Glob-a-log

Let’s start with a joyous tale of love conquering all:

In a world of celebrity relationships gone bad, it’s good to know that some limelight loves survive.

Take Petra, for example. Last year, the beautiful black swan from Münster in Germany made headlines across the world after she fell head-over-heels for a gigantic, swan-shaped pedal-boat. No matter what park officials at the Aasee lake tried, Petra would not be separated from her true love.

Every year, the rental boats are brought in so they are not damaged as the lake freezes over. Last year, though, Petra was so distraught when she was separated from her boyfriend the boat that the two - the real and the fake swan - were given the use of a pond in the nearby zoo for the winter.

Now, one year later, the couple is still together, with Petra having spent her summer blissfully following the boat as it was pedalled around the lake. What’s more, Petra is getting a brand new, winterized hutch so she can spend the cold months near her oversized, plastic sweetheart as well.

Now, that is sweet – and I dearly hope that when the two lovers will leave their winter retreat, next spring, they will be followed by a brood (or fleet) of little swaots (or boans.)

It is, however, a great pity that humans were not built in the same mould. Men and women, I mean. You know, the whole falling in love and happily-ever-after spiel.

Which is kind of weird.

Here, in the left corner, we have a fairly average black swan. (Average looking, that is. I’m not going to comment on his eye-sight or mental health.) In the right corner we have a huge, somewhat shoddily painted and not very sea-worthy boat that resembles a swan like Mickey Mouse resembles your every day rodent.

Now, do these two perpetually moan about their differences, or their lack of compatibility? Do they obsessively read books titled ‘Boats are from Neptune, Swans are from Hartlepool’? No, they don’t. They just get on with things and seem perfectly happy with what the good Lord (or - same difference: their German zoo keeper) has given them.

Humans aren’t swans though – we’re more like Betamax and VHS, so we do have real compatibility issues.

I’ll give you exhibit one: the male (by way of Jeremy Clarkson):

I recently bought a magazine called Smart Life. Billed as the international lifestyle technology bible, it is full of gadgets and gizmos that honestly and truthfully make me dribble. I want to own every single thing in it.

Did you know, for instance, that you can now buy a lavatory roll dispenser into which you plug your iPod so you can enjoy some four-four time while doing your number twos.

Or that you can buy a MediaBox? According to the blurb, it is an HDD media player with a 500GB capacity that can upscale the output from your PC to a full-on 1080p HD. I have absolutely no idea what any of this means but it’s silver and black and I want one very badly.

Now, here’s exhibit two: the female (represented by Ariel Leve):

The other day I was having coffee with a friend who was telling me about a failed relationship. He was going over it, trying to figure out what went wrong, and why, even though he loved her, he couldn’t be with her. I was sympathetic. Right up until he reached a conclusion. She was, he said: “Too much like hard work.”

Then, just as I was about to mount a defence on her behalf, my friend said, “You know what I mean.”

“You think I’m hard work?” I asked. He gave me a look. The look an airline employee gives a passenger who has just learned they’re not getting an upgrade and is trying to argue there’s been a mistake.

“You know you’re difficult,” he asserted. “It took six e-mails, three phone calls and a dozen texts to make a plan for coffee.”

What’s wrong with that? I’m conscientious.

From now on, when someone asks me what I’m looking for in a man, I’m going to say: a good work ethic. That, and a high pain threshold.

One can see that trying to bring these two people together would not exactly be a case of two ships passing in the night but more like a collision course not seen since those two hapless atoms had that blind date above Hiroshima.

Luckily, the human mind can be just as inventive as that of any romantically inclined German swan.

So, when human on human action seems to be too much of a bother, there are always other options…:

Congratulations are in order for P Selvakumar, a 34-year-old Indian farmer who last week tied the knot with a russet-coloured mongrel dog called Selvi. The four-year-old blushing bride looked absolutely lovely, dressed in a sari and garlanded with flowers. One assumes – or hopes, at least – that the happy couple plan to adopt.

Mr Selvakumar married the dog to bring himself good luck; however, not so long ago an elderly Nepalese chap called Phulram Chaudhary married a dog – a different dog, obviously – for precisely the same reason and was dead within the week from some mysterious infection. Rabies or parvovirus, maybe.

It is not so long ago that a Sudanese man got himself hitched to a lithe young goat – although he was a more reluctant bridegroom: village elders forced him into the union after he had been espied having congress with the creature while they were both still single. That, as you will be aware, is really not on. These are conservative societies, after all.

And following the Indian wedding, Mr Selvakumar was at pains to point out that his Selvi was a bitch, just in case anyone thought there was anything weird or perverted going on.

It is not always easy to be a celebrity. Take Santa Claus. Some days ago I reported on the fact that some health nazi types were forcing Santa to go to the gym and join boot camps in order to lose weight – and now he gets a mauling from the PC Pol Pot patrol…:

SYDNEY (AFP) - Santas in Australia’s largest city have been told not to use Father Christmas’s traditional “ho ho ho” greeting because it may be offensive to women, it was reported Thursday.

Sydney’s Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say “ha ha ha” instead, the Daily Telegraph reported.

One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use “ho ho ho” because it could frighten children and was too close to “ho”, a US slang term for prostitute.

“Gimme a break,” said Julie Gale, who runs the campaign against sexualising children called Kids Free 2B Kids. “We are talking about little kids who do not understand that “ho, ho, ho” has any other connotation and nor should they,” she told the Telegraph. “Leave Santa alone.”

So, time for some disgusting back-paddling from central office. Gods, but these corporations and their spokesclowns are so incredibly, gut and soul-wrenchingly disgusting…:

A local spokesman for the US-based Westaff recruitment firm said it was “misleading” to say the company had banned Santa’s traditional greeting and it was being left up to the discretion of the individual Santa himself.

Anyway, it’s not just Santa having a hard time of it. Spare a thought for poor Marie Osmond:

LOS ANGELES — Marie Osmond said her 16-year-old son has entered a rehabilitation facility, but she didn’t disclose the nature of his problem.

“My son, Michael, is an amazing young man, shown through his courage in facing his issues. As his mother I couldn’t be more proud of him,” the 48-year-old singer said in a statement issued Wednesday through her publicist, Marleah Leslie.

“The press and public have always been kind and gracious in the past and I know they will continue to respect our privacy during this time,” Osmond said.

I’m not quite sure on what planet old Marie has been hiding these last few decades but someone should tell her that the word ‘respect’ is now mostly – and most effectively - used by teenage gangs who will shoot you (or any bystander) when they feel you don’t show enough ‘respect’ in their soulless, brainless and utterly useless presence.

Still, I’m sure Marie will be able to find comfort in her faith – and comfort in her dancing. Her televised and tabloid-fueled dancing, that is.

For whenever one of her family members has to go into rehab – or plain simply dies, Marie’s God tells her, ‘Never mind, old thing, just put on your party frock and have a blast’:

LOS ANGELES — Marie Osmond says the Bible inspired her return to ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” following the death of her father last week. Osmond said on Monday’s live broadcast that she found comfort in the Bible when she randomly opened a passage from Ecclesiastes.

“It said … there’s a time to mourn and a time to dance,” she said. “And I felt like it was almost from my dad saying, `This is your time to dance.’”

She missed last week’s elimination show after her father, George Osmond, patriarch to the Osmond family’s singing group, The Osmond Brothers, died at his home in Provo, Utah. He was 90.

It is a pity that the TV show’s judges were all atheist commie bastards who wouldn’t know how to ‘respect’ a God-fearing orphan/mama even if she came crawling through the barrel of some crack-addled teen gangster’s gun:

The 48-year-old singer received Monday night’s lowest score: 49 out of 60 possible points from the judges.

Onwards and upwards though. Well, okay: ever deeper into the celeb sewer then…

Unless you’re a Rocky Balbao or a Bill Clinton, it is hard to make a come-back. So, when someone, or some group tries we really should applaud their courage and perseverance and not take cowardly and easy pot shots at them, like a pop singer I certainly had never heard of tried to do to her much elderly sisters:

It is a sexy new look that the Spice Girls desperately hope will show their younger pop rivals they can still compete in the glamour stakes. Posing for a raunchy photo shoot, they want to prove to the likes of Girls Aloud that they are not past it yet - despite being ten years older than them.

Each of the girls sports a spicy look but their skimpy outfits have caused confusion as the group’s new song is about friendship. Wearing little more than a bra and a bizarre skirt resembling a stack of lampshades, Geri Halliwell aka Ginger Spice boldly shows off her slim figure. And Mel B, better known as Scary Spice, is also refusing to grow old gracefully with her decolletage clearly on show in a revealing bra.

But the sexy new look has been criticised by pop singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor who feels it does not fit in with their comeback single ‘Headlines’.

“I don’t like the video. I don’t understand why they’re singing in their underwear when they’re talking about friendship,” said the singer.

Well, far be it from me, normally, to stand in the way of anyone who expresses their failure to grasp the deeply philosophical meaning behind cheap, mass-produced pop songs and their even cheaper, porn-stocked accompanying video-clips…

… but when I read about these concerns expressed by this Sophie Ellis-Bextor I did Google her, just to fully understand where this uptight, upright, moral mess of a miss was coming from – and I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to find this bit of news:

LONDON - Singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor has been signed as the face of high-street fashion chain Monsoon’s latest advertising campaign.

The pop singer is to appear in the “Create a storm” print campaign lying naked on silk and velvet Monsoon cushions on a sofa, and holding a wild orchid.

It must be a great comfort to Sophie Ellis-Bextor to know that if at pop music and modelling she won’t succeed, she could always go into politics. I’m sure there will always be a spot at the trough for a person with her lack of morals and her very distinct brand of galling hypocrisy.

Take it away, Santa, I would say: take all of them away, please.

No, not the new and politically correct version, you daft old bugger!

Yes, thank you: HO HO HO indeed…

These monsters are our so-called allies in the ‘War on Terror’:

A Saudi woman has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison after she was the victim of a gang rape.

The sentence against the 19-year-old Shia woman from Qatif, in the Eastern Province of the country, was passed because she was in the car of a man who was not a relative at the time of the attack, which contravened strict Saudi laws on segregation.

A court had originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes and the rapists to jail terms of between 10 months and five years but increased the punishment after an appeal, saying the woman had tried to use the media to influence them.

According to the Arab News newspaper, the woman was gang-raped 14 times.

Let’s start with another bit of sordid news:

Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” has found.

Yes, the FBI seems to want to emulate its political masters, in terms of corruption, callousness and contempt for the law of the land.

Still, the story also highlights that it isn’t always easy to find evidence against criminals and that trying to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt will often be quite complicated.

Of course, some things are easier to prove than others:

A male stripogram has been charged with wearing a police uniform and equipment in the street. Two police officers saw him and decided to take action.

“They followed me into the bar, watched the show, then asked me to go back to the station. It was all quite friendly. When I went back later they said they were going to charge me. I have spoken to two solicitors and they do not know if it will go to court.”

One thing deplorably hard to prosecute and prove in court are cases of stalking and sexual harassment. All too often it will end up as ‘her word’ against ‘his word.’ So, sometimes innocent people are convicted and (probably much more often) the guilty walk free.

Not all the times though…:

Authorities in Florida launched an investigation into what they called one of the strangest accidents they’ve ever seen.

Tucker’s girlfriend called 911 when she found the 32-year-old stuck, but when officers showed up four minutes later - he was already dead.

Not so much as case of caught in the act as caught by the cat flap.

So, that one was an open and shut case. I’d have said ‘unflappable’ but I already did one cat flap joke, so I won’t.

Anyway, while most people love ‘whodunnit’ stories, cops prefer their criminals stupid, unresisting and with their metaphysical trousers down. Like this father & son team:

A father and his son were arrested about 10:20 p.m. Nov. 8.

It didn’t help that the boy had been drinking, too.

Talking of being caught with your trousers down – and I’m not talking metaphorically anymore – I mentioned how it is so often the case that it is hard to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt, in front of a seen-it-all judge and a cynical, streetwise jury…

Well, to almost any rule there will be exceptions:

A German man who was appealing against a conviction for flashing didn’t help his case when he stripped off in court.

State prosecutors filed fresh charges of indecent behaviour against the man after the court incident.

There are millions upon millions of people who believe in the power of prayers. Far from me to question the wisdom of the multitudes, of course. Who am I, for instance, to kick over the shrine of democracy, which has brought us such blessings as Nazi Germany, the Big Brother house and George Bush?

Still, sometimes prayer doesn’t work. Or, let’s say, that if it does, then it does so in highly inscrutable ways. What is absolutely certain though is that, if these two guys were asking the Lord not to lead them in temptation, God sure wasn’t paying attention at the time:

FORT SMITH, Ark. (AP) — When the Rev. Fidelis Obdike opened his eyes after a prayer, the setting wasn’t the same. Gone were his laptop computer and the man with whom he was praying. Police arrested Carl Hagy, 41, on Wednesday on a theft charge after he allegedly pawned the computer.

Obidike told police officers he had bought a laptop computer from Hagy two weeks before. He said Hagy returned to the church on Friday and asked to pray. Obdike said he was praying with Hagy inside the church, but when he opened his eyes, Hagy and the computer were gone.

Of course, it might not have been absentmindedness on the part of the Creator. Maybe the good Reverend was just very bad at his job. That kind of thing does happen. People choosing or just ending up in jobs they’re not exactly suited for. (No, I’ve already done the ‘Bush is a the post turtle‘ joke. Let’s move on, folks!)

Right – so, I was talking about people not exactly being up to their jobs. Let’s give an example. If you had a product to sell would you hire the agency that came up with this idea…?

It is precisely the image of England usually guaranteed to keep tourists away in their droves, so it is perhaps a little odd for Eurostar to choose a picture of a skinhead urinating in a cup to promote travel to the UK.

The picture of a heavily tattooed, shaven-headed man wearing leather boots is part of an advertising campaign in Belgium designed to attract its citizens to London.

It’ a novel idea; I will give them that. A bit like shooting the next Coca Cola Light ad in Ethiopia. ‘Selling pork in Israel’ was what people used to call this when I grew up.

Anyway, there other folks who are not necessarily bad at their jobs but who do, at times, lack a certain professional judgement:

Seven air force crew including the two pilots are being probed by Thailand’s air force after they made the unscheduled hour-long stop in a rice paddy in western Kanchanaburi province on Tuesday, said air force spokesman Monthon Suchookorn.

Local press on Friday quoted villagers in Kanchanaburi who said they were perplexed when the chopper flew in low over the fields and then landed.

They asked the crew what they were doing, and one pilot replied that his mother had called and asked him to pick up some mushrooms, newspapers said.

Mind you, I would rather have an air force filled with people who went picking mushrooms for their mother occasionally than the trigger happy machos most armies seem to employ.

Still, when it comes to a total absence of anything like professional judgement and a devastating lack of suitability, look no further than a man called Vince Hogg:

An anger management counsellor has lost his job after beating up his partner.

Vince Hogg, 45, attacked Beverley Burns during a row at their Fife home, because he was angry about the fact a shower was leaking and caused a carpet to get wet.

The former psychiatric nurse tore the 42-year-old’s hair out and slammed her against a wall.

The assault took place shortly after he had taken up his counselling post.

You might think that Norwegian, politically correct liberals and conservative good old boys from Waco, Texas would make the most unlikely bedfellows – but you would be wrong.

Well, you’d be right about the ‘bedding’ part, of course, since both parties seem to frown on anything resembling harmless and (more or less healthy) fun.

The Norwegian spoil-sports first:

Norway’s largest erotic chain store was forced to change the labeling on products such as penis pasta, candy cuffs and chocolate body painting, to comply with Norwegian food regulations.

The Norwegian food safety authority, whose goal it is to make sure consumers have healthy and safe food, conducted a surprise inspection at one of the chain’s stores and found that several products violated food labeling regulations.

“We were a bit surprised to have the food safety authority on inspection. Food is not really our core product,” Kjersti Antonsen, a sexual adviser in the store, told VG.

Products containing food must be marked with a Norwegian label, listing all ingredients.

“We have panties, bras, handcuffs and suspender belts made out of candy,” Antonsen said, adding that the store will comply with the regulations and label all its food products.

It’s a bit of a stretch, maybe but one can almost imagine the Norwegian food safety authority running a desperate ad in the national papers, asking for extremely small sign painters.

For God forbid that any Norwegian citizen would swallow anything during oral sex which didn’t come with its own, individually hand-painted sign that warned that ‘This seed is not an official food product.’

Mind you, at least the Norwegian food safety authority doesn’t (as of yet) forbid sex altogether. They might frown upon the deplorably unregulated exchange of non-labeled, bodily fluids but so far they haven’t banned it.

In the USA they take their puritanical, punitive picking on pleasure a Hell of a lot more seriously than in poor, politically correct Norway, of course:

Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter.

The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.

“I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend,” she said.

District Superintendent Sam McGowen said that he thinks the penalty is fair and that administrators in the school east of St. Louis were following policy in the student handbook.

It states: “Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved.”

Well, good for you, District Superintendent, sir! American High Schools have problems enough as it is, with all those crazy, Satan worshiping kids trying to give the God & country loving gun industry a bad name with their commie-loving killing sprees, without some sex-obsessed hippy girl-freak making things even worse with these vile and random acts of hugging.

Mind you, it gets even worse. It’s not only High Schools where degenerate kids would just love to fuck with the God-blessed American way of life and afterwards wipe their dirty & dripping whats-its clean with the sacred American flag.

No, the rot already starts at Middle School – and if it weren’t for some brave and God-fearing and patriotic teachers these obscene acts would quite probably have remained unnoticed, and even worse, unpunished:

A 10-year-old boy was suspended from school after asking his teacher for a hug and calling her “sexy.”

Aaron Perez received the suspension last week after hoping for just a hug from his Putnam Valley Middle School teacher. He had been reprimanded in September for the “sexy” remark and his parents say he meant nothing inappropriate and that “sexy” is a term of endearment used around the house and heard all over television.

“I got scared when I got suspended and the reason I asked my teacher for a hug was to hope she had a good weekend,” Aaron told CBS 2 News.

Perez’s teacher, however, disagreed and complained the boy was acting in an inappropriate manner.

Ah, praise be Putnam Valley Middle School and its dedicated staff of valiant teachers – and how we need their unflagging zeal, their unwavering judgement and their keen, sewer-trained sense of smell.

For verily, I tell thee: the poor US of A is a desperately sick country, my friends – and the infection has reached the very bones and marrow of this once so noble and God-fearing land:

WACO, Texas — School administrators gave a 4-year-old student an in-school suspension for inappropriately touching a teacher’s aide after the pre-kindergartner hugged the woman.

A letter from La Vega school district administrators to the student’s parents said that the boy was involved in “inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment” after he hugged the woman and he “rubbed his face in the chest of (the) female employee” on Nov. 10.

A South Florida woman has sold a pancake she claims contains an image resembling Jesus and Mary.

Marilyn Smith, of Port St. Lucie, said the spiritual image appeared Sunday morning while she was making breakfast.

Her daughter, Dana Okane, said she believed the pancake was a miracle and posted it on the Internet auction site, eBay

Okane said she thinks the image is a message from God telling the world to “clean up its act.”

Well, maybe.

Though there just might be a few other lessons we could learn from this as well.

The most obvious ones are that people can be

a) such incredible morons
b) so truly devoid of spirituality that they find their portents on the face of a frigging pancake
c) so disrespectful of their Lord that they think He would come down to someone’s breakfast table in this rather dubious form, merely to spout these kinds of fortune cookie platitudes.

However, let’s (just for a few far-fetched moments) assume that it was Jesus, with His momma, Who appeared on the surface of that pancake.

We can still learn the following two things from that scenario:

1) When Jesus returns to (try and) lead His followers to Heaven, He won’t have to worry about a newly and specially appointed Judas. Apparently, most of His followers will be quite happy to flog Him on eBay the moment He returns.

2) The Son of Man has grown quite senile during His long absence, if He thinks that on His return He could beat the legions of Hell during Armageddon in the form of a pesky breakfast pancake. The only thing Satan would have to bring to such a fight would be a plate, some cutlery and maple syrup.

The movie got it all wrong. It’s not the natural born killers who are the greatest threat to our societies: it’s the natural born cattle.

First, a little story though, that is as pathetic as it is infuriating. It is also, in a very sick way, terribly enlightening. It reminds me of a BBC TV show, called ‘This is your life’. One could show the following story on all the existing networks and simply call it, ‘This is our civilization’:

Fifty-three children died between 1998 and 2005 after state child welfare workers assigned to protect them committed serious errors, made lapses in judgment and ignored their own rules. Children were beaten, burned, smothered, shaken and starved to death by their parents or other adults, even though the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services was supposed to be protecting them, according to an investigation by the Belleville News-Democrat.

In one case, a full-term baby girl — posthumously named Vanessa — died in a ramshackle house in Venice when her mentally ill mother, Jaki Ingram, delivered her into a waste-filled toilet. The DCFS suspended a caseworker and a supervisor for failing to properly assess the case over a five-year period.

In another case, 2-year-old Miracle Moon, of Chicago, died when her mother’s boyfriend pushed her head under water because, according to a prosecutor, she was slow at potty training. A medical examiner found more than 50 human bite marks on her buttocks.

When asked about these cases a spokesperson for the DCFS said:

“Through the Office of the Inspector General, death investigations and the (regional) Child Death Review Teams, DCFS examines each of these cases using a process that has been demonstrated over time to work. Both of these efforts use independent experts to investigate the department’s performance in these cases and continually improve practices, through a process that is purposefully transparent and accountable to the public.”

Quite. We have become a ‘civilization’ of passive, if endlessly greedy consumers of shit. We don’t live: we watch. We do not think: we follow procedures.

We worry about nonsensical issues, like passive smoking, while we allow the ‘market’ to push their sugar-loaded, fatty products on to our children, and we watch how the big corporations treat their customers, our children, with the same respect any lowlife drugs dealer would give to his crack whore clients - and we shrug it off. There’s some news about Britney we don’t want to miss. Some stupid new digital toy we have a craving for.

There’s always something that allows us to forget that we are adults, with obligations, with responsibilities – and with some serious problems that need our attention. We have created millions of evil, little distractions, that turn us into non-voting, non-participating, non-thinking and no-fucking-good-for-anything, moral morons.

And no, Bush is not the problem. Osama is not the problem. Both of them are pathetic, little clowns. Painted devils, if you like. They will grow old and impotent, getting to be more pathetic each and every year - and then they’ll just die and turn to dust.

Politicians and madmen are not the problem. We are the problem. We, the remote addicts. We, the cattle. We, who will watch our children become fat little addicts, who will watch our whole world turn to shit before we would even consider to do without our own pathetic little fixes.

Like mindless drones we watch, in our millions, some billionaire telling us about ‘empowerment’. It truly is as sickening as it is wildly funny. The talkshow hostess tells us how all of us count, because, as God’s children, each of us is unique and ‘entitled.’

‘We are unique. We are entitled.’ the millions upon millions of identically dead-eyed zombies agree with their Idol.

Maybe you’ve heard of the poet Charles Simic; maybe not. He was born in Serbia and brought up under Nazi occupation, before he was brought to the USA in his teens.

He has seen things. He knows things. When he speaks we should pay attention. I don’t think that we will, of course but I will end my rant with his poem, called ‘Help wanted‘:

They ask for a knife
I come running
They need a lamb
I introduce myself as the lamb

A thousand sincere apologies
It seems they require some rat poison
They require a shepherd
For their flock of black widows

Luckily I’ve brought my bloody
Letters of recommendation
I’ve brought my death certificate
Signed and notarized

But they’ve changed their minds again
Now they want a songbird, a bit of springtime
They want a woman
To soap and kiss their balls

It’s one of my many talents
(I assure them)
Chirping and whistling like an aviary
Spreading the cheeks of my ass

Every now and then, when Britney can’t be talked into doing something outrageously stupid again and the Loch Ness monster stubbornly refuses to show itself, our diligent journalists have to go out in the world to find and report on some real news – or fill their column inches with stories about extraterrestrials, of course:

Astronomers have discovered a solar system that appears to be very like our own. The planets in question are circling a star called Cancri 55, which is about 41 light years from here. They are particularly excited about this discovery because the planets around Cancri 55 are lined up in such a way that an Earth-like planet there might support life.

If the Earth-like planet of Cancri 55 was underdeveloped then it would all be very different. We would be mining the planet for natural resources and would be in the middle of a fierce debate about whether immigration controls were needed to stop the flow of Cancrions into our solar system, especially since – with their eight arms – they have an unfair advantage in the building industry over native workers.

Mind you, in any talk about relative intelligence homo sapiens makes a pretty damn awkward ‘golden means’. Thinking of humanity’s actual and emotional intelligence the only thing that springs to mind is the lacklustre, politically correct nomer ‘challenged’.

For instance, let’s take a quick and insanitary look in the gene & cesspool from which our future leaders will rise like scum rockets:

Hotel staff in Brussels are accusing senior members of the youth wing of Sweden’s Social Democratic Party of leaving a bedroom covered in human poo and paying a chambermaid only €50 to clear it up.

The Swedish politicians claimed that an animal had defecated in the room, according to hotel staff. This was not an explanation that cut much ice with the chambermaid. “One can see a clear difference,” she said.

Granted, politicians are quite probably beyond the pale throughout the universe. The only thing you can trust your average politician with is to organise a witch hunt or a crusade, in order to distract the public from their own black hole incompetence and moral vacuum souls.

So, politicians really shouldn’t be used to judge civilisations as a whole. Instead, let’s take a look at those good folks who are paid pretty impressive salaries to keep our home fires burning. Maybe there we will find evidence of a moral maturity and a level of competence that is lacking in your average politician.

Or maybe not:

Mr Abrams, who is in his 50s and lives alone, switched energy providers from Powergen to npower several months ago after receiving `disappointing’ service from the firm. He heard nothing from Powergen until a legal warning notice came through the door.

The letter, dated October 19, warned Mr Abrams he owed the company £0.00 for gas and electricity and said if he did not pay up immediately he would be visited by a debt collection agency. It added that he could also be taken to court and, as a result, may find it difficult to obtain credit in future.

Still, one shouldn’t do what the turtle does and come to snap judgements. Maybe humanity is just not very good on an organizational level but stocked to the rafters with talented, wise and morally sound individuals. True role models – or even better, the mothers of role models. For what better way to judge any civilisation than by looking at the way they raise their young?

What better way indeed…:

Almost incredibly, though, it turns out that this week Britney’s not even the most foolhardy member of her own family, as it is announced that her mother is to pen a parenting manual.

Yes, sometimes we all need a reminder that it’s not enough just to force a weeping eight-year-old Mouseketeer up the great showbiz chimney. You have to know what prayers to say as you light the fire below.

Water is important.

Seventy percent of our planet is covered with it. Up to 60 percent of the human body is made of the stuff. We bathe in it, we cook in it, we weep it like salted nuts.

Some idiots even dilute good whiskey with it.

All in all it’s not surprising that humans, like ducks, are provided with bills – though on humans these bills can look quite absurd…:

A luxury London hotel has put together a “water list” with 30 brands of the world’s finest bottled brands to choose from – and prices that would not look out of place on a wine menu. With exotic sources such as icebergs off Newfoundland and springs beneath the volcanoes of New Zealand, diners can pay as much as £50 a litre.

The most expensive variety is the 420 Volcanic, found more 200 yards under volcanic rock in New Zealand’s Rotomo Hills. It is sold in 42cl bottles costing £21, the equivalent of £50 a litre. Berg, iceberg water from Canada, costs an equivalent of £30 a litre.

All of which is, obviously, yet another bit of proof that modern man has become close to irredeemably decadent, morbidly materialistic and hedonistically heathen.

If only Western man would return to God and accept Jesus as his personal Saviour, then all this decadent bottled water nonsense would become a thing of the past.

Or maybe not:

Spiritual Brands Inc, a start-up company from Florida, is hoping to make a splash in the competitive bottled water market, worth over US$11 billion (NZ$14b) a year in the US alone, with its new Spiritual Water.

While the labels are different, all 10 kinds of Spiritual Water, which made its official debut this week at a trade show in Miami, are the same - purified water - with a suggested retail price for 16.9-ounce bottles of up to US$1.99

Apparently, Jesus wasn’t walking over the water to reach land. He was merely staking a claim.

So, it’s small wonder that so many politicians are into Jesus – or at least the cheap salesman’s personal Jesus, Who’s always willing to turn tricks for a few easy bucks (in the case of Bush) or bobs, in the case of Blair:

Tony Blair – come on, you remember him, pretty straight kind of guy, took the country to war more times than any other prime minister in the past 100 years – is apparently about to “come out” publicly as a member of the Roman Catholic church. Well, I suppose if you’re capable of believing that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, then transubstantiation, papal infallibility and the virgin birth shouldn’t come as too much of a problem.

The Lord spoke to Tony fairly often, apparently, during his occupation of No 10. Not so much “No, don’t do that, you moron!” as quiet words of wisdom, whispered into his ear as he awoke each morning.

So, let’s end with a philosophical, or at least existential question:

“Is it possible to be a bigger and more useless prick than Tony bloody Blair?

To which only one answer is possible:

“Probably not but it sure as Hell doesn’t stop people from trying…:

Phnom Penh - Cambodian officials on Tuesday warned the public against home penis enlargement plans after a coroner found a man who had repeatedly self-injected his member with hair tonic had taken his own life to end the painful side effects.

Coroner Vieng Vannarith concluded that a 35-year-old construction worker had hanged himself last week after the hair tonic remedy which advertised it gave thicker and more lustrous locks failed to have the same effect when injected into his penis.