Okay, I’m starting a new mental health regimen. I’m trying to normalise myself. Not in the fundamentalist Christians curing homosexuals kind of way. I don’t need that kind of help. Or, at least, not unless somebody can cure me off these secular feelings I have for busty French brunettes in black stockings who always look like a youthful Béatrice Dalle… What I mean is that I want to become one with the common man, though, again, I don’t mean that biblically.
I’m just tired of being wrong about everything and being told that I’m wrong. I’m wrong about the environment (damn you, Guardianistas for leading me astray). I’m wrong about manners and screw you if you don’t agree. I’m wrong about the internet (let’s hear it for more cat memes!) and I’m wrong about the decay of contemporary culture, language, and like whatever… Yeah? My family, who mean more to me than even my writing drawing and blogging, they constantly tell me to abandon my writing, drawing, and blogging. Now that I have a little real work, they have a taste for it. They now want me to devote myself to it utterly. ‘How much longer can you go on?’ they asked today. I need to get into industry where the money is. ‘Think of the future’ they told me and damn it, they’re always right. I need to make money and I need to make money quickly.
So that’s why I’ve sat down well past midnight tonight and intend to figure this out. This is going to be one of those long stream of consciousness blog posts. In fact I intend to write it very long, beyond your ability to make it to the end, so you should quit now especially if you have any moral qualms about my long time interest in the business of crime.
I often wonder if I would commit a crime if I could get away with it. I don’t mean the mugging an old lady kind of crimes which naturally sicken me. I mean robbing a bank. I see myself as the Robert Redford everyman figure, using his brains to get what he wants but harming nobody except the system. My bank robbery would be directed by Sidney Lumet and set in the 1970s. It would have the theme music to the original ‘The Taking of Pelham 123’. Bam ba da ba dam… You know… My accomplices would be Walter Matthau, Jack Klugman, and the great Robert Vaughn. My love interest would be provided by Karen Black, who sadly died earlier this year. I used to love those films with Karen Black. I now realise I’ll have to rewatch Capricorn One tomorrow. I think it accounts for my attraction to cross-eyed women. I always remember cross eyed women I meet in life. I’ve only met two, both at university, and they were both stunningly beautiful.
Bored you yet?
Anyway, my crew would gain entry via the sewers, using a thermal lance to break into the vault after months of gradually cutting through solid concrete despite my fear of a tunnel collapse. But now am I just thinking Charles Bronson in The Great Escape?
Insignificant fact: Bronson was Lithuanian and I always thought I was a quarter Lithuanian due to my grandmother claiming to have been born there. However, my father suspected she was actually Russian and that my great grandparents had claimed Lithuanian nationality to disguise the fact they were White Russians fleeing the revolution…
Of course, if I am a quarter Russian, then perhaps I could become part of the new Russian mafia that’s controlling the globe. I like the idea of working for some top of their game criminal family, perhaps as a consigliere like Robert Duvall in The Godfather. I’d simply nod and men would break other men in half. Failing that, I could become an underworld enforcer, complete with incomprehensible tattoos on my knuckles that would strike fear into any expat Russian who saw my hands. Not sure I’d make a good enforcer but I could ask at the local gym to see how long it would take them to make my 6’ 2” frame 6’2” wide. I hear steroids do strange things to your testicles so I need to decide quickly since I’m also considering getting into prostitution.
I figure male escort work would provide money and wouldn’t compromise my wanting to write, blog, and cartoon. The only problem is that I don’t think women would pay for my body, not in the state it’s currently in. If I can hardly bear to look at it myself, I’m not sure women would want to look at it. I’m also not entirely sure what I’d be getting myself into. You see, I’m currently doing some freelance web design and I don’t know how much to charge for designing and building a website. If I can’t name a price for that, how would I even begin to consider the rates for male escort work? Do you print up a price list? Do the prices change according to erogenous zones you explore? Has anybody done a time and motion study? If so, perhaps they could teach me the right motions. Bum tish…
Then again, it didn’t work out for John Buck in Midnight Cowbody and the young John Voight had more going for him and he still ended up turning cheap tricks in a hotel bathroom. I’m probably more Ratso Rizzo anyway.
I always liked that track called ‘Florida Fantasy’ which Rizzo daydreams to. It always amused me that the music to Rizzo’s dreams of becoming an escort to rich Florida women became the theme music to the BBC chilren’s show, Wildtrack, hosted by Tony Soper. However, I didn’t know that until I just checked. I actually thought it was the tune to ‘Animal Magic’. Knowing the truth ruins it since I’ve gone all these years imagining Johnny Morris pleasuring rich Florida women whilst making funny voices like a hippopotamus.
But back to prostitution: I suddenly realise that I do have a connection. When I was writing another blog, I exchanged emails with a man who claimed to be working in prostitution in Spain. He invited me to visit and to introduce me to all the girls. Unfortunately, at the time, I was pretending to be a six foot buxom stunner and there was some slight suggestion on my behalf that I would consider joining a stable. It all fell through, of course, once I remembered that although I am over six feet tall, I’m not a stunner and my legs are as hairy as they are long.
Incidentally, despite appearances, I’ve not taken drugs tonight. Nor am I drunk. I’m just very depressed and this is how it sometimes manifests itself after eating lots of dark chocolate McVitie’s digestives.
Speaking of drugs: I have considered drug dealing but that doesn’t appeal to me because I’m not keen on being around people whose noses are always running. It’s partly a hygiene fetish, I have, particular when it comes to other people’s hygiene. Crusted noses are a big no when it comes to employment. I was in Greggs in Manchester last week and the woman scratched her nose and then touched her bottom. She thought nobody was watching but I noticed. It made me feel slightly uneasy eating my cheese pasty so I don’t know how I’d react to heroin addicts who haven’t even the convenience of a brown paper bag to keep them clean…
It’s a shame, I suppose, that dark chocolate McVitie’s digestives aren’t a banned substance because I could certainly enjoy dealing those, though I don’t know what that would do for my habit. I’d probably OD or end up like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface, though my desk would be covered in digestives, my white suit spoiled by the dark chocolate goodness.
The other reason I couldn’t deal drugs is that I really don’t want to handle anything that’s been up another person’s rectum. I know it’s the same issue of hygiene but I think it’s more significant than that. It’s the same reason why I never understand people who want to work in sewers…
When I was a kid, sewers fascinated me. It was amazing to think of these tunnels that ran under the streets. I’d see them in films and always wanted to go down them to explore. Then, at some point, I realised that what films didn’t mention about sewers is that those lovely little subterranean canals would in real life be filled with what are euphuistically called ‘floaters’. That little underground Venice would actually be as filthy and sinking as, well, the real Venice…
Now I think of it, this puts a bit of a spanner in my plans to rob a bank via the sewers. I’m not sure I could spend weeks chipping through concrete whilst in close proximity to faecal matter. Also, the great Karen Black died earlier this year, so what’s the point? You can’t have a great 1970s crime movie without Karen Black.
So the bank is out of the question. What about the prostitution? What it would take to become a pimp and maintain my own stable of girls? I suppose I’d have to import them, which wouldn’t make me feel good. People smuggling is a horrible business and I don’t think I’d want to be part of it. I have, however, often wondered if I’d be any good as a smuggler. It seems such an interesting line of work, hiding things in other things. I’d love to spend my days trying to figure out how to open a coconut and reseal it without anybody being the wiser. I’d probably specialise in coconuts, or at least large fruit. You couldn’t smuggler a family of Chinese refugees in a large yam so at least I’d know that my work was morally clean in that respect. I’d probably smuggle high end consumer goods, such as the Samsung Note 10.1 (2014 edition) which is considerably cheaper abroad… Could I get it into a coconut or a yam? Interesting question. If only Samsung would send be a sample to test. Of course, I’d also have to source some yams…
Smuggling also seems a very easy job since the amount of stuff entering the country is huge compared to what’s searched. For example, if the yams didn’t work out, I’d buy a large consignment of novelty bike horns. At least 20,000. The sort with the large black rubber balls on the end. I’d hide my contraband in the balls, knowing that nobody would be foolish enough to deafen themselves by testing every single horn.
But this isn’t getting me any closer to deciding how I'm going to make cash quickly. I need to make money easily but without giving up my best hours to some hopeless job. Cartooning and writing aren't doing it for me so I need to think of some other way…
So, money. How to get it...
I suppose high level fraud is always an option but I don’t have the connections. I’d probably have to join the Conservative Party but they don’t allow anybody with my accent to join. Plus there’d probably be nothing left once I got there. The bankers seem to be doing a good job of emptying the vaults…
I suppose that only leaves the more unusual careers in crime. International hired hitman has a certain ring to it but I’m not sure about the hours. Also, I think I’m stubborn enough to want to have a say in the people I’d be hired to hit. I’d probably set the bar quite high and only take out criminals, dictators, and managers of boy bands.
I’m now getting tired and I suppose I should sleep on this. I’ve not written enough but you’ll have stopped reading a page ago. I can now say or do anything, confess my darkest fantasy… I always had a crush on that newsreader who turned out to be a lesbian. Didn’t see that one coming… I remember she announced that she was a lesbian in the same interview that she also announced that she enjoyed listening to The Archers. Stan wrote her a letter expressing his profound shock and disgust that she had admitted to such abhorrent behaviour and that he wouldn’t watch her again until she stopped listening to The Archers. I often wonder if she got the letter or understood that I was mocking the people who criticised her for being a lesbian. I sometimes feel terrible that she might have thought I was criticising her for being a lesbian.
It’s now 3.12. I didn’t intend to write this much, especially about yams and lesbians. I thought it was still about 1am. But here I am no closer to figuring out what criminal career I should pursue. I’ve not even talked about the doubts I have about becoming a cat burglar (pros: the clothes, the prowling; cons: dogs, broken glass, the possibility I would have to grow a David Niven moustache).
I’m going to bed before I start to talk nonsense.
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