Have you ever asked yourself what the meaning of news really is?
It’s like the meaning of life, isn’t it? Or the meaning of God, or love, or digestive biscuits. Maybe there isn’t any, I mean.
Anyway, whether there is any meaning to life, ABBA revival tours or news, I think we can all agree that there is a Hell of a lot of it. News, that is. (I try not to notice or count ABBA revival tours.)
So, each and every day, there are millions of stories, big and small, that make it into the world’s many news outlets. From Washington Post to Huffington Post, from the Tel Aviv Telegraph to the Jihadist Journal, from the Inuit Examiner to the Papua Express, from… Well, you catch my drift.
Lots of stuff out there - and I’ve been writing a daily column about various news stories, for over two years now.
No, this is not a farewell post but I’m going on a holiday and I won’t have access to the Internet, for a week. Which will be a mother of a cold turkey, I’m sure. So, I won’t be able to follow the news or write about it - but I will leave you with some links to older, strange and sometimes wonderful news stories. I’ve built up quite an archive, over these two years…
Here’s the first instalment, called, ‘It’s all about sex’. Enjoy:
I don’t know about you but me, I’ve heard quite enough about a certain dead DIY albino - up to and very much including the point that a BBC nitwit more or less compared the dead ‘King of Pop’ with the very much alive ‘King of Tennis’, Roger Federer.
Now, it tells you about all you need to know about our dearly deceased that he absolutely loved that stupid title - and anyone who knows even a little bit about Federer knows he would find this latest coronation acutely embarrassing.
What’s more, he may be too polite to mention it but I am not, so I am quite happy to state that such a claim, certainly in this particular context, is also in very bad taste.
Not quite as bad as a certain other BBC presenter who calls old gentlemen to inform them that he has fucked their granddaughters but bad enough anyway.
Enough about Michael Jackson though - and more than enough about BBC idiots.
There are, after all, more things in heaven and earth, Sue Barker, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. More things below earth too, as the following Telegraph article shows.
Again, I don’t know about you but some news stories just make me very happy - and this is one of them: “As a thin drizzle fell on the World Worm Charming Championships on Saturday, Stan Allen strummed his guitar and felt the earth move at his feet. This was broadly the idea, although it wasn’t clear whether the worms emerging mob-handed around him were coming up to enjoy the entertainment or to escape from the noise. “They like rock best,” Stan 61, explained between riffs. “Easy listening doesn’t do it for them, and classical puts them to sleep.”
Worm charming is an ancient, noble and mysterious art, which, while intended primarily to bring worms out of the soil also manages to bring out the worst in its ultra-competitive practitioners. Tales abound of dirty tricks and dubious practices. One charmer was banned for life after concealing worms in his trouser legs to sprinkle on the ground – “we got suspicious when we saw him wearing bicycle clips,” says championship organiser Mike Forster. Others have sunk to chopping worms in half to double their totals.”
(Bad but slightly less annoying than a Michael Jackson clip…)
It’s not a state secret that the world’s governments are not exactly winning the War on Drugs. Spraying coca fields in Columbia, paying millions to corrupt dictators and ‘Just say no’ campaigns at home have not seen any serious reduction in the production, trafficking and consumption of drugs.
Banks may go broke, house prices may drop as fast as unemployment figures rise but the drugs cartels are not really in need of any government bail outs.
So, should we just give up and stop pretending that we ever had a chance of winning this grossly unequal fight?
Until today I would have suggested that that should indeed be the case. Better to tax the enemy than to continue this doomed and very costly war.
Thanks to an article in today’s Guardian, however, I’ve become a believer - a born again flag bearer for the War on Drugs, if you like.
The best part of the story is that fighting drugs can be fun. We won’t need to bribe militias and dictators anymore, won’t have to use dangerous chemicals to kill coca crops or pretend that’s it’s cooler to say no than to get high.
No, the only thing we need to finally win the War on Drugs is to breed more wallabies, teach them how to use a parachute and drop them above the world’s various poppy fields:
“Unlike their larger mainland cousins,the wallabies of Tasmania appear to be more trippy than Skippy. No lesser an authority than the island’s attorney general has discovered that hungry marsupials and thousands of acres of legal opium poppy fields do not mix.
“We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” Lara Giddings told a budget hearing on Wednesday. “Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”"
Today’s broadcast is sponsored by hair colour brand Clairol Perfect 10, which is running a new campaign, with the somewhat surprising and more than a bit dubious slogan, ‘Over the hill and far away.’
Anyway, as I’ve stated a few times before, I like scientists. Not just the humble white coats who merely slog on, in pursuit of a better type of throw-away pen, a more convincing-looking toupee or a cure for AIDS but also - and maybe especially - the kind of scientist that has his or her eyes firmly on tomorrow’s headlines, like a heat-seeking missile in, well, in heat, I suppose.
Of course, the downside of trying to make the news with such religious fervour is that, occasionally, it makes you look like an utter prat:
“Researchers discovered women feel most confident and happywith their love life and body shape shortly before they reach 30. It is also the period in their life when they enjoy the best sex – but the happiness is relatively shortlived. Because by the time they have turned 30 they start worrying about growing old and developing grey hair and wrinkles.”
Yes, that great time just before you hit thirty. When everything is going ever so well for you…
Now, here’s another weird one for you: “Horse owners will have to sign a pledge not to eat their animalsunder new EU legislation, it has been reported. The rule, aimed at continental Europe, where two million horses are reportedly eaten every year, will still have to be signed in Britain.”
Nice, isn’t it, how the Brussels bureaucratic machine cares about horses?
Okay, maybe not quite:
“The Horse Identification Regulations, which will come into force at the beginning of next month, is partly to stop vets’ drugs from entering human diets. Anyone who refuses to sign up to the regulations could face prison or an unlimited fine.”
Enter the usual suspects, crying foul over this proposed bill.
No, not the odd ‘Brew up a buffet of horse’ whisperer, or the Guild of Black Beauty Butchers. It’s the British, of course:
“Kate Gillanders, of Kindross, Pertshire, told The Sun “We don’t see our horses as cattle. The thought of them being eaten is utterly repulsive. Brussels is poking its nose in where it should not be. The EU knows nothing about me and cares even less. This nonsense is somebody else’s obsession.”"
Quite.
Greater love has no woman for a horse than to protest against laws that protect them…
Anyway, I can’t say I’m in favour of this law myself - but then I’m not a vegetarian. Still, even if I were, what’s the sense of claiming it’s ‘utterly repulsive’ to eat a horse and perfectly okay to eat cows, pigs and chickens?
Now, I’m all for treating our food with due consideration. I don’t eat canned vegetables and I won’t buy meat that comes from animal concentration camps. That’s not because I think carrots or chickens necessarily got rights but I do think they deserve to be treated with some measure of respect.
However, I’m not sure it’s anything but the crassest form of sentimentality to judge some animals to be fit for consumption, while being repulsed by the idea of eating others…
… and that’s not even going into this whole horse riding industry, run by these horse lovers.
Now, me, if I had the choice of being a sheep, or a cow, who could live a peaceful life in a nice bit of meadow, before being eaten by whoever had kept me warm during those dreary English winters…
… or being a horse, who would have to jump over fences, carry stroppy kids around in ever more boring circles, be used as a sports utility in polo games and perform as a 1500 pounds sex toy for erotically confused teenage girls and not to be eaten at the end of such a foul existence…
… well, then I think I would rather star in a Cow & Chicken cartoon, even if it ended with a shot of some hungry bastard holding a fork and knife and slobber-stuttering, “That’s all, folks…!”
“Turn down that damn music: You’re killing me here!!!”
Lines that must be familiar to anyone who ever listened to music in his or her room, with parents screaming, praying and begging for quiet, on the outside.
A nice image, really. With kids playing the role of Joshua blowing his trumpet and the parents as the ancient city of Jericho.
In the eternal fight between the generations, walls are raised again and again - and, as often as not, they come tumbling down again like Wile E Coyote in an Isaac Newton panto.
Now though, scientists have discovered that music can be much more than a weapon of crass destruction in the generation war:
“Music may be used to treat heart attack and stroke victims after Italian scientists found it can affect blood pressure. Researchers found that music with faster tempos increased blood pressure and heart rate, whereas slower music reduced them. The same affect was also achieved by slowly changing the volume of the music. By combining slow and fast music it was possible to control the cardiovascular system and eventually help its rehabilitation.”
Which is all quite nice, of course but for one small detail.
Everyone who’s ever been put on hold and had some Mantovani vomited into his or her ear knows all about the link between apoplexy and certain types of noises.
So, though I wish these researchers and future operation theatre Djs all the best with this musical surgery, I can’t help but feel a bit miffed that I will be forced to carry yet another set of instructions with me.
Apart from that little card that says I am an organ donor who doesn’t want to be operated on when the brain no longer functions, I will now have to add a little list of bands that will probably carry me over the edge if played during surgery.
It would be quite a long list too.
Proudly headed, of course, by ABBA and finishing with ZOEgirl…
Though it does show the perils of inviting the private sector to take over so much of what used to be the government’s job.
We already have fast food and soft drink titans sponsoring schools and using these places as juvenile feeding & training pens.
Get them young, as the Jesuits say, and hook them for (a short and very fat) life.
Funny though, if you think of it. When schools even mention the possibility of teaching kids about the perils of STDs or the problematic future teen mothers face, howls of protests ring from sea to shining sea but when Coca Cola and McDonald’s are allowed to push their poison on the young in a way most of our street dealers can only dream about, you don’t hear all that much about the corruption of our youth.
Anyway, I’m digressing. As I started with saying, the following news story is rather amusing:
“When a neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Movementvolunteered last year to clean a Missouri highway, and get official recognition for it in the form of an Adopt-a-Highway sign, state officials felt powerless to refuse. So they took a rather clever tack. Officials are renaming the stretch of highway near Springfield that the organization cleans after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who fled Nazi Germany and became a prominent Jewish theologian and civil rights advocate in the United States.
The renaming, which would take effect this summer, was approved by the legislature as part of a large transportation bill. The governor has not yet signed the bill but supports the concept of renaming the road, an aide said. The measure is not popular, though, with some members of the National Socialist Movement, who clean a half-mile stretch four times a year.”
You don’t say.
Me, I’d have thought any group of Nazis would love to stomp their boots on the face of a Jewish road. Though I suppose it would require a bit more effort to vandalise concrete than it was to smash all those windows, back in 1938.
So, I don’t suppose we will soon see a follow-up of the Kristallnacht, in the form of a Concrete Night.
(Such a beautiful song about such an ugly affair…)
Am I a big admirer of the veil, or the niqab, or the burka?
Well, I was raised in a family that believed feminism was not so much a cause as the only sane way to live – so, the answer is, “No, not really.”
I believe that the many women who claim that wearing the veil is, in a way, empowering and liberating for them are probably quite sincere.
I also happen to believe that they are in denial about the misogynistic roots of the culture that first designed these clothes – and, if I’m honest, I find these claims about the liberating qualities of this type of dress more than a bit distasteful, in a world where God knows how many women per year are still being stoned to death for proven crimes against some perverted moral code, or the victims of honour killings for merely being suspected of said crimes.
I mean, isn’t it ever so nice that these liberated Muslim women choose to adopt the type of dress millions of their sisters must wear, if they want to avoid mental & physical abuse, ostracism or even a most gruesome death?
So, here’s a simple question for you: What would you call a bunch of liberated black women who would wear ‘empowering’ silver designer chains round their necks, while 90% of their sisters would still be forced to wear the original iron ones…?
In other words, was I pleased then, when I read the following news article?
People do many silly things. Modern Muslimas wearing a ‘liberating’ or ‘empowering’ burka aren’t that much dafter than a certain type of Western woman who claims that a pole dancing course is all about discovering your inner power and, really, quite the feminist thing to do.
Would I be in favour of a total ban on pole dancing, because it’s as offensive to women as a burka is? Again, not really. Whatever I might think of both activities, as long as women aren’t forced to do either, I don’t think it’s the state’s business to interfere.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Judaism. Sure, it’s slightly preposterous for any subgroup of humanity to claim to be the Chosen One but, unlike most other religions, they don’t try to convert other people. All they basically ask is to be left alone to worship the God of their choice, without feeling the need to tell others what they should do.
Obviously, like anyone who asks other people to leave well enough alone, the Jews have found out that this simply does not and will not, ever, happen. Which is another way of saying that, by now, even the most simplistically devout Jew must be aware of the fact that it doesn’t exactly pay to be God’s Chosen.
Anyway, now, I’m an agnost, so I find most stories about religious nuts (whether they are of the Ayatollah or Dawkins persuasion) quite silly.
Still, I normally don’t care all much that the vast majority of people feels the need to bow to one type of beard-in-the-sky or the other. It’s fashionable to call this state of mind ‘tolerant’ but, truly, I just can’t be bothered much to care about the spiritual comfort blankets of others.
I would only claim one simple rule of thumb. That is, the moment that the religion of person X starts to seriously inconvenience or harm others, then that person, religion and/or God can go fuck themselves. No form of tolerance should be wasted on anybody who thinks his or her belief systems are worth more than the welfare of other people.
It’s a rather elementary form of social hygiene, not to play your portable music thingummies in public, not to litter or to talk too loudly and too long on your mobile phones outside your home…
… and not to bother other people with your choice of supernatural support system.
It’s one thing to claim people should respect your need to have some kind of divine seeing-eye dog; it’s quite another to expect other people to tolerate said dog to piss all over their carpets, chase their cats and bite their ankles.
So, when Popes forbid people in AIDS-riddled communities to use condoms, or certain Muslims encourage throwing homosexuals from high buildings or groups of Hindus claim they will beat up or kill couples who kiss in public, then sanity and that fore-mentioned social hygiene demand that we resist these kinds of people, totally.
Now, I have to regretfully come back to what’s supposed to be God’s favourite set of tribes, the children of Israel. As I mentioned earlier, they mostly obey all the rules of social hygiene. Still, any social, political or belief system has its own fair share of lunatics. Judaism, sadly, is not exempt from this rule.
Enter Dena and Gordon Coleman, of Embassy Court in Bournemouth, England:
“A Jewish couple are suing neighbours over motion sensors that turn on the lightsin their communal stairwell, which they claim make it impossible for them to leave their flat during the sabbath. Since the sensors were installed, the lights come on as soon as they set foot outside their front door — which they say makes them responsible for switching them on and therefore prohibits them from leaving the building. The couple are suing their neighbours, saying that their human rights are being breached, and are claiming up to £5,000 damages.”
I’m obviously not saying that suing your neighbours over a few offending light bulbs is quite the same as telling people to get AIDS and die, or kill & maim homosexuals and kissing couples but it IS part of that strange pathology that insists you can sick your divine seeing-eye dog on people who don’t respect your preferred type of invisible pet.
So, I’m afraid all civilized and rational people should treat this Jewish couple in the same way as any other raving Godhead and politely insist they desist and fuck off already.
Dear Gods, can noone rid us of this terrible woman?
“A new history by Suzannah Lipscomb, a doctoral student at Balliol College, Oxford, and research curator at Hampton Court Palace, suggests that 1536 turned Henry VIII from a gifted, handsome and companionable king into the fat, wife-killing tyrant of popular imagination. In 12 months Henry suffered a riding accident, an alleged cuckolding, the death of his beloved illegitimate son and a rebellion. As he turned 45, then regarded as the beginning of old age, these separate traumas accumulated into a midlife crisis from which he never recovered.
“Looking at the events of Henry’s life, I had never noticed that so many of them coalesced in a single year. There was a considerable difference in the King before and after,” she said. “No one had written this before.””
Maybe because it’s a load of crap?
A traumatic year, a midlife crisis…
It all does sound terribly, depressingly familiar, doesn’t it?
By the way, when I misquoted another king in my first sentence, I wasn’t talking about getting rid of la Lipscomb. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like to run into her at any party but she’s probably quite harmless.
This is just one of those cases where a bored journo hears about some silly bit of business and decides it will make a nice filler article. You know the deal:
‘MAN WHO MURDERED TWO OF HIS WIVES CLAIMS HE IS THE VICTIM!’
A victim of the whips and scorns of time, no less.
Still, long after the Lipscomb woman will have returned to well-deserved obscurity, the rest of us will still have to suffer the slings and arrows of our outrageous blame game culture.
To paraphrase a certain prince, ‘Thus cop-outs do make cowards of us all.’
Hamlet, at least, was tormented by an honest to God Freudian ghost. We, on the other hand, are beset by the spirit of Oprah Winfrey – and there seems to be no getting away from that kind of shit.
It is ridiculously easy to imagine how, in a not too distant future, on the couch where Tom Cruise jumped, we will see the big O fawning on a very familiar, white-robed figure, who is stroking his recently trimmed, now mostly white beard and who, looking straight into the camera with big, soulful eyes, will blame everything on a riding incident, or the death of his pet bunny, or something…
All of which will be rewarded with a standing ovation by the public, a tearful hug from Oprah and a fading shot of Osama’s upcoming book, ‘Tora Bora: The road to inner peace and self-fulfilment’.
(Okay, here’s the whole of that monologue I took such liberties with…)
