Glob-a-log

Remember all those ever-changing reasons why “we” invaded Iraq.

Or, if you want to do the Bush chant, why we liberated that country from a most evil dictator.

Something about spreading democracy. Yes, that one came after the clear and present danger of weapons of mass destruction was proven to be a cynical lie.

Well, so democracy was spread - or its cheeks were spread wide enough for it to be raped - at the cost of billions of dollars and God knows how many lives of soldiers and citizens.

Of course, nobody said that democracy would have to be brought to the lower species as well.

So, in liberated Basra, honour killings are back with a vengeance and hitmen will do the honours for you, at a measly $100 a pop.

In other words, whomever George Bush may choose to pardon during his last days in office, it sure as Hell won’t be the women of Iraq:

“Authorities in the southern Iraqi city of Basra have admitted they are powerless to prevent ‘honour killings’ in the city following a 70 per cent increase in religious murders during the past year. There has been no improvement in conviction rates for these killings. So far this year, 81 women in the city have been murdered for allegedly bringing shame on their families. Only five people have been convicted.

During 2007 the Basra security committee recorded 47 ‘honour killings’ and three convictions. One lawyer in the city described how police were actively protecting perpetrators and said that a woman in Basra could now be murdered by hired hitmen for as little as $100 (£65).”

This from the ‘vaguely interesting’ front:

“Plans are being finalised for Pope Benedict XVI to visit Israel in May next year, the Vatican has confirmed. The Pope had intended to make the announcement himself at Christmas, Vatican sources said. However the news was leaked this week by the Israeli daily Haaretz.”

Never mind the Israeli daily Haaretz, of course: Those in the know had seen this visit coming long before this supposedly stop-the-presses leak.

This visit had been in the planning for the longest time - and has been orchestrated like one of those old John Lennon and Paul McCartney songs.

It started with Israel apologizing to the surviving members of The Beatles, in January, this year, for having barred them from performing in Israel in 1965:

“JERUSALEM – The Israeli Foreign Ministry has extended an official apology to The Beatles, 43 years after the British band was banned from performing in the Jewish State.”

Paul McCartney subsequently did a concert in Israel.

Then, last week, operation ‘Hug A Beatle’ continued with the Vatican officially forgiving John Lennon for stating that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus:

“More than 40 years after Christians were infuriated by the Beatles’ claim that they were “more popular than Jesus”, the Roman Catholic Church has made peace with the Fab Four.”

Obviously, John Lennon won’t follow his former band mate’s example by having a concert in front of Rome’s St Peter’s - but, no doubt, he will be there in spirit, when the Pope mobile stops in front of the Knesset, where German-born Pope and Israel’s Prime Minister will hug on the parliament steps and start to sing a medley of these pardoned & popular Beatles songs: ‘I want to hold your hand/Love me do/We can work it out/With a little help from my friends.’

Ah well, let’s hope the visit will be a success. God knows the world can use a few more things-not-going-tits-up stories - although, personally, I’m more comfortable with some of the later, much bleaker John Lennon songs, like the one I’m closing with, ‘God’:

(Most tasteless Durex ad ever…?!)

You know how nations have these national animals. Like lions, eagles, bears etcetera.

The French have a cock…

… and a new study by the white coat brigade shows that this has nothing to do with the flaccid performances and cock-ups of the French army throughout history:

More than 10,500 men across 25 European countries were asked to measure their penis - and the French came out on top with a claimed average length of 6.09 in (15.48 cm). This was 1.2 in (3 cm) longer than the Greeks, who had the shortest average measurement in Europe.

The Frenchman’s French letter requirements were disclosed during an eight-month study conducted by the Institute of Condom Consultancy, based in Singen, southern Germany. Jan Vinzenz Krause, the institute’s director, refused to comment on how honest he thought the Frenchmen had been in reporting the data.

Herr Krause is a natural born diplomat.

Me, I would think this collective Gallic claim is about as truthful as that former German one, “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” - or, more to the point, Bill Clinton’s claims about not having had sex with that woman.

Still, it does confirm what the English people in general have been thinking about their cross channel neighbours for centuries: That the French are indeed the biggest pricks in the whole of Europe.

These days, many writers have their own websites. Stephen King, for instance, has one (and you can find it here), as has his colleague and some time co-author Peter Straub (here.) Dan Simmons has one of the best author sites I’ve ever come across (here) and the truly incomparable Neil Gaiman, obviously, has an incomparable site (here), on which he shares his thoughts, hobbies, travel stories and even recipes in an almost daily updated blog.

This, however, is not a column about authors’ websites - though it did start there, on the Neil Gaiman blog, that is. Gaiman loves to tell his readers about the things he enjoys and one of the things he likes is the work done by the artist Amanda Palmer.

So, recently he wrote about her again (here) and put up the following clip:

Now, I did like that clip but I wasn’t totally satisfied with it. So, being an obsessive compulsive idiot I kept worrying at this feeling of vague dissatisfaction. Till I remembered what other clip & song the Amanda Palmer clip reminded me of. After which I had no trouble at all simply enjoying the A.P. song. It wasn’t the latter’s fault that her clip reminded me of something that was made by one of my personal Goddesses, Annie Lennox: ‘Little Bird’.

Of course, that realisation had me trawling for more of my favourite Annie Lennox songs, which gave me the idea for this column: A top five of Annie Lennox clips, starting, of course, with the above mentioned song.

So, here it is, with links, of course:

1) Little bird

2) Why?

3) Love song for a vampire

4) No more “I love you’s”

5) Waiting in vain

Alright, and just for the Hell of it, three more clips by her and her old Eurythmics partner, Dave Stewart:

1) Missionary man

2) I need a man

3) Here comes the rain again

Right, I don’t need to remind you that we live in desperate times - and I’m not (necessarily) talking about reality TV, Paris Hilton’s taste in lap dogs or the world wide economic meltdown.

All of those things are, admittedly, dire enough but, in the end, if you get blown up in Baghdad or shot in Mumbai, chances are your last thoughts won’t be on the ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ jury - and even the Dow Jones won’t register high on your list of concerns, while you are being burnt alive inside the holy house of your choice, or raped and mutilated in the course of some ‘honour’ attack.

I’m sure that I don’t need to remind you that war and destruction are as much part of us as that famous ‘mom’s apple pie’ is to the American fabled heartlands - and yet, we do tend to forget about these serious man made cancers, while we worry about the various unsightly but relatively harmless celebrity pimples on our collective face.

It’s how the human heart copes, I suppose: By looking away from things that might upset us, or give us any serious insights into our own, very flawed souls.

Ah well, I can’t say I’m in the mood for much human soul searching either, today. So, I’ll just shut up and let Edmund Blackadder speak for all of us:

“A man may fight for many things: his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally I’d mud wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock, and a sack of French porn.”

(So, here’s the fucking cop when you need him…)

Now, I know how the police like to bang on about things like ‘care in the community’ but this is ridiculous:

Greater Manchester Police chief Mike Todd, found dead on a Welsh mountain, had relationships with 38 women while he was a chief constable, according to an official report. The tangled love life of the head of Greater Manchester police is being investigated to see if it affected his ability to do his job or put national security at risk.

In America, of course, the police motto is ‘Protect and serve’. So, let’s hope this eager beaver cop at least used some kind of protection, while he served and screwed himself a way through the Greater Manchester area.

By the way, I love that expressed official doubt, whether the behaviour of our bluebell Casanova MIGHT have affected his job. Maybe those who decide on these kinds of investigations are all single but those of us who are not that much into DIY already know that having a relationship with one person will, at times, affect all other aspects of your life. Fucking around with 38 persons will most definitely do that for you.

Still, I doubt that our industrious officer breached national security while breaching all those girdles. As far as I know, Al Qaeda & Co. are not really into those types of, let’s say, fucking fatwas. I know that there are quite a few organizations who don’t mind women acting as suicide bombers but I think they would definitely draw the line at Mata Hari style sex bomb campaigns…

… and I do think that even our lust blinded bobby would have noticed if one of his playmates had sported the obligatory beard over his modestly long robes. So, in that sense at least, the nation may sleep in peace.

Which, obviously, is not something you can say for all the men in the Greater Manchester area, who might now very well be worrying whether their wives and girlfriends were also, at some point in time, helping the police with their inquiries.

(Where the buck once stopped…)

Right, so Barack Obama is already proving to be a disappointment to those who thought that ‘change’ meant some kind of real revolution.

To those naive and optimistic hearts the following: A politician’s ‘change’ almost invariably comes down to the few worthless coins he or she is carrying around in a back pocket and very seldom amounts to anything that could be described as big bucks.

The power and the money will stay safely where they always were. There is, after all, more than one way to interpret old Harry Truman’s famous saying, “The buck stops here.”

Anyway, we’ll return to those Obama plans and promises once he is in office. For now, there’s yet some more fun to be had with, as the Daily Show would call it, the ’still president Bush.’

So, there’s lots of talk about all the various ways that Bush could fuck up things even further for his successor - and knowing Dick Cheney, I think it would be advisable for Obama to send in some explosion experts before the new president actually enters the White House himself. It might also be a good plan not to buy a puppy but a fully trained and very all round sniffer dog…

Anyway, another favourite game right now is to predict whom president Bush will pardon before he goes, gentle or not, into that good night. The Washington Post is even running a prediction centre, where people can open so-called ‘Predictify accounts’:

“As Obama’s inauguration day nears, speculation abounds as to who will join the list of convicted felons pardoned by George Bush before the president leaves office. If you’d like to keep track of your score and participate in other washingtonpost.com predictions, create a Predictify account when prompted or visit our Prediction Center.”

There’s one candidate for such a presidential pardon who never really gets a mention - while I think he should be high on Bush’s presidential pardon list.

I’m talking about Osama bin Laden, of course.

Granted, he may be directly responsible for the death of a few thousand people but then he killed much less than the tobacco industry ever - and knowingly - did.

He also cost the taxpayers a fair amount of money, over the last seven years or so but then, so did Enron, Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae, Reagan’s Star Wars and any other government project.

Still, even without any of those mitigating factors, the pros should outweigh the cons for president Bush.

In political terms, bin Laden has been good for him. Without 9/11, Bush would not have stood a chance to win a second term. Hell, he didn’t exactly ‘win’ that first election either, of course, so Osama really helped him out there.

In economic terms, it might be true that bin Laden cost the average Joe the Taxpayer some serious money but the War on Terror and the invasion & occupation of Iraq have been great money makers for the various friends of Bush and Cheney. Think Halliburton and praise Jesus - or Allah, or Osama, of course.

All in all, Osama bin Laden has done more to serve the Bush administration than most of the other presidential pardon candidates and would be deserving of such a pardon for all these rendered services. A kind of extraordinary rendition pardon, if you like.

(Time to smoke the peace pipe…?)

(Birth of the UFO…?)

Hurrah…! Another bit of dubious research finds proof that people are idiots:

Believers in UFOs, aliens and ghosts outnumber those who follow mainstream religions, a survey has found. While 54 per cent of people believe in God, 58 per cent believe in the supernatural. Nearly a quarter of the 3,000 questioned by researchers claimed they had an encounter with the paranormal. Some 37 per cent said aliens and ghosts were the basis of their belief system.

Now, I’m an agnostic, so I’m no terribly impressed by statistics that show that an X number of people prefer one type of nonsense over the other.

Is it really any more ridiculous to base your belief system on aliens and ghosts than on a God Who created the world in six days and then waited some 4000 years before sending down His only Son (by way of a ghost and a virgin) to sort out the mess?

Is it weirder to believe in things that go bump in the night - or do some alien fly by in the night - than to accept that a divinely inspired travel guide parted the sea, or that God sent two bears to eat a rather large handful of children who had dared to laugh at one of His prophets?

As the Good Book says:

[23] And [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
[24] And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

Anyway, as I started saying, people are idiots and perfectly willing to believe at least ten impossible things before breakfast. So, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t choose UFOs over Jehovah, or prefer poltergeists to the Holy Ghost.

(’God is love’ and all of that…)

(A match made in Heaven…?)

So, all the world’s newspapers and TV pundits are still asking themselves and us why Obama picked Clinton…

That part of the news industry, that is, that is not obsessed with the Rise and Retirement of John Sergeant, the non-dancing hero of BBC’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’…

Or the various gossip agencies that are doing their various autopsies on the Madonna Ritchie marriage…

Or, to stay in TV land, for those of us who loved and still love Martina Navratilova, the best female tennis player ever, who have to come to terms with the fact that she has chosen to partake in that disgusting freak show ‘I’m a celebrity… Get me out of here’, where she now has to compete with the likes of Robert Kilroy-Silk and other B and C list slime creatures.

In fact, all of us know way too many examples of this phenomenon: Friends and relatives who keep picking the most disastrous partners, shoes, ties, hairdos and political candidates.

The universal question being: Why do people have this piss poor judgment in practically all aspects of their lives?

Answer: Who knows - but as the following article shows, there’s little hope we’ll ever grow out of it:

(Cuddly & cute like the clap)

Reptiles like snakes, geckos and bearded dragons have become such popular pets that they now outnumber dogs, new research has found. Calculations by the British Federation of Herpetologists (BFH) indicate that there are now as many as eight million reptiles and amphibians being kept as pets in the UK. This compares to an estimated dog population of 6.5 million.

Enter Chris Newman, chairman of the British Federation of Herpetologists:

“They are far more suitable as pets than are animals which are perceived as more traditional pets, such as cats, dogs and small mammals. Reptiles fit today’s modern lifestyles as they are less time-consuming, and can also be easier to keep, than other traditional pet species.”

Quite.

Also, putting a bullet in your brain is less time-consuming than, let’s say, having sex - and one or two pet rocks are much easier to keep than having the more traditional 2.4 children.

(Our strange fascination with reptiles)

(Obama’s new God…?)

They say there is no rest for the wicked.

Not that I’m saying Obama is wicked but the world sure won’t leave him alone - and it’s not just things that have to do with his new job.

No, like any successful sports star, the commercial world at large is more interested in his selling abilities than in his actual performance.

In Obama’s case, that means that he is asked to endorse even more products than O.J. Simpson was before he killed his wife.

Ex-wife, I mean. So, Nicole - not Michelle. I know the W.W.W. is the favourite place to launch and breed all the new paranoid conspiracy stories but I’m not suggesting Obama killed his wife, or any or all of the ex-wives he may or may not have had.

As far as I know, he’s also not into buying puppies to slaughter them on the altar of the great God Cthulhu - although that does come close enough to the topic of today’s column, since one of the organisations that is seeking Obama’s endorsement is a church:

Along with the speculation on what kind of puppy Sasha and Malia will choose, where the kids will go to school (it’s Sidwell Friends), and, oh yes, who will be appointed to the White House staff and the Cabinet, the matter of where the Obamas will choose to worship is drawing a lot of interest in Washington and elsewhere.

One of the candidates could be the Washington National Cathedral. It’s the place where, in recent years, presidents have gone for the inaugural prayer service the day after being sworn in, where ex-presidents are mourned at their death. Until recently, the cathedral has been mainly a place where people from out of town have come to worship and marvel at the beauty of the stained-glass windows and exquisite stone carvings.

I’m not sure what the man himself thinks about the idea but the whole “Worship and marvel at the beauty” schmeer would work perfectly well for all those Obama worshipers, of course.

(Obama’s new church…?)