Glob-a-log

Right, it’s the final day of 2009 – if not the actual final day of the decade – so, as promised, here’s my final installment of the calendars-we-really-need-to-have-in-2010 series.

I don’t have much blather time, today, because I have a largish meal to cook as well. So, let’s get this one over and done with quickly:

1) Sports are always a great cash vehicle, so what better way to make a few easy bucks than to present the gullible world with yet another ‘Golden Sports Moments’ calendar: Featuring Thierry Henry’s handball, the fake blood rugby scandal, Formula One’s deliberate car crash, followed by Tiger Wood’s less deliberate fire hydrant crash, the whole of the drug-addled Tour de France, etcetera, etcetera.

2) The whole Darwin versus Creation debate boils down to the question whether man is a rising ape or a fallen angel. Still, wherever one stands in that particular fight, most people would agree that mankind has come a long way since it climbed out of those trees – and what better way to celebrate this than by producing & selling the ‘Human Progress’ calendar: With photos of that recently stolen ‘Arbeit macht frei’ banner at the entrance of Auschwitz, pictures of Cambodia’s mountains of skulls, Quantanamo Bay (or Abu Ghraib) and Lubyanka prison, action pics of Japan’s rape of Nankin and the bombing of Hiroshima, a photo of Robert Mugabe, und so weiter, und so weiter.

3) Again, we can try to bring together two of the best things in the world, with a ‘Food is Better Than Sex’ calendar: Featuring photos of a naked Nigella Lawson swimming in a huge bowl of minestrone soup, Johnny Depp doing someting rude (in the raw) to a man-sized sprout, Carla Sarkozi’s naked struggles on an XXXL plate of spaghetti, Brad Pitt’s nude climbing over mountains of mashed potattoes and one of a naked Angelina Jolie not quite mounting a gigantic fish stick.

Right, I’m off to the kitchen, to do something really mean to an innocent chicken – fully clad, I might add.

You all have a very happy New Year.

(You can find the three earlier Calendar posts HERE & HERE & HERE.)

(Hey, if I had to do it with Monsieur Sarkozi I’d also say ‘Pas pour moi’…)

Yes, like yesterday and the day before, I’m still in end-of-year mode, which means that I will continue with my list of calendars the world will want to see in all the better shops, this coming year. Like it was with the invention of the wheel, the deodorant spray and the chocolate flavoured condom, people will shake their heads and ask, ‘Whatever did we do before this was invented?’

So, here are three more calendars we need to be able to give pride of place in our lavatories:

1) A really simple idea this but no less delightful for it. Ever since old Walt drew his first mouse, cartoons have become one of the world’s biggest businesses. God knows how many billions Mickey and Donald and the others have made for the Disney conmpany. Talking of which – God, that is: The world’s religions have also been always quite inventive about making money, so one could do far worse than combining these two money makers. Which is why I think it would be a splendid idea to make a ‘Danish Mohammed Cartoon’ calendar.

2) Of course, there is much more that you can do with religion (and calendars.) There are thousands of interesting stories in the Old Testament alone. It used to be that the church windows depicted scenes from the Bible, so that the illiterate masses could be instructed in this way. Nowadays, not many people go to church, so we need to find other ways to bring these stories to them – and what better place than a calendar, hung in that small room where everybody goes at least once a day to medidate in blessed peace? So, yes, we do need a straight religious calendar, with pictures of the most engaging Biblical scenes: With Lot having sex with his two daughters, God answering Elijah’s prayer by sending the bear that devoured the mocking children, the tribes of Israel obediently smashing the skulls of their enemies’ babies against rocks and trees, Jezebel being eaten by dogs, etcetera, etcetera.

3) Enough of the religion already, you say? You want more sex? Okay, why not? The world can indeed do with more kinky calendars. I’m sure the Kama Sutra would have sold even better if the author had gone for the calendar format. Which might still be something its publishers may want to consider but I was thinking of something else. What I would really like to see is for someone who is good at Fotoshopping to produce something we could call the ‘Crazy Coupling Calendar’: With images of Berlusconi and Angela Merkel in the shower, Gordon Brown and Carla Sarkozi on the kitchen table, President Sarkozi on a waterbed with ex-president Putin, Amy Winehouse pleasuring her royal majesty the Queen and eight more unlikely couples going at it.

Okay, that was the third installment of this special fantasy calendar issue. I had planned to keep it at that but the year still has another day left and if I would go for one more calendar post, then the total score of calendars would be twelve, which is kind of fitting, so I will probably be doing that tomorrow.

For now, I’ll leave you with the suggestion that you, again, could flesh out the calendars mentioned above and share the results in the comment section below.

(You can find parts 1 & 2 & 4 of this series HERE & HERE & HERE)

As I said yesterday, the end of the year is the time where people go all out mad about actual and metaphysical clocks. Well, I didn’t say that, to be honest but I could have.

Now, I can do herd animal behaviour with the best of them, so yesterday I started with a list of calendars. Not actually existing calendars but ones that one could wish were there to be bought.

Here are three more of those:

1) Sex sells. Perhaps not as much as hatred, fear and religion but in any get-rich-quick scheme sex will always be a handy XXX Factor. It has been claimed that about 90% of the Internet is about sex, so I can’t see why this percentage could not be equalled – or bettered – by calendars. So, here’s one for the sleaze heads, called ‘Mouseketeers go pro’, with upskirt shots of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell et al.

2) In terms of selling power, it may not quite be up there with sex but where would our tabloids be without Schadenfreude.We put people on pedestals, because it’s much more fun if they have to go some distance when they do fall. Britney at the hairdresser, Hugh Grant with the street hooker, Amy Winehouse and her drugs: The public love to read about all of that – and to look at the pictures, of course. Which is why a ‘Famous Divorces’ calendar could be quite a hit: Paul McCartney & Heather Mills, Britney Spears & Kevin Federline, Jordan & Peter Andre, John Cleese & Alyce Faye etcetera.

3) It’s what water is to fish and air to birds - or birds to Tiger and lies to a politician: What makes the global blogs go round? Yes, indeed: Conspiracy theories. Why admit to the possibility of coincidence and chaos, when you can point the finger at invisible bogeymen and cry ‘Conspracy!’. So, anyone producing a calendar that was dedicated to this weird hobby, would make quite a bit of money from selling such a ‘Conspiracy Calendar’: With Kennedy and the grassy knoll, 9/11 and the Truthers, Global Warming and those leaked e-mails, the Elvis lives brigade, Roswell and Hangar 18, the Moon Landing deniers, und so weiter, und so weiter.

So, your homework for today is to flesh out these three calendars. I’ll be back tomorrow with more.

(Calendar posts 1 & 3 & 4 are HERE & HERE & HERE)

(The perfect celeb song, really…)

Four more days to go till this year closes down. What better way to celebrate this than to (more or less) quote that old Clint Eastwood movie, “Play listie for me.”

Or I could do a calendar. They are always popular. (My own favourite: The Zombie pin-up calendar.)

Or I could do both: A list of calendars. Yes, that should do the trick.

Though I can’t be bothered to deal with the calendars that are already out there. It’s much more fun to make your own – which is what I will be doing these coming three days

So, let’s start simple

1) Sports calendars are always popular. Anything with sports usually is. Look at the success of ‘Sports Illustrated’, for instance, though that may have more to do with its cover (girls) than with any sport in particular. Which is why I would go for a calendar called “Tiger’s Titful Trophy Barbies. Surely we are on twelve by now?

2) Animals also give good calendar. From the mighty lion to the celebrity chihuahua, you can sell this product faster than you could flog an up skirt pic of the Pope. Add a few spoonfuls of fame to the mix and you’re really cooking. Which reminds me: Cook books by famous chefs are also big, so why not combine all three of these elements and do a calendar, called ‘Famous pet recipies’. So, January could be tuna-canned Flipper month, February a Chinese Lassie special, March could be barbied Skippy time, April would have us longing for Donald à l’orange, et cetera, et cetera.

3) Politicians do not make a pretty pin-up picture, on the whole (though cartoonists do like to work with this base material a lot.) Still, I think there could be a market for a political calendar, if you play the Schadenfreude card. So, I could see a calendar called “World leaders in trouble”. There’s quite a range of suitable candidates. You have Pope pushing, Berlusconi bashing, Bush with his shoe (or pretzel), Sarkozi and his jogging collapse. There surely must be enough politicians taking pratfalls to get us through the calendar year?

To be continued tomorrow…

… but in the meantime you could have fun trying to flesh out those pet recipies & political pratfall calendars.

(Compared to this my calendars look pretty damn good…)

(Calendar time, Part Two & Three & Four are HERE & HERE & HERE)

Four more days (and a year, if you want to be pedantic about it) to go till the decade ends. The last three days I want to spend writing & posting a three part end-of-the-year special. Today, I’m not much in the mood for reading the papers, let alone commenting on them, so you will have to settle with another one of those ‘Thoughts for the Day’. Here goes:

Remember those family photo albums, the holiday snapshots and home movies…

… and how you hated having to watch them and having to listen to the accompanying stories, again and again and again and again…?

Well, if you think you had it bad, then spare a thought for our all-seeing God, Who has to watch us and listen to our prayers all the fucking time.

How He must hate mankind by now.

Bad weather brings out the worst in our European public and private transport systems. With the kind of defeatism that would make the French army proud, the moment the barometer drops, all railway services will hide under the umbrella of ‘wrong kind of snow.’

Which is quite irritating (not unlike the French army, I suppose, behind their silly Maginot line, grumbling about the wrong kind of war.)

That’s old Europe for you in a nut shell: Inefficient and more than a bit pathetic and, like any grumpy old man, moaning about life, the universe and everything, making as charming a picture as a piece of soggy cereal caught in the false teeth of Father Time.

Of course, it could have been even worse.

We could have been Americans, making a cholestrol rich meal of our arrogant incompetence and adding a generous helping of religious mania.

Enter the good Rev. Joseph Mirowski, of the Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration of The Wrong Kind of Snow – so to speak.

You remember that spot of bother they had in the Mid West, as reported by ABC?

“A massive winter storm has forced scores of US churches to cancel Christmas Eve services as blizzards and freezing rain brought treacherous holiday travel conditions for millions of Americans. At least 19 deaths were attributed to the nasty storm system.”

Nasty indeed – like those nasty Nazis who just wouldn’t fight fair…

Anyway, as I said, enter Rev. Joseph, who, like his famous namesake, could only look down upon what God hath wrought impotently and mumble the silliest line this side of eternity:

“I don’t think God wants anyone to get killed or break a hip or break a knee or something,” said the Rev. Joseph Mirowski of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration in Mason City, Iowa, where up to a foot of snow and sleet was expected.”

Bless.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend in a bar. I like bar talk – if it’s about more than women, football, cars and, these days, of course, also iPhones and Macs. It’s amazing how boring people can be about those things.

Still, when the alcohol starts to ripple (as of yet gently) through the brain, and the conversation flows from the latest Stephen King to the self-portraits of Rembrandt, by way of the Second World War and EU politics and the records of Miles Davis and who was and wasn’t in Casablanca…

… then, to me at least, it’s about the best of times beer & shots money can buy…

… and yes, there is a point to all of that and I’m slowly coming to it.

So, at one random point in the evening my friend mentioned that stolen corpse of the former Cyprus president Tassos Papadopoulos. I reminded him that stealing corpses has always been the favourite pastime of a select few morons & scoundrels and I was quite amazed to learn that my friend did not know about the theft of a way more famous corpse:

“Three months after Chaplin died on Christmas, 1977, his body was stolen in an effort to extort money from his family. Chaplin’s body was recovered 11 weeks later after the grave-robbers were captured. He is now buried under 6 feet of concrete to prevent further theft attempts.”

Anyway, I was reminded of these grave robbing tales when I came upon the following story, a bit earlier today:

“Three mysterious signatures on pages of parchment bound in leather and kept under lock and key may prove the theory that William Shakespeare was a secret Catholic who spent his “lost years” in Italy.”

Talk about digging up famous graves indeed. Still, Shakespeare’s dead body has been fucked with by God knows how many necrophiliacademic chancers, who try to sell us this, that or the other latest theory about him.

So, we get speculations about his portrait, his sexuality and even his gender. We get to read about all the reasons why Shakespeare couldn’t have written what he has written…

… and now we have yet another idiot claiming that Shakespeare was a catholic…

… which, of course, is trivial beyond all other trivial pursuits. It’s like the pursuit of happiness entwined with the quest for the fountain of youth, squared by the search for an honest MP.

The point of Shakespeare is not whether he was catholic, female, black, alien and/or bisexual.

The only point worth making is that the point of Shakespeare is that he is Shakespeare.

All other speculation is as senseless and unwelcome as a plastic replica of the Tower of Pisa, thrown at the Taj Mahal.

Christmas truly is a miserable time.

Not only for people who are allergic to shopping malls, Bing Crosby and/or Dr Who Christmas specials.

I just returned from the shop – no, just some more bread and a bit of my favourite goat cheese – and within a five minutes’ walk I noticed three stands with rackety, scarred and slimy tables on which the carp that where lifted from their claustrophobic cauldron like prisons where cut into custom ordered pieces.

Being a carp in Yule-coloured Prague ain’t no fun at all…

… as it’s also not exactly a good idea to be a turkey…

… or a Brussels sprout, of course.

What I hadn’t realized before I read the following article though, was that it’s also such an astoundingly bad karma move to become a Christmas goat in Sweden:

“A Christmas goat made of straw has been burned down by vandals in a Swedish city in what has become a yuletide tradition. Vandals have burned down the goat 24 times since it was first placed in Gävle in 1966 Photo: EPA Gävle city spokeswoman Anna Ostman said someone set fire to the 43ft figure around 3am and only a charred wooden skeleton remained. Vandals have burned down the goat 24 times since it was first placed in Gävle in 1966 to mark the holiday season. It has also been smashed several times, run over by a car and had its legs cut off.”

(I rest my case…)

Last year I wrote a column with the title ‘Seven great investment tips for 2009′.

So, if you’re not a millionaire by now, you’ve only got yourselves to blame.

This year, I will, once more, try to make all my faithful readers obscenely rich, by way of yet another get-rich-the-lazy-way list.

Here goes:

1) Write a best-seller series of books about a chick raised by two lesbian dragons, who subsequently goes to a magic dragon school, where it will find friends, adventures, & evil wizards and will discover various things about magic, wisdom, midnight snacks and snogging.

2) I’ve mentioned this before but it’s still an excellent piece of advice, so: Paint a Pollock.

3) Write a movie script about a reality TV show that’s set on Mars. The show is a boot camp for strippers and pole dancers. Each contestant has her own bubble, in which she performs. Each week the viewers back on Earth vote which bubble will burst and which stripper/pole dancer ends up dying from this ultimate form of exposure. Then an army of alien sex & brain-starved zombies lands and paints the planet even redder. (The last shot has the zombie leader chewing on a still quite shapely thigh, then grinning into the camera and saying “A small snack of a stripper, a huge meal of mankind”.)

4) Write an i-Phone app that shows buskers, chuggers and other pests by way of Google Street View.

5) Write a TV RomCom about a slick Junior Minister who falls in love with a female Church of England do-gooder vicar. Describe their weekly domestic arguments about bankers, gay priests, ministerial expenses, Muslims, more ministerial expenses, minorities, ministerial expenses, the poor, ministerial expenses, paedophile priests, moats, sharia law, floating duck islands, God, Tony Blair, the Devil, porn movie expense claims, etcetera etcetera.

December comes with lists – and when it’s the end of a decade these lists start to fall like the leaves of a cartoon calender.

No, this is not a list column. I might still do one before the year is done but not today.

One of the somewhat predictable topics of the current set of lists is the question what it was that best defined this last decade.

You could say Big Brother, the TV programme that would have pleased Andy Warhol and his fifteen minutes of fame claim enormously…

… though I suppose that everyone would, in the end, perhaps grudgingly, agree that that one September morning in 2001 cast a bloody shadow that fell over the rest of the decade. Terrorism and the ‘war on terror’ were the topics that disgraced the front pages of the world’s newspapers almost every day since 9/11.

Still, it’s an ill hooker that blows nobody good and all that, so you could say that the world’s professional cartoonists never lacked for topics, the last eight years and a bit.

Saddam, Osama, Bush and Blair: From the White House, through Baghdad and to the mountain caves of Afghanistan, all of them appeared in numerous cartoons, prancing & preening like the Marx brothers in a Romero flick.

It’s a sensitive issue though and lately an English stand-up comedian got into a bit of media bother when he made a joke that, thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, England would win a lot of medals at the next Paralympics.

Cue the tabloids foaming at the paper mouth about the depravity of mocking ‘our brave boys and girls’.

So, should we all kneel down and pray, with closed and down-turned lips, in the Church of Shock & Awe…

… or can we, occasionally, admit that there is a funny side to all the madness?

I’d claim the latter and I call the following news story as witness for the defence:

“Chinese police were held in a hour-long stand-off with a suspected suicide bomber only to find the man was armed with sausages. Police believed that the straps and bulky items around Sing He’s waist were dynamite and detonators Mr He, 23, threatened to blow up a restaurant and its customers in Benxi, norhtern China, unless the staff handed over the contents of the till. But a specialist bomb unit called to the scene quickly determined that the device was assembled with pork products.”