Glob-a-log

Beauty’, they say, ‘is in the eye of the beholder’. Some people are into legs: long legs – and the more of them, the better…:

Mark Voegel, 30, was found dead in his Dortmund, Germany apartment. His body was draped in spider webs and more than 200 spiders, several snakes, thousands of termites, and a gecko were feasting on his corpse.

His black widow, Bettina, is believed to have administered the deadly bite.

Not that keeping to your own will necessarily keep you out of trouble. Just the search for a half-decent centerfold can get you into a world of hurt:

A man caught stealing a porn magazine was caught in a public toilet just minutes later. The 19-year-old man emerged red-faced from the disabled toilets in Darwin’s Karama Shopping Centre.

The security guard and Karama Newsagency owner Peter Cullip had been waiting for the man for more than 10 minutes.

“He was pretty embarrassed,” Mr Cullip, 43, said. “We can only guess what he was doing in there.”

Still, it’s not just a craving for naked women that can get you into those interesting spots of bother. If you want to name a common denominator for all those good intentions paving that road to Hell, look no further than the truly bizarre world of DIY, combined with naked greed and a mighty thirst:

A man wearing nothing but a Halloween mask with an attached ponytail distracted workers at a De Soto quick shop so his partner could steal a 30-pack of beer.

De Soto Police Chief Brian Werner, who watched the video, said the incident was pretty funny.

At least we knew he didn’t have a gun,” he said.

Anyway, beauty may be in the eye of the beholder as a rule – but an incompetence plea might be a better bet in the eyes of your lawyer in some cases:

Two Dorchester men were arrested for operating the same vehicle while intoxicated in the Abbotsford area.

Harvey J. Miller, 43, who has no legs, was steering the 1985 Chevrolet truck from the driver’s seat while Edwin H. Marzinske, 55, operated the brake and gas pedals, according to the Colby/Abbotsford Police report.

Enough, though – and since we started with a cliché, we might as well end with one. You’ve heard people say ‘Better safe than sorry’, right?

Okay, I’ll throw in another one, with no extra costs: You really can have ‘too much of a good thing’:

Organisers of a duathlon in Scotland have taken out a £1 million insurance policy against attack by or sighting of the fabled Loch Ness monster.

In one of those press releases that, like some ‘We’ll stay the course!’ slogan, sounds positive but is almost always directly followed by a confused “Yeah, but…?”, lingerie and sex toys retailer Ann Summers says it is hoping that

installing peep holes on the changing room of its Princes Street store is the answer to luring more male shoppers.

Well, no doubt it could, but you have to ask yourself: what kind of ’shoppers’ this would lure exactly?

I’m pretty sure that, if God would announce He, She or It would start a line in mobile phones, this would be a huge hit as well. Mind you, it would be fun to see that endlessly long queue of mad Islamists, Born Again Christians and all the other evil sects, all peacefully together for once, all waiting for their own, private line of holy, I-phone style delivery.

Talking of which, your average phone company these days is about as fast and reliable in picking up their phones as God is in answering prayers:

A woman had to be treated with sedatives for stress after a BT helpline kept her hanging on for twenty hours. Hannah King, 51, wanted to speak to someone when an engineer failed to turn up at her home to fit a phone line.

She held on from 1pm until 9pm but got only piped music and a recorded message playing in her ear. Next day there was another eight-hour wait with no luck. The next morning, she held on from 8am until noon, but again no one from BT picked up.

A BT spokeswoman said: “We would like to apologise for the length of time this customer was left on the phone.”

Anyway, there is something to say for a God that keeps His, Her or Its distance and can’t be reached for comment like any bent politician denying he did whatever he confessed to doing in certain bathrooms – but thanking his audience for ‘coming out in great numbers’ anyway.

A God should not be in your face all the time – and all religions probably should come with warnings like ‘Don’t try this at home.’ Because, you know, all that DIY stuff can get incredibly messy, pretty fast:

Two witches have been accused of tossing a raccoon head and entrails on the doorsteps of two businesses as part of what a witness called an internal Wiccan community feud.

One witch told police that another witch hoped to frame a local Wiccan who had fired the woman from his psychic telephone business last spring.

Not that the more traditional religions don’t have their own highly embarrassing moments. Their Gods might keep a discreet veil between Themselves and the praying plebs, but Their ministers are not always that good in the old hands-off approach:

Aggravated assault charges have been filed against a church deacon and University of Oklahoma Sooners fan after officials say he grabbed a University of Texas fan between the legs during a scuffle in an Oklahoma bar.

The police report described what happened to the victim, including graphic details about his injuries that included a torn scrotal sack with partially exposed testicles.

Still, there is, as they say, a time and place for everything – and some of those do-it-yourself priests and prophets do have an admirably direct approach to both their tasks and their deities.

One would certainly wish that, for instance, all companies like British Telecom and most of the world’s politicians would follow this medicine man’s example:

A traditional medicine man in Tanzania drowned after jumping in a river and promising to resurface three days later with revelations from ancestral spirits, police said.

Come to think of it, the poor guy was probably told to hold…

Forget about those thousands of allied soldiers, the few hundred thousands of dead Iraqis, the few millions refugees and the billions of dollars wasted, that could have been spent on upkeeping bridges, rebuilding New Orleans, or even – very weird thought – feeding the poor or curing the sick…

No, take a wild, Dali-drenched moment to reflect on and say a prayer for the true victims of the Iraq war, and the wider war on terror:

Rumsfeld, gone.
Scooter, gone.
Rove, gone
Gonzales, gone.

Still, the war goes on and what’s old Double Duh doing about it? Yes, just the usual response. You have to give the guy points for consistency at least. And at most.

Still, he has his fans – and no, they are not all dressed in billion dollar oil suits – or all-white constraining clothes.

Some of them are just your average folks, who would just like to keep shouting their ‘Four more years! Four more years!’ forever.

Folks like you and me, in other words – well, maybe not quite like you and me…:

Family Security Matters, a neo-conservative based think tank, has published an article advocating that George W. Bush should be a dictator for life.

The article written by Philip Atkinson states that Bush would fail his country by becoming an ex-President or can achieve greatness by becoming President-for-Life Bush in order to bring sense to Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court.

Atkinson also advocates that Bush should get rid of everyone in Iraq through military force and repopulate the country with Americans.

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestige while terrifying American enemies.

Hear, hear.

Mind you, it’s all good and well to read this kind of nonsense, in the comfort of your own living room, sitting in a cozy chair (or in some stupid office, while your boss isn’t looking…) but spare a moment’s thought for a certain old Lady, out there in the harbour, still holding her torch so high that it hurts.

For Her all of this very bloody nonsense must be almost impossible to watch.

So, to Her our prayers and best wishes.

Keep the faith, Lady; keep the faith. You’ll see all of these useless, endlessly scheming and self-serving bastards in their graves yet.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney defended his five sons’ decision not to enlist in the military, saying they’re showing their support for the country by,

“helping me get elected. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I’d be a great president.”

That’s one way of looking at it – and it’s also why most people think politicians are simply beyond contempt.

So, enough about Romney, and enough about American politics (for now.) Let’s get irritated by some other stuff, for a change.

Take the good folks who work day and night to keep us safe from terrorists:

A seven-year-old boy has been left traumatised after being stopped as a possible terror suspect three times by airport staff.

Javaid Iqbal’s family even missed their flight home from America because of the confusion, caused because his name matched that of a terror suspect.

Accompanied by his mum NaushabaNadeem, 35, and her three other children Sana, nine, Fareeha, nine, and Iftikhar, five, they were held up for three hours at Manchester Airport, one and half hours at Orlando International Airport and a further two hours Philadelphia International Airport on the way home, which resulted in them missing their flight.

Of course, it’s not just the Western world that is plagued by incompetent, heavy-handed and quite frankly, imbecilic cops, civil servants and politicians. Take the government of Delhi’s most ingenious way to protect women from rude, male drunks:

The government in the Indian capital, Delhi, has said a ban on women serving alcohol should continue because of the negative attitude and behaviour of men.

The Delhi government argues that the city’s men cannot hold their drink and that is why it is unsafe to allow women bartenders in pubs and restaurants.

Brilliant! So, let’s say that you have this situation, where men come out of some pub – drunk, of course. They go to a take-away, where they cause a fight.

Solution? Close down the take-away.

Then they go and take a leak against the wall of the church next door.

Solution? Tear down the church.

People of the, no doubt all male Delhi government: we salute you! Again: bloody brilliant!!!

Enough of all these useless wankers though. Let’s end with some positive news – and a positively heart-warming story:

A woman from Cwmbran, Torfaen took out a bank loan and lived on beans on toast for a year to pay £1,800 in vet bills after her pet chicken injured its leg.

Despite the costs, Mrs Mills told her vet to try to save the limb rather than have her put down. When the treatment failed, she paid for an amputation.

Lily was also diagnosed with depression but has now recovered, said Mrs Mills.

“But now she is a happy hen again and laying eggs regularly for us.”

Ain’t that the coolest thing? And I simply adore how the story ends:

“She is quite happy to hop around on one leg.

But sometimes she tries to scratch herself with her missing leg and falls over.”

Bless.

Yesterday I mentioned an old Melanie song, called Psychotherapy. It ends like this:

Freud’s mystic world of meaning needn’t have us mystified
It’s really very simple what the psyche tries to hide
A thing is a phallic symbol if it’s longer than it’s wide
As the Id goes marching on.

Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on

Funk master Freud was big on phallic symbolism, of course – and one of his more insanely brilliant ideas was to hook up people who didn’t even have a penis (yes, women: very good!) to this strange, longer-than-wide thought system, through a concept, called ‘penis envy.’ A syndrome only someone with a very troublesome appendix could have come up with.

If you just consider the weird shit men get up to because of their penises…

Okay, example. Here’s this type of deer – let’s call it an Okapricorn. It comes with a rather strange, inflatable antler on top of its head. Whenever the Okapricorn sees a bit of fruit it fancies, hanging from a nearby tree, the antler grows fat and heavy, flopping in front of the Okapricorn’s eyes, so that the poor deer can hardly see where its going – never mind getting at that delicious bit of fruit. Plus, the more the Okapricorn’s frustration grows, the more its antler inflates, so that the poor beast, still partly blinded by its appendix, now starts to continually trip over the damn thing as well…

Now, would any other deer, watching this unfortunate animal, think ‘Damn, I really need to get me one of those thingamajigs myself?’ Not bloody likely, no - and the same goes for most women and penises.

Still not convinced? Still think Freud was right about this penis envy business? Well, then consider this. It’s not just the man, who’s obsessed with all things phallic. This acting out starts at a very young age indeed. Even before the boy male knows his penis will become this unruly antler, he will have started throwing it – or penis substitutes – about:

A boy of 12 has been hauled before a court and charged with assault - with a sausage.

He was accused of throwing the cocktail sausage at an elderly neighbour. It allegedly hit him on the shoulder.

The boy entered a not guilty plea.

Innocent kid stuff, you say? Nothing a few years of grueling psychotherapy can’t cure? Well, maybe but the problems don’t stop here. The boy becomes a man, learns that the antler can grow – and, from that point onwards, will be forever obsessed with and disappointed at its size. Which can lead to some really weird scenes inside the goldmine, baby…:

A show called Circus Of Horrors lived up to its name when a dwarf accidentally glued his penis to a vacuum cleaner.

Captain Dan The Demon Dwarf was taken to hospital when he became stuck to the the machine after misreading superglue instructions.

The 42-year-old pulls the vacuum across the stage with his manhood at the Edinburgh Fringe production.

Its attachment came loose before a performance so he tried to glue it back on.

He left it to dry for 20 seconds rather than 20 minutes – and it stuck to him when he tried it out.

Of course, it gets even more interesting when the male psyche really gets into gear. Why stop at your own penis, when it comes to causing and getting into trouble? Remember the boy and the sausage. Remember the ‘longer than wide’ adage.

So, what happens when some foolish male gets really worked up about some stupid idea or the other? Well, he wants to fuck it into submission, of course. This, alas, is not always an option that’s actually available, so the man seeks to throw his dick about in a more abstract way.

That’s when his actual head starts to turn red, gathering blood. It swells. It swells some more – but there’s no obvious relief at hand, so the man starts to jab and point with his finger a lot, thrusting and throbbing like mad – really throwing the old appendix substitute about.

At times, though, even this is not enough – and then things really get out of hand (and not solely as a manner of speech…):

A Japanese political activist has been arrested after he cut off his little finger and posted it to PM Shinzo Abe’s ruling party, according to police.

Yoshihiro Tanjo said he was protesting against Mr Abe’s refusal to visit a war shrine, on the 62nd anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II.

Still, what will get the penis-riddled male most of the time is that he is so desperate to impress women with his power & grit and his mighty appendix. Such a pity that the penis isn’t actually a very impressive looking bit of plumbing machinery.

In rest it looks like an ill-conceived and poorly executed piece of pasta. Raised in all its glory, it would still not be quite strong or large enough to function as a door stop. So, men get nervous. Men get weird – and men will do any damn fool thing at all to prove to their women that they can take care of business. Sometimes, this leads to very weird situations.

A robber who held up a bookmaker’s shop in Leicester with his girlfriend’s vibrator has been jailed.

The manager at Ladbrokes in Narborough Road handed over more than £600 in cash when he pointed it at her on 27 December 2006, the court heard.

Penis envy, anyone? Thought not.

There is an old Melanie song, called Psychotherapy, that starts like this:

Oh mine eyes have seen the glory of the theories of Freud,
He has taught me all the evils that my ego must avoid.
Repression of the impulses result in paranoid
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on

Catchy little tune and quite a hit in its time – but we’ll leave it there for the moment, because, here, in the present, Lucy Mangan, one of the Guardian’s columnists, has written a book about dating, and about girls, and about girls dating.

Here are her ten ‘Secrets To A Long-Lasting Relationship:’

1 Separate interests
2 Separate workplaces
3 Separate televisions
4 Separate beds
5 Separate meals
6 Separate houses
7 Separate friends
8 Separate holidays
9 Separate Christmasses
10 Separate bank accounts

You may have noticed that, strangely enough, ’separate wardrobes’ did not make this list. An oversight that will most probably be corrected in the second edition of this quite wonderful book, since a stricter separation of wardrobes could have saved many a relationship – and even lives:

A 43-year-old Thai man was found dead wearing 15 bras and a mini-skirt belonging to his estranged wife.
Relatives of the man, who formerly worked as an optician in Bangkok, told police he had been suffering depression since his wife left him for another man and had been taking painkillers washed down with coffee several times a day.

It is, of course, not just Bangkok’s opticians who have a breast fixation. In the West, and maybe most prominently so in the USA, the pursuit of happiness has been replaced by the ever more bizarre pursuit of the ever-enhancing tit. An obsession that by now has reached well beyond all seemliness – and even well beyond the grave:

The late model Anne Nicole Smith’s lawyer, Howard Stern, has gone to court to prevent the now retired Dr Gerald Wayne Johnson from “selling, distributing or otherwise disseminating” a video of the breast augmentation surgery of his late client.

Smith, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, model, topless dancer and reality television star died on February 8 in Florida after collapsing from an accidental drug overdose.

In court documents, Stern accused Johnson of sending a tape showing the procedure to Thomas Riccio, a Los Angeles-based memorabilia dealer.

It is nice to see how doctors are still obeying that old Hippocratic oath: first do no harm to your own bank account.

(To be continued)

t’s not easy to get me really pissed off…Okay, that’s a bloody lie. I am extremely easily irritated, in fact. Some people are ticklish. I’m quite allergic to all kinds of idiocy.

Still, take it from the top, please. Let’s not go all rant-shaped from the very first paragraph.

So, there’s this publisher, ‘Classical Comics’ that’s decided to bring out comic book versions of Shakespeare’s plays.

Nothing wrong with that perse, though one could always ask the question, as a recent Guardian literature blog did, why one would want a comic book, if there still is a perfectly okay original version available.

For instance, there’s a publisher that’s just convinced itself that what the world really needs is the work of Agatha Christie in comic book form.

As the Guardian columnist notes:

The latest [works to be made into comic books] are Agatha Christie’s, with eight reworkings of whodunnits including Murder on the Orient Express due from HarperCollins. They’re intended to “enthral a whole new audience of Christie fans”, because apparently two billion books sold just isn’t enough.

Back to the bloody morons of Classical Comics though. They state, as a ‘How do you do?’ type introduction, that,

“Like you, we are passionate about the graphical novel format, and we know how much quality means to you. That’s why we only employ top-flight artists to create the full-colour artwork that captures all of the atmosphere, emotion and excitement of the original classical works . We want to to give you a thoroughly absorbing reading experience.”

Okay, ever (not) so slightly nauseating but nothing particularly offensive – so far.

Hell, no – I’m so not going to spend a second longer, analysing and then discussing these disgusting people and their insanely asinine project.

I’ll just leave you with this gem, lifted word for word from their own site:

If you’ve ever wanted to fully appreciate the works of Shakespeare but find the original language rather cryptic then this is the version for you!

Fully appreciate Shakespeare – but without all those pesky words…

Gods, give me strength…!!!

Jeremy Paxman is one of the most famous and respected TV News journalists on British television.

He is also acerbic, often impatient with question-dodging politicians and he doesn’t stand fools – or foolish ideas – gladly.

He also has a quite devastating sense of humour.

So, when his BBC bosses decided that its flagship news programme Newsnight should have a weather report, a deeply unimpressed Paxman made sure they regretted forcing him to read these weather forecasts.

After a few days of Paxman ‘doing the weather’ the whole idea was quietly abandoned.

Still, Paxman does have a nose for other types of weather – and when he talks, people tend to listen, whether they like what he’s saying or not.

Therefore, it was no wonder that, given the fact that the BBC and other British broadcasters only recently have been involved with all kinds of scandals, from rigged phone-in competitions to ‘creative’ editing of TV documentaries, it was Paxman who was asked to give the flagship opening night speech at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.

No-one was surprised that Paxman used this platform to hammer home some unwelcome home truths.

First he had a go at his own employers, the BBC:

Working for the BBC has always been a bit like living in Stalin’s Russia, with one five-year-plan, one resoundingly empty slogan after another.

Then, he got to the more serious business of condemning the whole medium in its handling of the News:

“In the very crowded world in which television lives, it won’t do to whisper, natter, cogitate or muse,” he told the audience of TV executives. “You have to shout. The need is for constant sensation. The consequence is that reporting now prizes emotion over much else.”

About the recent ‘credibility issues’ the medium had had, he was brief:

“The question we have to ask ourselves is, is there something rotten in the state of television, some systemic sickness, that renders it inherently dishonest?” said Mr Paxman. “But the question behind that one is simply ‘what is television for?’”

Of course, you don’t need to be Jeremy Paxman to see that the more sensational TV thinks it has to become, the less honest, reputable and, as a consequence, the less credible and relevant it will become.

In other words, you can cover the news or you can cover Paris Hilton – but if you ‘do’ the latter, you will inevitably pick up some very nasty diseases too.

(The full Paxman speech you can find here.)

Hollywood is at it… again:

There will be no Munchkins skipping among the daisies, and the Yellow Brick Road will be updated with the latest computer technology in the Warner Brothers remake of the Wizard of Oz.

To the inevitable horror of the movie’s thousands of ardent fans, the producers have vowed to take the story and inject it with a “2007 wow factor”.

The new version is the brainchild of Todd McFarlane, a media entrepreneur who cut his teeth on the Spider-Man comics and rose to fame with his own anti-hero creation, Spawn.

He told Variety magazine that he wants to give the film a dark edginess, with Dorothy “much closer to the Ripley from Alien than a helpless singing girl”.

He has already produced a line of toys featuring a sexed-up Dorothy, and her dog Toto morphed into a vicious warthog.

Lovely.

Still, I’m sure it will be an unmitigating success – just like that other remake, marketed as a sequel.

You know, the one about a young, blameless hero, following in the footsteps of his much loved daddy, going on the same quest as the old man: to serve the Light – and to defeat the Forces of Darkness.

Now, what was that one called again? It’s on the tip of my tongue…

What?

Oh yes, of course, how silly of me:

Iraq ll: The adventure Continues!

People love to complain about their government and all its institutions. From heads of state to garbage collector: all, in their time – and often more than once - have stood blinking in the furious headlights of some citizen’s disgust and fury.

Sometimes, of course, our nations’ institutions go out of their way to exasperate us:

Denis Basford was threatened with a £70 litter fine - for brushing his dog in his car. A litter patrolman claimed some of the animal’s hairs were blowing out of the window.

Denis, 52, said: “I thought he was joking. All I was doing was brushing my dog and I was told I would be fined £70 unless I stopped.

“I showed him empty pizza boxes and cans next to a burned-out bin, but he said he couldn’t do anything about that.”

Still, however harsh and stupid the above may sound, there is something to say for this kind of clarity. Moreover, if the simple rule ‘Thou shall not litter’ is enforced with such remarkable zeal, then the collected citizenry should be able to sleep peacefully, safe in the knowledge that the state’s bloodhounds will guard that sleep against much more serious offences: burglary, rape, murder and what have you.

For if you threaten to fine someone over some dog hairs, then the true evil doers must tremble and fear the fierce shadow of the law, whenever they even contemplate breaking it. Right?

Yeah, right…!

A predatory paedophile walked free from court yesterday after admitting a string of sex attacks on children, including an 18-month-old baby.

Michael Porter, 38, used his trusted position as a prominent Jehovah’s Witness to prey on youngsters, many of them children of members of the church.

A respected member of the church in Somerset, Porter regularly babysat for youngsters, took them on holiday and invited them for sleepovers at his home.

He pleaded guilty to 24 counts of indecent assault and gross indecency over 15 years. But at Bristol crown court Judge Tom Crowther handed him a three-year community rehabilitation order after hearing he had undergone therapy.

The convict’s church said yesterday it would support him. A spokesman said: “He will be carefully supervised.”

You know, I’ve never been a very enthusiastic fan of the ‘We’re doomed’ choirs of life. Still, there is something seriously wrong with our societies and almost all the institutions that are supposed to serve us.

Anyway, for whatever it’s worth and whatever its efficacy, while I’m addressing the sacred, binary void, I would like to use the opportunity to officially curse both crown court judge Crowther and the Jehovah’s Witness Church:

May both man and Church suffer the same amount of fear, anguish, horror and excruciating pain as all the collective victims of Michael Porter.

Furthermore and still addressing whatever avenging force may be listening and willing to act:

It would, of course, also be nice if the offender himself could die a painful death, after a long and debilitating illness (starting, let’s say: now); helpless and afraid as all his victims were – and, in his fevered and sick mind, certain that what he suffered now was nothing compared to what will follow after his death.