eleven weeks ...
On the eightieth day a sun came out quite suddenly and surprizingly, and we found ourselves close to a lofty wooded island, round which the waves were murmuring gently, the storm having almost fallen by this time.
We brought her to land, disembarked, and, to recover from our long tossingly turbulent voyagings, lay a considerable time idle on shore.
At last we made an attempt at a fresh start.
Some previously attention-demanding impetuous teens or twenties numbers of crewmates fled the womb of the spacetimeship to pursue their own courses.
This left the maturer-seeming remaining rest of us with more freetime to fill.
So ...
Leaving a thirty-or-forty-something of our number slumbering in drugged/drunken states, pretending they were guarding the ship, a soberer fifty-or-sixty-or-something of our party set off on a tour of inspection of the mysterious island.
We had advanced about half-a-mile/a-kilometer inland through woods, when we came upon a brazen phallic-shaped pillar, inscribed in characters that seemed like Greek to to most of us, but which however were worn and dim and difficult to decipher.
A classically educated former public school boy/girl disclaimed:'It most truly and absolutely surely reads: "Heracles and Dionysus reached this point"'
Those of us more comprehensively educated expressed some scepticism.
Not far off from the pillars there were two footprints on rock-forms.
One footprint might have been an acre in area, the other being smaller.
The classical scholar conjectured that the latter was Dionysus's, and the other Heracles's.
A wag who had spent schooldays at the back of the classroom retorted: 'You mean BigDick and LittleDick!'
We did obeisance, according to bent, with laughter or disdain, to these observations and proceeded.
Before we had gone far - would you believe it? - but we found ourselves falling into a river which ran wine-filled.
It flowed full and copious, and might have been navigable in parts, had we not all got rather rapidly drunk on the free bounty it offered us.
This river of wine, the classicist maintained, was sure evidence of Dionysus's sojourn in these necks of the woods.
It was just as surely sufficient evidence to convince others in our party that the inscription on the pillar was an authentic indicator of TheArgumentForDesign.
The rest of us were too pissed on the free wine to care much about such speculations.
The following day, in a hugely hungover state, we took some painkillers and resolved to find the source of the wine river.
We followed the river up, and discovered, instead of an expected fountain, an unexpected lake.
Signs around the lake read in a dozen or more IndoEuropean language systems: 'Produce of the European Union - if you journey here from one of the union's disadvantaged economic zones, you are entitled to help yourselves.'
This proved an offer that could not be refused by most of our party.
Nearby were planted a number of huge vines covered with grapes.
From the root of each there issued a trickle of perfectly clear wine, the joining of which made the river.
It was well stocked with great fish, which a trade expert assured us were of the species known as 'CashCowedOpportunity', usually abbreviated to 'C.O.D.'.
They resembled wine both in colour and taste.
Catching and eating some, we at once found ourselves intoxicated.
When we sobered up, some biologists in our group dissected the fish and found them full of wine-lees.
While this biological investigation was taking place, it occurred to some of the more temperate members of our party to mix these C.O.D.winefish with more ordinary seawater Haddock - more ordinary cod being in short supply in those parts as in others because of overfishing - thus diluting the strength of the spirituous food.
Well fishily fed and wined/watered we now crossed the river by a ford, and came to more vines of a most extraordinary kind.
Out of the ground came a thick well-grown stem; but the upper part was a woman, complete from the loins upward.
They appeared like a deranged artist's representations of a wanton lady in the act of turning into a tree just as a libertine enters her.
Perhaps for this reason it occurred to a deranged tabloid journalist present in our company to name this newly discovered vine PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy.
From the finger-tips of PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy sprang vine twigs, all loaded with grapes; the hair of their heads was tendrils, leaves, and grape-clusters.
They greeted us and welcomed our approach, talking in slurred forms of all the languages of Earth.
The PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy plant-forms went so far as to kiss us on the mouth - and whoever was kissed staggered like a drunk.
But the plantforms would not permit us to pluck their fruit, meeting any attempt to do so with cries of pain.
Some of them made further amorous advances; and one of my comrades who yielded to these solicitations found it impossible to extricate himmself again from their embraces - man-became-one-with-plantform, striking root, fingers turned to vine twigs, tendrils grew all round, and embryo grape-clusters were soon to be witnessed.
Seeing no alternative, we reluctantly left the man-plantform there in metamorphized state and hurried back to the ship, where we told our tales to the druggies and drunkards who had remained there, including the tale of our friend's experiments in viticulture.
'I saw it all without going with you,' replied one unimpressed psychaedelic experimentor.
The others expressed varying degrees of interest, incredulity and/or indifference.
Then, after taking some casks ashore and filling them with wine and water, we bivouacked on the sand for one final beach-party blowout on this intoxicating island.
Next morning we set off before a gentle breeze.
About midday, when we were out of sight of the island, a vortex suddenly came upon us, which swept the ship round and up to a height of some three hundred and fifty Earth miles above any form of solid ground.
She did not fall back into the usually mostly predictable cosmicoceanmedium, but was held suspended aloft in a unfamiliar reality randomizing medium, and at the same time carried along by a stellarwind which struck and filled the sails.
For a whole week we pursued hair-raising courses in these totally unpredictable state(s), consuming all our stocks of the wine to sooth our nerves.
On the eighth day we spotted a potential landfall.
It was an island with vapour for sea, glistening, spherical, and bathed in light.
We reached it, cast a relieved anchor, and landed.
Inspection soon showed that it was inhabited and cultivated.
In the daytime nothing could be discerned outside of it; but night revealed many neighbouring islands, some larger and some smaller than ours.
There was also another land below us containing cities, rivers, seas, forests, and mountains.
This we concluded, tentatively, to be the Earth, from which some said we had intially set out on a date sometimes recorded as Thursday 16 August 2007 (EDS).
One day, at about midday, I woke, bathed, breakfasted, donned a blue-themed outfit, and lit another cigarette.
'Out! Out! Brief Candles! Such fleeting moments of apparent enlightenment!'
And so it was that in a smokey haze, I found myself in a somewhat vaguely abstracted state, as if recalling bardic'ly confuzed lines that had almost actually passed between some him-and-her/her-and-him at some indefinite time.
'How much do you love me?'
'There's beggary in the love that can be measured!'
'I die to be loved so imprecisely!'
'Then you die for someone more adept at co'kmanship than myself, dear lady! You should have died hereafter, there would have been time for ...'
At this point I broke off from a travesy of MsMelodrama's diverting attempts to make a tragic mockery of my comedy, and attempted a return to romance.
Unfortunately, so voided had my inscape become, that romance proved impossible, and all too rapidly turned to rather dark-tinged lowly forms of irony/satire travestied from [as if?!] Lucian.
Said another: ''tis no matter!'
I almost agreed.
But then ....
On another day shortly after midday, I heard on the grapevine - or perhaps it was UncleBeeb's MrJeremiadVine show - that rumour had it that recruits were being sought among what sounded to me like 'ne'rdowells' for a futile-seeming quest on a SpaceTimeShip, to be known as TheSearchForTheFoolsParadise.
I thought myself more than a little well qualified to volunteer for this quest.
And so it was that, years later, having been-there-got-the-tee-shirt available exclusively - and for a bargain fee, VAT and P&P excluded - only on that quest, and getting on for one hour after midday one day, I re-read the following personal (b)log-entry: ...
Thursday 16 August 2007 (Eurocentric Dating System (EDS))
On this day, starting from an uncertain place at an, in fact, uncertain date from near the Pillars of Heracles, we sailed with a fair-to-middling wind into the Atlantic.
There we landed at a previously uncharted island peopled by tax-exiled offshore traders.
Shortly after landing we were greeted by a self-proclaimed financial market expert who cried: 'Beware! Beware! Here be bears! Here be bears!'
Thereupon MrDavidCoverdale, a tax-exiled Tyneside-born lead singer of the rock group sometimes known as Whitesnake, who had a hideaway on that island, appeared, as if from nowhere, and said: 'Fear not! Fear not! For I know how to dance bears into harmlessness - having recently, strangely but truly, had a real life invasion of such creatures into my house, albeit in another part of the world.'
And in such unlikely ways a day of surprizes on the island of tax-exiled offshore traders unfolded.
It has to be admitted that, whatever the truth of such interventions, the motives of our voyage remain uncertain.
A certain intellectual restlessness, a passion for novelty, a curiosity about the limits of the cosmic ocean and the beings who might dwell within - or even beyond - it. Perhaps such motives drive us on.
With a view to pressing on further into our formless quest, we delayed on the island to provision and water our spacetimeship on a generous scale.
This gave me the opportunity to review the crew which circumstances/chance had thrown me in with.
They seemed to be of mostly motley make-up, and, for this and other reasons, I had some sense of 'fellow-feeling'.
There was, for example, the ElvisCostello impersonator also known as MrDeclanMcMurphy, and others whose musical interests, as well as their years, roughly corresponded to/with my own.
A search of the stores we had brought with us revealed we were well provisioned with a good supply of vinyl records.
The playing of these items on a more often than not unstalbe spacetimeship brought a mix of melancholy and merriment, as well as much earnest discussion on the seemingly crucial issue of whether '70s and '80s rock music sounded more 'authentic' in the hissing and crackling medium of vinyul rekords and torntibles than in some digitally remastered form.
With such disorientating transition issues to deal with, we clearly needed some skilled and well-spoken navigators and link-people to guide us.
There was to be found on our mission control airwaves at least one fine navigation guide sometimes known as MsHalfEmptyHalfFullMonty.
She was misquoted in another today's log as saying: 'I am 69 and when I saw the man urinating in my rose garden I rushed out ... and to my surprize found myself pressganged into a lunatic spacetimeship enterprize ...'
The navigation guide's first mate was sometimes known as MsPosh.CassGreen.
She was misquoted in the same log as saying: 'And next up my channel is that shuddder-in-my-loins MrWillyClinton.'
The log then recorded this verbatim statement: 'MrWillyClinton: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman! - whose moniker is MsPosh.CassGreen."'
With scenes involving such potential steamy-seeming-scene-stealing-semenators to be incorporated, it was clear that our spacetimeship required an imaginative upgrade ... perhaps into a some sort of slappyhappyslippysloppysloop-like vessel ... ecstatically and otherwise(E)specially strengthened for some long and arduous passages, with baggage allowances made for fuckers, suckers, friggers, wankers, allsortsofsocalledsodomites, to say nothing of other mild perversities, and needlesstosay diversely allowed-for distorts of consentual adult play-making/mating.
In the new improved vessel of our wildest dreams we carried on, for at least another day and night.
We were carried quite quietly along as if on a soft breeze, while the crew were mostly distracted by self-and-other-indulgent pursuits.
'Well ... with a void seemingly before and after us there seems bugger all else to do,' one crew member was heard to tartly observe.
I was almost inclined to agree.
But then ...
As if to frustrate further the forementioned types of fore-and-after-play, on the next day's dawn, the previously soft stellar winds rose to a harsh tempest.
Caught up in this heavy cosmic turbulence, with inexplicable dark materials and inscrutable particle-wave ripples in the background, we found ourselves unable to control our vessel.
And so we surrendered ourselves to the elements ... let the ship run ... and were storm-driven for more than eleven weeks ...
On the eightieth day a sun came out quite suddenly and surprizingly, and we found ourselves close to a lofty wooded island, round which the waves were murmuring gently, the storm having almost fallen by this time.
We brought her to land, disembarked, and, to recover from our long tossingly turbulent voyagings, lay a considerable time idle on shore.
At last we made an attempt at a fresh start.
Some previously attention-demanding impetuous teens or twenties numbers of crewmates fled the womb of the spacetimeship to pursue their own courses.
This left the maturer-seeming remaining rest of us with more freetime to fill.
So ...
Leaving a thirty-or-forty-something of our number slumbering in drugged/drunken states, pretending they were guarding the ship, a soberer fifty-or-sixty-or-something of our party set off on a tour of inspection of the mysterious island.
We had advanced about half-a-mile/a-kilometer inland through woods, when we came upon a brazen phallic-shaped pillar, inscribed in characters that seemed like Greek to to most of us, but which however were worn and dim and difficult to decipher.
A classically educated former public school boy/girl disclaimed:'It most truly and absolutely surely reads: "Heracles and Dionysus reached this point"'
Those of us more comprehensively educated expressed some scepticism.
Not far off from the pillars there were two footprints on rock-forms.
One footprint might have been an acre in area, the other being smaller.
The classical scholar conjectured that the latter was Dionysus's, and the other Heracles's.
A wag who had spent schooldays at the back of the classroom retorted: 'You mean BigDick and LittleDick!'
We did obeisance, according to bent, with laughter or disdain, to these observations and proceeded.
Before we had gone far - would you believe it? - but we found ourselves falling into a river which ran wine-filled.
It flowed full and copious, and might have been navigable in parts, had we not all got rather rapidly drunk on the free bounty it offered us.
This river of wine, the classicist maintained, was sure evidence of Dionysus's sojourn in these necks of the woods.
It was just as surely sufficient evidence to convince others in our party that the inscription on the pillar was an authentic indicator of TheArgumentForDesign.
The rest of us were too pissed on the free wine to care much about such speculations.
The following day, in a hugely hungover state, we took some painkillers and resolved to find the source of the wine river.
We followed the river up, and discovered, instead of an expected fountain, an unexpected lake.
Signs around the lake read in a dozen or more IndoEuropean language systems: 'Produce of the European Union - if you journey here from one of the union's disadvantaged economic zones, you are entitled to help yourselves.'
This proved an offer that could not be refused by most of our party.
Nearby were planted a number of huge vines covered with grapes.
From the root of each there issued a trickle of perfectly clear wine, the joining of which made the river.
It was well stocked with great fish, which a trade expert assured us were of the species known as 'CashCowedOpportunity', usually abbreviated to 'C.O.D.'.
They resembled wine both in colour and taste.
Catching and eating some, we at once found ourselves intoxicated.
When we sobered up, some biologists in our group dissected the fish and found them full of wine-lees.
While this biological investigation was taking place, it occurred to some of the more temperate members of our party to mix these C.O.D.winefish with more ordinary seawater Haddock - more ordinary cod being in short supply in those parts as in others because of overfishing - thus diluting the strength of the spirituous food.
Well fishily fed and wined/watered we now crossed the river by a ford, and came to more vines of a most extraordinary kind.
Out of the ground came a thick well-grown stem; but the upper part was a woman, complete from the loins upward.
They appeared like a deranged artist's representations of a wanton lady in the act of turning into a tree just as a libertine enters her.
Perhaps for this reason it occurred to a deranged tabloid journalist present in our company to name this newly discovered vine PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy.
From the finger-tips of PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy sprang vine twigs, all loaded with grapes; the hair of their heads was tendrils, leaves, and grape-clusters.
They greeted us and welcomed our approach, talking in slurred forms of all the languages of Earth.
The PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy plant-forms went so far as to kiss us on the mouth - and whoever was kissed staggered like a drunk.
But the plantforms would not permit us to pluck their fruit, meeting any attempt to do so with cries of pain.
Some of them made further amorous advances; and one of my comrades who yielded to these solicitations found it impossible to extricate himmself again from their embraces - man-became-one-with-plantform, striking root, fingers turned to vine twigs, tendrils grew all round, and embryo grape-clusters were soon to be witnessed.
Seeing no alternative, we reluctantly left the man-plantform there in metamorphized state and hurried back to the ship, where we told our tales to the druggies and drunkards who had remained there, including the tale of our friend's experiments in viticulture.
'I saw it all without going with you,' replied one unimpressed psychaedelic experimentor.
The others expressed varying degrees of interest, incredulity and/or indifference.
Then, after taking some casks ashore and filling them with wine and water, we bivouacked on the sand for one final beach-party blowout on this intoxicating island.
Next morning we set off before a gentle breeze.
About midday, when we were out of sight of the island, a vortex suddenly came upon us, which swept the ship round and up to a height of some three hundred and fifty Earth miles above any form of solid ground.
She did not fall back into the usually mostly predictable cosmicoceanmedium, but was held suspended aloft in a unfamiliar reality randomizing medium, and at the same time carried along by a stellarwind which struck and filled the sails.
For a whole week we pursued hair-raising courses in these totally unpredictable state(s), consuming all our stocks of the wine to sooth our nerves.
On the eighth day we spotted a potential landfall.
It was an island with vapour for sea, glistening, spherical, and bathed in light.
We reached it, cast a relieved anchor, and landed.
Inspection soon showed that it was inhabited and cultivated.
In the daytime nothing could be discerned outside of it; but night revealed many neighbouring islands, some larger and some smaller than ours.
There was also another land below us containing cities, rivers, seas, forests, and mountains.
This we concluded, tentatively, to be the Earth, from which some said we had intially set out on a date sometimes recorded as Thursday 16 August 2007 (EDS).
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