Glob-a-log

(Princess to frog: “You’re SO not black enough…!”)

Hurrah, I’ve found an organization I instantly dislike as much as I’ve grown to dislike the Disney company, over the last few decades.

It’s called ‘Black Voices’ and it’s taken umbrage at a new Disney movie, called, ‘The Princess and the Frog.’ Now, for those Web dwellers who tend not to notice what they ‘read’: Remember the first paragraph? Where I already mentioned I don’t like Disney?

Try to keep up, if you can.

So, the Company that brought us more sickeningly sweet tales than a Scottish chippie sells fried Mars bars on a Saturday night, is at it again, with yet another Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast type of story. It’s that princess and the frog tale but this time the heroes are black – or, at least, carrying vaguely more pigment that the good folks who hopped on board of the Mayflower, some time ago.

Two small snippets of critique from the afore-mentioned and subtly titled ‘Black Voices’ website:

“Black Voices, a Web site on AOL dedicated to African-American culture, faulted the prince’s relatively light skin color. Prince Naveen hails from the fictional land of Maldonia and is voiced by a Brazilian actor; Disney says that he is not white.

“Disney obviously doesn’t think a black man is worthy of the title of prince,” Angela Bronner Helm wrote March 19 on the site. “His hair and features are decidedly non-black. This has left many in the community shaking their head in befuddlement andeven rage.”

Others see insensitivity in the locale.

“Disney should be ashamed,” William Blackburn, a former columnist at The Charlotte Observer, told London’s Daily Telegraph. “This princess story is set in New Orleans, the setting of one of the most devastating tragedies to beset a black community.””

My first, hasty and ill-considered response upon reading this was, “Oh, fuck off! Get a life.”

As was my second and third reaction – and it’s still what I’m thinking, eleven paragraphs in, so we may assume I won’t change my mind much about this.

Anway, first, I would suggest that there are still more pressing race-related problems around than the relative ‘blackness’ of a fucking Disney cartoon character.

You know spun sugar. The Brits call it ‘candy floss’, Americans think of it as ‘cotton candy’ but, today, for this column’s purposes, I will run with the Australian term for it, which is ‘fairy floss.’

So, Disney is the fairy floss stall at art’s gloriously big and unruly carnival. It sells cheap crap that looks very nice indeed and can become quite addictive, if you start consuming it in serious quantities. Once upon a magic time, Disney made truly mind blowing movies, like ‘Snow White’ and ‘Fantasia’, but it is no longer in the mind blowing business and it hasn’t been for ages, now.

The Mouse Company deals in Fairytale Lite. Very, very lite. For Disney to even notice or acknowledge any colour that doesn’t have ‘WASP’ on the can is almost like Martel giving their Barbie dolls a slight dusting of pubic hair.

Critics like those sad ‘Black Voices’ folks might – no: would, no doubt – complain that this still left Barbie well short of a long overdue good fuck but, as Lincoln already noted on his blog, “You can’t please all of those stupid trolls all of the time.”

As with Martel, so with Disney: The revolution won’t start there – and everybody knows it. Beating the Mouse to score a few cheap ‘race awareness’ points is just silly. Worse, it’s also counter-productive. As I already stated, there are still enough real racial issues. Anyone who’s been following the latest brouhaha about Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and who still thinks we’re now all living in some ‘post-racial’ society, has built him- or herself a very private, highly peculiar version of Disney World.

So, when you have sites like ‘Black Voices’ going on about bloody Disney characters, the majority of well-meaning folks will simply roll their eyes and mutter something impolite under their breath. If we’re lucky, those people will just forget about that bit of vulgar nonsense and go on to the next story. If we’re unlucky and you have too many of these types of silly grievance stories, people will, after a while, simply turn off, tune out and drop out of the whole conversation about race – and that could be dangerous.

Right, this column has grown long and unruly enough as it stands – or sprawls. I’d wanted to spend some time on that preposterous remark about Disney being wrong to use New Orleans as a setting for its latest movie. That using the city was, somehow, an insult to the memories of those communities most harmed by Katrina but I’ll just have to be very short about that, now.

It’s still utter bollocks, of course. Yes, Katrina and its aftermath were bad but this is just another desperate search for any stick to beat Disney with. I would dare ‘Black Voices’ to find any location in the USA where black communities haven’t had really bad shit happen to them. What with America’s still recent history of slavery and segregation and all, you can’t place a story anywhere on the continent without raising at least some chain-rattling ghosts - especially, if, like those good folks of ‘Black Voices’, you’re always on the look-out for these old and new ghosts anyway.

(How many clowns does it take to bury one politician…?)

Now, I’m not really into clowns. Like a lot of people, I find them vaguely scary creatures (and, sometimes, you can skip that ‘vaguely’ bit entirely.)

This is interesting, though:

“Norman Thompson considered cheering people up his duty. As a Shriner and member of the Antioch Shrine Funster Clown Unit for 15 years, Thompson took his work seriously. The clown unit specializes in eliciting smiles from and comforting children who are burn victims or have orthopedic problems.

Thompson, 79, died Monday, May 25. He was buried Friday, May 29, with the highest honor a clown can receive: he was “carried to his resting spot by his fellow clowns,” said Mick (Willie the Clown) Lile, the Funsters’ director known informally as the boss clown. Eight of Thompson’s fellow clowns in their full costumes acted as pallbearers.”

Still, enough with those clowns.

Let’s talk about some other clowns instead. Politicians, yes, indeed.

Politicians and funerals, to be precise.

Now, it’s not actually possible to wish a politician dead. I tried. Close your eyes, think of, let’s say, Tony Blair, concentrate and count to ten, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand but, each time you open your eyes again, the little bugger is still breathing and prancing about.

Still, we could pretend and play funeral. Pick a candidate – and God knows there are enough to go around – and think of ways they would meet their end, and then arrange the funeral. Including guests, songs, speeches and whatever else you think may make this the happiest occasion imaginable.

So, I would have Silvio Berlusconi joining the Heavenly choir, after choking to a slow & painful death on the tampon of a 17 years’ old lingerie model, who is too busy laughing at the size of his willie and the sight of his toupet to notice, while the president’s breaking eyes see his football club AC Milan being beaten by arch rivals Inter Milan on the wall to wall TV screen.

I’m sure that Gordon Brown, being a proud Scot, wouldn’t mind being tied to a big fat clunk of Northern Rock and accompanying said Rock on its whirling way down into the sewer system. I’m sure he would very much mind the demonic laughter of Tony Blair, whose evil spirit was watching gleefully from the sideline, while the current PM sank deeper and deeper into the reeking mess he’d helped to create while he was responsible for Britain’s finances - but then I think old Gordon would be too busy swallowing shit and drowning and beating off the angry ghosts of broken promises past, to pay much attention to the sadistic whoops & hollers of his former boss.

Yes, and I can see Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presiding over yet another conference of Holocaust deniers. He’s happily talking about the evils of Zionism, the machinations of the Great Satan and the threat of Barbie, aka The Whore of Babylon und so weiter, und so weiter… until a group of militant gay freedom fighters bursts into the conference hall, storms the speaker’s podium and starts to beat the president to death with fluorescent dildos. Of course, Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards beg their horrifically dying boss to allow them to intervene but Iran’s president (in between screaming and moaning a lot) shouts, “NO…!!! THERE ARE NO HOMOSEXUALS IN IRAN…!!!!!!”

Right, I’m off to make a new pot of tea. In the meantime, why don’t you come up with some more deserving deaths & fun funerals for a few politicians (or sports stars, celebs et cetera.)

Right, I’m going to bat for the British National Party here in this post, so, this being Blogland, let me first state that I don’t like the BNP. I don’t like their programme, their leaders, their voters nor the whiff of sloppy thinking, bad grammar and the ghosts of partly burnt Swastikas that I will always associate with them…

… as I associate Vera Lynn and Marlene Dietrich with all that was courageous and honourable about the fight against some of the most loathsome ideas and acts humans ever came up with.

The BNP is a despicable group of self-serving malcontents and I dislike them, if possible, even more than PC idiots and Islamist appeasers. Still, as I said, with regards to the following, I’m afraid I’ll have to side with them:

“Musicians have launched a campaign demanding that the British National party stop selling their music to raise campaign funds. The BNP is selling folk albums on its website featuring artists who claim they have no control over the fact that the far-right party is using their songs. Billy Bragg, along with Dave Rowntree from Blur and Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, have joined with the Musicians’ Union and Featured Artists’ Coalition in objecting to the BNP’s “politics and morals”.

“In the lead up to the European elections, it has come to our attention that the BNP is selling compilation CDs through its website in order to raise funds for campaigning,” they wrote in a letter published in the Times. “Many of the musicians featured on these … have no legal right to object to their music being used in this way. We would, on behalf of our joint membership of over 31,000 members, like to have our opposition to the BNP’s politics and morals formally noted.””

Cool.

Duly noted – and then ignored.

Politically engaged musicians, Civil Rights demonstrators and other action groups have always used music at their gatherings and protest marches, to help promote certain agendas. Sometimes, songs were specifically written for the occasion but, as often, existing songs were used – appropriated, if you like – to serve the cause.

So, the song ‘We shall overcome’ started its life as a gospel, before it was used during the Civil Rights marches – which was fitting enough, since it has its roots in the American anti-slavery movement. It was sung during the worst days of the ’struggle’ in Northern Ireland. It was adopted by India’s fiercely nationalistic communists and used against a communist regime during Prague’s Velvet Revolution…

Songs travel and sometimes they will be used in ways their makers would never have envisioned or, perhaps, approved of.

Throughout history, people have adopted ‘enemy’ songs and added their own lyrics, to create a (to them) pleasing effect. Dutch protestants did this to Catholic religious songs during the country’s Eighty Years’ War against Spain. Americans did it in their fight against the British - as I’m sure many other countires, armies and civilian groups have done, all over the world, in varying religious, civil and/or military conflicts.

Sometimes, of course, it’s not even the slightest bit political – like when the Sex Pistols did their famous version of ‘God save the Queen.’

I can’t remember Billy Brag, Nick Mason and others from the Musicians’ Union protesting about The Sex Pistols using the name of the British National Anthem as the title of their not very monarchistic song.

In other words, if it’s okay for bands like the Sex Pistols to appropriate (the title of) the National Anthem, for Indian nationalists to embrace ‘We shall overcome’ or, for that matter, for happy hordes of football supporters to adopt the old Rodgers and Hammerstein tune, ‘You’ll never walk alone’…

… then I’m afraid we’ll just have to allow the BNP to do the same kind of thing to whichever songs they like to use on their stupid albums.

(The end of civilization as we know it…?)

It’s not exactly up there with the quest for the Holy Grail.

In fact, if you’d decide to make a movie about it, you wouldn’t turn to the people who did the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hell, even the Indiana Jones crowd would, most probably, pray to have this cup pass them by:

“A software engineer from California is on a mission to visit every single Starbucks coffee shop on the planet. Winter, 37, has spent 12 years drinking coffee in 9,100 chain stores. He estimates he has 3,000 left. This week he arrived in London to tackle 400 shops in England, Scotland and Wales, reports the Times. Winter, who changed his name from Rafael Antonio Lozano Jr, will then move on to Spain, Portugal and Germany for more “Starbucking”.”

Still, it might do well as a Simpsons sketch, or a minor running gag on South Park.

I can’t say it comes as a big surprise that this loon comes from California. No idea though why he changed a hot sounding name like Rafael Antonio Lozano Jr into a tepid, mass produced moniker like Winter.

Not that I think his family will mind, of course.

As to the why of this epic quest, here’s what mister Winter had to say himself:

“In this world it is difficult to do something unique.”

Yesss…

Still, I’m not sure drinking coffee at Starbucks really qualifies as such, however much of the stuff you drink.

Ah well, enough about the Coffee Nut Formerly Known As Rafael Antonio Lozano Jr…

… apart from this small observation:

How come that when you hear about these kinds of projects, it’s always about idiots going for a new world record bungee jumping, or pizza baking, or hotdogs eating, or dwarf throwing, or towing trucks with their dick?

For every sad loser who wants to drink at all the Starbucks of the world, get a picture taken with every Ronald McDonald in the known universe…

… for each and every useless wanker who wants to get the autograph of every Playmate of the Month since Noah spent some quality time ‘reading the interviews’ inside the Ark’s single toilet or fuck every person who ever wore a Minnie Mouse costume in a professional capacity at Disney World…

… can you name even one person who tried to visit as many great libraries as he or she could manage, watch every Picasso or Rembrandt original in the world’s museums, take the time to listen to the complete works of J.S. Bach, go see all of Shakespeare’s plays or read the Holy Texts of the world’s Top Four religions…?

Meh.

Enough about this whole sorry subject.

Let’s just hope the CNFKARAL(Jr) packed enough antacid tablets, before he started on his odd (and overpriced) odyssey. God knows he will need the bloody things.

That, and a life but I think it might be a bit too late for the latter.

(One Hell of a product launch…)

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Talk about the most painful news.

Talk about sex bombs…

Anyway, so, when a woman promises fireworks in bed, it is NOT enough to be merely polite and say, “Of course, dear.”

What you should do is smile, slowly back off and then run like Hell:

“WHEN faced with the news her boyfriend was going to leave her, a Russian woman took the extreme action. She blasted his penis off during his sleep. The woman, named as Kira V, had suggested a farewell dinner after hearing the news she was about to be dumped. During the meal she plied her lover with alcohol in order to ensure he wouldn’t wake up as she tied several firecrackers to his appendage.”

(Resistance is futile: Have a nice day…)

It may not be safe to say this, in various parts of the world (and it would certainly be frowned upon in certain European circles) but I do like America. Granted, not its surface culture of fast food, fast living & fast spending but there is so much more to this vast and quite diverse continent than those who judge it on the merits of its (regrettable) TV shows and Hollywood movies will probably ever learn - but then, we know that prejudice is a condition that doesn’t welcome new information.

Anyway, on the whole, in America, people are certainly more friendly, welcoming and, definitely, more polite than in most of the other places I’ve visited and lived in.

The only gripe I share with a large amount of other Europeans who’ve spent time in the USA, is the way people in various types of shops, bars and restaurants wish you, upon leaving, a very nice day, with smiles as big and as fake as Elton John’s toupet.

It’s not the fault of these individual employees, of course: It’s their bosses with their ‘Smile or be fired’ policy who are to blame for this nonsense but it is, nevertheless, quite grating.

Having said that, the following news story is still vaguely depressing:

“Few places in Virginia are as draining to the soul and as numbing to the buttocks as the branch offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles. And yet, until recently, smiling was still permitted there. No more. DMV officials say the smile ban is for a good cause. The agency would like to develop a facial recognition system that could compare customers’ photographs over time to prevent fraud and identity theft. “The technology works best when the images are similar,” said DMV spokeswoman Pam Goheen. “To prepare for the possibility of future security enhancements, we’re asking customers to maintain a neutral expression.””

Quite.

‘Technology’ will only ever be happy if each and every individual person becomes part of an identical looking, thinking, consuming, voting and overall similarly behaving herd.

A sad looking herd, no less – since our new overlords, the machines, can’t cope with deviating expressions on the faces of individual pieces of cattle.

All this to prevent fraud, identity theft and, no doubt, terrorism.

Homeland Security already demands we remove our keys, our belts and bottled water, before we even go through ‘control’…

… and now, the powers that be have started to demand we drop our smiles as well.

Which is the kind of news, I imagine, Osama bin Laden will find highly amusing.

Not that you would notice, of course, with that beard of his.

(Maybe not…)

Now, this is interesting news:

“VATICAN CITY - Vatican Radio said Tuesday it will start running commercials for the first time in its 78-year history, interspersing the pope’s messages with “ideologically” sound publicity spots.”

Because I am a helpful kind of guy and because the Vatican, to paraphrase that old l’Oréal ad, is so worth it, I can’t help but start thinking about the kind of commercials and the type of products Vatican Radio should aim for.

Granted, the Church has been around the block a fair bit of times, so you could say, with Head and Shoulders, that it might be a bit late to make that vital first impression but still, there are more ways to lose your virginity than having sex.

Your first Crusade, your first auto da fé, your first indigenous massacre: There can be many significant ‘firsts’ in anyone’s and any organization’s life – and a first commercial break is one of them.

So, which ones to choose first. Obviously, Trojans are a bit of a no no – and though more topical, I feel that ads for incontinence pads, anti-ageing creams and those ‘pre-need’ funeral insurances would not really set the right tone. Not the one the Vatican is looking for, anyway.

Enough of the negatives though: Let’s try and think of something fitting to launch Vatican Radio’s bold first trip into commercial space.

Yesss…!

So simple, really, when you come to think of it.

What better commercial to start with than one for a Richard Branson product. I mean, give the man a white sheet, a pair of sandals and a bit more beard and he even looks a bit like Jesus.

Indeed, the very first ad in that very first commercial block really should be for Virgin Airlines.

‘Going Home in Style’, would make a fine headline for what could become Virgin’s new ‘Vatican line’ campaign.

I could see the Bearded One, sitting in his office, in his new Jesus rags but with that same smug smile on his face, with a picture of the current Pope in a gilded frame on his desk, next to a miniature Virgin airliner.

The Bearded One looks into the camera and proclaims:

“In my Father’s house there are many mansions but you will only get decent room service if you can say you have travelled with Virgin.”

Fade out of the B.O., followed by a wide angle shot of a real Virgin plane taking off into a very blue sky, where a band of angels awaits it,  with their trademark tambourines and trumpets at the ready.

Final fade out to the sound of that old Madonna song, ‘Like a virgin.’

Perfect!

(Embracing the cold…)

You know what?

I’ll never say another unkind word about scientists, ever again.

It may be true that our planet would never have had its somewhat unfortunate blind dates with hydrogen bombs, Crazy Frog ring tones or Pamela Anderson’s tits without the various efforts of the white coat brigade…

… but, all in all, could anyone fail to adore a tribe that spends a significant amount of quality time working on the theory that one woman from the frozen North of Lapland is much hotter than a feverish float of Brazilian carnival queens?

“Researchers have found that birds sing more sweetly in colder climates than their laid-back cousins in the tropics because they have to try harder to attract a mate.”

In other words, forget about babe magnets: It’s the magnetic babes at the Poles that will send our male needles all a quiver.

(”What…?! Thirty quid for two poppies…?!”)

I have to say that the, still ongoing, scandal about British politicians and their expenses has been quite educational.

Not that the venality and arrogance of that loathsome tribe are all that surprising, per se. It’s just that their greed has been allowed to blossom in such pathetic detail.

I don’t want to compare this particular crowd with Hitler’s Third Reich but I remember reading about the death camps – and how everything there was organized to the tiniest detail. Such as fake soap being provided to make those death chambers look more like shower rooms.

Again, the sins of this shameless set of politicians are of a different order altogether but it’s still, as I said, educational to see how bad things can get if we don’t tag these people like sex offenders or put them in glass, Big Brother type houses.

On the other hand, they couldn’t pay me enough to keep a close eye on the likes of Ed Balls, England’s Schools Secretary, who is, almost, in a very repugnant class of his own:

“Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary and one of Gordon Brown’s closest allies, claimed £33 for two Remembrance Sunday poppy wreaths — and had the bill disallowed by the Commons authorities.”

How sad can anyone be?

To what dizzying lows can even a politician aim to reach?

Remembering the dead: those soldiers that died in a world war for the country you ’serve’ as a minister of the crown.

Serving your country, that is, by claiming a lousy £33 as fucking expenses for the two poppies you wear on Remembrance Sunday…

Some things are beyond criminal.

When you’d actually piss on the wreaths at a soldiers’ memorial, you would be in breach of the law.

Ed Balls, the man responsible for the education of England’s children, might not have broken any laws, in trying to get the country to pay for the poppies he was happy enough to wear for the odd publicity shot but he might just as well have taken his dick out and marked that memorial with his politician’s scent.

(Sail on, sail on, o mighty Ship of State…!)

Sometimes, the old ones definitely are the best. Be it Rhett Butler’s, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” to Shakespeare’s Mercutio shouting, “A plague a’ both your houses”

Which, in the following case, would be a plague on the political & business classes, on both sides of the pond.

So, yesterday, we could read that good-for-fuck-all General Motors will get another ‘loan’. Not, mind you, to ensure they will finally get their house in order. No, they will receive another $30 billion to help ’steer the company into bankruptcy next week.’

In other words, those stupid arseholes can’t even go bust without government help.

Meanwhile, in Britland, the New Labour government showed us yet again how glaringly incompetent a bureaucratic busy-body machine can be, if you give it enough silly money and monopolistic mandates to play with:

“A two-year-long, 178-page report that cost taxpayers £500,000 has arrived at the unsurprising conclusion that passengers are likely to be in a “positive emotional state” if their train is punctual and announcements are audible and comprehensible, and in a “negative” frame of mind if the service is late and no one tells them why.”

You know, given the arrogant incompetence of our political and business leaders, it would almost be preferable just to give up.

To return to that famous tree we once climbed out of, select a solid enough looking branch and either hang ourselves or, preferably, all those useless shits – elected and unelected – who got us in this fine mess, in the first place.

In the meantime, right now, I’m not in the mood to spend any more time reading or commenting on ever more infuriating news stories.

So, I’m off to the park, to feed the ducks and to listen to some Leonard Cohen on my neolithic Walkman.

It’s a shame I can’t really invite my readers to come and join me in my duck feeding frenzy but at least I can leave you with a few, fitting Cohen songs to chew on. Enjoy:

1) Democracy

2) Closing time &

3) The Future: