First the good news...

Tintin is 90!

So, one of my worst fears isn't so irrational as all that.

Actually, Tintin is 80, but hey I don't reed so gud ollwheys.

It would appear the man who was bitten by the snake was entirely sober at the time. That much of his misfortune, at least, was his own fault.

it is i, hurley. i have been drunk for a very long time. i can't find the road to ormskirk.

sweet aimless, please help me. whither lynskey, sue denim, and the mighty J.

why does everything look so clean. point a fellow drunk in the right direction.

a blissium on your house,

hurley

oh yes, i forgot matt and the terrible zen clown . . . .

The ormskirk laddies seem to have buggered off. For all I know they are trying to pass themselves off as respectable citizens. Or possibly the magistrate has ordered them to stay away from bad influences. Either way, they have abandoned AAD to pursue their nefarious interests elsewhere.

Sue Denim appears to have disappeared entirely from the face of the earth. This can only mean she is in a cave somewhere, as she was not the sort to move into a disused sewer outflow pipe. Too much class. She would make a first class troglodyte, though and probably has several troglodyte servants by now, bowing, scraping and touching the forelock, serving up tasty roots and other delicacies as she sits in high estate.

Everything looks so clean at AAD because the fire department came through with a hose, on orders of the department of health and our numbers have dwindled so that we cannot re-enfilthify the place with anything like dispatch.

Matt stayed with us longer than most, until his toque slipped over his eyes and he became convinced he would never be seen again. We left him sitting under a bridge explaining to a bag lady how to fillet a carp. Luckily, she didn't have a knife.

Zen Clown is dead. This came as something of a jolt. His absence seems to have sounded the knell for AAD. He has remained dead for several years now, so there seems to be no hope for him. I am sure that he wouldn't be surprised at this. He was a master of low expectations in life, and had even lower expectations of death.

Rex, strange to say, woke up one day to find himself uplifted. I say this in a general sense, for he stayed in bed until his usual 2 pm that day. But this feeling remained with him, quite unexpectedly, long enough for him to become convinced he had a future. He traipsed away from AAD carrying a cardboard suitcase full of blissium and old papers, doing little liturgical dance figures as he capered off. We had a postcard. It was too euphoric to make sense. Bless him.

I still sit around here most days. I rearrange the cigarette butts into erotic mosaics. I groom the rats. I empty my bladder. Time passes.

You could have this job, if you want it. I'll even give you my stool and my backscratcher.

I still exist but I have gravitated, much like a special disk, to other forums elsewhere. Where I mainly lurk as I have a young daughter and short hair now. Today be the first day I've checked AAD since probably before Matty Prior was a valid choice for England wicket keeper.

Old home week has arrived, it seems.

BTW, Lynskey, do not wean your daughter with a sugar tit, or give her a tablepoon full of rum for the colic*. This is now frowned upon by child care "experts".

*Unofficially speaking, I don't give a good goddamn if you do. She's all yours to freely implant your vicious ideas into, so what harm can a sugar tit do, compared to that?

a higher power plainly is at work, dear lynskey. accept it, disavow the family, and rededicate yourself to clerical orders. hellfire, fastfood and an expensive, tasteless wedding lie down the other road.

needless to say, aimless (if i may speak for them) and i stand ready to provide every possible assistance. best done like removing a court plaster; i.e. plenty of C4 and a bronze prussian helmet over your dangly bits (just in case you change your mind).

oh, and do bring the sugar tit along. it's a long bus ride and the TV's all in spanish. plus god does drone on a bit: "michaelmas, blah blah, arthur scargill, blah, consubstantiation, blah." but, on the plus side, the clothes are comfy, the wine plentiful, and you'll have all of us! it'll be like #73 with lads only (plus sue if we can find all the parts).

please think it over & if it's still a no, you can always *invite us over your place.*

do think it over.

hurley
URBAN DOG REPAIR @ AFFORDABLE RATES

oh, and aimless, exceedingly well done, sir. you're the jap sub that never heard the war ended or the last olympian, lingering to gather a few withered laurel leaves. had you cast yourself on the winds of time, or simply let the fag ends pile up, i'd never have found my way home.

and the rats look downright *glossy*. but all lady rats, no?

well done, wot!

I have been demoted to cabin boy on a derelict run aground in the evaporation pond of the local sewage treatment plant.

Hence my internet connection, like my clothing, is spotty at best.

dude steel. you and your high tensile strength and near infinite malleability! the quivering signature glyph will e'er be burned on my brain.

read about your mishap in the latest number of colliers. appalling lack of seamanship, wot. but you smiled for all the pictures and your mustachios , at least, seem to have passed through the ordeal unharmed. just hope your council cheques are still reaching you. and be sure to oil your joints! don't want some know-it-all little girl avec perky dog having her way with you while you stand stiff-limbed on the poop.

FWIW, strongly suspect that lynskey is now under the control of the two davids. short hair and family encumbrances are the twin hallmarks of the liberal/SDP alliance. suggest resort to black ops. communicate availability through usual channels, etc.

a pleasant onslaught indeed.

in the main, i remain,

hurley

i knew he'd rust over.

As I understand it, Dude Steel has been passing himself off as Stalin's love child and and on the strength of that claim has been cadging free drinks from a Stalinist cell he stumbled upon in Rotterdam.

and I quote......

and be sure to oil your joints! don't want some know-it-all little girl avec perky dog having her way with you while you stand stiff-limbed on the poop.

end quote......

I WAS going to immediately go for the quick and easy joke about how EVERY deck on this derelict is a poop deck considering our current location and lack of locomotion......

But I reconsidered, once remembering Momma's teachings about think twice and count to ten before you speak.

I always get distracted somewhere around 6 or

In other news, Ask A Drunk outpaces the increasingly moribund I Love Cooking, proving once again (if proof were needed) that the love of alcohol will outlast an ilxor's love for any other source of calories.

senor steel, thank god your momma's not in politics. we'd never get to fight a decent war! or have sex with elderly former-soviet-bloc prostitutes.

and as for i love cooking, that's a crystal meth site; those dudes are hardcore, if a bit stuporous.

here's mud in your eye (really, *mud*),

hurley

There were corollaries to momma's rules.....

I'll double check but I'm pretty sure that Elderly Former-soviet bloc prostitutes are A OK.

As for the mud slinging, why wasn't I informed of the upcoming election?

i should have known that ma steel wouldn't begrudge a fellow the odd snog with a burley burlap-hosed комисса́рette. i'll send her a bottle of the good stuff . . . as soon as i'm done using it to remove the stains from my dog-fur ushanka.

as for the election, we pushed through the usual slate. didn't see a need to wake you; the drool cups were well below the six gill mark.

and the sherbet was much appreciated, if not used in the traditional way by any means.

all the better to see you with my dear,

hurley

In some cultures Sherbet is used as currency.

So if you managed to "trade" it for a bite of something here or there then good on ya! My what big EARS you have and all that? wink wink nod nod say no more.

My title isn't intended to be as pretentious as it sounds. It comes with the territory and I do enjoy it so.

all the scuttling roused me, at least long enough to tug the dude's beard. i hope you know, dearest dude, that such pretenses are wholly unnecessary in these liberal precincts. but happy for any feminine presence, i suppose. drool cups decanted lovingly into the beer barrel, joints oiled, auto-pilot calibrated, blissium dispensed. back to my slumbers.

Good. You were disturbing the dust bunnies.

... I can tell by their expressions.

They'll settled down a bit, now. But they still seem skittish.

I'm suspecting it's high time I pottered back, or I've pottered back and am highly suspect. At this distance it's nearly impossible to tell.

pottered back. Is that like jugged hare?

slightly more mustard

That's what they said in the studio, too.