Adventures in Weirdity

[david]

Welcome to Adventures in Weirdity, with your host, Lazlo Shunt.

Today's guest is Ignacio da Forbo, founder and manager of the website destruction page, Insolvency. 

LS - Signor da Forbo, tell us please about how you thought up the idea of website destruction.

IdF - Thank you for having me here, when I should have been somewhere else.  Well, you see, I have always, that is to say, never, been interested in contrast, opposites, antonyms, dvorakonyms too.  What we can construction, we can destruction. What we can tin, we tin can.  And so on.  You get the idea.

LS - Yes! It is quite a catchy, that is to say, fishy, idea at best.  Now, tell me, how much do you charge for your services on your page?

IdF - We only take offers of a percentage of a client's profits from their website.  If I offer you 10% and you wish to raise it to 15%, we would settle that difference at - what would you guess?

LS - Oh, that's easy - 5%.

IdF - Exactly.  The business model is a variation of a Dutch auction, the concept being that we split differences.  Or, if you are a barbarian, we split hairs. 

LS - Speaking of hair, Signore, I love what you've done to yours since the last time we spoke.  That style, a Salvator Mundi, I believe?

IdF - No no no no!!!! It is a Sic transit Gloria.

LS - So sorry.  But, it does seem to be running a bit under the studio lights, or walking quickly, one might say.  Crawling?

IdF - I was warned when I chose the less expensive cut that it might not hold up under extreme weather conditions.  My butcher shall hear of this. 

LS - 'Tis true, the cheaper cuts are tough unless prepared properly.  Were that a mullet, I would recommend slow baking.

IdF - I say, this might not be the right, or left, time to ask, but -

LS - Yes?  Don't be shy, coconut.

IdF - Hahaha! You remember that? Oh, what times those were!  But I forgot - oh, yes.  Would you like to come over to see my ctenophilic collection?  The largest outside Switzerland. 

LS - Aha!  You sly old devil, you.  You are indeed fine of tooth. 

IdF - What is that man doing there, or here?

LS - I am afraid our time is down for yesterday.  It has been so hideous having you off, Signore.  Please leave your microphone at the desk where you deposited your weapons.

Our guest next week on Adventures in Weirdity will be the forensic dentist who examined the teeth of Napoleon Bonaparte during his death on St Helena.  Join us then, won't you?

[david]

NOTE: The preceding interview was recorded shortly before the sudden, but not at all unexpected, disappearance of Lazlo Shunt.  He has been on the lam through several of the known continents since then.  He is not known for his good taste, so authorities have ruled out his possible consumption by cannibals.

Anyone with information leading to the capture and arrest of Shunt is urgently requested to appear at the nearest police station.  A reward is being considered and will be determined when China introduces its virtual currency later this year. 

Do not approach this man!  He is dangerous at all times.  The only way to deal with him is to grin maniacally whilst looking at his white socks and amber locks.  He will then respond with a crypto-friendly "And a cultural Brennschluss to you as well!" before disappearing in a cloud of cordite-scented banana smoke.

[david]

There have been rumours circulating the aethersphere that this forum has been visited by Lazlo Shunt.  Indeed, not just visited by, but contributed to by Lazlo Shunt.  Some followers of the hipster may be gladdened by this news, others left shaking in their Nikes for fear of being outed. 

Let me lay your fears to rest.  This man is an imposter.  Lazlo Shunt himself is an imposter.  That is how he earns his wicked living, allowing him to buy bubble-wrap goggle suits and countless white socks - not in pairs, as you and I buy socks, but in bulk, en gros, as it were. 

A brief retelling of his sordid and salty tale is in order.  He started life in a leafy suburb of North London, son of itinerant bankers.  He had, even as a lad, a reputation for mischief beyond the control of parents, teachers, or police.  All, however, agreed that he had the most brilliant mind they had ever known.  He was seen by specialists and was declare a genius, not even bothering to give him an IQ test.

He left school at the age of eleven and travelled to the Continent, where he dazzled crowned heads and commoners alike with his perception.  No luxury was denied him.  He wanted nought but praise.  He fed on laud and honour and glory.  But soon he discovered he need not impress others for his sustenance, for he realised that certain chemicals gave him the ability to maintain his habit by merely pretending to have an addiction to praise.  Thus was born, sprung fully formed from the womb of Saturn itself, the Imposter!  Saturn, the Hermaphrodite, was both Lazlo's mother and father in his new incarnation.  He became invincible and impossible, terrible and awesome.

In the next instalment, we shall learn of some of Lazlo's more infamous deceptions as the Imposter!  Stay tuned.  Stay Alert!  Stay right where you are.

[Lazlo Shunt]

Just a quick word to my loyal readers who may have got confused by what this idiot david is posting about me. He is a traitor of the worst breed - a mongrel, a cur, a scum on the beautiful surface of the alcoholic vapours which arise from my hideout.

Yes, fans and stans, I am forced into hiding by this "david" and his slurs.  He is fast on my trail and if you do not hear from me soon, the best advice in these troubled times is to check what he has written about me and then turn it upside down.  That will reveal my true condition. 

Help! I am writing this under extreme duress ...

[david]

I deny totally the allegation that I am putting Monsieur Shunt under any duress.  He has freedom of movement, wherever he may be, whether in Timbuktu or Ouagadougou (both of which are rather lovely places to visit in their own way). 

Should Shunt share his location with anyone, please remember that there is still a reward on his swelled-up head. 

Furthermore, I hereby challenge said Shunt to reveal himself to me, privately, at our previous meeting point on Clapham Common.  Third dustbin from the large oak tree next to the gents just off the main road going west from the duck pond. Do you read me, Lazlo? 

[sam]

Lazlo Shunt I know only by reputation. I rarely type his name right the first time, seeming to favour ‘Laszo’. Then again I rarely type anything right the first time, typos being my chief talent, Google my dictionary. If enough people start spelling chief cheif, I may go that way, too.

david hails from the same patch of the midwest that disgorged me. We’ve never met either. After reading certain posts with his byline, I feel compelled to note that I don’t have a cat. If I did, I would name it Schrödinger, put it in a box with enough food and air to last precisely the time it takes to be delivered once, and put two different delivery addresses on it. For science.

Both Laslo and david may be figments of my imagination. [They’re not. - Ed. And it’s Lazlo, you idiot]

I am mildly alarmed by the above exchange, though am intrigued by the possibility of a reward. Money has been tight since I spent my inheritance on a Prussian troll farm, there still being enough of the old boys around, just. They’re cheaper than Russians. [“Prussia was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. - Wikipedia] This idea was sold to me as a sure-fire business opportunity, but has proven disastrous to my finances as none of the major social media companies are interested. The CIA of course keep a bunch of Russians in the basement of Langley who service all their needs, and MI6 just put me on hold (their hold music is ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’, believe it or not) then disconnect, every time. [Waterloo was recently named the greatest Eurovision song all of all time. - ever helpful Ed.]

I’ve never been to Timbuktu or Ouagadougou.


The Ouagadougou skyline. Chief export of Burkina Faso: vowels.

Clapham Common, on the other hand, is familiar territory – click here and scroll down for photographic evidence. I haven’t been to London since the start of the plague, but employ a ragtag band of Skatepark Irregulars to keep tabs on the place. Should L and david turn up while they’re scavenging for dinner in the dustbin (keep ‘em lean and hungry), they shall inform me immediately and I’ll be submitting an invoice for at least a partial reward. The Prussians are growing bored, and have demanded a snooker table and a subscription to Hello!.

"Couldn't escape if I wanted to" –  a cornered Lazlo Shunt?

[Lazlo Shunt]

   I believe it was young Stevie Morrissey who once piped up with the immortal slovos 'Shyness is nice and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you want to', which is all well and good if you're laying down an idealistic indie pop track but he never actually confirmed whether he had either the skill or the dedication to complete Tetris on the hardest setting. I doubt he'd be able to wax it mate. Like, zero amount of Oscar Wilde quotes can prep you for that delicious feeling of terror/panic when you get your third L in a row but there's only space for a T. It's a world of hurt that very few people will ever understand. After all, how would you begin to explain the Tunguska event to a goldfish, sell a Casio to a Kalashnikov, or try to lay out the sequence of woeful political and economic decisions that led to the infamous Chernobyl meltdown to a hyacinth. You dig?

Now then, back when I used to slam the amphet full time I briefly dated an American girl called Dana Wilcox who was, at the time that I knew her, real-prepping to enter herself into the Tetris World Championships in St Petersburg. She would spend proper loads of hours with her Mary six inches from a flatscreen TV, hardwired to a vintage NES console, rolling her minces and chainsmoking gaspers as she manipulated (or should that be womanipulated) The Blocks like some kind of bleach blonde Johan Cruyff. When her hands could no longer grip the small rectangular controller we would roam the various bookshops of Soho together and she would drop lyrical about The Logic Of The Blocks and how they had changed the way she saw the world. I've never known anyone who could smoke as many snouts in sequence the way that Dana could. In fact, whenever I see an ashtray I am reminded of our time together.

She flew back to LA shortly after I told her ABBA were the greatest pop group of all time, complaining in her laconic California drawl that 'The only good commie is a dead commie' and that if I was ever stateside that I should absolutely not make even the slightest effort to link her. Seemed fair at the time, really. A couple of King Lear's later she popped up in a proper doc-film (The Ecstasy Of Order - 2011) about The Great Game and I realised that Billy Joel was right. We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning. Just think about that for a moment, or don't. It's up to you. As people who want to be heard often say, it's a three country. Maybe one day I'll figure out what this means.

It was only much later, while I was watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, that under no circumstances should you ever lend lids to a man with a sense of humour. But that was Dana, you know? Some of us are born heavy, other have heaviness bestowed upon them. With this in mind, I am brought back once again to the words spoken by Paul Tibbets as he aimed his gleaming B-29 into the great blue yonder on that fateful August morning and announced in a voice like Nesquik that 'A foreign city is simply a collection of damn fool buildings that needs to be flattened as quickly as god damn possible.' Make of that what you will, but my sister Tanqueray's first husband once told me that 'If you trust a man who named his plane after his mother you need to take a good long look in the mirror.' I couldn't share this knowledge with Dana as by this point she was long gone, and being an American would have pronounced the word 'mirror' like 'mere', which I would not vote for even if it was offering free Gameboys to every child on this sweet green earth we call Earth. Right?

And that was really all I wanted to say on the matter. But I guess the real lesson here is that you should never back down and that you've got the music in you. Did Dana have the music in her? 100% yes. Could she have smoked less gaspers? Maybe. What did she teach me? Not much. What did I learn? More than you could possibly imagine.

[david]

That fellow above is the REAL Lazlo - The Real Madrid.  The other one is the imposter.  Learn to tell the difference.  Stay Alert!  I will present my case, thus:

Ladles and Germinals of the gentry - Look at this poor soul, this pure sod of a man!  This is the man - Ecce homo - Behold the man!  Would you hang him on a cross of gold?  Would you hand him high for his sins?  If you hang him now, when will he learn his lesson?  His grammar lesson, no less (no, fewer)!

Lazlo Lazlovich Shunt, a man of all reasons, not in spite of, but because of his gleefully admitted uncertainty of English punctuation, is my pupil.  Indeed he is the very apple of my eye.  (No, the other one - I'm blind in this one.)  The writer Lazlo (the name is actually a shortened form of Lazlarius) needs his muse as a museum needs a curator.  His mind is a vast collection, a collation, a coalition, a correction, of countless and priceless, worthless artefacts and indeed artifacts as well.

Some muses muse, others amuse, still others bemuse.  In Germany, the vegetables Gemüse.  Lazlo sins more than he is sinned against, but PECCAVI was always the Shunt motto.  And back in Germany, they still say "Shunt the Funk up!" when they want you to turn off the radio.   

Justice for Lazlo!

(This reply was sponsored by the Justice for Lazlo Fund, a subsidiary of the Pinchin' Amber Trust.)