A Man With No Ass Is No Man At All

15 November 2001
George knows, you see

The man in the baggy jeans caught my eye on Sydney Street. He wasn't the first that I'd seen at that time, but he was the first who seemed to accept his fate. Many of the other men around who had been called (or "culled" depending on which underground theories you subscribed to) had fought their fate with machismo and whining - creating petitions, writing to their now-defunct MPs. Every other day there would be a protest march down Whitehall, crappy banners proudly held aloft in the drizzle, but the numbers rapidly fell. Yet this man, trousers firmly belted around his skinny waist, had no arrogance about the future the law had decreed for him.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. To explain:

The ordination of King Sally of England was viewed by the population as unexpected, unlikely and (by the more experienced political commentators) entirely implausible. Sally H was not in direct ascent for the throne when she was crowned after the unsolved assassination of the Queen, and there were strongly voiced doubts as to whether there was any blue blood in her at all. But these dissenters were rounded up and shot. King Sally made a television broadcast in which she stated that she has dissolved parliament earlier that day, and relocated power to herself. Anyone who didn't like it would be taken round the back of Buckingham Palace and beaten with a paddle "...because that's the entire bloody point of a dictatorship, isn't it?"

As it was, King Sally was a reasonably benevolent dictator. The differences that her power made to our lives were subtle: the vast new selections of cheese in the supermarkets and the increased financial help given to unsigned musicians and their bands. Thus, in an atmosphere of relatively peaceful stupor, the passing of the "Skinny Ass Begone" decree of January 17th 2003 came as a deeply unpleasant surprise. Rumours put forward were that the King had had an unpleasant experience with a skinny-assed male in a Sussex discotheque. These were later verified in the public broadcast that King Sally made to the nation, described by the Telegraph "...in which the monarch, clearly hungover and unshowered muttered about 'having had enough of all that nonsense' and 'shouldn't be allowed anyway'. The King then left the stage to the sound of retching."

The short of it - the decree stated that all males with "skinny arses" (later modified by the scientific and medical advisors to an exact ratio of gluteus maximus to waist and thigh size) were to be prevented from holding positions of civil authority, or from producing offspring. There was also a subclause about a severe vetting process about letting any skinny-assed man enter a sexual relationship with anyone. As the weeks passed and the King's temper worsened (there were mutterings of PMT but not too many - no-one wanted to be shot) the legislation expanded and became harsher, including bans on many other areas of employment and civil liberties.

Reaction was mixed. Rather than protesting against this infringement of rights, many men took to the fast-food chains to gorge themselves into a state of legal recognition. Realising that walking burnt off valuable calories, many small businesses made a killing from transporting fried chicken, chips, battered sausages, hamburgers and thickshakes to the house-bound menfolk too scared to move in case their ass-weight fell below the designated legal boundary. Several families set up lard-funds for their skinny offspring. The most vocal protests came from the men and women who found skinny-assed men attractive, and were threatened by the idea of never having a partner with viable legal status in the UK. Many of these skinny-lovers (as the tabloids labelled them) went to the Whitehall protests with unmemorable banners and chants.

For a while the policy went reasonably unenforced. Although skinny men were still seen as a lower social class, the roaring trade in buttock-implants meant that having a skinny torso no longer necessarily meant having a skinny arse. However, sixteen months after the passing of the initial decree the press reported that another unfortunate "incident" had occurred a between King Sally and a skinny-assed man in a Solihull nightspot. Enforcement against the skinny arses was brought in the next day, with another royal news broadcast in which the monarch made no speech but gesticulated wildly before the camera before passing out.

And here we are. The royal decree has been violently enforced by the Royal Militia, and the labour camps have been built on the Norfolk Downs. No-one is entirely sure what type of labour will be practiced - the optimists think that a high-fat, low exercise diet will be enough to bring these men back into civilisation again. More radical types think that their DNA will be analysed to allow for a preventative programme against the birth of skinny-assed boys anywhere. The rest of us just don't know. And the guy I saw on Sydney Street, parading his skinny ass in the baggiest jeans you've ever seen, he didn't seem to know either. But he didn't seem to mind. Maybe he and King Sally know something that we larger-arsed citizens don't.

Current clown:

18 December 2003. George writes: This List

Most recent ten:

15 December 2003. Jamie writes: Seven Songs
11 December 2003. Dan writes: Spinning Jenny
8 December 2003. Victor writes: Rock Opera
4 December 2003. Matt writes: The Mirrored Spheres of Patagonia
1 December 2003. George writes: Charm
27 November 2003. James writes: On Boxing
24 November 2003. Jamie writes: El Matador del Amor; Or, the Man who Killed Love
20 November 2003. Dan writes: Rights Management
17 November 2003. Victor writes: Walking on Yellow
13 November 2003. Matt writes: Disintermediation
(And alas we lost Neil, who last wrote Cockfosters)

Also by this clown:

1 December 2003. George writes: Charm
10 November 2003. George writes: Dead beat
20 October 2003. George writes: Shortening
29 September 2003. George writes: Manhattanites are Cleavage-Starved
11 September 2003. George writes: How to Bring Us in Line With the Future
18 August 2003. George writes: Slashtastic
28 July 2003. George writes: Underground Independent Small Press Comic Fight Club
7 July 2003. George writes: Careering
16 June 2003. George writes: Choose your own adventure
26 May 2003. George writes: Revelations
8 May 2003. George writes: Picture Perfect
14 April 2003. George writes: MetaPirate
24 March 2003. George writes: Preparation X
3 March 2003. George writes: F of x
13 February 2003. George writes: Three is the magic number
23 January 2003. George writes: Recorded Delivery
30 December 2002. George writes: Meat Bingo or Death
12 December 2002. George writes: Royal Inquisitor
21 November 2002. George writes: This Clown is Cancelled
28 October 2002. George writes: Shopping with God
3 October 2002. George writes: SaferSpoony
16 September 2002. George writes: Supercalanthropomorphicexpealidocious
26 August 2002. George writes: The deformed animal menagerie
5 August 2002. George writes: Plaice that Funky Music, Whitebait
15 July 2002. George writes: Safe as Houses
24 June 2002. George writes: Two Lions (DB/DS)
30 May 2002. George writes: Series 8
9 May 2002. George writes: Market Stall
11 April 2002. George writes: I, the Enlargened, Crunchy Product
18 March 2002. George writes: Cakexterminator
21 February 2002. George writes: Fiction Suit
28 January 2002. George writes: Spunk Gunk
31 December 2001. George writes: Fairytale of New Pork
10 December 2001. George writes: Circular
15 November 2001. George writes: A Man With No Ass Is No Man At All
22 October 2001. George writes: One Night in Heaven
27 September 2001. George writes: Uncut
3 September 2001. George writes: Porn Pants
9 August 2001. George writes: Names of the Roses
19 July 2001. George writes: No Fun Here
21 June 2001. George writes: All Your Elections are Belong to Us
28 May 2001. George writes: Pierced as Fuck
3 May 2001. George writes: My Lovely Horse
9 April 2001. George writes: Eight Hundred and Forty-Three
12 March 2001. George writes: Kill 'Em All
19 February 2001. George writes: Formal
25 January 2001. George writes: Sticks and stones
11 January 2001. George writes: A Thought on Morality
11 December 2000. George writes: You can't put that into a soufflé
13 November 2000. George writes: Lyrical Genius
19 October 2000. George writes: Wet wet wet wet wet
25 September 2000. George writes: Built on an Indian burial ground
31 August 2000. George writes: This Way
31 July 2000. George writes: Runt of the Litter

We are all Upsideclown: Dan, George, James, Jamie, Matt, Neil, Victor.

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