Glob-a-log

Remember the good old days, when desperate women threw their underwear on stage during Tom Jones concerts, perhaps to shut him up?

Well, those happy days are here again – or they could be, if the Pope will take his upcoming Christmas hit album on the road:

“Pope Benedict XVI has the chance of a Christmas number one in the pop charts after signing a record deal to release an album of him singing chants in the Vatican. It will feature the Pope singing litanies and chants in honour of the Virgin Mary, as well as reciting passages and prayers in Latin, Italian, Portuguese, French and German.”

Damn, that will be good.

I just can’t wait to get me a few tickets to that show. Just think of all the possible guest appearances during such a concert. The Pope and Paul McCartney, doing ‘Lady Madonna’; the Pope and Tony Blair, singing ‘I’m a believer’ – and the Pope with Tom Jones, with an a capella version of ‘Delilah‘.

Talking of which – I mean underwear turning up in the strangest of places: This following bit of news had me somewhat puzzled:

“A village suffered a power cut after a black thong became tangled in overhead cables, an energy distribution company said. The cut happened in the Lincolnshire village of Leadenham on Wednesday afternoon after the thong was found wrapped in power lines above a croquet lawn. The underwear was apparently attached to a helium balloon which had gone astray.”

Which, for no specific reason reminded me of that old John Betjeman poem, called ‘Senex’, which has this near perfect strophe:

‘Get down from me! I thunder there,
You spaniels! Shut your jaws!
Your teeth are stuffed with underwear,
Suspenders torn asunder there
And buttocks in your paws!’

Ah well, it’s a nice image to start off the weekend: The Pope (with or without Tom Jones) singing his purple sox off, with God throwing down His underwear.

Which is, obviously, a far more pleasing explanation for that thong. found wrapped in those power lines than the official ‘helium balloon’ version (which is, as cover up stories go, as effective as a thong in a blizzard.)

(A believable deterrent indeed…)

First, have you ever thought that driving instructors should be adepts at the game Grand Theft Auto?

No? Yes? What the fuck?

Okay, bear with me, while I digress a bit.

I hate that expression ‘Think outside the box‘, don’t you? It’s the kind of stupid and vapid new speak that’s only used by the kind of people who think George Orwell is a producer of a reality TV programme. Though it could be used as a (rather condescending) bit of advice to the homeless, of course.

Still, the concept is anything but new, as certain old saying show. ‘To catch a thief’ and ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, for instance. Both proof of the fact that our forefathers saw the value of creative and, sometimes, almost counterintuitive solutions.

Which shouldn’t come as a big surprise, since one of those Old Testament prophets, some 3000 years ago, already claimed there was nothing new under the sun.

Anyway, I was reminded of those two old sayings when I read the following article in today’s online Guardian:

“If you’re the kind of guy who gets his kicks from killing Koreans, atomising aliens and blowing up beautiful islands in pursuit of “total domination”, your country needs you.

The government’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston in Berkshire is advertising for a “virtual reality specialist” to use “serious gaming” to help train nuclear weapons scientists. One of the qualifications required is experience of computer games with good graphics like Crysis, the job advert says.

Crysis is a “first person shooter” game in which players become part of an elite group of US soldiers on a mission to an island in the South China Sea. They rapidly become embroiled in a bloody battle with North Koreans, then monsters from outer space.”

Now, I don’t doubt that nuclear weapons scientists need training. I also agree that such courses should be relevant. Which would, probably, exclude things like ‘Sensitivity Training 1.01′, ‘Empathy for Dummies’, et cetera.

So, yes, I can see that when a nuclear scientist is confronted with that stupid phrase ‘I feel your pain’, he or she would sooner interpret that as a possible Rambo quote than recognize it as one of Oprah’s many platitudes.

It still feels a bit New Labour gimmicky though. You want to be a nurse? Here’s an ER video box. Wannabe an astronaut? Here’s a box set of Red Dwarf.

Which reminds me: ‘Monsters from outer space?’

I thought Trident was a waste of money, but may we now conclude that the government’s AWE is turning its sights on space?

Mind you, it’s the kind of irony George Orwell would have appreciated – and highly typical of how the current British government deals with all things military, whether it’s the lack of basic and specialized army equipment or the latest plan to swindle invalided soldiers out of their, very hard-earned, compensation payments.

I mean, which vessel would be better situated to deal with an attack from outer space than a bloody submarine…?

(More is less…? More or less…)

What if I told you that the Sexual Equality Standards Agency wants women who complain about men staring at their tits to have breast reduction?

Or if I claimed that the Ministry of Defence wants to reduce the amount of friendly fire victims by reducing the amount of bullets given to the troops?

Or if shared with you the news that a Global Warming think tank want people with patio heaters to reduce the size of their patios, in order to reduce environmental damage?

Well, I won’t, of course.

Such claims would really be very, very silly.

Mind you, not much sillier than this real proposal by the British Food Standards Agency, as the following online Times article shows:

Chocolate fans, be warned: your sugary snack is set to get smaller. The Food Standards Agency wants manufacturers to reduce the size of chocolate bars by about a fifth to help to cut calorie intake. It proposes that by 2012 standard-sized bars should be no more than 50g. Currently, Mars bars are 58g and twin Bounty bars are 57g.

Ah, well. Let’s try and look at the bright side of things. I mean, if this lot really would be responsible for fighting the War on Obesity, it probably means we should soon no longer have to worry about problems like anorexia and bulimia.

(First Germany, then the world…)

Who said the world wide recession was all bad news?

In Germany some consumers of rather specialised services might feel quite uplifted by it, as the following article shows:

“German brothels are offering customers the chance to sleep with as many prostitutes as they like for a single fee, in recession-busting deals criticised as immoral by politicians. The “flat-rate sex” promotions, which are based on all-you-can-eat restaurants, have been introduced by brothel owners in a bid to revive trade that has fallen around 30 per cent in the economic downturn. Other imaginative offers include rebates for pensioners and people on benefits, 10 per cent discounts for men who arrive by bicycle or public transport, and free shoe-polishing for customers who stay overnight.”

I can see a future banner campaign here: “Have your knob and shoes polished in one go!”

Still, this whole idea might have much wider applications. Why leave it to brothels to offer these extras? If the flesh trade can go into shoe polishing, why couldn’t regular shoe shine boys & girls come with a topless service as well? There are already topless car wash and lawn mowing companies, so it wouldn’t be that revolutionary, really.

Why stop there, though? Why not have hole in the wall services for those who wait in supermarkets’ queues?  Or blow jobs by traffic wardens? There might even be a niche for people who want to be screwed for real by the taxman – and there should be quite a large market for the rough handcuff trade, now also provided by your local policemen and -women.

So, let’s finally make all those silly porn stories about pizza deliverers, pool boys, TV repairmen et cetera a reality. The whole advertising industry is already of the ’sex sells’ creed, so why shouldn’t the reality-based industries convert to this faith too?

It might not be such good news for those brothels that initiated this Prick ‘n’ Mix deal but it might do our shrivelled economies a world of good. Forget about the positioning of Keynes, Friedman and Adam Smith; study the positions of the Kama Sutra instead. Don’t talk about bonds; think bondage!

What the world economy needs now is a government and private industry sponsored boost of wigs, high heels, garter belts and a limitless supply line of Viagra.

I am, of course, aware that more traditional economists, moral crusaders and people of various faiths might not immediately be all that enthusiastic about this, in a certain sense, oldest of concepts. However, to that first group, I would friendly suggest they go play with themselves. It’s not as if they have proven to be good for much else, anyway.

To the latter groups I would say, more or less, the same thing as all those Victorian women told themselves and their daughters: “Just lay back, close your eyes and think of it as a kind of second coming.”

Everybody knows that it will be easier to bring peace to the Middle-East than it would be to get the bosses of Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola to come together to do an infomercial about the importance of brushing your teeth after drinking one of their toxic products.

The two companies don’t like each other. They never did. They never will. Osama Bin Laden will do a commercial for American Airlines before one of the two companies will say something nice about the other one’s products.

Remember that time that Michael Jackson did that Pepsi commercial, when his hair caught fire?

I’m not saying Coca Cola was responsible for that but oh, how they must have laughed when they saw that film. You can imagine the jokey ad lines the Coke boys dreamt up in the relative privacy of their offices. ‘Burn Alive with Pepsi‘ and all of that.

So, I just read this bit of news in the online Times:

“Coca-Cola is set to launch fizzy milk on the world. The drink contains skimmed milk mixed with sparking water, flavoured with fruit and sweetened with cane sugar. Scientists have developed the drink at the firm’s laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, ensuring it will not curdle in its 8oz aluminium bottle.”

Well, it would most definitely curdle if one of those damn bottles ever made it to my fridge – ’cause I’d sooner pierce my tongue with one of Amy Winehouse’s used needles before than open this latest catastrophic Coke cocktail..

‘At the firm’s laboratories in Atlanta, Florida.’ Give me strength! Like in, “Igor, hand me another one of those brains, please. This one hasn’t gone off quite enough yet.”

By the way, didn’t the USA sign up to some international law that forbids biological and/or chemical warfare?

Anyway, back to the article:

“Going under the name Vio, Coca-Cola has begun test-marketing the carbonated drink at natural food stores and delis in New York It sells for about £1.50 a bottle, no chilling required. One of Coke’s copywriters claims it tastes “like a birthday party for a polar bear”.”

‘A birthday party for a polar bear.’ Good one.

Ever smelled the breath of a polar bear? That’s probably what will happen to anyone who takes even a sip of the fizzy white shit.

However, I started with not quite claiming that Coca Cola had set fire to Michael Jackson’s hair – though I wouldn’t mind floating the following conspiration theory: That it was Coke that had Michael Jackson murdered (after having bribed a series of cosmetic surgeons to fuck up his face, of course.)

So, while Coca Cola just might be innocent of Flamegate, the release of this latest product is almost as tasteless as the drink itself will surely prove to be.

Following so close upon the death of the former Pepsi poster boy, it’s as if the Coke company is sticking up two shit-stained fingers to both its biggest commercial rival and the late King of Pop, saying, ‘Hey, we can turn from dark to white too.’

Okay, it’s a Sunday and I really can’t be bothered with the world’s countless news stories about the usual bloodshed, folly, heart breaks et al.

If, as the Bible says, there is a time to reap, and a time to sow, there surely must also be some quality time reserved for doing sweet fuck all.

(Old Calvin and Luther might not agree with that but if I am of any school it’s of the latter-day listeners to Leonard Cohen, a.k.a. ‘the little Jew who wrote the Bible’. Or the church of Calvin and Hobbes, come to think about it.)

Anyway, yesterday, I finished Marina Lewycka’s ‘We are all made of glue’, which was a lovely read. It left me (in an empty pub, with a beer & Fernet stoked brain) with two, more or less random thoughts.

Since it is a Sunday and I feel both benevolent and lazy, I will give you those two, for the price of one, and let you decide which one to pick as a ‘Thought for the day‘:

1) Buying shoes, just to put them in cupboards, to keep them new, is like falling in love but never mentioning it, in order not to spoil things.

2) It’s such a shame that love is not nearly as infectious as hate.

Okay, the latter thought is a bit grim for a lovely (if lazy) late Sunday morning, so I’ll finish with a third thought – one I came up with when I was trying to brush all that beer & Fernet off of my teeth:

3) Please don’t mention ‘In my Father’s House’. I’m a pretty laid-back person but I’d even tell Jesus to fuck off if He would play house music in my presence.

Have a nice Sunday, all.

I used to be a big fan of Jeremy Clarkson. His columns in the Times, that is. I don’t have a TV to begin with and, unlike JC, I’ve never seen a car I would like to have sex with. These days, I still seek out his columns but, most of the times, they are somewhat disappointing. His obsession with global warming (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Gordon Brown) is threatening to turn him into a professional bore.

Still, as long he’s not being as tedious about his twin obsessions as Richard Dawkins is about God, Clarkson can still be very funny. Like last week, when he was writing about gardening. You should follow the link to his column in the Times, as soon as you’re done here – or right now, if you must. It’s really nice, as this short excerpt shows:

“And even if it does grow, it will turn out to be either a twig or something so rapacious that within five months it will have eaten your lawn, your shed, your house and most of your children. First, though, it will eat your satellite dish. All plants do this. No matter how hard you encourage them to grow in one direction, they will make a beeline for the dish, so that in the middle of your favourite show you suddenly get a notice saying no signal is being received. Which means you have to go outside, in the wind and the rain, with a pair of secateurs and some dynamite to try to get your clematis out of Bruce Forsyth’s ear.”

Anyway, I was reminded of this column while I was sitting in the bath and studying my toes. Not that my toes have ever tried to eat a satellite dish (or look like Bruce Forsyth’s ears, thank you very much) but my brain always wanders – without much aim or reason – while the rest of the body is soaking in warm water.

(Tip for the minister of education: Install hot tubs in classrooms. Maybe that will make school less of a mind numbing exercise than it is presently.)

What I was thinking about was gardens – or, to be precise, that very first Garden. Where Adam and his ex rib got into a spot of bother because of a bit of fruit.

Now, it’s always suggested that things were utterly idyllic in the Garden of Eden but can it really have been that much fun?

As Jeremy Clarkson already suggested:

“Gardening is like doing a jigsaw. A pointless way of passing the time until you die.”

What makes the Garden of Eden a special case is that it must have been absolutely huge. If it is true that the lion lay down with the lamb, that can only be the case if all the other animals the good Lord created had their own space. You won’t see a lion cuddling up to a lamb, when an elephant is standing on its tail, a giraffe puts a hoof into one of its nostrils and/or a bunch of llamas is sniggering within hearing distance.

So, that garden must have been incredibly big – and since there was no electricity in those days, that means that Adam (and/or Eve) had to cut the grass the hard way. Plus, as Clarkson already pointed out, there was the endless pruning as well. (Though I suppose the First Couple didn’t have to worry about plants eating their satellite dish.)

Come to think of it, maybe that whole naming of all the animals stuff wasn’t God’s idea at all. Perhaps it was just Adam’s way to deal with the extremely tedious daily business of Gardening – and as the earwig, the dung beetle, the blue tit and the wildebeest can testify, Adam was not always in the best of moods when he was handing out names.

Which might have had to do with God’s stubborn refusal to say, “Let there be an electric lawn mower.”

All in all, I can’t imagine that Adam and Eve were very sad when they finally got kicked out of Eden. Yes, now they would have to cope on their own, including dealing with a suddenly imposed mortality but anything would surely be better than an eternal life of bloody Gardening?

(I think it’s also safe to say that the lion was mightily pleased when Adam and Eve ate from that tree. Lambs are not particularly noted for their bright table conversation. They may be fluffy but Oscar Wilde they ain’t. So, I guess the lion had always much rather wanted to eat the lamb than lie down with it.)

I don’t like dubbed movies. To me, the whole process is based on a colossal amount of condescending and, even worse, it’s also vandalistic. The original language is an integral part of any movie – as it is with music. Not many people would accept studios making dubbed versions of their favourite pop artists, with Japanese voices behind a Madonna clip, or a German version of Leonard Cohen, a French impressionist’s take on old Motown songs, et cetera, et cetera. With TV shows and big screen movies however, the majority of people are happy enough to swallow the fake version and even enjoy it.

That’s people for you: Easily satisfied and even easier led.

Having said that, sometimes dubbed movies can be fun. I remember, as a kid, watching an old Western on a German channel and being delighted to watch John Wayne enter a saloon, saying, “Hände hoch, bitte!”

Anyway, I’m writing this now, because I saw another beautiful dubbed movie yesterday, here in Prague. It was in one of those non-stop bars, where most people come to gamble on slotmachines and/or get seriously drunk. They also have always one or more TVs, showing either a horrible commercial channel or Eurosport. (Many of these bars also have topless waitresses, once a week but that’s another story, for another day.)

This non-stop is round the corner from where I live, so I come there, occasionally, and this time the TV showed Pulp Fiction, dubbed in Czech, of course – and as horrifyingly funny dubbed movies go, this one was a classic.

It wasn’t just that John Travolta sounded like one of the Bee Gees in even tighter tights than usual – which could simply be seen as a case of poetic justice.

In fact, all the voices were bizarrely wrong but none more so than that of Samuel L. Jackson’s character. Part of the problem was that the Czech dubbing industry still hasn’t collected any real black voices but it didn’t help that the very white voice they picked would have been perfect for the unfortunate hero in Anne Rice’s historical novel about a young Italian castrato singer.

Ah well, as I started saying: I just don’t get dubbing. It’s an affront to the intelligence of the audience and an attack on the integrity of the original product. It’s also a very stupid thing to do for any government that cares about the education of its people. I wouldn’t want to force commercial channels to stop dubbing (and dumbing down) programmes but state TV really should abandon that Godawful practice.

In Holland, where I was born, our state TV used under-titling (and to this day the commercial Dutch stations also still do so) and it’s amazing how much kids can pick up from that. Thanks to being able to hear shows in the original language, long before they start to learn languages at school, children will have picked up quite a lot already, simply from watching TV. Which, obviously, makes it much easier for Dutch kids to study those languages when they have to, at school.

In other words, apart from any other arguments, not using under-titling is truly an (inter)national waste of educational resources. Though, as I’ve also said, sometimes, and very much unintentionally, those dubbed movies can become things of truly perverse beauty. Like that Czech version of Pulp Fiction.

Mind you, the only thing working for the castrated Samuel L. Jackson’s character was that the voice of the Uma Thurman character had been seriously girlified, so that his wonderful vengeance-of-the-Lord speech didn’t quite make for the highest note in the movie…

… though it was still a bit like watching Darth Vader and hearing the words “I thought I saw a pussycat” come lisping from his mask.

(Whatever you do, don’t let her come near you…!)

Today, swine flu (again, yes.)

Now, me, I think this Mexican swine flu thing is just God’s subtle way of telling the world He’s really sick and tired of people still doing that fucking Mexican wave and asking us politely to desist from doing so any longer.

If I’m right about that (and people don’t get the hint) I expect the flu will be just the first of a series of progressively more interesting and bloody plagues. A bit like Moses and the Pharaoh and that “Let my people go” song and dance routine.

Still, getting the swine flu isn’t much fun and dying from it even less so. Getting killed by a Mexican pig disease is kind of humiliating. Like getting your head smashed in accidentally by a singing Venetian gondelier.

So, me being the great humanitarian, I will use this column to give the panic stricken world three useful tips of how to avoid getting the flu, in the first place.

Apart from not doing the Mexican wave, that is. (Or going to Mecca.)

1) For men: Get circumcised. Everybody knows pigs and Jews don’t mingle much. I’m not saying all pigs are anti-Semitic but I’ve never even heard one of them say, “Some of my best friends wear skull caps.” So, go and get rid of that foreskin and you can be sure that no pig will want to get close enough to you to infect you.

2) For women: Don’t date policemen.

3) For everybody: Sue the sick little fuckers. In Medieval times, they would put animals on trial for all kinds of stuff. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t do the same thing, preventively. Give them ASBOs or restraining orders. Make it very clear to any oinker that, if it even thinks of sneezing at you, you will take it to court. In other words: Threaten to change it into your personal piggy bank and break it.

(Haji there! Aren’t we off to a flying start…?)

First, there was this bit of news:

“Eight Kuwaitis have tested positive for swine flu on their return from an Omra pilgrimage to Mecca and have been admitted to hospital, the Kuwaiti health ministry announced on Tuesday.”

Then, the story spread, like, well, like the flu, I suppose – unstoppable as a greased pig at a Bar Mitzvah:

“The annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca could be under threat because of swine flu. Britain today joined a growing list of countries in the Middle East and Africa to issue advice to Muslim pilgrims not to travel to Saudi Arabia if they are elderly, pregnant, very young or have a long-term medical condition that may leave them more vulnerable to the disease.

The advice, issued by the UK’s Association of British Hujjaj (Pilgrims), follows a recommendation by Saudi health officials that anyone travelling to Mecca or Medina should receive the seasonal flu vaccine at least two weeks before their visit. The Saudi authorities also said that pregnant women, children, chronically ill and elderly people should skip the Haj this year.”

Which just goes to show.

Actually, I have no idea what it shows.

On the one hand, you could say that this confirms the views of both Muslims and Jews that you should stay well away from pigs.

On the other hand, if Allah (or Jahweh) is all powerful, compassionate and all of that, it’s hard to understand why He would have created such unclean animals to begin with – let alone use them as carriers of a disease that will stop pilgrimages to honour Him.

Ah well, this whole swine flu thing might just confirm the view of Depeche Mode, as expressed in the following lines:

‘I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor
And when I die I expect to find Him laughing’