2001-06-06 - 12:45 a.m.

�All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren�t respectable live beyond other people�s.�

Financial strife is incredibly annoying, given that I don�t really have much respect for money, only that it can buy you freedom from the petty miseries associated with not having any. I detest myself quite heartily for panicking about it, because it�s not like I�m really poor, just this crap, pretend poor that afflicts most of my peers throughout their twenties. It�s easy enough to get money. I laugh at the ads on TV for personal finance (is there any other kind? Impersonal finance � take out a loan for one of your neighbours!):

�Mrs Slagheap had debts of over six hundred thousand pounds � what a time to lose her job as Archbishop of Northumberland! She didn�t know where to turn. Then she came to us and now all she has is one easy monthly repayment of �42.50. Of course, we�ll eventually have to keep her artificially alive, working down the sewers on minimum wage because the repayment period is just under 306 years.�

I�m also astounded by these people who win big on the lottery and still want to go back to work the next day. �Local man, Jack Sod won �37 million pounds yesterday, but said he�d be at work on the silage farm as usual come Monday morning. �I just couldn�t imagine life without me silage, � he said.� Not only does it display a lack of imagination comparable with that of, say, a chipped ashtray, but it�s also incredibly selfish given that there are probably untold unemployed silage workers waiting for him to fuck off into the sunset so they can have a job.

I�m not completely sure what silage is, by the way.

�We all know that Prime Ministers are married to the truth, but like other married couples, they sometimes live apart.�

Pro-life people marching through town today. Rights of the unborn child, and all I could think of was Bill Hicks : �An unborn foetus is not a human. You�re not a human until you�re in my phone book.� I started to think about the sanctity of life stuff we were brainwashed with at school � how masturbation was a sin (for boys) as it was a waste of potential life. Some years later I remember successfully persuading an albeit very drunk but very catholic co-worker that having a period should also be considered sinful as shunning the opportunity to get pregnant was also a waste of potential life. Her concession to my vice-like grip of logic was hollow victory, though, and she persistently refused to sleep with me.

�Never be a pioneer. It�s the early Christian that gets the fattest lion.�

Today�s special guest