Hemingway: Verbose Prick

 Free shoes: baby dead

A Man Without A Team: Officially the End

It is no more.

 The zombie club is finally, irrevocably, and officially dead.

No tears here. 

1876 will be known as Bangor City 1876 from next season on. There is also the imminent prospect of a new chapter.

It involves in part a kind of, uh, interesting linkup with a businessman who, huge respect to him, has worked wonders on the stadium recently.

The club remains, in all team related ways, fan owned.

Who knows what the future holds? 

I'm tempted to say that all this shit that has gone on has brought the important things back to the community.

We lose those and we lose our soul.

I can't say it won't ever happen again. Humans are unpredictable.

I just hope and trust we don't lose sight of the power we created when we really needed to. The way football in Bangor was wrested back from foul chancers.

The way we all found our club was within us all along. Most importantly, the way we learned how to work and use that unity to build better and stronger.

What happens on the pitch is only a part of it. In a sense, it's a minor part.

Still ruins my night if we lose of course.

Free DNA test

Results bear that

You are related to everyone else.

To be more exact 

Part of everything ever there is or was or will be.

All there up yr DNA.

Om om buggy buncha atoms

Badman sandman don't aks me.

Somehow In Breathy Credit

Oh

Everything is loud and mercantile 

A messy house of reptiles

Shedding careless

Stop

Underneath the sultry sighing sun awhile

The paradigm unfolds

Incessant 

Oh

Sit and feel the undulations 

We approach the early

Evening dauntless

Cause

We have conquered tribulations 

Scrambled by fear

We rose nonetheless 

So

Ask not why them not us, why now, cause

Logic has nothing

To do with it

Or

Reason or rationale force 

Book learning to something

Beyond that 

Oh

We call across the passion skies, hands up

To shout your

Names out

But

Sine waves and sawtooth lives cannot

Create continuation 

From the casket

And

Belief in anything is worse than life

With scar struck

Projects

The

Prospect of capital or kisses or god

With all his magic

Merits

Oh

The day is cooling now, and still 

We seem to be somehow

In breathy 

Credit

Oh

The joint end's orange glow 

Mirrors a sunset 

If you bless it

So

For all those we have lost we offer a scraggly toast

With voices wracked

And ragged

For

With life comes the cost of its damning aftermath's

Heavy toll and its 

Cold dagger

Oh

Memory unreliable

Moments quite conflatable

But this all happened 

And

That we could exist at all together is incredible

A time tapered

Revelation 

So

Amidst all the bigotry we scaled the hill of dignity

Unassuming 

After a fashion 

Oh

We had our time in the city. Unending nights of fantasy 

Hackled back to reality 

A crushing crash land

Oh 

Karma's call seductive brings a tissued veneer 

Through which we see 

There is no pattern

And

Decades destructive kill qings and kings, 

Whichsoever queers 

The vast illusion

So sing:

If, if we are still here,

If here to sit must we:

Then maybe, finally,

With

Tired time detained an cuffed,

A darkest blue for us:

Let there be love.

And love there was.

Fugly

Lost my pension pot investing in a memestock pump and dump

Fronted by the hawk tuah girl

Well if that ain't financial smarts I don't know what is

Put my family in the hands of a convicted rapist and multiple bankrupt

Who wants us to drink bleach

Well if that ain't democracy manifest I don't know what is

From the fat twats in the west to the crackpot obese east

The rats and worms frenetic for the fugly famebot feast

Well ain’t that just another delicious kickback in the teeth

I could have sold my soul six times over if I just knew where it was

These days it doesn’t track

Another despot’s orgy undetected by Starlink’s inevitable malfunction

I surround myself with meatheads six feet tall and eight feet wide

Staring behind dark glasses

Demanding that I have authority over the definition of maleness

From the no-marks in the north to the scumbags in the south

The very worst amongst us get their snouts first in the trough

And that is just the latest way to shove and smite and snub

Lost my mind when I was implicated in a swathe of DDOS attacks

Restructuring is never a good word

Who wants to work anyway when you’re already using foodbanks

I built my week on AI and now I’m facing nine charges of fraud and theft

Though it all seemed above board

There’s no way I would ever have done those things without such timely help

From the bubbling rage of incels to the suicides in the Apple sweatshops

The groundswell is of hate and pain, an inward-facing rot

Don’t look up from twisted toes whilst tears run rank and hot

From the fat twats in the west to the crackpot obese east

The rats and worms frenetic for the fugly famebot feast

Well ain’t that just another delicious kickback in the teeth

Chappy

Chappy got bit by a radioactive octopus

And now he's an octopunk

Four extra limbs made transformation obvious

And his head became a bulbous lump

Chappy started sniffing glue and drinking scrumpy scrumptious

Dyed his hair and stuck it up

Mohican and a jacket made of leather looking glorious

And ink sacs squirting out black gunk

 A bike chain and a safety pin like sneer, he felt so monstrous 

Slouching down and getting drunk

He started speaking cockney like a prototype Sid vicious

Looking for someone to thump

Cause chappy was an octopunk

Yeah chappy was an octopunk

He pogoed like a springy spider  oh so dick ridiculous

Cause he had eight limbs to jump up

He didn't like the hippies cause their dope made him feel nauseous

And they gave him the hump

At all the gigs he got the crowd in paroxysm gnarliness

Kicking out for DM crunch

When the chaos started that was when he felt most ominous

He smacked and cracked at any chump

Cause chappy

Aye chappy

Chappy was an octopunk

Yeah chappy was an octopunk 

He couldn't help himself and went on tour to places dubious

Across the world to find more punk

Punjabi and Pyongyang never met someone so luminous

Tentacles that really sucked

Then chappy went to China and was stared at by the tourists

Waiting at the wall side pub

Cause he was on the grill in bits and god the smell was glorious 

He'd been caught by a fishing junk

He was a tasty octopunk

They had him on a plate for lunch

Cause chappy

Yeah chappy

Chappy was an octopunk

Chappy was an octopunk 

Learning to Write Jokes

I've been trying to get topical one-liners onto a radio show for a few weeks, with no success so far. It's much harder than you'd think. 

Such a lot of moving parts: the joke, its delivery, the cadences, where the emphases fall, the appropriateness of it to the show, the expectations of the audience... it's poetry and it's a beautiful writing challenge. Without getting too Giles Coren about it, it really does make a massive difference if your rhythm is off. I'm enjoying learning as I go, though. It has some clear parallels with news writing, particularly for broadcast and for packages which I've done quite a bit over the years for radio and a bit for telly here and there. Discipline is key to this; word choice can make or break the whole idea, too. Fascinating.

Usually the jokes are based on current news events. I think I've noticed a few themes running through what I've been submitting: plays on words, attempts to disguise punchlines, distraction, reclamation of cheese and puns, leading down one path then making a handbrake turn... anyway here's a few. I think some are a touch cheap, but some I'm quite pleased with. My technique is coming along, too. Some don't work in retrospect. Some work better. Anyway all academic as none got chosen.

I'll never do stand-up, and I'm in awe of those who can articulate themselves so well onstage under pressure - as well as ad lib when needed. As it is, the written word comes to life in a very different way when performed. It helps, too, that it's the same person presenting every week. The challenge is to find things that sound natural coming out of their mouth, with their honed delivery and professionalism. Lots going on. Anyway I reckon I'm probably more excited by comedy than music these days, which given my long background as a music journo is quite the realisation. It's not one or the other of course. That'd be frankly daft. Anyway. 

FAILED ONE-LINERS OCT-DEC 2024

Germany is being overrun by a gaze of invasive raccoons. One enterprising butcher there reckons he can solve it by culling them and making them into sausages. Not the best idea, not the wurst.

Moat Brae mansion, where Peter Pan author JM Barrie played as a kid, has closed, leaving investors out of pocket. Dumfries and Galloway, several hundred thousand pounds in the hole, said they were trying to claw back their funding. “If they’re trying to get themselves off the Hook, they’re living in Never-Neverland. Wendy wake up to the facts, they’ll realise their money’s Lost, Boys,” said a representative of the owners, Tink. R. Bell. I refuse to apologise.

A British collector of housebricks has run out of room and is hoping a museum will take all 4,000 of them. If only he could think of a way to knock up a building himself.

The youngest ever Chinese taikonauts have reached space. Their mission includes fly-bys of Button Moon, the planet of the Clangers, and Q Pootle 5, before returning to Earth with the taikonauts in suspended animation, or as they call it, ‘nap time’.

Researchers in Japan have discovered that chimpanzees perform better at tricky tasks when they’re being watched by humans. So if you were ever wondering why we record in front of a live studio audience...

Donald Trump’s son, Eric, has confirmed that his dad will visit Aberdeenshire in 2025, to open his new golf course.

Janey Godley’s daughter, Ashley Storrie, is designing a new sign for the occasion. (She already has the first three words: ‘Trump is a’ … )

Social Network news now, and there has been a massive migration away from X, formerly Twitter, with millions of disgruntled punters joining Bluesky instead. 

However, Sir Keir Starmer said that there were ‘no plans’ for the UK government to move away from Elon Musk’s app.

Once considered a welcome breath of fresh air, but in recent months a tainted, unreliable and toxic brand, the Labour party won the 2024 election by a landslide.

An unknown Glasgow-based violinist stepped in to play with The Corrs, after Sharon had to pull out of Sunday’s gig at the Hydro. 

Éadaoin Ní Mhaicín had just one soundcheck to run through the songs beforehand, and said she fulfilled a childhood dream onstage.

Of course, many of us have our own dreams about fiddling with Andrea.

Veteran rocker Rod Stewart is set for the Legends slot at Glastonbury 2025.

A byword for hedonist excess, booze and sex in muddy corners since the 1970s, Rod is 79 years old.

Ebeneezer Scrooge’s gravestone, used in the 1984 movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol, has been destroyed by vandals.

Eyewitnesses spotted three ghostly figures fleeing the scene, but police described current evidence as ‘miserly’.

Ed Sheeran has said sorry to the new manager of Manchester United, after gatecrashing a live pitchside interview.

United boss Ruben Amorim said it was the most effective intervention on the field he’d seen all season. Sheeran starts in midfield versus Everton on Sunday.

Britain’s obesity crisis is down to the Church of England failing to provide people with spiritual sustenance, according to Boris Johnson.

Seems the former prime minister remains obsessed with enriching our souls.

East 17 singer Brian Harvey has urged Vladimir Putin not to send nukes to bomb the UK.

In an impassioned YouTube rant, Harvey explained that he’d toured Russia and loved the country and the people. Though he had to go away, he didn’t want to take the pain, so he asked Putin to strafe another day.

The surgeon to the pope has been accused of fraud after saying he was in the operating theatre, when actually he was hundreds of miles away - on the beach. 

Luckily for Sergio Alfieri, he collects his wages through an app - so he has PayPal immunity.

A UK ticket holder has won 177 million pounds on the EuroMillions, the third biggest National Lottery win ever.

They told reporters: “Byeeeeee”

Conservationists have called an AI tool which can distinguish between grey and red squirrels ‘an absolute game changer’. Squirrel Agent can automatically allow only the endangered native reds into special feeders, whereas the larger invasive greys are forced to consume contraceptives instead.

Elsewhere today, sales of Rimmel red hair dye have gone nuts.

Dundee University, beset by cash troubles, has said that a £7,000 trip to Hong Kong has generated more than ten times that in revenue.

It would have been more, but the final roulette ball landed on red instead of black.

A previously-unknown 1830s waltz by composer Frederic Chopin has been unearthed by a New York museum. It’s the second longest time between new releases this week after The Cure’s latest album.

The Wall Street Journal  has reported that Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin have been in regular touch for the last two years. A volatile and capricious dictator spreading misinformation to destabilise democracy,  Mr. Musk bought Twitter in 2022.

Pippa Middleton is in the middle of a row as she blocked off a footpath crossing the back of her £15 million Berkshire estate. Local ramblers complained that they have lost access to one of the world’s greatest rear views.

(OR

Pippa Middleton is in the middle of a row as she blocked off a footpath crossing the back of her £15 million Berkshire estate. It’s not the first time her back passage has been in the headlines.)

Glasgow doctor and TV presenter Punam Krishan was voted off Strictly Come Dancing this week. We tried to get a quote but were told by her receptionist that it’s a three week wait for an appointment.

(OR

Glasgow doctor and TV presenter Punam Krishan was voted off Strictly Come Dancing this week. We tried to get a quote but were told by her receptionist that it’d be three weeks before we could see her.)