"Stop the World - I Want to Get Off" is a cliché, I must admit, and also the name of one of those hideous, middlebrow stage musicals.

But right now that expression sums up exactly how I feel. Our modern world of information overload and false imperatives is just ... too much. So tiring and BORING!

Please, you extraterrestrials, land here, and change things!

Otherwise, take me away from Earth and let me try living on your world.

WHEN the story of Jackson's death broke on Thursday evening (UK time), the response of the mainstream media was depressingly predictable...being mainly hype.

"The King of Pop is dead! Quick, somebody get Paul Gambaccini to crap on and on about it. Yeah, and what about that eccentric fork-bender, Uri Geller, wasn't he a mate of Wacko's? Let's have him on, gushing incoherently."

Then there's Madonna ... she can't stop crying. Oh, Purrr-lease!!

ME and Posh Boots always intend to make the most of our long bank holiday weekends - by going away.
But we usually end up staying in Wirral ... with its generic blandness, vile pub "restaurants" and unexciting bars.
The weekend just gone hacked me off for a variety of reasons.
First, Sunday night's Britian's Got Talent disgusted me when the 10- year-old girl singer Natalie Okri was put through the humiliation of being voted out of the competition. The poor wee thing was reduced to tears. Read more abiout what I think about all that in my Sam Brady blog.
Then being around and about in Wirral - and in Chester - and studying the faces of people made me reailse that we are becoming a very unhappy nation. So many people now look utterly beaten and in many cases, mentally ill. I have written a poem about that, which you can read on my poetry blog.
But actually, the weekend started off well, entertaining, exciting even...

MY pals Dicky Dunnit and Raven Smokieyes (pictured) are going to share their feelings of LURRRVVE for each other at the next Bards of New Brighton poets' and songwriters' evening.

Made of marzipan these newlyweds might be ... but they have soul.

Come join us Bards at our session on Monday 11 May, 8pm start, at the Magazine pub, Magazine Brow, New Brighton CH45 1HP.

WE HAD a rollicking good night at the Bards of New Brighton - our poetry group, which is celebrating two years of existence.

As entertainment our poetry performance sure beats the live music scene in Wallasey and the wider Wirral - urghhh, so many rancid bands banging out mouldy old covers!

If I have to listen to one more pot-bellied halfwit screeching his way through 'Mustang Sally' in a fake American accent I'll be in danger of storming off home and battering my budgie.

I WAS annoyed to see the anti-fun squad of Merseyside Police parked in one of their lurid spy-camera vans just outside the city centre yesterday (Sunday April 5).
A pal and I had been walking back to Lime Street station from Goodison when we spotted the ugly thing.
The bizzies' day-glo maria was emblazoned with the offensive, sinister and depressing words Caught on Camera and Anti-Social Behaviour Task Force.

The power of music to change one's mood is incredible...
I walked into my local, Hell's Waiting Room, New Brighton, a few nights ago feeling ... well...totally happy and contented.
Then suddenly I see and hear Billy Bustimes singing his verison of Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' ... and instantly I was depressed.
I stayed for a few scoops, though, and I've been in there quite a lot lately...it's been just like old times...

I'M a bit late mentioning this, but I had a most memorable split-location social evening last Thursday ... in Wigan and New Brighton.
First the Wigan bit. I was at a venue that combined bohemian decadence with blunt, Northern English humour - a winning combination.

IT WAS a strange evening I had in Liverpool as a performer at the Come Strut Your Stuff night at the city centre Egg café.
It's an established acoustic performance night but it has a strained atmosphere, with its unstable mix of young students, arty types, militant vegetarians, mad medievalists, anarchists, miserable 'wimmin' singers and old codgers doing covers.

WELL, I hope you and yours had a good Valentine's Day and evening.
And if you are single, then I hope all the slushiness, sentimentality and the crass concentration on couples shown by restaurants and shops didn't annoy you too much.
It is good to talk of love, and to write about it too. The subject has, after all, enthralled poets and philosophers since the earliest days of humanity.