Kira O’Reilly will provide her own answer today by spending four hours naked, hugging a dead pig - at the taxpayer’s expense.
The controversial Irish performance artist will invite one person at a time to watch her sit in a specially-constructed set and perform a ‘crushing slow dance’ with the carcass in her arms.
She claims the bizarre exhibition is an attempt to ‘identify’ with the pig, which she cuts with a knife during the show.
How frightfully daring…: ‘Sleeping with pigs.’
Okay, it is slightly less revolting than that movie, ‘Dances with Wolves‘ but still.
Kira, Kira, Kira… Was killing and stripping and, in a sense, fucking with a real policeman truly too much to ask for…?
Ah well: young artists these days. They just don’t have the guts to go for glory anymore.
“Abu Ghraib – you know…? Iraqi prisoners being tortured, snapshots taken:”
In the HBO documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, tracking the background to the scandal, we saw that the Americans had taken Saddam’s torture prison and turned it into a down-home, Texas-style torture prison. What remained unchanged was the Iraqis being tortured.
The programme began with that famous and overused behavioural experiment of the 1950s, in which ordinary people were asked to inflict electric shocks on invisible strangers. Many, many TV documentaries and reality shows have been based on this piece of research. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib had remarkable access to the soldiers who appeared in the photographs and the colonel in charge: the only people to be punished for offences. The documentary comprehensively proved that, far from being the sadism of bad soldiers, this was a planned programme, explicitly ordered and condoned by the chain of command that ended in the White House.
“Oh, that…!”
“Yes, that.”
“But that was ages ago, wasn’t it? Now, where’s that kitty gone? Here, kitty! Kitty, kitty, kitty…”
“Never mind that bloody cat…! Blackwater! Does that ring a bell, maybe?”
“Kitty, kitty – here, kitty, kitty…!”
“BLACKWATER, you moron…!”
“Kitty, kitty…; here, kitty, kitty…”
Blackwater…? Anyone…?!”
During the ensuing week, as Crocker and Petraeus told Congress that the surge of more U.S. troops to Iraq was beginning to work and President Bush gave a televised address in which he said “ordinary life was beginning to return” to Baghdad , Blackwater security guards shot at least 43 people on crowded Baghdad streets. At least 16 of those people died.
“Yes, very sad, of course. Now, have you seen that kitty maybe? Black and white? So cute! Here, kitty, kitty! Kitty, kitty, kitty…!”
“Right – I give up. But you know what? I almost hope Cheney will take over for the next eight years. Followed by Jeb Bush maybe, or Kenneth Starr.”
“Kitty, kitty, kitty… Here, kitty, kitty…!”
As the “first pet” of the Clinton era, Socks, the White House cat, allowed “chilly” Hillary Clinton to show a caring, maternal side as well as bringing joy to her daughter Chelsea. So where is Socks today?
Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks any more. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, who also had an embarrassing clean-up role in the saga of his relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky.
Some believe the abandoned pet could now come between Hillary Clinton and her ambition to return to the White House as America’s first woman president.
Clinton’s treatment of Socks cuts to the heart of the questions about her candidacy. Is she too cold and calculating to win the presidency? Or does it signify political invincibility by showing she is willing to deploy every weapon to get what she wants?
The woolly-hatted gunman, said to be in his 30s, first struck at 10.25am on Saturday in the centre of Doncaster, South Yorks.
He burst into the Bradford & Bingley Building Society and demanded staff hand over a bag full of cash. He ran out into the crowded street, but had to drop the bag when a security device was activated and dye began spurting from it.
Undeterred, he tried again just over an hour later at the Halifax - where he queued for 20 minutes before making a cashier hand over a bundle of notes. But once more his luck was out. He was tackled by a heroic member of the public and fled minus the cash after a brief struggle.
Just 30 minutes later the raider climbed into a taxi and demanded money. The terrified cabbie leapt out of the moving vehicle and it crashed into a road sign - forcing the gunman to escape on foot.
He hijacked a Peugeot 206 from a woman at a local filling station before attempting his final heist at around 2.30pm. This time he snatched a box from Group 4 security officer at a Co-Op in nearby Conisbrough … only to find it was empty.
Some people love conspiracy theories. From the landing on the moon (and Elvis on Venus), through Kennedy’s grassy knoll towards Twin Tower moments: someone is always ‘covering up’ something.
These ‘theories’ are always (mildly) entertaining but they all have this very basic flaw: they don’t account for the fact that people and organisations simply are too stupid to pull off any conspiracy for any serious length of time.
This whole Big Brother thing – and the state’s forces of darkness spying on your every move.
Well, in the end it always comes down to this kind of thing: EASTBOURNE The crew of a Ministry of Defence helicopter broke low-flying rules, causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to a Sussex mansion, so that they could spy on an au-pair who was sunbathing, the High Court was told yesterday.
People are, in effect, the best argument against that other nonsense ‘theory’: Intelligent Design.
Anyway, people can be quite stupid without any outside help – but when you throw in alcohol, things really can get hilarious fast. (Mind you, there’s this one guy, whom I wouldn’t trust with a remote controlled rubber duckie, who did made most of his stupid mistakes after he stopped drinking…)
Anyway, you know how public health & safety campaigns always go on and on about the perils of ‘drink driving’.
Matt Martin was camping alone near a beach in northern Queensland when he decided to go for a dusk swim, despite having drunk what he later admitted was “half a slab”, or 12 cans of beer.
When the 35-year-old construction worker dived into a wave, he butted heads with a submerged saltwater crocodile.
There was a lovely bit of news in the paper recently. Not exactly world-shattering (or -saving) news but it was a highly enjoyable story anyway:
Researchers investigating ‘The Role of Towels As A Control to Reduce Slip Potential’ are wringing out every drop of information on the topic. They have spent close to a month and £12,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to find out whether a towel on a bathroom floor makes one less likely to slip.
The team, based at the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton, Derbyshire, bought a set of identical towels from a local supermarket. They splashed rough tiles and smooth tiles and worn vinyl and new vinyl with varying amounts of water. Then, using a machine-operated pendulum, they measured the friction produced from a towel rubbing against the surfaces.
The results? They didn’t manage to come up with any.
“Unfortunately the testing carried out here is insufficient to draw significant conclusions,” their report admitted.
Kevin Hallas, who is leading the investigation, explained the research had been “complicated”.
Now, before you all go anti-science and Republican on me, just remember that the war in Iraq is now costing $200 million each and every day and could end up costing more than $1 trillion.
And that while it didn’t need any research for our neo-conmen to know that the war might prove to be “complicated.” Hell, their most faithful servant, Dick ‘the vice’ Cheney had openly admitted in an interview that to invade Iraq would be total madness.
Still want to have a superior snigger at those egghead scientists…?
Anyway, you know how they always say that times change? Well, in many ways hardly so that you’d notice. During the Vietnam era military spokesmen came up with truly delightful little gems like, ‘We had to destroy the village in order to save it.’
Wars come and go (and come again) but the military complex will always keep aiming for the gloriously surreal: BAE, Europe’s largest defence company, says that it is working on removing lead from bullets and shells.
“Lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people,” it observes.
So, when people wasting money on slippery towel research look vastly more intelligent than Washington’s policy makers, and when ‘intelligent design’ in weapons has come to mean the removal of some harmful substances from them, it is a small wonder that even TV comedians think they could do a much better job at ruling the country than the current crop of politicians:
NEW YORK — Stephen Colbert announced his candidacy for president on “The Colbert Report” on Tuesday night:
“I shall seek the office of the President of the United States,” announced Colbert on his Comedy Central show, as red, white and blue balloons fell around him.
Shortly before making the announcement, Colbert appeared on “The Daily Show” (the show which spawned Colbert’s spin-off) and played cagy, claiming he was only ready to consider a White House bid. He entered the studio set pulled by a bicycle pedaled by Uncle Sam and quickly pulled out a bale of hay and a bottle of beer to show that he was “an Average Joe.”
Well, God only knows what the average American wants but the ridiculously & shamefully small percentage of those who are not too self-centered, apathetic or simply too plain stupid to vote do seem to like this ‘Average Joe’ – so let’s end this column with just such an Average Joe story:
A burglar in Montgomery chose the wrong family to mess with, literally. Adrian and Tiffany McKinnon returned home on Tuesday after a week away to find that thieves had emptied almost everything the family of five owned, Tiffany McKinnon said through tears.
“Tears just rolled down my face as I walked in and saw everything gone and piles of trash all over my home,” she said.
My husband Adrian caught the thief red-handed in our home,” she said.
Adrian McKinnon held the suspect, 33-year-old Tajuan Bullock, at gunpoint and told him to sit on the floor until he decided what to do.
“We made this man clean up all the mess he made, piles of stuff, he had thrown out of my drawers and cabinets onto the floor,” Tiffany McKinnon said.
When police arrived, Bullock complained about being forced to clean the home at gunpoint.
Ah yes, talk about a truly perfect metaphor for our times…
Yes, obviously this complaining burglar can stand for George Bush and his cronies, who don’t want to be held responsible for or clean up the messes they’ve made.
However, he can also easily serve as a stand-in for all those non-voting citizens who subsequently complain about the ’system’ which enables all the idiotic & venal scum to rise to positions where they can make these messes in the first place.
2008 is closer than you think, my American friends. Remember those wet towel scientists, remember that complaining burglar – and do your civic duty (for once…!) and vote.
You’ve heard of the expression, ‘To flog a dead horse‘? (If not, the free dictionary.com defines it as: ‘To waste time trying to do something that will not succeed.’)
As an expression it works well enough but it does lack a bit of oomph. So, maybe we should replace that dead horse with something else – and maybe, while we’re at it, we can find something better to do to it than simply flog it. Something along the following lines, maybe:
Ronald Kuch, a 44-year-old from Michigan, is charged with ‘crimes against nature’ after allegedly being seen engaging in sexual acts with the corpse of a dog, which had been dead for four or five days.
Police say the sexual acts were witnessed not only by one of their officers, but by staff at the day care centre in Saginaw, Michigan.
When police tried to arrest him, he reportedly shoved an officer aside and ran away. He was eventually tracked down and discovered hiding in the attic of a nearby house – which, police say, belonged to his girlfriend.
Police say that they have determined the dead dog had also belonged to his girlfriend.
Yes, much better…
And if you hadn’t guessed already: yes, it’s time for yet another award. The Fuck A Dead Dog Award (or: FADD) to be handed to the person of persons who are trying to sell or explain something (stupid, criminal or simply distasteful) they’ve done with no chance in Hell of succeeding.
So, without further ado, this year’s candidates for the FADD are:
1) Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, of the vatican:
The Vatican was last night at the centre of an unusually public sex scandal after acknowledging it had suspended a senior official who was filmed apparently propositioning a young man in his office.
Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, a capo ufficio, or section head, at the Vatican ministry responsible for the clergy, insisted yesterday he was not gay.
Mgr Stenico acknowledged in several Italian media interviews yesterday that he had been suspended.
And this was his quite brilliantly deranged defence:
He told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that he “wanted to carry out a study, probably for publication”. He said he was a registered psychologist and psychotherapist and his aim had been “to study how priests are ensnared”.
He added: “I really believe that there is a diabolic plan by satanist groups who take aim at priests.”
2) A (so far) unnamed US immigration judge:
In the United States, a judge refused the extradition of a convicted Cosa Nostra heroin trafficker on the grounds that Italy’s tough prison regime for gangsters was a form of torture.
A US immigration judge rejected Italy’s request for the return of Sicilian-born Rosario Gambino because he would be subject to a prison regime designed to compel convicted criminals to turn state’s evidence, according to the Los Angeles Times. The paper quoted the judge as saying: “This coercion is not related to any lawfully imposed sanction or punishment, and thus constitutes torture.”
And this is why the Italian justice minister was less than impressed with this sorry excuse for an explanation:
Italian officials expressed outrage. The justice minister, Clemente Mastella, said he doubted whether “a country that uses the death penalty is more in line with UN values that a country that enforces tough prison sentences”. Piero Luigi Vigna, formerly the chief anti-mafia prosecutor, said the US “can’t give lessons on human rights when they have Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib on their conscience”.
3) The Goldman family, for hiring a ghost writer to finish and then publish O.J. Simpson’s ‘If I did it’ book.
First, a few of columnists Rod Liddle’s thoughts on the book:
Now, here’s a thing. A book that is simultaneously morally disgusting and excruciatingly dull. A filthy little project that, although extremely brief (there’s a lot of padding in those 208 pages), succeeds in both boring the reader beyond endurance and making him gag. Hurry, hurry, while stocks last, etc.
On the other hand, the stuff about the book — how it came into being and why — is quite compelling, in the same way that staring straight into an open sewer can be quite compelling for a while. What’s going to float along next? That old thing horrified fascination, I suppose.
There’s a lot of horrible stuff to be gleaned about America from the whole OJ Simpson business. The continuing power of racism. A society consumed by financial greed. How everything can be appropriated for entertainment, no matter how base or morally repellent. If I Did It is, of course, in the American bestsellers list. Spare yourself and don’t buy it.
And how did these parents of one of O.J.’s victims (Ron Goldman, the friend of O.J.’s wife Nicole) try to defend this morally repugnant & indefensible decision. Well, this is what they wrote in the foreword:
Well, of course you are… you disgusting little maggot.
Truly, there are way too many utterly revolting people on this ill-used but still beautiful planet of ours – reminding me of what columnist Katharine Whitehorn wrote about a subcategory of these folks:
‘Why do born-again people so often make you wish they’d never been born the first time?’
Maybe we could develop some highly selective bird flue strain, that only attacks these types of moral vacuums…?
Which reminds me of a rather nice joke – and a perfect note to finish on, having had to deal with all these truly ghastly candidates for the Fuck A Dead Dog Award:
‘When I roar,’ says the lion, ‘the whole of the jungle trembles!’
‘When I growl’ says the bear, ‘the whole of the forest quakes!’
‘So what!’ says the chicken, ‘When I cough, the whole world shits itself.’
I already mentioned this in a previous column but the people of Prague are very relaxed about sex. Whether you are male or female, you can approach about anyone and ask them if they would be interested in going to bed with you and no-one will call you a sexist pig or a hopeless slut.
This, of course, does not mean that people will actually have sex with you but it is safe to ask.
The following two anecdotes are, again, hopelessly autobiographical and will serve as a classic ‘How to get lucky’ text book - in reverse, that is.
1) Once upon a time I was sitting in my local non-stop, reading some book. I’ve forgotten what kind of book. It would be nice to pretend it was Shakespeare or Rilke but it is, statistically speaking, far more likely that is was a Stephen King or Terry Pratchett novel.
Anyway, I’m sitting there, reading and nipping from my beer & Fernet, when a woman sitting next to me approaches me. She apologises for disturbing me but could I do her a huge favour? Then she explains that the drunken neighbour to the right of her, who has just gone to the toilet, has been bothering her and won’t take no for an answer. So, if I could just talk to her for a bit, till the obnoxious drunk returns, so that he will then get the message that she won’t be going home with him…?
Well, the woman was quite pretty and I was raised to be polite, so I agree to do as she proposed. So, we start to talk and when the drunken guy returns to the bar, we keep talking (and ignoring his efforts to join in) till he sees the light, pays his bill and leaves. The woman thanks me, buys me a new glass of Fernet and I return to the immortal words of Shakespeare/Rilke (or, in all likelihood, to the gory/funny tales of King/Pratchett.)
After a while the beer or the Fernet starts to get to me and I go to the toilet. When I leave the toilet the woman from the bar is standing there. She says ‘Hi!’ and smiles at me; I say ‘Hi!’ and smile back, and then return to the bar and my book. Well, everybody knows that when you start to go, you keep going, and so it is this time. And the next two times I come out of the toilet, the woman is standing there, smiling & saying ‘Hi’ and I, being quite the clever little sod, simply deduce that she has the same kind of bladder capacity as I have.
The fourth time I go to the toilet she’s not there when I’ve done my business. Back at the bar the barman - who, by now, knows me well - hands me a note, left by the woman. The note is pretty polite, all things considered. The barman shakes his head, pours me another glass of Fernet and says, with a very long-suffering kind of sigh, ‘You are such an idiot…!’
It has been suggested by some (well, by Cherrycher, anyway) that writing poems will get you laid. Well, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t any poems around that will get all kinds of juices flowing and poets who, so to speak, are able to collect this spillage or steer the flow towards the bedroom. I’m just saying that doesn’t happen all the time - and more to the point: that it hasn’t happened to me. In fact, the exact opposite happened to me. Which leads us to today’s second cautionary tale:
2) I was sitting in a bar, finishing a letter to the Lady Renata. In fact, I was copying out some poems I had written for her earlier in the week, to go with the letter, as appendix. (A hand-written letter, yes. There’s something intensely satisfying about writing & receiving hand-written letters, especially if they contain poems.)
Renata had been in Australia for five months already and had just E-mailed me that she would stay there for at least another eight months. Earlier she had also informed me that she’d picked up another temporary companion (or, in her own words, a ‘beau’.) I had done my usual bit of mournful pining when she’d set out on another round of travelling but was slowly beginning to notice Prague’s many other extremely beautiful women again.
Like the one who was, in fact, sitting at the bar, in this pub where I was finishing my letter to Renata. She had looked in my direction a few times, and I had looked more than a few times to where she was sitting and whenever our eyes met, there was smiling & polite rejoicing on both sides. Hmmm: interrrresting… but I really wanted to finish that letter first.
So, I had just copied out the last poem, when another woman came to my table, and asked me what I was doing. She was also quite lovely (if not as beautiful as the woman at the bar) so it was no hardship at all to smile back at her and to explain (somewhat ruefully) that I’d just finished a letter to my girlfriend who was in Australia.
The woman smiled back at me. (She reminded me of someone but I couldn’t think of whom, so I ignored that niggling voice.) Then she looked at the letter and said, ‘You have written poems for her? You must love her very much.’ So, I said that yes, I did love her very much and then I waxed lyrical about Renata for a few more minutes. The woman then praised my steadfast heart and romantic soul and said her goodbyes. I waved her a manfully steadfast goodbye (thinking that I’d done very well resisting any possible kind of sexual overture, while still managing to send her on her way, feeling good about the whole encounter - and that now it was time to finish my beer, seal the envelope and go over to the bar and talk to that other woman.)
I was about to do just that when I noticed that the woman I’d been talking to was now in deep conversation with ‘my’ woman. And then I remembered where I’d seen the woman I’d been telling about Renata before: she’d come in with the woman at the bar before toddling off again to spend some time talking to other people.
Damn.
When woman A had explained the whole thing to woman B both looked at me, smiling approvingly. I smiled back at them and raised my glass in their direction, cursing myself mightily inside. When the women had finished up their drinks they left. On their way out ‘my’ woman smiled quite wistfully at me - a bit sad but still approving. I smiled bravely and wistfully back, cursing even louder on the inside.
So, I ended up going home alone, after posting my letter: the mighty player/poet striking out again…
Still, it did make a great opening for my next letter to Renata (who subsequently wrote me back, saying that she hadn’t had such a good laugh in quite some time…) and now it also makes a nice cautionary tale in this ongoing ‘How to get laid in Prague’ saga. Or, as that great sage Aristotle once wrote, ‘Go figure.’
(You can find ‘How to get laid in Prague: part one’ here.)
Accidents happen. There’s nothing shameful about that.
Still, before we elaborate on this, let’s commiserate a little with a young, bright English student, who has this tiniest of problems…:
A bright pupil has been excluded from his new school because staff were unable to cope with his nut allergy.
George Hall-Lambert, 11, attended lessons for only four days before being told to stay away until the school could carry out a “risk assessment”.
His mother, Judith, said her son had been labelled a “health and safety hazard” by teachers.
Don’t forget about poor George, please – we will come back to him in the dying moments of this column.
Back to accidents though. Nothing dishonourable about accidents, as we said – even though it is painfully plausible that some victims will carry the incredulous laughter of the accident’s witnesses with them longer than any bruises, broken bones or actual scars:
Leo Murphy was taken to MaineGeneral Medical Center in a hearse after the Sept. 20 fall during a burial service at the Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Augusta.
Other types of accidents though deserve to end in the kind of official recognition only the Darwin Awards can offer: Witnesses said a driver who lost control along a Highway 401 on-ramp in London, Ontario yesterday was eating cereal when the vehicle careened through a grass median and jumped into 100 kilometre-an-hour traffic, causing a three-vehicle crash.
Still, way beyond ordinary accidents, and the usual drunken, cretinous and/or suicidal mishaps, there’s stuff even Hollywood couldn’t come up with, not if they had the deep pockets of Bill Gates or a dream team of script writers, filled with the likes of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Stephen King.
Throw in one part Lady Macbeth, one part Oliver Twist and a coup de grace appearance of Jack Nicholson shouting ‘Here’s johnny!’and you’re still not even close to the slow-motion car crash & accidental freak show that’s celebrity life today:
She reckons he is the perfect man to help her because he has managed to hang on to his children through a string of troubles.
Wacko, 49, has offered the singer tips on bringing up her two sons – plus a holiday at his Neverland ranch away from her woes.
Britney, 25, is planning to take him up on his offer because she reckons he could help her win full custody of Sean Preston, two, and Jayden James, one, after telling a pal: “He never lost his kids.”
As I said at the start of this column: spare a few moments’ thought & sympathy on that unfortunate British pupil, because this truly must be the worst moment in all of mankind’s recorded history to be allergic to nuts.
Let’s start with a quote from a column by Richard Morrison, in The Times:
Every mother knows that childbirth is a stroll in the park compared with the trauma of deciding what to call the puking pink blob that discloses absolutely no clue as to its future personality, appearance or talents. No wonder that, in the world’s less imaginative families, the father simply declares:
“Hell, woman, George Bush was a good enough name for me, so it can damn well do for the nipper too.”
I’m not sure all that many women would actually agree with Morrison’s ’stroll in the park’ statement but it’s true enough that, like T.S. Eliot wrote in his famous poem:
‘The Naming of Brats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a brat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey–
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter–
But all of them sensible everyday names.’
Still, to go from one bit of verse to another: naming the child is just the first hurdle – which is then followed by every parent’s dream, or nightmare, to wit: what will become of what Morrison so charmingly described as their ‘puking pink blobs’:
‘When shall I marry?
This year, next year, sometime, never.
What will my husband be?
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief.’
Some parents just wish something eminently sensible for their kids. Something traditional. So, if it’s a girl, the mother or father will, from time to time, remark:
“Oh, wouldn’t our puking pink blob just make a perfect nurse?”
And indeed, it’s a noble calling: ameliorating the suffering of patients:
A severely ill patient on a strict “soft food diet” choked to death at a hospital after nurses gave him toast.
Martin Jennings,36, who had problems swallowing, died following “gross failure” at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham when lumps of toast became lodged in his windpipe.
Despite a warning notice on his bed and nurses being aware Mr Jennings could not eat solid food, Birmingham coroner’s court heard they gave him toast because he wanted it.
The court was even told that the nurses “believed it was the patient’s basic human rights” to have toast if he demanded it.
And if these salt-of-the-earth type of parents think of a career for their little pink boy blob, it will be along the lines of something technical, something in sales…
Something utterly dependable, with a steady kind of income – like that enjoyed by a car salesman, for instance.
Again, if not exactly a calling, it is at least a very good and solid call:
A car dealer who found a handgun in a car yard he bought accidentally shot his friend in the testicle while playing with the firearm, a court was told yesterday.
Both men then lied about the shooting to police, telling them it occurred during a robbery.
The court was told Cheers twirled the around his finger while showing it to his friend, Phillip Marino.
The gun discharged, shooting Marino in the scrotum and groin. He lost 15 per cent of his right testicle, the court was told.
Of course, most parents will be pleased enough to turn their puking blobs into respectable nurses and reasonably honest car salesmen, but some parents have bigger dreams. They want their blobs to go out into the world and conquer it. Their little girl won’t be a simple nurse. O no, she will become an honest to God doctor – and with it rich and respected; wise as a wizard and loved as a Goddess.
You simply can’t go wrong, wishing for your child to become a doctor:
An Indian couple has been charged with the murder of one of their sons after they tried to transfuse his blood into his elder brother to make him smarter.
The Indian Express newspaper said the mother had a dream in which a guru advised blood transfusion to make their elder son do better at his studies.
The couple were both doctors.
Most ambitious modern parents simply want their boy blobs to become successful in the world of finance – to become a money merchant or a fiscal warrior. A captain of industry, let’s say a CEO, would be perfect but there are many other, highly satisfying careers that come with loads of money, three piece suits and serious real estate – like, for instance, the mortgage brokering profession.
As parents you can really sit back and relax when your son has become a mortgage broker:
A crazed attacker broke into a Long Island man’s home, beat him with a karaoke machine and bit off his ear, police said.
The 64-year-old Uniondale resident attempted to defend himself with a vacuum cleaner hose.
Luis Hidalgo, a mortgage broker, has been charged with first-degree assault and first-degree burglary. He pleaded not guilty on Friday at his arraignment in First District Court in Hempstead and was being held at the Nassau County jail on $250,000 cash or $500,000 bond.
Police are investigating whether Hidalgo was high on drugs during the burglary or mentally ill.
In truth? The best advice for parents would be to call their new and shiny puking pink blob ‘Lucky’ and just pray that it will rub off.
It probably won’t have escaped your notice that Halloween is lurching round the corner like a desperate hooker or a senator on the take. So, it won’t come as a surprise exactly that the moron brigade has started to make its usual stupid noises again as well:
Teachers want to rename the party planned for the night of October 31 as an “Autumn Festival”.
Mind you, it is certainly true that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, while most people take offence some of the time, some people are offended all of the time – and some of these good folks have no trouble at all articulating this:
Garcia said she heard hollering and swearing and looked outside to see Odee struggling with the giant pumpkin. “He was enraged. I could see that,” she said.
When she yelled at him to go away, Odee charged the house. She fled through the back door with three of her children and heard window glass breaking. She called 911 from another neighbour’s house. Police said Odee used his head to smash a window to get in.
However, while this proves that some people aren’t exactly party animals, others are perhaps a bit too fond of the pleasure principle – and going for the odd ‘trick or treat’ in highly original if somewhat dubious ways:
WOODLAND, Calif. (AP) — A dentist accused of fondling the breasts of 27 female patients is trying to keep his dental license by arguing that chest massages are an appropriate procedure in certain cases.
His lawyer says dental journals discuss the need to massage the pectoral muscles to treat a common jaw problem.
However, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Phillips gave the judge three new complaints, including one from a 31-year-old woman who said Anderson fondled her at least six times over two years.
She took to wearing tight shirts with high necklines, “and Anderson would still get in under her shirt and bra,” according to a police report.
Still, who needs cheap sex stories, when Halloween is approaching? We want scary stuff, not skimpy knickers stories.
Ah well, as the Stones sang all these years ago, ‘You can’t always get what you want’...:
But for young women on the hunt for something extra special, Tinseltown can be a gold mine.
Trashy Lingerie in Los Angeles has designed intimate apparel for Hollywood’s glitterati for more than 30 years. Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Heather Locklear, Carmen Electra and Paris Hilton have all snared slips and snips of the spicy lingerie wear.
You will most definitely not hear me say this very often but: Hurrah for soaps! RAMALLAH, West Bank — With its tales of brave men and dutiful women in a simpler, long-vanished Middle East, a Syrian soap opera has become the latest rage in the Arab world during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Throughout the month, people across the Middle East have rushed from mosques and flocked to coffeehouses each evening to catch “Bab el-Hara,” or “The Neighborhood Gate.”
You know, with all this endless and boring talk about the clash between civilisations (or, bless, World War lll even) - one would almost forget that most people just want to live their lives in peace - want to be left alone, basically – and would probably, like that old Polish farmer, say something like, ‘May God bless and keep the Czar far away from us’.
Sometimes, we need the mindless comfort that soaps offer, to remind us that most people would rather stay at home and watch TV than go to demonstrations – or go to war, or blow themselves up for one stupid cause or the other.
As one imam readily admitted…
Imad Qadi, a preacher in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said more worshippers this year were hurrying home to watch the show instead of undertaking a lengthy evening prayer traditionally performed during Ramadan.
How comforting too, to read that, if you let them be, Palestinians, like Cindy Lauper, just want to have fun:
At one upscale restaurant in east Jerusalem, waiters hastily set up a large projector screen minutes before the show began one recent evening. Tables of Palestinian men and women faced the flickering screen to watch, hushing children and forcing waiters to duck under the projector as they served beer to Muslims unconcerned with Islam’s ban on alcohol.
What’s more, even Hezbollah can’t get ‘their’ people to listen when the soap is on:
Last Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised speech to mark Al-Quds Day, or Jerusalem day, in support of the Palestinians. But the speech was broadcast at the same time as “The Neighborhood Gate.” For many Palestinians, the choice was easy.
“I would prefer Hassan Nasrallah to anybody, but … I didn’t watch because ‘The Neighborhood Gate’ was on,” said barber Mutasem Nuwara as he watched the show and cut a customer’s hair simultaneously in his Ramallah barbershop.
So, yes, let’s hear it for soaps.
And what’s more… Sorry…? What was that you said…?
Ah, yes…
Fair enough, I suppose.
Sorry about that, but I’ve just been told that some of Nuwara’s customers haven been less than pleased with those soaps, or their soap-addicted barber.
He should do what, you say…?
Well, it’s a thought but… Come again…?
Right, it’s creative, I’ll give you that, but I’m not totally convinced that calling it a ‘coup van Gogh’ will really help the barber all that much to win these customers back.
Still, a few bleeding and disgruntled barber’s clients doth not a backlash made, so I will say it again, one third and final time:
