Month: October 2008

From their series, “Scenes From An Iraki Childhood”, this photograph of a Christian boy whose family are fleeing the campaign of persecution being waged against Christians in Mosul.^[1] Photographed at Qaraqosh checkpoint about 18 Kilometers east of Mosul.

“The surge is working.”

^{[1] “Gorilla’s Guides” October 14th 2008}

Filed under: Dissection of a nation

The world is populated by a large proportion of idiots. It has nothing to do with lack of education, poverty, or any of the usual reasons advocated for mental instability. The richest and most powerful among us are prone to idiocy just as easily as the local village clown, or jester.

Take the Italian prime minister Silvio Burlusconi, for example.

Today, while addressing a load of stuffed shirts in the US White House, he said he would work with whoever replaced the present president, but:

“….it will be difficult to find a man as idealistic and brave as our George”.

Then he knocked over and broke the lectern.^[1]

It’s possible he was drunk, or simply retaliating for the White House, earlier this year, calling him:

one of the most controversial leaders of a country known for governmental corruption and vice……..regarded by many as a political dilettante (amateur) who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media”^[2]

Either way, he’s obviously a total idiot for even suggesting George Bush was “brave” and “idealistic”.

Meanwhile, back in Burlesconi’s country another idiot preaches hypocrisy to the masses.

Popey Benedict, clad in hand-sewn silk with velvet trim, solid gold dripping from every garment, hands clasped tightly to the papal staff heavily encrusted with gold leaf and jewels, stated:

Those who think that concrete things we can touch are the surest reality are deceiving themselves.”^[3]

This, a day after he’d opened a synod of more than two hundred similarly clad RC minions, who’d traveled from all over the world at great expense – both to the church and the environment – to spend three weeks discussing why most of us don’t bother reading the bible.^[4]

Will it really take two hundred of them three weeks to reach a conclusion?

While Popey and pals waste their time on such frivolities, the really serious idiots are hard at it pouring our hard-earned tax dollars into the bottomless pits of bankers who’ve frittered our pension funds and annuities away in a reckless gamble to make them all much wealthier. Then they try to convince us we’re the idiots, by telling us the money wasn’t really there in the first place. This is to prevent us asking where exactly those two trillion dollars of our nest-eggs have actually gone?

The idiots in the White House didn’t even know what to do with the eight-hundred and fifty billion dollars they coerced out of Congress, so they kept it under their beds until fellow-idiot Gordon Brown decided to nationalize British banks with his own tax appropriations.^[5] Then they thought, “Oh, that’s a good idea.”

So now they’re going to copy Britain.

This has provided a great ego-boost to Gordon Brown, who’ll likely go down in history as the only British prime minister ever to be listened to by America. It’ll probably make him something of a hero, at least in his own eyes. After all, the stock markets are functioning again, so Gordon’s rescue plan seems to be working.

Well done, Gordon. You were Chancellor of the British Exchequer for ten years before Tony Blair allowed you to become prime minister. For all those years you oversaw the banks and financial institutions of Britain and the world.

What a pity you were idiot enough not to see this crisis looming.

^{[1] “Berlusconi breaks lectern for Bush” BBC, October 14th 2008}

^{[2] “Bush sorry over Berlusconi insult” BBC, July 8th 2008}

^{[3] “Pope criticises pursuit of wealth” BBC, October 6th 2008}

^{[4] “Pope laments decline of scripture” BBC, October 5th 2008}

^{[5] “Bank shares fall despite bail-out” BBC, October 13th 2008}

Filed under: Lobotomy helpline

Personally, I can think of nothing worse than ending up as a 105 year old virgin. Clara Meadmore, now from Cornwall in the UK, says it doesn’t bother her. She attributes her long life and good health to total sexual abstinence.^[1]

I’ve always had lots of platonic friendships with men but never felt the need to go further than that or marry…….. I imagine there is a lot of hassle involved and I have always been busy doing other things.”

It never ceases to amaze me how fixated journalists are with demanding from the aged the secret of their longevity. Unsurprisingly, these secrets are always unique to the individual.

Take the case of Buster Martin.^[2] Admittedly, he’s only 101, (some of the meaner broadsheets have suggested he’s only 94^[3]) but this year he completed the London marathon. Okay, so it took him ten hours. That’s because he stopped at every pub along the route for a quick beer. Rumor has it Buster sired seventeen children, and his secret of longevity is drinking ten pints of beer a day and smoking at least twenty cigarettes.

I have to admit to having more in common with Buster than Clara. While the cigarettes have been a definite no-no for twenty years now, beer and sex are two facets of life that definitely make our sojourn on this planet more enjoyable. Ever since the tender age of thirteen, when the horrifying thought of dying a virgin seemed an imminent probability, sex has remained an important part of life.

Fortunately, thanks to the favors of the delectable twelve year old, Muriel Whittington, a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, and the sixteenth tee of the Royal Liverpool Golf Course, fears of losing my life before jettisoning my cherry proved unfounded. Fifty years later, I am still profoundly grateful to Muriel.

(Yes, that is the same golf course where Tiger Woods won the Open Championship in 2006.)

Frankly, it’s always been something of a mystery why sex is treated as distinctly taboo by many religions. Is it, perhaps, that gods, having no physical form and unable to enjoy the carnal pleasures, are hellbent on ensuring we humans suffer similarly? If so, they failed totally with me.

Of course, the cold and religious will insist I’m bound for “where the worms die not, and the fire is not quenched”. That doesn’t bother me too much, as at least it’ll be well away from them.

Besides, it’s quite likely I’ll run into Muriel Whittington again, and it’ll certainly be warmer than the sixteenth hole of the Royal Liverpool.

I just hope there’s some way to cool the Newcastle Brown.

^{[1] “105-year-old virgin says no sex the key to long life” Daily Telegraph, October 9th 2008}

^{[2] “Man, 101, to run London Marathon” BBC, March 3rd 2008}

^{[3] “Marathon man, ‘Buster’ Martin, may be up to some old tricks” TimesOnLine, April 14th 2008}

Filed under: Cherry picking