Glob-a-log

On the third day, God had a long hard think about this whole Creation business. Being omnipotent, He foresaw no particular problems creating a whole Universum out of whole IKEA flat packish cloth – even if the instructions would prove to be written in Korean and several crucial keys and bespoke bolts were missing.

It was the omnipresent bit that had Him worried somewhat. It is one thing, of course, to be omnipresent when everything, as the Good Book has it, is ‘without form, and void’. When You’re an omnipresent God, a formless void is just the thing you look for.

Imagine though that the whole damn nothingness is filled with suns and moons and planets and people and sequoia trees and tiny lizards and skyscrapers and phone booths and bistrot restaurants and comets and cocktail umbrellas and Hubble telescopes and whoopee cushions and garden gnomes and TV weather girls and chamber pots and mounted rhinoceros heads and daisies and Jeremy Clarkson and Sydney Opera Houses and dolphins and cat food commercial story boards and airport novels and fountain pens and born again radio talk show hosts and rubber duckies and Second World War memorabilia and chihuahua sandwiches and pubes flashing Hilton heirs and…

… well, in such a place it would be damn hard for an omnipresent Deity to move about without bumping into stuff the whole bloody time…

… so, God pondered, maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea after all to clutter up this nice and roomy formless void with all kinds of highly dubious matter.

All in all, the Third Day of Creation was a bit of a damp (but, of course, as of yet non-existing) squid and a very frustrated God rued the fact that He hadn’t as of yet created anything He could have a good smiting at.

(‘Make a note of that’ God spoke into the formless void, ‘First thing tomorrow: Create something eminently smiteable!’)

(HERE: DAY ONE & DAY FOUR)

On the second day, it was raining. It was kind of dark an miserable outside – what with that wasted first day and all. No sunrise, no birds chanting, not even a set of curtains to peep through (or a window to look out of, for that matter), so God had a bit of a lie in…

… or He would have had, if He had at least created a bed, that first day, which He hadn’t…

… so, He had a really good sulk instead.

Afterwards, with no shower, no cup of cocoa, no newspaper and no Archers on the non-existing radio, the sulk evolved (Yes, Darwin was right after all…!) into a full-blown case of the gyps.

Which ended any remaining chance of God doing anything creative the rest of that Second Day of Creation…

… apart from having created, or discovered, the Blues, that is.

(HERE: DAY ONE & DAY THREE)

On the first day, nothing much happened at all. See, God had hired these cheap contractors and they didn’t show up till well in the afternoon.

When they finally did, well…

… let’s just say that, contrary to what the Good Book says, the first thing God created was a top of the range Hell.

After that pretty much wasted first Day of Creation God decided this was more of a hands on DIY job.

Besides, the screams of the builders were annoying enough as it was, without adding even more of their sort to the newly built Inferno.

(DAY TWO HERE)

(“Let’s get those evil mothersuckers…!”)

Damn, this is silly – yet it is hard not to sympathize with the guy. Especially, if you, like me (and him) have this thing about spiders:

“A man had to be rescued after setting the front of his house on fire while trying to kill a spider with a lighter. Firefighters say the man, in his 40s, had been trying to set fire to the spider as it crawled up the front of the semi-detached property But sparks reached material behind the cladding and caused a fire within the walls, shortly before midnight. Three fire engines raced to the scene in Portsmouth, Hants, and found the man trying to put out the flames with a garden hose.”

Phobias can be so weird.

I mean, if you are in Australia, it’s perfectly normal to be wary of spiders. Hell, if you’re an Australian it would be insane not to worry about the local fauna – since about everything that swims, crawls, burrows or flies there seems to be Hell-bent on killing as many human in as many painful ways as possible.

Here in Europe though, the fear of spiders is a bit silly. If you compare the size and weight of your average house spider to that of our most anorexic of celebs, we are still, more or less, talking about Mount Everest having this thing about humans.

Of course, phobias aren’t logical. That’s the whole point of them. To ask that poor guy who set his house on fire what he got against that blameless spider wouldn’t make much sense.

Or about as much sense as asking our young George what he had against Iraq, I guess.

Which would explain quite a lot about recent history, come to think of it – and it would make a great B movie too, with John Goodman playing Bush.

Yes, it does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

‘Iraqnophobia…’

(No animals were harmed in the creating of this product…)

Now, we all know that it ain’t easy to be a woman. What with periods and hot flushes, giving birth and full Brazilians and men.

I sympathize. I really do but us men have our problems too. We have to shave daily; we go bald. We can’t bring home our daily quota of sabre tooth tigers and mastodons anymore to impress our women, so all we can brag about are the extra hours we make at the office and the size of our pay check.

Plus, we fall in love with our peroxide blonde, gum chewing secretaries – and even worse: with our i-Phones…

… and not to rub it in or anything but to add serious fuck-uppery to injury, even if we have a loving & patient wife (or willing typing pool type of girl) chances are we can’t get it up anymore anyway.

Still, these are the brave and still early days of the 21st century. The Age of Aquarius has made way for the Day of the Scientist – and our beautiful boys and girls with the white coats have come to the rescue once more.

With a new cure for impotence, no less.

So far only tested on rats but since the ultimate beneficiaries are men, that seems a fitting enough control group:

“A new generation of anti-impotency drugs that are rubbed into the skin could prove more effective than Viagra, research indicates. Scientists in the United States have successfully tested the new technique on rats and believe it could also be used to help humans. Under the therapy, nanoparticles that release the anti-erectile chemical nitric oxide are rubbed on the problem area, and absorbed directly into the skin. Of the seven rats treated by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, five showed signs of arousal, according to results presented to the American Urological Association.”

Now, far from me to criticize our scientists but things being ‘rubbed on the problem area’…?

I think our clever white coats will find that this kind of thing has been done since the dawn of time – with fair to excellent results, as all the booming (if discrete) Thai massage outfits can testify to.

They even have come up with a word for it. Though I admit it doesn’t sound very scientific, it does hit the spot well enough.

It’s called a handjob.

(Add four nails as stabilizers…)

Now, I’m an agnost, so normally I wouldn’t comment on anyone’s particular brand of faith – apart from the small observation that all of them look more than a little bit silly from the outside.

Virgin births, four-armed Goddesses of wanton destruction, holy prophets with underage wives, matzes for Easter with a plague of frog topping, dog-eyed Gods with a penchant for party-wrapped corpses…

Again, if that’s your thing, why not? As long as you are mindful enough of your neighbours to keep the noise down – which true believers tend to forget about, truth to say – but don’t expect me to join in, in any hurry.

Still, whether people ‘believe’ or not, most of us have a pretty good idea what it takes for something to be called a miracle.

For instance, despite the many tabloid stories, the majority of people would not see it as particularly miraculous if the face of Jesus appeared on yet another quattro formaggi pizza.

No, it takes a bit more to make it as a bona fide miracle. Jesus and His mama coming back to Earth again, to enter American Idol (and at least make it to the fourth round) would probably count. The planet Jupiter inviting Venus over for a civilised sherry, followed by a wild fuck, would also satisfy most bookies And Guinness Book of Records accountants – as would, in all likelihood, John McCain’s winning the presidency on his third try (with Richard Dawkins or Gore Vidal as his running mate, to win the last few nay-sayers over.)

Looking at past, reported miracles, Moses parting the Red Sea or, even more unlikely, getting the Jewish tribes to sit still long enough to come to an agreement over a whole damn book of laws and what a full kosher menu contain or nor, should surely count…

… and yes, Jesus shaking off the the dust of the cave, three days after His human pin cushion act, was pretty miraculous too, of course.

So, we all have a pretty good idea of what constitutes a true miracle – and, even more to the point, what does emphatically not.

Which, unfortunately, means that the good Reverend Roger Preece doesn’t have a prayer if he thinks his little stunts would cause the same kind of ‘astonishment’ as Jupiter and Venus bonking like horny teenagers or Jesus doing His resurrected hedgehog thing:

“A vicar put his skates on to preach the Gospel in an attempt to replicate the astonishment that would have greeted Christ’s resurrection. Roger Preece, 44, has been dubbed The Rolling Reverend after skating up and down the aisle of his church in roller blades.”

(“Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror”)

“O tempora, o mores”, as the old Romans used to say – or, if your Latin is a bit rusty: “We’re so fucked!”

Most of these sorts of laments come from older people complaining about the pace, practices and preposterous pitfalls of modern life in general and, of course, the intolerable behaviour of the younger generation in very detailed particulars.

Of course, we, the descendants of the barbarians who did for the Romans, are truly fucked – and no, this is not going to be a rant about Endemol TV productions, mad Islamists and their even madder apologists & cheerleaders, nor will I vent or otherwise parade my spleen about corrupt politicians, Health & Safety gurus and greedy bankers, though each of the above have deserved their own place in Hell and, if there were any justice, would be hung and quartered and fed to the chihuahuas come the revolution.

Still, as I said, this is not a rounding up of the usual suspects. No, when I say that we – and what’s left of our civilisation – are well and truly fucked it’s because of the following.

I mean, it’s one thing when kids behave like a particularly nasty subspecies of the yellow, crazy ant, (which, as you already know, of course, is ‘one of the five species of tramp ants, known for invasive behaviour and devastating ecological effects’.)

Kids have always been like that and, on the whole, societies don’t go dodo because of a few hormonally challenged spotted dicks.

It’s when their so-called elders and betters join in that you should seriously think of pulling the plug before history does if for you:

“A cinema which screens classic films for pensioners has warned their elderly customers about their “unacceptable and juvenile” behaviour. Pensioners at the Odeon, in Leicester, have been reprimanded for threatening, pushing, poking, bullying, harassing and intimidating staff, saving seats for friends and queue jumping. Concerns were also raised about customers abusing the complimentary tea and biscuits arrangement.”

‘Abusing the complimentary tea and biscuits arrangement…’

Oh, the shame of it!

Or, as Conrad’s Mr Kurtz would say, while bidding his not so fond adieu to a jungle filled with crazy yellow ants and marauding pensioners alike, “The horror! The horror!”

(Only their TV ratings can tell them apart…)

First, haven’t you also often wondered, over way too many years, what Oprah could have achieved if she hadn’t spent so much of this time trying to lose weight.

All those sheer endless shows spent on miracle diets, personal chefs, unbearable optimism and hour after prime time hour of frustrated tears and quite nauseating mea culpas…

If only all this energy, measured in Kilo Jouls or otherwise, had been spent on less frivolously selfish matters.

We could have had manned rockets on Mars by now, found cures for cancer, AIDS and dandruff and harnessed the power of the sun, if only Oprah had stoically learnt to bear her harness of blubber and had focused her not inconsiderable powers on slightly more important things than trying to get into a size six cocktail dress.

Anyway, I was reminded of the big O’s massive gravitational struggles when I read the following news article:

“Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has compared the challenge of fighting climate change to her own struggle to lose weight. Speaking to State Department staff on Earth Day, Mrs Clinton said more must be done to reduce the department’s environmental footprint and conceded this was a big challenge, much like one of her personal battles.

“Often times when you face such an overwhelming challenge as global climate change, it can be somewhat daunting – it’s kind of like trying to lose weight, which I know something about. You think, oh I only have to lose X numbers of pounds but it seems like such a far away goal,” she added. “It’s kind of like world peace and so therefore why even try?”"

Yesss…

The road to world peace is strewn with discarded diet pills and torn little black numbers.

(“Do you have some chocolate milk for our car, ma’am…?”)

There’s an old Arthur C. Clarke quote that comes round to my place, from time to time, for a cup of hot chocolate and a nice chat. I really like that quote; it’s good company. It goes like this, by the way:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Magic. Who doesn’t like the idea of magic?

Beans that grow into plants that take you up to some giant’s garden, where you can make omelettes with golden eggs.

Houses made of gingerbread and candies, that have sugar windows.

Or whole mountains made for the easy life:

‘Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.’

Ah well, I know there can be no such things in real life.

I mean, you start believing in lemonade springs, magic beans and sugar windows and before you know it, you’ll call your local automobile dealer to ask for a potato Porsche that runs on chocolate milk.

In other words, that way lies madness – which you will reach with speeds up to 145 miles an hour, by the way, if you believe the following article:

“A new racing car made of vegetables and powered by chocolate will hit speeds of 145 miles per hour when it is launched next month. Designers hope the environmentally-friendly technology used in their car will be adopted by Formula 1 teams such as McLaren and world champions Ferrari. The car, named ecoF3, has a steering wheel made of carrots, a body made of potatoes and a seat made of soybeans. It uses plant-oil based lubricants and a biodiesel engine capable of running on chocolate and vegetable oil.”

(Everything you didn’t want to know about naked gnomes…)

First, you’d think that most governments would have their hands quite full at the moment with all kinds of rather pressing things.

You have the global fall-out of a particularly nasty and stupid kind of naked greed. Then, there’s the naked corruption that runs through local, national and international governments alike. There is also, of course, what you could almost call the ‘natural’ naked arrogance of all of our leaders, be they from the private, public or so-called spiritual sector.

Anyway, you might think so but you’d be wrong, of course – which brings me to today’s, rather absurd topic…

Now, I’m not the biggest fan of lawn ornaments. In fact, I’d probably be in favour of seriously relaxing the gun laws if each prospective new gun owner would swear that the first thing he or she would do with the new gun was to shoot one or more garden gnomes.

However, today I’m firmly behind Mrs Sandra Smith, a grandmother from Hunnington, who finds that the local District Council has her and her harmless gnomes in its bureaucratic sights:

“Householder Sandra Smith has been ordered to cover up her garden gnomes after complaints that the naked ornaments were upsetting local children. The gnomes, one male and two female, have stood in Mrs Smith’s front garden for around 15 years in Hunnington in the West Midlands. The grandmother has been forced to put clothes on the ornaments after a neighbour complained to Bromsgrove District Council and an officer phoned her.”

Again, I can’t say I’m particularly enamoured by your average garden gnome, fully clothed or otherwise, but I’m sufficiently allergic to busybody City Councils to make it a point to fulminate against their soulless diktats whenever they come up with any newly minted piece of foulness…

… and if that means that I, so to speak, find myself embedded with a couple of naked garden gnomes, so be it.