spEak You're bRanes

Thanks to Frank.

Ah, the Pope. Making it okay to hate large groups of people since… well, since the last one died. Have you noticed that he’s not quite as adorable and cuddly-looking as the old one? I have. But for expert opinion, don’t ask some acidic, anonymous gobshite on the internet – just ask David Jones. Or his grandma, if you fancy grabbing a spade and doing a bit of digging.

My grandmother made a small fortune on the stock market by looking, not at the figures in the company’s annual report, but by studyint photographs of members of the board of directors.

She looked at the photos and asked herself “Can I trust this person?”

When I look into the eyes of Pope John Paul II, in every photograph/video over every stage of the long years of his papacy I see eyes showing warmth. genuine compassion, love of humanity, humility and grace.

But when I look into the eyes of Pope Benedict XVI, I see the cunning eyes of a politician who would betray his grandmother if the price was right and swear blind that black was white. His every expression is less than saint-like

Am I the only one who feels this way?
David Jones, Burton on Trent

No. You’re not. Before, you knew the Pope meant well when he said that condoms spread AIDS, or that honestly, he didn’t know about priests abusing kids in their care, or he decided that it was his job to villify and help persecute ten percent of society based on their sexual orientation. I personally preferred it when the Pope was old and senile, and he didn’t look like Dr. Klopek from The ‘burbs. I could just about handle being Catholic when he looked a bit like Stuart Hall – in my head, I could add silly laughs to the end of his mass! Now when I look at this Benedict bloke, all I can think of is Tom Hanks in his undercrackers being chased by the Pope with a chainsaw. Or, ironically, Jake and Elwood Blues being chased by Nazis in a station wagon.

Yeah, I think Catholicism is done for me. It’s just far too easy to be reminded of horrible stuff now I can’t get a tingly groin looking at the Pope.

Thanks to Dave.

Morrissey’s been accused of being a racist, which of course makes it instantly okay to a) openly like Morrissey again and b) insult entire nations. Racism could only get more casual if it was wearing a shellsuit and tucking the bottoms of its pants into Pringle socks.

What inspires me about this is that amongst the chaos there appears to be at least some kind of natural order to the universe.

Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani, in fact many countries do things we find appalling. There’s nothing we can do about it, it’s their culture. But what we can do, and should have done, is to keep them and their ways out of our own country. Is it too late to do something?
Diane

No Diane, it’s not too late. You can f*** off somewhere else. People like you make me ashamed to be native British.
si

See, there are positive uses for that phrase! Now, if only someone could quote Morrissey lyrics and confuse the fuck out of a passing mentaloid, causing him to offer some shit advice based on complete fantasy, and do it in an easy-to-follow bullet form.

Ouija board, Ouija board….can you help me-ee-ee?
Rad Pitt

Stay away from Ouija boards for three very good reasons
1. do you think spirits, of departed are answering you – think again. You are dealing with something that could cause you a lot of hurt and damage, especially spiritually.
2. Malevolant evil spirts hide themselves in a guise imitating loved ones and so on, having info on them. They are out to delude you.
3. Worst of all, they are out for you to be possessed by these evil spirits, they are not interested in your problems or solving them. They are interested in destroying your soul, locking you up to them.
So Rad Pitt, my advice to you would be to throw away your Ouija board if you have one, preferably set fire to it in a safe place and go speak to a minister or priest. May God lead, guide and protect you.
Nektarios

Knock three times if you’ve ever been sectioned for standing outside Boots offering your own excrement as the body of Christ.

Can anyone honestly say that they aren’t even a little racist? Everyone’s a little racist and everyone’s a little gay.So there.
Also, he is obviously saying this out of anger and nothing more. Lord, if everyone had to make sure nothing they said would offend anyone…we’d be mutes.
Also, I hope PETA drops Moz as well because they are a terrorist organization. It irks me that my beloved Moz promotes them.
eli

Honestly, eli, I can say that I’ve never been convinced of my superiority over another human being based on our differing races. No, I base my superiority complex on provable concepts. For example, I think I’m better than you because you project your unchecked failings onto other people and excuse faulty reasoning based on erroneous comparisons to the perceived norm. When I read the bollocks you decided to share with the world, I didn’t think you were of a different race – I just thought you were some kind of twat. However, I did once try and have a wank over Jedward*, so it’s not all faulty reasoning on your part.

*If anyone wants to borrow that one, let me know.

Nation gripped by scandal, Juicy Jenni, Coleen, football, blah blah. Slave to its nature, as a dog eats its own sick, the Mail tackled Juicy Jenigate last week in typical fashion, by publishing a bunch of ‘racy’ pictures accompanied by a bit of hand-wringing and finger-wagging. Which, you’ll note, required the talents of four writers.

But it’s the readers we’re interested in. And in equally typical fashion, their comments run the full gamut from patronising armchair psychology, through sanctimonious prickery, all the way to utter batshit mentalism. Some (most, probably) are simply horny. But almost all agree on one thing: ‘Juicy’ Jennifer Thompson’s most unforgivable crime is being, in their considered opinion, less attractive than Coleen Rooney.

Thanks go to Kris. Commence the unpleasantness.

Its the Beyonce generation ie do anything for money!!
Paul

Does Paul know something about Beyoncé that I don’t, or are his cultural references just very limited? Who knows? Who cares? I don’t. Next…

I hope she’s going to pay tax on that.
With the country’s finances as they are, earnings are earnings, and as her advertised ‘client’ probably avoids heavy taxes by using offshore accounts, it’s only fair she should contribute.
As she would be self-employed (sounds somehow wrong said that way), I suppose she should be able to charge for the pill, or whatever contraceptive measures she uses, BUT she should pay for the medical checkups to make sure she hasn’t caught any sexual diseases.
PeterH

Here we go. Practical advice from PeterH for any budding escorts out there, alongside an apparent suggestion that the service sector pick up any slack left by its wealthier customers’ creative accounting. Which is a great idea. Say next time Bob Diamond pops into the newsagents for some Red Mill, an HMRC official rushes in as soon as the transaction is complete and slaps a big old fuckin’ tax bill on the counter, as Diamond strolls out laughing with bits of corn snack fluttering from his mouth like golden snow. The government gets to pursue those unpaid receipts as aggressively as they like without scaring off the rich people, and the less rich get crushed in the process. Osborne’ll love it.

From the dawn of humanity, women have been the corruptors of men. Everybody remembers it was Eve who ate the apple and began the descent of humanity.
Jeremy Tapsill

Mrs Tapsill find the receipts again, did she?

Lets be honest if it wasn’t for his money he would have to pay to sleep with someone ironically …
Chris Butler

It’s true. I earn a pittance, and prostitutes only ever give me ironic sex.

Women must realise that men like both steak and burger. This escort is Wayne’s greasy cheap burger. Us men like greasy burgers once in a while but we always prefer the steak waiting at home.
Matty Hayes

If this comment isn’t bad enough by itself, you’ll shit when I tell you that Matty is really talking about an actual steak. He’s married to a steak.

The sick fuck.

how do the newspapers get all these pictures off facebook?
tom

Lust = anger
Jeff

tom, presumably, is after tips, but seems fairly harmless compared to Jeff, who I’m a bit concerned about, to be honest. If he isn’t already on some sort of register, can we please get him on one? Before it’s too late.

She has an exotic sexy look about her, but she is definitely not pretty or English looking,-maybe she realizes this and that’s why 1.)she feels the need to sell herself, despite not needing the money, and 2.) is obsessed with her appearance.

Shame on her, poor Colleen.
Miss B

And with unnerving clarity, Miss B has identified the real tragedy of Jennifer Thompson. Loveless childhood? Please! If there is a single, definable root to Thompson’s issues, it’s not looking English enough. If only she’d been born a bit less exotic and sexy, she could’ve had everything by now. Marriage, children, a £400,000 house of her very own husband’s own in which to pace back and forth, trapped, getting ever drunker and more desperate, scratching away at the paintwork until bittersweet freedom arrives in the shape of death or divorce… all of these things could’ve been hers. Damn that exotic, sexy look.

Some people just get dealt a bad hand.

Does indie culture, asks one reader of CiF’s ‘indie professor’ Wendy Fonarow, really offer its female participants sanctuary from sexual objectification and imposed gender roles? Or does it, in fact, offer nothing more than objectification of a less overt nature and an alternative but equally rigid set of expectations?

The indie professor responds cautiously. Outwardly, the indie scene might be less macho than others, but wankers get everywhere, and remain wankers even if they listen to fey guitar music. And just because one of them has swapped his pink Ben Sherman for a bootleg Dirty Projectors tour shirt, his raging cock issues won’t magically resolve themselves.

Another reader – SexyLikeLemmy, apparently – isn’t at all happy with this assessment. Not that he particularly disagrees with it. No, it’s more that he’s sick of journalists sullying the purity of his musical experience with their ‘political ideology’, such as that of expecting not to get sexually assaulted.

Thanks to Nicholas.

This is infuriating! Why am I surprised that a music writer would write an article completely void of anything to do with actual music. Why? Why do music writers always do this? What compels you to apply your own vision of how you think the world should be on every one else?

What is it with you fucking people? Why must you try to enforce some ignorant orthodoxy of your own on every scene that comes down the road? Why? Why can’t you just see music for music? Why must you always try to attach some political ideology to everything? It’s asinine and it makes YOU the only one running around trying to be the equality hall monitor.

Is that what it is? Where all music writers hall monitors when you were kids? Miss the power over the other kids?

Let me let you in on how it REALLY works out here in indie-heaven. Whenever a group of guys gets together to build a band they always have to take into consideration that they’ll get slagged off in the press if they don’t find some way to live up to indie expectations. Get it? Whose the real cultural enforcer? YOU PEOPLE!

Think about it, you got 2 guys trying to put together a band, they know damn well they BEST get at least one girl, if they can’t find one, they better get a gay friend in there some how. Who cares if they know how to play? That’s not important. What’s important is getting treated fairly. You don’t stand a chance in the press if you don’t play there little game. Fine, find some girl and stick her on the bass, just turn the fucking amp down live so she won’t screw everything up!

You writers know fuck all about music, what you do know about it thrusting your orthodoxy on everyone else.
SexyLikeLemmy

So there you go. The truth, if you can handle it, is that Kim Deal was only there so the Pixies could call themselves an equal opportunities employer, and Vivian Girls are probably some sort of bloody PC local government initiative.

But take heart, girls in bands. Because as useless as you are, you are at least marginally preferable to benders.

Thanks to Andy and Dave. Assortment of desperately important opinions on the Mail and BBC, on the vital topic of writing on envelopes. Apparently the Post Office just need a house number and a postcode, and you needn’t bother writing, say, the county. They’ve probably also got their own shorthand to speed things up. All good things, right?

I am with Andrea (12.35) on this I will not be party to this erosion that stinks of the EU. Who do they think they are the Borg out of Star Trek where resistance is futile ?. Sorry pal, I am with the resistance on this. There is no way such things as the Cheshire show will be refered to as the 4NW Show. We are not going to throw away over 1000 years of history for the sake of what looks like an efficency drive by the Post Office,which I suspect is an attempt long term to standardise to a EU post coding system by first taking away the individuality of the area.
Mark, Manchester

This is a tricky one. How to shake free from the iron grip of the postie and his shadowy EU paymasters? All I can think of is you could continue to write the county and refer to it in conversation.

I’ll always continue to use county names. The Royal Mail will NOT dictate to me. I AM NOT A NUMBER…….
jb, sussex

I bet your house is called “Dunroamin” you pointless arse.

The Post Office says all they need is a house number and postcode. So, all these years, I’ve wasted hours writing out street, town and county names on hundreds of Christmas cards? From now on I’ll address the card to Aunt Nelly, 39, and the postcode – for the first time ever my right hand won’t be numb on Christmas Day!
Kevin, Belfast

Try sitting on it. Or using your left maybe.

Something about UFOs. Should we take them more seriously? Probably. It’s like HYS. You’re desperately looking for signs of intelligence, but all you find is a paranoid bunch of ballaches going on about the same things over and over and over again.

These alien visitation people are usually very boring and very mental – so much so that these deluded idiots going on about space aliens and probes are just too much for JohnH. Let’s get some science rolling. Some long, windy, science.

Let me explain the science as simply as possible.

You are on a fairground ride, the ‘waltzer’ being spun around very fast. You cannot move your arm, why? Newtons Law of Thermodynamics. A body accelerating increases in effective mass (weight). Go then on the swinging boat thing, as you swing back and forth you feel a lightness in your stomach. This is due to decelerating and a reduction in effective mass (weightlessness).

Now; send up a rocket and travel faster and faster. There has to be a limit and it is the speed of light. Travel at the speed of light (SoL) and you weigh infinity. So if you can only travel at or near SoL it would take 5 years to reach the nearest star and 200 years to reach the nearest S3 planet (its all to do with diameter and distance from a sun – try and keep up!).

So; if aliens are here they have found away to travel by other means. ALL science fiction writers know this. That is why StarTrek uses warp speed, StarWars uses hyperspace, Issac Assimov wrote about traveling in Parsecs etc.

If aliens are here, and its a big if, their technology is so far ahead of ours that to explain it would be like trying to explain the workings of your computer….. to a slug.

And yet.

They are supposed to have ‘crashed’ a spaceship at Roswell in the 1950′s.

So an alien technology that dwarfs ours rides around the skies like a boy-racer on a saturday night.

I don’t think so.

Remember what Hannibal Lectur said in ‘silence of the lambs’…..

“What is it in it’s self”

UFO’s are exactly what it says on the tin, an Unidentified Flying Object.

We do not know what it is and it’s pointless guessing.

Finally, a childrens poem about 5 blind men and an elephant.

None had seen an elephant (obviously) but knew it to be different from all other animals. So they went to find an elephant, and when told one was in a field they each intern approaced it.

The first grabbed it by its tail ‘its like a rope’

The second grabbed a leg ‘its like a tree’

The third touched its side ‘its like a wall’

The fourth grabbed an ear ‘its like a fan’

The fifth grabbed a tusk ‘its like a spear’

To conclude – each went their way, each to sing their song, but though the were all partially right, they were all completlly wrong.

With less to go on than the blind men lets stop guessing shall we?
JohnH

That’s some serious scientific reality there. After getting through that BSc material, I’m feeling about as real as you could possibly get. Normally I float around the place in a daze, but “Newtons Law of Thermodynamics” grounded me like a drunk pilot. Accepting the advanced knowledge of Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas in making shit up took me a step closer to accepting cruel, atomic level reality; and when I got to Isaac Asimov – sorry, Issac Assimov – “traveling in Parsecs” I definitely knew I existed, because I lost control of my bladder. But if I was in any doubt as to how real things could get, the elephant poem effectively cut off my balls and stuffed them in my ears.

I’m very glad I’m real, and not just some kind of massive cunt squatting in someone’s febrile imagination.

I find the subject of UFO’s as funny as the site ‘speak your branes’.
The former do not exist (they are just unidentified flying objects) not flying saucers. QED: Figments of your imagination.
The latter do not exist (they are just dullards who need to learn the English language) being figments of their own imagination.
reflector2

Oh, no! Everything I thought about myself was wrong! JohnH had me believing it, and now reality has been pulled from under my feet like Peter Venkman pulled out the tablecloth from under the flowers in Ghostbusters! Remember that? They caught ghosts, though, not aliens. Ghosts are real. “And the flowers are still standing!” Hilarious. They were in the dining room of the hotel, and they were looking for Slimer? And they had those awesome particle streamers? They were real. Weren’t they? Weren’t they… oh, n-

I’d like to thank Tim for sending us this. On the face of things, it’s all about Aborginal kids starving to death in rural Australia. But in reality, it’s all about Collin Brown. And may I say – wow. I mean, wow.

It’s almost admirable how racist Collin has managed to become. Here’s a man approaching critical mass – in the Large Hadron Collider of race relations, Collin is one man who’s been bombarded with too many Muslons, and at some point probably copped an Africon to the temple. When I read his anal dribble, I feel like I’m watching White Beauty escape majestically across the fields, shouting racial epithets and “It’s science! It’s for their own good!” as he goes. And then, just as I’m about to put the cunt out of my misery, I feel Nelson’s hand on my arm…

“No, Dizzy. Let this one go.”

I derive no satisfaction in pointing out using empirically derived data that proves beyond doubt, that Sub Saharan Africans (black people) have a very low IQs compared to many. But being aware of this data, accepting this data as factual, is at least a starting point to properly helping Africans. If we continue to pretend that we are all equally smart, Africans will not receive the help they truly need.

If my forthrightness makes me a race-hating-bigot in the eyes of liberals, so bit it – it is a price I’m willing to pay, to make a real change.
Collin Brown

Oh. I see. Yeah, very, er, ‘forthright’. I could see how people could easily confuse that with racism, but on closer inspection, it’s not racist – Collin doesn’t hate Africans. He just pities them with science and shit. After reading Collin’s posts, I’m starting to see the benefits of keeping them doing manual labour and breeding them. If only someone had thought of this a few hundred years ago. They could have built a country.

Collin doesn’t feel good about this absolutely true and empirically derived situation – on the contrary, the burden of this knowledge weighs heavily on his shoulders. The way he bears this cross is practically heroic. Clearly, this man is a fucking saint. Benevolent pity is the only realistic way forward. Feeling sorry for the poor bastards who had the misfortune to be born closer to animals than to God’s glorious shade of pristine-white-or-maybe-slightly-pink-depending-on-the-season is a much better approach than anything we’ve tried so far. Most importantly, it’s not hatred. No – that would be racist! After all, you don’t hate horses for being horses, do you? That’d be silly! Also, horsist.

Being born in a stable, doesn’t make one a horse.

British Muslims, – can there really be, such a thing? Maybe in a civic sense – but a Muslim is a Muslim and no amount of political correctness will change their DNA into British DNA.

If 10’000 Muslims moved into a corner of a British city they, (as a policy among Muslims) will only spend their money within their community – a system known as (Black Money) They will shop at major supermarkets but they wont spend money with British tradesmen and small retailers.

As a result, long-established British business dry-up owing to a severe drop-off in trade which of course leads to: job losses.

Jewish people? Hmm, OK. You did ask, so here goes.

Atheistic Jews (non-religious-Jews), lack many Semitic features that characterise a Jewish person. Semitic Jews are not the Jews, that people constantly criticise. Atheistic ‘Jews’ – such as Peter Mandelson, look ordinary – void of a Semitic (orthodox, Palestinian-look). It is these (select) ‘Jews’, who insist on countries having anti-Semitic laws (not to protect Semite Jews, but to stem criticism of their business practices from coming under scrutiny). Atheistic ‘Jews’ claim to be a people – not a race – a statement which in part, is true. However, this claim does not hold up because Atheistic (internationalist, high-flying ‘Jews’, are essentially European ‘Jews’ -(Bolsheviks) – the architects of communism – void of many Semitic features.

Atheistic ‘Jews’, (in the strictest sense), are not really Jews at all. A portion of them make up part of the international elite who influence and control politicians around the world. The ‘Jews’ who do this, are universally disliked not for what they are, but for what they do.

Orthodox Jews – on the other hand – Semites are a peace-loving race who believe in keeping themselves to themselves. Off course there are many, Semitic descendants in this world with Jewish names, who have no aspirations to impoverish the lives of ordinary people for self-gain.
Collin Brown

Oh, man. I don’t mind telling you that after reading all those facts, I have a tingly feeling going on in the crotch area. It’s brilliant – the scent of a rose that blooms once every thousand years. You just don’t get this quality of racism nowadays. The study of the Jew! British DNA! That kind of stuff extends my phenotype, if you know what I mean. I start picturing beautiful, pristine white British DNA being attacked by some kind of multicultural radiation. Koranium or Judaenium or something. And the only thing that stops it is a suit lined with… oh, I don’t know, Griffonium? Yeah, Griffonium.

But if you thought Collin was just about disjointed race-based thinking, then you thought wrong. He’s also all about the curse of Gay. And again, Collin doesn’t resort to base emotions like hatred – the recourse of liberals and Marxists everywhere. No, he uses reason, and his objections are not raised to stop you from having equality – heaven forbid – but to save you from a major social faux pas…

For heterosexual married-couples departing a hotel after a 7-day stay, it is quite common for either party to announce one, of the two, exit phrases:

(1). My husband and I, would like to checkout – please.
(2). My wife and I would like to checkout – please.

How, I ask, will same-sex ‘married’ couples phrase their exit announcements, not to mention introductions. Imagine, (as a newly ‘married’ SSC) attending a cocktail party (for business reasons) as a man having to introduce everyone to your new husband – or for that matter, as a female, having to introduce everyone to your new wife?

Is this really, what same-sex couples want? As a SSMC, will both of you – (emotionally-speaking), be able to live up to your new-found status or, will you revert to ‘reticent-mode’ when straight-couples look upon you in a somewhat quizzical fashion?
Collin Brown

You didn’t think about that, did you, you selfish fuckers. In your drive for ‘equality’, you forgot that you could, on occasion, confuse people at business-related cocktail parties. Just imagine the look on your line manager’s face when you introduce your same-sex husband as your husband over a plate of cheeses on sticks. Can you picture the look of searing pain across his face as he tries to work it out? Well, then. Lesson learned. Now we can save him all the pain of reconciling that in his poor, overheated brain. Did I mention that in this fantasy your line manager is black? He’s black.

Enjoy Collin Brown to the fullest. He’s a dying breed – after all, the nearest he gets to reproducing is the crusty sock he keeps under his pillow next to the well-thumbed copy of Mein Kampf.

It’s usually a bit below the belt to lay into someone just on spelling mistakes, but Stephen Murray from Middlesbrough, who I found chatting shite on an old Mail article about Baroness Scotland’s housekeeper, is an exception. Firstly, he’s an idiot. Secondly, he’s an idiot racist with weird paranoid delusions. Thirdly, these are just magical.

She employed this woman nowing she was a imigrant thats why she employed her in the first place ,if you had the slightest dought and you had a job of such importance you would play it safe and look around for uk citizen no problem no fine ,she never thought she would get found out and now she and the labour party are trying desperatly to find some sinario which thay can save her job ,weak priminister and weak goverment.

- stephen murray, middlesbrough

Look at ‘dought’, for a start. Despite his obvious shit-for-brains thought-processes, Stephen understands about silent letters and ‘gh’, he even knows a fair few words that are spelt funny. So he clearly has the makings of a good speller in him. And look at ‘priminister’. It actually seems quite logical if you’ve never seen a newspaper and have no idea what the word is meant to look like. It’s implausible, the more I think about it the more it explains a great deal about the internet, and to be honest it frightens me a little. But the only conclusion I can come to is that Stephen Murray can write but not read.

emma2001 offered up this bleak vision of the present in response to David Mitchell’s CiF piece on the burqa debate. Thanks to Giles.

When a Goverment starts telling people what they should wear we are on the road to George Orewells 1984 which is the country we now live in

But remeber today sunday we allow the Goverment to tell us that Tesco/Asda/Sainsburys can only open for 6 hours to let us shop

What hope has this country got of ever living in freedom when we allow the Goverment to tell us when to shop

Think of it

Emma
emma2001

Just think of it, when you’re trudging all the way to the corner shop at 4:01pm this Sunday. Think: “this is my Oceania. This is my war-torn totalitarian murderhole. This is my Iraq, my Zimbabwe, my Sudan. They may not be laying waste to my cultural heritage. They may not be violently suppressing dissent. They may not be dragging my family away to death camps. But they are restricting trading hours for one day of each week. Repression of basic human desires. Just as Orwell predicted. Shit, I’m like a philosopher or something. I could murder some Space Raiders.”

Although it looks more like a hilarious tear-soaked pillow of hubris since his invitation was rescinded, Nick Griffin’s call for things to ask the Queen at yesterday’s garden party is, in fact, a bucket of curdled pomposity. If you manage to put your hand in there without being sick, you’ll be rewarded with a fistful of semi-congealed racist throat slime.

Here’s what Chris pulled out…

Your Majesty, we have met before, remember me?…. I am the lion that stands on your crown, I am the Dragon that is the spirit of your nation, I am the sword that rose from the lake and was given to Arthur, I am the blood that runs through your nation’s veins, I am the breath that your nation breathes, I am the morning mist on the downs, I am the heather on the moors, I am the sun that shines on the Dales, I am the mountains of caledonia and Cymry, I am the white cliffs of Albion, I am the beat of the Morris man’s bells, I am the sound of the pipes over the hills, I am the snow that falls on the meadows. I am the soldier who fought for you, and you father, and your father’s father, and his, I am the Gesith that stood on Senlac field, I am the wise old man you met when you were young, I am the young man your great grandchildren will meet, I am the ghost of the past, and I am the future…. Remember me now?… Your Majesty?
Sigbrit

Sigbrit, we have met before, remember?…. I am the rapidly descending silence every time you walk into a room, I am the pretty Somali girls who laughed at you on the bus, I am the modern world that makes you shit your silly pants in fear and confusion, I am the weird smell of rotting dog food that you leave behind when you do, I am your parochial bafflement at exotic foodstuffs such as ‘sizzling beef in black bean sauce’, I am the look of disappointment glued permanently to your mother’s face, I am your grandchildren’s crippling embarrassment, I am the ghost of your past failures, and I am your dismal future…. Remember me now?… Sigbrit?