Is ‘Broken Britain’ Broken?

Self-styled "Hitler Vampire", Dick Witless, in the rotting flesh

Dick Witless looks back on a golden era that never was: ‘Broken Britain’

Just one year ago, I knew precisely where we, as a nation, stood: knee-deep in the most pestilent mire this once-proud land had ever known. Blighty was blighted. The country hadn’t just gone to the dogs, it was the dogs, and not the dignified bulldog of old, nor even some frightful Frankenmutt of new (a labradoodle, say), but a teeth-gnashing, drool-frothing pitbull, sporting a studded collar and leashed up to a gang of feral hoodies. Anthony Burgess saw it coming, we cried: drugs and dregs did equal droogs. The streets were no longer safe to walk on in daylight hours. It was like a Zombie invasion, only these zombies were drug-addled teenage goons reacting with the incendiary speed of savages. 

Picture this: another innocent victim lies bleeding to death, having been sliced up like a side of roast beef at Sunday lunchtime. The ambulance arrives hours, if not days, later, and by the time it’s ready to take the fallen hero (who had, no doubt, been neglected and ignored by the social services in his youth) to the no-man’s-land that is a modern A&E waiting room, the tyres have been robbed by the very same hoodies who had stabbed this iconic idol. Just one more martyr for the lost cause that is ‘Broken Britain’, we’d sigh.

Not anymore. These days ‘Broken Britain’ is decidedly broken. Just yesterday, I saw an old man up who had fallen over on the ice. Within seconds, a bunch of yobs had surrounded him. But, instead of kicking his head in and robbing him of what few pence he had about his person, they were actually helping the old fellow up! Where there should have been “You’re fuckin’ dead, you are!” there was “Are you alright, sir?” I wasn’t just flabbergasted, I was disgusted. And this sickening display was just the beginning.

Exhibit B came this morning, on the overcrowded train into London. In the red corner, a pregnant lady in need of a seat. In the blue corner, a hoodie with his iPods on slouching across two seats, volume drowning out conversation, and the whole coach too intimidated to even look his way, let alone challenge the reprobate. I sat and watched the whole sorry spectacle unfold as if it had been scripted, until the wholly unexpected happened: the hoodie, upon seeing the pregnant lady, only went and gave up his bally seat to her!

Staggered as I already was, this outrage was far from finished. Someone then took this opportunity to suggest his music was on “a tad too loud” and would he mind turning it down a bit. Would you believe it if I said the fool not only apologised, but folded up his iPods and put them away? You couldn’t make it up!

“Why the hell aren’t you punching her in the stomach and filming it for the Youbends?!” I bawled.

His answer? “Well, it’s not the done thing, innit.”

I was incredulous.

The final straw came when I saw the feral yob brigade en masse at a nature reserve. Surely they’d be busy molesting tadpoles or, at the very least, playing football with hedgehogs. No chance. They were building a nest box for some rare stoat or other. Typical of today’s ‘thugless thuggery’ and ‘can-do’ mindset, social evils that are threatening to make the catch-all phrase ‘Broken Britain’ unusable.

Just what has happened to this sceptic isle? Wasn’t life so much simpler when a yob was a yob, hurling abuse, upturning prams and trampling pensioners underfoot? These days, the ambulances arrive in timely manner, there’s snow in winter, and good news is everywhere. It’s as if everyone has decided to live by the mantra: you could always not make it up.

Would the last person to leave ‘Unbroken Britain’ please turn off the light, which, no doubt, will be working irritatingly well and won’t have required thousands of pounds in consultancy fees to have its bulb changed.

In Pursuit of ‘Ghetto Booty’ Part 13: Hair of the Dogg (ii)

As I placed the last of the calling cards on the table, I attempted to continue my mental circumnavigation of last night’s revelry.

I recalled much in the way of noxious bibulosity, with sundry new alcoholic concoctions being thrust my way. Eager to appease my new acquaintances and ‘save face’, and, as ever, keeping one ethnosexographical eye on the prize – that is, the well-upholstered woman, Ghetto Booty, the very raison d’être behind this first expedition in the New World, I accepted all of these à la mode tipples, however egregious the appellation. Thus it was that I imbibed a Slippery Teat, an Orgy-Porgy and a Miss Princum Prancum, followed by a pair of Thru’penny Bits as chasers.

My palette, long-refined in the art of imbibing curiosities, picked up sundry notes: the juniper of gin, the toffee of oak-aged rum, and the unmistakeable tang of Blue Nun.

I suggested that, before long, a ‘Captain Queernabs’ would appear on such menus, a bastard amalgam of tea, gin and Scottish single malts, mash’d up by some mixologist of ill-repute, perhaps sporting a monstrous pair of bugger’s grips and adopting the nom de guerre “Kennedy”.

Much hearty laughter was the upshot of this sally!

With these cocktails safely dispatched, it was time to ‘get our crunk on’, according to Mr. West. This involved the imbibing of the ‘fo’shiz maniz glug-glug’. Such arcane babble was not, as it first appeared, the inane baby-talk of the maggoty-brain’d, but was actually the lingua franca among the hipper-hopper community, and this ‘crunk’ consisted of such renowned French labels as Cristal and Hennessy.

Mr. West and I were escorted to a table beladen with cut-glass flutes and goblets, a bottle of Cristal chilling to the maximus, and a bottle of Hennessy V.X.O.C.D. At the table, Mr. West had assembled what he called his ‘pussy posse’.

I enquired of Mr. West whether his troop had long been cat-lovers, and, by way of reply, received: “Holmes, eda you iz drunk or you waz born crunk!”

As we approached, his crew seemed stoked up and merely awaiting a battle cry from their leader, Mr. West, for revelry to commence. It was soon forthcoming: “T-dawg and KWestie in da house, y’all!’

The crew erupted into a frenzy of ballyhooing, and we were soon engag’d in the felicitous exchange of bon mots, divers rodomontades and convivial drinking.

As for my departure from this resplendent soirée, and whether I encountered she of the ballooning-backside, Ghetto Booty, I recall not, for an impenetrable fog has, for better or ill, descended upon my egress that eventide.  

In Pursuit of ‘Ghetto Booty’ Part 13: Hair of the Dogg (i)

I awoke fuggy-headed and asprawl the chaise longue and, somewhat shamefully, I was still attired in my tweed fatigues! It was some moments before I could compose my thoughts and recall whither I lay and what had passed the previous eventide.

I espied my deerstalker, which was resting precariously on the cusp of the detritus receptacle or, as the denizens of the New World insist on calling it, “trash can”. It looked as though it had been tossed thither with a most alarming indiscretion.

I rang the bell for the scullery maid, a delightful little filly called Rosalita, and bade her prepare breakfast. I was soon in the front parlour partaking of the most salubrious victuals – eggs, sausages, bacon, tomato, fried bread, sundry marmalades and jams, primarily (but not exclusively) quince and whortleberry, and a pot of invigorating English breakfast tea. Unfortunately, my current abode is lacking in fine china, and so I suffered to take my tea in an unholy ceramic vessel of preposterous size, which Rosalita said was called a “mug”. Nay, ‘twas a veritable tankard, said I, and it was I who was the mug to take my tea in so indelicate a manner!

If Rosalita comprehended my sally, she deigned not to show it in her pretty phizog.

As I was rooting around inside my Norfolk jacket for a cheroot, my preferred post-prandial digestif, I happened upon a strange bulge in my inside left pocket. Retrieving it, imagine my astonishment when I found it to be a stash of calling cards!

It was then that a deluge of memories descended into the conscious part of the Thropplenoggin noggin. I prepared a space on the breakfast table and, lighting up a cheroot, I glanced through the pile. With each name came a remembrance of things past, a brief snatch of discourse I’d either o’erheard or engag’d in at the soirée, allowing me to retrace my somewhat meandering steps through that long night.

David Lynch, amateur meteorologist and sometime film director.

“The skies are azure blue, there’s a moderate south-westerly breeze and it’s a pleasant 29 degrees out there.”

“Zounds! Sir, but how can this be? Nay, I fear you are in error, sir, for ‘tis now night, and yet you say the sky is blue. What twaddle! Would you likewise insist the equally improbable, that a man will one day walk o’the moon?!”

“The skies are azure blue, there’s a moderate south-westerly breeze and it’s a pleasant 29 degrees out there.”

“Yoiks! This man is addle-pated. Adieu, jingle-brains!”

Christian Bale, Rage Consultant

“So anyway, this fella comes walking right through my scene – a-dada-dada – right through my eye-line. I’m focused, I’m in the zone, and I see red, man, I just see fuckin’ red! So I says to him, all reasonable like, what the FUCK do you THINK you are DOING!”

“Perhaps Mr. Lynch was right when he said the air was blue – forsooth, your vulgarities have made it thus!”

Rue Paul, Shemale

“Good evening, sir. And how do you do?”

“Why, the pleasure is all mine. The name’s Thropplenoggin, Dr. Thropplenoggin.”

“Wow, now that is a mouthful. And I do so like one of those. I’m Rue. But you can call me Ms. Paul. Or just Paul.”

“Most peculiar, but very well!”

“You’re a doctor, you say. Well, I got a l’il somethin’ I’d like you to take a look at. Actually, it’s quite a big somethin’.”

“But I assure you I’m not a medical doctor, Madame. I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you with any complaint you might have.”

“Oh, I reckon you gonna be jus’ fine, sugar. Here, take a l’il looky at this” and she hoisted up her skirts.

“Good God, woman! You’re a man!”

“See, I knew you was qualified!”

Tom Screwloose, Occultist

“Sir, can I just ask you something? Do yer…do yer mind if I just – ha! – ask you one thing? What’s your name, sir?”

“Not at all, sir. It is Thropplenoggin, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin.”

“Ah, you’re a doctor. Good. That’s good. What’s that, a medical doctor, or some kind of doctor of the mind, a psychiatrist or something like that?”

“I’m afraid you are barking up the wrong tree there, sir. My field is more closely aligned to anthropology.”

“Good, Doc. That’s good. Okay. Let’s cut to the chase. Are you helping?”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“Are. You. H-e-l-p-ing? ‘Cos either you are helping or you are not helping. So which one is it? ‘Cos if you are not part of the solution, then – ha! – you are part of tha problem. Now, if you wanna help, Doc, you gotta have a system – no, you gotta have the system in your life. And do you know what that system is?”

“The Hegelian dialectic?”

He ploughed on regardless.

“No, sir, it is not. I’ll tell ya what that system is, Doc. It’s Scientology. See, there was once this powerful guy called Xenu, bad guy, Doc, majorly bad guy, and he…”

“Sir, would you believe it – my presence is required in the drawing room this very instant!”

Nicolas Cage, for all your ‘unlikely hero’ needs

“Yeeah, Mista Throwapple, I’m shoootin’ a new movie where I’m jus’ sooome ordinary Joe, jus’ some blue-collar sort, mindin’ ma own bus’ness, and then I got to take on these fellas who, you know, jus’ wooon’ be reasoned with. You like movies like thaaat? I maaake lots of movies like thaaat.”

I stared in utter befuddlement at this buffoon’s incomprehensible drawl.

“Say, you listenin’ to me, buddy. Or am I gonna have to reason wit you, too? All I’m tryin’ to do is git home to see my l’il gurl. And no one gonna stop me from doin’ that, ‘kay? So, jus’ back away, Mista Throwapple – b-ack a-way!”

George Clooney, Smug-Wobblyhead

“Lotta people ask me that, Thropps – kin I call you that? Feel like I know you already! Hey Clooney, what gives with the head-wobblin’ smugness? people ask. Truth is, it’s hereditary, from way back. Evolved as an adaptation, you know, sort of a Darweenian selective advantage. So the head-wobblin’ has a hypnotic effect on the listener, enabling me to put you under my spell. How else d’you think I got all them plum roles, eh?”

Brad Twit, Orphan Collector

“Yeah, we got black ones, yellow ones, a sort of mocha-lookin’ one – slurp! – still tryin’ to get a green one, one of dem ET ones, to complete the collecshun – guzzle!”

 

David Letterman, Performing Monkey

“Dr. Topplesnog, lurve the old-timey name! Say, I haven’t seen a helmet like that since, oh, the Boer War! You’re a doctor, right? Tell me, what position do you take on the African problem. Let me guess, missionary?”

After each of these statements, which I deduced to be attempts at jocularity (with yours truly as the target), one could hear a ‘badum-tish!’ Upon closer inspection, I discovered Mr. Letterman kept a man-servant in close proximity and gainful employ for the eliciting of said noise from a miniature drum-and-cymbal ensemble, presumably to indicate hilarity had just ensued.

Gentle reader, I assure you it had not.

“Sir, I care not for such a bombardment of bon-woes. Forsooth, Dr. Samuel Johnson would be in no hurry to replace his definition of humour with your name or risible antics.”

Sensing I was in high dudgeon, he attempted to assuage me by proffering his card and promising that he would be in touch.

Lastly, Oprah of the Winifreds, Full-Circle Blessings, Healings, Diets and Über-Lavish Baby-Showers:

“You all kinds of crazy. Come on the show!”

Verily, a most daunting prospect!

In Pursuit of ‘Ghetto Booty’ Part 12: Close But No Huzzah!

Tales of sexual derring-don’t from “ethnosexographer to the stars”, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin.

I continued to hot-foot it about the ballroom floor, “on the prance” before the gathered multitudinals, when the encircling personages broke asunder and a well-upholstered woman entered the ring, striding with purpose towards me.

It was as though my flabber had been well and truly gasted! I was speechless and froze mid-step, bringing my hakakaka to a rather sorry conclusion.

As she drew close, I began to fathom her features, and mine eyes dashed o’er her, ferreting around for those tell-tale signs of whom I hoped she was.

Her derrière was immense! Her skin of a dusky hue! It could only be that most fickle of fillies, the damsel who possess’d a posterior reminscent of a “brickhouse”, Ghetto Booty.

And yet, something within the Thropplenoggin noggin yet resisted the idea that this was her. Had I not heard rumours that Ms. Booty was partial to wearing close-fitting calf-length pantaloons composed of a novel fabrick by Messrs. Lycra & Co.? Had not my researches enlighten’d me to the not that the well-cushioned wench bedecked herself in jewellery akin to that fabricated by cheap goldmonger, Elizabeth Duke, and that she reek’d of perfumed tinctures most severe on the nose? And here she came, draped in silk finery, awash in diamonds and pearls, and cutting a most elegant sashay through the room!

She was almost upon me and the usually steadfast Thropplenoggin heart was suddenly a-flutter. Was I being unmanned by the imminent conclusion of the hunt?! I doubted not one whit that the ensuing wooing would go my way, and that I’d be able to conclude my expeditionary notes on “Ghetto Booty” on the morrow with a ripe satisfaction, having bagged another intra-species species.

As she arrived in my immediate vicinity, I drew upon my prodigious master of social propriety and embark’d upon a low, sweeping bow, doffing the pith as I did so.

I rose and uttered in a rather affected, superior enunciation: ‘Ma’am, many miles have I travelled and escapades encounter’d in attempting to engage in intercourse with your renowned personage. It is my very great honour to finally make your acquaintance, one which I hope will become only ever more familiar in time. Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin at you service!”

It was perhaps this prolonged and eloquent ejaculation that had brought a look of sheer bewilderment into her eyes. She took a second to recompose herself, before proffering a rather man-sized – but well-manicured – hand my way, laden down with sundry diamond-encrusted rings, which I would fain have taken in my own and kissed, but, alas!, that was not the game this imperious minx wanted to play!

No, this game filly bade me shake her hand, as’f sh’were one o’the chaps! A most ludicrous foible, methought!

‘Howdy! You kin really moooove that chic-lookin’ rump o’yours, kint ya?! Ah guess y’already know who ah am!”

“I believe I do, ma’am. Your mammoth reputation precedes you, although in actualité it rather trails behind you!”

I thought this a rather delicious sally!

“Ya know, you got tha most adoooorable British accent! ‘N so darn polite! You could teach these ‘mericans a thing or two bout being a gent, eh?!”

“British?!” I roared. “I’m an Englishman through and through!”

“Well, anyways, I jus’ wanted to say hey! May God bless you in all that your spirit aspires to do!”

She proffered her hand again and mentioned something about getting me on the show to teach “that ol’ skool etiquette stuff” to the New World populace.

I emitted a casual nod of assent, as I was still wrestling to glean her sally re. my spirit and the Lord.

If this was ‘Ghetto Booty’, and I was now almost entirely convinced it was not, the first instance of wooing had been utterly woeful. Forsooth, I had brought ignominy on a long and esteemed line of Thropplenoggin ethnosexographers. Thus it was, with the Big T’s tail dangling in a most wretched droop ‘twixt his legs, that I decided to withdraw from the hubbub of the soirée to ponder on the paucity of my flattery.

In Pursuit of ‘Ghetto Booty’ Part 11: Old Busted Bafflegab

Tales of sexual derring-don’t from self-styled ‘ethnosexographer’, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin

As I sauntered about the room, with a glass of Mother’s Ruin on the go, I o’erheard a most banal conversation, ‘twixt a tall bosky man and his companion:

“So I says, new hotness, old busted!” and then seemed to rather point my way.

I interjected.

“Thropplenoggin, at your service, sirs. I couldn’t help overhearing what sounded like a most slanderous assertion.”

“Sho’, ol’ timer. Wha’ I said was, “new hotness”, and here he pointed at himself, and then proceeded “old busted!” and nodded to’wards me!

“Why, you saucy knave! I’ll give you old busted…in the unmentionables!” and duly gave him a most forthright punt in the goolies.

This maggoty-brain’d fopdoodle went down like a sack of potatoes, uttering dimwittedly: “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

“Consider yourself Thropplenoggin’d!” I jeered, and hot-footed it into an adjoining chamber.

It featured parquet flooring and seemed to be set up to allow the merry jape of ballroom dancing.

I gave a turn of the room, thrusting my chest out and occasionally fluttering a handkerchief about with the most delicate flounce. In an instant, I decided that I would attempt to flush her out from whichever nook or cranny she hid in, this well-cushioned wench, Ghetto Booty, by emulating our feathered friends, the squabs o’the air, and putting on a display for this damsel’s eyes.

I dilly-dallied, on the flounce, awaiting the propitious song to appear, which, as luck would have it, was betimes.

The ditty was built around a rather complicated 7/8 syncopated rhythm, which, try as I might, I could not harmonise my steps with. Yet, verily, this is where the vast encyclopaedic knowledge an ethnosexographer wields within him comes into its own! Was this not the very same rhythm of the hakakaka dance I had seen performed in Lower Gussock, in a remote, salubrious and somewhat inbred corner of our fair British Isles? Indeed, it is believed that this very dance travelled with our Empire to New Zealand and inspired the indigenous peoples of those isles to form their own fearsome haka.

I revelled in the beats, a curious melange of hipper-hopper-isms and a more strident melodious strain. Did mine ears deceive me or did the rapper-scallion libretto seem to mock the braggadocio of the hipper-hopper tribes? My woman’s disrespected? I sick of that fake thug, r & b, rap scenario all day on the radio? The message was most politick and yet the tempo was of such prettiness that one’s brogue-shod foot could not help but to tap out its cadence!

I was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable urge to gyrate and began throwing myself into the euphony with reckless abandon, a veritable whirligig, hot-footing it about, with many an outrageous hip-waggle and ludicrous shin-jiggle.

In no time at all, a circle of personages had circumscribed themselves around me, and they proceeded to emit a clamorous chorus of huzza!s and hand-claps, which I took as encouragement to persist, and did so, upping the dance-ante even further! Verily, I didn’t just take hakakaka-ing to the next plateau, but to the one after that!

It was then that the personage’d circumference parted, and, forsooth, I believe I had found her!

–

The song featured in this narrative is Dead Prez vs GrizzlyBear Two Weeks of Hip-Hop by The Hood Internet and can be heard here. 

In Pursuit of ‘Ghetto Booty’ Part 10 – Haranguing With The Ill-brained Ha’penny

Tales of sexual derring-don’t from “ethnosexographer to the stars”, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin.

Having escaped the advances of one vile harpie-snake maiden in the corridor, Mr. West and I fought our way through the remainder of this pack of she-devils, using sundry prods and my pith helmet to fend off their insalubrious advances, and slowly circumnavigated our way to the source of the hubbub – the ingress to the penthouse suite, where Mr. Piddles’ soirée was proceeding with riotous abandon.

My Extraordinarily-bespectacled comrade engaged in dialogue with a pair of hoodlums at the entrance – hired hands determined to exclude Sir John Brute and Captain Queernabs types from the festivities within. These o’ersized thugs and Mr. West then engaged in a bizarre display of what I can only term “hand gymnasticks”, and I was then ushered through.

It was then that Mr. West bade me farewell, deigning to “co-mingle” with the multitudinals and “spread the love”, a most ribald expression of promiscuity!

I re-pithed and sallied forth into the interior unaccompanied, and thus steeled myself to woo the well-cushioned wench single-handedly.

I penetrated into an ante-chamber of the Trump Tower penthouse suite, which was bathed – nay, suffused – in an unsettling red glow.

“’sup, dawg!”

These words jostled for my attention from a man wearing a ghastly diamanté garland that bore all the hallmarks of tawdry cut-price jewellers Elizabeth Duke, who was surrounded by a phalanx of svelte damsels, all clad in the most scantily manner imaginable.

“Supper? Why, thank you kindly, sir, but I’ve already dined this eventide.”

“What da fok you be sayin’, homie!”

“Holmes?! Why, sir, did you know that that’s the very nomenclature Mr. West uses to appellate me!”

This fellow, whom I discovered to be one Fifty Cent – the New World equivalent of an English Ha’Penny – kept on pulling a most alarming quizzical expression every time I entered into discourse with him.

“K-dawg been tellin’ us y’all like some kinda nineteenf cent-u-ary G relic in tha tweed plus-fours, foshizzle?”

“Verily!”

“Huh!”

“Forsooth!”

“Whassa?”

He eventually ejaculated vociferously: “Kin we git some kinda translator in here for this Indiana Jones fossil sonofabitch puh-lease!”

Whilst awaiting the aid of a translator, I sensed that he was going to try a different tack.

“K bro’, let’s see yo neck n’ yo wrist?”

I proceeded to ease my cravat to one side and expose my neck, and then to roll up my sleeve and show him my wrist joint. All the while I thought what a peculiar ritual this was, exposing these specific corporeal zones. Perhaps I would have to make the same bequest to “Ghetto Booty”, when I eventually discovered her.

“Old Man G, I’m talkin’ bout yo’ wristwatch and yo’ necklace, s’what I’m talkin’ bout, y’all!”

“Oh, I see!” I produced the trusty family heirloom, the silver fob-watch Pater had bequeathed me, of Swiss fabrication and replete with the Thropplenoggin family motto: prodeo quod concubitus or Go forth and copulate!

The crenulated forelock and slack lower mandible of my companion suggested that he was struggling to comprehend either this timepiece or the Thropplenoggin dictum.

I wondered if I might have better luck exposing my necklace to this chap, and so I loosened my cravat and ferreted around inside the top of my worsted shirt for a pendant containing the image of Saint Expeditus, the patron saint against procrastination, that had been presented to me by a young damsel during an early ethnosexographical expedition in the south of Italy. I oft wondered whether this religious totem could have a beneficent effect on a sworn agnostic such as myself.

‘Wossat?’ cried my ill-brained acquaintance.

‘This, sir, depicts Saint Expeditus, patron saint against procrastination. They say procrastination is the thief of time, but I say, nay, ‘tis constipation that is the thief of time!”

Sadly, this splendid bon mot sailed past the vacant gaze of the gentleman I was destined to denominate Ha’penny, since I still failed to grasp the new-fangled coinage and peculiar paper bill impedimenta of the New World.

My far-from-edifying tête-à-tête was thankfully cut short by Mr. West, who wished to introduce me to other notables in the drawing room.

A foolish desire to give this Ha’penny chap a parting dig in the ribs persisted, and, weakling that I am, I succumbed to this childish urge: “Adieu, Ha’penny. I assure you, the pleasure was all yours.”

Certes, he garnered not one jot of what I meant, the clot.

In Pursuit of ‘Ghetto Booty’ Part 9: Blue-Titted Brouhaha!

Tales of sexual derring-don’t from “ethnosexographer to the stars”, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin

Our elongated hackney carriage soon arrived at an edifice of astonishing perpendicularity! It must have been an hundred human heads high, nay, more.

‘Fitty’s havin’ his shindig at the Trump Tower, penthouse hired out, MC’s, girlies, ‘gonna be bitchin’, y’all!’

‘Yoicks! I’m astounded to find they’ve erected a monument to flatulence!”

We entered the atrium of this cathedral to Mammon, a metaphor I felt quite certain no one had previously uttered, and I headed towards the staircase, steeling myself for the arduous ascent.

“T-dawg, we’s takin’ the elevator!”

“Come again, sir?” I said, startled by this curious lexeme.

“El-e-va-tor, ma main man. Guess they ain’t gots these in L’il Brizzle yet.”

We proceeded into a small chamber, perhaps two above-average humans in height and four rotund humans in width and breadth. A hireling, besuited in a crimson cloth begirt with gold filaments and buttons, enquired, “Which floor?” and Mr. West took the lead, saying, “Penthouse, y’all! Bring on the bitchin’ honeyz!”

At this mention of the sugar’d condiment, I enquired: “Is there to be an aperitif consisting of toast?”

“You is so whack, Holmes.”

I would have to wait to learn of what this “whack-ness” consisted of, for some uncanny sorcery was peremptorily afoot! The doors of the chamber closed, and suddenly the ground beneath my feet shot upwards, and we were all thrust with considerable oomph into the air. I felt certain I was all set to be propelled through the chamber’s roof, and so clutched the trusty pith into position on my noggin, lest I should crack my cranium and empty its contents in a pool of florid matter onto the floor, something which Mr. West found most titillating.

I was quite unmanned by this peculiar trajectory, and as we ascended up to the Heavens in the occult contrivance, I ejaculated with furious profligacy: “Zounds! Ye gods! Yoicks! What infernal damnation is this?! ‘tis the Devil’s work, for sure. We’re doomed! Quick, hireling, take note of my dying words Ahem [here I cleared my throat]: “I have gladly be-pithed myself for Queen and Country, and go now as a pioneering ethnosexographer into the Great Unknown, be it the Nether Regions of the Underworld with their demonic damsels, which would, perhaps be not so very different from expeditions of yore, or unto the Elysium fields of Heaven, resplendent with seraphim booty, either/or, as the Lord sees fit!”

By the time I had finished this extempore epitaph to myself, the bewitched apparatus came to an unexpected halt, causing me to emit an effete little squeal, much akin to those poor saps who have been Frenchified! Zounds! This experience would require much meditation anon, if it were not to wholly unman me. My initial hypothesis was that this was a contraption designed for accelerated vertical ascent and presumably operated like a dumb waiter, via a system of ropes and pulleys, only on a colossal scale.

Alas, I had time not even to gather breath in my lungs, for the doors glided silently apart in that eerie fashion of theirs. I was all set to examine the hinges and handles of these doors, when Mr. West hailed me with a solecistic interjection: “Yo, T, you comin’ wit!”

I was about to remonstrate about the paucity of correct syntax in Mr. West’s discourse, something which I believed reflected rather poorly on his otherwise exemplary decorum, when, out of the very corner of my eye, I saw a blue tit flash by!

But, damnation, how could this be?!

I peered into the murk that surrounded us. All was dark, and the only sound was the muffled throb of some almighty hullabaloo – the jungle rhythms of some arcane tribal ceremony was afoot.

As my eyes got used to the Stygian gloom, I espied strange phantasmagorical creatures – hallucinations, surely – of unclad females wearing a thin blue robe which was made luminescent by some bewitchery of the candelabra.

“The blue tit, the blue tit!” I screeched rather gracelessly.

“T-dawg, get wit da program, man! Dey’s just some painted blue-ass beatches!”

“Quite,” I mumbled, not catching his meaning, and decided to quickly change the topick: “Mr. West, this soiree is being hosted by which dignitary?”

“Ma man Sean “Puffy’ Coombes – a.k.a. Puff Daddy or “Puffy”, but now jus’ plain ‘ole Diddy.”

Verily, I was stunned. Did mine ears deceive me in all this hubbub and ballyhoo?

“His previous nomenclature was Piffle and now he calls himself Piddles? What rot! Does he have maggots on the brain?”

“No, he cool, he cool,” my interlocutor insisted.

One of the frolicksome fillies had entwined herself around me, a veritable snake-harpie amalgam, making perambulation awkward, if not entirely impossible.

“Kindly unweave yourself, smock-faced wench, or I shall be forced to eject you physically from my breeks!” I exclaimed, and was all set to de-pith and beat her off, but my glowering phizog proved sufficient enticement.

It was then that I realized my desert goggles were still very much in situ. No wonder I couldn’t see a blasted thing!

In Pursuit of Ghetto Booty Part 8: The Bling’s The Thing

Tales of sexual derring-don’t from ‘ethnosexographer’, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin

As we made our way thither in Mr. West’s immense and lavish carriage, replete with all manner of newfangled gimcracks and tchochke, it was suggested by my host that I was rather lacking in “bling”, especially that pertaining to “ice”.

I replied that, regarding the latter, surely I had sufficient quantity in the drink I was currently imbibing – a gin and tonic supplied c/o a bar within the very carriage that transported us (egad, gadzooks and, why not, huzzah!) ) whilst as for this “bling”, I knew nothing of its ilk, and dares’ say it knew nothing of me!

Mr. West took pains to enlighten me as to what he meant by “bling” and “ice” – showing me a collection of the most ghastly jewellery imaginable, all of’t awash with diamonds.

I produced from the pockets of my coat a silver memento mori ring, which had belonged to Pater: a grinning skull bearing the latin motto ‘vulnerant omnes ultima necat’ upon it’s forehead, which I translated for Mr. West as “they all wound and the last one kills”.

“Bitchin’!” was my host’s excitable reaction. “Where kin the Kanye git one?”

“Why, they’re ten a penny at the silver mongers in Kensington Mews.”

“Maybe I’ll git som for KW, my designer label, but pimped up Kanye-style, you know, wit ice for teeth or somethin’.”

“But that wouldn’t do at all, sir!” I roared. “ T’would not do! The memento mori is worn to remind you that death hovers all around us, that life is fleeting, and so one must gather one’s rosebuds whilst ye may. Of course, I take this maxim of gathering buds rather literally, being an ethnosexographer – huzzah!”

I thrust an elbow into Mr. West’s ribs, to underline this witticism.

“Cool. Kanye can dig that whole mortality vibe, man. I git it.”

“Sir, I never doubted you for an instant.”

“Now, you gots da bling, but you kint be seen out wit the Kanye and not wearing no eyewear, homie. You got some shades or what?’

“Indeed I have.” I brought forth a pair of goggles worn by explorers to keep out sand when adventuring in the desert.

These were described by my host as “super-bitchin’!” a prefix usage I had hitherto never heard, and, dare I say’t, which I rather approved of.

“Man, you, like, totally the shit, Big T!”

My very ears reeled from the profanity my host had just violently propelled towards me.

“Monstrous!” I roared. “Never, in all my years as the world’s premier ethnosexographer, have I been so monstrously abused by such a base epithet. Kindly stop this carriage at once, sir! I insist on disembarking this instant!”

“Woah, T, chill! We cool, we cool. The shit, well, you know, ’s’like the numero uno, the top dog, the best y’all.”

“Really?! What an extraordinary usage! Well bugger me backwards with a bamboo tallywhacker! I’m…well, I doff my pith to you, sir, for such praise. ‘Tis a most overwhelming sobriquet to bear, but bear’t I shall.”

We sped through the night, the Extraordinarily Bespectacled Man and I, he in his white slatted spectacles-for-the-sun that seemed to make vision impossible, and I in my desert goggles, crawling past a profligacy of humongous edifices, some perhaps a hundred humans high, and which seemed to literally scrape the night sky of this strange New World.

In Pursuit of Ghetto Booty Part 7: Befuddled By The Bizarre Manhattanese Tongue

Tales of sexual derring-don’t from “ethnosexographer to the stars”, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin.

After the travails of two verbal duels back-to-back, I was relieved to be out of the limelight and hankered after a chaise-longue upon which to recline and take stock. Seemly, all my wearying labours had brought Ghetto Booty no closer. The ever-elusive well-cushioned wench had yet to materialize and avail herself of the new successful status I now held in the world of “badinage battles”.

Alas, this pined-for retreat and stock-taking session was not to be, for no sooner had I left the stage and began seeking egress from Thugz’n’Beatchiz, than the broiling mass of bodies made at me like a veritable humanoid swarm, every man Jack of them keen to extract a piece of Thropplenoggin memorabilia or some Big T trophy of the night’s proceedings from my corporeal self, while others were content to proffer any number of peculiar ejaculations my way: “Granddad, you iz one mental son of a bitch!”, “You rock!”, “Tweed-dogg in da house!” “Woo, go deerstalker dude!” etc.

Fortunately, Mr. West came to my assistance, or, rather, the burly chaps who accompanied the Extraordinarily-Bespectacled Man wherever he went, for they surrounded me and formed a prophylactic circle, escorting me back to the stage. Once thither, Mr. West gave me his hand and pulled me up, and then suggested we use the tradesman’s entrance to vacate the building, a proposition that left me feeling a little – how shall I put it? – ill at ease with my new friend. But I could hardly decline his kind offer of assistance and so, with posterior to the wall, I shuffled my way crab-wise along the corridor towards the exit, and to what I hoped was the end of this most arduous eventide!

I should have guessed it was not to be. For nothing in this curious New World followed suit with its brethren in the Old World. There, after a lengthy bout of horseplay, rest was sought; here, ‘twas merely the prelude, nay, the epigraph to further proceedings.

And so it was with Mr. West.

A most remarkable contraption was waiting for us outside, some kind of horseless cart, with the cart having been elongated to the length of two, nay, three, carts, if you please!

“Dog, you iz one crazy antikated mo’fo!” my new friend babbled incoherently, his spectacles-for-the-sun still very much in situ despite a distinct paucity of sunlight at this late hour.

I had still to get to grips with the bizarre tongue of Manhattanese, and assumed Mr. West had paid me some kind of compliment.

“Why, sir, ‘tis most kind of you to say so!”

“We’z gonna hit up a par-tay, wanna come wit’?”

Aside of a wisp of an interrogative tone, I was utterly stumped by this statement. What the devil was this chap saying?!

“Forgive me, sir, but I haven’t quite caught your meaning. Would you be so kind as to repeat it for me?”

“No probs, Tweedledee. I’s talkin’ ‘bout a P-A-R-T-Y, you know, where we be chuggin’ on Kristal’n’Hennessy, smokin’ some dem big Montecristos, gittin’ some sweet-ass honeyz, mmm-mmm, yeah!”

I’d gleaned one word in all that gibberish, which was party. Instantaneously, the thought came of how such an opportunity might enable me, finally, to situate, placate and then procreate with that most fickle foe, Ghetto Booty.

“Might I enquire whether Ghetto Booty will be in attendance at this soiree?” I asked Mr. West.

“You betta believe it, bro’. ‘Cos any place the Kanye go, da booty be goin’, too – dat fly booty, dat ghetto booty, dat nasty booty…”

I ascertained that this gobbledygook was the equivalent of a reply in the affirmative, and said I’d gladly accompany him in these festivities.

In Pursuit of ‘Ghetto Booty’ Pt.6: Can Ye West Side Story?

Tales of sexual derring-don’t from self-styled ‘ethnosexographer’, Dr. Y. U. Thropplenoggin.

With the fecund smell of victory still ripe in my nostrils I basked in the glorious moment, like Morning Glory in the first rays of the sun, amid much huzzah-ing and harrumphing by the assembled multitudes.

Alas, it was not to last long! Forsooth, as I stood there awash with jocundity and felicitous feelings, who should I espy wending their way through the ecstatic throng but the very same Extraordinarily-Bespectacled Man from earlier in the eventide, who had assisted my ingress into Thugz’n’Beatchiz, and sporting my deerstalker atop his noggin, if you please!

This outrageous display of scant regard for the bared forelock of its rightful proprietor – me –The Big T! – was too much, and I prepared my dukes in readiness to box the Extraordinarily-Bespectacled Man’s ears, according to the Queensbury rules, of course!

‘Sir!’ I cried, as E.B.M ascended the stage where I stood, draped in victory, “put your dukes up!”

He merely ignored my command and seized the metal voice magnifying wand from R’d Cor!, who was still reeling from his defeat amid the floor’s detritus, and boomed to the multitudinals: “Kanye West in the house, y’all!”

In one fell swoop, he took the roof off of Thugz’n’Beatchiz, quite stealing my thunder in the process.

Certes, this did not augur well.

Kanye West: Yo, Big T, I gots ta test
To see which homie flows the best.
The last word rhyming with the West ,
I’ll think yo find that Kanye’s blessed!”

The Big T: He’s news to me, this Kanye West
I ask you this, Can he jest?
If he can, I’ll acquiesce
Until that time, may I behest
My badinage is quite the best
Do not stir up this hornet’s nest!

Kanye West: Nice try, T-boy, I do confess
But it’s clear to me yo needs a rest!

The Big T: Certes, ‘tis true, I’m tired, but let’s not digress
Not while my deerstalker remains dispossessed

Kanye West: I tell you what, pops, I’m not sympathy-less
I’ll giz ya hat back if yo rhymes impress

The Big T: Okay, sir, I accept your request:

There are those who would be depressed
By a life spent chasing odd-shaped breasts
Yet ‘tis the lot of this chap, my life’s behest
To gird the loins and string my vest
Hankering after fillies with bodice-popping chests
And damsels and maidens, the dainty and the pests
So south by south-east or north by nor’west
That’s where you’ll find me upon my quest

To bag some booty and get enmeshed
In the hirsute cleft of a prize gusset-ess
My pith helmet in situ, though I be undressed
Finishing the job with archetypal finesse
As the damsel cries aloud, Oh yes, yes, yes!
‘Tis the ethnosexographer’s fate, so do it with zest!

I had never produced an oratory like it and was duly shattered by this prolonged ejaculation.

The Extraordinarily-Bespectacled Man came over and placed my deerstalker atop its rightful noggin. Whilst doing so, he insisted on offering “mad props” to me, his “tweed-lovin’ homie”, forcing me to enquire just what these “outrageous propositions” might be. Having propositioned many a virginal damsel in my long career as an ethnosexographer, I was somewhat alarmed to find myself on the receiving end of just such a carnally-minded proposal!

However, Mr. West proved to be a true gentleman and held no perverse inclination to “juggle the juggler’s own balls”, as my old Eatonian chums were wont to call it.

‘Twas a most merciful relief!