Glob-a-log

There were some weird news stories coming at us this week - a few of them inspiring, some tragic and quite a handful plain, damn funny.

First we learnt about the pros and cons of Turkey Waste Fuel. These days, about half the new stories seem to be about what stuff we put in our cars and the other half about what all the shit that comes out of the car will do to the planet and us.

Anyway, one of the positive side effects of Turkey Fuel that wasn’t mentioned, was that if you would use it like this, at least this would put an end to the embarrassing and quite tedious discussion about it joining the European Union.

Then, there was very mixed news from another ongoing and very tiresome soap series: yes indeed, the Guantanamo gore fest. So, the good news was that the Bush administration got a bloody licking, when even one of their own military judges immediately threw out the case against two Guantanamo prisoners.

The bad news was that, with all the other problems these prisoners already have, scientists revealed that Guantanamo-style interrogations can have very serious and potentially deadly consequences.

There were also some disturbing stories about the lack of proper role models, these days. We have become quite used to the fact that celebrities can no longer be trusted to do that job but these days you can’t even trust ordinary parents to lead by example - like this guy from Germany who proved to be a bit more than a spitting distance removed from the business of good parenting.

Even religious organizations are at it, like this church that thought (or pretended to do so) that holding an, excusez le mot, honest-to-God minstrel show was a fine way to celebrate black culture.

(Mind you, we probably don’t even want to know what the family values crowd made of the news that even the good, old Klan can’t be trusted to defend the good, old American family any more.)

Still, there was also some highly amusing news. Libby got sent to prison for lying. Obviously, it’s not a huge story - but it’s like that old dead lawyer joke: a good start. For wouldn’t it be nice, if all politicians who got caught in a lie, would automatically be sent to prison?

If politicians, like celebrities, can no longer be trusted to be positive role models, at least in this way they could function as abject object lessons.

Talking about role models and object lessons, it’s almost too cheap to mention - a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, really - but hey, we can’t all be like Jesus, turning the other cheek and all the other fine things He’s famous for, so here goes anyway:

That great puppeteer and glove puppet duo, Dick Cheney & George Bush, will not be welcome at the GOP 2008 convention.

A prophet in his own country and all of that.

(Not that this particular prophet is more popular abroad, of course. Even after speeches about the values of democracy, his minders don’t allow him to answer questions from the international press any more - and during his visit to Bulgaria the people weren’t even allowed to hang out their clean linen, in order to spare Bush’s blushes.)

Anyway, with the latest Guantanamo disaster, the Libby thing and that ongoing car wreck called Bush, it’s not been a great week for far right evangelical Christians.

So, it’s with great joy that we can throw them at least one bone - namely, that Japanese scientists have shown that there is, after all, quite convincing proof that Intelligent Design should be taken very seriously indeed.

Now these are God’s laws, so respect them:
All the unborn babies, protect them!
But when they are born,
Their welcome outworn,
You can fry, or hang, or inject them.

“You are without shame or morals. We will cut your throat from vein to vein if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation.”

This is an excerpt from a longer letter, sent by a radical Palestinian group to more than a dozen women television broadcasters working in Gaza and the West Bank. If the women refused to wear strict Islamic dress, it read, they would be beheaded.

Obviously, the people behind these threats are sickening, moral retards - and I can already hear that big choir of offended Muslims responding, Don’t judge all of us because of a few.

Well, I’m sorry but I ain’t buying that argument any longer. In the West, the newspapers are full of reports that condemn the actions of Bush, Blair and the other idiot war mongers. There’s a whole culture of protest: from music, books and plays to the (mostly ordered) rituals of demonstrations, peace camps and what have you.

The so-called moderate Muslim majority can’t be bothered though to publicly address and rebuke their moronic fringe - and about the only time you see Muslim demonstrators out in the street, it’s to protest something that, compared to Western wars and Muslim terrorist threats & outrages, is quite marginal and stupid, like a handful of cartoons or some offending novel.

Then you do see the representatives of this peaceful religion pouring out in the streets, their faces ugly with hatred and blood lust - with placards that call for the death of all infidels, with burning effigies of this politician or that writer or cartoonist. Then there will be looting, fires and a few murders here and there - and cries like, Death to those who insult the peace of Islam, or calls for another “real “ holocaust.

So, a pox on all extremists, be they Christian, Muslim, or of any other intolerant persuasion - and a pox on all history’s good Germans too.

And yes, most definitely, that means you: the so-called moderates who now (yet again) stay so damn quiet while your ‘brothers’ threaten your own women.

In a way, this silent majority is even more disgusting than the mad killers and the psychotic violence junkies who praise them. Insanity is an excuse in law - silent complicity is not.

P.S.: Incoming news… More silence, anyone?

Even amateur critics can see
That most sequels are boring and twee,
From Clinton to Gore -
Though a Bush encore
Would be worse still than Spiderman 3

A cute little witch from North Woking
Called down from her pyre (almost choking)
I’d renounce Satan
And save my bacon
But I can’t give up passive smoking

Remember Pat Buchanan? Yes indeed, the soulless right wing troll who did his usual disgusting party-political tapdance routine over the Virginia tech shooting.

Well, he wrote an article, called Who lost Russia?:

If we don’t like the way Putin treats Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, and the other “oligarchs” who robbed Russia blind in the 1990s, maybe Putin doesn’t like how we treated Martha Stewart.

In fact, he blamed Bush (and Clinton, of course - hey, what else is new?) for causing a second Cold War.

Truly amazing: when even right whingers like Buchanan leave the good ship Double Duh, as if it were a cross between the Marie Celeste and Typhoid Mary, maybe it is time for Bush to find some little, tropical island and get terminally lost.

While Bush was still loudly defending
What Putin found very offending,
All Hell could break loose,
Until Mother Goose
Provided a true happy ending.

Honouring the memory of Sgt. Pepper, I should, of course, open this column with, I read the news today, oh boy…

So, the only friends that George Bush has left are now begging Osama to send a few more planes. According to the head of the Arkansas GOP what was needed to bolster support for the president was a few more attacks on American soil.

Meanwhie, on the other spaced-out side of the newly restored and ironed out, cold war see-saw president Putin claimed that he was the only true democrat left standing. Ah well, it’s nice to see that the international balance of idiocy seems to be restored.

Or, as Dorothy might have commented to her doggie, We’re not in Kansas any more.

Talking of pets, for all those people who may have wondered how Schrödinger’s cat would have survived for so long (or not) without food, wonder no more: cats are surprisingly good at surviving without nourishment, it seems.

Life seems to be less kind (or at the very least incredibly more complicated) to humans - especially older ones. When they’re not being hoarded into buses and driven at gunpoint to studios where they are forced to record incredibly lame songs, they suffer through all kinds of other indignities.

Like this 84 years’ old, retired art dealer from Delray Beach. The police took away his false teeth and now refuse to give them back.

Or take this poor Belgium bloke, who just wanted to leave his relatives a nice surprise for when he was gone - but who died before he could finish the job.

Life can be very cruel indeed.

I’d like to shake hands with the warden
Who gave the deserving a pardon,
Like Eve and the Snake
(An honest mistake)
But who banned the Blairs from the Garden

When Bush and old Vlad came together
To talk about bombs and the weather,
George said, On this field
I carry God’s shield
And sanity’s head on a platter.