Minimalist film posters

These are quite brilliant

My Badger Hat

I recently bought a fearsome badger-hat
It sits where my school cap once sat.
I was told; "Return that animal to its natural habitat"
But the badger said "No!" and that was that.

It's growing bigger, getting fat
From the people it's eating, my badger hat.
I believe, in its greed, it consumed my cat
And scared away my best friend Pat...

...Who ran away, like all the rest
(at least those folks who it didn't digest).
"Would you be rid of the beast?", I answered "Yes!"
But it ate my priest after I'd confessed.

I now bow and stoop just to carry that
Fierce badger, who smells like a sewer rat.
He even looses his droppings upon my back,
How I wish I'd kept my old school hat!

Generation A.D.D.

I would ask you all, if you can manage it, to follow me
As I speak for a while on the topic of attention deficiency.
I promise I will attempt to document this with some brevity
For it is attention, as I have mentioned, that is troubling me.

It is our inability to focus, for periods at length,
On subjects and matters of consequence
That is systematic and endemic of our societal situation
We are become fickle, we the ADD generation.

The factors of the matter in this ongoing decay;
The process of information communication and the way that
We structure (or rather clutter) our waking days
With piecemeal inputs from the bizarre to the commonplace

The evermore indispensable internet provides us, in narcotic drips,
A plethora of diversions from advertisements to video clips
And our mind, though in construction sublime, is nonetheless eclipsed
By the chaotic glut of information at our fingertips

Two clicks and I’ve flicked to a video of a man
With his dog drinking lager from an open beer can,
Or an image of a waterfall, a news article or some interesting facts
But more often than not, shots of gratuitous sex acts

Television is worse, feeding us fifteen minute scraps
Of shows (for they know) by the end that our focus will have elapsed
And though we complain at the interruption to our televised choice
Secretly we appreciate the breaks so we can breathe and give voice

To the exhaustion of concentration (and let it be known)
That I myself am a victim of this troubling syndrome
For whilst working or studying I find that I am prone
To wandering thoughts or the welcome distractions of my telephone

With literature we struggle through tomes but seem hopelessly vexed
Unable to sustain thoughts in trains on the relevant texts,
And return, half a page to a section that was somehow unseen,
Missed during a two-minute reverie; a momentary daydream.

When standing lost in our kitchens, we search for any trace
Of our reason for being there in the first place but
Then stumble back to our seats in defeat with stock certainty
That our purpose will then return to us immediately.

We gaze, impotent and vacant when in Supermarket aisles
Aware that in there somewhere are the items we desired
Just ten minutes before, but as we did not write a list,
We leave instead with unsought-after items and the essentials are missed.

Even as I’ve been talking you have most probably found
That your eyes have been searching the walls or the ground
For a diversion or escape from the continuing sound
Of my voice, of me, and of this topic I propound.

If we could arrest our interest for a moment and remove the blinkers from our face
We would see the feckless, fickle future of the human race
And though we may realise with horror the consequence of this evolutionary trap
We’d probably soon just lose interest and watch a humorous clip about cats.

Lucky

Robert Vain throws the girl a wink
And spots, on the still surface of his drink,
His reflection, smiles, and (to himself) thinks;
‘How lucky she is,
Getting to go home with this.’

The girl says something, to which he agrees,
Not really listening, just nodding absent-mindedly
And stroking his chiselled chin, he can hardly believe
‘How lucky she is,
Getting to go home with this.’

He laughs out loud and scans the bar they’re in
For other girls who will undoubtedly be watching him
But catches no looks (just bad timing), so he leans back in.
‘How lucky she is,
Getting to go home with this.’

She’s saying something, about someone, probably from her past.
Something about ‘not paying attention’ and ‘coming too fast’
And he thinks how happy she must now feel, that finally, at last,
‘How lucky she is,
Getting to go home with this.’

She finishes her little rant and ends it with a list
Then her eyes, across the table, meet with his.
So he leans in further, to give the girl a kiss,
‘How lucky she is,
Getting to go home with this.’

Surprisingly, she avoids the offering and stands up instead,
Removes a large vibrator from her purse and waves it at his head,
And he could only gawp, bewildered, as she triumphantly said;
‘How much luckier she now is,
Getting to go home with this.’

What did the Romans ever do for us?

“What did the Romans ever do for us?” Monty Python questioned in ‘The Life of Brian’, before going on to list sanitation, medicine, peace and education amongst their many contributions. Well, the Romans also gave us pubs. And this nation was forever grateful. That is, perhaps, until this point in history.

Britain has, for nearly two thousand years, been a pub culture. With the introduction of the Roman Road system came also the need to have taverns for travellers to rest, feed and relax. The public house quickly became an essential fixture of community life in England. It is so integral to how modern English civilisation was formed that, at the crossroads of any village, you are likely to find two buildings; a church and a public house. 

Unfortunately, with St. Patrick’s Day on the horizon we can expect that, alongside the usual marketing onslaught of Guinness hats, drinks promotions, shamrocks and Irish-themed pub nights, we will also be inundated with news stories, adverts and opinion pieces about the disgusting state of youths, yob culture and binge-drinking. 

Suggested efforts to tackle this situation generally involve increased taxation on alcohol. A hike in prices is far more likely to adversely affect the clients of a working man’s pub or student bar than it would the clientele of a wine-bar in Canary Wharf. And it is still unlikely to provide an actual solution to the problem. It is the British drinking culture that must be addressed.

The comparison with European drinking habits is often used to highlight the appalling state of our nation but generally does so by demonising certain societal groups such as 'youths', 'yobs' or 'students'.  However, one of the major factors that contribute to the relaxed nature of drinking habits in France or Germany has always been their more casual attitude toward closing times.  The introduction of late night licensing, far from being a catalyst for increased over-indulgence, has allowed many British people the freedom to drink at their own pace and not require that  panicked final rush to the bar. Indeed, It was often the urgency and drama of the bell ringing and those ominous words, ‘last orders’ that generally instigated a final and frantic melee of drinks purchases.

Affecting any change to the long-standing habits of a nation will undoubtedly take time and all the diatribes and outrage of our politicians as they try to find convenient scapegoats is not part of the solution, just another form of middle-class vote-grabbing. Neither is it likely that heavier taxation or the removal of drinks promotions will curb these drinking tendencies; it will merely stretch the finances and debts of those who already have little leeway in their budgets.  

We are all a part of this problem and cannot seek to blame certain sectors of our society for our own cultural issues. For all the good that will do us we might as well blame The Romans; they introduced us to both pubs and taxation, in which case who knows, maybe vomitariums and gladiators will be next?




From February 2010

Immaculate

“I’m pregnant!” she beamed as he entered the room.

Joseph just stood there for a moment, looking blank.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?!” Mary asked, her expression vaulting swiftly from joy to irritation.

Joseph stared at her, scarcely able to believe what he was hearing. “What, but we haven’t even...”

“Oh no, silly, it’s God’s.” She remarked, her smile returning, radiant.

A pause. “What?”

“God came to me last night while you were out and impregnated me with his child. Our baby will be the son of God, it’s a miracle!”

Joseph felt his ears redden and tried to manage his rising anger. “I’m sorry, you’re saying it’s...God’s child?” he managed.

“Yes, isn’t it marvellous?!” Mary exclaimed, pirouetting and skipping her way toward the window and gazing happily out.

“And...what did God look like?” Joseph asked, his knuckles whitening.

“Oh, you know, hair, beard, tunic, like God.” She replied vaguely.

“Like God. Right. And...and I suppose he appeared in some mystical and amazing way then?”

“Oh no, he just knocked on the door. He was very polite. Just as you’d expect, really.”

“So...I take it he didn’t leave in...a great flash of light or something either then?” Joseph questioned, grinding his teeth.

“No, it was quite curious actually” Mary mused, “He left by the window. He does move in mysterious ways though, I guess” she quipped with a light-hearted chuckle.

“I guess” Joseph muttered, whilst tightly wrapping his belt around his fist...