sparrow chat

School’s back on Monday. The Thanksgiving holiday is almost over and the family Roberts will be returning once more to their educational facility. The Roberts’s had an extended vacation, at least from the school bus. Seven out of nine Robert’s kids were barred from riding the bus for the week prior to Thanksgiving, due to illegal activities that included fighting and creating a mass disturbance, that resulted in the bus returning its load of kids to their school, rather than the homes and welcoming parents who expected them.

Not that the other kids on the bus are total innocents. Nicholas Lilly, a third-grade, suffered a blacked eye only last week when his best friend, Quinton Long, suddenly decided he was no longer Nicholas’s friend, and laid into him with vigor. The resulting bruises earned Quinton a three day bus suspension and a threat from his irate Mom to “black more than your eye if you ever do that again.”

The last time Quinton had a bus suspension was when he uttered a four letter word. It all happened in a vain attempt to make his brother shut up. I felt sympathy for Quinton on that occasion. Brother Malcolm, nowhere near the voice-breaking stage, is prone to long outbursts of high-pitched gibberish, vaguely passing for what is usually some explanation of a minor infringement of his rights by another student on the bus. By the time anyone has managed to interpret Malcolm’s frequent, long-winded and ear-piercing complaints, we’ve all forgotten who he was originally attempting to incriminate.

Nevertheless, Quinton’s ‘F-word’ eruption earned him a ‘bus referral’, later followed by a mouthful of Dove soap, forcefully inserted by his Mom in an effort to cleanse her eight-year-old of his unsavory taste in language.

Oakley Canton will be on the bus Monday, complete with her over-abundance of hormones. Fifth-grade girls can be a problem, particularly when fifth and sixth-grade boys are riding the yellow school bus. Oakley’s a nice enough girl, but like most on Bus 13, she hails from the poorer areas of the town. Consequently, her fashion sense – something never terribly mature among young, black female, minors – lacks a certain sophistication. Oakley’s tight skirt and high heels don’t assist her to mount the three steps onto the bus with any degree of alacrity. Once inside, she’ll sway one way, then the other, on her way down the aisle to her seat, ensuring any eligible young male receives a portion of her ample backside in his face as she passes by.

The most startling aspect of eleven year old Oakley’s appearance is not her enormous gold earrings, or the six inch heels on which she teeters precariously to her seat. Neither is it the hip length mini-skirt, or multitude of brightly-colored plastic dangly bits hanging from a hair-style whose creation must surely have kept her up all night. Oakley’s piece de resistance is her brassiere, a work of art that must surely contain the innards of at least three of her mother’s settee cushions. Oakley stands out in true Marilyn Munroe fashion, though sadly it could all shrink alarmingly if her mother ever demands her cushions back.

The latest male to light Oakley’s hormonal fire is one of the Roberts’ boys. Cordell Roberts, blinded to all but Oakley’s buttocks swirling past his face, was quick to plant a punch on his younger brother, Jethro, when the poor lad happened to call her a “stupid bitch”, after one of Oakley’s six inch heels mangled his toe as she sashayed past him on the way to her seat last Monday.

The resulting melee caused the irate bus driver to divert from his route and return the bus load of punch-drunk, pre-pubescent, hooligans to the school they had recently vacated. Consequently, the Principal had an apoplectic fit, and banned all the Robert’s boys from riding the bus for the remainder of the week.

Peace returned to Bus 13, though Quinton Long still looked daggers at Nicholas Lilly from across the aisle, and Oakley Canton, no interest in any other males, sat and stared out the window with an air of total boredom, her bosoms sagging somewhat with the lateness of the day.

Still, nothing lasts forever, and the family Roberts will be back on Monday.

Filed under: School bus

Posted under Sparrow Chat

With the Mumbai hostage siege finally drawing to its conclusion, the majority of terrorists (if that is what we must call them) either dead or under lock and key, it comes time to take stock and consider exactly what happened in this great Indian city most of us still remember as Bombay.

NBC Nightly News labeled the events of the last few days, “India’s 9/11″. Well, of course, they would, wouldn’t they? Mumbai is no stranger to terrorist violence: two years ago, seven blasts ripped through rail stations and commuter trains in Mumbai, killing 187. No mention then of “India’s 9/11″ – possibly, because no Americans died in those atrocities.

Much speculation exists on the identity of these latest attackers. Are they from Pakistan, a historical enemy of India? Al Qaeda, perhaps, or Hindu extremists from the north of the continent? Putting a label on them will not be too difficult. The authorities of any nation have ways of making their enemies talk.

More difficult, is finding words – adjectives and nouns – that will describe them. Yes, that’s a lot more difficult.

The first to come to mind was, “pigs”. But, pigs are gentle creatures, unless riled. Pigs don’t deserve association with those responsible for these latest atrocities.

In fact, there’s not a creature on the planet so cold-bloodedly evil as those who attacked and killed, for the sheer joy of killing, innocent individuals who had not done them the slightest harm, or wished them the least ill.

It matters not the nationality or religious belief of the victims. British and Americans were, we are told, singled out for execution – though by far the greatest number of dead were Indian – and a young American rabbi and his Israeli wife and family. Oh, the ecstasy of those who happened on these defenseless human beings. How glorious to gun down in cold blood representatives of the Zionist intruder. How inopportune that one, two year old, Jewish child escaped their lethal clutches.

No, to refer to them as ‘pigs’ is to bestow far too great a compliment.

Instead, let’s call them what they are – human beings. Members of the only animal species on the planet that willfully slaughters its own kind, without guilt or mercy, in the mistaken belief of ‘serving a cause’. It’s not important to achieve anything, other than the killing of innocent members of their own kind. Apart from the death-toll, no other result is anticipated.

Is it possible to understand the mindset of such people? We gasp in horror as the atrocities unfold before our eyes. We question what it is they want from us, even though it’s obvious their only desire is our death. After all, there were no demands for ransom.

The slaughter of innocents, to serve a cause, is nothing new. Whether that cause is Islamic, Christian, or political, wherever there is conflict in the world it is the innocents who die in greater numbers than the combatants. While US drones regularly exterminate whole Afghan villages, or its mercenaries shoot up locals in Baghdad; while Israel starves the Palestinians in Gaza, dismembers their children with tank shells, or mutilates Lebanese innocents with cluster-bombs, there will always be those who wrongly believe they have some god-given right to take out their self-centered revenge on other, innocent, human beings.

While Madeleine Albright, asked whether the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was worth the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990′s, can answer, “Yes,” there will always be those who believe they have a cause for which the taking of innocent lives is justified.

There is, of course, no such justification. Search the very depths, the hidden corners of the Universe, and you will never find a bonafide reason. But that applies as much to governments as it does to terrorists. Those empowered to make the laws have even less excuse to break them.

Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet revered by the Islamic community as well as the Christian, when asked whether a woman who committed the sin of adultery should be stoned according to the law, responded: “Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone.”

It’s a sad indictment of our species, that those who profess to serve a divine cause, are the very one’s to cast aside the teachings of their Godhead in a vain quest for power, glory, and a dubious immortality.

Until we learn to respect each other’s beliefs, honor the sacredness of all human life, and stop justifying the slaughter of innocents under the label of “collateral damage”, the “9/11′s” of this world will continue with monotonous regularity.

Frankly, the future does not shine forth with any glorious promise of hope.

Filed under: Pinnacle of creation

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Reports today that Ann Coulter, the big-mouthed Barbie doll of the Republican party, has had her jaw wired in the shut position, after she broke it recently (or, maybe someone broke it for her?)^[1]

Ms Coulter is one of those Americans, of which both parties have their share, who’ve discovered a way to become infamous, and consequently a celebrity, by mouthing ignorant and inaccurate statements about their political opponents. It’s an American game that never ceases to confound the rest of the world by its immaturity and lack of any facet of intelligence.

We can only hope Ms Coulter remains orally challenged for the foreseeable future.

Across the pond, in Britain, a new advertising campaign is hoping the festive spirit will take note and carry a condom to all those office Christmas parties where, it seems, anything goes and the results can be disastrous:

The story, publicized in the UK’s notoriously hypocritical Daily Mail newspaper, asks whether this “crude ad” is really the best way to combat unwanted Xmas pregnancies – all, while displaying the lives, loves, and dirty washing of UK and US celebs, for the reader’s delectation.^[2]

To some Americans, the loose moral attitudes of the British are an anathema, but thankfully not all nations share the same narrow-minded, moralistic, interfering-in-other-people’s-lives, philosophy, so to those British males headed for the annual Christmas “do”, Sparrow Chat says, don’t forget to pack a ‘packet of three’, ‘cos you never know when you’ll need one.

And, while you’re at it, give thanks you’re not subject to the religiot morals of your cousins across the pond.

^{[1] “Ann Coulter’s jaw broken and will be wired shut” OregonLive.Com, November 25th 2008}

^{[2] “Is this crude ad really the best way to tackle unwanted pregnancies at Christmas?” Daily Mail, November 28th 2008}

Filed under: All about Thanksgiving

Posted under Sparrow Chat

I can think of nothing worse than spending a whole day eating and drinking in the company of in-laws and relatives. I mean, just the thought of having my relations, and those of any of my ex-wives, (my present wife’s parents are no longer with us) in the same room, is reminiscent of a day in Hades with the Borgias and Genoveses.

Yet, this is something Americans do every year, and they at least pretend to enjoy it. “Relations” are considered sacrosanct to such an extent that at times the US appears like a nation of families Gambino.

Which begs the question: do they really enjoy it, or is it just an old tradition turned into something expected?

My guess is the latter.

Here in the mid-West, or the Heartlands, or the flatlands, or the asshole of the US, it’s a tradition probably better tolerated than elsewhere. After all, central Illinois is the epitome of that place where life originated for the sole purpose of eating. Within a radius of five hundred miles there’s absolutely nothing else to get out of bed for. Unless, one includes shopping, but that’s usually just a means to procure even greater amounts of sustenance.

On any Saturday afternoon between May and September, the air is thick with the odor of roasting flesh intermingled with the caustic fumes of burnt fat incinerated over countless barbecues. Even the ten thousand tonnes of poisonous pollution pumped into the atmosphere by ADM and Staley Sugar, pale into insignificance alongside the ritual weekly cow-cook that is the raison d’etre of most Illinois residents.

Consider the irony of a local law that forbids camp-fires on one’s own property – “it may cause an allergy alert or spark an asthma epidemic” (I kid you not!) – yet happily ignores the pollutants from two major, unregulated, industrial giants and the barbecue output from fifty thousand homes.

This evening, as the Thanksgiving holiday draws to a close, my wife and I give thanks for the wonder of isolation. We spent our vegetarian Thanksgiving with the best company to be found on the planet – each other. No animal was injured or killed in the making of our meal. No pollutants were released into the atmosphere, and our relatives enjoyed the occasion, or not, in the company of other relatives – well away from us.

We hope your Thanksgiving was as delightful, peaceful, free of argument and screaming kids, and as full of love and joy, as ours.

Filed under: Happy Holidays

Posted under Sparrow Chat

As the eve of Thanksgiving is upon us, we pause a moment to think of the wealthy people of Mumbai, India, enduring the horrors of terrorism as armed thugs invade their five-star hotels and lay waste to the foie gras and Château de Chasselas.^[1]

How comforting for them, and for us, to be assured our respective American and British governments have lost no time in “condemning” the violence. British prime minister, Gordon Brown, was heard to suggest a rapid-reaction force be deployed, but an aide quickly whispered in his ear, reminding him we’d left the days of Empire behind, and the Indian armed forces must now deal with the problem unaided.

Meanwhile, at Bangkok Airport, protesters have prevented flights from leaving for the second day running.^[2] The BBC news this morning aired the grievances of one American gentleman, complaining to a female Thai airport official:

“Have you any idea of the tens of thousands of people whose plans you’ve screwed up? Tomorrow is a real big holiday in the States and many people will miss it because of some cockamamie little protest that you’ve got going.”

How terribly, terribly, American of him.

(Note: ‘cockamamie’: an Americanism – “ridiculous, pointless, or nonsensical”)

Meanwhile, at the US White House, George W Bush is much happier knowing the crimes and atrocities he’s been responsible for over the last eight years will not be coming home to roost. He can live out his retirement without fear of retribution. According to reports, he was today officially pardoned by a turkey.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all Sparrow Chat readers.

^{[1] “Mumbai rocked by deadly attacks” BBC, November 26th 2008}

^{[2] “Thai protesters shut down airport” BBC, November 26th 2008}

Filed under: What a wonderful world

Posted under Sparrow Chat

If there’s one thing that could be relied on about Monty Python and its ilk, it was good, clean, honest-to-goodness, humor.

Where’s it all gone?

Television today provides the most appalling service of any industry in the history of mankind. It’s not just American television, though this nation leads the field in cheap, nasty, unrelentingly boring tat, peddled under the misnomer of “entertainment”.

If the British public are to be believed, their service has similarly descended into a pernicious pit of pigswill, spewing forth noxious odors from a veritable volcano of vomit labeled, “Reality TV”.

Where once the BBC could be relied on for meticulous period dramas and high quality variety entertainment, by comparison, tonight’s peak-hour line-up now consists of ‘on-couch’ chats with unknown ‘celebrities’; the inevitable soap opera; a grindingly boring sports quiz, and an overly long-running series called “Spooks”, in which “a teenage boy stumbles upon a government conspiracy and is absorbed into the world of MI5″.

Needless to say, there are other British channels. They serve up cold left overs from ABC, FOX, Hallmark, or any one of a thousand other US cable outlets.

Where have all the “Monty Pythons” gone?

No, I don’t mean the plethora of perpetual repeats of that iconic, but grossly overexposed series from the early 1970′s. Where are all the similarly titillating, charming, side-busting, modern day equivalents?

The simple answer is: there aren’t any. Comedy is dead. It’s been replaced.

What’s it been replaced by? I’ll tell you – in one word:

FUCK!”

That’s what makes people laugh these days. Just one little word, but it’ll set the theater on fire when uttered by Lewis Black, Jon Stewart, or any number of other would be Pythonesque students. Who needs jokes when one four letter word, uttered in the right way, will get you all the laughs you could wish for?

The ‘piece de resistance’ of TV channels dedicated to providing an audience with enough tat to decorate the walls of the local Wal-Mart, has to be that great ‘hands-across-the-ocean’, trans-Atlantic bastion of all things British, BBC America.

Designed to bamboozle the American viewer into believing the average Brit lives solely to raid attics in search of valuable antiques; is ready and willing to switch from a diet of burger and chips to three lettuce leaves a week if only he can go on television to do it, or is happiest when divulging the disgustingly filthy state of his post-war semi-detached to an international audience, this television station has survived for years by repeatedly repeating repeats of repeats of repeats of repeats until eventually the video becomes too grainy to be viewed ever again.

For an occasional break from the domestic grunge of the average English family, BBC America will allow us a glimpse into the artistic talents of top chef, Gordon Ramsey, as he goes about his business of serving unsuspecting viewers with generous helpings – of the word, “FUCK”, while castigating his unfortunate kitchen staff in a manner scarcely tolerated by lowly Victorian scullery maids, who definitely weren’t exposing themselves to ridicule on international television.

Sadly, those glorious days when the television medium was a crucible of talent, birthing young starlets into a genteel world of Bronte, Austen, and the Oxford Footlights Revue, have long since vanished into obscurity.

No more will new Monty Pythons grace our LCD or LED screens – their demise as assured as the very cathode ray tubes that once glowed with the cutting edge humor of Palin, Jones, Chapman, Idle, Cleese, and Gilliam. A humor certainly not reliant on four letter expletives for effect.

In fact, it can be reliably stated that the word, “FUCK”, was never once used by the Monty Python team on British television.

What?……….. okay…….are you sure?   Damn!

Well…… almost hardly ever……

Filed under: Something completely different

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Today, the BBC asked the question: has the world lost faith in the USA?^[1]

Surely, before asking that question, one or two others should be considered, like: has the world ever had any faith in the USA; is the world seriously concerned about the USA; or, is it all just a load of political guff designed to consolidate corporate power both inside and outside the USA?

The BBC is basing its question around the latest report from the US National Intelligence Council, a body composed of representatives from US intelligence agencies, charged with crystal-ball gazing in an attempt to come up with some notion of what the future might hold for the world at large, and America, in particular.^[2]

Apparently, the BBC is keen to emulate the CIA, or perhaps it’s just been watching too many Bond movies, but to access the particular webpage, I had to invent secret questions, passwords, and a whole host of other security items, before realizing this was just to allow me to comment.

Note: I would never consider commenting on anything the BBC has to offer. Mainly because three and a half million seriously deranged headcases, in desperate need of frontal lobotomies, have got there before me. Like, for example, “Out of Touch” from the EU:

maybe the laid back texan just wants to live in peace and be in 22nd position of military power as in 1901. the world needs leadership by western culture developed in europe … intelligent and cultural….they probably have the balance that indians chinese and muslims will respect… europe should abosorbe itself with pride and be inteligent and dutiful…. ameriaca does not want to lead…laid back texan wants to smoke…and the english should speak spanish and italian and french

I’m not totally sure what the “laid back Texan” will be smoking, but “Out of touch” from the EU is obviously an expert, and it sure sounds too good to miss.

Then, of course, there is always the super-nationalist, “American Voice” from San Francisco, who’s not going to let anyone criticize his country:

Even if the US domination goes down by a factor of 20, still US will be 20 times more powerful than the closest competitor…… So don’t count US out !!!

No, don’t dare count the US out, even if it has been comatose on the mat for twenty minutes and shows no sign of ever regaining consciousness.

Why, I wonder, does that last sentence remind me of ex-Israeli prime minister Arial Sharon?

Question: what ever did happen to him?

Answer: he’s still snoring profusely on some hospital gurney in Tel Aviv, oblivious to all but the fact that no-one, but no-one, is ever going to have the temerity to permanently turn him off.

I digress.

The National Intelligence Council today pronounced: “US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades.” China and India will grow more powerful. The US dollar will lose its status as the world’s major currency, and an increasing scarcity of food and water will fuel conflicts.

While all the above is hardly arguable – unless you happen to be “American Voice” from San Francisco – the report also assumes that a world with more power centers will be less stable than when the planet had only one.

Given that, in the last eight years, George W Bush as managed to ruin the global economy, propagate military mayhem throughout the Middle East, instigate torture and imprisonment without trial as normal procedures, and alienate every foreign power on the planet, that statement may appear a trifle far-fetched. Unfortunately, given that the National Intelligence Council is a US institution, and therefore bound towards bias, and bearing in mind that only four years ago it categorically stated the US was on the up and up and would remain a strong and indomitable superpower ad infinitum, one must regrettably take its utterances with the proverbial pinch or two of sodium chloride.

Let’s not forget, the US intelligence services charged with concocting this report were also responsible for providing the sure-fire certainty that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction stashed away all over Iraq, and – we don’t want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud, now do we?

Still, according to Marti, another BBC commentator, we’ll all be sorry:

As an American I would LOVE to see us lose our dominance:
Dominance in Foreign Aid to an ungrateful world
Dominance in Humanitarian efforts that are unappreciated
Dominance in troops defending YOUR countries

I say let someone else have dominance for a bit. Keep American resources in America for 10 years and you’ll have the whole world begging for us to accept the Crown. (What’s left of the world, that is.)

Oh, Marti, you’ve been watching that Fox News again.

Marti was, of course, from – TEXAS.

Where else?

^{[1] “Who will be the next superpower?” BBC “Have your say”, November 21st 2008}

^{[2] “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World” an incredibly boring, rather egocentric, 120-page report by the NIC, in pdf format}

Filed under: Intelligence – or, lack of it

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Many in this world consider the human species way too important to have evolved from a primitive form in the distant past. They believe our intelligence and mental dexterity are so far above even the most advanced of animals, that any suggestion of a connection between the two is absurd.

Though relatively primitive creatures are capable of social interactions with their own kind, many humans fail to accept this is evidence of any evolutionary link between humankind and the animal kingdom.

Take honey bees, as an example. They live in colonies and maintain a rigid social order. A hierarchy exists within the colony, and while there are many varieties of honey bee, only one will be accepted within the colony. Any attempt at intrusion is met with fierce resistance, usually culminating in the demise of the unfortunate visitor.

Manish Kumar was just fifteen years old. He lived in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, and had fallen in love with a girl from his own village. He wrote to her telling of his affections. For this appalling crime he was kidnapped on his way to school by members of a rival caste; his head was shaved, he was beaten, then thrown to his death under the wheels of a moving train while his mother looked on helplessly.^[1]

Manish Kumar was from the Yadav dairyman caste. The girl belonged to a different Indian community – the washerman – considered a lower caste than the dairyman.

Writing a love letter was Manish Kumar’s only crime, for which he suffered horrific torture before being murdered.

Recently, researchers from the Australian National University, working with honey bees, succeeded in overcoming their instinctive impulse to kill intruders and managed to cultivate the first ever mixed-species colony, combining Apis mellifera, the European honey bee, and Apis cerana, its Asiatic equivalent. While the two types each utilize different dialects, the researchers discovered both can communicate the whereabouts of food to the other, by dances of differing duration. Both species of bee can now live within one colony, coexisting in harmony.^[2]

Perhaps, the researchers of the Australian National University should consider turning their attention to the eastern Indian state of Bihar?

^{[1] “Indian boy thrown under train in caste punishment” Daily Mail, November 20th 2008}

^{[2] “Bees Can Count” Live Science, September 26th 2008}

Filed under: Sad state of our species

Posted under Sparrow Chat