The Trash Whore Diaries (2001-2011): Ten Year Anniversary Special Part II

In Japan, mums have been giving their sons blowjobs rather than let them have girlfriends.

With that pithy statement, so began the opening line of the opening blog of The Trash Whore Diaries.  As inaugural lines go, December 16th 2001’s entry was an emphatic one: when a weblog has been born into this world screaming incestuous fellatio, it’s impossible to advance to writing haikus about snowflakes and serendipity.

Once a trash whore, always a trash whore.

As I sat typing those words in a Robert Gordon University computer room on St. Andrew Street in Aberdeen, I had no idea what I was about to set in motion: a sprawling, putrid tale that would encompass sperm donation, meatpaste, perjury, imprisonment and national media coverage.  Had I known, I would probably have settled for a 17-syllable snowflake eulogy.


A decade on however, I’m glad that stubborn, spiky-haired bastard foolishly struck out on the path he chose, for had he elected otherwise, who knows where I’d be right now?  Probably mortgaged up with an oil industry job and a Range Rover in the driveway.  Even as I write these words, I can feel the bile rising up in my stomach.  Blogging about blowjobs is fine, but suburban bliss?  It’s a step too far.


As it was, I aimed for the gutter and struck sewage from day one.


Of course, once you’ve gone down that cum-spattered path, you can never go back: no regrets, no retractions and no recriminations.  If The Trash Whore Diaries were to be encapsulated in a single sexual act, they would be a rough, hard fuck: spitting, slapping, biting and choking - the works.  Dirty, disgustingly satisfying sex, but the sort of sex that should carry a health warning: once you’ve fulfilled a woman’s rape fantasy, you can’t go back to love-making.  That’s just how it goes.


Back in the early days of this weblog, Bob and I were almost interchangeable, frequently popping up to finish each other’s sentences and even DJing at the band nights we held at Dr. Drakes to promote our Flowback fanzine.

Such was our camaraderie, my partner-in-slime even launched Trash Whore 2 as a short-lived sister blog to The Trash Whore Diaries.  These days, of course, we’ve forged our own separate identities in separate cities; he’s Bob and I’m Kai (or is it the other way round?), while The Trash Whore Diaries have been largely supplanted by my new blog, which sprang up in February of this year.  It continues where TWD left off, although its rage is now directed largely at insipid chain restaurants and pish-scented nightclubs.  (Sample quote: "Doing your thing in Cav generally consists of trying to do the opposite sex’s thing; fingering, fumbling and frigging it on the dance floor, in the toilets and even at the bar.  If you don’t come home with fingers smelling of Scampi Nik-Naks, you’re clearly a double amputee.")


In a week that heralds the ten-year anniversary of The Trash Whore Diaries, their successor has symbolically peaked at ten times the TWDs’ average traffic: on a good day, the new blog attracts over 1,000 readers, a small but not insignificant figure.  In terms of cold hard statistics then, it has exceeded anything that the pre-social media TWD ever achieved.  That said, for all its popularity, the new blog could never hope to have its creator sacked, imprisoned or featured on STV and in the thankfully now-defunct News of the World.


Over the course of the 825 blogs that have been published in The Trash Whore Diaries, I’ve covered such wide-ranging topics as ‘Why do dicks drip?’ and ‘Why is it impossible to pee straight after sex?’  This blog is the labour of one man’s love for all things bawdy, salacious, lubricious, libidinous, prurient, priapic and other adjectives that my built-in thesaurus may care to suggest.  I’m planning to publish a Christmas Day special, encapsulating some of the most memorable quotes from the last ten years of The Trash Whore Diaries, and then I promise to lay the nostalgia to rest - for another decade at least.


Earlier in today’s blog, I observed that once you’ve crossed a certain line, you can never go back; once you’ve lost your hymen, no amount of reconstructive surgery can turn you into a virgin again.  Once you’ve witnessed your partner bound, gagged and bukkaked, it’s impossible to beat off thinking of her in that racy low-cut top she wore to your first date.  Less is always more for the senses, right?


Wrong.  It has occurred to me that there’s one exception to that golden rule - burka porn.  While less clothing invariably leaves less to the imagination, with the burka, the opposite is true - more is most certainly more, as my boner will attest.  I don’t know what it is about the burka that turns me on so much; perhaps because it’s a throwback to a more innocent era, when the Victorians would cover up piano legs for fear of men being aroused by their shapely form.  Perhaps it’s the thought of all the repressed sexuality that lurks beneath that black shroud; perhaps it’s because that buxom goddess Nigella Lawson was recently pictured on the beach wearing a burkini.  Whatever the case, all I know is that when I see a set of sexy eyes framed by a burka, I see it as a challenge.


Could I cum through the letterbox slot of a burka without spilling a single drop of my seed on the surrounding cloth?  I don’t know, but it’s a challenge I’m willing to accept, if only I could find a willing volunteer.  Sadly my girlfriend has refused to indulge this innocuous fantasy, while my entreaties to the Muslim community have fallen on burka-covered ears.


It’s hard to define what’s so sexy about the burka.  Perhaps the illicit thrill lies in it being danger porn; there is a very real danger that you could be issued with a fatwa for shooting fat wads through the eye slit.  And also the danger that lurking behind that burka, it could be your mum or sister.  How would you know?


Google ‘burka porn’ and you won’t find so much as a semi-inducing clip; it’s the last taboo.  Search for ‘bukkake bestiality’ and you’ll probably turn up an entire pack of dogs spaffing over some Japanese chick, but search for ‘burka porn’ and you won’t find a peep.  Never mind the Chinese government cracking down on dissidents - Google’s burka porn omission is internet censorship at its worst.


I’d always assumed that Muslim men must all harbour eye fetishes, and be capable of identifying a set of sexy eyebrows at 100 paces.  Steven, my non-Muslim friend however (I don’t have any Muslim friends come to think of it; I’m not sure why), opined that the hands are actually the best indicator of a burka-wearer’s sexiness.  Thus, should I ever fulfill my burka-based fantasy, I intend to focus on the hands, though my outpourings of pent-up frustration will be directed elsewhere.


The Trash Whore Diaries might be aiming for the gutter, but rest assured, I’ll be aiming for the starry eyes.

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I like words.  Words are my business, and I love them in all their multi-syllabic sizes.  Amongst my favourite vocables are sesquipedalianism, moist and pish-flaps.  Like any smutty schoolboy, I enjoy the gratuitous deployment of smutty words, and am prone to the odd bout of priapic dictionary-perusing on occasions.  There is one word, however, that I am loathe to use because it causes more offence than any F-word, C-word or Gash-word ever could.  It is the sort of word that makes Voldemort sound like angel’s breath and spunk-monkey like a fragrant rose.  The unmentionable word in question? Paedophile of course.  No other word in the English language is as emotive as the P-word.  In Scotland, people will readily call each other ‘c**t’ as a term of endearment, and yet paedo?  It’s the sort of savage diss you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy, unless of course your worst enemy happened to be Craig Thomson.

For some reason, the rest of the squad were reluctant to model Hearts' new strip

‘Ah, Craigie boy, Craigie boy, wherefore art thou Craigie boy?’  So pleaded the 12 year-old girl stationed in front of the webcam.  ‘Eh...I dunno.  That’s jist whit aw ma mates called me at school,’ mumbled the shy teenager watching from behind his computer desk on the other side of the city.  He grinned bashfully, before appearing to suddenly grow in confidence.  ‘So eh...you gonnae get yer rat oot for us noo?  Seeing how ah’ve showt you ma boaby an aw that?’

Welcome to the world of Craig Thomson, footballer extraordinaire.  By day, this emergent young talent plays football for Heart of Midlothian FC.  By night however, he takes photographs of his hairy scrotum before emailing it to impressionable children.  In official parlance, he is a paedophile, although on the terraces, you’re more likely to hear him by his street names of ‘Beast’, ‘Kiddie Fiddler’ or ‘Wrong Un’.

Last week, Craig Thomson pled guilty to ‘lewd, libidinous and indecent behaviour’ and was fined £4,000 as well as being placed on the sex offenders register for five years.  Sordid as his conduct undoubtedly was, that should have been the end of the matter, right?  After all, the boy had been caught purple-handed, punished by the courts and duly disciplined by his football club.  Having made assurances that his recklessness was an aberration - the actions of a naive and misguided teenager - he promised that such behaviour would never occur again.  And that should have been the end of the matter, right?  Right.  Only in the real world, it doesn’t quite work that way.

Sure, the powers-that-be might have had their say, but when it comes to paedophilia, the public always want their pound of flesh - and they’re not talking about Craig Thomson’s sweaty tadger.  A man can assault another man and be forgiven.  He can fuck his brother’s wife and be forgiven.  He can even kill another man and be forgiven.  But do so much as wave a bag of sweets outside a school and suddenly your name is mud.  And not the nice sort of mud they use as facial masks in beauty parlours, but the sort of stinking Glastonbury mud that drags a man down and chokes him to death under the weight of his own indiscretions.

Believe it or not, there used to be a time when paedophilia was seen as a slightly seedy yet fairly harmless pursuit.  When the children would come pelting into the house complaining that old Jimmy Rimples  from the village had flashed his tackle at them, mum would clip them round the lug and tell them that they shouldn’t have been looking.  That was then however, and this is now, an era when things that used to be acceptable (drink-driving; casual racism) are now A Big Fucking Deal.  Technically speaking, Craig Thomson’s crime was at the lower end of the paedophilic scale.  And yet technically speaking, if it was your daughter he’d done that to, you’d have chopped his sweaty ball-sacks off, passed them through a mincer and then force-fed them into his lacerated anal cavity, daubed in wasabi.

Curiously, it was not so much Thomson’s actions that caused outrage amongst the footballing community and indeed Scotland as a whole.  Rather, it was the actions of his football club who released a glib statement noting that they ‘accept that there are sufficient mitigating circumstances that provide significant assurance that the player's conduct, no matter how distasteful, was the result of a grave error of judgement due to naivety and possible wrong outside influence rather than anything more sinister and it will not be repeated.’

At the mention of this, message boards and newspaper columns went into meltdown, with the moral majority quick to excoriate the beleaguered footballer.  After all, what sort of external influence causes a man to act in such a manner?  The idea that Thomson could have been inveigled into performing a Dirty Den by, say, listening to his Tinchy Stryder records backwards seems credulous to say the least.  On the Aberdeen Mad forum, fans rued the fact that they would have to wait until mid-August before regaling the Hearts support with such cheerful ditties as ‘I’d rather shag a sheep than a child’ and the Pink Floyd-inspired ‘Hey!  Thomson!  Leave those kids alone!’

In spite of the footballer’s seemingly untenable position, there were still a few people willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, including Hearts Supporters Trust Chairman Derek Watson, who observed: ‘The overall situation is there’s more to the situation than meets the eye.  I think the guy should get another chance...it’s a bit of a witch hunt.’

‘Mad’ Vlad Romanov, dictator-in-chief at Tynecastle, also backed the player.  Back in Vlad’s homeland of Lithuania, admittedly, refusal to piece a vulnerable pre-teen is probably seen as an emasculating act of cowardice.  As one Dons fan pointedly observed: ‘There are NO mitigating circumstances for an allegedly sane, mentally-sufficient adult sending pictures of his man servant to a young child. I don’t care if his bird shagged his old man the night before, he is dying or his mother ran off with the milkman.’  Another Dandie, meanwhile, observed more succinctly: ‘Big Vlad knew.’

The few apologists prepared to defend Thomson were swift to trot out the usual platitudes: the player was only a kid himself - a misguided teenager, only seven years older than the recipient of his porksicle polaroid.  There are plenty of accepted relationships out there with a wider age gap than the pair, and besides, Thomson hadn’t actually had sex with her - he’d only wapped out his truncheon and jiggled it about a bit.  By the age of 12, every girl knows what a penis looks like, right?  Some polemicists even went so far as to argue that there are countries in which feeding a 12 year-old your length is perfectly acceptable.  To make such a comparison with Thomson’s case however would be as disingenuous as pleading for leniency were five-oh to bust in and catch you with a plantation of Lemon Skunk.  That shit may be legal in the Dam, but it sure as hell ain’t here.

Shit went from ‘real’ to ‘hyper real’ on Monday afternoon, when notorious football pundit Graham Spiers posted the following Tweets:

The reaction to his pleas for leniency was anything but lenient, with responses ranging from the indignant to the extremely outraged.  Was Spiers right in what he said?  To be honest, it’s almost a moot point whether or not Craig Thomson deserves to be given a second chance.  The fact is that when it comes to paedophilia, there are no grey areas. The hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade just won’t allow it.  There is a reason why murderers and thieves can eventually be forgiven if they’re truly remorseful - it’s because we’ve all felt that way at some point in our lives, and recognise that, under exceptional circumstances, people can crack and do exceptionally bad things.   We’ve all wanted to kill someone in the heat of the moment, yet the vast majority of us have held back because we possess two essential attributes known as self-control and common-sense, qualities that appear to have deserted Craig Thomson at the time of his monumental cock-out.  The truth is that every man has passed a schoolgirl in the street and thought to himself ‘What a stunner she’s gonna be when she’s legal.’  It is also true however that most men don’t then attempt to fast-track her transition to adolescence by treating her to a swatch of their pork sword.  Paedophilia is the last sexual taboo for a reason - because no right-minded person would even think about going there.  While only Craig Thomson can attest as to whether or not he was planning on going there, when a man shows a woman his sleeping beauty, it’s not just compliments that he’s usually fishing for.

As for Spiers’ remark about ‘what the internet does to kids these days’, well... Like every virile man, I’ve seen my fair share of things on the internet.  I’ve seen women shagging horses and horses shagging women; I’ve seen fart-porn, spew-porn and incestuous lesbian dwarf porn.  I’ve witnessed such acts because I was either bored, curious or occasionally horny.  In all my time of smut-surfing and bestial-beating however, I can’t say I’ve ever sought out underage girls, and not just because I feared I may have cause to take my hard drive into PC World one day.  As for my own meat-puppet, well, it’s probably lurking on a few exes’ camera phones - and it’s certainly lurking on mine - but I can’t say I’ve ever felt the compunction to share it with anyone who wasn’t old or experienced enough to treat it to the sort of TLC it was crying out for.  It would be nice to just shrug the whole Craig Thomson business off by graciously electing to forgive and forget, but what if it was your daughter who’d been in the firing line?  Would you be able to cheer if he went on to score the winning goal for your team in a cup final?

When this blog first started, I must admit it hadn’t occurred to me that I would wind up penning a 2,000-word treatise on paedophilia.  But then The Trash Whore Diaries is about exploring the best and worst aspects of humanity, and thus here we are, discussing at length Craig Thomson’s length.  It’s probably not what people logged on here for, but hey-ho, that’s life, isn’t it?  One minute you’re minding your own business on the internet; the next, someone’s poking you on Facebook with their jap’s-eye.

While all the furore hasn’t done much for Graham Spiers or Craig Thomson’s careers, there is one Edinburgh resident who’s been rubbing his nose with glee.  On the other side of the city, a certain Gary O’Connor, back within the Hibernian fold once more, is awaiting trial for possession of cocaine.  The prodigal son, who has a history of racking up error after error, can’t even buy a by-line in the paper at the moment, let alone a quarter-page spread.  That’s the thing about iniquity - it’s all relative.  How Thomson must be praying right now for police to discover a Fritzl-esque basement in Neil Lennon’s house.  Until then however, he’ll continue to attract pelters wherever he plays, which right now looks like nowhere on this side of the galaxy.  Irrespective of what stance you take on his indiscretion, the fact remains that Craig Thomson is not the anti-messiah - he’s just a very naughty boy.

Friends, Subjects and Fellow Countrymen:

As the alternative Head of State for this great island, may I wish you all a most wondrous Christmas and a felicitous New Year.  We are nearing the end of a topsy-turvy year – an annus promiscuus – that has been both the best of times and the worst of times.  As a nation, we have collectively experienced the full gamut of human emotions over the past 12 months, taking in the extremest extremes imaginable and everything in between.  I too, as proud Queen of this country, have experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows  life has to offer.  The highs?  Boshing a couple of pink diamonds on Halloween followed by a bucket of rum, a fistful of jeeftos and two dozen poodles’ legs of Tony.  The lows?  Waking up the next morning.  Nationally, this pattern has been repeated, with 2010 seeing disparities and incongruities that have hitherto never been witnessed, and which may never be seen again.  Contrasts in weather, in political ideals, in social – and in Facebook – status.

    For example, who would you estimate to be among the greatest heroes and villains of our time?  The answer, of course, is that they are one and the same person.  Raoul Moat?  Wife-beating, cop-killing, psychotic, jilted madman.  Or courageous, cop-killing, postmodern messianic anti-hero.  It all depends on your outlook on life.  And specifically on whether your outlook on life has been tainted... by meeting the police in real life.

    And then there’s Tommy Sheridan - bare-assed liar or unflinching mouth (and cod)-piece of the proletariat?  Maybe neither, maybe both.  Maybe everything and nothing.  When is a lie not a lie?  When it’s told in court, in which case it’s counterargument.  Or possibly perjury, depending on how many members of the establishment you’ve pissed off whilst uttering said truths/half-truths/untruths.

    Depending on whether you see the glass as half-full or half-empty, the erection as half-up or half-down, will determine how you assess this year.  It’s clearly been an eventful one for ex-con lefties with a penchant for piecing dirties whilst fucking off the government.  No, I’m not still talking about Tommy - I’m talking about Julian.  Un-American, terrorist-assisting rapist or subversive whistleblower?  Once again, the jury are split, leaned on, nobbled and tampered with.  Then there’s this season’s coolest, most stylish attire to be seen out in, not to be confused with this season’s uncoolest, most unstylish attire to be seen dead in - Hunter welly boots.  Even Tommy Sheridan would draw the line at fucking a girl wearing a pair of those.

    We truly live in a polarised and skewed society.  I mean, some of my best friends believe it is acceptable to throat-fuck a girl until she spews into her own arse-hole whilst forcing me to film the ensuing carnage.  Some of my more distant friends think this a misogynistic and degrading way to treat a woman.  These people make me sick.  Which ones?  All of them of course.  That’s why we’re friends.  It’s hard to witness such scenes at the best of times, but virtually impossible when you’re trying to hold a video camera steady while wanking furiously.  We’re a nation who will shit, weep and spew cum, blood and puke from every orifice, then dress it up in euphemistic terms such as ‘making love’ or ‘visiting the restroom’.  Then we’ll smoke a fag, chill for 20 and do it all over again.  What is wrong with this country?  Absolutely nothing, which is why I am so proud to be its monarch.

    This Christmas, I have eschewed the comforts of Buckingham Palace in order to deliver this address from Aberdeen’s Yangtze River restaurant.  While Chinese - and occasionally Scottish - families make some din over their din sum, I sip my Tsingtao and scribble thoughts on the back of a sheet of crumpled legal correspondence.  I wouldn’t want it any other way though; it’s Christmas with the one I love - me.  No seasonal address would be complete of course without sparing a thought for those less fortunate than ourselves.  My heart goes out to all the kids currently holed up in Austrian cellars and dungeons and destined to remain undiscovered for another 20 years.  They can only dream of what a white Christmas looks like.  On the plus side, those Hunter wellies their fathers/captors have bought them will be worth a fortune in 2030 when they’re still in mint condition.  Spare a thought also for Madeleine McCann - I meant to take her out for a walk this morning, but I was so stoned I couldn’t remember the combination to her cage.  Sorry Maddie - maybe next year.

    Before I leave you to enjoy the rest of your festivities, I would like to finish this address on a positive note however.  Amidst all the doom and gloom, there are many reasons to be optimistic looking ahead to 2011.  Many Christmases ago, on this very weblog (set to celebrate its tenth anniversary next year incidentally), I noted that the strange time between Christmas and New Year is a bit like the scrotum - nothing really happens there, but there’s plenty of excitement on either side.  As we prepare to move from the balls to the scrotum (or possibly the arse-hole to the scrotum, depending on how bad your Christmas was), it’s time to reflect on what lies ahead, not what’s in between.  Like many of you, I am about to change lanes by embarking on a journey into the unknown - in my case leaving Aberdeen to seek out new adventures and foreswear working for the man for working for this man.  The last time I was self-employed, I sold drugs.  This time, I’m gonna attempt to make it as a writer.  And if that doesn’t work out, well, there’s always Plan B...

What does my future hold?  I don’t know, though whenever asked this question, I always preface it with these five words: ‘If I’m not in prison...’.  No one in this country is above the law.  Not even the Queen herself.  Which is why, were I to try and kill myself, I could be charged with attempted regicide and suicide.  Sadly I don’t make the laws in this country - I just get wheeled out once a year to read them off a script, before retreating to my chambers to play with the corgis and roll a fat banger.  There are some who would say that this country - just like the remains of my Christmas dinner - is going to the canines.  Nonsense, I say.  This is still the only nation in the world where anything is possible, and every underdog has its day.  Believe me when I say that all of you, no matter what your circumstances may be, can achieve anything you want to provided you work hard, follow your dreams and don’t give up hope.  And failing that, you can always audition for next year’s X-Factor.  In this great island of contradictions and juxtapositions, there are some who believe that the current Christmas number one is the epitome of great music.  There are others who believe that those responsible for it should be taken outside, shot in the head and then fucked in the ass.  To which I can say only this: where’s Raoul Moat and Tommy Sheridan when you need them?  Where are your heroes and villains now?

Merry Christmas, my people.  Merry Fucking Christmas.

This is a true story about how idiots are taking over the world, and why euthanasia is the only solution to this fatuity epidemic...

Once upon a time in a far away land, there lived a handsome prince named Kai.  One day, while spring-cleaning his awesome castle, the prince happened to stumble upon a box of old junk.  It contained, amongst other things, some antiquated computer discs and a power supply for a PlayStation2.  The Prince knew he ought simply to hurl these trinkets off the battlements and into the moat below, yet a part of him couldn’t bear to see them go to waste.  He might be the second richest man in the entire kingdom (after the good king himself), but Kai hadn’t forgotten his humble origins in Aberdeen.  To dispose of this junk without obtaining some sort of remuneration for it would be a very un-Aberdonian thing to do.  And so it was that the prince came to sell off his unwanted possessions via the time-honoured medium of eBay, until the only thing left was the PS2 power supply.  This too he listed on eBay, for the fair sum of £5 plus £7 international postage.  The prince may have been reluctant to see such paraphernalia go to waste, but he was not an avaricious man, and so he priced it reasonably so that all his subjects would have the opportunity to purchase this fabulous power supply.  Sure enough, within two days it had been snapped up by an eBay member called tamas_sergiu.

    Tamas_sergiu, whose real name was in fact Rusu Tiberiu, lived in the faraway kingdom of Romania.  To travel there by horseback would have taken many months, and so it was that Prince Kai sensibly elected to post the power supply to this distant land using standard class mail.  A week or two went by; leaves began to fall from the trees as summer begat autumn.  Then one day, while surfing the net for Swedish dirties suitable for transforming into princesses, Kai received an email.  It was from Rusu, informing him that the promised power supply had failed to materialise.  The handsome prince was aghast; hadn’t he walked to the post office himself (Kai didn’t need servants to do his dirty work) and affixed the stamps to it with his own fair hands?  The prince anxiously replied, reassuring Rusu that he had indeed posted the power supply, and urging him to look out for it.

Another week went by and another email arrived from Rusu.  Still no sign of the power supply.  The prince knew that he had posted it, but could only assume that it had gone missing en route to the dangerous kingdom of Romania.  Out of the kindness of his heart, the prince decided to issue a refund for the missing item.  Aberdonian he may have been, but he was not entirely callous.  He sent the following message to the unfortunate Rusu, who by now had been staring at a blank screen for weeks, eagerly waiting for the chance to power up his PS2: ‘Hi. I have refunded you £7, as that is all I have in my PayPal account at the moment. Apologies for the item not arriving, but I hope you can appreciate that I posted it in good faith, and so I have lost out too.  Thank you.’

 
The prince smiled, content in the knowledge that he had done the right thing and made amends for this most vexatious of situations.  Imagine his surprise when he received the following message from Rusu: ‘hi, i dont see the money from you in my paypal acount i think is a fake mail , i will send a copy of this  mail to your local police, and I GIVE YOU A NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.’
The poor prince was taken aback by this outpouring of vitriol and hate.  His ears still ringing from all the caps lock shoutiness, he patiently drafted a measured reply: ‘The money is in your account, but if you don't believe me, by all means contact the police and ask them to investigate. Don't just take my word for it.  Regards, Kai.’
The prince hit the send button, crossed his fingers and prayed that his antagonist would be more understanding on this occasion.  He didn’t have to wait long to find out, for hours later Rusu’s response arrived, and this time it was more shoutier than ever: ‘Available balance in EUR (primary): ?0.58 EUR  THAT IS ALL I HAVE IN MY PAYPAL ACOUNT  SO WHERE ARE MY MONEY? I WAIT 12 NOT 7  I WANT MY MONEY BACK.’

The prince drew in his breath sharply and then sighed.  All his life he had strived to be fair and generous to the subjects of his father’s kingdom.  One day he would be their ruler, and he dearly hoped that they would love and respect him as much as he did them, which is why this unsavoury incident was so hard to stomach.  Reluctantly, the prince reached for his keyboard and attempted to draft a reply.  Surely it was still possible for diplomacy to win through?  His work finally done, the troubled prince retreated to the courtyard and spend the remainder of the evening pacing listlessly, pondering life’s peculiarities.

Three hours later, a Romanian man going by the name of Rusu opened his email and discovered a new message from Prince Kai.  It read: ‘Fuck off and die you dirty, smelly gypsy. I hope you suffer a slow and painful death.’
For some reason, Rusu took great offence to this and, after much cogitation, bashed out the following rejoinder: ‘what? are you crazy?  i recived the package today you stupid fuck, it's not my fault. call at the post ofice and ask when i picked up, you stupid fuck. asshole, think before you make any acusations, and suck my gipsy DICK .i whanet to resend you the money, but now i will not,  if you dont recive 4 weaks the item what do you think? IT WAS NOT POSTED.  wy did you not sent the tracking number?  it's your fault, YOU ARE SO STUPID, and i hope you live 100 years  i dont whis you to die, because it's to much for 7 and again YOU ARE SO STUPID.  I WIL SEND YOU THE MONEY BACK I DONT NEED IT.’

 
    On the other side of Europe, in a much more pleasant and civilised kingdom, a prince sat at his desk and drafted a response to the stramash of garbled syntax and assault-by-upper-case that he had received masquerading as an email.  The prince wrote back: ‘Dude, you're the one who got all shouty and started using big capital letters to accuse me of defrauding you of £7. And I told you before, I couldn't send you a tracking number because it's impossible to track items that are sent by standard post. If you don't want to be spoken to like a dirty, smelly gypsy then don't act like one. Keep the £7, you could maybe use it to invest it in some soap.
Best regards, Kai.’

Astonishingly, Rusu the Romanian took further offence to this and, after wracking his incredibly large brain for some time, came up with the following pithy riposte: ‘i called  today at paypal and the refund it was made to my card not to my paypal acount thats wy i have dont see it, MAYBE I HAVE MORE MONEY THEN YOU AND I AM MORE CLEANER THEN YOU, YOU RICE EATER.  FUCK YOU. STUPID RHD     FROM THIS MAIL  YOU ARE THE GIPSY AND THE DIRTY ONE, I HOPE YOU EAT RICE ALL YOU R  LIFE AND ONCE AGAIN  SUCK MY GIPSY DICK   FUCKING  EMIGRANT.’

 
Upon reading these words, the prince decided it was only right and fair that he warn his subjects about the dangers of trading with as backward and inbred a nation as Romania, and thus he wrote a blog about it.  And from that day onward, the entire kingdom of Scotland came to know that the name Rusu was synonymous with stupidity of the most retarded sort.  And as for Rusu himself?  Well, legend has it that he went on to father an entire brothel of illegitimate, inbred mongrels, who in turn shat out yet more thumb-clenching, drooling idiots, and thus the entire world came to be populated by stupid people.  The end.

Two blogs in one day? Madness! Thankfully, this one's as sweet as it is short. Although I've not had much opportunity to write on here lately, I haven't completely given up on the art of stringing sentences together. Every weekend for the last few months I've been swapping my dull life in Aberdeen for a more exotic one in Edinburgh, like a heterosexual businessman who transforms into a Thai ladyboy come Saturday nite. Instead of willies however, I've been playing with synths, and gargling rum in place of cum. Amidst all the carnage in Auld Reekie, I've struck up a prolific (non-gay - or at least non-consummated) partnership with Stuart Jackson. Together we form Zambian Astronaut, the finest - and indeed only - synth-hop duo the world has ever seen.

Hailing from the darkest recesses of Edinburgh City, ZA feature yours truly on lyrical and song-arranging duty, with my partner-in-crime Stuart taking care of all the production.

The two of us have been fortunate to meet some awesome artists who've collaborated on our debut EP, including Edinburgh rapper Werd and Norwegian vocalist Asa Seljestad.

If you're intrigued as to what Scottish hip-hop could possibly sound like, check out The Legacy below. If you'd prefer something a little more seductive, Butterflies is worth a listen. The latter, as well as Run These Streets, feature wordage penned - but thankfully not song - by me.

Hope you enjoy the first instalment of ZA.

There may be more than one way to skin a cat, but what about a dog? How many ways are there to de-fur a canine, preferably while making it suffer a slow, agonizing death? I ask this not out of curiosity, but out of necessity. You see I have a problem. Actually I have several problems (narcolepsy, insomnia, anorexia and obesity to name but a few), but right now there is one problem that is afflicting me more than all the others combined. It is small – puppy-sized to be precise – and yet it is causing me to contemplate murder in the cruelest, most inhumane way.

To explain, let me tell you a bit about my current living arrangements. (But not too much, because you really don’t wanna know about the blow-up doll called Peggy Sue who sleeps on top of me every nite, or my propensity for shitting in plastic bags and lobbing them out the window when I can’t be arsed walking to the bathroom.) At present, I am a lodger. You know those sad single men who rent a room in someone else’s house because they’ve just left home and don’t have a girlfriend or any mates to stay with and so they sit alone in their room nite after nite, eating Pot Noodles and beating off? Yep, that’s me. Although in saying that, I do have a girlfriend, and a couple of acquaintances who would probably begrudgingly concede that they were my mates, plus I left home ten years ago, so what’s my excuse? Well, right about now I can’t afford to rent a place of my own (that’s the trouble with earning an honest wage), and besides, because I like being mothered, there are certain advantages that come with abiding under someone else’s roof. Such as the knowledge that I need only leave my laundry basket outside my door and when I return home my cum-stained CKs will have been exchanged for a neatly folded pile of clean boxer shorts.

The property I partially call my home, a three-floor townhouse in deepest suburbia, accommodates four people (though it could easily take more). On the bottom floor, in the humble bedroom/bathroom/utility room, there is me, The Lodger. And then, above me, there is The Family. Comprising of a married couple and daughter, they occupy the top two floors. The middle floor I am technically allowed to visit on occasions, but generally choose not to, preferring instead to fester in my bedroom, eating Pot Noodles and beating off (sometimes at the same time.) The top floor, however, I am not permitted to set foot in at all on pain of death. It is, to all intents and purposes, the forbidden floor from The Others, occupied only by ghosts, unless of course I am the ghost, in which case it is occupied by humans. Although my rented abode is undoubtedly comfortable (the middle – and presumably top – floors especially), it suffers from the malaise that affects all modern edifices; paper-thin walls and ceilings. Directly above my bedroom is The Family’s living room. Indeed, were the slender floor/ceiling ever to collapse – a not unlikely proposition – I would be crushed under the weight of their pool table. The house is so flimsy that my girlfriend and I have already been chastised twice on account of certain noises that have emanated from my bedroom. (What can I say; she never gave me any warning she was gonna do that with her finger.) Of course, it works both ways, and every sound that resonates within their living room filters through into my bedroom. Most of it – the clank of pool balls, the mother screaming at the daughter and vice versa – I can ignore. However, there is one sound in particular that has lately afflicted my earballs so acutely that I now find myself with a mind set on murder. When I first heard it, a couple of weeks ago, I thought the high-pitched squeal was that of a new toy that the daughter was playing with. My girlfriend, on the other hand, thought it was the squeak of a vacuum cleaner. (I’ve never heard a hoover squeak before, but then I’ve never attempted to do some of the things with the nozzle that she has). What neither of us considered was that it might actually be a real, live dog, and that the infuriatingly pathetic squeak was its attempt at a bark. It was funny for the first five minutes. And then it was just really, really annoying. Every morning, my final – and most precious – hour’s kip is interrupted by the yelp yelp of that odious little bastard, swiftly followed by the landlady’s screams of ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Amusement, which swiftly turned to annoyance, has morphed into apoplexy. Now, whenever my slumber is terminated by that yappity yap yap, thoughts of doggy death start brooding. What if I dropped it from the top (forbidden) floor to its death? It could be made to look like an accident. What about the microwave? The little bastard would surely fit in there. Or the dishwasher? Or, how’s about I just go straight for the jugular and rip its throat out with my teeth?

For all my threats of poochicide, the fact remains that I have yet to set eyes on the high-pitched hound. It could look nothing like the scrawny runt I have written it off as. If I sneak upstairs armed with a toothpick, only to be met by a snarling Alsatian, then it is I who will be yelping off with my tail firmly between my legs. This afternoon, while writing these words, its wretched whining became so grating that I responded the only way I knew how – by opening my door, cranking the stereo and unleashing the full fury of Blood Brothers. That appeared to temporarily disable its dismal whimpering, and I was just preparing to sharpen my knives and take the pain to another level when The Family arrived home. At this point, the little fucker had the audacity to shut up completely, making out that it hadn’t spent the last two hours torturing my ear drums. I then felt obliged to follow suit, donning my sincerest smile and making out that I hadn’t spent the last two hours thinking up ways to torture their pet. A part of me feels bad for even contemplating whacking the poor girl’s doggy, and then I start to think think maybe I‘m being a bit harsh; perhaps I could just cut its tongue off and leave its head attached to the body. But then it starts its yip yap yapping once more and my thoughts return to unfortunate altercations with soup blenders or fateful introductions to Chinese restaurateurs. There’s only space for one whining little bitch in this household, and I was here first. That doggy’s leaving here in a doggy bag.

Aberzine Gig Night, Friday 9th April @ The Tunnels

What's this I hear? Four local bands playing in the same venue on the same nite? And admittance for just £4? What a perfect opportunity to get along early and catch every drop of sweet, sweet music as it oozes from the stage. Actually, scrap that. I missed the majority of the first act because I was too busy pre-loading on vodka Red Bull in that manner much decried by publicans and MPs alike. Actually, scrap that previous sentence too as it's mostly untrue; I wrote that part while stocking up on the aforementioned vodka Red Bull before the gig. I did actually catch opening act Which Way Now, or part of them at least, and what I heard was damn good. Unfortunately that's about all you're going to learn about them or indeed any of the acts who played Aberzine's inaugural gig as the review that follows was composed on my phone in situ while completely wrecked. Too much VRB does that to a man. Apologies for the lubricious and misogynous comments that follow; they weren't written by me, but by the alter-ego who possesses me and my pen after a few drinks more than a few too many...

Do you remember the scene in American Pie 3 where the dog swallows the wedding ring and Stifler ends up having to eat the dog shit, pretending all the while that it's actually a delicious truffle? That's what watching local bands is like. You've got to wade through a lot of shit to uncover the gems, all the while mustering your best rictus in an effort to pretend that their aural faeces are in fact delicious truffles.
Upon arriving at The Tunnels I discovered, much to my disappointment, that the first act were still on. I've never been a fan of watching bands as I find that their cacophony impacts upon my ability to talk at length about myself. However, having contrived to arrive too early, I felt obliged to begrudgingly endure the remainder of Which Way Now's set. There's a tendency when reviewing female-fronted rock bands to focus on the hot chanteuse and ignore the rest of the band. Well I'm not gonna fall into that trap. All I want to say is that even if I was the singer's brother, playing guitar alongside her, I would. Musically they were reminiscent of Puddle Of Mudd, but I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. Thankfully their singer looks - and sounds - nothing like Wes Scantlin. Is that his name? Who? OK, I'm showing my age now, I'll shut up. Trying to disassociate the aesthetics of the singer from their musical output is impossible I discovered. It's like the Lady Gaga conundrum - would anyone lust after her if she wasn't famous? I would, but then I'm an animal with no standards. Some people can look at a band like Which Way Now and see the talent oozing from every individual member. I can't. All I see is a bunch of metalheads backing a singer they all fantasize about fucking and yet don't have the social skills to approach because they've spent their teenage years locked in a stuffy bedroom perfecting their fretwork. Guys, she'll never know how you truly feel about her unless you summon up the courage to tell her, but that's never gonna happen. Thankfully, Cupid here is on hand to do the dirty work for you. Heather, here's how it is: You're good and so are your band but I think you should know that they all want a piece. If they say they're in a band with you for the music, they're lying. [Sober note to self: Did I really write that? What a cock. I need to either start drinking less, or drink so much that I'm too incapacitated to write.]
Next up was singer/songwriter and general layabout Bob Knight. Where do I start? What can I say about Bob that he's not already said about himself? Ah fuck it, I'll pass him the mic: 'You'll find the best thing about an acoustic set is it's possible to talk over it without spoiling your pint.' Then, upon fucking up the start to a song: 'You know, intros are a bit like foreplay and not really necessary.' Utter genius. Bob has always been something of a Marmite character; not brown, viscous and spreadable, but the sort of person you love or hate. I often find myself experiencing both emotions simultaneously in his presence. When he's good, he's damn good, and when he's not... well, tonite thankfully he was, so let's just focus on the good times. Gary Glitter would give the contents of his hard drive to have written lyrics as good as those found in 'Secrets, Tales and Lies'. (Not that ST&L is about paedophilia, I hasten to add. For that, you'd have to turn to the Bob Knight classic 'My Friend Bubba'.) 'Found You', meanwhile, is one of the best ten songs ever written. Fact. (Not that there is such a thing as a best ten songs in the world of course, any more than there is such a thing a best ten sets of tits. They're all good, apart from the saggy ones and the ones equipped with an extra nipple.) I played 'Found You' to my daughter when she was still in utero, the headphones placed against her mother's bulging belly. Now that Kris Watson-Morgan-Prais-Wish-8 has disappeared off the radar, Bob Knight is officially the best songwriter in Aberdeen. Where next for this prodigious talent? Tonite the Granite City. Tomorrow the Mearns, perhaps. Sadly we don't live in a meritocracy where the good rises up and the shit sinks to the bottom, so Bob's occasional flourishes of genius will never reach the audience they truly deserve. If the handful of bored looking punters in The Tunnels couldn't appreciate them, what hope is there? Talk about pearls before swine.
The third act, Panda Eyes, reminded me of the sort of bands they used to put on every Thursday nite downstairs in the old Aberdeen Student Union. And that's not a good thing. At least back then there was copious amounts of cheap drink to numb the pain of having to endure some turgid female-fronted rock band. Panda Eyes were so bad I had to go to the bogs for a line just to make them seem better. I tell you, following that band on tour wouldn't be cheap. Am I prejudiced against Panda Eyes because their female singer is about twice the size of Which Way Now's? Possibly, but even so, Panda Eyes' frontwoman would have to be Lady Gaga famous before I'd even contemplate going there.
I missed the final band, Captain Face, presumably because Panda Eyes bored me out of the venue, though to be honest I can't really remember now why I left. I'll just helpfully note that Captain Face were probably very good at what they did, whatever that was. I'd like to conclude this review by quoting the last two lines of text I entered into my phone before exiting the venue midway through Panda Eyes' set: 'The thing about background music is it's in the background. That's all I'm saying. It wasn't bad, it was just the background to the rest of my nite out. So they were either boring or I was drunk. You choose which.'
Well said, Kai. Even wasted you speak more sense than everyone else. Somebody buy that man a pint of Irn Bru to wash away his hangover.

iPods. iPod Touches. I touch iPods. PDAs, Macbooks and DS-es - a baffling array of abbreviations and bastardizations, of bastard abbreviations - these are the names of and the ways that we while away the miles and the hours, sleeper after sleeper, station after station. We, the passengers on the East Coast Line, immersed in our gadgets and our virtual worlds, lost within our own personal (cyber) space as we rub shoulders with the stranger sat next to us and absentmindedly play footsie with the random across the table. Too close for comfort and yet not close enough to be comfortable. I too am lost in my own inner space, thinking my thoughts as I drink my drink (lukewarm Stella, that'll be £2.90 please sir) just like all the rest, only I lost my Touch around Haymarket when the battery passed away, leaving me all alone; an analogue boy in a digital world, armed only with a pen and a sheet of paper that I borrowed (in the same manner in which one borrows a cigarette) from a stranger on a train. One side in and I've only just begun trying to say whatever it was I was going to say - must elaborate less, abbreviate more (PDA, DS), running out of paper, uh-oh, txt spk, mayB not, I think not. These streams of consciousness - this stream of consciousness, is it life trying to be art or just words on a page, markings on a piece of paper, as relevant as an indecipherable hieroglyphic or a discarded shopping list.?
'Oh sugar!' exclaims the man in the seat opposite (so close, knees touching knees), his DS pressed tongue-lickingly close to his face as he fucks up the game he is playing. The woman sat across the aisle doesn't glance up, so immersed is she in her iPhone (texting? You Tubing? No, Googling for the services of a hitman, I decide, to dispose of her husband who sits across the table, staring listlessly out the window but seeing nothing of the bridges, mosses, slaps and stiles.) Unbeknown to her - though she would hardly be surprised to learn - the man sat behind her is following suit, on hardware if not on software. Her reasons for browsing - a boring husband - are understandable; his - a boring textbook (Energy Systems and Sustainability) - even more so.
'Only 15 minutes until the buffet service, including hot and cold drinks, closes,' announces the guard. I finger my empty can of Stella and survey the rapidly diminishing blank lines - six and counting down - and prepare to say my short goodbyes. All around me, the faint clicking of keypads, furrowing of brows and refreshing of browsers continues unabated. I pat my pocket to feel the reassuring clink of change, put down my pen and begin that long unsteady walk to the front of the train.

Like a bad penny or a bad curry, The Trash Whore Diaries are apt to disappearing from sight for a while before resurfacing when you expect them least, bursting onto your screen in a smorgasbord of reconstituted prose. A four-month hiatus has elapsed since time and technology last permitted me to inflict my thoughts upon that portion of the web that cared to entertain them. (Mostly bored housewives, bored students, bored oil execs and bored… well, you get the gist of the demographic.) Since last blogging about whatever it was I was blogging about at the time (I’m guessing boobs, but I could be wrong – perhaps it was vaginas), a lot has happened in my world. I’ve moved out of the parental abode for the second time in my life, I’ve managed to avoid arrest (or should that be resist arrest?) and have even secured a job at a company whose management have been good enough to overlook my previous foibles on the grounds that when I’m not getting up to no good, I’m actually pretty damn good at doing the things that normal people do in their workplace; write stuff, sell stuff and drink lots of tea. Not only can I do all of said things, but I can do them damn well; I make a killer cuppa in fact. So happy am I in my current job that I have vowed to be super well-behaved and ultra boring by not writing about my job at all. That way, I might just have a chance of retaining it beyond the three-month probationary period. (Remember what happened to my cleaning job at a certain prestigious girls’ school in Aberdeen? Look back through the Trash Whore archives, circa 2003, if you dare.) But today’s blog isn’t all about me for once. Neither is it all about trying to be funny, as you’ve probably gathered if you’ve persevered this far. No, the purpose of today’s blog is to pay tribute to a Trash Whore devotee who will be unfamiliar to you. In fact it’s less of a tribute and more of a eulogy I’m afraid to say. Let me try and explain…

Back in 2006, I was released from prison after serving 13 months for some offences, the exact nature of which I can no longer recall. (OK, so it was drug dealing and perjury, OK?) During that time, the prison blogs I had written from inside HMP Craiginches and posted online had built up quite a following. Friends, foes, judges, solicitors and prison staff; they’d all stumbled across The Trash Whore Diaries and gotten hooked on its methadone-esque properties. Unknown to me at the time, one such devotee was a man named Gordon Sutherland who worked at an oil company in Dyce. After discovering the TWDs and rapidly succumbing to their moreishness, Gordon alerted all the staff in his office, who also subsequently fell victim. Following my release from prison, the media got wind of the prison blogs and they appeared in the Press & Journal, News of The World and on STV’s North Tonight. Around that time, after lamenting in my blogs that no one would employ me now because of my criminal record, I received an email from the aforementioned Gordon that went as follows:

Kai,
I am a manager at a very large US based, Aberdeen company that could use an intelligent, articulate guy like you. What is it that you want to do? Do you just want to get a job, or does it have to be a particular job. Your requirements appear to be quite demanding. I could give you a job in a heartbeat, but it would might not be up to your exacting standards. I have read the TWDs for quite a while now, and realise that you are a fairly smart cookie, but am concerned that you would not stick anything I offer you for very long, due to lack of mental stimulation… I can try and sort you out with a job if you like. It is not going to task your literary skills, but it is at least a start....
You reckoned that nobody would cut you an even break.

I will.....

2 conditions.
1)No mention of the company in the WHDs, there are a lot of lunchtime internet fans...
2)Nae drugs Min.... This company tests regulary...

Intrigued – and pleasantly surprised – to learn that anyone would even consider taking on a liability such as myself, I began corresponding with the mysterious Gordon. For now, he was just a name attached to an email address, and for the next three years he would remain that way to me. Although flattered by Gordon’s offer of work, I informed him that after some consideration I had elected to start up a sandwich shop with a couple of mates. Gordon (or Big Gord as I then knew him) replied as follows:

Kai,
Excellent! Delighted to see that you are making some progress.
Tell, me where [the sandwich shop] is, I might be able to throw some hungry people your way. I know that you think that I might be some official or lowlife with ulterior motives, which I understand, but I would love to buy you a beer some day. I even nipped into the Bassment a couple of Saturdays ago in the hope that you were there. (No I'm not a stalker, I just wanted to by you a drink for keeping at least 8 people at my work entertained through their dreary days!)
We will meet at some point, and you will realise that I am genuine....
Gord

And so life went on, days passing into months, Gord getting on with whatever it was he did in his life while I got on with doing whatever it was I did in mine (selling sandwiches and weed mostly, but not at the same time). Then, in early 2009, disaster struck when I found myself back in Craiginches once more, this time for getting caught with a couple of kilos of weed. (I was also still selling sandwiches at that point, but for some reason the police didn’t seem as interested in those. Maybe if they had been doughnuts it would have been a different matter.) Sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, I served eight months before being released in late August on a tag. Upon my release, I set about publishing the blogs I had written during my second spell inside. Soon afterward, I received the following email:

Kai, I don't know if you remember me, I was the guy who you refused a hand up from last time you got out. What the hell has happened to you this time? Sadly, I'm no longer working for the same company, and presently unable to make a simillar offer, but any way I can, I will help. I can point you in the right direction, of people to speak to etc, and after 25 years in the Oil Ind. I kinda know my way around. Not to be condescending, but with your imagination and flair for writing, you would be an asset to any company......
Feel free to drop me a line, and like I said I will do anything I can to help.

Regards
Gord

The Trash Whore Diaries were back, and so was Gord, my faceless personal adviser whose advice to date I had lamentably elected not to heed. We began corresponding again, and this time got as far as exchanging fone numbers. Our slow-burning relationship was now starting to hot up. After reading my blog of February 25th 2009 (published on 27th September), Gordon emailed me the following message, starting with a quote from yours truly:

Never pick a fight with anyone uglier than you – they’ve got less to lose. Looking at the scarred and stitched up faces around me, that precludes pretty much everyone.
Kai, Absolute quality.....
I used to go to college in Glasgow, (Well Paisley actually, Glasgow without the nice bits) and the only time I got into a fight was on the underground, across the road from my flat in Cessnock. I grabbed a Stanley knife off a wee tit, and fired him out the doors just as they were closing. It wasn't until the guard came along to ask what happened that I looked at it to see that there were two blades in it, flat sides together, cutting edges apart.... Ehhh??
"It's so's (sic) they cannae stitch ye back up man, better geez it here....."
Loved the coincedence that whilst you were writing that, I was, on the same day;
A) Opening my Birthday cards,
B) Enjoying being told I was unemployed for the first time in over 20 years..
C) Having my first alchoholic drink in over a year....
D) Telling my wife about B) above......
These all happened over the course of less than an hour.... and it wasn't even 10 o'clock......

It was becoming evident that Gordon and I both had problems of our own to deal with, some of which were self-inflicted (prison; drinking), others less so, such as being unemployed and, well, being unemployed. A few days later, during one of our exchanges, Gordon opined the following:

Kai,
Having read the most recent two of your blogs.....
Can I just say.... YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT!!!
A very erudite, intelligent and articulate idiot, but an idiot none the less....
As someone who can no longer stand being stuck in a steel box for two weeks at a time, deprived of everything that I love, how could you possibly be so stupid as to find yourself locked up in that shithole again..... At least I could throw a sicky and get flown back to the beach.
Now I really want to meet you, if only to slap some sense into you, because I know that there is a very clever person inside there somewhere........ Deeply inside....
I'm hoping that the story of your most recent arrest is purely just good story telling, because, I just sat reading that shaking my head, and thinking, "why am I still communicating with this waste of a good skin?"
BTW.... The "Pigs - Bacon - Filth - " are only doing a job. Neither you nor I would do it for the same money... (And trust me, my run ins with Scotland's finest doughnut munchers have not been very pretty.....)
And like yourself, I deserved everything I got.
Kai,
Just read your latest, and as you suggested "last" ever episode of the TWDs]
There is just one thing I don't understand.
If you hate this way of life..... STOP FUCKING DOING IT.
Nice to talk to you on the phone today, hope I came across well, but you sounded like a startled schoolchild.
I just feel I should take you under my protective wing......
And beat the 17 colours of stupidity out of you. (And there are precisely 17, I Googled it)
You don't think that selling, or using controlled substances is bad......
I don't think that doing 130 MPH on a Honda Blackbird up the Blackburn straight is bad........ I could have gone another 50 faster.....
But sometimes you meet people who do...
(Driving a Volvo 440 with lights hidden behind the grill.......)
Who then ask the unanswerable question.
"Do you know how fast you were going?"
Yes.... "that's intentional then ........ "
No... "Ah... driving without due care..."
Kai, we know the rules and sometimes we choose to ignore them.....
But please don't be angry about being caught.
Thankfully, I have only ever spent one night in the Travel Lodgewalk with the glass brick windows, and that even was for something I didn't do....
My mate and I were in a bar in Windmill Brae, (Peaches I think it was called back then Bugsy's now) and went for a hit and a miss before the walk home.......
"What's that hole cut in the ceiling?"
Dont know, but I bet there's a camera behind it....
I pushed aside the mirror tile and sure enough there was a camera.....
Ripped it out, and left it hanging by the wire.....
Weirdos.... cameras above the urinals..... Tsk.
Got outside, and my pal remembered he'd left his fags and Zippo on the table.....
He came back out with a suspicious lump in his coat...
"What have you done?"
Nothin' don't worry about it....
We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved)
After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....
I should have suspected something was up when the barmanager said "nah, you're okay mate, you're getting this from me"
I turned round, and one of the shaved gorillas in a suit was standing by my left shoulder...
Fuck...............
I looked at the barmaid, and she just shook her head......

Even then I was impressed by how quickly two members of Grumpian's finest managed to get from all of 25 feet across the road....
"Come with us son, we've got a something to show you"
A video of my big face reaching up to the lens of a camera 2 seconds before the picture became white noise....
Bollocks....., here comes Miranda........
"You have the right to remain silent, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you in a court of law"
Do you understand?
......yes.....
Bet you know that feeling!

Not long after, in October of last year, I finally met up with Gordon for the first – and alas only – time. I had caught the train into Aberdeen to go job hunting; he had driven in from Westhill to sign on. Having been seriously injured in a car accident a year earlier, Gordon was still requiring physio for his damaged back. He picked me up near the station in his 4x4 and drove me past his house in Westhill, where we stopped by his house to enable his over-zealous dog to greet me like a long lost bone. During the course of the couple of hours we spent together, I got to know a man who was as decent, kind and humorous as his emails had suggested. Gordon then drove me out to the nursery for me to pick up my daughter and we parted. Later that week, he emailed me:

T'was a pleasure meeting you the other day Kai, one of the most strange, interesting, bizarre, funny, mornings of my life.
You must be wondering what my motives for meeting you were, and to be honest, so am I, but basically boils down to two things. (I think)
1) Whether you were actually as smart as I thought you were;
or
2) You were a keyboard hero, who in fact, behind the online personna, and in real life, was a total hoser.
Can I just say you fell in to category 1
(But wash your fucking hair now and again, hippy!!!)
Thouroghly enjoyed the few hours, and hope we can do it again sometime......
(And having been to my home, in my wife's car, been raped by my dogs, I hope you feel a little less nervous of me now....)

A month or so later, I received another, more abrupt email from Gordon that read as follows:

Kai,
How are you getting on?
Hope it's better than me...
After months of asking, I've just been informed that I have a fracutered spine...
Life's great....


That was the last I ever heard from Gordon. Ten days ago, he died in his sleep at the age of 43.

Today I attended the funeral service of a man I only once met, and yet who it feel like I’ve always known. I know it’s only words on a page, but I figured a tribute to Big Gord was the least he deserved. After reading them for so long, it only seems right that his last role in the Trash Whore Diaries should be a starring one.

As I wind this rambling eulogy up, I find myself thinking back to the email I quoted earlier, in which Gordon recalled:

We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back he died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved) After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....

I never did get the chance to have a first – or a last – pint with Gordon, so instead I’m going to the Justice Mill tomorrow, the pub we had initially planned to meet at, to raise a glass to Gordon’s memory. It's not much, but it's the best I can do.

RIP Gordon, you were one of a kind.