Glob-a-log

This is possibly one of the sickest things I’ve seen in a while.

With my thanks to Adsense who linked this ad to my last post about the rotting corpse of some Catholic saint - which is kind of appropriate, come to think of it:

Forget-me-not Heart Pendant for miscarriage, pregnancy, and baby loss in sterling silver or 14k yellow or white gold

I create each of these sweet forget me not pieces entirely by hand, from beginning to end. Forget-me-nots have always been my favourite flower to remember my baby by - so tiny and sweet, and each one absolutely perfect… with a tiny circle in the middle of each flower, reminding us of the continuity of things - of life, loss and love. I hope that this little pendant will help grieving mothers and fathers the same way that I was helped after my loss - by acknowledging your loss as very real, and by keeping your baby’s memory close to your heart, while providing you with something tangible to hold onto when you need comfort and strength…

This pendant is tiny, delicate, and discreet ( each heart measuring only11mm x 13mm, with each flower being life size) and can be made in your choice of precious metals. We do not keep gold pieces in stock, so please allow 14 business days for us to create your gold pieces specially for you.

Each pendant can be customised with a charm in the colour of your choice. Some mothers prefer the stone of the intended due date, while others prefer the colour of the month of the baby’s loss. Neither choice is wrong. If you are unsure, or are purchasing this as a gift, you may also choose a rose quartz bead that is said to be the stone of love and healing of emotional pain.

Not exactly the human face of capitalism - more the appalling & very revealing naked skull of greed.

What next? Little silver machete earrings, to ‘honour’ the dead of Rwanda?

Gold gas lighters with the words, ‘Remember Auschwitz’?

Or maybe T-shirts with a smiling baby and the text, ‘Rape can be the beginning of a beautiful new friendship’?

There truly are some despicable people around - and the crowd that is into selling these gruesomely tasteless pendants to those who suffered a miscarriage deserve a special place in Hell.

It’s a wildly funny story, deserving to be told by Monty Python, in a ‘Life of Brian’ manner.

It is also kind of sad to see how deeply primitive, stupefyingly superstitious and incredibly irrational people really are.

If you told people about an alien race whose members would gather in their millions to watch and pray to a decomposing corpse, we would declare them mad and quite possibly evil.

On planet earth though almost nobody raises an eye-brow when our secular sects do stuff like that with their evil, dead dictators, like Lenin and his stinking remains in his pathetic mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square - or when our regular churches feel the need to have another one of their saintly show & tell gatherings.

Like they’re doing today, when they will exhume and parade the corpse of yet another sanctified old fraud:

Tens of thousands of worshippers gathered this morning at the shrine of the Roman Catholic saint and mystic Padre Pio to be among the first to view his exhumed body. More than a million people are expected to file past a glass casket holding his restored corpse between now and the end of the year. Catholic practices allow for the remains of saints to be exhumed, checked for their state of deterioration, and put on display as relics for veneration.

Though still known to millions of Catholics around the world simply as Padre Pio, the Capuchin friar was made a saint by the late Pope John Paul II. He was credited by his fellow friars with more than 1,000 miraculous cures and interventions. But until his death in 1968, the church authorities remained deeply sceptical of the claims made on Padre Pio’s behalf. It was only the sheer momentum generated by his devotees that prompted a rethink.

How fitting that Madame Tussauds might be involved. When it comes to matters of the lowest and worst taste this museum truly is an expert - with its ghastly funereal, corpse-like statues of the Paris Hiltons and Victoria Beckhams of this world.

Oh, and did you notice? That the Church decided to sanctify the old faker because of pressure put upon it by the great unwashed millions of superstitious fools?

Not much of that ‘The Truth is more important than fashion & public opinion’ there now, is there? So, next time the Church leaders tell you their dogmas are eternal and free from all earthly influences, have a good laugh at them…

… or feel the deep anguish and anger of all those millions of people who are dying from hunger or from AIDS, because the Church decides that it is okay to be democratic over a decomposing corpse of a mad saint but that it will stick to its monstrously inhumane and dictatorial guns when it comes to matters of real importance, matters of true life and death.

In fact, this whole ghastly carnival today perhaps does show us a true image of the Roman Catholic church after all: a rotting cadaver with a Madame Tussauds mask.

The thing I like most about fashion is that almost all of it passes me by without me ever noticing.

I’m not sure that would be true about the new kind of trousers some fashion designer has dreamed up recently - me not noticing, I mean:

It’s a design for the really slim or really brave woman - ultra low-rise jeans with a built-in bikini or thong. The Brazilian-made trousers would not look out of place among the bronzed bodies on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro but their effect on the British high street has yet to be seen.

The jeans sit extremely low on the hip and leave little to the imagination. The tight-fitting garments are held up by the elasticated black thong or denim bikini ribbon, tied at the side. Sandra Tanimura, a designer from the clothing company Sanna, came up with the idea after customers asked for ever lower trousers but then had difficulty keeping them up. She said: “We specialise in making low-rise trousers and our customers wanted them to get even lower. It was very difficult meeting these demands without the trousers falling down. I came up with the idea of using the bikini strings to let the trousers hang really low without falling.”

I have to say that it sounds more practical than it looks. Not that it looks bad - just a bit weird. But then that’s true about most things fashionable. Fashion is not even meant to be comfortable, let alone practical.

Though there are always exceptions. Take this latest idea: a new type of children’s shoe that’s meant to save the buyer some serious money.

I’m sure it won’t deliver the Good Little Capitalist Award to its producers but I am sure that there will be many parents who will be quite happy to declare them saints:

A new range of children’s shoes mean parents no longer have to rush to the shops every time their little ones’ feet grow - because the shoes can grow with them. Inchworm shoes can extend by one full shoe size so when kids’ feet grow, all parents need to do is simply adjust the shoe to fit.

They are altered by simply pressing a button on the side of the shoe and pulling the toe out to the required length. Parents know what size they have pulled the stylish trainers out to by looking at the numbers on the heel. Each pair of shoes offers three different sizes in half-size increments. The shoes are available in the UK through Scottish based distributors Fat Shoes Day.

Insert your own ‘Scots are sooo cheap!’ joke here…

I never cared much for the song - nor for the deification of its Maker - but I still think ‘Imagine‘ deserved a kinder fate than to be raped and dismembered by Creationist salesmen.

So, for once I’m all with Yoko Ono, who is suing the Darwin deniers. It’s kind of funny that a woman who can’t sing and who has murdered a few songs in public herself has now become the champion of what many see as John Lennon’s anthem…

…but then again, history is the biggest & meanest irony machine:

NEW YORK — Yoko Ono is suing the producers of a movie that challenges the concept of Darwinian evolution, saying they used the song “Imagine” without her permission. Ono accuses the producers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” of suggesting to viewers that those who guard John Lennon’s legacy somehow authorized or sponsored the film.

The producers of the film, which features Ben Stein challenging Darwinian theories that prevail in academic circles and suggesting that life could have emerged through intelligent design, said they used only “a very small portion of the song.”

“Based on the fair use doctrine, news commentators and film documentarians regularly use material in the same way we do,” Premise Media said in a statement. “Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the ‘Imagine’ clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry.”

Unbiased viewers?

Let me state that I am not one of those. Neither unbiased nor a viewer of Bible belching shit like that. There’s not much worse than a bigot but one thing sure is and that’s a cowardly bigot - one who tries to hide his or her colours - and the peddlers of the Intelligent Design pipe dream are just seven day Creationists hiding behind four-syllable words.

In other words, they’re like the ‘I’ve got nothing against Jews, blacks, etcetera but…’ crowd. Still, it is kind of funny to see these types of bigots going for the free speech defence, which, to paraphrase, has become the first refuge that any scoundrel seeks.

To be fair, their other excuse, that they only used ‘a very small portion of the song’ is more consistent with both their practices and their convictions. Only using homeopathetically small kernels of the truth (if that) in any of their professed beliefs themselves, you could say that they have become very good at the cheater’s most beloved tactic: to use a bit of the truth to hide the big, fat lie they are trying to sell.

Anyway, if the Darwin bashers lose the case and are forced to steal some other dead singer’s song I would suggest that they look no further than that sweet song by Kirsty Maccol. It’s certainly more fitting than Lennon’s song with its ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven’ line.

The title of that Maccol song? Ah yes, here it is: ‘There’s a guy works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvis…

…Just like you swore to me that you’d be true.
There’s a guy works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvis
But he’s a liar and I’m not sure about you’

America is no stranger to political trials. From the Cold War Joe McCarthy era to the military tribunals of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, the USA has been trying to do to justice what the Soviets did somewhat better and on a larger scale during the Communist decades in their show trials.

The Soviet Union could always count on the KGB to provide the courts with false evidence and torture derived confessions. In the USA the FBI have always proven to be more than willing to do the government’s dirty business.

Hoover was America’s answer to Stalin’s foul henchman Beria - and if J. edgar would have been granted the same powers he would probably have done things in the same manner as the butcher of Lubyanka square.

The FBI is still at it, by the way. The more realistic threat of world communism has been exchanged for George Bush’s Quixotic fight against the phantom mills of world terrorism - as old Joe McCarty’s obscene House Committee on Un-American Activities (the infamous HUAC) has been born again as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act - the famous PATRIOT Act, indeed.

The same tyranny of fear, the same ruthless paranoia and the same Witch Finder General spirit rule again - and now, like then, the same principle applies:

Who’s not for us is against us and should - and will - be fucked over with extreme prejudice. As the artist Steve Kurtz found out at great cost.

This is what Tim Dowling wrote about the case in the online Guardian:

In May 2004 the American artist Steve Kurtz woke up to find that his wife Hope was not breathing. Paramedics summoned to his Buffalo home noticed laboratory equipment and petri dishes containing bacterial cultures, which Kurtz used in his art work. His wife died and the paramedics immediately notified the police. The Joint Terrorism Task Force swooped in, detaining Kurtz on suspicion of bio-terrorism. Agents in bio-hazard suits - from the FBI, the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, among others - sealed off the street and seized equipment that Kurtz had already told them was harmless (indeed, much if it had already been exhibited in public) and carried off books, papers, computers and his cat.

Within a week the Commissioner of Public Health announced that the seized cultures were harmless and that Kurtz’s wife had died of natural causes. His lawyer called the FBI’s response “a colossal overreaction”, but only now, four years later, has the case finally been dismissed. While it may have been immediately obvious to some that the bio-terrorism investigation was an embarrassing mistake, the FBI, with its curious knack for groundless tenacity, went ahead and indicted Kurtz for mail and wire fraud, the maximum sentence for which had recently been upped from five to 20 years by the USA PATRIOT Act. It claimed that he had obtained the $256 worth of harmless bacteria illegally.

This week a federal judge ruled that the government’s case was “insufficient on its face”, offering support to the assertion by Kurtz’s lawyer that no crime had been committed. Why the FBI chose to pursue this case is unclear, but Kurtz’s supporters are convinced that it was an intentional attempt to punish an artist who is critical of the government’s authoritarian tendency. As Nature magazine put it: “It seems that government lawyers are singling Kurtz out as a warning to the broader
artistic community”.

As I said, not for the first time - and most certainly not for the last either. For this is the house that Jack built - or rather, this is the USA that Bush, Cheney and the other maniacs have been steadily building, these last seven years.

And as the people in Berlin learned the hard way during the Cold War: It’s much easier to build those prison walls than to tear them down.

There’s this great song by Luka Bloom, called ‘Gone to Pablo’.

It’s about the wife of Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline Roque, who committed suicide after the painter died, reportedly leaving a note that said she’d ‘gone to Pablo’.

The following story is not about a painter - or his wife.

It’s about a priest and he’s not left any messages but he might still be gone - to Jesus, or, God knows, to Pablo:

Rescuers searching for a missing Roman Catholic priest who was attempting to break a record for flying with helium balloons have located his cluster of brightly coloured party balloons floating in the ocean. Rev di Carli was reported missing about eight hours after taking off when he lost contact with port authority officials. The priest wanted to break a record for the longest period aloft with balloons.

The cluster of yellow, orange, pink and white balloons was seen Tuesday night, floating intact in the sea off Brazil’s southern Santa Catarina state near di Carli’s last contact point, according to a photograph posted on Sao Paulo’s UOL news Web site. Authorities reached the cluster of balloons late Tuesday but the priest was not there.

Rev di Carli, who has taken jungle survival and mountain climbing courses, was carrying enough drinking water and cereal bars to stay alive for at least five days, an official said, suggesting the priest may be adrift in the ocean or resting on a beach or forest-covered mountain along the coast.

Or he might have been swallowed by a whale, like Jonah, only to be brought back to safety and dry land after a bit.

On the whole it seems more likely that the padre has become fish food. Gone to Pablo, if you wish, or his just reward, whatever comes first.

So, it won’t be burned after all:

Dmitri Nabokov, son of Vladimir, has decided to publish The Original of Laura, the novel his dying father commanded be destroyed. Having kept the literary world in a state of suspense for years over whether he was prepared to carry out his long-standing threat to burn his father’s last novel, Dmitri Nabokov has finally announced that he is prepared to save it from destruction.

Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura will now not be thrown onto the flames, the 73-year-old has told Der Spiegel magazine, arguing that his father, the creator of Lolita and Pale Fire who died in 1977, would not want his son to suffer any more over his most tortuous dilemma.

It has been a fascinating if long-drawn-out story: what would happen to this particular book. The dilemma was obvious. On the one hand, there was this unmistakable and clearly expressed wish of the author himself, who did not want a book he couldn’t finish to be published. On the other hand, the whole literary world wanted to at least have the chance to see the work and judge for itself if the writer was right to wish to have it destroyed unseen.

As it often goes, the desires of the living trumped that of the dead.

From a moral point the decision is absolutely wrong - immoral if not illegal. The artist who is still there to express his or her wishes concerning a work of art that has not been promised or sold to some private collector or publisher should be the sole arbiter of these issues. The moment any work of art enters the public arena it becomes part of this world. At that point anyone’s opinion of it becomes as valid (or vapid) as that of its creator. In this sense the world of art is the most democratic of all.

However, until a work of art is brought into this public world the artist’s rule is and should be absolute. It is his or her unalienable right - and duty - to be the God of this creation. No other individual, no society as a whole, should have or claim the right to intervene. Ultimately, all kinds of authoritarian censorship or a more democratic wish for art to be, as it were, ‘painted by numbers’ are bad - and may spell the death of art. An artist must be free to create what he or she wishes and to decide what to do with the end product. That does not mean the world has a duty to applaud whatever is made or to support the artist morally and/or financially - but it does mean it should at least leave the artist in peace, to do as he or she pleases. The making of art should be the most private of all enterprises, so it can become that most public and democratic artefact: a work of art.

Until sold, given (or promised) to the public the artist should have absolute control of the process and the destination of his or her work - including the right to destroy it. This is, as said, the artist’s inalienable right and the death of the artist should not diminish or even extinguish this most necessary power. In other words, the decision not to destroy this unfinished work by Nabokov is wrong - terribly wrong even: an absolute perversion and a moral, if not a legal crime.

Having said all that, as a fan of Nabokov’s work, I am, of course, very happy that his son chose to commit this outrage.

You know, it does get boring to have to talk about militant Islam all the time, with its psychotic suicide junkies and its pederast prophet. How many cartoons can you present to the public like so many tired rabbits out of the same old hat before it becomes old hat?

So, it is nice that there is always that good old stand-by, Christianity.

Thanks to evil morons like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and legions of other grubby televangelists, thanks to the Roman Catholic church and its criminal doctrines & paedophile priests, and thanks to its million of demented sheep, Christianity is always there when you grow tired of Mohamed bashing.

As my country man and film maker Paul Verhoeven showed. In his case it must have been that he grew tired of presenting stories about more worldly psychopaths like RoboCop and making soft porn movies like Showgirls - or both, like his Basic Instinct flick.

So, like most other celebs he turned his gaze to the more spiritual world - not in order to seek solace or find wisdom but to shock & annoy, to make some more money and to do his boring ‘Me, me, look at me!’ dance routine in the ever fading limelight:

AMSTERDAM (Hollywood Reporter) - “Basic Instinct” director Paul Verhoeven will publish a revisionist biography of Jesus in September, following more than 20 years of research.

The Dutch filmmaker, who has had a lifelong ambition to make a film about Jesus based on scientific research, claims that Jesus’ father was probably a Roman soldier who raped Mary during the Jewish uprising in Galilee. He also claims that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot.

Mind you, it is a more likely story than the one about the virgin birth, the Holy Ghost and other supernatural pregnancy tales - which always had a whiff of Clinton’s ‘I did not inhale’ (or, indeed, ‘I did not have sex with that woman’) or George Bush’s ‘removal of an evil tyrant’ excuse.

One could argue that making a film about Jesus, based on ’scientific research’ is a bit like that old Vietnam war standby, ‘Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity’.

Which would be rather apt in this case - so let’s leave the whole tired subject with that line.

Now, did you hear the one about Mohamed, the little girl and the pretty camel…?

It’s not easy being a small and in all ways completely insignificant neighbour to a big yob of a bully. Especially if that much bigger guy can’t even be bothered to kick sand in your face on the beach.

When you’re Scottish you can claim all sorts of true (and nonsensical) things when it comes to your relationship with England. Scotland has seen successful scientist-inventors, politicians, sports players and even the odd (and short-lived) military success against the enemy in the South.

As some Scotsman once said about the ‘glorious union’ of the two countries, ‘We were getting tired of stealing their sheep, so we decided to take the whole country.’

Then, there are the many ways that the Scots have been waging a very dirty war against the English - with their kilts and bagpipes, with the endless Nessie stories, those terrible Burns poems and their Godawful haggis.

So, the English might have done a lot of bad things to and in Scotland but the Scots have always been willing to return the favour.

It’s a different story for Wales, alas.

According to an old anecdote there was this Frenchman who was asked to give his opinion about the English cuisine. He just shrugged politely and said, ‘La cuisine Anglaise…? Soit.‘

So, yes, I’m afraid that that’s what one would have to say about poor Wales as well, ‘Soit’

Members of the Welsh Assembly are up in arms after a Cardiff film production company used a baby-changing room at the £70 million Senedd building to shoot a sex scene. Assembly authorities gave Fiction Factory permission to film various scenes at the landmark building last month, including what they thought would be a “conversation scene” in the Senedd’s baby-changing facility.

In the event, however, that scene was notable for its non-verbal communication as Lea, a 29-year-old civil servant played by the actress Alys Thomas, entices her older lover, played by Dewi Rhys Williams, into the room for a moment of forbidden passion.

Among those complaining is William Graham, a Conservative AM and member of the Assembly Commission which is responsible for running the building. Mr Graham told the Western Mail last night that he expected people to be outraged.

“This is obviously unpleasant and unnecessary,” Mr Graham said. “Potentially it’s distressing for people who don’t like the idea of one of the buildings they funded being used in this way. One doesn’t want censorship but nothing that is controversial or concerning should happen. My mother would be outraged – and I think rightly so.”

The scene was shot for the S4C Welsh-language series Caerdydd (Cardiff), Wales’s answer to Sex and the City. Caerdydd is advertised with the tagline: “Love and lust at the cutting edge of capital city life”.

Of course, it’s not just the raunchiness that makes this series so problematic to the good people of Wales.

There is something far, far worse than that…

According to the Western Mail, the series launched in 2006 and “immediately attracted attention for its raunchy storylines, graphic scenes of sex and drug-taking…

(Here it comes!)

… and heavy use of English”.

Well, this is nice. The new US army recruitment figures for last year:

The US army doubled its use of “moral waivers” for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the demands of the Iraq war, allowing sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats, and child abusers into the military, new records released yesterday showed.

The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.

The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-cannabis-related drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and nine sex offenders.

Okay, all of this might not be such a bad thing. I mean, recruiting all these criminals may make America’s streets a little bit safer - and it will hardly make Iraq’s problems any worse.

Plus, it’s just what the US army is doing in Iraq anyway: recruiting local war lords and petty criminals to do some of the fighting for them. Ten dollars a day seems to be the going rate for the Iraqi ‘thugs for hire’ scheme.

American lowlifes will probably cost a little more but that’s the price you pay when you want to hire the best quality, made in the USA type of scum