Glob-a-log

The madness will go on, of course, but the man who described it – and us – so well is no longer here to witness and remark on it.

He would have smiled, I’m sure, if he had read how the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex was brought low (but he would not have been surprised.)

The man who survived the bombing of Dresden – would he have smiled ruefully if he’d heard some prelate proclaim that the silence of ‘Hitler’s pope’ was not really silence but a policy taken to avoid worsening the situation? Would Vonnegut have dared or even bothered to write, ‘Worsening: how exactly…?’ in the ashes of the Jews and the Roma, the gay and the disabled? Maybe he would just have shrugged and moved on to another tale of ordinary madness.

He would have liked, I think, the idea of thousands of Chinese officials, running through Beijing in a mad rush, trying to rid the city of thousands upon thousands of signs, that were so helpfully and yet so disastrously translated into English.

The man who wrote Welcome to the Monkey House would not have been surprised by anything the me, me, me generation would throw at him, from Vampire Sorority Babes to dysfunctional foxes, let loose in some built-for-TV hen-house.

It would be hard to predict in hindsight, what would have raised one of his hairy eye-brows higher: the news that the West had found yet another bogeyman or the story of the restaurant and the exploding sauce.

We’ll never know – and yes, as he would say, So it goes.

Call me sentimental though but I think I know he would have smiled if he’d read the story about Papa and his little Kraut. In his books, Vonnegut might not have specialized in happy endings but he did approve of lightning candles in the dark – and kindness, always that:

‘“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ “

Dedicated to S.F. Chronicle’s Jon ‘odd sock’ Carroll

So, news reached us that one can actually die from a broken heart.

Also, you should never - ever - ask Barry Gibb to organize a house-warming party.

What’s more… ; but no, enough already.

Yes, each day comes with enough trouble to keep Pandora smiling like Schrödinger’s box (or some such.)

Still, there are many reasons to be cheerful too. It’s spring in the Northern hemisphere and soon all those cute little lambs will be cute little lamb chops.

Right now, even the old are young and foolish at heart:

With old ape pensioners pigging out on birthday cakes - and other golden oldies taking out mortgages as if death had lost its sting for real - what’s to worry for the rest of us?

Even Frankenstein’s monster is having a giggle: some nitwit is having another go at its creator!

Then, just when a fistful of gloom-mongers are discussing a Who’s Who of currently famous writers who will be forgotten in a few years’ time, a modern loon with some real serious shit for brains comes and digs (up) Wordsworth.

And a dead (drunk) Picasso can still be sent over the top of the wall.

Verily, we live in strange but happy moments.

So, no reason really to get upset with people who go out of their way to win next year’s Darwin award - and others who very sadly don’t. Life’s too short - and full of wonderfully weird stuff anyway.

So, Jon and Cheetah, please step forward and open this spring ball for us, with a Bojangles flourish or a Pacino tang - and let us all pray to saint Neil and ask the old Baron:

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

“Yeah… I will… Love you too…Bye now.”

“That was the girlfriend.” I said, putting down the phone.

The cat yawned.

“She sends her regards.”

The cat looked at me.

“Okay. She gave me a recipe for cat casserole.”

The cat yawned again. Then it started to wash itself. If more cars would do the same, maybe then I’d buy one. What’s more, most cars didn’t bite the hand that poured the petrol – unlike cats, or crocs.

Like the old Jewish Resistance Movement, I mused what the Romans – or in my specific case: my cat – had ever done for us. Unlike the hapless Jewish Resistance Movement I found it hard to come up with anything, except abuse, hairballs and vomit with interesting bits in it.

Why do people take cats?

It’s not as if they are highly desirable assets. People steal cars, houses, jewelry, bikes, library books, babies and, God help us, even mobile phones. I couldn’t remember ever having read anything about people getting angry about the rising theft of cats.

If only I had a car… Then I could lock the cat inside each day, when I got up, and hope someone would have stolen the car by the time I’d go to bed again.

Hell, I’d even be willing to buy a mobile phone, if tying the cat to it meant that both would get nicked. Though one could only hope the thieves would know better what to do with the stolen ware than other mobile muggers in the past had done.

Or maybe I should just do as the girlfriend suggested.

“You want something from town?” I asked the cat.

The cat looked at me.

“I need something larger in the oven-ware department. So, you got any last requests?”

“Go boil your head.” the cat said, before leaving the room through the huff side of the cat flap.

“Better be careful out there.” I said – but the cat, like Elvis, had left the building.

Unlike the late, lamented lard-arse, the cat probably would not be worth a king’s ransom, if there were any cat-nappers around.

“And more’s the pity.” I mumbled, before entering a daydream, that featured the girlfriend and me (and a cast of no clothes) in one of those outdoors Japanese baths.

High above, stars twinkled at us and sang old Elvis songs (almost inaudibly, praise the Lord of Song) before one of them morphed into an honest to God spaceship that descended like a mighty sparrow and then flew off with the cat (hopefully to do all kinds of interesting and painful experiments on the little monster moggie.)

The last thing the girlfriend and I heard – before we lost ourselves in yet another breath-defying kiss, was the fading scream of the cat:

You baaasssstaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrds……!!!!!!

Ah, well. One can dream…

Our world depends on stereotypes.

Douglas Adams once said, by way of Ford Prefect:

If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

An unkind but useful observation.

Spouting stereotypes is, what cocktail talk, crocheting or casual sex might be to some and watching female wrestlers on TV to others: a restful non-activity that does not require any brain power whatsoever and passes the time in a boring but non-threatening manner.

Ah, stereotypes: so often disdained and discarded.

Without them, any family get-together would be unbearable; newspapers would go broke; churches would stand empty. Our world would not be able to function without the soft and careless blessing of this, our favourite means of communicating.

Besides, not many columns would be written without their comfortable and ever-lazy presence either.
What would columnists do, if they did not have some stereotype to attack:

“See! Not all Americans are weird and obsessed with glory…”

or champion:

“See! All Americans are weird and obsessed with…”

What joy the average newspaper column can bring to each and every household around the world:

We may be weird but those Brits are strange beyond words.

We may not be brain surgeons but what about those uniform-loving Germans.

We may not always be paragons of virtue but what about those Dutch folks, who send out their little boys to molest unsuspecting lesbians.

We may have our hang-ups but what about those sex-crazed Japanese…?!

Our loved ones observe us and, if we’re lucky, forgive us. Gods may measure our lives and judge us most sternly and, if we’re unlucky, fair.

Stereotypes though, like death and American Idols, are the great levellers. Nothing is beyond their casual reach, nobody safe from their indifferent but all-pervasive call.

The house was very, very quiet. The girlfriend had left for Tokyo four days earlier – and the cat had vanished around the same time.

There was only one serious suspect, so I called her:

“It’s what?”

“Buggered off.”

“Good!”

“You didn’t kill it?

“No – though I should have. He ruined that coat!”

“True. You never get all of the shredded sparrow out of suede.”

“You should have killed it.”

“Yeah, years ago. Listen… The bloody animal didn’t hitch a ride with you?”

“To Tokyo…?! Are you mad?!”

“It likes raw fish.”

“Believe me: I would have noticed.”

“True.”

“Are you telling me you’re missing that damn cat?”

“Well…”

One tip: if you have a conversation with your girlfriend – one you’ve just put on a plane, after protracted & teary goodbyes, and many assurances of never-ending lust, devotion and what have you…

… and she plays the ‘Do you miss…?’ gambit…

…don’t you ever even think of hesitating.

Don’t let a coat-molesting, evil if absent cat come between the moment she brings up the ‘missing’ bit and your immediate and only correct answer:

“I miss you!”

I missed my cue.

The girlfriend hung up. The cat was still gone.

Could I have killed it in my sleep? Dreaming of the girlfriend while I hacked the little brute to pieces and, still snoring, put its evil remains in the bin? A happy thought but a somewhat unlikely scenario, on the whole.

(I checked anyway: Nope, not there either.)

Well, it would probably return in its own good time – and more’s the pity. Did I miss it though?

Well, you get used to things. You know; looming volcanoes, radio talk shows, crocs in the river, TV’s Political Question Time – evil cats. They do become part of the daily cursed landscape.

Bugger.

The idea that I could actually miss that animal – even as some kind of phantom limb irritant – was deeply annoying. Hell, even in its absence it proved to be a bloody nuisance.

Ah well. Time to do some shopping.

Maybe buy some sturdy nails as well – to immobilize the cat flap? Nah. Even a drawbridge and a moat wouldn’t keep the cat out, when it finally decided it wanted to come and annoy me again. It would be much easier to lick all the barnacles off the Marie Celeste, hoover up Marley’s ghost or parcel-post the Eiffel tower to the Dalai Lama than to get rid of that nuisance of a cat.

I put on my coat, checked for my keys, picked up a very…heavy???… shopping bag…

Prrrt…

Shit.

Prrrt!!!

“So – you’re back…”

“Missed me?”

Enoch Powell once said All political careers end in tears.

Well, he should know – although in his case he was more concerned with rivers of blood than a rain of tears. Still, we don’t need to be a Shelley or a Walcott to know that all statues and great houses will, in time, return to dust.

Strangely enough, most modern politicians don’t seem to be aware of these more humbling aspects of all human endeavour – or, more prosaically put, their very own Sell-by Date.

They will spend some quality time on mirror games of nostalgia, worrying about their legacy but they hardly ever plan their actual goodbyes in an orderly (or even sane) manner.

They keep ordering more Hallelujah cocktails, never acknowledging the impatient frowns of the other guests, who’ve grown very tired of these ever more needful noises – or, indeed, not even much aware of their kind Host, who by now is really dying to announce last calls.

In a world where Saviours, even in Their season, can be used to sell carbonated teeth rot, it should not come as a surprise that politicians, like each and every vain movie star, try every gimmick in the book, however distasteful or abusive, to get some extra limelight mileage out of the pathetic vehicles that once were, arguably, promising lives.

In truth, whatever Messianic complexes our modern politicians tend to have, their lives are mostly rounded with the pathos of some starlet, whose one trick body led her to a predictable and tacky ending.

Take it – and them – away, Leonard:

Wish me luck

A fresh spiderweb
billowing
like a spinnaker
across the open window
and here he is
the little master
sailing by
on a thread of milk
wish me luck
admiral
I haven’t finished anything
in a long time

I just read this article in the New York Times.

I’ve only just started writing this blog and I’m still discovering this weird world of people talking into the binary void. It’s fun - and it’s profoundly silly, at times.

There’s also a lot of terrible and cowardly behaviour. There are trolls. Fair warning now: bad language coming up:

I wouldn’t even call these people trolls. They are ugly fuck-wads who are below contempt. Below consideration, even.

Every time there seems to be a discussion about bad behaviour on the Web, the usual apologists come forward, blathering about censorship & free speech.

Abuse is not free speech. Threats form not free speech. Bad behaviour & rudeness are not free speech. What these fucking trolls do is the lowest form of bullying.

So be it. Give people the opportunity to act out in anonymity or in the safety of a mob and they will take it. They will write ‘Suzy sux’ on walls and gleefully take part in beating up gays, stoning women and any other kind of Kristallnacht they can make their own. That’s human nature, sadly enough and one shouldn’t be surprised to see that the dregs of all societies also troll cyberspace.

Not here though. I don’t care a damn about anyone’s individual ‘rights’. I am not even a democrat. I don’t think the majority of people are right. I think the majority of people will almost invariable be wrong on any given issue. I also do not believe that any individual is necessarily as good or worth as much as some other.

Here though my only concern is whether visitors behave in a civil manner. Their ‘rights’ to do as they like do simply not exist in this bit of cyberspace.

I am the host. You are visitors. I will try to be entertaining; you are free to visit – and indeed, start or join any discussion, if you so want. I will try to be a good host: to offer a pleasant and safe environment for people to vist, to do a bit of quiet reading and/or talk about all kinds of matters.

I will remove any remark and any visitor that I do not want in my ‘house’. There will be no discussion about this, no system of first warnings. Visitors are always welcome – if they know how to behave in a grown-up and civil fashion. If they don’t know how to behave, I’m not willing to spend one nano-second of my time on trying to enlighten them.

If they - in deed, thought and imagination – have so far avoided to join the civilised part of the human race, they can fuck off and take their disgusting manners somewhere else.

Now, here’s the deal:

There’s been some terrible accident. Maybe a plane crashed, or the Yellowstone caldera finally erupted, or - God forbid – ABBA held a reunion concert in Wembley Stadium. Anyway, something dreadful happened and the world has been changed beyond recognition.

So, we need some Ry Cooder in the background: something classy – profound yet understated. No Towering Inferno or Jaws crap; something really cool.

Then we need some burning trees – no big fireworks; it must be a few last moments’ worth of smouldering. A young Marlon Brando, or James Dean – a young Johnny Cash in a pinch; that kind of brooding, bruising, lowlife heat.

We also want smoke that rises like morning fog, like an old Kate Bush video clip.

Some animals running away in a blind panic would be nice.

Then the hand-held camera catches a first victim. She – it must be a she – staggers, yea stumbles forward. She’s covered in dust; her hands, held out like begging bowls, are scratched and bloody. Her hair is a mess; her eyes are swollen. She is hurting, mama…

Then, one after the other, the rest of the victims appear, out of the still smouldering wood, wading clumsily through the smoke. None of them speak. All we hear is the sound of a thousand dying, crackling trees, settling themselves against a grey and forbidding sky – and, of course, some Angelo Badalamenti.

The victims walk towards the camera: the camera floats backwards. The woman we first saw walks in front. Behind her we see the others. They form a wobbly pyramid that’s forever pointing the wrong way and can’t seem to right itself again.

Now, a close-up of the woman. She looks bad, with her swollen eyes, pale skin, terrible hair and stumbling, Mad Cow Disease gait.
Now, she lifts her head, almost hopeful - she hears something: people are coming! Help is on the way…

She opens her eyes wider: the light hurts, like streams of burning barbed wire. She wants to cry for help but her lungs don’t seem to be working. Her throat is a desert worth of dry heat dust.

Then, through the pain and the heat and her aching flesh she notices her rescuers have stopped. They stare at her in horror. They start to scream, to cry, to pray. They shout abuse at her.

Someone throws a stone. Someone calls her a monster. Someone shoots at her.

Enough is enough. She gathers the other victims round her, like an army of hurt. They attack. They kill. They conquer.

Later, much later, she looks at the torn corpses of her enemies. She shakes her head – saddened, but also very hungry now.

Before she starts to eat, she shakes her head again. She spits out a dead tooth, and bits of skin and bones. She murmurs: They should not have called me a zombie.

THE END

(Anyone who wants to turn this brilliant story into an Oscar-winning masterpiece, can bring a few million quid and contact me through my agent.)

(Note to same agent: I really, really, really want Meryl Streep as leading lady!!!)

(’Nother Note: maybe not Streep – maybe Jolie…???!!!)

(P.S.: …Those eyes – those lips!!!!!! on a flesh-tearing zombie…???!!!)

(P.P.S: Oh, man, oh, man…! We’re gonna get rich!!!!!)

(Agent to self: Get a grip, grab a cold shower, get a life!)

There’s a new biography of Walt Disney, describing him as an obsessive, workaholic bully. Apart from the workaholic bit, that would also be a fit epitaph for that most famous of ducks: Donald. In fact, most of the immensely popular Disney characters are rather creepy. The enthusiasms of Micky Rodent are vaguely repellent, while the teeth of his dog are profoundly worrying.

Whenever you see Micky (and his dog) in a domestic setting, you wonder what terrible secrets lie hidden in the attic: an old Waffen S.S. uniform, a collection of weird Victorian porn, real skeletons? And whenever the Mouse reaches for that old radio of his, you fully expect to hear a Fire & Brimstone rant from some mad, born-again mullah.

If uncle Walt were still alive and into rodents, the upgraded and digital-savvy Mouse would be a big fan of Godtube, no doubt – and would cackle madly when he read in the Republican Weekly or the Ducktown Patriot that some Godless scientists had blown up their lab, while researching the Big Bang.

(Mad aside: The Offal Office. Enter Dick Cheney with a festive looking, heart-shaped box. He gives the parcel to George Bush. No, it’s not a bomb – dream on: it’s Double Duh’s birthday. The president opens the box and out comes a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. The 43th president of the US of A is a Mouseketeer at heart – but then the Man looks like he should have been drawn by Disney anyway.)

Mouse and Man would probably love to share a platform, waxing sentimental about the No Child Left Behind programme – and then, at the end of the day, under their saved duvets, read the last instalment of the Left Behind series, where the chosen few thump their noses at the vast majority of people who now will burn in Hell for Four More Years, Four More Years, Four More Years – sorry: eternity.

In the long run, the Mouse will probably outlast the Man. Busloads of tourists are far more likely to go see the Seven Wonders of Swindon than come and gather at the dubious feet of some future Mount Bushmore.

(Mad photo finish: Mickey Mouse wearing a George Bush T-shirt, burning books in his backyard – all copies of the final, blasphemous Harry Potter book, of course, whilst singing Danny Boy in his original and very creepy Master’s voice.)

So, now there are schools in England that don’t teach about the Holocaust, to avoid an antisemitic backlash. Which, of course, makes perfect sense, if you are an ostrich. A cartoon ostrich, that is, since the actual birds behave in a more sensible manner when confronted with danger.

Problem is, humanity often behaves more like cartoon characters than real life actors. Like Buggs Bunny we fully expect that our actions have no serious consequences. If we run our societies over some metaphorical cliff we not only expect a Micawber outcome, we are actually offended if things do end up in a million little pieces.

As a species we’ve always been more into problem solving than avoiding trouble to begin with. So, first we invent the sword - and then, only very reluctantly, we agree that making ploughshares might be a more sensible option; and then, of course, we spend most of the rest of history talking about converting one into the other without ever actually doing so.

We run from crisis to crisis, barely surviving this or that self-inflicted outrage, before creating even bigger messes - and then, again, complain about our troubles.

Still, it’s probably no use to curse our nature or try and stop the cavalries we always set in some, almost pre-ordained motion. We are what we are - and will probably remain so till we wipe ourselves out in one spectaculair way or the other.

However, if, in the maybe not too far-flung future, a God, or some E.T. wants to put something on our grave stone, he, she or it could do worse than state:

Here lies one race whose name was writ in Czech giraffes.