Glob-a-log

Well, well, talk about the perfect crime:

Two Orange County women are suspected of using fake identities to set up credit accounts to pay for cosmetic surgeries. Irvine police say the women got liposuction, tummy tucks and breast augmentation in February at a medical facility center in the city.

Of course, these women might still get caught - though I’m not even going to think about what kind of ‘reparations’ they might be ordered to make when they really can’t pay for the operations. Can you re-inject body fat and take out whatever they inject into those lips…? The mind boggles and then firmly refuses to go any further into that particular direction.

Still, I have to say there is something quite pleasing - perfect, if you like - about someone using a fake identity to build a fake body, so to speak. I’ve been trying to think of any other example of a crime that is so aesthetically pleasing as this one - and I can’t come up with anyhting…

I know that not many people will end up reading this but I’d like to invite any one of them to think of some crime that is as perfectly pleasing to both eye and mind as this one is.

Happy hunting - and yes, I do hope the women will get away with it.

Well, Jesus once said that there were many rooms in His Father’s mansion but even He would have had to scratch His head if He’d be forced to find accommodation for all the various fractions within the venerable (if slightly senile) Church of England.

I suppose you will always be having some problems with a church that was basically formed to make it possible for one of England’s kings to marry the floozy of his choice (after the RC Church refused to do so, being of the not unreasonable opinion that good king Henry was, to say it politely, rather careless with his wives and tended to run though them like an excitable but clumsy kid runs through a bag of party balloons.)

So, a church built on the ever-changing whimsy of some bloated king with a Bluebeard fixation might, at times, find it hard to define what it’s really for, apart from functioning as a royal marriage agency.

And it shows.

We all remember the Archbishop Rowan Atkinson - no, sorry, that other comic: Rowan Williams, suggesting it would ever be so nice to introduce some parts of Sharia law to England. Now, that might not have been the sanest, let alone best timed suggestions but you can always trust the Church of England in this regard: For every ship of fools that steams full ahead one way, you will have at least one other that races in the exact opposite direction.

Sometimes, as with the instalment of gay and women priests this leads to spectacular and highly amusing accidents at sea - but sometimes these ships sail so recklessly and are so over the place that you would need a whole platoon of quantum butterflies to even predict where the damn things themselves think that they are going.

In other words, chances that such ships end up on a gratifying collision course are slim to vanishing. All of which being a slightly unnecessarily long introduction to the latest bit of nonsense to have bloomed in the brain and tubled from the tongue of one of the Church of England’s clergy, the Bishop of Rochester, to be precise, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, who, by the look of it, would not altogether be in favour of the introduction of Sharia law - to say the very, nay, the bloody least:

A row has erupted within the Church of England over calls for British Muslims to be converted to Christianity. The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, accused the Church of failing in its duty to “welcome people of other faiths” ahead of a motion at July’s General Synod in York urging a strategy for evangelising Muslims.

Fun, isn’t it? The Archbishop being all in favour of inviting another faith to please introduce at least some of its laws into the, supposedly weak and failing Anglo-Christian judicial system, while one of his Bishops would seem to like nothing better than go on a new Crusade and slaughter all Muslims who don’t convert to the Christian faith - okay, to kindly ‘welcome’ Muslims and other heathens.

You can easily imagine though that quite a lot of those renowned peaceful Muslims around the world will interpret this kind welcome speech as the forebode of a new Crusade and will react with their usual restraint - you know, Salmon Rushdie, Danish cartoons, that sort of thing.

Not that I give a hoot about the childish antics of the ‘Behead those who insult the peace of Allah (or some such)’ fanatics - au contraire. Let the rabble riot in the streets, says I. It beats having to watch the Eurovision Song Contest (of which I wrote earlier.)

Anyway, I have to say that retrospectively, I’m becoming quite a big fan of the even bigger Henry Vlll, whose lustful ways gave birth to the Church of England. I’m not a friend of organised religion, to put it mildly, but even I have to admit they give good value for money, in terms of endless and hilarious entertainment.

Now, this is quite interesting - and more than a bit weird:

It is an average match night in Spain. The bar is full, the beer is flowing and all eyes are on the TV as the game gets under way. Meanwhile their wives and girlfriends once more have to content themselves with other things while their partners cheer on Real Madrid or Barca. These viudas de fútbol - football widows - who lose out on a sex life to the beautiful game are not isolated cases. According to a survey, seven out of 10 Spanish football fans prefer watching the match to making love.

Right.

I have to say that I enjoy to watch the occasional football match. Apart from all else, what better chance will you ever get to see 22 multi-millionaires (plus substitutes) running around like mad, kicking & screaming, diving & weeping, spitting & bleeding for 90 odd minutes, solely for your enjoyment?

Still, 70% of Spanish football fans enjoying this more than sex? And there I thought being a golf widow was about as sad and pathetic as it came. Being one of those ‘viudas de fútbol’ must be much worse though. Golf is still more of a rich man’s game, so chances are that people who play golf also have a swimming pool - so that the golf widow can at least find solace in the arms of a handsome pool boy. ‘Fútbol’ supporters, on the whole, don’t go for the private swimming pool life style much, which means that those football widows can’t even get some well-deserved relief in and around the pool.

Hm. Yes. I think I have another of those ‘cunning plan’ moments. Something to help all those Spanish women - and which will make me a lot of money too… Yes, why not? Let me use this place to announce the birth of yet another humanitarian relief effort. I will set up my own travel agency, which will then be used to import sympathetically horny males from outside Spain and deliver them to these benighted ‘viudas de fútbol’.

They will, of course, travel by couch.

(Both cartoons came from: www.fezzart.com/Sports%20Funnies.htm)

Now, this is funny - and rather sad, of course:

Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman to run on a major party presidential ticket and a supporter of Hillary Clinton, has accused Barack Obama of conducting a “terribly sexist” campaign. Miss Ferraro, the losing Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, said that she might abandon her lifelong party loyalties and vote for the Republican John McCain if Mr Obama is confirmed as the nominee.

Now, I’m very sure misogyny is alive and well in the USA, as it is mostly everywhere else on this fine planet of ours but I think Ms Ferraro should be advised not to complain too much about the way Obama has campaigned.

As far as I can remember he has not spread evil rumours about his opponent - this in contrast to some of the really ugly stuff coming from team Clinton. Remember the one about Obama wearing some traditional garb? Yes, that one, which had one of the Clinton people dig up the Muslim thing again. Which Hilary was good enough to - well, not to deny, of course, when she said that “as far as she knew” Obama was a Christian.

Also, I can’t seem to recall Obama suggesting Hillary would not attract enough black votes. Yes, you know: how she, more than once said Obama would never win over enough white working class votes, with the emphasis very much on ‘white.’

Oh yes, one last small thing: Obama also didn’t warn Hillary that it might not be wise to stay in the race because history had shown that candidates who didn’t know when to stop could be shot like Bobby Kennedy…

So, again, Ferraro better not start playing that ‘He was so mean’ game. I know politics is a tough (and I would argue despicable) business but they don’t come tougher (or more despicable) than team Clinton. Apart from that though, it’s all very well to play the martyr for the feminist cause, saying you’d rather vote for McCain than Obama if the latter would win the nomination but that truly would be a betrayal of all the women who fought the good fight for better laws.

Feminism is not about glitter, not about having a female president (however welcome that would be, by the way) but about laws: about equality under the law. Any spiteful vote for McCain brings closer the reality of at least four more years of a Republican hand-picking judges for the Supreme Court.

I know most Democrats live under the illusion that John McCain secretly is one of them but a feminist like Ferraro should know - and does know better, of course. This is what McCain had to say about abortion:

“I am proud of my pro-life record in public life, and I will continue to maintain it. I will not draw my children into this discussion. As a leader of a pro-life party with a pro-life position, I will persuade young Americans [to] understand the importance of the preservation of the rights of the unborn.”

So, when it comes to the abortion issue, voting for McCain really is voting for at least four more ‘Bush light’ years - and Ferraro is now saying she might be be happy to do just that. Thank you, Ms Ferraro, for that. Another great day for political personality cult posturing - another very sad day for fairness, decency and, yes, a very, very bad day indeed for the feminist cause.

While I’m writing this the Eurovision Song Contest is live on air in God knows how many living rooms all over Europe - and in Israel. Israel, as we all know, is part of Europe, sort of. When it comes to nauseating pop songs anyway. When it comes to the more messy stuff of day to day politics and survival they’re on their own, of course. Then the whole of Europe tends to look the other way, shuffles its collected feet and says, ‘Not my beat, guv.’

Which perfectly sums up my feelings about the whole stupid Eurovision Song Contest: definitely not my beat. So, why write about it at all? Well, because, like Baldrick, I suddenly came up with this cunning plan: Why not do away with all those stupid bands and solo singers and let our elected leaders slug it out on stage instead?

It would be brilliant: All those presidents and prime ministers, dressed like your typical Eurovision lead singers, with those Song Contest hair-does, spouting out those stupid lyrics like so many, badly rhyming political manifestos. I would buy a big screen plasma TV just to be able to watch this yearly(!) show in style and comfort.

Wouldn’t it be great to see and hear England’s Gordon Brown sing that old Sinatra favourite ‘My way’: “Regrets, I have a few.”

It would be easy for France’s president Sarkozy. Rumour has it that his wife is recording a new album, on which she sings a song about giving a blow job to her husband. I’m not suggesting that the two of them would perform that particular song on stage - oh well, whom am I kidding: Of course I would want them to do that.

Germany’s Angela Merkel. though? That’s a tough one. She’s not really Eurovision Song Contest material. You can’t see her as a Spice Girl. Hell, she’s got ‘material’ enough to form all of the Spice Girls and have enough left to build one or two Little Jimmy Osmonds. Okay, so maybe it is easy after all: She can perform Madonna’s ‘Material girl’.

Ah, so many European leaders, so many songs, so little time - but it would be fun to have them compete in such a contest. They might be tempted to agree to do it too, you know. Berlusconi singing ‘I am the walrus’ and Serbia’s Boris Tadić, with ‘Happiness is a warm gun’ (to stick to the Beatles theme in this paragraph) would certainly get more voters out performing on stage than during those boring, political elections.

On a personal level, I would find it intensely gratifying to see our own Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende first work his way through a tepid version of ‘Send in the clowns’ before gathering his well-deserved ‘nil points’ from every voting European country.

I must admit that I never believed in the working of aphrodisiacs - but when I’m wrong I’m wrong and I’m always willing to acknowledge my mistakes.

So, my excuses to all who plough this wonderful field. I salute all of you miracle workers and hereby proclaim that at least some aphrodisiacs do work remarkably well:

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials are warning New Yorkers to stay away from an illegal aphrodisiac made from toad venom after the product apparently killed a man. The city’s poison control center issued the warning Friday after receiving a hospital report that a 35-year-old man who ingested the hard, brown substance died earlier this month. The product is sold under names including Piedra, Love Stone, Jamaican Stone, Black Stone and Chinese Rock at sex shops and neighborhood stores. It is banned by the Food and Drug Administration.

Which is a bit harsh, since the product only does what it says on the packaging. It promises to deliver a stiffie - and boy, do they deliver…

Many, many years ago, I saw some kid’s toy in a shop. It was a small, plastic inflatable thingy. It basically was a swans’ head and neck, fixed to a ring. It was obviously a bath toy and you can imagine some toddler having fun with it. Same toddler could just about have stuck his or her arm through the ring that made the ‘body’ of the swan. It was a very small swan - let’s say half the size of an anorexic duck.

So, obviously, the toy came with the following warning, ‘This product is not a life saving device.’

Anyway, enough about that toy and on to today’s lesson, and today’s prayer, which is, ‘God help us - and save us from the pompous and the bloody boring’:

For all his swashbuckling adventures, the fictional Dr Jones would be found guilty of unethical and quite possibly illegal behaviour, the head of the said.

“In pursuit of ‘fortune and glory’ Jones ignores international treaties, treats human remains as weapons, and destroys archaeological sites in a bid to escape from potential entombment and other worrisome possibilities,” said Professor Claire Smith of Australia’s Newcastle University.

Hello, anyone in there with half a brain that isn’t completely mummified? These are movies: Hollywood action movies…

There’s a mandatory clause that states that no action movie will ever even look vaguely as if it cares or even knows about the laws of nature or the rules of logic.

In this movie our hero (reportedly) hides in a fridge to escape the effects of an atomic bomb… Now, I know that the producers of customer products have become a bit paranoid about possible law suits and have grown fond of making the most obvious and preposterous disclaimers on these products but I can’t see even them getting in a panic about this movie and suddenly producing labels that state, ‘This fridge is not a life-saving device during a nuclear attack’.

In other words, lighten up already - or return to your dusty tombs and bother us no more.

Yesterday I did a piece about an ex-English teacher who had decided to become a terrorist bomber. Today, I’m forced to take another look at the twisted world of English teachers and those who do English supply jobs - and it doesn’t make for a pretty sight.

First, let’s go back in time a bit and meet the main character of this column, a woman called Fiona Forster. The first time she made the papers was because of this:

An education boss has criticised the six-month ban given to a supply teacher who sold cigarettes to pupils, saying it should have been longer. A tribunal found Fiona Forster guilty of unacceptable professional conduct after she was found selling cigarettes at Meopham School near Gravesend, Kent. The General Teaching Council (GTC) imposed the ban, saying there was no serious risk that she would re-offend.

The GTC is, in my not so humble opinion, a collective bunch of useless wankers who are not fit to collect empty miniature sugar bags but, strangely enough, they were proven right on one account. The next time Fiona Forster made the news it wasn’t for selling cigarettes to her pupils:

A TEACHER was banned for two years yesterday after quizzing special needs kids over who was most likely to be raped. Fiona Forster, 45, had already been banned from teaching for selling pupils cigarettes. She lied on her CV to land an English supply job in Dartford, Kent – then set the sick quiz after three months.

A General Teaching Council panel in Birmingham found Forster, who now lives abroad, guilty of professional misconduct. Panel chairman Tony Neal said: “She has expressed no remorse.”

Well, I can’t say I’m surprised she didn’t show any remorse. She’s obviously a sick piece of shit, so why should we expect her to express herself in even vaguely human terms or show normal emotions?

I am surprised with the amazing stupidity of Birmingham’s General Teaching Council panel, who didn’t simply fire her but only gave her a two year suspension. First, that six month ban for smoking, now a two years ban for terrorising her pupils with rape stories. As I said, you don’t expect sociopaths like Fiona Forster to behave any other than she does but these British GTCs are truly sick.

As for Fiona Forster, in an ideal world the next time we’d read about her was because she’d decided to follow that other teacher’s example and become a terrorist bomber - that is, after she’d blown herself up, without damaging other people’s property or harming other people.

The world doesn’t have many stories with happy endings, so I would appreciate it if it could deliver on that one.

People who take this whole ‘War on Terror’ business seriously might sometimes worry that the leader of the knights in shining armour can’t even demolish a pretzel without doing himself an injury.

Well, as the following story shows, they shouldn’t worry too much about the mental capacities of the leader of the free world: The forces of evil seem to match him quite easily in the ‘I’m with stupid’ category:

A former English teacher today pleaded guilty to threatening to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre. Saeed Ghafoor said he was going to bomb Europe’s largest shopping complex using three limousines filled with gas canister explosives.

But when questioned about his plot, the 33-year-old, of Southampton, did not appear to know where the shopping centre was, the Old Bailey heard. When told it was near the Dartford tunnel in Kent rather than in Exeter, as he had thought, Ghafoor, a Muslim, said he had not “finalised” his plans, the court was told.

Quite.

I don’t approve of terrorism but I have to admit that I’m glad mister Saeed Ghafoor decided on this career change. Not only should we welcome any wannabe bomber who can’t even locate his target but it must truly come as a relief that this psychopathic dunderhead no longer teaches English.

Hm, now that I think of it, when you look at the quality of our educational system these days, you have to wonder how many more Saeed Ghafoors are employed in our schools. I’m not saying all of our (English) teachers are potential terrorists, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them couldn’t find their local supermarket if their weekly rate of fish fingers (or the glory of Allah) depended on it.

Ah well, news stories like this shouldn’t really surprise anyone any more, these days. Anyway, you remember how last year the president of Gambia proudly announced he had discovered a cure for AIDS? Well, now it seems he has found a cure for homosexuality:

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh says he will “cut off the head” of any homosexual caught in his country. He said that Gambia was a country of believers, indicating that no sinful and immoral act as homosexuality would be tolerated in the country. He warned all homosexuals in the country to leave, noting that a legislation “stricter than those in Iran ” concerning the vice would be introduced soon.

Nice guy.

Gambia is officially a secular country, be it with a population which is for 90% (Sunni) Muslim and for the rest mostly Christian. In most secular but Christian countries it is not very often that you will hear a president announce that he will cut off the head of all the homosexuals he can lay his hands on. Which just goes to show that, to paraphrase Orwell, all secular countries are equal but some more so than others - or something.

Having said that, I’m sure that there are plenty Christian fundamentalists, in the States and elsewhere, who (secretly) envy all these Muslim regimes who can do what they want in the name of their Gods, without some bloody Constitution insisting that the rights of the infidel should be protected.

I’ve always believed that the only thing that prevented the Falwells of this world from behaving like Iran’s ayatollahs was the fact that they were bound by the US constitution. ‘Cause I suspect they would love to be able to call fatwas on their adversaries, hang homosexuals and force women to wear burqas.

Oh, how these Christian fundamentalists must curse the Founding Fathers in the secret torture chambers of their hearts…