World Wide Waste #001 - william-shakespeare.org.uk

I am sick to the high, back teeth with pathetic purposeless excuses for the way the English language has changed and continues to change.

Take a quick gander at this parasitic website:

http://www.william-shakespeare.org.uk/

Only don't! It's awful! Not only does it defile the name of the Bard by riddling it with pop-ups and commerical booby-traps, it tells lies! LIES!

On one page it panders to the simpering idiotic generation-x reprobatic morons (who infest mainstream education and waylay the truly gifted and intelligent) by excusing the fact that Shakespeare wrote in Elizabethan English. It goes so far as to explain that what seems like non-Standard English to us, was Standard English to him. Bollocks! There was no 'Standard' English then. Dialect differences alone could render communities incommunicable.

It then goes on to spout more trite glibettes: Shakespeare had less words than us. What? Nonsense! If he had less words to use than us, then surely every word of his would still be in common usage. Linguistic evolution relies on vocabulary systems being streamlined. Morphology simplifies, the language standardises, words get dumped. Not the other way around!

I think it made me most cross because that paltry nonsense was offered up as an excuse. "Please forgive Mr. Shakespeare," they hoot, "he didn't know any better."

Rubbish! Shakespeare was a genius! If they can't be bothered to work at it a little bit or go and see some Shakespeare then they don't deserve to take pleasure in the breadth of his insight and imagination.

Send them to the wall! TO THE WALL!

Nothing is but what is not it is is not, isn't it?

A whisper in the darkness

A scrabble for the light

And on it came and there I saw

A Honda motorbike.

   

"Why this?" said I

In mid-sleep drear

But came there no reply.

And all at once, and once and all

I thought I might just die.

    

For the motorbike

It revved and reared

It drove at me with fury!

For from within my sheets I peered

And saw the driver - Ian Dury!

    

"Polio has done its worst,"

He said with ghostly anguish,

"And now I come to mow you down

Unless unto me you furnish

    

A silver baton

Light as air

Tempestuous as thunder."

And I knew precisely what he meant:

    

A stick I stole at seventeen

Made out of astral beauty

Capable of cosmic sounds,

Most treasured of my booty.

    

"Wait, please wait, you spastic prick!"

I hollered in the darkness

And held aloft the rhythm stick

From the depths of my pyjamas.

    

And Ian Dury quickly up

And snatched my prize possession

And off he went in dark and mist

To join the ghost procession.

The British Blogspot Expeditionary Force (BBEF) #1

So what are we?

You've read this far so I'll tell you. I'll tell you what we are. We are the British Blogspot Expeditionary Force. My name is Dominic J. Allen, and I am in charge. I am the Major General or possibly Generalissimo, if you will.

My mission: to plunge myself into the reaches of the unknown and report back in digestible chunks.

My mode of transport: the little button at the top left that says next blog.

Destination: Unknown.

So, without much further ado, I give to you my first spate of findings. If you should so wish, you may approach the journalage as a sort of blogger's digest. I'm sure that name is copyright somewhere though. So think of it like that but different. Think of it as THE BRITISH BLOGSPOT EXPEDITIONARY FORCE!

BBEF - #001 - 

The first blog we hit is 'Fashion y Flash'. This blog is profoundly visual, presumably because when text is used it utilises some fanciful or, as yet, unkown language. Distinctly unique is its use of only the female image to symbolise elements such as 'Regresion' and that equally famous psychological phenomenon 'Submundo'.

The first image nurses a baby that isn't there. Perhaps some sort of post-miscarriage depression. The second sniffs her own armpit longingly. What is there here but failure and solitude? Only ones own body odours.

The next picture, a face is engulfed by long white tentacles. Lovecraft. Cthulhu. Doom. The eyes roll backwards into the brainless skull. All is mis-spent navigation classes at the Academy.

Then a naked woman in a well. Contorted with her own insane lusts.

An invader. Asian-fashioned ladyselle in a barn. East meets West to create Iraq. Polemic. Political. L'Esprit de vie de Junta.

Next: a woman ties her shoelaces without looking at them. She looks at you. She realises the lack of logic but takes no heed.

Finally, a girl on an indoor swing looks behind her. Is distracted from her play article that does not exist in the real world. She looks. Have they said something. A lover? A lover would be silent. If it were true love. Or perhaps not. Perhaps her life is one big sham. Hence, an indoor swing. Society has lied to her about what is acceptable and what is not to turn her into a laughing stock. She becomes 'anima'. Hence, 'Regresion'.

BBEF Review: 6/10... 8/10 if you are not an homosexualist

The next destination is 'Work now, Play later'.

Let us dissect:

We are treaterised to artworkings made by an headless man. The horseman? No.

The works are too manifest to analyse individually. When viewed as a cache or the many being an entourage to the few and the one, a deep-seated anxiety and paranoia is betrayed at the heart of the headless host. He is perhaps Iberian, perhaps Latino. Perhaps both. Or neither.

Something in the colours. Something in the colours. It kept coming through on the radio but the radio wasn't on, so I turned it round from square. Nothing. Nothing now. Not even static hum.

So we scroll deeper and deeper into the psyche of the mind without a box. Labor day weekend. Bicycles and Bradley's. Salt and Pepper. Archduke and Duchess. King and Queen. Left and East.

Deeper.

Legend. Myth. He had been posting photos instead of words because he's lazy. His own conviction. Or hers. Without a head. A shame. A real shame.

A captive woman in a box of captor things. They presumably impede her into submission. She looks displeased with her newfound incarceration. Perhaps she'll perish.

The rest is all flying dogs and basketball played wrong.

All in all, an exciting visual, yet mentally stimulating romp, through the mind of a headless Spaniard.

BBEF Review: 7.5/10

A Dictionary of Sgrabble #1

Ependeturous, adj

1. An addition at the end of something else.

    a. Lit. The addition to an article not written by the original author(s). Most often on an interactive journal, online blog or act of Exquisite Corpse. In the case of the lattermost it will refer to the final entry.

Related forms: Ependeturously (adv), ependeturial (adj. rare), ependetement (noun).

Known usage:

First known usage is by Dominic J. Allen signing off an ependeturous ependetement on a cohort's (Christopher Stokes) blog:

"Yours ependeturously,

Dominic J. Allen

Actor/Writer/Raconteur"

An Old Case of the Writer's Block

I am blocked.

Blocked like so many drains in New Orleans.

I'm not quite sure what to do about it other than write things. Unimportant things of no consequence. Like this. Just to get myself flowing, so to speak.

It's not working.

I'm supposed to be writing two plays. Neither are happening. Blocked, like I say. Blockety blocked blocked blocked.

But then I got a bit inspired. Started writing a short film. Was going well. Really well. I thought, by gosh, at this rate I could I have it finished by this afternoon. That was three days ago. And the two policemen have got no further with their enquiry at all. Andre Breton is trying to organise the Surrealists and Pitcairn is still standing around in Lexington, trying to understand why everyone's started brawling.

Ad nauseum.

Ad infinitum!

Tch.

Might have a cup of tea. That usually helps.

Hypothetical Lecture Tour 1: An Address to the U.S. House of Representatives I Was Never Asked to Give and So Never Gave

As an outspoken spokesman for women's rights, a lot of people come to me asking why I'm not having an operation to adapt my gender. The reasons are manifest, much like your destiny here in the United States.

[Pause for laughter]

Indeed, many have said quite rabidly that I should really be a spokeswoman if I'm to accurately represent the plight of women sincerely to the public and, also, the private. Some have cited my record of domestic violence in the Guinness Book as argument against my status as a spokesman in this particular field. Others have preferred to list my myriad supposedly backwards looking approaches to taming the female such as my recent demand for female chastity belts forced on to all mini-ladies at the age of the first period. Or, as I prefer, full stop.

[Pause for laughter]

How refreshing it is then to come to a country where my ideas are not perceived so backwards as they are forwards. How refreshing it is then to come to a country where women are not married, but purchased. Not loved, but owned.

In my long career as a journalist, spokesmodel, author, actor, raconteur, celebrity chef, amphibian, deep sea diver, record breaker, athlete, arable land farmer, nudist, rapist, presenter and newscaster, I have had many wives, precious few of them of an ethnic persuasion. How refreshing it is then to come to a country where ethnics are not persuaded but are told.

[Pause for a mixture of laughter/moderate patriotic applause]

That is why I implore you now, with dismay in my voice and socks in my shoes, to rise up in your offices, stir yourselves among the public and drum up support for McCain. Too long has the rest of the world feared a non-Anglo Saxon reaching the presidential seat. At least with McCain we choose the lesser of two evils, with his Celtic bones and Gaelic eyes. At least with McCain our children will be safe from international paedophiles - you may think you will never fall victim to such a one as them. But you are wrong.

You may think you are too old. You are not flavoursome enough for them. But you are wrong. You may think they would prefer to prey on your children and your children's children. But you are wrong. They will come in the night. They will snatch you and your children through their bedroom windows, plying you with snozzcumbers, and the JFK is no longer here to give you nice dreams.

[Pause for earnest applause]

But there is still hope! These megalithic paedophiles and bar-burning women do not herald the end of the civilised West on their silken trumpets - far from it. They herald a warning. A warning to us all. The time has come to you as politicians to no longer be men of words, word man, but men of action - action man. Beat the women back into the pantry. Burn the paedophiles in a laboratory crucible back down to their correct size through the precipitation of their water content. Lead your people into a golden age of rampant, mindless, thoughtless, breathless, headless, useless xenophobia and money-grabbing oil-sipping. In the name of God the father, son and holy goat, Vote McCain.

For a superior chip.

[Pause for fervent applause. Some whistling. Approx 7 mins]

Thank you.

[Exit podium to your right. Smile at the camera left and forwards. Exit via nearest door. Not broom cupboard on immediate right.]

Gunning The Curtain

I have recently been in some mild turmoil over the future of British theatre and, rather selfishly perhaps, the future for British playwrights in our native land.

Perhaps I'm worrying for nothing, but it seems to me and to many others in the business that the only plays that are getting put on centrally are either foreign or revivals whereas the provinces, slightly more daring though some may be, are generally relying on repetitive tours of The Best of the Eagles and amateur productions of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals. Hardly what I, and other artistic snobs, consider to be real theatre. Those provincial houses that do produce tend to lead nowhere now, whereas once a transfer to the West End was almost always on the cards. Now there needs to be a clear runaway financial success before penny-pinching 'producers' will sit up and take notice.

And that right there is the problem. The plague of commercialism. Commercialism works for a lot of things - cinema, for example, because cinema is a popular convention that requirtes oodles of money to support. It does not, in my opinion, do anything for theatre - other than keeping the Mousetrap and Andrew Lloyd Webber in business. I think we all know the world would be better without Andrew Lloyd Webber's contribution to the theatre. Why has commercialism done this to the theatre? Why? Opera has managed to avoid it, but only by being viciously elitist. It seems to me that the theatre is being treated more and more like cinema, when it's not cinema. Cinema is big and bold and expensive. Theatre should be intimate, generally, and all about the art of it, rather than it's presentation. What it lacks in technical wizardry and awe-inspiring feats of the visual it ought to make up for in sheer craft and talent. But, alas, nowadays it does not. I largely blame modern 'producers'. These people have no interest in actual theatre. Typically they have money that they want to invest so they'll stick it in a theatre, force that theatre not to take risks and then they can also pretend they are cultured when, frankly, they're not. If we could just ensure the people in charge of theatres - the men with the money - had passion and courage for the art of the theatre. Then we'd see more varied plays, more exciting productions - who knows, it may make people once again interested in theatre, bringing in revenue other than old ladies who want to see yet another clairvoyant evening or night of 'entertainment' with Dominic Kirwan. It might give provincial theatres a new lease of life and make the high and mighty West End sit up and - pardon the pun - get its act together.

What I propose then is a new approach to theatre management. This is just an idea at the moment - I would need some kind of syndicate of playwrights or eccentric, rich, theatre-obsessed financial backers to make it reality - but what if one was to buy a theatre and adopt a laissez-faire approach to the finances. Let people put what they want on, when they want. The bare minimum is taken off ticket prices for the most basic maintenance of the actual building, and the rest goes straight to the artists. No vetting of content or censorship of subject matter. No elitism. No sort of traditional artistic director, who filters through the programme only what will sell to the public. Rather an artistic director who's only prejudice is against poor quality and the status quo. In short, a revolution - a return to the theatre of dreams. Let us give rebirth to post-war theatre and sire a new generation of Pinters, Ortons, Mamets, Albees and Stoppards. Let us give back to the theatre what we have denied it - freedom. In return, you can guarantee that theatre will take back the audiences that tv, cinema and Andrew Lloyd Webber have stolen if only she can have room enough to breathe.