You want it all without the consequence.

"In the course of the complex and terrible evolution which has brought the era of class struggle under a new set of conditions, the proletariat of the industrial countries has lost its ability to assert its own independence. It has also, in the last reckoning, lost its illusions. But it has not lost its being. The proletariat has not been eliminated, and indeed it remains irreducibly present, under the intensified alienation of modern capitalism, in the shape of the vast mass of workers who have lost all power over the use of their own lives and who, once they realise this must necessarily redefine themselves as the proletariat - as negation at work in the bosom of today's society. This class is objectively reinforced by the peasantry's gradual disappearance, as also by the extension of the logic of the factory system to a broad sector of labour in the "services" and the intellectual professions. Subjectively, though, this is a proletariat still very far removed from any practical class consciousness, and this goes not only for white-collar workers but also for wage workers who as yet know nothing but the impotence and mystifications of the old politics. But when the proletariat discovers that its own externaslised power conspires in the continual reinforcement of capitalised society, no longer thanks merely to the alienation of its labour, but also thanks to the form taken on by unions, parties and institutions of State power that it had established in pursuit of its own self-emancipation, then it must also discover through concrete historical experience that it is indeed that class which is totally opposed to all reified externalisations and all specialisations of power. The proletariat is the bearer of a revolution that can leave no other sphere of society untransformed, that enforces the permanent domination of the past by the present and demands a universal critique of separation; the action of the proletariat must assume a form adequate to these tasks. No quantitative relief of its poverty, no illusory hierarchal incorporation, can supply a lasting cure for its dissatisfaction, for the proletariat cannot truly recognise itself in any particular wrong it has suffered: nor, therefore, in the righting of any particular wrong - nor even in the righting of many such wrongs; but only in the righting of the unqualified wrong that has been perpetrated upon it - the universal wrong of its exclusion from life."

I fell on the ice yesterday so comically that if it had been in a movie it would have broken immersion for being too over-the-top. My hat came off and everything. Turns out my right elbow is not doing the thing elbows are supposed to do, so I doubt I'll be able to get the shop open tomorrow like I intended. Should be fine for Tuesday though. The hatch will most likely be closed because there is no heating in the bun shack, but I will be in there selling both buns and a random assortment of my personal and professinal possessions, of which I must divest myself before I am deported. Think of it like a garage sale, if you guys have those in the UK. Or like a charity shop that happens to also sell tobandjan and sambal oelek. Just look for the sign, and follow the smell of succulent pork belly.

Depending on the day we can hang about after hours and drink wine if you want. I find that makes the holidays feel more festive.

 

Don't let the collapse of the UK economy prevent you from seeing this film, which is in every way phenomenal.

I'm curious

 If someone could help me out here that would be great. 

The entire UK is currently experiencing a "Cost Of Living Crisis" yes? 

Primarily, this is due to the massively increased cost of gas/electricity, industries that are required for living in 2022 (can we say 2023 yet? It's like ... two weeks away). A person cannot live without gas and/or electricity. It is illegal to use open flame inside a residential property, which is the only way one could cook or heat their home without those utilities. Even if one could sit in the dark without refrigerated food in the summer, or use the frigid air inside their home in the winter to keep their food cold, wrapped in rags and blankets against the frost, it would be impossible to cook anything without heat. And that's before we get to the part where we live in Scotland, so there is only seven hours of daylight in January. So there you would be, in the dark, starving.

And these utilities are not, as one would expect, public utilities controlled by the government, despite their necessity for living. And there can be no possible way that having your citizens being alive is not a priority for any civilised government. Even if only for selfish reasons. After all, dead people can't pay taxes.

So we are currently witnessing something that is affecting literally every living resident of the entire union, from the poorest to the richest, negatively. And there is the actual risk of death to the most vulnerable. That is not hyperbole. The desperately poor and the elderly and the infirm will die this winter when their power is cut, or they will die from health complications related to cold and malnutrition and overwork trying to solve this insoluble problem. Or they will lose their homes due to spiralling debt and be left in the streets to freeze. 

Countries with nationalised utilities have seen increases as low as 5%. The UK keeps using its little guerilla math to make our jumps seem smaller (12%, then 54% in April, then 80% in October, but they don't mention that that's compounded, so if you were paying £100 it would be £112  but then 54% on that, not on the original £100, so £175 in April, then 80% on that, so £315 by October, etc, so the real increase is actually 215% or more, as I'm sure your electric bill will reflect).

And the argument as to why this should be allowed to occur is that the utility companies are privatised, and the government cannot interfere with the operations of private companies. The companies have no moral obligation to the citizens and the government has no control over how these companies choose to operate their business. It would be a violation of their rights as capitalist entities, which apparently outweigh the rights of actual living human beings to see inside their own homes or not freeze to death.

And yet, if I recall correctly, for a period of twenty four months between April 2020 and March 2022 the UK government absolutely and unilaterally told almost every private business in the UK exactly what they were allowed to do and how, at great detriment to their profits, their workflow, their livelihoods, and their sovereign rights to pursue capital, did they not?

I myself, owner of two small restaurants, was told I had to close completely, and then that I could only do takeaway despite being set up to do sit-in dining, and then how many people were allowed inside my space, what kind of perspex and sanitiser I had to have on hand, how many employees could work there at any given time, etc. I had to provide masks and gloves, refuse service to non-compliant customers, close at random intervals for indeterminate periods of time while wages were still due and stock spoiled, and watch while my very hard-earned savings dwindled away to nothing. A shifting, impossible to navigate series of hoops and demands, the violation of which would result in my shops being closed by the government and being fined for violating the rules. 

I'm not sure if any of you remember, but the whole fucking city of Glasgow was shut except for grocery stores and petrol stations for quite a while there. Airlines were not allowed to operate. The taxi industry basically collapsed. Grants and furlough were not remotely enough to save hundreds and thousands of businesses across the UK who could not survive closure nor operating at half-capacity. Last time I checked that was the government telling private businesses what they could or could not do because there was a risk to the safety and health of the citizenry.

So I'm just wondering how it is that suddenly the government, when faced with a similar but even more acute crisis, which unlike COVID will actually affect 100% of the population, and also carries the risk of death for the most vulnerable among us, is suddenly unable to issue a single command to the utility companies or tell them specifically what they can or cannot do.

Either you can or you can't. And since we all know that you absolutely can, why would you not do it right now, before the holidays, at the coldest, shittiest time of the year, for the good of the people you are supposed to represent?

Every single one of these companies is on track to make record profits this year. RECORD profits. I know I bring this up all the time but Shell alone will make more in profit in 2022 than the entire £37 billion bailout package for ALL of the entire UK's poorest families. And that's just Shell. And that £37 billion is doing absolutely fuck all when these companies just quadruple their rates to overcompensate unnecessarily. So again, why could the UK government tell every restaurant, nightclub, retail outlet, office, airline, etc how to run their business even if it crippled them, but can't do the same for the ones that are right now causing absolute chaos and misery across every sector of the population?

I'm sorry, I keep saying "can't" when I'm asking why they won't. The precedent has already been well set. Two years worth of precedent, and we are technically still in the second year for another two weeks so it's not like you need to dig up some historians from their dusty libraries to explain how it worked back in the Victorian era. It was THIS YEAR. So what's the issue? 

Why won't they stop them, and why are they still in charge? Blatantly ignoring the basic needs and the lives of their constituents to help their pals make some money at the people's expense should immediately eliminate any mandate they think they have.

So if someone could explain it to me that would be great, because I just can't seem to make it make sense.

Say you made one million pounds in 2021

You did this by selling SEX VIBRATORS to LONELY WOMEN at the LANARKSHIRE COUNTY RUBBER WIGGLER CONVENTION.

It was a great year for rubber wigglers, and butt lube sales were also through the roof. Just a fantastic time for the whole industry. 

Thankfully, your vibrator manufacturing infrastructure has been in place for many years, and you stay on top of advancements in materials and design, plus there are government subsidies for large-scale wiggler production. Profit is steady and secure.

But oh no! War has broken out on the continent! There is a MAJOR DISRUPTION in the VIBRATOR SUPPLY CHAIN! 

You are counting on that million pounds in 2022! You already have your flights booked to the WARM GEL CONVENTION in Athens, and you need to pay your DIRTY UNDERWEAR BILL! Whatever will you do?!

Well, let’s see: Let’s say it costs you £10 to make a really top-notch, super long, very ergonomic vibrator that really wiggles those hard to reach places. First you need the raw materials (RUBBER, and AN ELECTRIC WIGGLER), which are sent to your SEX FACTORY to be assembled and hand painted by the art department. That’s all there is to it. The rubber costs £2.5 and the small yet powerful wiggler costs £6, plus a minor (yet in your eyes vital) £1.5 for some really vibrant paint.

Your production costs and wages are steady because you have a small yet dedicated team of RUBBER WIGGLER MANUFACTURERS that know their jobs and do them well. Your outgoing expenses are consistent because this isn’t your first SEX RODEO. Therefore, every year since you first had the dream of making aesthetically pleasing sexual prosthetics for the lonely and/or horny you have sold forty to fifty thousand “units” (that’s an industry term, which in this case represents RUBBER WIGGLERS) at a retail price of £40 each. Quite an impressive markup, but you have added VALUE to people’s VAGINAS AND BUTTS, and they are happy to pay it.

Your outgoing expenses, not counting raw materials, are £100,000 per year. That covers wages, utilities, shipping and distribution, dry cleaning, the company dental plan, rent on your vibrator factory, dry ice, wet ice, petrol for the unmarked van you bought when the company car got vandalised, and marketing. So it costs, every year, £100,000 plus raw materials to run the best god damned vibrator manufacturing company in Scotland, if not the whole of the UK.

So how many RUBBER WIGGLERS do you have to sell (at a very reasonable, especially for the WIGGLE QUALITY, £40) to consistently make a million pounds a year in profit?

MATH(S):

£1,000,000 (profit)

£100,000 (outgoings)

£??? (materials) (obviously this depends on WIGGLE DEMAND)

If we assume making £1,600,000 will cover the whole thing with some to spare then that is your target for the year, meaning you would need to sell roughly 40,000 SEX DEVICES to ensure you cover all costs and meet demand, plus make that £1,000,000 you want so you can go to the best LATEX WALTZES and DOUBLE-ENDED BRUNCHES that bring such joy into your life.

40,000 x £10 (rubber/wigglers/paint) = £400,000 (materials)

40,000 x £40 (retail price) = £1.6 million 

£1.6 million - £500,000 (£400K materials + £100K outgoings) = £1.1million in PROFIT

BOOM. There you go. Only a fool could fail to sell 40,000 “units” of top quality RUBBER WIGGLERS in a country this LONELY and HORNY. You do it every year! You’re on easy street!

But wait! We were so caught up in SEX MATH we forgot about the ECONOMIC CRISIS! 

The cost of rubber has LITERALLY DOUBLED! And there is an ELECTRIC WIGGLER SHORTAGE affecting almost all of the European Union! Thank fuck you use good old fashioned UK VIBRATOR PAINT, made right down in Yeovil. Still, this is a disaster for your rubber wiggler company. It now costs £5 in rubber, and £9 for the wigglers, plus inflation has pushed the cost of even UK-made vibrator paint to £2 per unit. 

SUDDENLY THE  DEPENDABLE RUBBER WIGGLER MANUFACTURING COSTS HAVE SPIRALLED TO AN UNPRECEDENTED £16 PER RUBBER WIGGLER! JUST TO MANUFACTURE! JUMPING JESUS ON A POGO STICK, WHO HAS HEARD OF SUCH A THING? AND WHAT DOES THIS DO TO YOUR BUDGET?!?

Well, your outgoings remain the same. The factory is good, the employees are seasoned pros, and you can even save a little on dry ice this year because of some internal feedback about its overuse. So that’s still £100,000 in outgoings. 

And, even though people are hurting and worried about the GLOBAL SITUATION, you still need that £1,000,000 in profit to go LUBE DIVING in Peru and you have to fly to Paris for the JIZZ MOP TRADE SHOW in August because there have been some really interesting developments in that industry and you don’t want to be out of the loop.

So now your materials costs to make 40,000 rubber wigglers is at £640,000 instead of £400,000. And, of course, at current prices you would instead need to sell another 4000 wigglers just to hit your targets, which would increase materials cost closer to £700,000. That’s a 75% increase!

Fucking-A, WIGGLE BOSS. Can you guarantee that there are another 4,000 horny customers out there? And how do you cope with the near doubling of your materials costs?!

I know it sounds crazy, but you could do one of several things:

1. Keep prices and distribution steady in a time of uncertainty, absorbing the added cost of production so that LONELY HORNY PEOPLE all over the country have something dependable and wiggly to cling to and/or sit on. This would mean you only make about £750,000 in 2022 and you would very likely have to skip the NOVELTY BUTTPLUG CONVENTION in Sacramento, including their absolutely legendary taco bar.
2. You could increase the cost of your product to £45, a 12.5% jump for the customer, and hope that sales remain steady despite the economic uncertainty prevalent in the world at the moment. Then you would make £1.8 million, which covers your materials increase and outgoings, and still leaves you your cool million in profit.
3. You could sell your rubber wigglers for £100 instead, citing the economic disruption and increased costs but inflating those costs to people who are bad at math and/or not allowed to see your books, and take advantage of the government subsidies given to the WIGGLER INDUSTRY to offset their costs, which would actually make 2022 the most profitable year for your company by a HUGE MARGIN even if you only sold 20,000 “units” but would set you up with so much cash you could retire at the end of the year if sales remained at current levels. 

You would make £4,000,000 just in 2022 alone, and less than a quarter of that is needed to run the company. It is not in any danger of failing or even incurring a single penny of debt. Its costs would be covered after you sold your first 1100 wigglers. 

In a regular year, with regular costs, and rubber wigglers selling for their previously totally acceptable £40/each, you would only have had to sell 4000 of them to break even. The other 36,000 were pure profit. 

Remember, almost all of this SEX MATH is dealing exclusively with a vibrator company that wants to make A MILLION POUNDS A YEAR IN PROFIT. At absolutely no point is it in danger not doing so. You could have been selling vibrators at £20/each this whole time and still made £300K a year. 

You could quadruple the cost of rubber and electric wigglers and it would still not be necessary to charge the consumer the original £40 for you to have a profitable company. Sure, it’s not going to make you a millionaire, but you won’t starve either, and your company is not in danger of closure.

(£10 rubber, £24 electric wiggle unit, £2 paint = £36 per wiggler to produce)

(£36 x  40,000 units = £1,440,000)

(£100,000 outgoings + £1,440,000 materials = $1.54 million operating costs)

(£40 retail wiggler price x 40,000 = £1.6 million, or £60,000 profit)

In what universe would it be necessary to quadruple the cost to the consumer? When would you ever need to charge someone $160 for a vibrator that only costs £10 to make? £20? Even £40?

When they have no choice, of course. When they have to use a long, ergonomic rubber wiggler or their children will starve or they will freeze to death. When they cannot eat or work or in any way exist in the modern world without your big, sleek, wiggly necessity.

Remember when Roosevelt said “I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster” in response to WWII? Remember when we actually tried to discourage war profiteering and disaster capitalism? Of course you don’t, because that world is gone, and the one we live in is a joke.

I hate math(s), but I hope this little diatribe can help you make some sense of your current electricity situation, and the much worse one coming next month, and the absolutely bonkers one coming in March. I don’t need to make sense of it. I can spot a shower of cunts from a mile off (or 1.5km if that is easier to process), and that’s all I can spot these days, everywhere I look. You can’t throw a rock without nicking an absolute bastard running 100% on premium unleaded high-octane greed, from the politicians to the corporate fuckbags they work for to the wannabe coffee barons and bar owners on the local strip. It’s trickle-down corruption, and you’re the recipients of every level of shit dripping from above you.

I was trying to be an example of how to succeed from the opposite direction, but I didn’t count on the public utility sector being privatised, so … I failed. Got five good years out of it, though.

Thank fuck all those social media influencers tried so hard to shut me down last year, eh? It did actually take a pretty good chunk out of Nanika’s sales. That was a good use of everyone’s time, and did a lot of good for the world. Let them be your guiding light, paragons of honesty, virtue, and integrity that they are. The old fucks in charge are rotten to the core and have set up the system to retain their power and profits and the youth can be bribed to destroy their own future for a free cheeseburger or a pair of shoes.

Ah well, at least we’ll all still have Locavore to keep the “community” going this terrible winter. Who among us is not comforted by the thought of a £12 turnip? I know I am.

Stay LONELY, Glasgow, and stay HORNY. 

Somewhere out there is the last honest LUBE MIXER working his ass off to bring you what you really want for Christmas.

"Welp," sighed the former whelp, "That's that."

"Good morning,

I spoke with your office yesterday regarding having received a notice of disconnection from BES Utilities for my business at 72 Victoria Road. I have been there since August 2018, so nearly five years, and it has always been my mission to provide the best food I can to the people of this neighbourhood for under £10. We were in The List's top restaurants in Glasgow in the last eating and drinking guide pre-pandemic, which I thought was incredible since we were up against some of the most expensive and large venues in the city, and Nanika only seats 14 people and a dinner for two will come in under £30 even if you really gorge yourselves.

It has been closed for the past six months due to an injury (I had tendonitis and could not use my left arm, so I operated a different business at my other shop on Allison Street while I was doing physio), so the only electricity usage would be the refrigerators and dehumidifier that are always running, and the occasional prep day and dishwashing where there would be very minimal drain compared to actual service, when the extractor fan/pasta boiler/steamer/bain marie/rice cookers, etc would need to run concurrently for at least five hours per night.

If you are familiar with the shop you will know it is literally one small room with one lightbulb, maybe 50 square feet. It is, I believe, the smallest functioning restaurant/takeaway in Govanhill. And I would like to reiterate that it has been closed, and thus its electricity usage has been as low as possible from the 20th of April to the 10th of November, when we reopened. We were similarly closed last year from May to September while I set up the other shop, with all the same equipment running at Nanika, and our monthly electric bill was £225 on average. That is the baseline for a closed shop, with £350 being average for the times we are operating normally.

I have had a direct debit set up for the electric bill since 2020, and I do not normally pay attention to the total, as it has always been consistent. In October, however, for the period of 15th September to 15th October, I received an invoice for just under £900, which is more than double the previous month's invoice. It is also almost double the monthly rent.

As I did not have £900 in the account, I immediately cancelled the direct debit and tried to contact BES, but their web interface was not functioning, and after managing to speak to an agent via chat he informed me that he couldn't even authorise anyone to call me back. All he would do is insist that I reinstate the direct debit. I explained that there is no way a closed shop could possibly use £900 in electricity, and that I wanted an engineer or other professional to come out and check the supply to determine what could be drawing that much energy or if someone else had somehow accessed my wiring. Eventually he agreed to have someone call me. I received two calls in November from BES, both of which were dropped due to poor connection on their end, as I spoke to them on the restaurant's phone, which we use every day we are open to take orders. There is no signal loss inside the building and the phone is on wifi anyway. When I attempted to call back the number was outgoing only and would not re-connect me to BES. (As an aside, I am wondering why so many companies nowadays use dead emails and blocked numbers to communicate with their legitimate customers; why is it legal to contact people about their accounts from a means of communication that can't be used to return the contact? And why would you want that?)

I then received a second bill for 15th October to 15th November for another £900 without explanation nor resolution, along with an intent to disconnect notice. When speaking to the disconnection agent he told me that if I did not give them £1100 in 24 hours they would remotely cut the power, and that if I didn't have £1100 then it would show that my business wasn't "economically viable" enough to continue operation.

As you can imagine, someone quadrupling one of your monthly bills after five years of consistent operation and then calling the business economically unviable when that is the sole reason that it would be so is as insulting as it is laughable.

Either someone is illegally using electricity from my meter (it is a shared building), or BES has literally quadrupled my energy costs in under six months, which would be completely unsustainable for ANY business, let alone one as small as Nanika.

I have attached several monthly bills and invoice summaries, etc. for your examination, as well as a small flyer I put on my window in September, before I received the first startling invoice. As you can imagine, Brexit and the post-COVID economy have driven my cost of goods up significantly. Literally every item I need to buy in order to make food for my customers has increased in cost in the past 12 months. I have raised my prices by 50p from their 2020 levels, and my profits are significantly decreased. Some months I even lose money, but it has always been more important to me that normal people can afford a good dinner in this neighbourhood and that they can count on the restaurant being there for that purpose.

A main at Nanika is £9. A bun is £4. A person making minimum wage can get dinner for the cost of an hour's work. Apparently I should be charging £13 for the thing you can hold in your hand and £34 for a chicken katsu, if we're going by the BES maths, which would be wildly out of the reach of my neighbours, friends, and fellow Govanhill residents.

If these figures from BES are accurate then Nanaika must close immediately. It cannot absorb the cost of their naked greed. Obviously the energy consumption would increase with regular weekly operation, and if it miraculously costs almost a thousand pounds just for the shop to sit empty what would it cost to actually sell food?

There is no possible way that BES could need to increase costs by 400% to cover their expenses unless they are simply willing to let people literally die to maintain or exceed their already astronomical profit margins, which would be repugnant from a restaurant but should be literally illegal from a utility company. The difference between Nanika and a utility company is that nobody needs Nanika to keep their house warm in the winter, or to keep medical equipment running for the sick and dying. They don't need buns to see when the sun sets at 3:30pm, and to keep their groceries from spoiling.

I hope to hell there has been a mistake, or that some illegal activity is to blame rather than just corporate greed and government complicity pairing to literally kill off some citizens for money this year, because while I have been here for ten years and tried my best to improve the city/country I cannot and will not contribute to that sort of behaviour. It is morally bankrupt and disgusting, and can have no positive consequences for the UK and its actual people going forward.

Please review the attached, and let me know your thoughts.

Thank you,

Justin Valmassoi"

Just in case you were wondering why we're closed this weekend and every weekend thereafter, that is the letter I sent to my MP this morning, but I already know the answer. There is no cap on commercial electricity, so the energy company doubled my bill in April and then doubled THAT in October, and will continue to do so while making record profits, just like every other privately-owned utility company in the UK because nobody will stop them. I work 70 hours a week. I have been doing that for years. I will not do it so that BES can make more per week than I do while thousands of their customers will literally die this winter in shivering poverty. Fuck them and fuck those that created the situation, and continue to allow it to progress. And fuck the "small businesses" that lie about their energy woes, and the "community interest companies" whose entire business model is apparently based on borrowing money from the taxpayer, and somehow still charge triple what any other business charges for the same items. I will not be holding a crowdfunder so the community can pay twice. Without Nanika I will not be able to afford my visa renewal either, so what I really need is someone to take my pet when they deport me, as airlines do not allow lizards to fly on them. Believe me, I have checked.

This country is broken. I came here because mine was too, and I thought the people here were smarter, but it turns out they were just on a slower path to the same point.

I have not always enjoyed my job, but I have always enjoyed my customers, and seeing/feeding you week after week, year after year. You are the best, and I wish you all a tolerable Christmas and independence from Westminster's insane policies in the future.



Thanks, Govanhill. Happy holidays, etc.

If you wake up before you dream, what’s the difference?

The slave admires the tyrant because the last is what the first would be.

"He surveys himself all over in the glass of royalty. The swelling bloated self-importance of the one is the very counter-part and ultimate goal of the abject servility of the other. But both hate mankind for the same reason. because a respect for humanity is a diversion to their inordinate self-love, and the idea of the general good is a check to the gross intemperance of passion."

As we wind down 2022, a year I think everyone but the utility and gas companies will remember as one of the worst in their lifetimes, let us abandon the trappings of rote behaviour and surrender to WHIMSY, not for the spark of joy that might illumine those pitch-hued corridors of your guarded hearts but as an experiment to test the strength of those bonds forged by that which is stronger than twined steel and more steadfast than the mightiest of ancient oaks: FLAVOUR. Perchance the flavour of a cauliflower hash brown bun, whose yielding dough and alarmingly savoury layer of chilli crisp mayo surrender to the pressure of your grinning jaws and yield up their crispy, well-seasoned bounty. Maybe to the flavour of numbing Sichuan noodles whose hidden cashews proivide a rich textural contrast to the soft, pork-dappled noodles atop them. Does the flavour of kedgeree that you can hold in your hand do more to move the blood through your sluggish veins? How about the spicy crackle and finger-staining bliss of a salt & chilli aubergine?

Regardless, all of these are valid possibilities at one of Nanika's famous MYSTERY SALES.

And a MYSTERY SALE is all we are doing tonight because Cilijn is away to a funeral and I am too overburdened to run the whole place by myself, but still have to run the whole place by myself because there are so many bills to pay and no other way to pay them! That's the joy of being alive right now! Inflated bills from companies that are absolutely rolling in money! Corporate interests that threaten to sue the government if they try to cap their greed! Amazing! You have to marvel at the illusion that anyone else is actually in charge of the country!

So come on down (or call; you can and probably should call ahead) to Nanika and get yourself a bag of WHIMSY, containing one main, one bun, and two sides for only £16.00! That's it! That's all we're selling! And you don't know what's in it, just that it's food, and that it's good! That's the MYSTERY!

ETC!

De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio.

I am really struggling to stay afloat, either financially or emotionally. If it were possible to take a day off we would not be open tonight, nor this entire understaffed weekend, but I am forced to not only work but work fourteen or fifteen hour days at an untenable pace so you should probably buy some katsu, etc since it is there and in need of purchase.

Speaking of needing purchase, have you seen society's collective fingers desperately seeking some as we all slide merrily into the abyss of our own complacent acceptance of moral bankruptcy? I can't quite figure out why we're struggling against what we so obviously allowed to happen, both in insidious, small ways and in blindingly bright explosions of stupidity whose afterimages have yet to fade. It would be fascinating, if we could afford the illumination necessary to examine it.

So come on down to our Cilijn-less weekend of migraines and merriment. We can briefly discuss my birthday, which was very eventful in comparison to my usual complete lack of social activity. You will have to speak loudly, though. In my advanced years it becomes harder and harder to hear you.

Poultry providers for poverty prisoners.

"How matter presses on me! what stubborn things are facts! How inexhaustible are nature and art!"

Despite an exhausting week of melancholia and mild injury it is time once again to feed you, the eight people who read this thing (and the two hundred who have no idea it exists but see the lights on and are drawn to them like moths with debit cards). We have all the things on the menu so you don't have to keep asking. We are not one of those hipster places that run out of their shit every shift and open whenever they feel like it. We are the place that has been here for five years and has always adhered to its opening hours, and I have tried to never run out of anything unless it is a special, which by its very nature would be a limited item and subject to the whims of fate and scarcity.

Speaking of specials, they are the same as last week, with the caveat that the Red Chicken Curry is actually on the menu full-time but has been omitted from the printed version because of my own failings as a menu-artist. We have so much Red Curry. Please buy it. We need the space for other foods.

The only thing that was neither painful nor disappointing between Saturday night and Thursday morning was watching Tár, starring Cate Blanchett, twice (and also Three Days of the Condor starring Faye Dunaway, the Cate Blanchett of the 1970s, once). Tár is phenomoenal, and you should watch it, twice.

So when you have finished with that, or if you find yourself peckish at some point during its expansive yet very engrossing runtime, there is a little bun shack/noodle hut just at the end of Victoria Road which for some bizarre reason has dynamite (and huge) cannoli for like ... £3.50. Come grab some dinner, and lift my sunken spirits with your presence as I lift yours with pork mince.

You got any good dishwashing music? I got like ... a hundred tubs I need to get through.

Következő!

It is amazing what not working 9 am to 10pm four days a week and another 20 hours on the "off" days will do for one's productivity. NANIKA is all cleaned up and fully stocked (save for some spring onions, the eternal job, the bane of our existence, etc), I have run something like 35km in the past eight days, and after 704 consecutive mornings I have finally finished the Hungarian Duolingo course (although I still cannot speak/read anything more complicated than a children's book, and not a very good children's book at that). And now it is time to once again fire up the pasta boiler and sharpen the cleavers to provide you, the few remaining people who can afford to live in the south side, the katsu and/or noodles you have so long been without.

It does occur to me that it is mid-November, which means that there is only a month or so before we have to close for Christmas holidays. I was hoping to get some dinner parties happening, but that's not a lot of time, and you will likely be even more broke than usual this holiday season due to the almost pathological greed of the energy companies and the completely fabricated helplessness of our laughably inept leaders to stop their donors from literally killing the electorate. Woooooooohooooo! Perhaps we'll squeeze one in. Keep an eye on this space for details.

I hope you all remember the drill. Phone line opens at 3pm. You call, order, and select a time between 5pm and 9pm to collect your dinner. We get you as close to that time as possible. You arrive and pay the person who is not covered in sauce and oil burns, and he/she hands you your bag of hot food with a pleasant smile and some sort of chat (and maybe even eye contact, a completely unheard-of experience in this neighbourhood). Rinse, repeat. First call, first to get a slot. The later you call, the longer you might have to wait, depending on what you want and how busy we are. Then again, maybe we can squeeze you in quickly. Who knows. It's a crapshoot. Walk-ups are also welcome, although much like the previous scenario it is possible you will have to go for a walk and come back later. Or go to the Star Bar and grab a beer. Or sit in your car and have a wank. Whatever floats your boat. It's your life. I just work here.

See you soon, Govanhill and surrounding area residents. Thursday to Saturday, back under the extractor, deaf and crying, where I belong.

Get a touch of class this Thursday.

It was a gamble; it was a risk.

R.I.P. O.B. 2

As I was trundling some very important elements from the former bun shack to the former (former) bun shack in preparation for its re-opening I was struck by a wave of sadness. OnlyBuns was very, very cute, and it is always sad to see cute things disappear. So let us once again watch a small video made by Mark, who managed to capture one bit of one night's worth of its cuteness (and set it to the soothing sounds of Pill, who we miss almost as much as we miss OnlyBuns).


Thankfully, all of the food items glimpsed in these brief scenes will be available once again starting November 10th, three whole blocks up the road from the depressing husk of a once-adorable idea. Plus there will be noodles and stuff. And pork mince. And mapo tofu. And probably Saigon salad, etc. And Cilijn will be there too, in an apron with a tea towel so she can do the aggressive hand slap that removes 99% of stubborn furikake from one's fingers, so your buns will still be in good (clean) hands.

There is a lot of prep required to get this old hunk of noodle bar up and running again. Also, it needs the internet to run the basement sex dungeon Spotify playlist that one of our Chechen dominatrices playfully titled "slappers" (plus the air fresheners down there are on a digital timer that comes with a super helpful app you can access from your phone), so it will be next Thursday, the 10th of November, before you can stampede to your/our old stomping grounds and fill bag after bag with Chicken Katsu and steaming Sichuan Noodles. Meanwhile, the children and I will be hard at work testing fuses and selling cocaine to ensure that everything is tip-top and ready to go for your arrival. Any specials will be announced slightly before we reopen, but the full menu is available somewhere below this post in another idiotic post I made earlier.

See you soon, back where we belong.

We are experiencing higher than usual call volumes.

Please stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly.

Their fingers scrabble for purchase as the earth yaws, but find little in the smooth and ergonomic lines of their illuminated keyboards.

It is unlikely that we will be open this weekend, given the staggering amount of food that needs to be prepared. I had forgotten how big the actual Nanika menu is. There are hundreds of tubs crowding every conceivable horizontal surface, currently empty but destined to hold various sauces, pickled vegetables, meat mince, noodles, vegetables, and powders. Just an absurd amount of tubs. They're like ... everywhere. So we will begin prep tomorrow, and work through Thursday night. If it seems feasible to open on Friday then we will. If not, we will possibly do a Sunday night trial run for the newbies, or just patch it until next weekend when we can properly serve you, all tubs and hands on deck.

That is the tentative re-opening menu. As always, something will be unavailable along the supply chain, an electrical appliance will explode, or or someone will trip and spill a 25 liter tub of noodles down The Hole to form some sort of Tim Burton-esque art project, necessitating last-minute alterations to the available offerings, but it will definitely hew along these lines. And, as we are incapable of doing less when MORE is an option, there will be specials as well, which we will post in due course.

This weekend or next. Keep an eye on this here space for details.