Strivers and Skivers: 5
SKIVERS
CONFECTIONARY CUISINE: When a kid carefully chooses three flavours of Fruit Pastille, squashes them together and pops this new Pastille Pie into their mouth, it is their first taste of cuisine. Other favourites in the canon include hula hoops worn like a ring then chewed off, adding vinegar to a pack of Ready Salted Crisps (tried once, quite disgusting) and Idler favourite, The Rolo Kebab:
1. Insert skewer through the centre of an entire pack
2. Remove wrapper
3. Serve.
BELLYBUTTONS: Kinda cute but useless twist of flesh that, when surrounded by a fat gut, forms a deep well that doubles up as an ashtray. You can stroke a dog’s stomach for a lifetime and never see it’s bellybutton. And can you imagint the amount of fluff that gathers in the bellybutton of a sheep? Rumours abound that these animals don’t even have bellybuttons? Does anyone know for sure?
MULTI-SLACKING: A word for keeping two windows open on your computer screen at work, one of which contains a game or personal stuff, the other some official-looking work document that you click on to conceal your slacking everytime the boss saunters by.
TV COMPANIES: “I know, let’s suggest a TV programme about food!”
“Well what’s left to do about food?”
“Oh, there’s loads. The Perfect Sandwich, twenty-five minutes of discussions about ciabatta and pesto and olive oil and I don’t know we could make the whole programme just focused around lunch, yeah, none of that heavy dinner food. Or how about Cooking with Endangered Species, a serious six-part series focusing on people who eat rhinos and lemurs. Wait, I’ve got it: Prawn Hour. Prawns are so fucking versatile, they could carry a whole series. Fuck it, they could carry a movie. Get the BBC on the phone, now!”
STRIVERS
FLIES: Herds of them never ceasing, always on the go, sticking a proboscis in this and that and indulging in their incessant fly politics. Buzzing around your head as you lie in the grass, driven by the absurd fly work ethic which only gets them killed. Like all busy beings, condemned to eat shit for the rest of their lives.
CHURCH BELLS: An affront to multiculturalism and the peace of Sunday mornings. Always out of tune, always out of tempo, church bells shred the soul of anyone with the faintest musical sensibility. There are laws against loud “repetitive beats” in the open air, you know. The Idler therefore fully supports any campaign to ban the Church of England on the grounds of it being an illegal pay party, or “rave” as young people used to be say. Don’t think that clever “collection plate” scam bypasses the laws, young vicar.
TOUGH: What is your position on crime? On dole cheats? On drug users? On miscarriages of justice in soap operas? On killers writing books? on Saddam, dissenting pop stars, the Euro, high ranking police officers, masons, drivers, scholars, teachers and miscreant kids?”
“We’re tough.”
“Thankyou, Prime Minister. You’re fucking hard as nails.”
DRUG SEIZURES: The news clips featuring customs men hauling lumps the size of video recorders out of the back of a lorry arouse pangs of pain in our souls. They sling tonnes into the furnace, and expect congratulations. Surely all drug seizures should be kept and stored in a warehouse, forming a huge EC drugs mountain that, for one day only we could crawl over like Charlie in the chocolate factory. Well, it was just an idea.
SKIVERS
CONFECTIONARY CUISINE: When a kid carefully chooses three flavours of Fruit Pastille, squashes them together and pops this new Pastille Pie into their mouth, it is their first taste of cuisine. Other favourites in the canon include hula hoops worn like a ring then chewed off, adding vinegar to a pack of Ready Salted Crisps (tried once, quite disgusting) and Idler favourite, The Rolo Kebab:
1. Insert skewer through the centre of an entire pack
2. Remove wrapper
3. Serve.
BELLYBUTTONS: Kinda cute but useless twist of flesh that, when surrounded by a fat gut, forms a deep well that doubles up as an ashtray. You can stroke a dog’s stomach for a lifetime and never see it’s bellybutton. And can you imagint the amount of fluff that gathers in the bellybutton of a sheep? Rumours abound that these animals don’t even have bellybuttons? Does anyone know for sure?
MULTI-SLACKING: A word for keeping two windows open on your computer screen at work, one of which contains a game or personal stuff, the other some official-looking work document that you click on to conceal your slacking everytime the boss saunters by.
TV COMPANIES: “I know, let’s suggest a TV programme about food!”
“Well what’s left to do about food?”
“Oh, there’s loads. The Perfect Sandwich, twenty-five minutes of discussions about ciabatta and pesto and olive oil and I don’t know we could make the whole programme just focused around lunch, yeah, none of that heavy dinner food. Or how about Cooking with Endangered Species, a serious six-part series focusing on people who eat rhinos and lemurs. Wait, I’ve got it: Prawn Hour. Prawns are so fucking versatile, they could carry a whole series. Fuck it, they could carry a movie. Get the BBC on the phone, now!”
STRIVERS
FLIES: Herds of them never ceasing, always on the go, sticking a proboscis in this and that and indulging in their incessant fly politics. Buzzing around your head as you lie in the grass, driven by the absurd fly work ethic which only gets them killed. Like all busy beings, condemned to eat shit for the rest of their lives.
CHURCH BELLS: An affront to multiculturalism and the peace of Sunday mornings. Always out of tune, always out of tempo, church bells shred the soul of anyone with the faintest musical sensibility. There are laws against loud “repetitive beats” in the open air, you know. The Idler therefore fully supports any campaign to ban the Church of England on the grounds of it being an illegal pay party, or “rave” as young people used to be say. Don’t think that clever “collection plate” scam bypasses the laws, young vicar.
TOUGH: What is your position on crime? On dole cheats? On drug users? On miscarriages of justice in soap operas? On killers writing books? on Saddam, dissenting pop stars, the Euro, high ranking police officers, masons, drivers, scholars, teachers and miscreant kids?”
“We’re tough.”
“Thankyou, Prime Minister. You’re fucking hard as nails.”
DRUG SEIZURES: The news clips featuring customs men hauling lumps the size of video recorders out of the back of a lorry arouse pangs of pain in our souls. They sling tonnes into the furnace, and expect congratulations. Surely all drug seizures should be kept and stored in a warehouse, forming a huge EC drugs mountain that, for one day only we could crawl over like Charlie in the chocolate factory. Well, it was just an idea.
"The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live."