Guardian All Ears 14th July

Whoops! Managed to scoop myself by publishing this weeks article with last week's image last week (if that makes sense!?!?!) - here's the article again with the correct image!

Of the many things to admire about New York City its inhabitant's
uninhibited facility for loud public conversations naturally falls
near the top of my list. The simplest excursion will likely lead you
though the edges of endless dramas. Why anybody watches television
here is beyond me. I was eating breakfast when the people across from
me launched into a complex business/wildlife analogy.
Man 1: "It's a tough organization, there are sharks on the bottom, and
Huck is like a great white-he'll eat a rubber tire, and he'll keep
coming at you- not so smart but he'll do anything."
Man 2: "Edna's like the good shark.
The other man pulled a face that said "What do you mean by 'good shark?'"
Man 2: (Trying to bail out) "I mean, the kind of shark that, you
know…not like a great white, the one that floats around. Helping
people…"
Man 1: (Frowning and laughing) "What kind of animal, is this? Where
did you hear about it?"
Man 2: "You know, I mean she's good, Edna."
Waitress (pouring coffee) "You want more coffee?"
Man 2 "What's that, a rhetorical question?"
Waitress: "Ooh, 'rhetorical question.' I'm impressed.'
Man 1: "You should be, he's trying to impress you."
Man 2: (staring into some form of hand held device and considering his
professional existence) "You know I won't even take my blackberry home
with me."
Man 1: "You've drawn a line in the sand."
Man 2 " I'm saying, 'this is where it stops.'"

Man 1 (looking past his friend toward the waitress)"I have so much
admiration for that."

Article by Michael Holden

'Support Your Local Butcher'

Meat! ...just do it!

I love those pictures of really enthusiastic animals who are about to be eaten - there's something extremely disturbing & wrong about that 'pig butcher' on the pork scratchings packet

Guardian All Ears 5th July

If the Guardian can do 'Organic Vegetable' wallcharts for kids with biblical names I figure the Telegraph readers might go a bundle on my Fox Hunting wallchart concept - or am I stereotyping?

I took a seat on a train and was struck by the aristocratic tone of the accents behind me-a rare sound in the modern phonetic landscape, and one that often merits closer investigation. I turned round to see a girl of around 16 sitting with her father, who must have been in his late fifties.

Girl: “You know Rachel?”

Father: (Peering over the top Britain’s only remaining broadsheet) “Hmmm?”

Girl: “She faints, all the time, she doesn’t mean to, but she can’t help it.”

Father: “Yes, I know the kind of thing.”

Girl: (Tugging at the armrest) “Does the seat move?”

Father: “I imagine so.”

Girl: (Struggling with the mechanism) “How though? How?”

Father: “Backwards and forwards, like a car.”

She tipped the seat back and spilt coffee on her jumper

Girl: “It’s stained!”

Father: “How many of those jumpers do you have?”

Girl: (As though this would never be sufficient) “Three.”

Father: (Perhaps considering this excessive) “Hmm”

Girl :(Dabbing at the stain) “I can’t tell what color it should be now, or whether it’s just damp.”

Father: “Well stop rubbing it, or you might find you lose the color completely.”

Girl: (Recovering) “Thanks for coming with me on the train.”

Father: (Animated by her gratitude “Well, we were quite fortunate. Your mother dropped me off at the station last week and I noticed they had some special offers. It worked out about £20m one way.”

Girl: “Is that good?”

Father “It is good.”

‘That’s better than good’, I thought to myself. ‘ It’s cost me three times that amount, you organized bastard.’ I was angry with myself really, but for the next few minutes it was all about them.

Article by Michael Holden

Guardian All Ears 23rd June

Hmmm...had to draw cuckoo clocks in two separate jobs this week...must be something in the air!

In a department store I queued for the till behind two men-colleagues on their lunch break I assumed-who were buying some lamps. As we waited for the lone employee to return from some errand I could see one of the men eyeing the display of clocks on the nearby wall.


Man 1: “My old man’s got a cuckoo clock.”

Man 2: “Eh?”

Man 1: “Yeah, my dad’s got a cuckoo clock.”

Man 2 (baffled): “What like, and a cuckoo actually comes out of it.”

Man 1: “Yeah, the whole deal.”

Man 2: “Had he been to Switzerland or something?”

Man 1 “No, no. He’ll have got it from somewhere in Hull. It’s not even much of a cuckoo. It’s just like a beak that comes out.”

Man 2 “You’ve had a proper look at it then?”

Man 1 “Oh yeah. I was round there with me daughter just after he got it. He says to her, ‘At five O’clock a little bird will come out.’ And I say, ‘It’ll cuckoo five times.’ Anyway, five O’clock comes and the thing goes nuts, keeps coming up, my daughter wants to know what’s going on. Then I’ve realized, it’s on 24 hour whatnot.”

Man 2 “So it’s come out 17 times?”

Man 1 “Aye. But I wanted to be sure. So I waited for an hour to see if it came out 18 times, but my dad said something to me and I lost count.”

Man 2 “So what did you do?”

Man 1 “Well I wasn’t hanging about for another hour, but I figure that must be what’s going on.”

Man 2 “That must drive your dad mental.”

Man 1 “He’s alright. He’s in bed by nine.”

Article by Micheal Holden

Rabbits!

Rabbit strewn Phantasmogoria with a cheeky nod to Ed D Wood - bless his soul!

Guardian Guide June 14th

This week I just wanted to concentrate on the 'dog-on-string-soap-dodger' angle as I've been on the end of so many worthy but absolutely clueless self righteous rants from folk addled on cheap cider & cock awful 'tribal psy-trance' bollocks!

the article follows...

I was in a café sat adjacent to two girls and man in their mid twenties who would once have been described as “crusties,” though they presumably now enjoy some more contemporary title. Either way, matted hair and willful squalor was the overall vibe as they discussed their disappointment following a recent charity event.

Woman 1: (annoyed) “All that money at the gig that they collected they said it was going to Africa, right? That was the whole point.”

Woman 2: “Yeah, that was the whole point, right?”

Man: (quite exited at the thought of some wrongdoing) “No-you’re gonna tell us they nicked it?”

Woman 1: “No, but get this. They flew there on a plane! They got three returns to Africa out of it.”

Woman 2:(sensing something wrong in this but unable to find words to express exactly what) “Wah!”

Woman 1 “Yeah, so they got there and then it turns out they were just taking them art supplies, no food!”

Woman 2 “What, like pens ands things?”

Woman 1 “You know what I’m saying? This is Africa innit, take some tins. Take art supplies but come on, get your priorities sorted, take some food too.”

Man (forming what he evidently assumed was a lucid vision of the mechanics of global charity) “You can imagine the disappointment of the people that are hungry. When those three got off the plane-imagine the kid’s faces. They would be expecting some grains or something, and all they have is like…easels and shit.”

Woman 1 “It’s too much.”

Woman 2 (moving on) “What are you doing later?”

Woman 1 “I’m gonna go on line and look for a trip hop night.”

Man “Nice.”
-

Guardian All Ears 7th June

This week's copy...ruminations on cat indolence...



I arrived at an airport with several hours to spare and having made it to the departure lounge without let or hindrance and not consumed by the urge to buy a foot long Toblerone or try and win a car in a raffle there seemed little else to do but repair to the hideous “pub”. This proved a popular option and soon I was sharing a table with a couple fretting about their abandoned pet.

Man “I hope the cat’s O.K.”

Woman “It’ll be fine.”

Man “I worry about him.”

Woman “ I dunno why, it’s not like he’s gonna get into a trouble, he never does anything when we’re there, I don’t imagine he gets up to much when we’re away.”

Man “You never know…”

Woman “You never know what? You think it’s gonna have some friends over and wreck the place?”

Man “No, I mean…”

Woman “What?”

Man (as though revealing a guilty secret) “They get lonely”

Woman “He’s too lazy to be lonely.”

Man “That’s not fair!”

Woman “The other day I was watching him and he was staring straight at the sun. I couldn’t figure out why an animal would do that and then I thought-perhaps it’s easier than dilating your pupils, perhaps it’s his way of doing even than less than he was doing anyway-which was nothing-just lying on his back looking at the sun in the sky.”

Man “The Egyptians…”

Woman “Don’t even start with the Egyptians, they built the pyramids. You worship a cat and you won’t even put up a shelf.”