Glob-a-log

Most domestic disputes are quite silly.

They can also get completely out of hand and end in violent break-ups – and, occasionally, very bloody murder.

Most of them start over silly little things like the following:

In the television advert for Quorn, a moody schoolgirl sitting down to dine with her family threatens her plate-robbing brother with the words: ‘Eat my food, feel my fork’.

She said she intended only to ‘prick’ 56-year-old Mr Donkin, her partner of five years, as a joke. But she slipped and the blade made a wound almost 3in deep behind his knee.

However, for every hundred ‘domestics’ that involve drugs, alcohol an/or suspicions of sexual infidelity, there are always one or two who have something truly remarkably bizarre as ignition point.

Like this one:

Two family members have gotten into a violent fight over which Democratic candidate was more fit to be president: Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Shurelds ended up in Hahnemann University Hospital with life-threatening spleen, lung and diaphragm injuries, and Ortiz in county jail on felony assault charges.

You know how people sometimes say that art imitates life – with some clever dicks saying that life also imitates art. Well, sometimes you have art that imitates life, after which the art itself then gets imitated by life again… Which is enough to give anyone a headache – or at least serious offence.

Speaking of which: offence, that is – there are, right now, all sorts of wars going on.

The most costly of all is the War on Terror, which doesn’t seem to go anywhere at all in any kind of a hurry.

Then you have the slighty older and also quite expensive War on Drugs. That one is going quite well, incidentally – if you’re the head of a Colombian coke cartel or an Afghan war lord, that is.

There’s the War of Appeasement, which is part of the Politically Correct Wars, which wants to ban all kinds of offensive behaviour and unwelcome truths. That one is being won by the sewer-chewing muckheads who started it, I’m afraid.

And then you have the War on Obesity. I have not the slightest idea how that one is doing, since it obviously is a very secret war, which can’t be allowed to take place in public.

As the following article shows.

Still, it’s a safe bet that, like the other wars mentioned above, it’s mostly waged by morons who would do all of us an immense favour if they just fucked off and died – or moved to a Galaxy far away from this one. Whichever option gets rid of them soonest, of course:

A promotional poster, which shows a man in pink boxer-shorts being crucified, has been banned from the Tube.

The play was based, in part, on a person who auditioned for the play Jesus Christ Super Star and was told he was too fat to be given the part.

Transport for London said the advert for the play Fat Christ, which begins showing this week in Islington, north London, was offensive.

Okay, so it’s war – and about time too!

For it is one thing if grown-ups want to spend their precious God- or Darwin-given time on earth watching YouPorn clips or Paris Hilton/Britney Spears/God-knows-who sex tapes all day long…

… but is quite another to try and get kids to join them in the fun as well.

So, we’ve had British Home Stores trying to sell a range of sexy ‘Little Miss Naughty’ underwear to children from the age of seven onwards…

… and, of course, then there was Woolworths who were selling a bed, intended for girls aged about six, under the name ‘Lolita.’

So yes, there is good cause to wage war against those who want to sexualize children – either for filthy lucre or even filthier private reasons.

Having said that, as with any war – however just – it is always wise to pick the right battles…

… and some, I have to say, are less wise than others.

Which, in all honesty, is just a very polite way of saying what really went through my mind when I read the following article – which was:

“What the fuck do you think you are playing at, you lousy pieces of shit-for-brains…?!”

A GIRL has been banned from playing tennis by her local club because she grunts too loudly. Lauryn Edwards, 9, was told at the weekend that she could no longer play her beloved sport after a complaint from an opposition player a fortnight ago. The club informed Lauryn’s stunned parents Duncan and Ruth the grunting had become too much.

Dubbed “Lauryn Sharapova” by a former coach, she nominates the Russian champion as her favourite tennis player.

Here’s a strange story for you:

Papua New Guinea - Nolan Yekum and her husband Paul were dragged from their house and hung from a tree by fellow tribesmen who accused them of sorcery after the couple’s neighbour suddenly died.

The woman and her baby girl, her third child, were doing well in Mt Hagen Hospital after two weeks in hiding, the report said.

Her husband said men entered their house in the middle of the night with a rope and tied it round their necks, accusing them of sorcery over their neighbour’s death. Then they were dragged outside and hung from a tree.

He said he pleaded with villagers to wait for his neighbour’s post-mortem examination and he accused local police of failing to act.

“We managed to loosen the noose to get our feet on the ground … we were able to free ourselves. My wife, who was about seven months pregnant, delivered the baby while struggling to free herself. It was a painful experience for me and her.”

Well, maybe it’s not such a strange story after all.

In the Western world we don’t really enter our neighbours’ houses anymore, to drag them out and lynch them.

Nowadays, we delegate these things to our media – and they never, ever feel the need to wait for any kind of post-mortem examination before they do their worst.

Whether it’s during the build up to wars, the coverage of primaries, the glorification of celebrity culture and the inevitable hounding of those who fall from grace: in all their reporting, pontificating and forecasting our media are ready with their their easily aroused and cheaply bought emotions, with their ugly appetites and yes, of course, with those bits of rope.

And we?

Well, we like to watch.

A funny thing happened on the way to the theatre…

Well, actually, it happened at the theatre – or at least an outdoor variety of it:

An Australian outdoor screening of the award-winning film The Queen became an embarrassment for Ryde Council. The film chronicles the royal family’s struggle to meet public expectations in reacting to the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

There were captions included because the film was being shown to an audience of the deaf and hard of hearing by a council in Sydney. But the movie, starring Helen Mirren as the Queen, became a comedy of errors thanks to the oddly rendered captions.

The council’s Derek McCarthy conceded that the captions, produced either by a crude computer translation programme or somebody with only the faintest grasp of English, were bizarre:

“The copy shown did have some spelling mistakes and interpretations of the script which affected the experience for the deaf community present,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Some mistakes and interpretations” indeed…

Here are a few of them:

- “Buckingham Palace” appeared on screen as “Burking in Paris.
- The question “did you vote?” flashed up as “dead in a boat”.
- When a character spoke about former prime minister Tony Blair being “educated at Fettes”, it appeared on screen as “educated the fattest”.
- The observation that “every newspaper proprietor has blood on his hands today” became “every newspaper proprietor has blown in his hands today”.

It is passing strange that it wasn’t possible to find even a half-decent ‘translator’ on a whole English-speaking continent - and I must admit it does give strength to the overly familiar complaint by the English that those damn colonials are always messing up the beautiful language of Shakespeare.

Because in this particular case you really can’t deny that some liberties were taken with The Queen’s English…

The human brain likes duality – opposites, if you like. So, we have ‘love & hate’, ‘pleasure & pain’, ‘hot & cold’ – etcetera, etcetera.

That is why it’s been so frustrating that we never had something that could function as the opposite of ‘joy-riding’. Until now, that is…

HAVERSTRAW, N.Y. (AP) — A man fighting with his girlfriend clung to a car roof and punched her through the window as she drove more than a mile on a busy road, hitting several other cars, police said.

The man, William Kremer, apparently jumped onto the car and held on as girlfriend Stacey Sperrazza wove along Route 202 with the car’s air bag inflated, police said. She eventually stopped the car and hit him with it, police said.

Sperrazza, 37, of Stony Point, was arrested on a felony charge of reckless endangerment. Kremer, 42, of Haverstraw, was arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge. He was treated for a foot injury, she for eye and head wounds, police said.

Mind you – and we’re still talking about joy-riding, of course, it’s not just the fucked-up little punks from broken-down housing estates or the spoiled, stupid brats of middle-class folks who are into that most pathetic of crimes.

Sometimes, it’s not exactly the ‘usual suspects’ who get caught at it:

Five police officers face the sack after being accused of taking patrol cars for unauthorised day trips to the seaside. The constables, dubbed the “Seaside Five” by their colleagues, allegedly dared each other to see how far away from their base in south Wales they could get without being caught.

They even allegedly took photographs of each other at their various seaside locations and on fairground rides to prove where they had been. But they were apparently rumbled after their car broke down and senior officers demanded to know what they were doing outside the force’s area. All five are having separate hearings this week and could be kicked out of the force if they are found guilty of the “misuse of police vehicles whilst on duty”.

Still, there can’t be much greater joy than to take the car out for a spin – with your girlfriend beside you…

Especially when she then closes her lips round your… Ah, that just feels so good… So good…

Such a pity that such joy can’t last…

… and it really, really doesn’t!

Police were called Saturday to the scene of a one-vehicle crash in the 1100 block of 1st Avenue. Officers saw a man running from the accident scene. Police chased the man and he was eventually apprehended.

Police identified the man as Matthew Justin Clark, 29, of Park Avenue in Charleston. Clark had no shirt on and his jeans were unzipped, partially exposing his underwear. When the officer returned to the scene of the crash, he spoke with Katie Ann Stewart, 25, of Arthur Drive in Cross Lanes. Stewart said she was the driver of the crashed vehicle, but witnesses who had gathered at the scene said they saw Clark behind the wheel.

The officer said Stewart also appeared to be intoxicated, failed three sobriety tests and was charged with DUI. A test indicated her blood-alcohol level was .12. After she was taken to the police station, Stewart asked what was going to happen to her, and when the penalties for DUI were explained, she immediately changed her story.

She told police she was performing oral sex on Clark as he was driving and that was why he crashed the car. Clark, who also was at the station, told Stewart several times to “shut up.” Clark was given an Intoximeter test at the police station and registered a .211 blood-alcohol level. During a search, an officer also found a Viagra pill in his pocket.

Clark was charged with DUI, possession of a controlled substance, obstructing and driving on a revoked license. The license had been revoked for drunken driving. Stewart was charged with obstructing.

Okay, so this time it’s serious.

Forget about Tibet, ignore Sudan – and who gives a fuck about all the members of the Falun Gong rotting away in Chinese prisons, if we don’t care all that much about what happens to Muslims and Christians there.

And all those political prisoners? Well, Jeez Marie, if they really wanted to live in a democracy they could have stepped into one of those leaky boats a little bit sooner, right?

Right.

For when it comes to human rights the world doesn’t give a good Goddamn what China does or doesn’t do.

However, this time it seems that the Chinese government really has gone too far – and it might cost them.

‘Cause it’s one thing to torture and kill a few miilion of their countrymen – but quite another to…

… no, it’s truly unspeakable!

But it means WAR – or at the very least it should mean a boycot of their precious Olympic Games:

Animal welfare activists in Beijing are up in arms over a decision by the city government to clear the capital of its stray cats as part of a sweeping Olympic facelift.

They say there’s nothing as dishonest as a crocodile’s tears – or a politician’s laughter.

Okay, the same has been claimed about a hooker’s orgasm or a man’s promise not to come in his lover’s mouth but we’re trying to run a clean blog here, so we’ll ignore those similes.

More important than cleanliness even: I still have plans for that politician.

First this though:

For those who believe laughter is the best medicine, now there is a way to measure the dosage. Researchers at Kansai University have developed a machine that can scientifically measure the quantity and the quality of a person’s laughter.

The system distinguishes between real and fake laughter by closely monitoring the movement of the diaphragm — the thin sheet of muscle extending across the bottom of the rib cage, which separates the chest organs from those of the abdomen. According to Kimura, the diaphragm does not vibrate significantly when a person pretends to laugh, even when the person’s voice and facial expression appear genuine. On the other hand, when one laughs at something they truly find funny, the diaphragm generates 2 to 5 distinct vibrational waves per second.

Anyway, as I already said, forget about the hookers (and the boorish male lovers.) It will be our politicians who will have to worry most - if the article’s claims about the laughter machine are correct, of course.

If so, politics might never quite recover from it - and unlike those hookers, our politicians might have to learn a few new tricks if they want to keep our custom.

It is often said that a policeman’s lot is not a happy one. This can also be true for the non-human part of any police force. In Germany people are well aware of this, so there the human coppers are quite protective of their canine colleagues:

Police dogs in Düsseldorf, Germany, will soon be kitted out with blue plastic-fibre shoes when they go on patrol. Andre Hartwich, a police spokesman, said: “All 20 of our police dogs are being trained to walk in these shoes. I’m not sure they like it, but they’ll have to get used to it.”

The unusual footwear is a necessity due to the high rate of paw injuries on duty. The dogs often step on broken beer bottles, especially in the old town, which is famous for its pubs, Mr Hartwich said. The shoes come in sizes small, medium and large and were ordered in blue to match the officers’ uniforms.

Right, now let’s leave these doggies and their blue suede shoes for a while and move to another part of the world - and to another hard luck story. For it’s not just the police (and their dogs) who are suffering. Weiring the uniform can be quite hard on soldiers too - as the case of mister Kwon, of South Korea, shows. He proved to be quite allergic to his kit:

A court in Suwon, 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of Seoul, recently ruled in favour of a petition by the army reserve, known as Mr. Kwon, to get a “person-of-national-merit” status, Yonhap News Agency said.

People of national merit are entitled to a monthly state subsidy for livelihood and various other social benefits in South Korea. Kwon joined the army in December 2002 and his hair began falling out in July 2004. He blamed his training for the alopecia, which has worsened, and demanded compensation from the government, Yonhap said.

He was discharged from the service in January 2005. The authorities decided not to award him merit, citing no precedence and relevance, but Kwon filed a lawsuit against the decision, which he won.

Well, that’s great news for mister Kwon, of course. Mind you, he’s not exactly the first person to get money from the army because he felt the lack of a certain something. You might remember the following story. It was widely reported at the time, anyway.

Which is hardly surprising. It was a great story – and even more importantly: as photo opportunities go, this one was a Hell of a lot more exciting than any male hair loss story could ever hope to be:

THE Royal Australian Navy is paying for women sailors to have breast enlargements for purely cosmetic reasons, at a cost to taxpayers of $10,000 an operation.

Defence officials claim the surgery is justified because some servicewomen need bigger breasts to address “psychological issues”.

Right, so we have a South Korean ex-soldier who’s getting money as compensation for his hair loss and all those lovely Australian sailors who turned their government into the kind of sugar daddy who pays for his mistresses’ boob jobs. Yes, it’s a wonderful world, isn’t it?

Okay, time to return to Germany and to those poor police dogs. We heard how the police spokesman there was not entirely sure if the dogs would like their new shoes. Well, I’m not suggesting for a moment that all of Germany’s police dogs are spoilt little bitches who are forever complaining about any present their male carers buy them.

Still, we’ve seen how others who wear the uniform feel they are entitled to new hair and new breasts and God knows what else, so it could be that these German police dogs might also think they deserve a bit more than just one set of boring old work shoes.

Me, I wouldn’t be surprised if these dogs would demand at least one extra set of Italian shoes. Red shoes, I’d think – with those sexy-looking high heels, for the following and quite obvious reasons:

In the past stilettos have been blamed for stress fractures and joint pain but now it seems that the pain might be worth the gain. Italian urologist Dr Maria Cerruto discovered that a pair of “moderately high-heeled shoes” had beneficial effects. Wearing them could in fact work wonders for a woman’s sex life, research suggests.

The study involved 66 women under the age of 50. Dr Cerruto discovered that women who held their feet at a 15-degree angle to the ground, the equivalent of a two-inch heel, showed up to 15 per cent less electrical activity in their pelvic muscles. This suggests the muscles are more relaxed with higher heels, increasing their strength and ability to contract.

So, high-heeled shoes not only tone the legs and strengthen the pelvic muscles, but they “directly work the pleasure muscles which are linked to an orgasm”, it is claimed.

Which is worth knowing even if you don’t have a dog to buy shoes for, I guess…

I’m not sure many people will have heard of the ‘crested screamer’ but I read a quite heart-warming story about two of these creatures.

You wouldn’t think so, judging by their name, but this couple of screamers was actually quite shy. In fact, they turned out to be such a nerdy pair of bloody wall-flowers that their warden felt forced to do something about it:

Washington Wetland centre is home to a pair of crested screamers, which use their distinctive calls to mark their territory and attract a mate. However, the centre’s birds have shown no interest in mating.

So, staff at a Wearside nature reserve have been using a mobile phone to encourage two South American birds to mate. A recording of a screamer’s call has now been downloaded from the internet onto a phone and is being played to the birds in a bid to get them in the mood.

Warden Owen Joiner said: “They’re a prehistoric species and this is reflected in the way that they move - everything happens at an incredibly slow pace. Hopefully the recording will spark something in them and then nature will take its course. They are starting to react to the recording, which is very exciting, so we’ll just have to see what happens.”

Well, one of the things that could happen is the following, I’m afraid:

When Timothy Mortimore broke up with his girlfriend, he expected to have nothing more to do with her. Lee Amor had other ideas. She used her mobile phone to contact him more than 10,000 times in 65 days – the equivalent of once every eight minutes. The 23-year-old called or texted Mr Mortimore relentlessly after they split up and she became pregnant.

Wrongly convinced the baby was his, Amor sent her 37-year-old ex-boyfriend used pregnancy tests and even left a bottle of urine on his doorstep in an apparent attempt to show him he was the father.

I’m not suggesting that the female crested screamer will prove to be as much of a nutcase as Lee Amor, of course.

Just saying that you can’t trust every bloody bird with a mobile phone…