The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘offensive’ Category

Nearly 5 years ago to this very day, I wrote a lit­tle some­thing here on the hippy that is one of my favourite posts ever. Back when I had a top-ten favourite list, this par­tic­u­lar post was fea­tured prominently.

Its called ASS BOMBS

Don’t worry if you can’t be both­ered to re-read it right now, I’ll sum­marise it for you: I spec­u­lated on the lengths future ter­ror­ists would have to go through to sneak explo­sive devices on to planes and the addi­tional secu­rity mea­sures that would have to be put in place to main­tain safety. This wasn’t long Richard Reid tried to blow up his shoes.

I the­o­rised that a ter­ror­ists’ rec­tum would become a com­part­ment for hid­ing plas­tique and air­port secu­rity screen­ers would have to play proc­tol­o­gist to make sure all air trav­ellers were not car­ry­ing any­thing up their bot­toms. Instead of “take off your shoes and remove all metal objects”, their instruc­tion would be to “bend over and spread those cheeks.”

It would cer­tainly put fly­ing into a brand new per­spec­tive. Mak­ing sure you wear clean socks with­out any holes wouldn’t seem so impor­tant any more.

It turns out, I was par­tially right. An alleged Al Qaeda fanatic tried to blow up offi­cials at a meet­ing in Saudi Ara­bia with some TNT shoved up his ass, only the idiot left it stuck up there when it det­o­nated and it only killed the bomber. You’re sup­posed to take it out of your bot­tom before it goes off.

You can read the report here in The Sun news­pa­per, under their clever head­line; “Sui­cide Bum­mer”. Did you see what they did there?

Its unlikely as fuck that Al Qaeda visit my web­site, so they prob­a­bly worked this one out on their own. Now that this fright­en­ing and icky tech­nique is out there, how long before air­ports imple­ment new secu­rity pro­ce­dures? Not long is my guess.

Still, there’s an upside. If you’re going to have to dis­play your ring­piece in air­ports for all to see, anal bleach­ing is set to be the next big growth indus­try. They’ll even have a new slo­gan: “Anal Bleaching…its not just for porn stars any more!”

The National Health Ser­vice (NHS) here in the UK has been in the fir­ing line this week as Amer­i­cans “debate” over­haul­ing their health­care sys­tem in an attempt to extend access to their 50 mil­lion res­i­dents who have absolutely no cover or access to care.

Amer­i­cans are being led to believe that the free health­care avail­able to all of us in the UK is no good. This is so far from the truth that it would be funny, except for the fact that people’s lives hang in the balance.

The UK has a much higher life expectancy than the USA. Check your sta­tis­tics and see that I’m not lying. The UK also spends less on health­care per per­son than they do in the states, yet they yield bet­ter results.

Go fig­ure!

The Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem is run like a for-profit busi­ness. Think about that, some­one prof­its from your ill­ness and the per­cent­ages of profit are obscenely high.

Insur­ance com­pa­nies, drug com­pa­nies pri­vate hos­pi­tals, pri­vate doc­tors are all in the game to make money from your mis­ery. That can’t be right, can it? Every test ordered that you don’t really need, every over-prescription is money in the bank for someone.

Just ask Michael Jack­son if pri­vate health­care on demand is a good thing. Oh wait, you can’t because it killed him.

In Amer­ica, health­care is seen as a priv­i­lege, not a basic human right. Should one only be enti­tled to health­care on the basis of qual­i­fy­ing for insur­ance, rather than qual­i­fy­ing for need? Shouldn’t every­one have access to healthcare?

Of course they should!

Some of the scenes I’ve caught on tele­vi­sion, of the so-called town-hall meet­ings have been very amus­ing, well amus­ing in as much as the igno­rance fuelled anger is sim­ply surreal.

It seems to me, that the loud­est voices at these town-hall meet­ings are com­ing out of the mouths of peo­ple with the least infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject. These sad, twisted, igno­rant peo­ple have an unjus­ti­fi­able hatred of Pres­i­dent Obama that is prob­a­bly rooted in their inher­ent racism rather than any actual dis­like of a new health­care system.

All you need to do is lis­ten to what they say, their buzz words, like “social­ism” and “this isn’t the Amer­ica I know” to under­stand just how mis­guided and ill-informed these folks are on the subject.

Ok, any subject.

At the heart of all of this is FOX News, the biased and unfair pseudo news net­work owned by Rupert Mur­doch. FOX News pro­vide the stilted talk­ing points and their legions of view­ers turn up at town-hall meet­ings, par­rot­ing the same lame shit.

I can’t say I’ve looked into it, but I am guess­ing a wealthy guy like Mur­doch must have busi­ness inter­ests out­side the media world, say per­haps insur­ance or drug com­pa­nies. In other words, he may have a vested finan­cial inter­est in how this debate plays out. And if not him, then some of his rich robber-baron mates have got invest­ments in the med­ical field. There’s a lot of profit to be protected.

Its funny how SKY News, the sis­ter sta­tion of FOX News, under the News­Corp cor­po­rate umbrella is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent tack here, right­eously defend­ing the NHS against the FOX News inspired attacks. Does one hand not know what the other is doing? Or is SKY sim­ply pan­der­ing to their UK-based subscribers?

I think we both know the answer to that one.

I’m in a fairly unique posi­tion, hav­ing lived con­sid­er­able lengths of time under both health­care sys­tems. Nei­ther the US or UK sys­tems are per­fect, both excel at some things and lack in oth­ers, but over­all, I know which sys­tem I would choose, if I had to…

The NHS all the way!

In the UK, I’ve never had any con­cerns about insur­ance, access to the med­ical sys­tem or being able to afford the costs. I’ve for the most part, had excel­lent care of a world class stan­dard cour­tesy of the NHS.

In Amer­ica I’ve been charged one hun­dred bucks for a wooden tongue depresser — you know what I’m talk­ing about, a wide wooden pop­si­cle stick.

Open your mouth and say “ahhh fuck, you just charged me a Ben­jamin to do that!”

In my world, life is usu­ally quite sim­ple and this unhealthy debate is no dif­fer­ent. What it boils down to is this: “I’ve already got mine, so screw you if you don’t have yours!” It all comes down to com­pas­sion and America’s appar­ent lack of it.

The Chris­t­ian right in Amer­ica preach some­thing known as “com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism”, but sadly they don’t prac­tise it in any mean­ing­ful or tan­gi­ble way. Where’s the com­pas­sion? What would that guy Jesus do?

Jesus would move to the UK, sign on to the dole and get those holes in his hands and feet looked at for free, same for that nasty stab wound in his side.

Uni­ver­sal health­care is an unde­ni­able right, yet 50 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are being denied it. Any com­pas­sion­ate per­son would recog­nise the inequal­ity in the cur­rent sys­tem and want to do all they could to change it.

Where are all the com­pas­sion­ate folks in Amer­ica? Don’t they care about their fel­low man? Maybe if there are any, they could go to those silly town-hall meet­ings and shout down all the igno­rant idiots that are mak­ing Amer­ica look so stupid.

Oh and while I’m at it, lay off the NHS. Ill-informed opin­ion does not make a debate, it just makes you look even more like morons to the rest of the (bet­ter informed) world.

Hey fuck­ers! I’m blog­ging from my iPhone again.

I am hav­ing a rather dull and dreary night at work with pre­cious lit­tle to actu­ally do.

Cov­er­ing a war is lively at first and then you set­tle into a rou­tine. Yes I am as cal­lous and jaded as I sound. I have been cov­er­ing wars for around 20 years, they’re all pretty much the same. Peo­ple die, lots of them.

Life is so frag­ile and we are all so break­able. Its a won­der more of us aren’t killed more often.

The thing about cov­er­ing wars from a dis­tance, as I’ve mostly done, is you get to see some of the most har­row­ing scenes of suf­fer­ing. By the time it arrives on the tv in your liv­ing room, its been san­i­tized and cen­sored, to pro­tect you from images you are likely to find distressing.

I strongly dis­agree with that. You have just as much right to see the uncen­sored hor­rors as I do and my media col­leagues should not be deny­ing you from see­ing the truth.

I don’t find strong images offen­sive, but I do think war and the need­less slaugh­ter of civil­ians is extremely offensive.

I guess I picked the wrong job. Or rather the wrong job chose me!

(blogged from my iPhone)

Well fuck me, look who it is!

I mean me. Where the hell have I been?

I’ve been nowhere, doing noth­ing. Hon­est, offi­cer, I swear.

That’s not strictly true, because I am still the part time lib­er­tyc­i­ty­hippy, so you know where I’ve been hang­ing out sometime.

I’ve also been work­ing a fair bit, but my sched­ule has been all over the place with­out any sort of pat­tern, rhyme or reason.

I’ve been dis­tracted, I’ve been unfo­cused, or as it say in the larger, yel­low font above, I’ve just been “coast­ing through life.” That means any­thing requir­ing the slight­est of effort has been rel­e­gated to another day…and when another day comes, I am gonna be one busy hippy.

I wish I could be telling you oth­er­wise, that I’ve been busy record­ing my album, or writ­ing another book, or pro­vid­ing sex­ual favours to a small gang of vora­ciously demand­ing 16 year old glam­our mod­els. I wish I could tell you lots of things, but I won’t lie to you.

I can’t lie to you. It would be eas­ier if I could.

I get up every­day and seem to be busy, I don’t actu­ally just sit in a dark room all the time, yet I couldn’t tell you what eats my time away. Maybe its some time-eating mon­ster from another dimension.

How cool would that be? To be a time-eating mon­ster from another dimen­sion, trav­el­ling to north Lon­don to eat hippy time. I won­der what time tastes like?

Prob­a­bly time tastes like chicken. Every­thing tastes like chicken.

Never mind time mon­sters, now its just time to meander…

I was very dis­heart­ened and sad to read of the pass­ing of George Car­lin, yet another big influ­ence on me when I was younger. Along with Hunter S and Kurt V, George Car­lin was a hero of my youth.

I used to lis­ten to George Carlin’s albums end­lessly with an absolute obses­sion. His humour, on the sur­face, could be seen as crude, but when you explored what he was actu­ally say­ing, it was gen­uinely pro­found. His com­edy dealt with word-play and idea-play and noth­ing in this life escaped his crit­i­cal gaze.

Just off the top of my head:

Words that go together, yet are contradictory:

Jumbo Shrimp
Mil­i­tary Intelligence

But the words he’s most famous for are the fol­low­ing seven:

shit
piss
fuck
cunt
cock­sucker (not a bad man, but a good woman!)
moth­er­fucker
tits (sounds like a snack. I’ll have the cheese tits)

And later on he added:

fart
turd
twat

And one that still makes me laugh, “You can prick your fin­ger, but you can’t fin­ger your prick.”

Car­lin con­tin­ued to per­form prac­ti­cally right up to his death on Sun­day, his final gig was the pre­vi­ous week­end. While in the busi­ness for nearly 50 years, his jokes never went stale and he never, ever ran out of mate­r­ial. How could he? The human race excels in stu­pid­ity and that could have con­tin­ued to fuel his humour for centuries.

Sorry to see you go, George. You left your mark on this world and we won’t ever for­get you. Some­thing tells me that another gen­er­a­tion will be dis­cov­er­ing you very soon, thanks to your untimely demise.

Speak­ing of death (and inap­pro­pri­ate segues), my Log­itech Har­mony 885 remote bit the big one this week. It thinks its work­ing, when you press the but­tons, but it doesn’t seem to be trans­mit­ting any infrared sig­nals. This is a bum­mer of enor­mous pro­por­tions, as it it is the cen­tral com­mand for my small, yet per­fectly formed media cen­tre. My life is now awash with too many device-specific remote controls.

The upside to this is that the remote is still under war­ranty and I am wait­ing for a call back from Log­itech sup­port which I hope will result in them send­ing me a replace­ment. The first guy I spoke to tried to help me sort it out over the phone, but his reme­dies didn’t do did­dley. I’m missed their return call yes­ter­day, but they should phone me back again later today.

And stay­ing with my elec­tronic theme, I can­celled my Voda­fone con­tract today, in antic­i­pa­tion of hav­ing a brand new, shiny, lick­able iPhone 3G on launch day, which is 11th July, just over a fort­night from today. Voda­fone were sur­pris­ingly mel­low about my depar­ture, no hard sell, the phone call was brief and pain­less. Actu­ally, the guy was so nice, I told him I was switch­ing to O2 for the iPhone — usu­ally I don’t tell these peo­ple any­thing, so this is out of char­ac­ter for me. I’m a marketer’s worst nightmare!

Once I get my fancy new iPhone, I’m going to exper­i­ment with blog­ging from it. I’m not sure how it will go, but I like the idea of pro­vid­ing short posts on the fly. We’ll see if the real­ity keeps up with the fantasy!

I did con­sider play­ing around with Twit­ter, but I got frus­trated at the reg­is­tra­tion phase. The char­ac­ter limit of your screen name on Twit­ter is far too short and I couldn’t fit northlon­don­hippy into the tiny lit­tle box. None of that mat­ters any­way, I mean who in their right mind would sign up to fol­low me around on Twit­ter? How many times can you read: “had a piss, now smok­ing a spliff”, over and over every day?

While you pon­der that, I’m going to go for a piss, then smoke a spliff.

See, I told ya it would be lame…

I haven’t really weighed in on the upcom­ing US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions yet and I thought it was about time I did.

I think I was wait­ing for the field to nar­row to the final two can­di­dates and like most of the world and media (of which I play a small role), thought it would have been resolved by now. It just goes to show you what the media knows…sweet FA.

Except me, of course with my crys­tal balls and amaz­ing pre­dic­tive pow­ers of foresight.

I’ve always joked that news­rooms should replace their for­ward plan­ning desks with psy­chics any­way. Just imag­ine if some­one could tell you where to put a TV cam­era for the next big plane crash or polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion. Talk about a world exclusive!

And speak­ing of polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, why are peo­ple so obsessed with some­one bump­ing off Barak Obama. You know, some wacko doesn’t have to kill the black can­di­date. It’s not a rule, or even a sug­gested guide­line. It’s actu­ally rep­re­hen­si­ble to sug­gest it, but the sug­ges­tion is out there, far more than you might expect.

My friends over at ANORAK NEWS, have been chart­ing the OBAMA DEATH CULT, thanks to pub­lic com­ments by for­mer Repub­li­can can­di­date Mike Huck­abee and now HILLARY CLINTON.

These are just the two most recent and high pro­file exam­ples, but there are more.

Why is every­one so afraid of an Obama presidency?

I think the answer to that is quite com­plex and any­one who says its just down to racism, is miss­ing the point. I’m not going to deny there is a racist ele­ment to it, because it is cer­tainly a com­po­nent and for some, the only rea­son, but there’s more to it than that.

Obama rep­re­sents change and a break from the past. He is, if noth­ing else, cre­at­ing an illu­sion, that he will take Amer­ica in a dif­fer­ent and more pro­gres­sive and dare I say, lib­eral direc­tion. Whether or not that is true, remains to be seen, but he is cer­tainly mar­ket­ing him­self that way.

So many peo­ple wouldn’t be talk­ing about some nut killing Obama, if they weren’t afraid of him.

I have a silly the­ory that he might be the anti-christ, but of course I don’t believe in that non­sense any more than I believe in the real one. It always gets a laugh though, except from com­mit­ted Chris­tians (and shouldn’t they all be?), who give me know­ing glances and a cou­ple of leaflets from their church.

When­ever I lis­ten to Obama speak, I actu­ally like what I hear. I realise that’s a politician’s job, but he does do it well. When he says he would talk directly with his ene­mies, I applaud him, when he says he’ll pull all the troops out of Iraq as quickly and safely as pos­si­ble, I com­mend him and when he says he’ll allow the use of med­ical mar­i­juana, I’d kiss him.

But would I vote for him? If he ends up being the demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date, of course I would, but it doesn’t mat­ter, because I am not a voter. Any­thing is bet­ter than another four years of McBush.

But back to the “kill Obama” sideshow…I found this clip from Fox News espe­cially dis­turb­ing. Actu­ally it really fucked me off. See what you think…

I have to say, I was more than a bit miffed at being excluded from the Observer Newspaper’s top 50 list of most pow­er­ful blogs. I guess this is just another main­stream media plot to keep my mes­sage from reach­ing a wider audi­ence, but I will not be silenced!

And there’s always next year! Make sure you write your MP or con­gressper­son and point out this hor­ri­ble injustice.

Ah-hem.

The real rea­son I’m here is because the pope clearly must read my blog and he doesn’t like it and he doesn’t like me. Well, matey, the feel­ing is very mutual.

A while back, I con­firmed the exis­tence of my band, “the seven deadly sins” when I announced the upcom­ing release of my album. It seems the pope didn’t like this move and he’s try­ing to sti­fle my cre­ativ­ity by updat­ing the 7 deadly sins for our mod­ern age. I guess god has finally made an appear­ance in the 21st cen­tury and about time!

The new top seven sins accord­ing to the pope are as follows:

1) Envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion
2) Genetic manip­u­la­tion
3) Accu­mu­lat­ing exces­sive wealth
4) Inflict­ing poverty
5) Drug traf­fick­ing and con­sump­tion
6) Morally debat­able exper­i­ments
7) Vio­la­tion of fun­da­men­tal rights of human nature

Ok, there’s one on that list that wouldn’t be there, if it weren’t for his hatred of me and that’s num­ber 5…drug con­sump­tion. The pope’s get­ting his revenge on me with that one, but it’s not the only one…

Genetic manip­u­la­tion! My pub­lished work in recom­bi­nant DNA research is well known and I only missed out on a Nobel sci­ence prize because of some ill con­ceived pub­lic com­ments I made while drunk on power, fame and 151 proof Bacardi!

And yes, I’ve vio­lated the rights of human nature, for accord­ing to the catholic church, that’s an easy one as its their def­i­n­i­tion of sodomy. Oh and before you think I am some sort of ass ban­dit, sodomy at its most basic def­i­n­i­tion includes oral-genital sex­ual con­tact. Guilty!

The pope is out to get me! He knows my lib­eral ideas and secular-humanist val­ues threaten his exis­tence as a silly old white man in a white dress!

But never mind him! What about my band?

The drum­mer, wrath, doesn’t want to change his stage name to “genetic manip­u­la­tion” and sloth, who never makes it to rehearsals, would have to start show­ing up…

I’m sure glad I’m an athe­ist and I don’t believe in any of this non­sense. I mean, come on, eter­nal damna­tion? Give me a fuck­ing break!

Sin is far too much fun, any­way. I don’t see any­one stop­ping, do you?

No, I’m not going to tell you 935 lies. That would be silly and quite frankly, I don’t have the time.

I could, if I so chose, cre­ate pre­cisely 935 care­fully crafted and exceed­ingly believ­able bold­faced lies, but I have no rea­son to do that. I never have rea­son to lie to you at all, ever.

I don’t lie.

And I espe­cially don’t lie when I log in and blog onto my own god­damn website.

Peo­ple who lie, do it for a reason.

Whether it is to obscure the truth to cover some mis­deed or inten­tion or accom­plish some secret goal or fur­ther a pri­vate agenda, lies are moti­vated by something.

Some­times, even gov­ern­ments lie.

OK, gov­ern­ments lie a lot, but it’s not every­day they get caught.

And it’s not every­day they get caught in 935 of them.

There’s that num­ber again: 935.

I didn’t just pull 935 out of my ass, that would be stu­pid and poten­tially painful.

Per­son­ally, I’d be wor­ried by any­one who pulls any­thing out of their ass, but that’s just me. On some sub­jects I am sur­pris­ingly conservative.

But on the sub­ject of inten­tional fab­ri­ca­tion by gov­ern­ments to achieve a heinous and immoral goal, I am one pissed-off, bad-assed moth­er­fucka with an atti­tude and an Uzi.

OK, I don’t have an Uzi. I’d like an Uzi, but my local Uzi shop closed down ages ago and I missed their going out of busi­ness sale.

You’d want an Uzi too if you lived in my north Lon­don ghetto hell. There’s a shoot­ing or a knif­ing around here often enough that I’ve lost track of the num­ber of yel­low police signs solic­it­ing wit­nesses to the lat­est teenaged atrocity.

Yes, I know these teenagers mainly shoot each other, but there’s been a wor­ry­ing trend in middled-aged white guys get­ting kicked to death and I don’t want to be one of them.

Hey, I know the secu­rity ser­vices keep an eye on blogs. Hi guys! I’m on your side and if you’d sup­ply with me a small armoury of weapons, I’d be your bitch. Oh and the promise of a spot in the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme after I take out some crack house or Al Qaeda cell sin­gle handledly!

It could happen!

But seri­ously, you guys could recruit me. I’d be a great agent and I’d set­tle for cash. I was only jok­ing about the guns. Well, maybe just a Glock for my trou­ble, please?

Ah-hem.

935 fuck­ing lies! Get to the point.

Here’s the top of the AP report I’ve been refer­ring to since I started:

“A study by two non-profit jour­nal­ism organ­i­sa­tions found that Pres­i­dent Bush and top admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials issued hun­dreds of false state­ments about the national secu­rity threat from Iraq in the two years fol­low­ing the 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks.

The study con­cluded that the state­ments “were part of an orches­trated cam­paign that effec­tively gal­vanised pub­lic opin­ion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decid­edly false pretences.”

The study was posted Tues­day on the Web site of the Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Inde­pen­dence in Journalism.

The study counted 935 false state­ments in the two-year period.”

Click right here for the source arti­cle in full, please.

As some­one who never believed a word of what they tried to sell us over Iraq, I don’t find this sur­pris­ing. What grabbed me is they were able to doc­u­ment it with this degree of accuracy.

Let’s face it, 935 indi­vid­ual instances of 100% lies being ped­dled as fact to jus­tify a war that was com­pletely unnec­es­sary is aston­ish­ing! It should make our col­lec­tive jaws hit the col­lec­tive floor.

It should be front page news. It should have led news bul­letins around the world.

But did it?

This story hit the wires nearly a week ago. Sorry, my bad for not get­ting around to do some­thing with it until now, but at least I’ve marked it. I’ve brought it to your attention.

Did any­one else? I know a few news­pa­pers men­tioned it, because I read the sto­ries, but I don’t think I saw it on TV.

This is impor­tant shit!

George W (for “won’t you be glad when he’s gone gone GONE!”) Bush and cronies all lied. The Bush regime lies. They are doc­u­mented, unde­ni­able pur­vey­ors of utter false­hoods and fic­tion. They conned us and conned us but good!

I bet Hal­libur­ton and Black­wa­ter and the other war prof­i­teers are gig­gling like school­girls all the way to the prover­bial bank.

And how much has this abor­tion of a war cost us decent, tax-paying mem­bers of mod­ern society?

And how many hun­dreds of thou­sand Iraqi lives were lost? And how many Iraqis dis­placed and maimed?

And how many sol­diers from the coali­tion of the will­ing lost their lives or lost their limbs or lost just a tiny, lit­tle piece of their souls fight­ing for liars and cheats and well, just plain moth­er­fuck­ing cunts?

I’m enraged, I’m incensed. And you should be too! This war was fought in our name, to make us safe.

Do you feel safer know­ing that an entire gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple in the Mid­dle East hate you? Not for your free­dom (because you hardly have any, any­way!), but because of what your lead­ers do to them, in your name.

If you were Iraqi and your entire life was fucked hard, fast and with­out so much as drink bought for you, how would you feel about the peo­ple who fucked you? Would you hate them? Would you want to kill them? Would you be will­ing to give your life to do it?

You’ve lost your job, your home, your sav­ings, your pos­ses­sions and sev­eral close mem­bers of your fam­ily, like your spouse, or par­ents, or chil­dren. Or maybe all of them. You’re liv­ing in some shitty refugee camp in Jor­dan or Syria, where you’re not wanted by your hosts. You’re life is shit and if some­one offered you the option of going to the West and killing the infi­del, you very well might think that was the prefer­able option.

I’m cer­tainly not advo­cat­ing a career as a sui­cide bomber, no sen­si­ble per­son would, but I’m empa­thetic enough to see and feel how some­one in that posi­tion could reach that rather unhappy conclusion.

Geoge Bush Junior did that. He handed the world enough ammo to hate the West for at least a cou­ple more gen­er­a­tions. Thanks, George. Well done! Bet the pri­vate sec­tor can’t wait to get their hands on you!

Less than a year! Yippppeee to that, because anybody’s got to be bet­ter than Bush the lesser.

And who­ever is next to inhabit that big ol’ white house is going to have their work cut out for them, as the bar has been set really high. They’re going to really have to push it if they want to top 935 lies. Let’s just hope their lies are all about the econ­omy or the envi­ron­ment this time, because I am fuck­ing sick of point­less wars that accom­plished absolutely nothing!

It’s always inter­est­ing to see what words peo­ple stick into Google and other search engines, which lead them to my hum­ble, lit­tle website.

I receive a wide vari­ety of sta­tis­tics via my web­site hosts, but I always like check­ing out the search-terms sec­tion. It’s always good for a laugh.

This is the cur­rent list, for the month of July, to date, count­ing up from num­ber ten:

10) “north lon­don hip­pie” – my name, spelled wrong, with spaces. I’m glad it still leads to my site and I’m glad peo­ple search for me, even with the mistakes!

9) “billi bhatti” – him off Big Brother, evicted a cou­ple of weeks ago. As you will see, BB names are pop­u­lar on this list.

8) “pur­ple ohms expe­ri­ences” – a cou­ple of years ago, I had a bad time on these pills. I took too many, I had an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence. They’re legal highs and I think they are still avail­able, now in non-BZP form.

7) “northlon­don­hippy” – now that’s more like it, spelled cor­rectly, with­out spaces. I fea­ture twice in my own top ten, which means my brand aware­ness is high and get­ting higher. Just like me, I’m get­ting higher too, right now…!

6) “RooR Pocket Friend” – a fine pipe from my friends at RooR. I’ve writ­ten about mine a few times. Usu­ally, there are sev­eral RooR-related search terms in the top ten, but when I write about Big Brother, that tends to over­take it. Go figure!

5) “charley uchea tits” – Thus begins the breast obses­sion at the top of the list, nearly all BB related.

4) “vic­to­ria beck­ham top­less” – see, more tits. As if I would post pic­tures of that bean­pole with fake boobs!

3) “chanelle hayes mas­tur­ba­tion” — BB related, but not so breast-centric. Does any­one know if these pic­tures do exist? I wouldn’t post them, but I might like to see them myself, purely for research purposes.

2) “shab­nam paryani top­less” – I don’t really get this one, espe­cially as it is so high up on the list. Do peo­ple really want to see her top­less? I don’t even want to see her clothed! She’s scary!! Peo­ple have very weird tastes and inter­ests, but this is the inter­net, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

1) “expand­ing the­ory” – A while ago, I wrote up a silly lit­tle the­ory about what I thought the effect of the uni­verse con­stantly expand­ing would have on us. I was very high at the time and it was total bollocks.

Google doesn’t seem to think so, for if you put “expand­ing the­ory” into the world’s largest and smartest search engine, this is what you get as your top hit: CLICK HERE

Go on, check it out. My site is the top hit! Read it!

Do you really think I am an expert on the sub­ject? Should I win a Nobel Prize for inno­va­tion in science?

I should very much think not!

I don’t know if you found that inter­est­ing, but as always, I am inter­ested in what you have to say. I’d like to take an infor­mal survey:

Please email me with how you found my site. Did you stum­ble upon me via a search engine? Do you remem­ber what you were search­ing for? Maybe you saw a link to my site? Where?

How­ever you found me, I’d like to know. Please email me at thehippy@northlondonhippy.com — I won’t spam you or give/sell your address to any­one. I don’t even keep a mail­ing list. I’m just nosy.

There’s not actu­ally that much in this world that pisses me off, I mean REALLY pisses me off, but I am about to share some­thing with you that made me angry and tear­ful at the same time.

Please take a few moments to read THIS ARTICLE in today’s Guardian news­pa­per. Don’t worry, it’s short.

I have so much sym­pa­thy for Angel Raich and the prob­lems she’s fac­ing and I have absolute dis­gust and hatred for the peo­ple who are deny­ing her the only treat­ment that her doc­tor has prescribed.

This poor woman has a myr­iad of health prob­lems, rang­ing from sco­l­io­sis right up to a brain tumour. Mod­ern med­i­cine can offer her noth­ing in the way of hope or even pain relief, but cannabis can. Of this I have no doubts at all.

Thanks to a stu­pid law, enacted years ago to pro­tect the paper indus­try and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, a court is try­ing to pre­vent her from hav­ing the only thing that can do her any good.

Fuck­ing cunts! Fuck­ing cunts run the world!

On behalf of every­one on the planet, Ms. Raich I would like to apol­o­gise. I am very sorry for your pain and even more sorry that we live in a soci­ety that would pre­fer to see you suf­fer and die rather than let you con­sume a plant which is widely grown, that would offer you a tiny bit of relief.

Free the weed!

Could some­one tell me when we all col­lec­tively aban­doned com­mon sense? Emails to the usual address, please.

Greet­ings and Happy New Year to all of my beloved hip­py­fans! May this year be bet­ter than the last one!

Yes, 2006 sucked the big one, but now it’s rel­e­gated to his­tory, which is exactly where that shitty year belongs.

You don’t need me to tell you how crappy 2006 was; every other form of media has done the entire ‘year in review’ thing to death. I won’t go there.

For me, 2006 had a cou­ple of minor high­lights, but over­all it wasn’t any­thing spe­cial. Mostly, it was just another year.

It was another year full of death, destruc­tion and despair. The weather turned angry, the death toll in Iraq con­tin­ued to climb and our per­sonal lib­er­ties con­tinue to be method­i­cally stripped away. I’m sure none of that will hap­pen in 2007!

2006 ended with three famous peo­ple kick­ing the bucket. Celebrity deaths tend to come in threes any­way, which is a real night­mare for the PR peo­ple that coor­di­nate these things, but some­how they manage.

Ger­ald R. Ford, for­mer pres­i­dent and VP, not elected to either office, granter of a par­don for Richard M. Nixon (who despite his own protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, was a crook), popped his clogs at the age of 93. The papers keep call­ing him “the acci­dent pres­i­dent”, but let’s face it, he’s a foot­note to a foot­note and he’ll get his big state funeral and that will be that. His wife, Betty is more sig­nif­i­cant, with her Betty Ford Cen­tre and good work high­light­ing the prob­lems of sub­stance abuse. I thought she was dead too, but I saw her on TV the other day. Sorry, Betty.

The next death was the god­fa­ther of soul, Mr. James Brown. Brown was about as influ­en­tial as you can be in music. If you have ever heard a hip-hop or rap record made in the last 20 years, then chances are you, you’ve heard sam­ples from James Brown’s music in the back­ing tracks. Try Googling “Funky Drum­mer”, the most sam­pled drum beat in the his­tory of sam­pling comes from this track.

I was work­ing the night before Brown died and I caught a news wire that said he had been admit­ted to hos­pi­tal with pneu­mo­nia, but was expected to be released in time to per­form the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day. That was enough for me not to think he was going to die. By the time I got home, it was break­ing news that he was dead. Ooooops, I guess I shouldn’t believe every­thing I read.

Except of course on the northlon­don­hippy website!

James Brown was a one of kind, wild man and damn he liked to party! He was a true orig­i­nal and will be missed very much.

The third celebrity death is the one I find the most trou­bling and I’m not really sure why. Some­thing was decid­edly unset­tling about the exe­cu­tion of for­mer Iraqi pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein and I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel this way.

I’m not going to debate whether or not he deserved to be exe­cuted. He was an evil dic­ta­tor, respon­si­ble for the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple on Iraqi soil. He was a crim­i­nal and a thug.

I’m more inter­ested in how it was done, in such a piti­ful and pathetic man­ner. I’m more inter­ested in the speed in which the death sen­tence was car­ried out, as if it needed to be done as soon as possible.

Now that we’ve all seen both videos, the offi­cial exe­cu­tion film shot by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and the camera-phone video, shot by a wit­ness, we know exactly just how half-assed the entire thing was and how it lacked in dignity.

You can argue that Sad­dam didn’t show any mercy or dig­nity to any of his vic­tims. I’d agree with that. But we’re sup­posed to be bet­ter than that. We’re sup­posed to rise above the behav­iour of our enemies.

We’re sup­posed to do a lot of things.

Sad­dam Hus­sein was an evil man, a dic­ta­tor, and a morally rep­re­hen­si­ble piece of shit that got his just rewards. Sad­dam Hus­sein was also a human being, a father, a son, a for­mer pres­i­dent and leader of a sov­er­eign coun­try, who at a min­i­mum deserved to be treated some minor level of respect and dignity.

A soci­ety can be judged how it treats it ene­mies and in this exe­cu­tion, we weren’t any bet­ter than the man we put to death. He may have deserved to die, but he didn’t deserve to be taunted and ridiculed in the last moments of his life. No one does.

Let’s look at it another way: If you feel that a pres­i­dent deserves to be put to death for being respon­si­ble for the ille­gal, unsanc­tioned killings of thou­sands of peo­ple on Iraqi soil, then Sad­dam shouldn’t be the only one swing­ing by the neck, should he?

I’m not jok­ing. Isn’t it time George W. (for war­mon­ger) Bush should be sent to The Hague and be put on trial for crimes against human­ity? He won’t face the death penalty there, which is far more mercy than he showed his sworn enemy, who tried to kill his daddy.

No, I don’t want to bring Sad­dam back; the world is bet­ter off with­out him. But then, that would be true if he remained in prison until his nat­ural death as well. Killing Sad­dam was blood lust and victor’s priv­i­lege. It righted no wrongs.

Two wrongs only make another wrong.

Will 2007 be any bet­ter? As a con­stantly dis­ap­pointed opti­mist, I can hope.