Last Year I wrote this Pythonesque Dionysian Imitatio of Graham Chapman’s Autobiography, I found it today and I chuckled at it, and I hope you will too:

In retrospect all the signs were there for my interest in Greco-Roman archaeology, culminating in my inspiring trip to Lebanon. Although this is perhaps just my archaeologist’s attempts to find tenuous links between fragments of identifiable history.

Nonetheless in February Nineteen Seventy Splunge I arrived at the home of my High School Professor, the porntly Professor Profferson. He had instructed me that if I wished to pass my grade I’d have to help him dig up his garden for he was attempting to cover the whole backyard in azaleas. In class he spoke with such ferocious azealeaic zeal one was sure he’d excrete on the podium then and there.

Languidly I sauntered to his front door. I wasn’t greeted by the Professor but rather a rather a somewhat Brazilian woman with heaving breasts that I immediately mistook for the Himalayan peaks Edmund Hillary had climbed.

“I’m a student of the Professor; he said I should dig up his backyard.”

“It’s the azaleas” she said, in Englishy Portuguese.

“Yes, the Azaleas”

She took me into their front room and proceeded to pour me a drink, she bent over revealing a posterior so perfectly round Euclid would be proud. She swivelled her hips and offered me the glass.

“Can you do something for me first?”

“What’s that?”

She dropped her robe; Whammo, Pow, we were starting to make ecstatic love on the Professor’s sofa, as I drove my throbbing coc…

Stop That! Stop it now! There is no place for that smut in a book like this. What if irrational conservative types find it improper?

But it’s important to the story.

Can’t you skip to the archaeological part?

Well I was trying to investigate a “hole” of sorts

Watch it!

Okay, Okay.

I removed some more dirt with my hand and the white marble started to shine in the sun, clear to the day I could see that this was a figurine of the goddess Venus who was being pursued by a satyr with a massive penis.

What did I tell you about smut!

But it’s a fact, it’s an academic fact. It’s common in deputations of Satyrs of that time.

Use Euphemisms

Fine…

…Pursued by a Satyr with a massive naughty bit, with the Venus covering her own… lady’s naughty bits.

The professor was astounded, and immediately took the object from me and the subsequent credit for finding the very first intact Roman sculpture in the Cardiff area and his backyard.

So I took some pleasure from his Brazilian wife, ZOOM, GOBBLE, SLURP, all around my naughty bit…

That’s enough. Tell the penultimate journey to Lebanon.

March Nineteen Eighty Splunge. The day was finally here, as I waited pensively as the aeroplane rolled up the tarmac with languid ease.  The turmeric sunset gazed wistfully over the glistening asphalt that seemed to sparkle like a galaxy frozen into the ground. The all mighty phallic aeronautical vehicle was before me, as dancing heat waves emanated from the cosmic asphalt to produce a vista that warranted pretentious overwriting and esoteric adjectives such as ‘ignominiously experiential moment’.

I was onboard, next to a rather attractive, albeit innocent looking, Celtic lass with shimmering red hair. I was sure that given the chance I’d change that.

The engines of the plane roared and we were finally moving forward, and I felt deep in the caverns of my stomach the rumble before finally I was forced deep into my seat as the mighty aeroplane seemed to erect itself from the earth and penetrated the sky, thrusting deep into the warm atmosphere of the dark night. I could feel it rocking as it got further and further into the atmosphere, and then finally turbulence and a spasmodic relief, ahh — finally stable flight. Bliss.

“Wow, wasn’t that an interesting take off” said Biggles as his best girl Nancy giggled as best girls do — her character wasn’t yet fleshed out.

“fwang” buzzed the radio.

“Calling Sergeant Biggles!”

“Tip tip, cheerio, just made a rather smashing take off. What seems to be the riz tiz, ziz?”

“I have some bad news old chap, it appears some Gerries have been spotted over the North Sea”

“Oh what a kick in the knickers, I suppose it’s time to shoot some krauts”

“I have some more bad news old-chap, it appears that you’ve been shot down and you are spiralling into the sea as we speak”

“Ponderous, it appears the old girl has been hit by some damn Gerry. Rather a shame really. I was quite a fan of living.”

“Sorry about this old chap”

“Nothing that can be done. Oh, and my wife was wondering if you’d be around for Tea on Sunday?”

“Well I suppose I’ll have to cancel my extramarital affair if I’m attending your Funeral on Sunday”

“Quite”

“Okay, Cherrio Biggles”

“Cherrio old Chap”

And we landed in the sweltering desert heart of the Beirut International Airport. The Paris of the East, the Capital of the Arabian Switzerland, the land of Phoenicians, and a small rather old fellow called Monty. It was morning and I was rather groggy as I languidly vacated myself from the plane, sorry that I hadn’t gotten much more than a smile and the name of the beautiful Celtic girl. I didn’t realize “Ashley” could be Celtic.

After some languid sleeping, followed by some languid running I was greeted the next day with a sight that would forever change my life: The ruins of the temple of Jupiter; there they stood in their yellowed desert wonder: An artefact of the mighty Roman Empire that once stretched from Cardiff to here. It was a humbling thought.

All of a sudden I imagined all the practices that would have undergone here, of course my mind immediately turned to oily orgies of virginal priestesses with pert breasts slithering and kissing and licking in a very naughty and arousing offering to Jupiter. But fearing that the Sister would beat me over the head with her ruler (she could probably smell such deviant thoughts) I surmised the sociological function within the greater construct of Roman Administration.

The Temple wouldn’t hold strictly religious significance of course; it would have been aesthetic, political, and economic. God it was beautiful, almost as beautiful as that Brazilian woman — oh, but the Nun is watching, time to think of old England.

And that I did, but Old Rome was better, much better. I think it must have been at that point that I realised that aside from a very healthy appetite for sex, my true passion came from looking at and studying the remnants of Ancient Rome, and to a lesser extent the Hellenistic Kingdoms, they were fun too. Such civilisations which were in fact so modern — with lawyers, aqueduct systems that stretched miles, the first steam propulsion device, vending machines, and a complex series of philosophical schools and yet all we had been left with were these still sublime columns of marble which looked marvellous as silhouettes in the amber sun of the desert sunset.

I wanted to be an archaeologist.

(c) 2012 - Constantine Ballis

In case you didn’t hear the John-Swartzwelderian recluse that is John Frusciante is releasing a new 5 track EP soon, wooo!

‘Ic Explura’ is a name which John Frusciante gave to his ex-girlfriend Toni Oswald (sounds sort of Aleister Crowley/Kenneth Anger-esque doesn’t it?) Turns out it’s a word Frusciante just came up with, he often talks about how he loves playing word games with lyrics.

Likewise I’m willing to bet Letur Lefr is actually some neologism, a word which Frusciante plucked from the aether with no established meaning, perhaps the EP has it’s own sort of pseudo-mythology like the Empyrean.

I dunno, maybe I’m just aether plucking too.

Anyway, turns out he’s doing his own artwork too!