You know that old slogan, the one that’s so popular with the merchants & facilitators of quite avoidable death: ‘Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.’

Technically, they are right, of course, though I’d love to see those Columbine idiots, or that Virginia Tech moron, or the promoters of your average Shock & Awe campaign try and kill as many people as swiftly and easily with a catapult and some brightly coloured balls of paper.

Gods don’t kill people. Priests kill people.

The Little Red Book doesn’t kill people. Megalomanic arseholes kill people.

McDonald’s doesn’t kill people. Lazy gluttony kills people.

Death doesn’t kill people. Living kills people.

Et cetera, et cetera, et ad absurdum…

Spiders do kill people, of course – but not all that often, really. Mostly, it’s stupidity that kills people or embarrasses the shit out of them, as the following article shows:

“An 28 year-old man suffered severe burns after attacking an arachnid with an aerosol can at his home in Clacton in Essex. The man was summoned by his wife to deal with a spider she had seen scuttling behind the lavatory on Bank Holiday Monday. Not being able to reach it, the man decided to kill it by spraying it with the can. However he was unable to see whether it was dead because the bulb in the bathroom light had blown. At this point he turned to a cigarette lighter to illuminate the room, but in the process ignited the gas fumes and caused an explosion. The blast was so strong it blew the man off his feet and lifted the loft door off its hinges.”

Talking about spiders, and about idiots, and about religion, and about religious idiots with a spider fixation. Here’s a little something I found on that most omnipresent of Webs:

“Because its webs are traps for the unwary insect, Christians use the spider as a symbol of the Devil and the elaborate traps he prepares for souls which are represented by flies.”

Right…

Meaning that the good God-bothering flies would go to Heaven and the wicked Richard Dawkins flies to That Other Place…

… which would turn both God and His Adversary into a kind of B-movie type good cop, bad cop Lord of the Flies team.

Christians against arachnids. What next?

Hindus against holograms? Jews against geography? Muslims against muesli?



I’ve always had mixed feelings about Texas.

On the one hand, it’s the actual home of Kinky Friedman, front man of the legendary Texas Jew Boys and writer of superbly funny detective stories, featuring a puppet’s head, a lesbian dance class, cigars and a perfectly grumpy cat…

… but, on the other paw, it’s the spiritual birth place of George Bush.

So, what to make of Texas?

Or, perhaps more to the point, what to desperately avoid eating in Texas?

As the following story makes clear:

“A chef in Texas has created what he claims is the world’s first recipe for deep-fried beer. The beer is placed inside a pocket of salty, pretzel-like dough and then dunked in oil at 375 degrees for about 20 seconds, a short enough time for the confection to remain alcoholic. When diners take a bite the hot beer mixes with the dough in what is claimed to be a delicious taste sensation. His deep-fried beer will be officially unveiled in a fried food competition at the Texas state fair later this month.”

By the way, those who think deep-fried beer has no chance in Hell to win any fried food competition may be as sadly delusional as the people who thought George Bush had the same chance of ‘winning’ the presidency (twice.)

As this quote, taken from the same article, shows:

“Last year’s winner of the Texas state fair fried food competition was a recipe for deep-fried butter.”

Still, however distasteful deep-fried beer or butter may be, today’s newspapers saw many stories that were much harder to swallow…

… like the one about Tony Blair and his bloody memoir, in which he stands by his decision to invade Iraq but regrets banning fox hunting.

(A lot of dead Iraqis would agree it’s a pity he never ran for the presidency…)

Brilliant:

“Viewers want more access to interactive TV in the future including the ability to influence plots in programmes, a survey has revealed. The YouGov poll, which questioned more than 2,000 people, found 69% of people wanted live voting to alter storylines in shows.”

So, the system that exposed us week after week to John Sergeant in Strictly Come Dancing…

… and launched the career of ABBA by way of the Eurovision Song Contest…

… and made Adolf Hitler Reichskanzler…

… will now be responsible for plot lines on TV.

It’s a pity I threw out my own TV, some ten years ago – and even more of a pity that they didn’t come up with this bright idea, some 400 years ago, come to think of it.

I would have loved to see the following scene play out in the original Globe theatre:

Stagehand One: Mr William, sir, the audience doesn’t like it…

W.S.: Now what?!

Stagehand Two: It’s the duel, sir.

W.S.: What’s wrong with the damned duel?!

Stagehand One: They don’t like the poisoned sword, sir.

W.S.: For fuck’s sake! They didn’t like the ghost…

Stagehand Three: Too scary, sir.

W.S.: They didn’t approve of the drowning…

Stagehand One: Too sad, sir.

W.S.: They hated the stabbing…

Stagehand Three: They really liked his ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’ speech, sir.

W.S.: That Was A Fucking Parody! Polonius is a boring oaf. Are these people totally stupid?

Stagehand Two: They do pay the license fee, sir.

W.S.: What?!

Stagehand One: He means the tickets, sir – I think…

W.S.: Never mind. Oh well, so now we have Ophelia married to Polonius – while our hero was told about his father’s death by a fucking angel…

Stagehand One: They liked the angel, sir…

Stagehand Three: And they wept when the hero gave his best man’s speech!

W.S.: Another bit of satire wasted on those sods. Now, why don’t they want the poisoned sword?

Stagehand One: They don’t want young Hamlet to die, sir.

Stagehand Three: Not after that speech, sir.

Stagehand Two: They really want a happy ending, sir.

W.S.: Right…

Stagehand Two: You can do it, sir!

W.S.: Right…

Stagehand One: Maybe he could marry Ophelia…

Stagehand Three: She’s already married to Polonius, remember?

Stagehand One: Oh, yes. Pity, that.

Stagehand Two: Polonius could die, I suppose?

W.S.: What, like having that angel fall on him from great height?

Stagehand One: Oh, brilliant, sir!

Stagehand Three: Brilliant!

Stagehand Two: Absolutely brilliant!

W.S.: Yes, yes, yes, I get it. So, the audience will go for that?

Stagehand Two: I’m sure they will.

W.S.: And I suppose I should let Polonius give a speech, with his dying breath, beseeching the two to honour his memory by marrying each other?

Stagehand One: Yes…!

Stagehand Two: Yess…!!

Stagehand Three: Yesss…!!!

I really can’t wait…

Oh well…:

“A porcelain lavatory which John Lennon told a builder to use as a “plant pot” has fetched £9,500 – nearly 10 times its guide price – at an auction today. The loo was used by the music legend when he lived at Tittenhurst Park in Berkshire between 1969 and 1972.”

Ten times the guide price, perhaps but still not much to write home about.

Which goes to show that even celebrity alchemy can’t turn shit into gold, all of the time.

Of course, things would have been different if this lavatory hadn’t been used as a plant pot by its former famous owner.

Imagine what the bloody thing would have gone for if Lennon had done a Presley on it.

Which goes to show (part deux) that death outsells flower (power) pots, every day of the week.

Hell, I suppose even one of those five hollow-point rounds that killed Lennon would have raised more money in auction.

Which goes to show (part trois) that we truly live in a very sick joke of a world.

Sic transit gloria flowerpoweris, or some such.

(I prefer this version but YouTube won’t let me embed it…)

These days, the late English politician Enoch Powell is almost exclusively known for his ‘rivers of blood’ speech:

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic…”

Et cetera.

You could compare him with Geert Wilders, I suppose – without the weird hair but with a much richer vocabulary…

… because Powell was a good writer. He was also quite intelligent. Perhaps not quite as bright as, let’s say, Oscar Wilde but, like the playwright, old Enoch produced some remarkable one-line zingers.

This is one of my favourites:

“The life of nations no less than that of men is lived largely in the imagination.”

Which is such a great line – and it’s absolutely true, of course.

Why am I talking about the bon mots of some ancient enfant terrible?

Good question. No reason, really. It’s just that I was reminded of that line about the imagination when I came upon this article, yesterday morning:

“Fidel Castro has claimed that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of the CIA and that President George Bush summoned up the al-Qaida leader whenever he needed to increase the fear quotient. The former Cuban president said he knows it because he has read WikiLeaks.”

Now, that’s what I call a lively imagination indeed.

Mind you, I can also see president Obama frantically going through all the drawers in the Oval Office, hoping to find an old diary, or a sticky note paper, or an old McDonald’s napkin – anything on which his predecessor may have left Osama’s number.

‘Cause God knows Obama could do with a few discreet distractions himself.

(Okay, so it’s not really a new dining movement…)

Did you ever wonder why so many German Nazis ended up in South America?

This following story might provide part of the answer – sort of:

“In a prominent advertising campaign on the internet, in German newspapers and on television, restaurant Flime is appealing for willing donors and diners to become members of what it hints at being a new dining movement.”

What’s so interesting about yet another bloody restaurant being fawned over by boring life style sections in the world’s online newspapers, you might well ask?

Or might have asked, if that term ‘a new dining movement’ had not kept you too busy puking out whatever blameless meal you had last.

Wipe your mouth, brush your teeth and bear with me, though; it is getting quite interesting, about now:

“The soon-to-open Berlin restaurant is touting for diners willing to donate body parts that it says it will turn into gourmet meals according to the age-old cooking habits of an Amazonian tribe infamous for its cannibalism.”

Okay, I grant you that it is a bit rich to call something that people, in various parts of the world, have been doing for millennia ‘a new dining movement’.

‘Cannibalism: the new dining experience’ makes about as much sense as the marketing slogan ‘War: the new wave of human intercourse’ but I’d still say the whole thing is, pace Stephen Fry, quite interesting…

… and you might argue that the following bit of the story hints at a kind of ‘third way’ thinking, vis-à-vis the old cannibalism experience – or experiment, if you like:

““Members declare themselves willing to donate any part of their body,” the advertisement reads, adding that any resulting hospital costs will be taken on by the restaurant. They say they are also looking to employ an “open-minded surgeon”.”

I think the latter won’t be an insurmountable problem. It is, I am sure – and excuséz le mot – a bit tasteless to bring up but Germany does have some history with open-minded surgeons…

… though I’m not so sure the rest of the world – or the vast majority of modern Germans – are quite ready to book their table at restaurant Mengele.



(“Nothin’ to eat, nowhere to go”? Not anymore, my friends…)

(Love is in the air…?)

The Iranian government truly is the columnist’s gift that keeps on giving.

It feels like only yesterday that I last mentioned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his happy gang of psychopaths – meaning I’m only wrong by two days…

… whereas the Iranian government is about two millennia removed from the cultural mindset that gave us the international declaration of human rights…

… and at an approximately two light years’ distance from any place where they sell Germaine Greer’s ‘The Female Eunuch’…

… or Garfield and Odie mugs:

“Fresh from banning women from watching wrestling, and men from sporting mullet hairstyles, the Iranian regime is now targeting a new source of Western subversion: dogs and cats. All advertisements for pets, pet shops, pet food and other pet products are to be prohibited, the powerful Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has announced.”

Which leaves me with one rather intriguing question:

Does anyone out there reading this know if our good friend Mahmoud is still a bachelor? Or, if not, whether he’s looking for an add-on wife?

If so, I think I have found the perfect bride for him…:

(Meet the future Mary Ahmadinejad, née Bale…)

Okay, so, yesterday, I read in the Guardian that the BBC will broadcast an adaptation of Douglas Adams’s ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.’

Which is great news. I’m a big fan of Douglas Adams and, though I’m sure the vast majority of the Adams Appreciation Society will call it sacrilege, I rate his two Dirk Gently novels even higher than the five parts of his Hitchhiker’s trilogy. Five, yes, not six: Fuck off, Eoin Colfer.

Right, sorry about that. So, great news, only slightly – okay, wildly – spoilt by the announcement, in the same article, that said channel will also do an opera based on a dead Playboy model:

“BBC4 is to broadcast an opera based on the turbulent life of the former Playboy model, Anna Nicole Smith. Anna Nicole – The Opera will dramatise the life of Smith, who married oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, more than 60 years her senior, in 1994 and then after his death the following year was drawn into a lengthy legal battle over the settlement of his estate. Smith died of a prescription drugs overdose in 2007, aged 39.”

How nice.

By the way, the fact that the book of one of the most popular writers in his field (a field of one, most of his ardent fans would claim) was only mentioned as an aside in the above article, of which the leading photo and headline solely dealt with the late ‘model’, would probably have made Douglas Adams smile…

… and the following quote by BBC4 controller, Richard Klein, would have the wry bones of the creator of Arthur Dent et al rolling in his grave – with laughter:

“BBC4 is the channel that seeks to offer television to those parts of the brain that other television channels don’t reach.

Indeed.

‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’ doesn’t quite have the same je ne sais quoi as ‘I love the smell of exhumed bunny meat’.

It would make for a great corporate slogan, though: ‘BBC Zombie4, going for those parts of the brain others don’t reach.’

You would think this following car journey would be the worst bit of A to B travelling since that irritating whistle moving from the one side to the other side of the bridge on the river Kwai…:

“Thousands of drivers on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway just outside the Chinese capital have been snared by roadworks ever since 14 August – and the disruption is expected to last a further month. The tailbacks now stretch for a mind-boggling 100km and 400 police officers have been assigned to the area to quell rising tensions, with impromptu vendors said to be charging exorbitant prices for tea and noodles.”

… but there you would be wrong – terribly wrong.

Granted, it can’t be fun to be locked inside a car for more than a month, having to exchange your last gold filling for a piece of overcooked noodle that may or may not fill this reopened hole…

… but that would still be Heaven compared to the following journey:

“Some literary fans show their dedication to a particular author by traipsing to book signings or festivals; others track down elusive first editions. Nick Newcomen went a little further than most, spending a month driving more than 12,000 miles to inscribe his message – “Read Ayn Rand” – on a vast swath of US land. “She is the only modern author and thinker to offer ideas that have the potential and power to genuinely reshape the world for the better,” he said.”

I mean, just imagine being locked inside the same car, for 12,000 fucking miles, with this right wing nutcase – or even worse: inside his claustrophobically small-minded skull…

(Unbalanced, indeed…)

(Those were the days, my friend…)

Fucking baby boomers:

“If you’re about to become a grandparent - or about to make grandparents out of your parents by having a child of your own – you’ve most likely thought about what the upcoming child will call you or your parents. Of course, there’s the traditional “Grandma” and “Grandpa,” which works well for many people. But others feel they want a younger-sounding name or one that’s more personalized. So, how do you pick the perfect grandparent name?”

Not that their fame & fortune obsessed children and grandchildren make for much better company:

“Fans of The X Factor are falling off their sofas after learning that Jedward may be even less talented than they appear. The most popular programme on TV, which returned for a new series on Saturday, is at the centre of a revolt after the show’s producers confessed to using technology to iron out wobbles in contestants’ voices. Auto-Tune allows singers to perform perfectly, regardless of their ability to hold a note.”

All of which would almost be reason enough to start a Facebook account and ‘friend’ Iran’s vice-president, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, who recently made the news here when he was even less complimentary about the British people than his boss, the all-sensible & charming humanitarian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

“The British people and David Cameron have been labelled ‘thick’ by a senior member of Iran’s government.”

Well, duh…, but please continue:

“In a blistering diatribe against Britain, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said: ‘They have plundered the world in the last 500 years…”

We’ll give you that. Do go on:

“…and the young lad in charge now is even more stupid than his predecessor.”

Hang on, now; that’s not altogether fair…!

“It’s as if God has made this nation servants of America and Zionists.’”

Yeah, yeah, yeah: We know. Perfidious Albion; no homosexuals in Iran; Great Satan; Holocaust never happened; Britney Spears bad, stoning good…

“Iran’s First Vice President added: ‘England has nothing. Its inhabitants are not human, its officials are not responsible, and it doesn’t even have any natural resources. (They are) a bunch of thick people ruled by a mafia.’”

Ah, well. For a few moments it seemed that our mister Mohammad-Reza Rahimi did have something sensible to say…

… but all that this diatribe shows is that old Mahmoud has taken a clever leaf from papa Bush’s book: When you know that perhaps not the whole world is all that fond of you, make sure that any armed dissenter knows that the guy waiting in the wings is far worse.

So, meet the new not-quite-boss yet, same as the old not-quite-boss-yet: Mohammad-Reza Rahimi is the new Dan Quayle.

(Yeah, yeah, I know: dreadful – but I would welcome an ‘auto tune’ thingie for politicians…)