Glob-a-log

(Story story night…?)

As they say, ‘You can’t make it up’.

Although, in this particular case, you can – and some do:

“A police force spent £100,000 on ’storytelling sessions’ to encourage senior officers to share their sucesses. The sessions organised by Greater Manchester Police were supposed to improve policing, with the lessons learned pasted on a cartoon storyboard to form a ‘business strategy’.”

Granted, it is quite a bit of money – but money well spent, I’d say.

I mean, we know, from the Birmingham Six fiasco in the seventies to today’s headlines about the lying Metropolitan Police commander, that your average English copper likes a good story…

… and who can blame them? Making it up as you go along is so much easier than real detecting…

… and much more entertaining than trying to find real evidence, of course.

As my examples of old, let’s say inventive police work shows, however, some cops are not really good at it, which can (and in these cases did) lead to all kind of, quite costly, embarrassing situations.

So, it was a wise decision by Greater Manchester Police to send these senior officers to this storytelling course. We can only hope that these sessions indeed help to ‘improve policing’, the next time they want to stitch someone up.

After all, it’s not much fun to be a pig if you’re no good at telling porkies.

(Eyes that know the darkness in my soul, indeed…)

Stop the presses…!

Praise be to our men and women in white coats who discovered a way to end world hunger.

They found that food flown in by airoplanes relieved all symptoms of hunger. “It has to do with the sound of the motors on the planes”, one scientists explained.

Okay, I made that up – but only after I read the following article in today’s Telegraph:

“Obese people should try living in the mountains if they want to lose weight, according to scientists. Fat is much easier to burn off where the air is thin, researchers said, a phenomenon that could lead to tents that mimic the atmosphere of countries like Tibet and Argentina.”

Far be it rom me to cast doubt on these findings but what made me think of those planes & food parcels must surely also be obvious to, let’s say, a Dachshund with Alzheimers.

To wit, one of the things about mountains is that they go up and down a fair bit, which ensures that people who live in these natural work-out zones will always burn more calories than flatlanders.

Ah well, all of this is, in more ways than one, quite academic to me. Holland isn’t that renowned for its mountains – and if the global warming crowd is right, we won’t be able to burn off those calories with those famed silver skates of ours (and I can’t see how even those ‘thin air’ scientists can come up with evidence that sticking fingers into dykes will help us get rid of our surplus fat.)

Yes, the party yesterday was quite nice – thank you for asking. Lots of booze. Lots of good food, which is what happens if the guy who throws the party is a professional chef. Also lots of beautiful women but my lady doesn’t like me enjoying their company too much – which is cool: One love-of-my-life at a time will do for me.

One thing though: That lady in question got a bit too excited and invited all the party goers to come to our place, this Sunday. For dinner…

… and guess who will be doing all the cooking…?

Indeed, me. For seven guests (which doesn’t include my lady and me.)

Which means I’m a bit stressed for time, what with three other people coming over, this evening – yep, even more cooking duties for me. Not that I mind. I love cooking but it does mean I have not much time to do anything else.

So, this is it for today. I’m not even opening any online newspapers. It’s 17.30 now and I have to start chopping onions, peeling potatoes, marinading the meat (for today and tomorrow…)

To be continued.

I don’t have much time to write anything today – and I have absolutely no time to trawl the Internet, in search of bewildering, outrageous and/or amusing news stories.

My love of my life du jour promised some guy, last week, that we would come to his party, today. She informed me of this yesterday, before we went to sleep.

Most of today was spent (by me) house cleaning, while my lady was babysitting two children, on the other side of town. Now, it’s almost 17.00 here and I still have to shower, dress up and then buy some booze to take to the party, then eat something and then go to the centre to meet up with the one-who-set-us-up-for-this.

I’m not a big fan of the seventies band Nazareth and I despise their ‘Love hurts’ hit – but I will give them this: Sometimes, love is bloody hard work.

See you tomorrow.

(As pathetic as Nazareth but slightly funnier…)

Me, I’m all for tolerance, though I have to admit that I would like anyone who plans – or even condones the idea of – suicide attacks to take his or her explosives to some desert and do as many practice runs as it takes to perfect their technique.

It’s a bit like that trope about a tree falling in the forest with nobody to witness it. In other words, if a trainee terrorist blows him or her self up in the desert with no-one around, does it count as a true martyresque act?

To which the only reasonable answer would be: Who gives a fuck?

Anyway, people who read this blog on a regular basis know that I have very little patience with religious nutters, be they of the Christian, Muslim, Scientologist or any other brand.

So, anyone who opposes fundamentalist attitudes and sings the praises of tolerance would normally have my sympathy.

Though I’m not so sure about this one:

“Muslim fundamentalists should “learn how to drink wine” because it would make them more tolerant, according to a philosopher. Roger Scruton, 65, urged “lunatic fundamentalists who have set their heart on giving Islam a bad name” to imbibe, although it is considered against their religion, claiming it would help them to a more moderate view.”

As I said, I have my doubts.

I mean, look at any English town, just after closing time. You can say a lot of things about the hordes of brainless oiks who take their vomiting, fighting and raping business to the street but ‘more tolerant’ would probably not be the term you would use.

So, thanks but no thanks. I don’t think the world is quite ready for an army of suicidal drunks, sporting Millwall and Bin Laden tattoos.

I suppose that all of us know by now that smoking is bad for you. Of course, living is also bad for you. More people die from being born than from any habit they pick up later on. Life’s a 100% killer disease; smoking is just one of the possible complementary threats…

… and yet there’s this, almost world wide, hysteria about smoking. It’s been banned in bars, restaurants and parks, at bus stops and on beaches. There are plans to ban smokers from adopting children and old movies that still have actors smoking are no longer shown in an ever growing number of cinemas.

Total madness, really – and I say that as a non-smoker.

On the other hand, we know that humans always overreact. It’s what we do best. (That, and totally ignoring certain other problems. When we don’t want to see the elephant in the room, that sucker is SO not there, you know – but that’s another topic entirely.)

So, you could say overreacting isn’t a form of madness, really. It’s perfectly normal for our species.

Still, when I read the following news story, I did think that those anti-smoking activists are now really starting to get a little bit out of control:

“An Indonesian man lost six teeth when the cigarette he was smoking exploded in his mouth. Andi Susanto, a 31-year-old security guard, said PT Nojorono Tobacco Indonesia, the maker of the brand of cigarette he was smoking, had offered to pay for his medical treatment. A spokesman for the company said there were no plans for a recall.”

(Never mind those eyes: It will get your fucking teeth…!)

Today, I have two vaguely related stories for you – and we will move from absurd comedy to unintended satire…

… helped by two protagonists with sex on the brain…

… and who are both quite willing to let their feelings be known in both an unrepressed and quite maniacally agressive manner.

First, there’s this story of a New Zealand kakapo parrot:

“The New Zealand prime minister has given the country’s most famous parrot a job in his government, it has emerged. An endangered kakapo parrot, named Sirocco, which rose to fame last year after it attempted to mate with the head of Mark Carwardine, the wildlife presenter, during the BBC’s ‘Last Chance to See’ series, has been appointed by John Key as the world’s first “spokesbird for conservation”. “

It’s kind of cool to have an avian sex addict as a spokesbird of anything – though one feels it would feel more at home as spokesbird of Playboy. It would be interesting to see what the parrot would do to Hefner’s head (or to that bunny, come to think of it.)

Anyway, let’s leave the parrot and move on to the second story, in which an old guy that dresses up like a bird is also making the news - again… - ranting about his favourite obsession: The things that other people do in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Though I, for one, would prefer to be fucked by a parrot than listen to the hateful homelies of Herr Ratzinger:

“Benedict XVI says legislation safeguarding rights of same-sex couples violates ‘natural law’. Pope Benedict XVI has condemned British equality legislation for running contrary to “natural law” as he confirmed his first visit to the UK later this year.”

To which the only sane reply would be to tell him to – quite litterally – mind his own fucking business.

(Of course, this would be funnier if the Norwegian Blue had been a Papal White but you can’t have it all…)

I’m not quite sure why this irritates me so much – but it does, a lot.

It’s a BBC programme that I never even watched.

It’s called ‘One man and his dog’.

Every time I see that title I want to foam round the mouth and scream to the television I don’t have:

ONE MAN AND HIS DOG…?!

WHY NOT ONE ALCOHOLIC AND HIS CAT

ONE AGNOSTIC AND HIS PYTHON

ONE PHILANDERER AND HIS PARAKEET

ONE POLITICIAN AND ITS MAGGOT…???!!!

Right, that’s all we bloody need.

I mean, as if it is isn’t enough knowing that humankind can produce people like Robert Mugabe and Glenn Beck some seriously fucked up scientists now claim that your average football hooligan is more evolved than, let’s say, a Mother Theresa:

“Researchers now believe that being aggressive, intolerant and short-tempered could be a sign of a more advanced nature. A more childlike attitude to behaviour such as tolerance and sharing, could, in contrast, be an indication of not being as developed, the new study suggests.”

To which, in the spirit of this research, I can only answer with a, “Fuck off and die, you white-coated morons.”

(Yes, that’s ever so much more civilized than THIS…)

My quote of the day, thanks to the Guardian’s Marina Hyde:

“What is Glenn Beck, but a malevolent Gump?”

You can read the full article HERE – and you should.

Here’s a clip by Kevin Coyne, performing in front of the Berlin Wall, à propos of nothing much, to be honest.

Though you could say that the fall of the Wall shows that evil does not always triumph.

So, there’s hope for those 51% of the people who don’t trust FOX and the Glenn Becks of this world.