THE ÜBERTRONIC TANGO

(By way of clarification, this particular piece was written on foot of my experiences as a warehouse operative in a few multinationals back in the 90's.  Beyond that, it's all completely imaginary.  No real warehouse operatives were injured in the writing of this piece...)

The night was clear, the moon was full,

The stars shone bright and chill,

And in the town of Limerick,

The sleeping town of Limerick

The grim, grey block of Übertron

Was dark and grey and still.

And in the shadow of the warehouse in the cold night air

Things moved and crawled and rustled

Little creepy creatures scuttled

in the shadows on the tarmac darting swiftly here and there.

But none approached too near 

that place of menace and of fear.

Among all those creepy creatures there wasn’t one would dare.

And as the midnight hour drew near, clouds flew before the moon

And an eerie silence crept across the sleeping town

The dogs of Limerick ceased to howl

The cats all ceased to yowl

And a weird sense of something –

An otherworldly something about to happen very soon

Crept across the denizens of that strange town beneath that witching moon…

Within that block called Übertron
the  Übertronic  clocks all ticked…

With electronic resolution the seconds were all picked

Keyed off, packed out and labelled,

Configured when required,

QA’d and shipped into the past

To make a history uninspired.

Second after second, every minute of the day,

The lives of those who pass these doors are packed in this one way

An endless stream of empty dreams sent into yesterday

By the relentless ticking of those clocks

As they Pick, Pack, and Q A.

But now the clocks have ticked and tocked

Their way around the hour

Their metal hands combined now stand

To form the Midnight Tower.

And in the heart of Übertron

Strange magic starts to stir

And a crackling and a sparkling

Breaks through the silent air.

A light flares in the darkness

Strange music starts to swell

And from the hidden heart of lunacy

Comes the Ringing of a Bell….

And down the aisles come dancing the shades of those who toil

Day in, day out, in Übertron with little cause to smile

Led by a figure in a tracksuit and a crimson baseball cap

The motley crew come dancing through the Ubertronic trap.

The midnight hour has fallen

The witching hour is come

It’s time to start the carnival

Of the manic and the glum

The maniacs who work within the walls of this weird hole

Are here to sing and dance tonight, and sell their very souls.

ACELLERANDO

The lights go down and darkness falls

Tension creeps along the aisles

A spotlight flares and in its beam

A single shiny tracksuit gleams

And into the light a pair of glasses smiles

Here’s your M.C. for the evening

The CEO of Übertron

The Boss is here so let’s all cheer

And let the show go on!

He stands in solemn splendour

Face and tracksuit all aglow

As the warehouse rafters echo to the roars and adulation

The king has come among them and His subjects want to show

How much his presence means with an Ubertron ovation.

PIANISSIMO

At last he raises one calm hand and at once the clamour dies

And everyone strains eagerly to hear

What pearls of wisdom or of wit 

will come from one so wise

At the end of this last quarter of this last fiscal year.

“I’d like to say”, His Lordship says, “how much it means to me

To see how well this company has done –

And it’s obvious to anyone who cares to look and see

That it’s clearly MY intelligence 

and MY unique strategy

That generates the energy that makes this business run.”

“I’m really proud,” he goes on, “of the way this crew combined

To clean up each location until each location shined –

We polished up the warehouse

And scrubbed down all the racks

We packed and shipped out orders

And watched them come right back.”

“We counted all the power cords out,

Then we counted them back in

And just in case we’d got it wrong

We counted them again!

Then we moved them onto pallets from the pallets where they’d been

And we counted them a fourth time for our sins!”

“Now, when I say we did it,

            I mean the real work was mine

Because someone’s got to organise and plan

True lunacy can only run along well laid out lines

The crapwork can be done by any man,”

“In other news,” he says, and here his smile grows wide,

“I know we promised you a raise,

            And when we did, we lied.

The wages that you get, we feel, are fair remuneration,

And, at that, we think you do damned well,

 don’t get above your station.

Remember that all promises

of future wealth are lies

-you’ll never be as rich as me,

 but you might be half as wise.”

PRESTO

“Well, that’s about enough of that,

‘cause it’s the end of Quarter

And every one of you is here

To show your loyalty and cheer

The managers who organised your year

With our peculiar brand of torture.”

“It’s time,” the boss shouts, shiny faced,

“to start the rave, and so,

Uninhibited and demented

Contorted and tormented

Confused and re-invented

I give you one

I give you all

The Übertronic Tango!” 

And once again, the lights go down,

And a drumming fills the air

            Then eerie wisps of vapour start to rise

Lasers start to strobe and pulse

And strange colours start to flare

And the place is filled with otherworldly sighs.

Through the drifting clouds of dry ice a figure now appears

Dramatic silhouette  against the laser light

He poses for a second, then to screams and shouts and cheers

In a cherry picker’s cage, he is raised up to a height.

Is it Bono or Bob Geldof?  Is it Elvis?  Is it God?

Andrea Corr or Shane McGowan or Sinead or even Van?

Or a bizarre mixture of them all making something yet more odd

Never seen before by any man?

He is wearing a white jumpsuit and a single spangled glove

He’s Moonwalking and Flashdancing, there’s grace in every move

He’s clearly seen now in the light

The Übertronic Barry White

It’s Roy Gorman and he’s doin’ it on the the Picker there above

He’s doin’ it for Ubertron and he’s doin’ it for Love!

Now Gladys had her Pips and Diana Ross had The Supremes

And history tells us Jagger had the Stones

But of all the bands we’ve ever had

You never dreamt of one so bad

Not even in your deepest darkest dreams

As the menagerie of the weird, the zany and the mad

The depressed, the dejected, the deluded, and the sad

We have Ragin’ Roy Gorman and the Manic Übertones!

Bob Reilly, Joe Lynch, Monica and Sue

Are providing backing vocals now for  Roy

But Roy is doing “Get It On”

While Sue is singing “Sliabh na mBan”

And Monica’s doing a medley from U2

While Bob and Joe are making sounds

That would raise a lustful answer from a passing caribou

Bill Green is playing air guitar

And Jack Burns is on the drums

Bing is on the bongos

And Des is doing sums

Steve and Paul are out there

Making noises with their phones

Gerry’s on the bander

Jim Brown looks slightly stoned

George Cullen’s got a rhythm section with a stapler and tape measure

Barry Mac has disappeared in search of personal pleasure.

 PRESTISSIMO

And now begins this Mardi Gras

This Riverdance beyond belief

This collision of the Twilight Zone

And Michael Flatley’s feet.

But the Michael Fatley here is Podge

Cossack dancing down Aisle J

And the chorus line that comes behind

is a nightmare gone astray

a delirium tremens vision from a hell of rum and gin

stout and beer and vodka, rock and roll and sin

High kicking down the aisles they come

Tap dancing through the night

In time to that relentless drum

Short skirts and legs in tights

The Uberdancing Chorusline

Would put the stoutest heart to flight.

Just close your eyes and try to see

If your courage stands the test

An image of these faces

In Jean Butler’s tights and dress!

Here’s Philip, Ger, and Mikey

Joe Connor, Roy and Bing,

Rocky, Con and Barry, and Psycho on the wing

Their feet are flying fierce with pride

It’s an Ubertronic thing!

Podge Flatley’s feet are blurred and fleet

As he clatters down Aisle J

A thunderous staccato beat

Of Latin fire and Celtic heat

That forces into mad retreat

What little sanity dared stay.

Relentless, now, the dance drives on

A choreographers fever dream

Not so much a Riverdance

As an Übertronic scream

Sweeping all before it in a strange psychotic stream

The dancers form a circle

And at the circle’s core

Joe Brown is doing Disco

Like it was never danced before.

He’s doing John Travolta

By way of Tarantino and Pulp Fiction

But Brownie and Travolta

Are a mind-boggling contradiction.

Whatever drink this man has drunk

It was a powerful potion

It has given whole new meaning to

The idea of Brownian Motion!

The picking crew of Jack McCue are in their cherrypickers

With the forklifts and the pallet trucks, they slowly circle round

Like a locomotive conga line

They are moving to the sound…

Slow at first move Jacko’s crew

But they gradually get quicker

There’s something ominous about

Those conga-dancing  pickers…

FURIOSO

From the corners of the warehouse, the cherrypickers now advance

Their klaxons sounding loudly, their drivers in a trance

They’re locked on a collision course with the Bastard Son of Riverdance

The pickers and the dance collide

In one tremendous crash

Brownie’s at Ground Zero

And is Übertronic hash

The explosion blows out all the walls, the racks evaporate

The stacks of products and the lines all just disintegrate

The warehouse is an inferno – a raging ball of fire

And a mushroom cloud hangs over the Übertronic Pyre.

Sub-Übertronic particles are smashed and recombined

Little bits of  Office Staff and Warehouse atoms meet

Their previous existences are changed and re-defined

Podge particles are still dancing with microscopic feet

Bing-lets and micro-gimps and bollixed S3 bits

Are blown apart by micro-farts in tiny Psycho fits…

PASTORALE

Strange things start to happen and reality must change

The odd place that was Limerick has now been quite erased

Logic has completely gone and life is rearranged

And only God knows how the odd will be replaced

The seeds of tomorrow have been sown

And the future starts to burgeon in this place

In the heart of that explosion were possibilities unknown

Out of Limerick and Übertron will come a strange and different race…

FINALE (PIANISSIMO)

Twenty centuries have passed

Two thousand years have flown

And on the ruins of Ubertron

A strange jungle now has grown

A truly new environment

- the real Twilight Zone!

The night is clear, the moon is full

The stars shine bright and chill

And in the place that once was Limerick

The strange place that was Limerick

The images of Ubertron

Are weirdly living still

Strange mutant creatures prowl between

The mutant vegetation

Their cries and calls are echoes of

A long lost generation.

The particles of strange things past

Have mutated and combined

The things that once were slightly weird

Have been distilled and re-refined

(con dolore)

In the shadows of the jungle

In the cold night air

Things move and creep and rustle

Little creepy creatures scuttle

In the shadows of the branches

Darting swiftly here and there

In the long chill reaches of the night

You will hear those creatures sing

You’ll hear plaintive cries of “Bollix”

Or of “Gimp!” or sometimes “Bing!”

And if you look real close

Your eyes will find strange visions

And you’ll see with growing horror

The latest versions and revisions

Of things you thought long since condemned

To eternal perdition

You’ll see the Brownmac Buzzard

And the balding Senile Gimp

The slowly moving Bingchuck

And the Jimmyracing Chimp

And in the middle of them all

A Riverdancing Demon

- ‘Tis called the Cheerypodger

And it sends the others screamin’!

(con brio)

The bedraggled looking buzzard with Brown eyes is looking on

And every now and then, he shifts and mutters “Übertron”…

But the Cheerypodger rolls along the matted jungle floor

His cry is loud and confident –‘ tis  “Übertron no more”

V for Vendetta - a bit of a review

I started reading this book by accident back in the 80's. I picked up a few issues of a magazine called "Warrior" back then. I could not believe how good the ideas and the artwork and the writing were. Stories like Marvelman, Warpsmith, and the wonderful Bojeffries Saga were among the jewels in that particular crown, alongside an oddly realistic but surreal storyline called "V for Vendetta"...

 I only got a few issues, more or less by accident because that was how comics arrived in Ireland for most of my life - by accident. But the raw talent and intelligence that underpinned those stories was blindingly obvious in the few samples I got the chance to read.

 Coming up to more recent history, I finally got around to reading the full text of V for Vendetta in the late 90's. If you haven't read it and your only knowledge of the book is from the Guy Fawkes masks that have become totemic of the Occupy movement, then I can only suggest you go out and buy the book yourself.

Very strongly influenced by the great dystopian novels of the past, particularly Orwell's 1984, V for Vendetta manages to carve out it's own particularly bleak vision of a Britain that picks up in the darkest days of Thatcherism and marry them to a viciously successful version of the BNP to create a nightmarish fascist state with a distinctly British taste.

 Alan Moore was the author of this book, and his writing was beautifully matched by the artwork of David Lloyd. I read the first few instalments in black and white, and was powerfully struck by the graphic style. Lloyd eschewed conventional comic book techniques and opted instead for an almost photographic realism, evocative of some of the work of Jim Steranko, but distinctively different at the same time.

 Lloyd's work had a kitchen-sink grittiness, a sense of the shabby reality of life under the heel of an oppressive but culturally withered autocracy that spoke directly through the eye to the heart. I have read the full book in colour, but as with classic movies of a certain vintage, my heart belongs to the stark beauty of the original black and white artwork.

 I'm not going to expand on the plot. Anyone who is familiar with Alan Moore's ability to chart a devious and ingeniously labyrinthine narrative while punching home his own particularly dark musings on the inner workings of the human psyche will know what to expect - or, more accurately, will know that whatever you expect, you will still be wrong-footed.

 But if you are prepared to deal with the awfulness of the logical outcome of the thinking behind so many modern government policies all over the world, then get your hands on a copy of V for Vendetta. It does hold out a small spark of hope that in the face of overwhelming authoritarianism, something positive can arise from the pit.