Frogs and Scorpions: Silly Bastards

Do you know the fable of the frog and the scorpion? People attribute it to Aesop but I just looked it up and his is called The Farmer and the Viper. The frog and scorpion came a century or so later.

Both stories share the same general idea, though. So let’s stick with the frog cos I like frogs and their mad jumpy boingy legs and funny burp language:

-

Once upon a time, there was a frog and a scorpion next to a river. The scorpion wanted to cross over cause I dunno there was scorpion porn on the other bank or some shit. The frog, of course, could do so any time he wanted.

The scorpion asked the frog,“Lad, giz a backie lad gwan lad,” cause the scorpion was from Tocky. The frog went, “No way lad, yous’ll well sting me and we’ll both drown, ya big sausage.”

Scorpion replied: “Don’t be a div, lad, why would I do that? I’m not drowning today lad.”

So the frog started to give the scorpion a backie over this river and all was going well til about halfway there the scorpion’s tail flicked and stang the frog a proper good one right in his cock. The poison set in and the frog became paralysed and started to sink, taking the scorpion down with him toward a watery grave.

Before they both drowned to death, the frog said, “Fucks’ sake la, what did you do that for? Prick.”

And the scorpion said, “I’m a fuckin scorpion you absolute queg. What did you expect.”
Glug glug glug and that’s all she wrote as they both died of drowning, the frog feeling a bit shitty about the whole fucking deal.

-

Now people usually take the moral of this tale to be that no matter how much a scorpion claims it’s gonna be nice and not sting you to death, it’s always bound to do exactly that. This is cause scorpions by nature are destined to lash out with their stinger. Therefore, never trust a scorpion. On your own head -- or frog cok -- be it.

But that’s not correct.

The scorpion wants to get over to the porn, which means he’s got a sense of delayed gratification. The frog is wary because of the scorpion’s reputation. So the frog can take previous information and extrapolate it onto an abstract potential future event, plus make a reasoned decision based on that, i.e. to tell the scorpion to get a lift elsewhere cause the latter is a stinging, killing machine and the frog would like to carry on living (showing a sense of self-preservation, position in embodied space, self-reflection and therefore complex sentience).

The scorpion replying means that he in turn can take all that in mind and then provide a rebuttal to the frog in that he appeals to the frog’s sense of fairness. It would be absurd would the scorpion then sting the frog, cause they’d both die. The scorpion doesn’t want that either, infers the frog. So on they go. Cue stinging, etc, and an unrepentant scorpion basically shrugging and mugging in a tight close-up to camera, like at the end of a crappy US character comedy called “Trust Scorpy”, then there’s a circular fade to black and cue credits.

The scorpion and the frog share language, so share that language’s cultural context and connotations. If the scorpion is capable of this level of abstract contemplation, then he is surely capable of seeing that the urge to sting is so strong that he’s possibly going to kill them both. Given that the stinger is a defence mechanism, or at least a food-gathering one, the most likely outcome is that the stinger won’t be used until and unless a) the frog attacks and/or b) the scorpion is hungry for a frogs’ legs butty.

The scorpion’s already said his goal is to reach the other side, and to read Big Thoraxes Over 40 Months, and the frog’s clearly a woolly liberal type who’s prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to one of nature’s most beautifully-calibrated killing machines.

So is the scorpion a liar, or is he bound by his deeper instincts to always sting the frog? If it’s the former, then the frog would seem to be at fault for falling for those untruths. We know the frog can reason and base its conduct on previous information and apply that to a potential situation.

The frog should tell the scorpion to shit off. In that case, if the scorpion is an instinctual killer when threatened, it’s likely that it’s stinging time anyway. The scorpion wouldn’t get his porn, but he would get a meal as well as the satisfaction of ridding the world of one more instance of woke left crybaby virtue signalling.

If it’s the latter, though, that a scorpion can’t help but sting a frog just because a scorpion is a scorpion, then the scorpion’s death by drowning was wholly avoidable. We’ve seen the scorpion in a complex exchange that dances around truths and possibilities, and ultimately the scorpion’s persuasiveness leads to the doomed journey cross-water. To persuade a frog whose thought processes are at a high level of cognition means that the scorpion is in one sense working at a higher level still, even if that’s just recognising the naivety of the frog’s stance and taking advantage of it.

Our tricksy scorpion, however, reveals his own flaws when he, on the way to his soggy grave, announces that it’s the frog’s fault for trusting him in the first place. Whilst we can’t completely discount the idea that somewhere in there the scorpion was suicidal, at least consciously the scorpion did want to have a future: sitting on the other side of the river leafing through the pornography.

So who is to blame?

The moral seems to be “Don’t trust a scorpion” – extrapolated to human interaction, usually – that if you get stung, that’s your fault. Or, to borrow another fable, if you leave your front door open it’s your fault if you get burgled. But it isn’t that, because in a burglary there is a distinct malice aforethought on the burglar’s part. Both are cases of victim-blame. At worst the frog is naive, and that’s not a crime.

The scorpion takes no blame on itself here, either. He appeals to a sense of inbuilt instinct: he was born to sting. A thief will always take the chance to thieve. That’s fundamentally reducing a cogniscant, persuasive, complex individual to a single perceived instinct or behaviour, and that’s problematic for all sorts of reasons. The scorpion is either a liar or overwhelmed by its need to sting, obliterating even the instinct for self-preservation. This seems unlikely given that the scorpion is clearly an old hand at persuading other creatures to take him places, because in none of those previous cases has he drowned to death as a result.

Nature’s a lot more route one than all this. There would be no pre-match discussion. Either the two creatures would have a short-lived altercation, they’d cross the river together, or most likely they’d both leg it from each other. Frogs are pretty damn good leapers. I reckon the frog’d get away pretty quickly, and have a long and dull career reflecting on this life event in the downtime during takes for the video for that Paul McCartney song.

No, I reckon the blame lies on the person telling the tale. They’ve recounted the whole story, but not understood it. And they probably vote Tory.¹

(Also that you should be more careful where you discard your scorpion jazz mags. This whole thing could've been avoided had the porn been left under a bush like what people did in the olden days.)

1I’d have said ‘Reform’ here but that implies they can actually reflect on fables, which requires actual abstract thought and has nothing to do with mistakenly painting the flag of Denmark on mini-roundabouts, or sticking fireworks up your arsehole.

God, I'm Sorry

God, I’m sorry.

I’m truly fucking sorry.

I took your name in vain.

Please acknowledge my shame:

I cursed you a few times and more.

I’m not an infidel. I don’t think I ever have been.

(There was one time. We’d been on one date, or two tops,

but we weren’t officially going out at that point,

and it was in Germany, and what happens on tour

stays on tour, so I think it’s borderline at best).

I know you worry.

I don’t want you to worry.

It must drive you insane,

When your sheep wander astray,

Do things you might deplore.

There’s not so much to tell: In any case, you’ll’ve seen.

(It’s all been fine: Most of the times with the cops

weren’t anything arrestable, just background noise,

like cautions for crossing tracks, or being drunk,

or at gorse-burning parties that I really should’ve left).

If I can say sorry and truly try and mean what I said,

Can we come to some arrangement do you think?

Like if I promise that from now on I just won’t

do anything bad, and I'll say you’re great, and stuff?

I'll do my best, and try not to be mean

and love your son and that ghost bloke -

you're totes my fave hat-trick -

and I'll sing songs to your name?

And all that do re

mi fa so?

And in return (not that I’m demanding it)

If you could see your way to giving me a break

And letting my back heal, so I can work,

and you just lay off with the deaths for a touch?

Just give me a little spell where the grass really is green

and everybody’s warm,

and nobody’s in pain?

Let me try, and try again:

I say, and please believe me

God: I’m sorry.

This Is How It Feels

I know it’s going to be awful, and it’s going to rain, and be cold, and we’re going to be crap and probably lose.

I wake up on a Saturday thinking these things to myself. The heart sinks at the realisation that I’m skint but I’ve got my season ticket so I have to go.

So we gather ourselves together, look longingly through the window at the beers that the rich ones with jobs are drinking, pre-match, and drag ourselves down Farrar Road.

But as we turn that corner next to the Foulkes garage, and start to head down the tiny alley that frames the turnstiles, things change. A flutter, unwarranted, in the gut. From here the tiniest sliver of the grass is visible, down the side of the tin doors where the mower can get in. Next to the club shop. There’s a merest whiff of ancient parchment; old programmes from The Good Times of three years ago. There’s a hubbub. Before a game everything is possible.

No matter how shit the team’s been this season, no matter how despondent you are, this one-minute final walk before entering the gates of doom still brings something primal out. Because one thing can never be relegated, and that is hope.

A game begins. A game happens. A game ends.

Some jeers and boos, maybe. Or, perhaps, the appreciative applause of ultimately failed, but honest, effort. At best a draw scratched out, another point toward the verdant potential of a new season and a new crack at it. Maybe, maybe even a ropey win. But usually not. Shaking heads. Staring at the floor as we, now in an evening shroud, trudge back down the ginnel. The opposition’s team coach is parked at the top. Younger and angrier amongst us find the rage inside to spit on its wheels. Most of us hardly bother to lift our heads up to acknowledge that we have been conquered, yet again. If we can scrape together enough for a few bottles of Frosty Jack, we’ve got a night of amplified self-hatred ahead. We usually manage it. But for now? For now some of us go up Ffordd Farrar, some for a self-soothing pint, and some of us head the opposite way. As we part, gloomily wishing to be anywhere else, any time else, we nod to each other.

“See you next week.”

“Aye.”

No other option is possible. This is, as the song goes, how it feels. Lonely, small, worthless. But let’s get one thing clear: defeated, skint, cold and dulled we may be, make no mistake that this is our misery.

Anyway, we nearly hit the post when it was still 0-0, didn’t we?

Lucifer Shot First

With every tear shed the night lasted for longer

Every memory a painful thousand years

How he pled, how he begged, but there was no-one on the line

Since he’d burned up all his credit with that goddamn early draw

So now what, oh now what? No, this ain’t livin’

Everything I done I thought I done it well

Oh my Lord, my Lord, I am the one who fell, forsaken

Cast from heaven, lost forever in the ninth circle of hell

But there was no turning back for the light-bringer

All he wanted was to be the shining one

But the morning star was fated to lose the battle

His divine light extinguished by the blazing rising sun

So now what, oh now what? My Lord I loved thee

But you threw me down below the moaning dead

Those who gaze on me are blind with hate forever

I was once a king but turmoil haunts my mind

When he flexed his wings they said it was defiance of The Word

Agitating for an equal love above

For the sins of pride and insubordination

They hounded him with demons, all banished in the fire

So now what, oh now what? I am your servant

In the midnight doubts I will surely appear

Everywhere you see a faithless congregation

You will find me there, and I will rise again

Double-Cut McKenna

Double-Cut McKenna was a man outa time

Hopped the train to Memphis til the end of the line

When the guard demanded tickets it was surely unwise

A moment of pure tension as the two locked eyes

Then Double-Cut McKenna sliced him up with both knives

Double-Cut McKenna got his ass off the train

Guitar case in one hand, a grim smile on his face

Made his way to Beale Street where the music was blue

Drank his fill of whisky in a filthy saloon

Baby let me tell ya he was dancing with doom

His guitar safe encased the whole damn time

The barkeep laughed at him: you gonna play for us or sit?

Or are you just another poser thick in his drink?

I bet there ain't even no guitar in that thing

Double-Cut McKenna stared from under his hat

Eyes of raging fire shut the barman down flat

No-one talks to Double-Cut McKenna like that

He said:

Listen here, Slick, cause you’re coming down fast

and your mind is writing cheques that your body can’t cash

you better hope it’s quick when fate comes back for you

So listen here, Slick, cause these words are my last

and your mouth is writing cheques that your fists can’t cash

you gonna get it double when the devil knocks on your door

Crumpled on the floor in a mess of crimson blood

A bartender who bore the brunt of Double-Cut’s grudge

The knifeman took his guitar out and picked out a tune

And all the whores stood silent, awed, enraptured by blues

Whilst the devil sneaked around them and cursed their souls

With each note a demon flew and cackled alive

Down the throats of every single person inside

And each one felt malevolence like nothing before

So Double-Cut McKenna made his way to the door

To ride the train, his only home forever

Some say that you can hear him in the clicks and the clacks

Strumming out those rhythms in the tunnels and tracks

Looped in time eternally paying off his debt

His punishment for cheating in a rigged game’s bet

And all who hear the devil’s tune will sing it out in terror

Of Double-Cut McKenna:

Listen here, Slick, cause you’re coming down fast

and your mind is writing cheques that your body can’t cash

you better hope it’s quick when fate comes back for you

So listen here, Slick, cause these words are my last

and your mouth is writing cheques that your fists can’t cash

you gonna get it double when the devil knocks on your door

No More Brown Paper Parcels

He’d love that one.

That’s perfect for her.

But there’s simply two fewer

to shop for this year.

No brown paper parcel

with slippers and socks

that were half the price

of the postage’s cost.

No charity cards

with soaring white doves;

no more cursive content,

no message of love.

And, in your notebook,

in your tidy hand,

addresses updated.

But nothing to send.

Exhausting, enraging.

Still unfair. Still sick.

Half-blind, reaching, flailing,

through translucent mist.

But when I see presents

that I’ll leave behind,

I will value the fact

that our lives intertwined,

Cause you taught this lesson

through all that you did:

It’s the thought that matters

not the price of the gift.

365 Days Into A Deal

“I’ll put you on this cutting edge medicine,” he said.

“But no alcohol. Deal?”

We shook on it.

(Even if I hadn’t agreed, he’d have put me on it. I mean it’s not a binding kinda zero sum thing is it.)

It was a good deal for me. My bones were turning into cinder toffee. My back had collapsed on itself. I had thirteen – 13 – pressure fractures in vertebrae. That’s a lot. It hurt. I couldn’t walk without sticks.

I've lost six inches in height after my spine collapsed. I'm lucky to be walking at all, I know that.

Thirty five years gone in one handshake.

I meant it, too. No alcohol. Deal. Shake. Done.

Fuck, the evenings were boring. Long. Weird.

Fuck, the journeys home were longer and bumpier.

But weirdly I didn’t mind going for a pint which was non-alcoholic. The main problem there is that you get bloated way quick.

That first pint, the cold, wonderful nectar on a hot day – still magnificent. So it wasn’t really the alcohol there that was doing it was it?

I’ve not been on a long-ass away trip with footy though. That’s a tricky one to navigate. But I probably will do it. And I probably will navigate it. (I reserve the right to access herbal medicine, though. Come off it).

I have to say that the Universe is doing its best to make me get pissed. But so far, I’ve managed to swerve that somehow.

And if I did slip, did drink – well, just don’t do it again. I mean that’s the way to be kind to yourself isn’t it. Nobody’s perfect and all that.

It gets easier. You can easily fill the time with searching for the perfect NA drink. It doesn’t exist in the same way that the perfect pint doesn’t exist, and nor should it. The fun is in the search and the trying and the putting-it-on-ice and the supping. The whole point of beer is that it’s there to be drunk then pissed away again. Alcohol or no. But after a couple of months it’s kind of a dull thing to consider anyway. Drink, don’t drink, who gives a fuck and what the hell was all that fuss about?

Stu, a brilliant writer and top bloke, said once that he hated drinking but wouldn’t stop. That’s familiar (he has stopped, and continues to be stopped, but if he slips – he’ll get back up and start stopping again). Wouldn’t, not couldn’t. I think that’s an important distinction.

Going For A Pint is alright isn’t it. Running to catch the offy and buying two bottles of cheap wine in case you run out and want a drink is not alright, I don’t think. Being a grown-up on paper means being able to buy small bottles for the journey home and a big bottle to have with dinner and another big bottle in case we want more after the big bottle runs out, and oh fuck it another one for tomorrow but yeah ok one more before bed and let's open it and away it all goes. Being an adult by dint of age means being able to buy a bottle of cheap rum and necking it all to chase down oblivion.

But you always wake up again and feel like shite.

If you drink, you get hungover so deal with it. I used to tell people and myself that all the time. It’s true but at some point drinking ceases to be social and fun and begins to be an activity that is circular and thus pointless. Drink-bed-wake up-work-drink-bed-wake up-work etc etc. That I could function for so long on that locus isn’t anything I’m proud of, or actually ashamed of either, and now each and every second of every minute my bones tell me I fucked it up.

Mind you, says a little voice in my brain, it could easily just be a quirk of genetics.

Also true, I suppose. Also true.

I mean I smoked like an absolute bastard for 10 years nearly exactly: 20-40 rollies a day, unfiltered. Cough cough, horrendous stink, and my desk was a fucking nightmare of ash and crud. Disgusting, really. Now that’s a fool’s game, smoking. Terrible. Bad For The Bones. (The worst blues song of all time.) I’ve done nearly 20 years off of that stupid shit and I think technically it means I am back to the baseline of a non-smoker. That does feel good.

So a year NA done and I don’t think I feel a single iota better in general, given the pain and whatnot. On the other hand, maybe I’ll get to still be able to walk properly for the rest of my days. On the other foot. Strange phrasing. Strange days.

Stopping getting drunk, stopping taking alcohol, is not the same as stopping smoking was. I did like being drunk – sometimes. What’s the equivalent for a smoker? A really nice cigarette? Nah. They do exist now and again, nice cigarettes, and sometimes a rollie could inexplicably taste of coffee or something. Tastebuds burning out with a last flourish, is all. Drinking leads to being drunk. Turning the world off outside and inside your head, if you’re lucky. But a lot of the time it just pokes demons and traps them inside you, which is way worse. And the doom’s never too far away.

Taking alcohol. That's how David Nutt describes it in his ace book about it. Taking it. A drug. If only that framing dominated.

A year. My mind is clearer, I think. I used to think I could feel my brain losing its power. Maybe I could. Maybe my vocabulary’s returning: I can even remember where I am in books I’m reading now.

Still, if they invented alcohol without the bone-crumbling side of it I’d probably be one of the first in line to give it a go. As I write that I can hear most of my brain railing against the prospect. That’s gotta be good, hasn’t it. Something's being reprogrammed. Overwritten. Tentatively, then stronger.

Logic has nothing to do with it, though. Feeling will always take the lead. Alcohol without the bad shit? Bring on the cocktails: I’d line them up and neck them one by one, and let the devil take the hindmost.

The cutting-edge medicine doesn’t appear to have done a great deal for me. I’m not gonna have any more scans til the course is over, and I’m only just coming up to about a year on it. The first year of two. Perhaps by the end of the 24 months I’ll be absolutely flying and pain-free. At this moment I am neither. Trying to calibrate various pain-relieving tips and tricks, medicines from various plants and molecules. Some send me to semi-sleep. Some put a half-smile on my face. But none of them have the wonderful, deeply treacherous blanket of familiar sinking self-abused comfort as a quarter bottle of whisky does. So they pale in comparison.

Hey though. A year. That’s good. That’s great. I don’t need to drink and never did. I needed to fuck everything off, including my whizzing brain. And alcohol could do that. A bit. Sometimes.

All I need to do is walk (stumble, stagger, limp) less than 50 yards and I could re-up my booze again. It’s legal and I’m old enough to do it. I just haven’t for a year, and I don’t think I’m going to do it today either.

No guarantees, mind. Just a handshake with a consultant a year ago. 

Really though it was finally a handshake with myself.

Ultimately, that’s the only real deal that ever matters.