David Hadley's Blog, page 67
June 6, 2015
New Avenues in Everyday Eroticism
Footstool Trackevent is probably best known these days as the man most responsible for making geology sexy. He took the use of fossil and geological time periods out of the sometimes-staid world of earth science into the hot new form of erotica it has now become. After all, there cannot be many bedrooms in the Western world these days where there is not at least one trilobite waiting to be utilised in that evening’s erotic adventures. Furthermore, many women these days say they find men who know the difference between the Jurassic and the Cretaceous periods of earth history often make the best lovers. Especially when the sexy talk turns to supercontinents and other aspects of prehistory.
In the past, men used to baulk at any woman who knew too much about ice ages and early hominid jawbones. But in these post-porn days, many men claim they find such sensual adventurousness a massive turn on. This is especially so if the woman is willing to frankly discuss their theories about the origins and purpose of Stonehenge at the height of physical passion.
Nowadays, more and more couples willing to consider earth sciences with a frankness earlier ages would have found outrageous. Many other couples have also been experimenting with the erotic possibilities inherent in Quantum physics. In particular, the space-time relationship and how quantum tunnelling affects it. A sensuous method many experts in both theoretical physics and practical eroticism believe can make t whole experience at least seem to last a lot longer, if only in the eyes of an observer.
Leading erotic experts have put this increasing interest in the erotic potential of science down to the increasing technological and scientific age we live in. Nowadays, to believe in – say – the absurdities of creationism or astrology now makes people seem not only intellectually limited but also deeply unsexy.
These days, for example, most teenage girls no longer have posters of pop stars, film stars and other empty celebrities adorning their bedroom walls. They are far more likely to feature posters of great scientists like Einstein and Feynman, as well as current teenage scientific heartthrobs. This craze -historians of sexy science claim – dates back to the erotic hairstyle of Professor Brain Cox. As well as – of course – the very sexy jumpers of Mick Aston, a leading archaeology sex symbol of his time. Along with flint knapper, Phil Harding, in the hit teen-heartthrob TV show of the age, Time Team.
There have always been many sexy women in the sciences as well, even going back to the age of Ada Lovelace and Caroline Herschel. These days some of the leading TV archaeologists such as Carenza Lewis and Raksha Dave have enabled many teenage boys to dream of one day meeting a glamorous archaeologist, biologist, physicist or earth scientist.
After all, there is nothing quite as arousing to both teenage hormones and the burgeoning teenage intellect as an explicit video of an excavation of a Neolithic roundhouse.
Still, though, it does go to show that the nature of what we call erotic does change and grow alongside society. Many are now claiming that soon the attention of the sexually curious will turn to yet another aspect of modern life to discover the erotic secrets it contains.
There are rumours that the nation’s actuaries are preparing themselves as we speak.
Filed under: arts, Celebrities, Culture, Education, Entertainment, Health And Safety, History, media, Moments, Nature, Popular Culture, Science, Sex, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, Time Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour
June 5, 2015
Kindle Countdown Deal Novel: Juggling Balls – Only 99p!
Kindle Countdown Novel: Juggling Balls
Only 99p for the next five days
[Then £1.99 before returning to full price]
Juggling Balls available here
Martin Laws hates mysteries.
So why has someone sent him a bag of juggling balls?
Why has he no memory of buying a new computer?
Why has that new computer decided Martin needs to go shopping?
Why does a hairstylist he’s never met before keep saluting him?
Most of all, why are so many Elvis impersonators trying to kill him?
Juggling Balls – a science fiction comedy featuring time travel, mind control implants and a future religion that claims an Elvis Presley clone as its saviour.
Oh, and an interplanetary terraced house.
Kindle Countdown Novel: Juggling Balls
Only 99p for the next five days
[Then £1.99 before returning to full price]
Juggling Balls available here
[Other Books by David Hadley are available for kindle here (UK) or here (US)]
Filed under: Book, Books, Entertainment, Fiction, Journeys, Kindle, Mystery, Novel, Novels, Places, Possibilities, Secrets, SF, Society, Technology, Time Tagged: comedy, funny, humour, kindle, kindle countdown, novel SF
Escaping
She came towards me slowly, the bowl held in her hands. Her eyes flicked towards the guard, but he was too busy investigating the contents of his nose. He looked young, too young to be a full warrior.
The women made the sign of belonging with one hand while her other held the bowl.
I gasped, glancing towards the guard, but he was still finding all he was discovering up his nose fascinating.
‘Tula?’ I mouthed, not hiding my surprise.
She looked down at the ground, nodding. It was the way of the Tula, for a woman to lower her eyes when in the presence of a warrior. Not that I felt much like a warrior, bound hand and foot, waiting helpless for my fate to be decided by these strangers from another tribe.
She put the bowl down in front of me. Something fell from under her skirt. She kicked dirt over it, but not before I saw the glint of a blade in the torchlight.
The young guard noticed the woman and was now busy rummaging in his trousers. He called to the woman, but she shook her head.
He called again, curtly.
She shook her head and then nodded towards some of the older warriors around the campfire.
The young one gulped and nodded.
My foot stretched out, as I tasted the foul broth from the bowl. The broth was warm and I didn’t know when I’d eat again, so I swallowed it down. Maybe I would never eat again. I knew nothing of the ways of this tribe that had captured me. They had a captured Tula woman though, so maybe slavery was my fate, or rather death would be for I would kneel to no man… ever.
I felt the hardness of the knife under my reaching foot. I drew my foot back, bringing the knife with it.
The woman had walked away, but now she came back slowly towards the grinning boy. She glanced nervously over her shoulder towards the warriors at the fire, and then reached out to him.
I had the knife now, hilt held tight between my knees, as I used the blade to cut the bonds around my wrists.
Then I freed my ankles.
The boy should have been watching me, not the woman peeling her dress from her shoulder with one hand while the other hand freed his manhood from his trousers.
Her died before he even realised I was behind him.
The woman watched him die. She smiled at me. ‘I wish we could kill them all,’ she said, glancing back at the warriors around the fire. ‘But come, we must go.’ She took my hand and led me out into the darkness of this unknown land and deep into its night.
Filed under: Events, Fantasy, Fear, Fiction, Fragments, Journeys, Moments, Night, Places, Possibilities, Secrets, Time Tagged: fantasy, fiction, story, writing
June 4, 2015
Restless
Restless
The mind turns in on itself.
Ever restless, it haunts
The passages of the past.
Opening long-closed doors,
Peering in through dust
And easy forgetfulness.
Looking for something
It can find some use for,
Something it can believe in.
Filed under: Dreams, Events, Fear, History, Journeys, Memory, Moments, Mystery, Poems, Poetry, Possibilities, Secrets, Time, Words Tagged: memory, poem, poetry, writing
June 3, 2015
A Revolutionary for Our Time
Protractor Angleiron is, these days, best known in the UK as a former leading member of the International Cheese Brigade (ICB). This was one of the most notorious terrorist organisations of the 1970s. This group were particularly responsible for the infamous Dutch Edam Hostage Siege of 1973 and the Red Leicester bombings the year after. It was the ICB, of course, who demanded full human rights for all cheeses. They also demanded protected status for other dairy products during the heyday of what was then known as the EEC’s butter mountain.
Angleiron and his comrades were first radicalised into cheese extremism by that very butter mountain bought in by the community’s Common Agricultural Policy. A scheme designed to prevent French farmers setting fire to things every now and then.
Up until that time, Angleiron was an amateur mountaineer who wanted to climb every famous peak in Europe and so, naturally, was very keen to get his crampons stuck into the butter mountain.
However, such is the notoriously tardy European bureaucracy; it took far too long for them to issue Angleiron’s butter mountaineering licence.
It was while waiting for the licence to be granted that Angleiron first became aware of the complete lack of human rights allowed to all dairy products. All cheeses were especially denied trial by jury should they be involved in any capital cases. Angleiron took his cue from the then-nascent Animal Rights movement, then seeking full human rights for anything from a mollusc upwards. Of course, many European politicians, especially those in the European parliament were very sceptical about animals’ rights. A view often shared by many in the national parliaments as well. They feared for the very safety of their own jobs should slugs and snails, for example, be granted full human rights. The politicians knew from Europe-wide polling than many of their voters considered slugs, snail and other vermin to be much more deserving of their vote than the current incumbents of any parliament in Europe.
However, for Angleiron himself, the fate of mere animals paled into insignificance. Especially so when he discovered that Frederick Engels had deliberately suppressed a chapter of Marx’s communist manifesto. That section dealt specifically with the way that capitalists appropriated all the best cheese for themselves. Thereby denying the working class, as Marx put it, ‘the full cheese value of his labour.’ Engels had argued at the time that a total cheese revolution would be too radical a stance for a successful communist takeover of the West. In particular one where each worker would get ‘his full share of cheese, each according to his needs’ Of course, history had proved Engels right and Marx wrong.
However, such was the abundance of cheese available in the West, Angleiron thought, that a full cheese revolution would now be possible. Apart from in America, of course, which had always had a deep suspicion of European cheeses and their ties to radical left-wing politics. Angleiron claimed that the working class were long kept in a state of false consciousness by their lack of access to the best cheeses. He claimed they would need a leader to take then forward into the bright new dawn of cheese for every worker, each according to his needs.
However, unfortunately for the great cheese revolution though, Angleiron was offered a job as a politics lecturer in an English polytechnic college. A place where he knew the revolution would begin when the students, realising their lack of cheeses, would overthrow the local cheese hegemony. All Angleiron needed to do was wait. So he disbanded the ICB confident that the revolution was soon about to begin.
He is still waiting.
Filed under: Celebrities, Cheese, Culture, current affairs, Events, Food, History, Ideology, Law And Order, philosophy, Places, politics, Popular Culture, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, The EU, Time Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour
June 2, 2015
What the Sea Told Her
The sea spoke to her. She heard the words in the slow sibilance of the waves falling over themselves to reach her. Sheena stood barefoot on the shore. The water washed over her feet as the exhausted waves made their final trickle across the land.
The sea spoke of its endless travels across the vast spaces between lands Sheena did not know the names of. It spoke of its unknown depths and the strange creatures that lived inside it. It told her the secrets of the love between the Earth and the moon that made the sea so restless. It told her of the warm lands and the places that turned even the eternal sea to ice around its polar extremes.
The sea called to Sheena and told her she was the one it had chosen to come and live inside it. She could become the queen of the oceans and circle the world for evermore. She could see places she could not even dream of, and travel to worlds far beyond what the dry arid land could offer her.
The sea promised it would bring lovers, drowned sailors and adventurers, men she would only ever briefly meet on dry land. It would bring her men who had the same thirsts, the same desires to brave the wild seas as she did. She would be the queen of the drowned and Empress of all the mermaids that swam through the dreams and songs of the sailors. She would meet those for whom the dry land was a prison. Those like her for whom an ordinary life was like a slow drowning, far from any sea.
The sea told Sheena she could dive deep; discover treasures far beyond the mere gold and precious jewels of any sunken cargo. She could dive down into the lost cities of myth and legend and learn their secrets. She could find out why the sea had taken them and learn the lost wisdom of their wisest men.
Sheena turned to look back at the land and the dull, dry life it offered. Back there, she had no chance of swimming free. Already the old matchmaker was taking an interest in Sheena and sorting through her lists of eligible men.
Sheena was young and they called her beautiful. So she knew only the older men, the careful men, the miserly men, would be able to afford to pay the bride price for her.
Then what…?
That was no life for her. It was no life at all.
Sheena turned back to the sea and nodded to the next wave that came for her.
She let her robe fall into the shallows for the wave to take from her.
She strode out deep into the waiting sea.
Then, when the next wave came and washed over her, she dived eagerly into its embrace.
Filed under: Days, Dreams, Events, Fantasy, Fiction, Fragments, Journeys, Moments, Mystery, Myths and Legends, Places, Possibilities, Secrets, Society, Stories, Time, Water, Words Tagged: fantasy, fiction, sea, writing
June 1, 2015
Sport and Foodstuffs
Structuraldefect Pastrycase is, as almost everyone in the country knows, one of the UK’s leading defensive pastry makers currently appearing in the professional leagues. Of course, as one of the founder members of The International Pie Competitions Association, most sports fans expect the UK to have a strong pie team. Unfortunately, since the introduction of the European Quiche League, the UK team has begun a slow slide down the rankings.
Not only that, there is grave concern in the sport that the British Pork squad will not do well in the next Olympic Sausage qualifying rounds. Many fans feel that the British banger has been placed in a tricky qualifying group that features not only the traditionally powerful German sausage team, but also both the Spanish and Portuguese chorizo squads. The Iberian teams reached a tense European final against each other in last year’s competition. With the Spanish side winning only after extra time, penalties and another day’s play. A result many feel that was mainly due to the Spanish chorizo showing its superior cornering ability in the hammerhead leading into the final straight.
However, there was much UK disappointment following the British sausage team’s failure to make even the last eight. A somewhat unfortunate showing especial considering the team’s a strong tactical Cumberland sausage when it is fielding. Many food sports fans consequently turned their hopes to the British pie side and Structuraldefect Pastrycase in particular.
As every school pastry team player knows, the secret to a good pie team lies in the defence. If the defensive pastry is too moist or – even worse – too short, then the defence is prone to collapse. This is often the case when the opposing team has good wingers, with an ability to pass the pie deep into the defending team’s penalty area. A situation that is particularly true during the first over when the back straight still has some grip and before the umpire’s call close of play for either bad light or a tea break.
It is Structuraldefect Pastrycase’s tactical abilities in the defensive quarter of the British team’s last half of the outfield that enables him to control the flow of the game. He also controls the vital consistency of the pastry. In particular in the savoury pie endurance trial during the always stressful hill climb stage. This stage often tests the ability of the British steak and kidney pie to retain its structural integrity at altitudes that can cause the continental quiche style pie to disintegrate, especially in the chicane.
However, many fans of food sport in the UK say it lacks the necessary funds to develop itself since the terrestrial, satellite and cable TV channel have withdrawn their support.
All the sports channels now prefer to concentrate their sports coverage on the traditional TV sports of football, rugby, cricket, snooker, darts and naked baby-oiled mixed doubles Twister. All of which have many times the viewing audiences of the food sports. Even despite the drama and emotion inherent in the danger of, say, a high-speed apple turnover. Or even a disaster in the meringue peaks of a traditional lemon meringue pile up that makes such riveting viewing, especially during the sweet pie speed trials.
However, the many fans of the sport believe that in Structuraldefect Pastrycase the sport has a new hero. Some even say that the traditional sporting success of the British pie is bound for a new lease of life, which many fans would agree is not before time.
Filed under: current affairs, Entertainment, Events, Food, Games, Health And Safety, media, Moments, News, Places, Popular Culture, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, Time Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour
May 30, 2015
May 29, 2015
More Savage Government Cuts
Amongst those that notice politics, Overbite Pinkingshears is probably most famous politician in the UK. As the government minister in charge of appearing on TV to be antagonised by the media’s leading political interviewers, such as Wildebeest Prolestrangler, he is a familiar face in the media.
In recent years, the government has claimed that it is making some almost noticeable cuts to public expenditure. These cuts are mainly in areas where the opposing parties have their most supporters. Often in areas such as local government, quangos, fake charities and other drains on taxpayers’ money. Although the government claims its cuts are making a real difference, it does seem to be – to many observers – that little if anything has changed. It still seems that public expenditure is just as out of control as it ever was.
However, in an interview last night on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newssnore, Pinkingshears claimed that last year alone the British government has saved almost 53p in their multibillion-pound budget. The government achieved this impressive saving through each member of the cabinet deciding to leave the last biscuit on the plate at cabinet meetings.
As Pinkingshears said in the interview ‘if you know the membership of the current government cabinet, you will realise what a massive sacrifice this is. Especially so on the part of some cabinet members who do not like to go more than 20 minutes without at least some food to tide them over until lunchtime.’
However, the presenter of the programme then introduced a video clip shot undercover by a BBC intern. She posed as a job interviewee shown around various local government offices. She was shocked and outraged to see that because of the savage cuts none of the local council offices that offered her a job had massage facilities for workers, video game rooms or free horse riding lessons for members of staff. As an outraged and incredulous Wildebeest Prolestrangler said ‘how is this savage barbarity and worker cruelty even possible in this day and age?’
In response, Pinkingshears said that some cuts were necessary. Especially if the country is going to meet its commitments to expanding the vital role that ever-increasing MP expenses play in the modern economy. Furthermore, Pinkingshears argued, if the essential foreign aid budget is to be used more efficiently, it can only be by sending even more MPs on overseas fact-finding missions. Especially to discover the true state of affairs in the overseas sex trade in the more exotic and exclusive holiday resort countries. Not only that, he claimed it will be necessary for the UK to increase its budget for sending cabinet ministers to even more exotic and exclusive locations for the many multinational intergovernmental conferences. These conferences, Pinkingshears claimed, are so vital for getting pictures of world leaders, and the British Prime Minister, into the media headlines.
However, Pinkingshears did have some good news for hard-pressed taxpayers struggling to make ends meet. Soon, he announced, it would be necessary for the UK peasantry to spend only eight days a week at work in order to fund the government’s planned expenditure for the next ten years. This includes developing a new special high-speed train line that will travel the length of the British Isles. This train line is for the exclusive use of MP as they travel down to London to file their expense claims at the Houses of Parliament. The MPs then head off to their subsidised London residences to spend the week with their high salaried research assistants, in readiness for some vital in-depth research into Ugandan discussions.
Filed under: current affairs, Events, Ideology, Journeys, politics, Popular Culture, Services And Shopping, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour
May 27, 2015
A Descent into Drug Hell
Until his doctor put him on a course of placebos for his terminal hypochondria, Stegosaurus Mulligatawny had never had a day’s illness in his life. However, Mulligatawny had recently concluded that there is no point having a health service free at the point of use if he didn’t use it. Therefore, he tried to find something wrong with him so he could get his money’s worth out of something he had – up until then – little use for. Apart, that is, from some serious heavy-duty imaginings about nurses – both in and out of their uniforms. This almost resulted in repetitive strain injury to his wrist, had he not exhausted himself before any serious damage could occur.
After all, Mulligatawny did have rather a good imagination. Unfortunately, he worked in a Local Authority. A place where having an imagination is a dangerous thing. So when his employers rejected his proposal for a traffic congestion scheme for the third time, he became utterly despondent. Especially so when he discovered they had rejected his plan because it didn’t make things worse for every road user. Nor was it, in the eyes of the Traffic Department, financially punishing enough for the council’s local taxpayers. Furthermore, the Traffic Department claimed, his scheme was not seriously convoluted enough to get the council an award for The Most Inventive Use of the Spurious and Unnecessary Complication at the Annual Local Authority Awards. These awards are presented annually to the local councils that succeed in making the lives of their local populations more complicated, miserable and expensive as the council can get away with.
Continuously passed over for promotion by younger, more dynamic council officers with a better record of making things worse for people in the area. Mulligatawny put his first attack of hypochondria down to this snub and his now dead-end career. As Mulligatawny suffered from increasing dissatisfaction with his job, he started out drinking the local council’s coffee from its vending machines.
Soon he was on 17 cups of the unidentifiable brown liquid a day, which contained almost enough caffeine to wake up an amoeba from a light snooze. From then on, for Mulligatawny, it was downhill all the way. Soon he was drinking instant coffee and weak tea and taking vitamin tablets as his drug use increased. He tried dabbling with homeopathy, but he found the highs from such strong drugs so harsh that they left him strung out for days.
When his local street drug dealer ran out of the grass cuttings he usually sold to the naïve and gullible like Mulligatawny, offered the council worker some placebos. ‘The strongest on the market, man,’ the dealer promised as he handed them over.
Mulligatawny had never known a drug trip like it. He saw things in colours, he’d never seen before, which as this was the West Midlands was all the colours beyond grey and brown. Mulligatawny was so high he almost nearly spoke to a woman… once.
However, the drug habit was costing him a fortune, with Mulligatawny using nearly one and a half placebos a week. He was in despair, wondering how his local council salary would be able to finance his drug habit and enable him to continue taking his mandatory seven Caribbean holidays a year. Holidays that were now compulsory for local council staff under regulations reached in a compromise between the local authorities and the public sector unions.
However, it was then that Mulligatawny discovered to was possible to get placebos on the NHS. So, from then on his whole life, his whole world, changed forever.
Filed under: current affairs, Days, Environment, Events, Fear, Health And Safety, Journeys, Law And Order, Moments, Places, politics, Popular Culture, Possibilities, Science, Services And Shopping, Society, Tales of the Unexpurgated, Time Tagged: comedy, funny, humor, humour
