Friday, 2 March 2012

ANTI-BANTER GLOSSOLALIA, LOLZ

Let's raise a glass to the Death of Banter, yeah?

Banter.

No, not the benevolent, bearded, once-a-year postie from Lapland for whom Brian Badonde leaves out a stocking each December 24 – “Banta Bores” – but the scourge of grown-up conversation (ergo: is endemic to football).

My co-columnist over at The FCF, Andi ‘Twisted Blood’ Thomas, has picked it apart – its motivations, its dissimulations – and flatly refuses to put it back together, no matter what part of his body is twisted, sister. Reading his delirious final paragraphs earlier swept me into an anti-banter reverie of my own. This is the result.

If you would like to perform a Marxist, post-Marxist, feminist, post-feminist, deconstructionist, psychoanalytic, or simply a banter reading of it, by all means do so. Just don’t send it me.  



ANTI-BANTER GLOSSOLALIA 

Banter on the streets of London.
Banter on the streets of Birmingham.
I banter to myself:
Could life ever be sane again…? 

It’s anti-banter
you’re after, yeah?
The winner, at a canter
(in a Gallup poll, Dancer)
is askance glancer,
footy sage
and neuromancer, 
the virtuous and sanguine
(though never tortuous) 
Twisted Blood
(mebbe Ebbe, Dansk 
in the dark – a real 
[Lars von] trier), 
auteur, formatador
who deigns
to feign
(mainly on the plain
– over zumo de naranja)
an answer to the
pestilential banter,
the existential cant-ah
(à la Mark E Smith-ah),
which makes this lil’ Spanish orange
canta
y canta:
“An end to the banter!”

So he of Blood Twisted
insisted
(forceful as a cross, from danger
fisted)
the long-ball game of the
garra-less, garrulous
little Banter Cocks,
 claw-less, clueless
mental bantamweights   
should be resisted, 
with tiki-taka
Or haka.
Or kung-fu: à la Eric 
Banter-nah.
Use your head, son: 
keep it on the deck,
don’t use your head
all the time! 
Crouch. 
Ab-zurda: two left feet, a
Little Donkey, 
little Don Quijote,
ay, ¡qué burrito!
poor, poor control
(had a sangria or
couple o’ mojito…?):
a shin-toe: a sin, 
sin the Zen countenance of Hirohito. 

But his Buddhis FCF column
out beyond football 
did roam
(quixotic, picaresque,
always chivalresque),
and our gunslinging,
narrow-eyed,
anti-banter hero 
– mantra: zero
tolerance
for verbal violence – 
our wee Naranjito
(moniker of Santa) 
the stuff of Fanta-?
Nein! Cos’ Fanta’s Nazi coke, 
and Banterese,
freshly squeezed,
is but Nazis on coke:
chalk farmers,
talk harmers,
verbosity not verboten:
also sprech der DOMINANZ
#bantz 

Quick half-time orange
(with which nothing rhymes,
which must be, like, a cwimez)
then more me, me, me, me,
yo-yo-yo-yo:
narcisismo
Echo. 
Charlie, Hitler? 
Roman hand-show for head
honcho, like Sancho
in Panzer.
Imperialist banter cancer.
Keep going till the end, 
never enough
wee rayitas
to snort
passion
of the Enlisted Blood
of the Race (Aryanz).
Foxtrot Charlie
Foxtrot, eleganz;
poledance gig
in
Free City.

Bravo.
Alpha.
November.
Tango.
Echo.
Romeo. 

And as the VJ spins Hirohito’s 
Japanter-mime,
a bunraku of tweeted
bantercrimes,
up bobs Naranjito
of Orange 
– (Rob) Peel policing in 
Bantustan – 
and heads off to 
Isla de END-BANTER
Me voy. Me voy. Me voy 

















Partial glossary to foregoing glossolalia

zumo de naranja – orange juice
canta – 3rd person sing., present tense, of ‘cantar’: to sing
garra – lit. ‘claw’: the tenacity and penetrative bite of South American forwards (esp. on the Uruguayan side of the River Plate). 
zurda – colloq.: ‘left (foot)
¡qué burrito! – “what a (little) Donkey!” [Nothing to do with Mexican food]. 
sin – without
yo – I
rayita – colloq.: ‘little line’; diminutive of raya: beam, ray. 
narcisismo – self-love; narcissism
Me voy – “I’m going”




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