Glob-a-log

Two days ago the organisation Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) made the news again - or rather, a policeman who had won a MADD Cop Award did, when he was arrested for drunk driving himself.

So far the (now desk-bound) police officer has not commented on the affair. Which is probably a good thing, since those explanations never come down to more than self-serving, not even thinly veiled excuses of the Oprah made me do it variety.

That other one, Alcohol made me do it would be technically correct in this case but not really very helpful. Not that it did Mel Gibson much good, of course - although rumour has it that he’s been offered the job of doing voice-overs for the next Middle-East Mickey Mouse movie.

(At this very moment the old favourite God made me do it does not apply: The Almighty One is much too busy right now, what with His credit problems and the fact that you can’t even get an old-fashioned God-fearing cup of coffee any more, not for love, a good smiting or the threat of an eternal roast.)

There is, of course, always the good old Larkin defence. If you know your Larkin, you will recognize these lines immediately:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

It may be easy (and, admittedly, quite gratifying) to despise Paris Hilton and all she unwittingly stands for but it has to be said she does have these parents from Hell. Especially her mother, as that mad harpy’s incredibly stupid and crassly arrogant behaviour showed after her dear daughter was convicted for driving without a licence (again…); she fully deserves to win the Baldwin Awards for Bad Parenting this year round. With parents like that it would indeed be a miracle if kids didn’t go bad or simply mental.

45 days in jail doesn’t seem that excessive, to be honest - not for a repeat offender like Paris Hilton; and certainly not if you consider the way the Atlanta cops deal with jay-walkers or Los Angeles finest treat the elderly who, at the very least, try to cross the street in a legal fashion. Never mind what kissing in an aeroplane can do to you these days, in terms of legal bother.

So, whatever the mad histrionics of mama Hilton, Paris seems to have got off rather lightly. It’s very tempting to say that she got off much too lightly and should have been punished with more Romanian orthodox zeal but that might be a little bit too…

Oh Hell, whom am I kidding: let’s just fly in that priest, give him a Martel ‘Nail Jesus’ set and point him in the right direction - and while he’s at it, let him hang out the parents too. It would make for a nice Biblical image and they certainly are as deserving of the honour as their useless daughter.

So, let’s just do it - if only for the simple reason that, for once in their pathetic little lives, the Hilton tribe would finally be able to provide us with many happy hours of highly enjoyable Reality TV indeed.

It’s been yet another proud week for humanity. In England cheese advertisements have been taken off the air - cheese, of course, being a key factor in corrupting the youth. (This in contrast to, let’s say, the wholesome and splendidly educational entertainment American Idols offers.)

More and more celebrities are cruising the world’s poorest places for more and more photogenic & starving orphans, causing very strange traffic jams indeed.

Then, the USA’s most beloved/hated rogue president, Bill ‘B-J’ Clinton, made the papers again. This time not for not inhaling or other things you can do with smoking stubbies though. Nope, the once most powerful man on earth now earns a bit of cash on the side, writing puzzles for the New York Times.

It’s a fair guess though that none of the clues (or solutions) will involve words like ‘intern’, ‘Whitewater’, ‘dress stains’, ‘Vietnam’ or ‘blow jobs’, since that would have resulted in fairly cross words from Hillary, who is still trying to win an election.

To top all of this though, there was the story that a peace & goodwill-building football match between Muslim and Christian clergy in Norway had to be called off after they had a row over women players.

Mind you, it was fairly stupid to involve women in this game. Given the respective histories of Christians and Muslims on this issue, it would have been much less divisive to invite children to come play with them.

Anyway, with all this and lots of other stuff going on, it was truly a great joy to read that scientists have done things to worms that will result in all of us adding another thirty years to our human lives.

Yup, that’s just what we needed.

When even hardcore Republicans can’t face another four years of more of the same and a mere three movies about spiders have the critics arachnavomiting all over the world’s entertainment pages, why on earth do we need to prolong our collective misery with another thirty years? (And that’s not even taking into account that these days adulthood starts around the time children are out of their nappies anyway.)

In this time of mindless terrorism, decadence and attention-seeking losers, it would make much more sense to ask Santa not to give us more time but to take away two or three score of our years till we learn to spend our lives a bit more sensibly.

(Besides, quiet consummation would be much, much better than hanging around for the now inevitable Stalin in Love: the Musical!)

It is not easy to duplicate success. While it’s possible to dig up some old oracle to make her repeat her dire predictions by simply exchanging one old war for a contemporary one, it is less easy for a modern man to be as successful as, let’s say, Attila the Hun.

So, for every John Belushi, there are a thousand John McCains who want to imitate their predecessors - and fail rather miserably at it too. As the Disney corporation learnt the hard way, it’s better to stick to what you know than to try for formulas that worked rather better for others. To put it politely, the world is not exactly waiting for the Playboy Mouse Channel.

In England the Gordon Brown camp (no, not that camp) face similar problems in presenting their man as the natural heir to Tony Blair’s stained throne. Since they’re even having problems convincing their own party of pointless zombies, it’s rather doubtful that the country as a whole will suddenly go Brown with desire.

One doesn’t need the oracular talents of a Neil Gaiman to predict that poor old Gordon will probably end up looking like the Khartoum loser rather than that Flashy git. He’s more likely to become his party’s sacrificial goat than its magic goose, in other words.

Or, to stick with the animal kingdom for a little bit longer: where Blair is now reviled for having milked his public for too long, Gordon now seems to get severly punished beforehand, for not knowing how to milk the bloody beast to begin with.

A politician’s lot is not always a happy one - but then again, old Gordon is a true, dour Scot, so, however much he might look the part, he knows life ain’t a picnic. Still, it’s cold comfort but let’s throw the guy this tired old bone anyway: however heart- or balls-breaking it is, not everybody can win life’s lottery - or: in terms of happy endings, not everybody can be as lucky as the Danes.

Poor George Bush. Nowadays, for him the hills are not exactly alive with the sound of music. Jack Nicholson turns 70 and the world celebrates - Hell, there’s even a Date Jack website. Where is the angel though that would sing for this beleaguered prez? Today’s stars don’t seem to bother much with Pennsylvania avenue; they’d rather sell their own brand of dubious cookery books or pet-tested make-up than help out the not exactly most influential man in the world.

It’s all very sad. Once a president had the same elevated status as any superhero. Nowadays, he has to appear on American Idols, showing that he has a sense of humour, for crying out loud. A USA president used to be a man who inspired respect, fear & awe; nowadays the only card this president has left to play is a no trumps, Aw shucks humble bit of cardboard.

You can tell that Laura is still behind him. She hasn’t stopped seeing him as her knight in shining armour; as a man who should be king (without certain royal perks, of course.) But his so-called followers have all but abandoned him. They are either obsessing about trousers, seeing Jesus (or sniffing out Satan.)

Worse, it seems that poor old Double Duh isn’t taken seriously any longer even by his enemies. Where are the angry masses denouncing the Big Satan? These days orally fixated British actors get their day in hate’s limelight easier than Bush. Hell, even those stupid cartoon figures still bring out all kinds of mad mullah muppets in enthusiastic frenzy.

At times, George Bush must look at his British Bambi friend in awe, and perhaps some envy. Blair is reviled & hated, yes. People make very tasteless jokes about his wife and insult the rest of his family. They obsess about him - but they still take him seriously.

Sometimes, the president must feel it’s no longer worth it to set the alarm for yet another lonely day at the office, where all he ever faces is the disdain of his so-called friends and the indifferent abuse of his enemies.

Newspaper articles suggesting that sometimes it’s better just to elect a drunk won’t make his day either.

So, no-one should be terribly surprised, if one of these days the world would wake up to the merry sight of mushroom clouds, doing the can-can all over planet earth. For, while the police will be interviewing some hapless, out of work cartoonist, that will be the Buddy Holly day that the 43rd president of the US of A finally went truly postal on all of us.

According to Einstein nationalism was the bane of humankind - humankind’s measles, he called it. Others would say that claim was só 20th century. They insist climate change is the worst threat that humanity will face in the coming decades.

In fact, there are those who are sure it already affects other planets as well. (And then there are those who see any newfangled bit of nonsense news as an excuse to get seriously nostalgic.)

However, all those good folks who do think nationalism is as bad for our health as, let’s say, sunbathing, or that climate change will do to us in the 21st century what rats brought us in the 14th century, haven’t met my cat.

My cat is more evil than Vegan parents, and far more annoying than the combined top ten of most annoying pop lyrics. Believe me, you’d rather hear someone in the street scream ‘The fridgemen are coming!!!’ than you’d have my cat enter your living room.

Right now I was staring at the little brute in utter disbelief. It had just told me how it had managed to arrive at my Prague apartment before my plane from Holland had brought me there.

“So you’re saying…?”

“Yup.”

“And they really believe…?”

“‘Fraid so” the cat said, smug as only the biggest smug- or smeghead can be.

“Unfuckingbelievable.”

“Great story, yes?”

I shook my head. That was one way of describing it, yes. Like old Popsicle Oates saying to his friends that he’d just go outside for a bit.

“So, those idiots returned.” I said.

“Yup, yup.” said the cat.

I shook my head again.

Remember that car park I mentioned some time ago - where my cat had seen fit to have its own first contact celebrations by way of eating the leader of a rather small alien delegation from some faraway planet that had just landed their UFO outside my local supermarket?

Well, they’d managed a second coming.

“And they didn’t come back to do an Arnie…?”

“Nope.” said the cat.

“They came to surrender instead.”

“Yesss…!!!” the cat hissed triumphantly.

“Even worse, now those stupid, green wankers think you’re some kind of God.”

The cat did a truly irritating victory dance.

“And then they flew you to Prague, just because you told them to…”

More sur place fancy feline footwork followed.

I shook my head again - and then went for my coat.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the cat asked.

“I’m going to get seriously drunk.” I said and then left my cat-infested apartment, still shaking my head.

It was a very Victor (I don’t believe it!) Meldrew moment: numb-skull aliens now saying their pathetic prayers to my bloody cat - and playing celestial cabbie too.

Ah well, so much for the theory that there are other, maybe even more intelligent life-forms out there.

It’s not easy being green, Kermit the frog sang long ago. No doubt having legs that makes millions of French mouths water isn’t much of a picnic either. Still, as far as I know, nobody knows or has ever recorded songs about the plight of your average cat owner - let alone the not-so-average-owner of a cat who gets from Holland to Prague faster than its plane-sailing cat food provider. And it wasn’t even as if the plane had been flown by some Stevie Wonder wannabe pilot who took the scenic route via Vladivistok or Sydney.

Anyway, so here I was in Prague again, which was great - and so was the cat; which, on the whole, was as welcome as Yeltsin’s knocking on Heaven’s door or George Bush posing for even more action shots in Iraq.

What made matters even worse was that the damn animal flatly refused to say how it had managed to get to Prague before I had done so. In other words, it had become time for desperate measures.

“What’s this?” the cat asked, looking like a guy who’d finally found out why the curry had tasted so weird, the last few weeks.

“The best pet food money can buy.” I assured it.

“It smells like shit.”

“That’s just one cat’s opinion. Millions of dogs love this crap.”

“You’re trying to feed me dog food? You want to kill me?”

“Weeelllll…”

“I’d rather starve to death than eat that stuff.”

“You know that old proverb?”

“What?”

“Curiosity killed the cat. Well, I’m curious and till you give satisfaction in that regard, you will eat dog food or starve.”

“Blackmailing bastard!”

“Mutinous moggy!”

“Okay, I’ll tell you.”

“Finally…”

“It’s like this…”

(To be continued)

Cats can do smug like no other creatures on this planet – and my cat is better at it than most other moggies I’ve known. Right now, it was looking as if it had secured the copyright for the word (and the T-shirt franchise.)

Admittedly, it had some right to look smug: I’d left it to the greedy care of its baby-sitter, locked inside my Dutch apartment – and here it had arrived in Prague before me, while I had taken the fastest route possible to get here. Fastest for humans, that is. The cat had somehow managed to arrange a more speedy ride.

“You’re going to open that damn door?” the cat asked.

I opened the door.

“I’m hungry.” the cat said.

I walked through the hallway, shaking my head. This was so not the way I had envisaged my return to Prague. I unlocked the door to my apartment. The cat sneaked in before I had the chance to fully open the door.

“What a dump.” it said; “Where’s my food bowl?”

“In Holland”

“My Prague food bowl – you idiot. And I need a drinking bowl, and a cat flap and a litter box – a bigger one than in Holland, mind you: I’m sure the food here won’t agree with me… And while you’re at it… Hey! Where do you think you are going…?!”

“Out. If you need me, you can reach me somewhere in outer Mongolia.”

I didn’t stay away that long though. Tempting as it was to leave the cat without all its normal creature comforts, I was rather attached to my Prague apartment and I knew what a seriously miffed cat could do in terms of interior redecorating, if you let it on its own for too long.

So, I went to the nearest pet shop – luckily there are many of those in Prague – and bought the full set of ‘keep your cat moderately happy’ paraphernalia. Food & drink bowls, scratching posts, a bed, a litter box, some small play things. The lot. Then I bought cat food and returned to my apartment.

“What took you so bloody long?” the cat complained; “Let me smell your breath. I’m sure you’ve been in the pub!”

“Go fuck a duck.” I muttered, putting food in the cat’s new bowl.

“I heard that.” the cat said.”

“Good.”

“There are bunnies on that bowl.” the cat said; “I hate bunnies.”

“Tough. All the other ones had butterflies, or dancing mice.”

“Liar! I’m sure you bought the most disgusting bowl they had.”

“You know me so well.”

“And where do you think you’re going now?!”

“Out.”

“Bloody boozer!”

“Fucking felix!”

Outside, the sun was shining; about a hundred cellar bars and garden pubs awaited me within less than half a square mile. Life wasn’t all that bad – but for that bloody cat of mine…

Ah well, the next few hours at least would be a feline-free fun fest. I had money in my pocket, a good book, some notebooks & a few pens in my trusted plastic bag – and a major thirst.

Obviously, I was still wondering how that bloody animal had managed to arrive in Prague before I did but I knew it would have been a major mistake to ask.

Let the animal believe I didn’t care; then it would tell me soon enough, just to brag. Show any sign of curiosity though and it wouldn’t tell me in a million years.

Bloody cats.

(To be continued.)