Glob-a-log

This is for those who wonder where the expression ‘on a winning streak’ comes from:

“A British billionaire, Alki David, has offered $1 million to the first person who manages to streak naked in front of Barack Obama.”

For many though who want to strike it rich it’s a small step from lucky streak to tight squeeze:

“A suspected burglar was left dangling today when he got stuck as he tried to climb through a window. His legs were still dangling outside and it appeared his bottom had prevented the man from squeezing through completely.”

They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Christopher Hitchens might still disagree with that but loads of people, from serial streakers to bungling burglars, will, on occasion, have the urge to pray for divine intervention.

Though even that, these days, comes with more caveats than you have breakdancing angels on theological pins:

“An advert for an amulet which promised ‘divine protection’ has been banned by advertising bosses because the firm behind it could not prove that angels will protect those who wear it.”

Ah, how the mighty have fallen…:

“In July, one of the longest losing streaks in the history of culinary combat finally came to end. According to the Nielsen Company, 52-week dollar sales of packaged wheat bread topped those of white bread for the first time in U.S. Supermarkets.”

On the other hand, and talking of the end of another long losing streak, it’s not all bad news…

… for today we can announce that things can – and will – only get better in Afghanistan:

“In a wide-ranging, hour-long interview with The Washington Post, [General David Petraeus] said he sees incipient signs of progress in parts of the volatile south, in new initiatives to create community defense forces and in nascent steps to reintegrate low-level insurgents who want to stop fighting.”

Ah yes, my friends, the dance goes on and on…

Now in the Post there are two pretty pieces
There is one where Death comes to cry
With a lobby of Afghanistan salesmen
Made of trees where the doves go to die
There’s a piece of white bread torn from the morning
As it’s banned from the fridge and your plates

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws…

… or something. (Sorry about that, Leonard!)

Ladies and gentleman, a big hand please for the most astoundingly stupid question asked this Millennium…

… and no, it wasn’t young Levi Johnston asking Sarah Palin if it was okay for him to call her Mom again.

It’s this:

“American cinema is omnivorous. It has swallowed almost every subject from the trivial to great historical events, and then spewed them up. However, there is one subject it has refused to tackle directly: the bombing of Hiroshima and its consequences. As it is now 65 years since the horrific event, the omission seems even more astounding.”

Astounding?

Only if you have very, very bad taste – or the brain of a quail (senior or junior.)

Whatever you think about the decision to drop those two bombs on the civilian population of two large cities, to expect Hollywood to go all John Wayne about it, or give it an angst-y Woody Allen comedy make-over would be a bit much…

… or a bit like asking why the National Association of Catering Butchers don’t show a clip of the death of Bambi’s mother at their annual convention.

I wonder how many of you know the old story of the Hydra.

The Hydra itself was a largish, many-headed water snake that lived in some God-forsaken swamp – though not half God-forsaken, since Heracles had it on his to do list. Killing the Hydra was one of his famous twelve Labours.

The only problem with killing what was, in effect, no more than an oversized wet worm was that when you cut off one of its heads another one replaced it immediately – which was a bit of a bugger.

I’m only mentioning this old story because the following news article had me thinking that, right now, the US army and, perhaps more to the point, its Commander in Chief, would, in Oprah speak, be quite able to share with the shade of Heracles that they feel his pain:

“American allies the Sons of Iraq being offered more money by al–Qaida to switch sides. Al–Qaida is attempting to make a comeback in Iraq by enticing scores of former Sunni allies to rejoin the terrorist group by paying them more than the monthly salary they currently receive from the government, two key US-backed militia leaders have told the Guardian.”

Heracles, of course, did manage to end his labours without much huffing and puffing, while both Bush and Obama seem to be doomed to spend their terms not even coming close to what even the friendliest critic would call ‘full term’.

To be honest, Obama’s dearest wish to hang his own ‘Mission Aborted’ banner on some battle ship seems, right now, as preposterous and premature as his predecessor’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ message.

In other words, there must be many days that Obama wished that Bush had not opened and passed on this particular can of Hydratic worms.

Talking of which – worms, that is, or presidential wishful thinking, for that matter…

… I’m pretty sure the big O would have much preferred it if Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al had ignored those Iraqi sand worms and spent their demented energy on trying to boss about the latter’s less lethal Lincolnshire relatives instead:

“Dozens of competitors converged on a field in Lincolnshire for the sport which involves trying to lure as many worms as possible out of the earth within a 30-minute period. But while the world record stands at 567, not one of the entrants at the Woodhall Worm Charming Festival managed to persuade a single invertebrate to vacate its underground lair.”

You don’t have to be a beleaguered president, one of the many dead & wounded American soldiers and their families or one of the collective horde of ‘collateraled’ Iraqi civilians to appreciate that such a no show of worms in the Iraqi ‘theatre’ would have been celebrated as an epic win.

One of my favourite writers in The Times is Simon Barnes. He mostly writes about sports, and about wildlife, but everything his pen touches turns to gold.

He is both level-headed and passionate and has a good eye for the absurd.

He would probably make an excellent after dinner speaker but when you read him you also feel he would be perfectly comfortable being a silent and attentive guest at any table.

Anyway, yesterday I read another one of his ‘nature notes’ and, as always, it was a pleasure to spend time in his company.

You should read the whole article, of course. Birds feature heavily – as do bombs and grenades, including an atom bomb turned tourist attraction…

… and this is how he ends the piece:

“It’s a banal thought to end a really remarkable day, but someone’s got to have it. Think of all the money, and all those brilliant minds, working here in secrecy on this strangely lovely spot, giving the best we had to the ideal of killing as many people as efficiently as possible. What if — I mean really, just think — what if all those millions and all those minds had given themselves up to the task of looking after the planet rather than killing people? Life, not death?”

It’s a good question but not one that would enter the mind of a politician, bureaucrat or general.

Pete Seeger wrote the song and the voice of Marlene Dietrich turned it into a monument, made of indelible notes & tremors.

It’s not the title but it’s the one unforgettable line: “When will they ever learn?”

The answer: Most probably, never.

Simon Barnes chose another voice from the past, to make the same point – and since this post is more about him than about me, I will happily give him the final word:

“In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver, in the land of giants, boasts to the King of Brobdingnag about the advanced technology that humans have created for warfare. The King replies: “I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.””

Today, I’m not going to talk about Iran’s justice system…

… or the tempest in a tea cup row between Britain’s Prime Minister and the president of Pakistan…

… or about the first all-female crew to try and sail to Gaza…

… or rightwing Diggers…

… or the latest (fears of escalating) violence in Rwanda…

… and yet, in a way, I’m talking about all of these matters – or, to be more precise, it won’t be me who will do the talking, because, today, my ‘Thought For The Day’ is, luckily for you, not one of mine but something both more profound and articulate than I could ever manage – so take it away, Mr Rushdie:

“So we are paradoxical beings, both individual and social, both of our time and part of history’s flow. We are mortal but have, like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, immortal longings in us; and contradiction is our life-blood. There are great social benefits in such broad definitions of the self, for the more selves we find within ourselves the easier it is to find common ground with other multiple, multitude-containing selves. We may have different religious beliefs but support the same team. Yet we live in an age in which we are urged to define ourselves more and more narrowly, to crush our own multidimensionality into the straitjacket of a one-dimensional national, ethnic, tribal or religious identity. This, I have come to think, may be the evil from which flow all the other evils of our time. For when we succumb to this narrowing, when we allow ourselves to be simplified and become merely Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Hindus, then it becomes easy for us to see each other as adversaries, as one another’s Others, and the very points of the compass begin to quarrel, East and West collide, and North and South as well.”

(Milking the immortal Cleopatra angle indeed…)

As T.S. Eliot – more or less – wrote:

“The Naming of kids is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a child must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey–
All of them sensible everyday names.”

Et cetera.

Enough with the poetry though; it’s time to climb that old soap box again.

So, far be it from me to question the wisdom of the New Jersey State Appeals Court but…

… oh well, whom am I kidding: They’re a right set of plonkers – as the following case shows:

“A US couple who gave their children Nazi-themed names, including “Adolf Hitler Campbell, have been denied custody by a New Jersey court. Their children – Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell – have been in foster care since January 2009.”

Let’s first say though that I do think that the parents of these children are most probably unfit to raise dandruff, let alone kids but then they are hardly the first or the last ones you can say that about.

People being people, you will always have a fair share of those who, to use a phrase I’ve used before, would most probably drown in the shallow end of the gene pool.

You have your political nuts, religious fanatics and those who think their children will thrive on a strict diet of Big Macs and jumbo milkshakes. God or the ghost of Darwin knows how many children live(d) miserably blighted lives because of the idiocy of their parents…

… but I’m not sure it’s the state’s place to judge which set of potential parents can become actual parents with the judiciary’s blessing.

There are exceptions to this, obviously. The state should be there to actively frown upon parents who want to sacrifice their children to Baal or Jaweh, or those who mutilate their daughters’ genitals, or those who starve them, beat them or sexually abuse them.

We have, so to speak, been there, done that, bought the headlines – and yet I would say that the state should not interfere if the madness of parents does not directly threaten the well-being of the child and I’m not so sure naming your child ‘Adolf Hitler’ should count as reason enough to take that child away from the parents.

Still, these parents were easy pickings, I presume. They’re probably what’s so lovingly called ‘trailer trash.’ The kind of folks we watch and laugh at on the Jerry Springer Show.

I seriously doubt these kids would have been taken into care if their parents had been rich, or politically well-connected.

I mean, yes, to call your child ‘Adolf Hitler’ is insane and quite vile but not much more so than to raise it in the belief that God is an alien, all psychiatric help is wrong and women should give birth to their children in silence – while even aspirin supposedly interferes with ‘forming mental images’, so good luck with that last bit…

… but even if he had lived within their legal grasp, I seriously doubt the New Jersey State Appeals Court would have taken little Suri away from Tom Cruise.

Ah yes, now to be a Shakespeare and to declare, with one hand on my heart and the other on my bulging, bald forehead…:

“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on”

… though in truth, the following line is more in the ‘As B-movies are made on’ category:

“Sir Winston Churchill is at the centre of a cover-up as the Ministry of Defence release new UFO files.”

So, what I want to say is, “Never mind those bleeding UFOs: You’re saying ole Winnie is alive and well – like Elvis…??!!”

Now, that would really be a ‘Stop the presses!’ moment.

It’s a pity he probably is still dead as a dodo wearing a Monty Python T-shirt, ’cause I would love to have heard what he might have to say about the current and quite recent incumbents of No. 10…

… or failing that, he would have looked truly magnificent on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ or, perhaps even better, ‘Dancing on Ice’…

… and yes, Elvis would have been a sight for sore eyes too, during those eating challenges on ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here’.

What…?

Oh, you want to know more about those UFOs?

Okay, but then I will have to bow out now and leave you to the tender care of the dead parrot – I beg your pardon: the immortal Sweet Swan of Avon:

“Our revels now are ended. These darn UFOs,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless rumours of these visits,
To cloud-capp’d council flats, the gurgling sewers,
The solemn strip clubs, all over the great globe itself,
Yea, all these space ships shall dissolve,
And, like an insubstantial fantasy faded,
Leave not a taser behind. Little green men are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and the journos’ little lies
Must turn sensible folks to sleep.”

The problem with authoritarians is that they think everything revolves around them. In that sense, there is no real difference between the late and unlamented Chairman Mao and a minor bureaucrat working in any Health & Safety junta: They like to have things their anally articulated way and tend to throw their Fatwas out of the pram when things & subjects don’t.

Anyway, you know the story of king Canute, of course. That is, most people think they do. The story is often told as one about the arrogance of kings.

Which is rather a pity, because the king was actually trying to demonstrate to his sycophant courtiers that not even God-blessed monarchs could order the tides to behave as they saw fit.

Which won’t stop some modern despots from trying, of course, as the following story shows:

“Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates have announced the bans on some functions of the Blackberry mobile phone, claiming security concerns.”

It would be nice if we had more Canutes around to teach the facts of life to those who think omnipotence comes with power the way manual labour comes with calluses.

Louis LlV, of France, would have agreed with these power junkies but then he wasn’t called the Sun King for nothing. In his mind he was the source of all radiance and all space was his space, allowing only for satellites, attracted and kept in place by his might & whim.

Which would probably – but without the wig – be a reasonably accurate description of Apple’s Worm King, Steve Jobs…

… who is fighting against a tide much more powerful than the one King Kanute was wrongly accused of challenging:

“Erotic fiction titles mysteriously disappeared from the iPad book chart yesterday after Apple became aware that pornographic novellas were dominating its bestseller list. Blonde and Wet, the Complete Story was ranked first in its e-book chart yesterday morning in a top ten that included three other erotic titles.”

Ah yes, Steve Jobs and his War on Porn. Cute but doomed…

… as are all efforts by the children of man to harness the powers of the sun and remake themselves in its glorious image…

… as the following story shows – sort of:

“Academics funded by the Medical Research Council say their findings explain why certain people find it difficult to get an even, consistent tan. The main problem, it seems, is people’s bottoms, which take a lot longer to go brown than other parts of their anatomy.”

Oh, and just one more thing about the whole WikiLeaks affair; something that would easily make it as Quote of the Day, 364 days of the year – and that’s the hilariously outraged comment by one Admiral Mullen:

“”Mr Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” Admiral Mullen said.”

You know what? The good Admiral is right. Team Assange may indeed have blood on their hands.

To be honest though, with the army’s recent proud record of collateral damage in Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s a bit like the McDonald’s and KFC companies accusing animal rights activists of endangering the lives of test animals when they set these sad critters free.

Technically true, that is but perhaps just the tiniest bit hypocritical…?