2002-02-14 - 7:02 p.m.

�I�m just the same as everybody else, I�m only out looking for myself, but I got all this wealth and I ain�t killed yet�I wonder why people don�t like me?�

You can tell it�s arsing, jizzing v-day because you can�t move on the tube for people thrusting their ostentatiously-brandished, prickly-stemmed, parasite-baiting, mass-marketed, hurriedly-chosen floral manifestations of vague affection into your nostrils like twelve scarlet, polleny reasons why they�re better than you, with the kind of slap-invitingly smug rictus worn only by people who need these overpriced, lacy-ribboned reassurances that their unfortunate partner isn�t going to start some squalid, crack-induced affair with the first sexually available cretin who has the ill-judged inclination to try and lure them away from their gnawing, tick-like mandibles. Get your rapidly-wilting couplehood out of my face and kiss my front bottom.

Some might say that�s a tad bitter, of course, but I say to them, �You don�t fancy coming out for a drink tonight, do you?�

But of course they have some �meal� to go to at a so-called �restaurant�. They�re not the ones curling up with cheap herbal tea and the �situations vacant� pages tonight, are they? Are they bogroll!

�I�m only out looking for some fun, I�m only out to get me one�and I ain�t never ever fucked with nobody�s head�I wonder why people don�t like me?�

Flowers are, and you can stop your internal dialogue, rubbish. For two days they, let�s face it, attract flies and insincere enquiries about the sender, and then it�s petal-strewn decay city all over your carpet and studiedly-minimalist vase from Ikea. You�re looking at compost for like a week. If someone loved me, I�d want them to prove it by giving me something much more desirable, like Audrey Tatou�s home phone number, say, or three bottles of expensive gin. Remember kids, romance is nothing but a bourgeois construct.

(If I can�t get laid, it looks better if it�s because I�m opposing ideological oppression.)

�I ain�t no big, big boss man, I ain�t got no shares in nobody�s plans, and I swear I never ever meant your daughter no harm�I wonder why people don�t like me?�

The English Gentlemen of Rock and Roll