SAUSAGE LIFE

MYSELF: Over the years I’ve had several stabs at comprehending the long, loud, ludicrous pantomime. Yet despite my superhuman powers of deduction, the ridiculous ‘game’ still appears to me to consist of a lot of suspiciously talkative pundits who shout impenetrable stats at each other whilst 22 pumped-up overdressed jocks recover from one of their five minute flurries of homo-erotic ‘football’. To complete the picture, a stadium full of wildly cheering drunks encourage the ‘footballers’ to collide with each other at maximum velocity. (Question: how much American ‘beer’ does it take to get drunk?).

READER: Here we go again! You’re so missing the point, which is that the great American game of “Gridiron” is a fascinating strategic tussle, more like chess than association football.

MYSELF: I see, of course. And here’s me thinking that American Football is nothing but a hyped-up stop-start pageant, whose arcane rules were concocted by the TV companies purely to accommodate the maximum amount of expensive commercials. Chess, on the other hand, is a little-watched sport, which I think we all agree would benefit hugely from the introduction of shoulder pads, cheerleaders and the intervention of Alicia Keys or Uber-Pillock Harry Stiles in his non-gender specific Michelin Man outfit singing someone’s national anthem. No O-fence.

WIGS MIGHT FLY
Professor Thinktank's latest brainwave - artificial dandruff flakes for sensitive toupée wearers, is being marketed worldwide by Japanese multinational YadaYada Atomic Industries. He calls his new invention Scrof, and I was privileged to be shown this advance extract from the script of their $3,000,000 TV ad, which is to debut at the Superbowl:-

EXTERIOR. DAY. WINDY.
We see an attractive young woman stroll by as a handsome man pulls alongside riding a motor scooter. As he removes his crash helmet, a breeze lifts his toupée momentarily and we glimpse in close-up her brief look of disappointment. Undeterred, the man confidently shakes his head and small white flakes begin to fall. She stops, turns and looks at him with renewed interest. He makes the Scrof gesture, (a casual brush of the shoulder). Reassured, the woman smiles at the resulting puff of "dandruff". Their eyes meet. She climbs on to his scooter and they ride off into the sunset.
DEEP-VOICED NARRATOR: Scrof by Yadayada - Your little white lie.

VERY RAPID DISCLAIMER VOICEOVER:
Scrof time release toupée flakes with Zeitgeist is highly toxic to birds, racoons, insects, fish, nursing mothers and children. May not contain nuts

WENDY WRITES

Queries answered

problems solved

souls untattered

Amongst the usual bag of hate-mail, requests for my bank details etc, I have received an angry letter from Dr. A.A. Troon, head of the implied psychology department at the University of Pevensey Bay, who thinks that xenophobes "ought to be be beaten with sticks".

I have no idea where you are getting your information from doc, but this is what Wykipedia says:

Requiring neither sticks or beaters, the xenophobe is played by expelling air into the leather bag until sufficient pressure has built up to cause the upper flaps to ossilate. As you squeeze the bag, you should hear a steady tone, midway between a tenor persiphone and an Eb calaboose, which can then be modulated by pinching the flaps with the thumb and forefinger and gently shaking the hips.

PHOTO BUM

Brigadier Augustus Rambunk of Bexhill encloses a photograph which he thinks may be London Rd. St Leonards c1965. Sorry to disappoint you Brigadier, but my researchers inform me that this photograph was probably taken in Rangapanga, India during the Great August Tea Insurgency of 1847. The car at the front is a camouflaged horse-drawn rickshaw used to smuggle untaxed tea leaves concealed in bundles of raw opium.

RHYME OR REASON

Finally a letter from Emily Palindrome, one of our regular poetry contributers, who asks; "Should poems always rhyme, and if so, how?"
Well Emily, rhyming is certainly not compulsory, but should you wish to employ it, perhaps this short excerpt from my book Rhyme Thyme (Airflow & Windchime £19.99) will assist:

RHYMING:

cat-slat

rubber-blubber

help-kelp

NON-RHYMING:
catatonic-diaphinous

madrigal-souzaphone

portcullis-ratatouille.

I hope this has been of some assistance.

Wendy

SPORT: FOOTBALL’S GOING DOWN

According to sources inside the club, Sergio “The Horse” Peccadillo outspoken manager of Hastings & St Leonards Warriors FC, appears to be contemplating the final curtain. After their humiliating 8-0 midweek thrashing by AC Hellingly Supernaturals, the club's tenure in the Nuclear Waste Disposal Solutions League (south) looks to be over. Ever the controversialist, the Italian supremo was tracked down to the Tortured Cat Karaoke Lounge in Silverhill, where, having taken the team for a post-match debriefing, he appeared surprisingly upbeat about the whole affair. Relaxing between two cocktail waitresses after a stentorian rendition of Simply The Best, he gave us this statement; “Football is like algebra, where x is the ball, y is the ref and the unknown quantity is the score. The players gave their hearts for me out there, and in some cases their livers. We've only been in here half an hour and most of the team are inconsolable already. We are not finished yet. Even though we are certain to be relegated, we could still stay up. Football is a funny old game and I'm certainly going to miss it when I'm sacked."

ART APOLOGY

The editors have asked me to mention that the painting featured in the arts section of our last issue was mistakenly captioned Spring Dawn over Beachy Head by Lucian Frightwig when it should have read Ravenous Wolves Devouring the Putrid Body of Marcel Proust by Damien Hurst. This newspaper apologises for any offence taken, but in private, sniggers like a cheap garden hose.

Sausage Life!

Alice's Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

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