Glob-a-log

So, yes, let’s do it. Talk about sex, I mean.

Granted, in a world that has more babies than it can feed one would think that the last thing people needed was to hear even more about sex.

It would seem a bit like looking at Australia’s rabbit population before myxomatosis rode into town and then watching one of those annoying Duracel ads. The first thing that would spring to mind then would be something like, ‘Yes, but do the little buggers really need any more staying power?’

Still, people can be remarkably ignorant about sexual issues. From South-Africa’s president Mbeki, who thinks AIDS is a colonial fantasy to former US president Bill Clinton, who thought getting a blow-job had nothing to do with having sex: it seems we could do with some more sex education.

Consider the following statistics, for instance:

Men are to be urged to be tested for chlamydia, the commonest sexually transmitted disease.

Genevieve Clark, director of communications at the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: “Our research found that one in ten men think chlamydia is a flower, so it’s no surprise that too few of them are going for a test.

Of course, many people fear that if governments and schools get into the sex education business, it would take power away from the parents. And one can sympathize with this view: it’s so hard to raise sexual bigots when others keep interfering with things like actual facts.

So, it’s much better to leave these things to the parents.

Or not:

Amy Smalley thought she was being a good parent when she taught her children about sex.

Smalley’s lawyer attempted to get the case thrown out, saying that sex education was protected free speech, but a Columbia County judge disagreed and sent the case to trial.

Onwards and upwards though, like a hard-on dreaming of the Eiffel tower – or, like that old joke that I just made up goes:

‘This morning I woke up with such a huge hard-on that King Kong kept trying to climb it.’

Anyway, people do have sex and whether they know anything about it or not, they keep talking about it too.

And if they can’t get any or are too socially awkward to even talk about it, they can always become writers and fill book after book after book with their ill-adjusted and ill-informed ideas about the oldest way of keeping warm at night known to man and beast.

Some of the stuff these virgins-at-heart come up with is so charmingly ludicrous or charmlessly lubricated that the authors will receive formal recognition for these efforts.

It’s called the ‘Bad Sex Award’. it’s a prize not exactly coveted but most authors at least try to accept it with some good grace. After all, they’ve just been found out to be terrible in (even their imaginary) bed, so it wouldn’t do to appear not to have a sense of humour either.

Well, at least this year’s winner will be spared the agony of having to collect the prize and be seen smiling doing so. Norman Mailer, for once in his accident-prone & scandal-ridden life, did the diplomatic thing: he died before the jury could announce him the winner of this year’s Bad Sex Award.

And this was why the jury picked him…:

“Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni’s death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.

The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again!”

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You know, people can be stupid. I mean, incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid.

Take this idiot.

Would you hire this guy? He’s honest. We have to give him that. Stupid though, quite unbelievably stupid:

Police are investigating after a man who claimed to have “great international contacts” posted an ad on a job networking website.

“I’ve gathered valuable experiences in building connections in Europe and the USA for many years.

“During training in Afghanistan I gained experience of other cultures working inside major international organisations. I have a lot of experience in co-ordinating projects.”

The man said he was a reformed terrorist.

Cute, isn’t it? I can imagine the ad some other guy might place:

‘Dear Mr. president, I would like to become your personal secretary. I would be perfect for that position, since over the years I’ve sent at least a hundred Anthrax letters to various government agencies.’

Sometimes though, people are not happy to be merely stupid. No, they insist on being terminally boring and priggishly politically correct as well.

Like Guy Richie and his wife Madonna:

To London’s vomit-flecked Leicester Square, where Guy Ritchie surfaced briefly from the skip of obscurity last night to escort two junior members of his family to the UK premiere of Fred Claus - and to announce that after a recent clampdown, his and Madonna’s is a household of festive humbuggers.

“We cancelled Christmas a few years ago,” Guy informed reporters. “We stopped all the presents, and since then we’ve really enjoyed it.”

Whether this was done in accordance with the couple’s devout adherence to celebrity fake Jew cult Kabbalah we do not know, but the turn-of-the-century movie operative - director? was he? - suggests his brood do not know it’s Christmas time at all. I know, not even the one they got from Africa. Isn’t it just so sad? It’s like two fingers to everything Bob Geldof was fighting for.

Of course, there are those who are truly beyond the pale.

They’re stupid, boring, disgusting and insanely egotistic to boot. I suppose all celebs can be like that but this one really takes the coke-flavoured & come-stained cake:

He may be notorious for his pervy ways with the ladies, but according to a story in the New York Daily News, Charlie Sheen’s preferences aren’t limited to the real article. Rush & Molloy report that the actor once proudly owned a $6,000 full-sized, anatomically-correct cheerleader doll.

Apparently Charlie didn’t see anything wrong with his latex lady. An insider told the publication that he even brought her along to the “Spin City” set back in the day. But all that changed when Charlie offered a couple of real live women the chance for a foursome with him and his inanimate pal.

“They couldn’t stop laughing at him,” the source told the Daily News. “Charlie got so mad that he ran the girls out of his house. Then he took a meat cleaver and chopped one of the doll’s hands off. He and his bodyguard tried to dispose of it, like it was a real body. They wrapped it in a blanket and drove around in the middle of the night till they found a dumpster.”

But was it really rejection that made the former escort agency serial-client go axe murderer on his cheer-squad reject, or ribbing from his friends that the doll bore a striking resemblance to ex Denise Richards?

So, what should we give all these useless little drones? Something traditional? Something with chocolate?

Something like this?

Is it a raunchy festive talking-point? Is it a work of art? Whatever it is, the $100, 10in tall chocolate Santa with Butt Plug is the talk of chic New York - and is delicious, even if the sugar rush could keep you awake.

Or no, wait. what better gift for these blathering toss-pots than this…?

When doctors warn of the dangers of binge drinking, exploding bladders may not immediately spring to mind. However, last week a report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) made alarming reading. In the report, the medics discuss the unprecedented appearance in emergency wards of women who have suffered alcohol-induced “bladder rupture”: their bladders have quite literally torn apart under pressure of a big night out.

There are over 28,000 hospital admissions as a result of alcohol misuse each year, and 22,000 premature deaths because of it. But even so, it must surely be hard to drink so much that your bladder bursts?

Until now, certainly, doctors expected to see bladder rupture only in people with abnormal or previously damaged bladders, or in men - who were more likely to be hardcore alcoholics. In fact, alcohol-induced bladder rupture was considered an exclusively male problem. However, women are now catching up with men when it comes to drinking: 86% of women, compared with 91% of men, consume alcohol regularly. This drunken equality is starting to produce some serious side effects in women too.

The biggest fans of political correctness and health & safety nutters are the tabloids, of course. They love to fill their columns with ‘P.C. or H&S GONE MAD!!!’ stories.

Well, as hard as it is to admit it, sometimes even tabloids can be right. Things really have gone way too far in this regard.

For instance, you thought Sesame Street was a children’s programme? Well, according to some it sure ain’t:

Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia. Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only:

Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.

Censoring TV shows and books and movies – or infesting them with stickers and parental warnings – is always fun, for a certain type of anal retentive moron but for those who really don’t have a life and love to spread their hard-earned misery around, there is no time more jolly than Christmas.

What better way to let the world know what a sad & useless prick (or cunt) you are than by attacking Santa?

A school is forcing Santa Claus to wear a green suit this year – in case his traditional red costume reminds children of Coca-Cola adverts.

Sarah James, spokeswoman for the Steiner School in Brighton, said: ‘The red-suited Santa was created as a marketing tool by Coca-Cola, it is a symbol of commercialism.’

Bless.

No, let’s rephrase that: ‘And fuck you too, ma’am.’

Yes, that’s better.

Oh, by the way, do you know how you can see when things have really gone too far?

Well, that’s fairly easy. You know the world as we knew it has really gone totally Mad Hatter Tea-party when the infernal PC brigade is being embraced and joined at the hip by bloody PC Plod…!

Scotland Yard is spending £15,000 on ethnically diverse police mascots after complaints that PCSO Steve, its current rubber representative, is too white, too male, and too blond.

The initiative follows the creation of a working group within the force’s Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate to tackle “race and gender” issues within the Met’s mascot division.

I suppose the Borg were right with their, ‘Resistance is futile.’

So, maybe we all should join the PC and health and safety zombie force. They’re going to come and get us, to suck all the joy out of our lives soon enough anyway.

Well then, in the glorious French way of surrender & collaboration, here’s my craven olive branch, wrapped in a tattered white flag: my own health & safety warning for next year’s summer:

“This is a health & safety message to all the girls and women out there:

DO NOT GO TO THE BEACH BEFORE YOU’VE HAD A BOOB JOB! REMEMBER: A “PAMELA ANDERSON” CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE!!!”

An Israeli woman wounded in a Hezbollah rocket attack is saved by her silicone breast implants.

He tells Reuters, “She was saved from death.”

Porn is everywhere these days. In fact, it’s often easier to catch a glimpse of some stranger’s grotesquely enlarged pubes than it is to catch a bus.

Although the latter can’t be said be said of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia:

Bus passengers in Sofia are being shown soft porn films on giant video screens at night.

They also claim the security guards have stopped patrolling for troublemakers, and spend their time watching the giant screens instead.

Indeed, a truly heart-warming story – especially the bit about the station management expressing concern that children might have watched these scenes.

He needn’t have worried about children staying up late enough to catch these movies. Nowadays, kids get their daily communion of porn at school:

Students at a strict 152-year-old Catholic college, which warns against promiscuity and extra-marital sex, have been caught passing round explicit snaps of teachers.

“It’s fair to say we were pretty shocked, especially since we get lectured about strict Christian values all the time. It was wrong to pinch the photos, but they must have thought it too good an opportunity to miss. The head must have gone ballistic.”

No doubt he did – but it’s still a sad fact that where the head leads the body doesn’t necessarily follow.

Still, someone should have told that teacher and her deputy head lover that safe sex and mobile phone cameras are not exactly a marriage made in Heaven.

Talking of safe sex and the Catholic faith, the Vatican still frowns on the use of condoms. While this seems quite a cruel judgement in a world filled with millions of HIV and AIDS victims and God knows how many starving children, there is – or rather: was – this one guy in New Haven who might have been served better if he had followed the Pope’s strict ruling on condoms:

A naked man died after pulling a condom filled with laughing gas over his head, an inquest was told yesterday.

“He had been putting a condom on his head for sexual gratification. I’m sure his death was an accident.”

It is a strange fact that, although many people enjoy to watch movies or read books about crime capers, they do not like it when they read about it in their morning papers. So, while they may root for Jesse James or Billy the Kid, they turn into hanging judges when real life criminals enter their own cozy, little worlds.

Admittedly, some crimes are quite awful – and they don’t even need to be major crimes technically to be utterly despicable.

One would have a hard time coming up with a punishment that would fit the following crime – though ‘hard time’ would only be the start of it, in many people’s minds:

A bank cashier has been caught stealing from children aged between one and nine. They handed her their piggy banks full of pocket money and she credited their savings accounts with less than was in them. The case has shattered the children’s faith in banking.

The 45-year-old woman, who has since lost her job at a savings bank in the southern city of Augsburg, received a suspended six-month sentence. The public prosecutor’s office had sought a tougher penalty for a crime it called “deeply immoral.”

‘Let the punishment fit the crime’ is, of course, a nicely Old Testament way of doing things - like cutting off the hands of thieves.

‘Vengeance is mine.’ said the Lord, which is all very good and well, of course, but He might have provided us with a bit more detail.

God knows there’s enough in the Book about stoning women to death or bears killing children who dared to say ‘baldie’ to one of God’s prophets but the good Lord was uncharacteristically quiet about, for instance, certain vehicular crimes:

Sandy Wong gets turned on by expensive and classic cars, and really likes to expose himself in public.

He also admitted climbing onto the roof of a 1991 Buick Century parked at the rear of a south-side home, taking off his clothes and masturbating on June 12.

So, what punishment would be deemed suitable there? A perplexed judge might want to go for some kind of community service but there’s the rub: working at a garage or at a car wash doesn’t seem to be quite suitable somehow.

Still, if it would have to involve cars, maybe we could combine this case with a few other car and head cases that lately made the news. So, yes, maybe we should punish the guy by making him the lifelong designated driver of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

Though even this none too liberal Court of Justice might conclude that this would count as a ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment.

Talking about cruel and unusual: the following crime was certainly that. Not quite as bad as stealing money from babies maybe but just imagine the following scenario being played out:

You’ve just heard how some evil witch who stole all your money wasn’t even sent to jail, so you return from your day in court already deeply disillusioned by the justice system and humanity as a whole.

So, the only thing you really want now is a cup of hot chocolate or some ice-cream and to cuddle up with your favourite stuffed toy – and then you come home to this:

A defence lawyer told the court that his client, who has a history of domestic violence offences and court breaches, gets himself into trouble when he has been drinking.

“He was lying there with his genitalia exposed next to the stuffed dog,” said Crown attorney John Peden. “While the police report doesn’t describe it this way, the dog might be appropriately characterized as now being anatomically correct, as opposed to its condition before he removed it.”

So, you get up slowly from your bed, gravitate with glacier speed to the shower house, feed the cat, children & spouse, or fish and then sit down with a cup of tea or coffee and the morning paper.

Most of what you read will sustain that bless̩d early morning state of brain limbo for a little while longer Рas the world, steadily and in an almost comfortably familiar manner, keeps going on going to Hell in a handcart.

Sometimes though, you will read some piece that’s truly hair-raising:

A man was beaten by his fiance and in-laws and relieved of his belongings in India after they found out he was bald and wearing a wig, it was alleged yesterday.

Prabir Das, of Dispur in Assam, told police that his fiancé yanked off his hairpiece after dinner last week and began beating and abusing him for hiding his pate.

Her parents then joined in, ripping his expensive wig apart and relieving the 33-year-old of his wallet, mobile phone, motorbike and driving licence as “penalty” for his deception, he alleged.

The wedding, police said, appears to be off.

Still, most of the news we half read and half watch on TV is like a demonic form of Transcendental Meditation. The war on Iraq, flooding in Bangladesh, hunger & AIDS & corruption & mad dictators in Africa… Been there, done that, washed down the T-shirt with some cheap corn whiskey.

Most news just doesn’t feel all that much like news. More like yet another sighting of UFOs and Bigfoot or the news that Angelina Jolie (or Michael Jackson) is considering to adopt yet another child.

In other words, ‘Yeah, yeah’ news:

The Kindle, once again for those of you who don’t salivate over wireless devices, is an electronic reader, like an iPod, but for books. Amazon describes it as “a revolutionary wireless reading device”, heroically ignoring the fact that most pre-revolution reading devices didn’t have wires either.

We called them books, and they were awfully popular. We hardly ever had to plug them in either.

So, we’ve dealt with the hair-raising news and the ‘yeah, yeah’ news, which leaves us with the third variety: the anti-news.

The anti-news is a bit like the ‘yeah, yeah’ news, in the sense that it doesn’t really bring us anything new – but it does so in such a ludicrous manner that it almost become hair-raising again.

Anti-news is the dark matter that lurks in the more seedy alleys of the journalistic universe, distorting everything it comes into contact with. It’s business as usual but with a vengeance. It’s also always quite grotesque, like falling up the Eiffel tower.

In fact, it’s exactly like opening the newspaper and reading something that so deeply penetrates the world of the bleeding obvious, that it comes out of the other side of its own arse as a true work of art:

ST. MARTINVILLE, La. — Willie Nelson and his tour manager were spared jail time Tuesday after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of marijuana possession.

Nelson and tour manager David Anderson, along with Nelson’s sister, Bobbie Nelson, and two drivers, were issued citations on Sept. 18 after state troopers said they found marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms on the country legend’s tour bus during a commercial-vehicle inspection on Interstate 10.

Everybody knows that traffic can be murder. However, people fail to take into account that even a stationary car can be quite lethal.

Especially, when its owner is a moron:

A US man has injured himself in both legs after attempting to loosen a stiff wheel-nut by blasting it with his gun.

The man - who police say was on his own and not intoxicated - was taken to hospital. He’d sustained injuries from his feet to the middle of his abdomen, with some pellets reaching as high as his chin.

There’s an old saying the NRA folks like to employ, whenever one of their adored toys has been used in yet another bit of senseless slaughter, ‘Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.’

However factual or facetious that argument may be, both gun lovers and gun haters would probably agree that one thing is absolutely sure: that stupidity can kill people as quickly and efficiently as the sharpest knife, the most powerful gun or the most lethal poison.

Talking of which:

A 45 year old man from Fuentes de León in Badajoz, José Manuel Hidalgo, ate some mushrooms to show they were not poisonous, and ended up in intensive care.

An ambulance was called but it took considerable argument before the patient finally agreed to be taken to hospital. By this time he had turned yellow and started to vomit. He spent two days in the intensive care unit, and finally was allowed out onto the ward on Tuesday afternoon amid concerns that his liver may have suffered permanent damage.

A quite beautiful example of ‘Putting your mushrooms where your mouth is.’

Still, people can get lucky, and the two idiots mentioned above did survive their own monstrous stupidity.

Not everybody is that fortunate, of course – but then, few people show the kind of terminal determination a certain young Austrian computer nerd proved to have:

A 19-year-old computer gamer who lived in the Upper Austrian town of Laakirchen beheaded himself with a chain saw.

The young man locked himself in his room of his parental home, and removed his head with a chain saw. The younger sisters heard the noise from his room, and tried to push the door in, but it was too late. Their 19-year-old brother was beyond remedy.

Strangely enough, a footnote to this weird story shows that the victim was not the only one having problems using his head in the more conventional manner.

Enter the police and their breathtakingly refreshing summing-up of the mental state of the deceased:

This kind of suicide is a mystery for the investigators. The suicide victim was a very happy young man.

People are inventive. We know that. Sometimes, that’s a good thing – at other times, less so.

Of course, often the things that start out as good ideas soon become something else entirely.

So, the invention of the wheel: a good thing, right? Yes, well, up to a point.

Or, more specifically: right up to the point that some moron on a skate-board does a stupid wheelie in your face and all over your toes.

In other words, there is not one good original concept that humanity can’t turn into something quite unspeakable.

Another example?

Okay, take Santa Claus. Fat bloke, reindeer, sleigh, presents, chimneys. Good set-up.

So, there’s absolutely no reason why anyone would try and improve on this, right?

Wrong:

Some scary moments in Conroe, Texas Saturday night when Santa’s grand entrance doesn’t go as planned.

Rock climber James Bossom, dressed in a Santa suit, was supposed to rappel off the side of a local mall during a holiday tree lighting event.

But about half way down the 80-foot wall, old Saint Nick’s beard got stuck in the rigging leaving the jolly old man dangling.

Fire crews were called in and with the help of a knife and long ladder were able to get Bossom down safely.

Kids attending the event were told the man dressed as Santa and stuck hanging, was not the real Santa but one of his helpers.

“All I want to do now is concentrate over this huge disappointment,” he added. “Although this is a sad day, I’ll recover and bounce back and wait for the next challenge - I’m not one to lie around on the beach.” No, that was not George Bush, reflecting on Iraq, his presidency as a whole or his command of the English language.

It was, in fact, the now fired English football (or soccer) coach Steve McClaren, after England failed to qualify for the European Championships tournament, to be partly played, of all places, in Austria: another one time cradle of dreams, which did not exactly come true in the end.

So, now, with both the Republican party and the English Football Association desperately seeking a successor who might be able to take away the taste of recent failures and gross incompetence, it is time for contemplation, mourning and the kind of ‘if only’ wishful thinking that makes for great morning-after columns, the most grandiose bitterness and, in some cases, lifelong held grudges and obsessions.

In other words, here’s a general health warning to both the Republican fanatical faithful and England’s deeply disappointed football fans: lick your wounds and mourn your losses, by all means, but do realize that there is a time and place for everything.

As David Lynch, while touring through Germany with some highly dubious side-kick, discovered to some cost:

Film director David Lynch recently visited London, where he appeared with the folk singer Donovan and announced plans for the Invincible Donovan University promoting transcendental meditation, a discipline he has followed since the 70s.

Last week he took the same idea to Germany - with explosive results. The audience at Berlin’s Urania theatre were expecting a talk about cinema, but instead found themselves listening to a rant about the joys of TM. Lynch had brought a controversial guest: Emanuel Schiffgens, a TM guru who styles himself as the “raja of Germany”.

Wearing white robes and a golden crown, Schiffgens announced:

“We are here to found the university of the Invincible Germany … a new era in the history of Germany,”

A comment that - perhaps inadvertently - echoed an older, darker era in the country’s history. Many in the audience reacted furiously. When someone pointed out that an “Invincible Germany” was exactly what Adolf Hitler wanted, Schiffgen replied:

“Yes, but unfortunately he didn’t succeed.”

Poor Paris Hilton. She just can’t get a break, it seems.

Some time ago news reached us that she might indeed have become a reformed character, who was preparing to give back to the community some of what was given to her.

Something not including underwear, shaved pubes or videotaped sex sessions, that is:

Conservationists today hailed the socialite Paris Hilton, who was convicted of drink driving earlier this year, for apparently trying to highlight the problem of binge-drinking elephants in north-eastern India.

Activists said the celebrity endorsement would raise awareness of the plight of pachyderms that got drunk on farmers’ homemade rice beer and went on the rampage.

“There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn’t chased them away,” Hilton was quoted as saying in Tokyo last week according to a report posted on the World Entertainment News Network website. “And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad.

“The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them.

It would have been such a Paris thing, since it combined rather pathetic creatures, suffering from the encroachment of man, with substance abuse and weight issues.

What a way to redeem yourself. So, way to go, Paris!

Alas, it seemed that all of this was just a cruel hoax – and I can imagine the conversation Paris had with her minder:

P.: “Hi, I’m almost packed! And I did remember the underwear!”

M.: “I’m sorry, but you’re not going after all.”

P.: “What do you mean: I’m not going. I’ve got the tickets, the outfit, the in flight magazine and my nose powder…”

M.: “I’m sorry but you can’t.”

P.: “But I wanna go…!”

M.: “Sorry.”

P.: “But my elephants neeeeed meeeeeeeee…!!!”

Ah well, apparently they don’t:

In a Nov. 13 story, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that Paris Hilton was praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India. Lori Berk, a publicist for Hilton, said she never made any comments about helping drunken elephants in India.

Poor Paris. It’s like she never left that hotel.

So yes, taken for a ride again – by drunken elephants, no less.

Let’s hope that nobody made a tape this time.