# charity shop blues in which to listen with existential intent to old shuttleworthian electro media on their human ai pda deck still laugh after all these years despite the more essential sadness of the shuttleworthian directly mirrors their own paltry semi existence here in this lousy damp bedsit room cube their own webspace in a dead end thrift store corner of nets is also cheerfully wack never updated and always intrinsically obsolete from the outset some pleasantly useless virtual collection dedicated to urban situational surrealist esoterica few seem sure of in terms of meaning or symbolic implication like so many others around who pass by they do not see it but like the sound of the idea of it existing was chatting to the person in the local charity shop while looking for cheap n'th hand cyberpulp sci fi paperbacks last week nice silver haired oldie says: nice day isn't it researcher replies: it's just started to rain again nsho: mustn't grumble researcher: guess not any new arrivals in the fiction section nsho: we put up few last week you might like to check out researcher: ok thank you nsho: would you like a tiny tea cake researcher smiles: oh go on then thank you very much in which the unique faded stale smell of one's local charity shop is a polyversal state of what might be tagged being in charity shopness nfr60's carpeting feel a slight rising underfloor dampness and odor of boiled spam an old researcher's yellowing sci fi paperbacks the kind with fantastical lurid original cover rat mild leftover cabbage fnart tinge in the local library although blue meanie atacs have closed most of those libraries if they could they'd probably charge users for the social privilege of reading as pained eyes flick over rusted slightly dented metal shelving units they think about the whole charity shop phenomenon and take mental sub notes charity shops as a naturally unnatural extension of the thatcherite era it should be obvious by now that ruling class vampiric deff lizards in uncle bill's party of one never wanted to pay a single quid for their citizen's health and well being so they had to start forming a multitude of useless charities to help drag themselves out of bed for another inept grey day of coughing holotelevision and listless drifting social abandonment indeed the sheer number of charities and charitable ngo's on island is a living testament to the precise degree to which life here was always destined if not actively designed to slowly crumble away into blank grey slate nothing much from their stillborn beginnings heck there's probably charities via which one can get funding to help set up one's own charity help the jaded / the die anna fund for ballardian studies / doff to a toff anonymous charity for leave europe voting meat brains permanently inconvenienced by lingering romantic notions about the upper crust // [[republic of bob contents | imaginary pastime republic of bob]]