I live in a city that isn’t quiet unless you test shotguns for a living. The public services have all the comfort of the middle ages. The labour government is presenting me with a tax bill that unless you are an accountant who is probably nursing a semi erection by now most people would run away screaming. I need to win the lottery or find a massive oil well in the desert to live in a shoebox, and despite the fact that the sea is not far away we do not dare go in case we get stuck in traffic and die from starvation. Sitting still on the M25 (UK motorway) for 3 weeks is bad for my hemorrhoids, let alone the blood vessels that seem to burst in my forehead at the thought of it… It is cold, wet, & dark during winter, and if you are a teenager you better bring a Magnum 44 & a samurai sword to school so you can defend yourself on the Circle Line and some bandage to cover up the stab wounds from the kitchen knife stuck in your stomach. Of course as Maya grows up I will be a permanent taxi driver taking her to and from school and I will probably look like Mad Max with a sawn off shut-gun on my left thigh. Oh and by the way I will need to sell my mother first and my left kidney to pay for the school fees. Oh little Britain, life is great if you enjoy reality television, Simon Cowell’s white smile, and watching Jordan & Pete Andre having a bust up in OK Magazine.  Oh it feels good to whinge it’s a clear sign the English are rubbing off on me, I have all of 2009 wrapped up in a fireball and it’s exiting Herr Gruber’s (Tv series allo allo) big canon right now.  

As a recent journalist wrote in the times “Money talks, but wealth whispers. And Switzerland is the snowcapped, landlocked Bermuda Triangle of the cashocracy, where those with serious swag go to quietly disappear among their own kind.” Reina, Maya, the dogs and I escaped little Britain on Dec 18^th for our annual winter migration to the cashocracy of Switzerland. Unfortunately I am not doing something meaningless in the city making millions of pounds so I don’t really belong in Switzerland, but the relatives bring us there, and with the fresh amount of snow the skiing was excellent, the calories intake comparable to a sumo wrestler’s preparation for a big tournament and the family atmosphere charged up like Pablo Escobar’s final assault on the Colombian special forces. We reveled in Swiss chocolate, melted cheese and the usual holiday overeating, but combined with some healthy walking, skiing and fresh mountain air we all came out at the other end of the Christmas sausage machine looking fairly normal.

I started out in life with nothing and I still have most of it left, so the recession has not taken away our desires for a bigger house, nor will the higher taxes drive me to become a tax exile in Belgium or Andorra, I don’t fancy getting buggered while eating nice chocolate nor re-enacting Jack Nicolson’s scene from the Shining while suffering from cabin fever in the Pyrenees. So that leaves me with the option to stay in London, the greatest city on earth. Just don’t get ill outside of normal business hours, because you won’t be able to see a doctor, unless you are happy to go to someone who has flown in from Ukraine for 2 days earning £900 a day (from a bankrupt government), but who doesn’t speak English and has not slept for 3 days, who will most likely kill you anyway.

Piece Love and Hara Krishna

Danepack Shakur

Dear friends,
Well it’s that time of year again, folks. It’s getting dark before dinner, swine flu is in the air again, and the Hesselhoj household is buzzing with activity as preparations gather steam for the 2009 Christmas. The smell of summer is gone, the days are shorter and the morning autumn air is crisp, the BBQ’s have been packed away in the dusty garden sheds, the leaves are going brown and the sound of flip flops won’t be heard until next year. I love the smell of cut grass and when my wife embraces me covered in Hawaiian Tropic with a golden glow. This has now been replaced with a paler version in a black pyjamas, black scarf & wearing grandma’s fluffy comforters, and the scent of a baby hanging off her arm and the loud speaker comes on “Please change her diaper daddy”. Maya is now 4 months old and she drinks more milk than a Kiwi Rugby player and as a result daddy is busy sorting out new waste management policies in west London. As some sensible chap once commented on this smelly topic “If it looks like shit, smells like shit, mail it to your enemy…he will know what to do with it”. Unfortunately I have no enemies and it simply wouldn’t be possible to package up the goods.

Sleep – the most beautiful experience in life – except drink as WC Fields said, and yes I would agree with him yet having kids sort of makes you forget about sleep. People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one! But when it comes to sleep both Reina and I have been blessed for now. Maya sleeps like Reina after a glass of wine. Both hands up in the air, legs slightly spread and a face with less facial expression than an ant on prozak. We try to keep it fairly quiet as we don’t want other tired looking parents to stab us out of envy, but I guess we have won the lottery for now. Yet this perfect child has clearly demonstrated to mummy and daddy that 7pm is just too early for bed, it sounds like Axl Rose in puberty when she rips it up to 110 decibels telling us to keep her company until 9pm. I can understand her, 7pm is only a good time to sleep if you are jetlagged or have a massive hangover. But the general Mama Tan has read in some book that babies at 4 months need sleep training so for now Maya is in Reina’s Paris Island Marine Corps bootcamp. When she finally falls asleep exactly at 9pm, good old Ralph Emerson manages to capture the moment “There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.” We sit in the living room enjoying some peace and quiet looking a little frazzled because we know the strange noises that are awaiting us in our bedroom when we go to bed around 11pm. Babies make some strange noises when sleeping, and in particularly Maya….. I am thinking about recording them so I can ask her later what she meant! Honestly, for all those men out there, don’t worry about snoring, a baby is ten times louder and it sounds like a mixture between Hulk Hogan wrestling Andre The Giant and a German Stucker dive bomber…so for once in your life the missus won’t elbow you during sleep.

They say a cynic is a man who when he smells flowers, looks around for the coffin. Maybe, but I think a cynic is a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn’t any Santa Claus, and he is still upset. I am quite the opposite of a cynic, you might call me an optimist. In case you thought optimism was dead, the average pencil is 16 cm long with just 1cm for an eraser! Now back to the point on optimism, I historically have always driven fast and been known to get into minor altercations with other motorists. As a youngster I used to love driving fast while getting my wing wang squeezed and not spilling my drink, but as you mature the appetite for driving the car like a rental beast (.i.e. as if you stole it) is slowly fading away. I guess my optimistic view on how other people drive and there never being a car coming the other direction while making a silly overtaking maneuver is disappearing with age. “If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience” the issue with getting older is those thoughts become more realistic, luckily Maya is teaching us to think like kids again….she is a great excuse to do foolish things with enthusiasm and on that happy bombshell, have a great run up to Christmas and lets stay in touch for 2010.
Word up’
Danepack Shakur

In June global warming was working its magic and the heat wave in London was making anyone on the tube feel like they had swine flu in their underwear. It was on June 12th that Danepack Shakur was sitting at home practising his lyrical masterpiece “Offshore The Wife” which should go platinum in Calcutta by year end, that suddenly all peace and radio silence was broken from the living room. His beloved wife the VC specialist in black pyjamas Reina “Tunnel” Tan launched a Tet offensive. Upon entering the room it was evident that the bun we placed in the oven 9 months ago was coming out. Reina yelled at me with a skewed Sylvester Stalloneish’ mouth “It drew first blood not me”. One moment later she was as calm as a librarian 5 years past menopause. Then 3 minutes later she looked like Jack Torrance from the Shining yelling “Christian I’am home” but luckily no axe was present for her to chop down our house. So we decided to visit St Mary’s hospital at 9.30pm. We get into the birth centre and Reina looks about as calm as Clint Eastwood in a 1960’s spaghetti western. I tried to hurry her up while walking from the car and Reina looked at me while lighting a match on her chin “Dying ain’t much of a livin’, boy. You know, this really isn’t necessary. You can just turn around and walk on outta’ here if you want to live”. Of course I stayed like a loyal Labrador drooling with happiness and excitement about the next chapter in the birth adventure.

The midwife informs us that most people that arrive at the centre get sent home early because they are not 4cm dilated (You need to be 10cm to give birth). Five minutes later cold KY Gel & rubber glove on the hands of a lady who used to play for the Harlem Globe Trotters confirm that Reina is 8cm dilated and almost ready for the final push up the beach. Normally at that stage of labour women sound like they dropped off a mountain, but Reina is sitting calmly in a chair with eyes that made Lance Armstrong look weak when he clinched his seventh Tour De France. We brace ourselves for a rough landing when Eagle 1 might spin out of control since it is our first one, we both have some gas, water, chill out music, surrounded by brilliant staff, occasional swearing by Reina, and then suddenly my wife she looks at me and says “I know what you’re thinking, punk. You’re thinking, did she push six or only five times? Well to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being as my birth canal is like a .44 Magnum, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?” at that magical moment with a little help and some incredible stamina by Reina…Maya Hesselhoj was born on June 13th at 2.55am (5 hours after getting to the hospital), weighing in at 9.5lb’s in the blue corner, fighting out of Maida Vale. SO NOW LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE…..

Maya was so big when she came out that she asked if she could borrow my jacket for the ride home and if I could stop at McDonalds for a happy meal… So what have I learned by being a daddy for 6 weeks….if your baby’s beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on schedule and burps on demand, an angel all the time, you’re the grandma. I think an appropriate definition of a baby is a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. Now on that happy bombshell I hope you & your families are doing well & look forward to meeting up soon.

Asta La Vista
Danepack Shakur

PS: Diaper backward spells “repaid”. Think about it

Sick and tired of living in the here and now? When the world goes zig sometimes you need to go zag, come on stop freaking out about the recession, just cease the moment of the day and grab it by the scruff and shake it around until you feel senses of a normal person entering your prefrontal cortex area of reasoning in the brain. No point standing waiting for the ship to collect you….sometimes you just need to swim out in the ocean to meet the ship. When it comes to all the negativity in the press I am starting to dress up in black leathers from my motorcycle days…and I speak like Mad Max ;”I’m scared, Reina. It’s that rat circus out there, I’m beginning to enjoy it. Look, any longer out on that road and I’m one of them, a terminal psychotic, except that I’ve got this bronze badge that says that I’m one of the good guys. I am the Nightrider. I’m a fuel injected suicide machine. I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!“

With regards to motorcycling I will be mourning the loss of my pride on two wheels this month. Unfortunately my dictator wife with her legal background made me sign an agreement that when we have kids I am banned from motorcycles, but she is missing the point. A motorcycle is more than just an engine, wheels and a seat…..it is freedom, to be who you want to be, go where you want and see things few other people can. My bike felt like a gateway to experience adrenalin from that tiny saddle, it inspired me to go on trips abroad, but from her viewpoint she does not want to have kids as a widow. To which I always reply “Prudence keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy”…as my old countryman Kirkegaard said “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”, but after all she has the upperhand as we made an agreement 5 years ago and I have to stick to it. The good news is that I am still allowed a scooter, an aeroplane, speedboat, sports car and to hike in Wales on survival trips, so just because we are going to have a little terrorist join us in June doesn’t mean the end of all good hobbies, just swapping a few around.

The next chapter of adulthood is staring us in the face…… Do we feel ready to deal with becoming parents. Well not really, we have travelled the world, done our fair share of naughty things, started a business…..so come on bring it on!. As I read somewhere the other day “A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for” Well my dreams are pretty simple….I dream of my wife giving birth to a child who will ask at delivery “Mother, why does Daddy not ride motorcycles”. To which I know she will say “Now shut up or I will put you back in that dark room you just came from full of water where you have to spend another a few months hanging upside down until you stop asking silly questions”. I just cant wait for the next few years…they say having a 2 year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it. On that happy note, I want to wish you, your family & friends a good spring. Asta la vista Danepack Shakur

Has the festive cocktail of brass monkeys, road salt and financial meltdown left you suicidal? Worry not, because you are not a Palestinian in Gaza running away from F16’s, neither have you just accidentally stepped on a syringe and is about to froth out of your mouth as you go stiff in your final moments. With regards to Israel who says they are Fighting for peace it is a bit like screwing for virginity, I think too many people in that region have been watching Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry) and believe in his motto “Nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right people get shot!. The doom and gloom is all around us yet I wake up every morning as if my infected appendix was removed with a chainsaw when I switch on CNN. A silent swiftness comes over my face as I see my now worthless stocks dive deeper into the abyss, but at least these days everyone have resigned to the Russian roulette of the markets and started enjoying fried chicken with both buttocks firmly on the chair as the wallet is very thin indeed. Don’t worry folks, the dynamics of capitalism will soon throw us a lifeline & a bottle of fresh oxygen so we can survive the sewers of recession, and before you know it, the human mind will have forgotten all the lessons learned and we will again attack merchandise with our minimal savings and feel like a big gorilla in Las Vegas after getting lucky at Caesars Palace.

 

Reina and I were certainly not grounded amphibians in 2008, we still managed to clock up the miles and contribute to global warming as we spend endless hours on long haul flights visiting Mauritius, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and a few short haul flights to hotspots in Europe. So jetlag has been a monthly occurrence for us. They define jetlag as “A chronobiologic disorder resulting from rapid travel across a number of time zones, characterized by insomnia or hypersomnolence, fatigue, behavioural symptoms, headaches, and gastrointestinal disturbances”, I can vouch for the gastrointestinal disturbances on my latest flight on an A380 together with 545 passengers I was breaking wind so badly that I thought I heard the cargo door open an inch over India.  I have been doing some research on how to combat this horrible state. There was a study done in Argentina which showed hamsters that were given Viagra were able to adjust their internal clocks by six hours in roughly half the time that hamsters who did not receive the treatment, so maybe the little blue pill known for making time in bed more enjoyable may also help weary jet travellers roll out of it in the morning. My concern about this solution is how will the jetlagged wife respond to this little rusty pecker creeping up poking her leg, I am sure she will have as much enthusiasm for it as Marie Antoinette had for the guillotine. I think it would be “slightly” frustrating lying in bed next to a sleeping wife feeling like a millionaire aristocrat with the sexual capacity of a rutting rhino and yet still not be allowed to enter space with Apollo 11. In fact that is by far and away, and without a shadow of doubt, the worst and most contemptible cure for jetlag in the history of the universe.

 

Comedian George Carlin viewed life as “a ticket to the freak show” and if you were born in America you had a seat on the first row. He noted that the light at the end of the tunnel could be daylight — or, maybe, an approaching train. Either way, it’ll be here soon enough. I think 2008 was like being in a freak show and every morning I felt a white light approaching my business, luckily so far it was just my bank manager collecting interest and the wife stopping by to give me a kick up the backside. There is nothing as motivating as having the wife whip you into shape, we got off to good start in 2009 and have several exciting engagements on the go, so on that happy note I want to wish you and your family a healthy start to the year. I’m as excited as a terribly excited person who has a really good reason for being terribly excited about the opportunities in this crisis.

 

Ciao

Danepack Shakur

 

I leave you with just a few comments that might make you smile in the beginning of 09’.

• The credit crunch has helped me get back on my feet.  The car’s been repossessed.
• I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.
• How do you define an optimist? A bank manager who irons 5 shirts on Sunday night.
• A man went to his bank manager and said, ‘I’d like to start a small business. How do I go about it?’
‘Simple,’ said the bank manager. ‘Buy a big one and wait.’
• The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”
• You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.
• Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

So here we are towards the end of 2008 and the credit crunch seems to be spreading like gonorrhoea in a Parisian brothel the year before the condom was invented; Quite wonderful for people trying to get onto the property ladder and horrendous for luxury good manufacturers & greedy people expecting big bonuses. I saw the gorilla of greed (Lehman Brother CEO) being question during a congressional hearing on the news, and they asked him if he felt it was right to pay himself $480Million during a 5 year period to which he replied “If I may correct you it was a little under $250 Million”. That reply summarised to me what Wall Street stood for, forget Gordon Gekko from the movie he is lightweight anorexic child compared with the gorilla’s of the last 10 years. These gorilla’s wont just steal your bananas but also bend you over the counter and make you squeal like pig. I feel like a little child that has been molested by an old evil teacher called Mr.Wall Street.

 

Life is definitely about to change for many millions of people around the world, we have survived communism, the Third Reich, Cuban missile crisis, bird flu, global warming, terrorism, nuclear war, Aids, and now we are going to be finished off by bankers driving there sports cars into the Thames river all at once which will cause a massive tidal wave and wipe out the south east of England. But let’s remember it takes two to break the virginity of a greedy bank. I bet you that for millions of people out there that when you place their head in an MRI Scanner you will see almost zero brain activity….how can these baboons keep taking on more debt..I do sympathise its not easy when you only have two and half brain cell left, 1 to tell you to light the cigarette, the other instructs you to buy a drink, and maybe half a brain cell left to tell you to borrow more money & get pregnant. We have now arrived at a point where the world is going bankrupt. Politicians keep printing trillions of dollars informing us we will be ok, but we’re not. Not when the food in our fridge is worth more than the new bathroom we built last year. Personally, I just want to hang out with the Big Lebowski, drink a large glass of milk, drive around, go bowling and have the occasional acid flashback. Sometimes I wish my local bank manager would be more like Walter from the Big Lebowski and just whisper in my ear “You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don’t wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock this afternoon… with nail polish” In fact I would say yes, please give me some toes from Wall Street, one from each CEO that would make my Christmas turkey taste even better.

 

 

Enough gloom and doom, now lets get back to the happy days of life with a demanding wife, two lovely dogs, great family and the best friends in the world. In the past 3 months we have had a great time with friends and family. My two dogs are called the “Asbo evil twins” (ASBO- Anti Social Behaviour Orders) in the park which is a good testament to the discipline in our household. The dictator and I had a romantic break at the Amalfi coast which was spectacular, lots of romance between the mosquitoes and me. And on the business front we are making good progress but have had a challenging year like every other new business on the block.  So like John McCain clinging to the wilderness of Alaska I declare to you: send me your tired, weak, hungry, but most importantly those looking to reduce IT spend in this time of financial need.  I will take care of them in the same way India took care of Dalai Lama, I will show them how to dance and sing in true Bollywood style, and if we are all lucky we can enjoy a spicy vindaloo together. 

 

All the breast , Danepack

Hi Friends,

Flood warnings are more frequent than orgasms. Icebergs are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing which is bad unless you are a Saudi Prince or the CEO of Shell. Home values are abysmal. Airlines are charging you for wearing clothes onboard. Wars on terrorism rage in Iraq & Afghanistan. Young people in Northern hemisphere need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire. But lets again put our luxury problems into perspective. Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting us luxury monkey’s in the UK….more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone. So yes I might be annoyed when some overweight low IQ Airport staff removes my 120ML bottle of aftershave since it exceeds the amount by 20 ml…about the same amount that comes out of my left eye after my wife pokes it with a chopstick. Oh yes of course I can bring down a Boeing 737 with that extra 20 ml, whereas with the 100ml I can only burn the toilet seat. To add insult to injury, you now want to get away from it all, but with UK sterling being so low makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive unless of course you visit the US which is cheaper than Somalia but more depressing in these economic times.

 

Walking is the most ancient exercise and still the best modern exercise. …. Myself and 4 friends went hiking in Brecon Beacon in April. We live in a fast-paced society and hiking slows us down…. I firmly believe a vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for stress than all the medicine and psychology in the world. We arrived in Wales around 11pm, and we set off into the night setting up camp on the side of a mountain around 1.30am. Temperature dropped to 3c and I was sharing my basha (tent) with a fellow Dane aka Rambo Saugmann. I called his girlfriend to find out more about him…..this is what she said “You don’t seem to want to accept who you are dealing with. You are dealing with a man who is an expert—with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who has been trained to ignore pain and to ignore weather. To live off the land and eat things that would make a billy goat puke” comforting words before settling into my sleeping bag. The next day after a pot noodle we set off around 8am and we walked until 6pm (14km crossing three small peaks)….Walking gets the feet moving, the blood moving, the mind moving …..life is all about movement! Hiking in Wales with a generation that grew up watching 1980’s action flicks is an extended form of hiking in which people carry double the amount of gear they need for half the distance they planned to go in twice the time it should take.  On the contrary, my grandmother started walking five miles a day with just a rusty saucepan from the Great Depression when she was sixty.  She’s 88 today and we don’t know where the hell she is!

 

So here we are in the 21st century, where Google can solve most of your problems, we are guaranteed that most of the Chinese swimmers at the Olympics in Beijing will look like children of Dolph Lundgren wrapped around Bruce Lee’s spine, most of the participants at Tour de France will be higher than Sid Vicious ever was, and the photographers will be nailing Britney Spears into oblivion, while soldiers are chasing “extremists” into the sand….. What has really changed in the past 100 years? Not much really so with that thought in mind do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations and make the most of them.

 

Hi Friends,

Was there ever a time when you didn’t lie awake obsessively worrying over work, the mortgage, the heating on or off, dildo-wielding burglars, cancer, nuclear war, or if you can still run like you did in high-school…hang on…is that a mouse under the floorboards? Where are the glorious days of being a corn fat teenager when you could really drink 7 pints of lager and only eat 4 bags of crisps while supporting some extremist political movement….scroll time forward and now 1 pint at work renders me useless and if I have two pints my farts will set off the smoke alarm. What about our lack of imagination today. All I needed as a teenager was a rich soup of erotic memories and my right arm was like the size of Pop-eye’s, nowadays try to conjure something up from your brain and you might as well have been watching ESPN Classic Sports…..that’s what 10 years of non-stop pornography will do to you from the internet.

As mentioned in previous email, 2008 will be a tough year for the economy, bankers, businesses, but no one would have expected 85 year old Wall street banks going bankrupt and this is just the beginning. I am sure the senior Bankers of Bear Sterns felt like the waiter who was told to clean the floor of the Titanic 5min before it hit the iceberg, as long as the economy will drag Celine Dion with down to the abyss we might just survive. Remember Economists are pessimists: they’ve predicted 8 of the last 3 depressions and they are people who work with numbers but don’t have the personality to be an accountant. So what is Gordon Brown going to do to help stimulate the British Economy….Labour’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it! Inflation is creeping up, in particular in Zimbabwe with 100.000% inflation where a piece of bread now cost 30.000.000 $, now could you imagine going to a lap-dance club, I don’t think anybody has pockets that big….. And the cost of petrol in England is now £1.08 per litre and last year it was £0.86 pence…..As Sam Ewing said “inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair”. So now every corporation is tightening their budgets, people privately are now all going economy (economy is how to spend money but without enjoying it), and finally remember a budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it!

On the family front, the two dogs are still re-enacting the 11th round between Holyfield and Tyson, with the smaller dog having a chewed ear, in fact they have moments where they look like Jean Paul Gautier & Yves Saint Laurent giving each other a reach-around in the Boulogne forest of Paris, the next minute they are like a Shia and Sunni Muslim fighting it out over who has the right to the land…big mood swings, but generally Vito has improved since we got an electric shock collar from China, if he does something naughty like the other day where he jumped up Jude Law’s kid in the park as a result my tough wife gives him a little voltage to sent a little static down his spine. You can accomplish a lot with electricity; remember just like Saddam Hussein proved it’s not just for light bulbs. Vito’s behaviour has improved, he is almost re-habilitated and the great news is I get to use the collar for sex, my wife really enjoys zapping me! Finally in March we had a family trip to Mauritius, we all needed that holiday…..a Vacation is what you take when you can’t take what you’ve been taking any longer…It used to be a luxury, however, in today’s world, it has become a necessity. Seven days of sunshine, swimming, diving, fishing, tennis and reading books, now back fully charged and ready for the second quarter of another exciting and changing year. As a British psychiatrist once said “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.” So remember to make the most of every single day with your loved ones because that is what makes it worth living.

All the best,
Danepack Shakur

Friends,

Finally the excessive spending of the past 5 years has finally caught up with the global economy, less trips to the luxury good’s section of town and more in line with parking near the supermarkets searching for 2 for the price of 1 deals. To blame this on the US sub-prime mortgage crisis is like saying that nightfall is caused by the hooting of the owl. House prices are finally coming down in US & Europe and even though interest rates will be cut it will not prevent the inevitable correction in store for 2008 & 2009. Ahh a little Dr.gloom never heard anybody, I am still optimistic about this having a positive impact on people as it’s a good reality check for us to dig deep and find other meaningful spiritual sides to life. Release the genie from the Krug Champagne of London’s over priced nightclubs and let it drown itself in Tesco’s finest champagne at private house parties with good friends. I have a feeling 2008 will be wonderful for people to reconnect again, but if your happiness is determined by huge bonuses then you might as well buy the shot-gun now and remember to buy cheap 12 ball shot-gun shells on Wal-Marts website.

In the past 8 years my emails have always contained some reality updates on our life, some politico-gobbledegook from the news, whinging about London prices and of course my infamous Malaysian dictator that regularly tortures me in the cold basement with slow dripping Kikkoman Soya Sauce. In other words, when it comes to subject matter I have plumbed the bottom of the barrel and then kept right on going. But I don’t really know if I am ready for change because life isn’t fair and my wife deserves some abuse in my quarterly emails. In the same way that it’s entirely unfair that some people are born fat or ugly or dyslexic or ginger or small or German. Life, I’m afraid, is tragic. There’s no point turning to Gordon Brown for help because his policies will suck your genitals through your wallet before you can pay 1.07 for a litre of petrol…..furthermore he lives in Westminster and believes that everyone is a Tory bastard who need to be frozen alive and should suffer from asbestos breathing difficulties since age 10. To escape the blunders of Gordon Brown, my wife and I went on a liveabord in the Red Sea where we dived some wonderful wrecks. Thanks to the Luftwaffe in 1944 for providing us with such spectactular reef’s half a century later, so I do have lots of positive things to say about the germans and I am a balanced individual who believes in equal opportunity abuse.

Reina and I returned from a wonderful Christmas in the alps where we collected our dog that had been sent to Guantonomo Bay last year with some terror suspects. Britain is an amazing place, at every shopping centre you see youth wearing hoodies who hang around, shoplifting and catching venereal diseases and on the other extreme of the scale you have non-conker-playing, health-and-safety obsessed, mastermind contestants, high-visibility clowns who love to enforce pointless Anti-rabies laws on French pedigree dogs. Anyway, I fully appreciate that adding Rabies to this little island where they have bird-flu, mad-cow and about 100 illegal immigrants running across the eurotunnel every night they don’t need any other spices to the already lethal cocktail. Miro (dog just returned) is his name and he is back with a vengance, Vito our other male dog is a bit like Joe Pesci from Goodfellas’ without the drug habit. He has had to accommodate for the butch French bodybuilder and is no longer the alpha male, and I am afraid he has to toss Miro’s salad regularly, at first he refused but now he is a raving queen and has fully accepted the submissive role in the bunkbed behind our clothes cabinet. They both lie in front of our fireplace at night howling songs for each other, smoking cigars sipping on cognac discussing which dog’s bottom to sniff out in the park tomorrow.

Men who don’t understand women fall into two groups: Bachelors and Husbands. But I would even go more basic than that: The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things. You might argue that your man is not like this, but I assure you that beneath the veneer you see at home, he is. He may do the washing up and help with laundry, but when you’re not around, he’s like the light in a fridge. He’s a completely different animal, obsessed with bottoms, buggery and belching. I fully appreciate that in a post Mrs Robinson world, where women work and raise children, men are like kleenex to women…. soft, strong and disposable! So remember whatever your plans are for 2008 do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive….If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

All the breast for 2008
Danepack Shakur

Friends,

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a big television. Choose sitting on a couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Have the right choices been made? All this baloney about mid-life crisis amongst younger people…..I recently read many men start to question their choice of mate and may also start to yearn for the days before kids and responsibilities around the house. Many men describe feeling angry more often and may start to regress toward a younger, more self-indulgent version of themselves to avoid these painful feelings…..I have a solution for this feeling, start behaving like a boy again! I just returned from the Welsh wilderness where I spent 2 nights with 7 friends doing a SAS survival course. Bob the ex-SAS instructor who served tours in Colombia, Northern Ireland and Falklands between 1979-84 would smile if you stabbed him and say “please hit me with a brick as well” He was about as hard as 7 Vietcong’s melted into one body.

We learned about starting fires, building shelters, it was evident that our sensitive city slicker hands normally covered in Jo Malone soap from Harrods took a bashing chopping wood with axes, there were plenty of blisters but no one whinged. Believe it or not people from London are pretty tough and with the magnificent seven stuck in the wilderness with plenty of aggression in them from the daily rush-hour….. It took us no time deforesting woodland & completing 4 shelters. By end of day 1 we had eaten most of our rations and we were ready for more action, so we sent the guides down to collect 36 beers in nearest village to make the night more comfortable, capitalism can force anyone to the nearest corner shop. Next day they kidnapped one of our guys after throwing a flash bang and smoke grenade into our camp….. And we were given Ak-47’s look-alike air-soft weapons and told to storm a camp to free the hostage. As we were storming the camp people were yelling and screaming and for a split second I felt like I was storming Omaha beach liberating Europe until an enemy sniper nailed me on the chin with a direct hit from 4 meters away with a pellet the size of a small pea, at that brief moment I knew I belonged in front of a computer desk sitting in my cubicle delivering Outsourcing solutions to Mid-size companies….holy shi* that hurt! I simply don’t know how my grand-dad’s generation could run up that beach, amazing accomplishment!

They were created by man & dog….they evolved…..they rebelled… And there are no copies of them …and they have a plan! ….My wonderful Vito (new dog mentioned in previous email) and wifey Reina really do make my life interesting. Since acquiring Vito on July 1 our lives have really changed in particular mine since I work from home these days. Its all about routines, picking up shite, enter your bathroom and it smells like a 12 year male Bull 2000lb’er just before participating in Pamplona had an enema and someone left the open-topped enema bag, or “fountain syringe” equipped with a rectal nozzle pointing right up my clear nostril….oh yeah I am ready for kids, every morning I feel like I roll right out of bed and bear-hug a giant turd on the way to the bathroom. There is nothing like a little puppy who gets too much love, of course he looks so cute that whenever he looks at you with those “pls help me eyes I stepped on an HIV positive syringe last night and I am going to die in 12 hrs” you simply cant help but feed him whatever is on the table…..oh no big mistake, small puppies cannot digest meat well and end up creating lethal farts that could be bottled up and used as mustard gas in the Battle of the Somme. We took Vito on a holiday to Devon and fed him meat forgetting we had a 3.5 hr drive back to London….honestly we almost crashed twice it was so smokey in the car as he was dropping something that smelled like napalm on us at 3 min regular intervals continuously. I think we did 90% of the drive with our heads out the window… its not easy to concentrate on the M5 motorway when you have a Malaysian gagging and a dog that looks like a scrotum farting you in the face and then he turns around and tries to bite his own backside every time a sound comes out…moral of the story put the wife in the boot and place the dog on the front seat, after it has been on a colonic irrigation holiday at a Thai beach resort where they washed 70-odd gallons of coffee and vinegar, lemon or garlic solution – lightly warmed, please waiter – to be squirted up his anus before departure.

On that happy visual, enjoy your week-end

All the breast Danepack Shakur