Stonehenge

Archeology is an interesting science.

It involves the digging up of things from the past.

There are a number of things I do not want to dig up from the past. I'll get to one of them shortly, which has erupted unbidden from the cold, dank past.

I went to a trivia night at the Wit Perd this evening. The caller was a divine symphony of hips and blonde hair. A towering ectomorph with no tits, like a cross between a 16 year old Robert Plant and a giant vulvine sex-snake. Just legs and jawbone. Thick as pigshit tho. She read one of the questions out, then immediately the answer. And repeated it three times while the audience laughed.

It being Halloween we were given, along with the usual picture round and music round, a pumpkin and a steak knife. We were told that there would be a prize for the best carving.

The only thing I know about sculpture I learned from Douglas Adams. Just look at your substrate, visualise your muse within, and simply hack off any bits you do not recognise.

During all this I ordered the wild boar sausage and mash. A very simple meal, which has all the requisite ingredients to allow a man to live forever. The little waitress we had was just delicious. A tiny meek little thing, subserviently seeking approval and asking if there was anything else I required, timorously lisping as she proffered a steel bucket full of condiments.

"Fuck off away from me with your shitty sauces and herbs. I require ketchup, and nothing else! Begone! You are occluding my view of Robert!"

I threw ice cubes at her till she fled, weeping hopelessly.

Midway through the sports round I turned my attention to the gourd. I looked at it, and could not find any inspiration within. All I could remember was that two weeks ago there was a report in the press that a world record pumpkin had been grown in Carmarthenshire. And that last week there was a national pumpkin shortage due to an exceptionally shitty August and the credit crunch. I looked at the other teams in the pub and saw them all doing Jack-O-Lanterns. Fuck that. I have to do something else.

Perhaps I should just carve "Ceci n'est pas un pumpkin" on the outside and be done with it.

But judging by the way Robert the sex-snake just pronounced "Galla-pay-gos" I figured this would not find favour with the judges. Not that kind of pub.

So I skinned it, and carved a brane. And shoved the steak knife into the amygdala when it was done. Garnished with splatter of Heinz's best. Fuck yeah.

Goddamn people can be stupid. I was in court this morning waiting to prosecute a breach of section 92 of the Trade Marks Act. Some cretin was waiting to swear a statutory declaration for some kind of piss-ant fine. She burst into tears when she couldn't read the phrase "... and I solemnly swear and conscientiously believe the same to be true ..."

The clerk had to help her: "Con...she...en...shuss-lee". I mean, it is an oath. The woman's gotta know what she's saying. Her immortal soul is imperiled!

It was all I could do to stop myself from standing up in open court, amicus curiæ stylee, throw £100 at her for the fine and exhort her to fuck off. Right now. And let proper people do some proper fucking work using the English language. It was costing my client that much to have me sit there and hate.

And tonight, when the sex-snake asked: "What is it that a heliologist studies?" some dickhead on my team spastically blurts out, in a whisper loud enough for the whole pub to hear: "Helium!"

There is a pitiful knowledge of the sciences in the current age. In the old days people like Einstein were like rockstars. People actually waited for his next album. It is gratifying to hear people shouting out the names of noble gasses. There's not enough of it. It is sad when people shout out these names just cause they know it sounds like a funny word they just heard for the first time. In this instance it was unfortunately followed by the unshakable belief that this could not possibly be wrong. Helium - Heliologist. It is irrefutable when you say it out loud.

"Dickhead! What is it that helium makes? Trust me; what is it I hold in my hands? Lo - it is a brane! Admittedly a sad grey vegetal pumpkin brane, but for certain it is a brane nonetheless. And It sings cerebral songs to me. Its lament is sweet and sad, and filled with chlorophyll dreams: "The Sun, The Sun!""

Alas, poor Curcurbita! They heed him not. I knew him well.

No, no, people are dumb. They do not learn. 2 Peter 2:22!

But archaeologists do learn. After another ground breaking dig, they've apparently learned that Stonehenge was some kind of religious site. (See what I did there? Ground breaking. Archaeology. Whatever. You wanna hear my impression of an extractor fan? I don't like tractors anymore. Nevermind)

And someone else who digs shit up from the past is British Gas, apparently. For fuck's sake. I left that last shithole habitat with my sanity and not much else. I left a wedge of cash which would choke a donkey - for the bills. But no. Apparently the flatmates had some kind of celebratory ceilidh immediately following my departure, where this fund was used for the purchase of lager and marijuana and pornography.

And didn't pay the gas bill. And now there is a Kafkaesque rigmarole to be gone through with some kind of canine debt collector. And do you know what? I have to go to court...

And swear a statutory declaration.