Frankie Boyle - Work Consume Die

Some of my favourite parts from Frankie Boyle's book Work Consume Die. I really hope he keeps writing after he quits doing stand-up, the world really needs more people who can dissect how rotten our society is as well as he can.


---

We drop bombs from miles up in the sky and say they are surgical strikes. Ignoring the fact that there is no way to safely drop high explosives into urban areas. That surgeons don't, for good reason, ever use explosives.

The bombs we're dropping cost more than the buildings we're dropping them on. In financial terms they're winning.

According to the Israelis, their troops started shooting because people on the boats threw stones. That sounds proportionate. It's a bit like, well, someone throwing stones at you and you executing them in cold blood with a team of commandos.

(While pitching ideas for a reality TV show)
Unbelievably, this is idea number one. The other one is about a celebrity slave ship where young black rappers are made to live as slaves for a week.

During the awkward wait for the producer, Gary tells me at length about his new baby while I reflect that in the wild his mate would have eaten him now.

(On the proposed change to the voting system in the UK)
My idea of an alternative vote would be having the option of electing someone who isn't a cunt.

Asking employers to consider British people for British jobs contravenes EU human-right laws. Which has upset many Tories. Listen, when your policies are the direct opposite of human rights, it might be time to take a long, hard look at your soul.

I was upset that all those flights were cancelled. Anything that slows down the approaching death of the planet is a tragedy in my opinion.

Perhaps we just project hatred onto things we see as embodying what we hate about ourselves, and perhaps tabloids simply embody the worst of us.

We live in a culture where the only time you see someone with a disability is on a freak-show documentary. The Man with an Arse for a Hand and a Hand for an Arse, that kind of thing. Is that really where we’re at with this? Where the Victorians were? I’m generalising, but disabled people are often more fully realised human beings, in that they have been forced to think about the nature of existence a bit more. It’s the ‘average’ person who should be in a freak show. The Man Too Busy to Love His Kids.

I find the best way to deal with the news on April the 1st is to consider it all lies. Which is only slightly different to how I approach the news on any other given day.

There are fresh concerns over the safety of Facebook. I must say that I've always found Facebook perfectly safe and enjoyable, but then I'm a predatory sex attacker.

Television is just a distraction, really, a jangling set of keys hoisted nightly in front of our stupid, drooling faces. Marshall McLuhan said, 'The medium is the message', meaning that the way TV makes us think - the shorter attention span, the dullness to sensation - is more important than its content. Railways changed the Wild West and it didn't really matter if the trains were carrying wood or marshmallows. We don't even retain the information. Think about how many TV shows you've seen in your life about Ancient Egypt. Now think about what you actually know about Ancient Egypt. Fuck all.

Apparently, more people have now voted on The X Factor than did in the last election. Luckily, I've thought of something we can do about that... we can all kill ourselves.

In fact, Ed Balls blasting Osborne for his handling of the economy is like us bombing Gadaffi for using weapons we sold him... oh.

There's a lot of British money in Ireland - as well as a lot of our illegitimate children, stolen land and murder victims. Of course we want to help the only country we share a border with, but if we really wanted to help, we possibly could have resisted putting that border there in the first place.

Perhaps, some day, people will look at the metal and paper in their pockets and realise it means nothing, and if they all agreed to agree that it meant nothing, we could all just head to the beach and watch the waves come in.

Our royals realise they are playing a publicity game and, when it gradually emerged that the media were fascinated by their sexual misadventures, their petty rivalries, their boorishness and their racism, they must have been secretly delighted knowing deep down that they have fuck all else to offer.

I read an incredible article in The Guardian describing the summer rioting in Belfast as 'a marketing disaster' for a city hoping to encourage golf tourism. But how could these young people, from an area of chronic unemployment and lack of opportunity, actually benefit from golf tourism? They could get minimum-wage jobs changing the sheets at hotels, hold that 'Golf Sale' sign in the high street or become prostitutes. I mean it - those are the options... It's a 'marketing disaster' for hoteliers, investors and the middle classes. For the people involved it's a human disaster, one that is ignored. The effect the rioting has on their lives is not discussed. They are an inconvenience to capital.

What do we raise the next generation to be in a country run by thieves?

I'll bet a psychopath does a lot of the same things you do. Sticks exclamation marks into a text because they don't want to admit the sheer lack of emotion they feel about the communication. Psychopaths must love Facebook.

I think about whether I care and decide that, on balance, I don't.

Let's not forget that with environmental disaster, profiteering on commodity prices, the risks we take with the food chain, and mobile-phone masts springing up everywhere, it's a lot more likely you'll be killed by a bank or a big corporation than by Al-Qaeda.