EDITORIAL  

Strange how bad things seem to happen at Christmas. The holy family being kicked out of a Premier Inn would be the start of it and now we have the untimely demise of Kim Jong-il. Bon viveur, connoisseur of fine cognac, he liked to eat dogs (does this suggest he also rode a bike?). His collection of 20,000 videos included the complete films of Liz Taylor. They say his top nuke could have reached LA but the Angelinos felt safe knowing Kim wouldn’t touch a hair of Liz’s head (or her grave after she died).  

His successor Kim Rong-un seems less attractive. Kids that age are always violent, stroppy gits – the leaders of the French revolution were all under 35 (except for Marat). He even looks a nasty pieceashit. We’d’ve been better off with his older brother, the one who tried to sneak into the Japanese Disneyland. Such an outlet in Pyongyang, with McDonalds attached, would surely have brightened the lives of the population who normally eat grass – without fries. 

Film buffery seems to be a family trait. His dad, Kim Il Sung, was also a fan and, as a youngster, hung around Hollywood a great deal. He managed to get it up Mae West and then arranged for his bastard daughter, Kim Gno fac to meet Alfred Hitchcock.  

I shall ask our Korea correspondent, Kayti, to verify these facts and also to keep an eye on the North Korean EBay in case those videos turn up. 

Anyhow, back here in the decadent west, we report a pleiade of new Oik writers: Jim Burns, Leilanie Stewart, Peter Street and John Smaje. We also report the arrival of a great story from India by Jeff Tikari which will appear in Oik 13. Wider still and wider, or what? We welcome new subscriber Fred Whitehead who wants all the back issues for an archive in the University of Pittsburg. Fred’s newsletter, Sandbur, is up on the Oik website. Coincidentally Fred, like star writer Kayti Doolittle, lives in Kansas City but has never met her – an astonishing fact considering there are only two million inhabitants. A subscriber in Rome reports reading Kayti’s No Man’s Woman (Oik 11) several times with increasing admiration. 

The established team checks in as usual. Dave Birtwistle’s satirical portrayal of East Lancs rednecks gathers momentum. He tips us off concerning uses of sterilised milk bottle caps (nobody under 60 will remember these). Dave’s character uses them to make a model of the star cluster Gemini but I’m going to have a go at the Uranium 235 atom. Thank you Dave! You are indeed the Kenneth Clark of Todmorden. 

Tanner is more Swiftian and with disgusted irony describes what it’s like to work in a scouse supermarket. This makes Orwell’s Wigan Pier sound like an Old-Etonian’s picnic (which, when you think about it, is exactly what it was).  

Ken Clay January 2012

CLENCH - Tanner

Smithy the work gimp,
every time I take a piss
he starts banging on the door
‘Turtle head pokin out!
Open up for my turtle head!’ 

every fucking time  

I’m there
my dick in my hands 
straining
and I swear
he waits
his ear to the door
listening for that first drop
I’ve managed to squeeze out

and then it’s
‘Turtle head alert!
Turtle head comin through!’

he’s synchronized his sphincter
with my bladder –
one must swim oceans of dissatisfaction in life
to program your body so vindictively,
assuming Smithy’s brain is conscious,
to achieve such a biological feat  

and I go back to my checkout,  

I can’t move for the next 4 hours 
sitting on my balls of agony
they are not my property here
they belong to Smithy
they belong to the shop
to the very piss that swells them
that swells all our souls
or the souls we would have
were it not for
our jobs
and the Smithys of this land.