Post Count Glory

I'm on the road this week so I'm just gonna give you a quick rundown of what is currently going through my brain, aside from the duty free Johnny Walker of course.

A noun you verb

I read online the other day someone using marathon as a verb. The context was of someone spending the weekend watching entirely too much Battlestar Galactica and the quote was something like "I think I'll get a case of beer, a pizza and marathon some Battlestar". Brilliant. Fucking with our language is not just reserved for MBA paradigm breakers. Apparently using nouns as verbs like this is called Anthimeria. Betcha didn't know that.

Communism has its perks

As much as you may like democracy, there is something to be said for Communism, particularly in the way it let's the rulers do what ever the fuck they want, should the need arise. Beijing's pollution has been pretty legendary for years now and there has been a bit of concern about how this will affect the Olympics. The solution? Make people only be able to drive their cars on alternate days, effectively banning half the cars on the road. According to the BCC World News report I just watched the pollution in Beijing is now down below WHO acceptable levels. Try that one in California.

Fuck reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2020, China could do it tomorrow by introducing 'Turn on that gas heater and you lose your hand' day.

RIP Big Brother

I checked news.com.au this evening and my eye was caught by the headline "Nana nails Big Brother's final series." You can't make that shit up. Channel 10 have decided to let that abomination of a show finally die and there is no one more grateful than yours truly but to have it finish so nail-in-the-coffin-ly is, as Prince Paul would have put it, the sweetest victory of all.

I must admit though that I have watched more French Big Brother in the week I have been in Paris than I have ever seen of the Aussie version, but only because it is basically porn and the inane crap they are surely babbling is in French so I can substitute it in my head for in depth discussions of Chomsky's relevance in a post 9-11 world.

Eat, drink and miss meetings

I'm working in a French office at the moment and I just have to mention how they do lunch. God Damn, no wonder the Nazis just waltzed in here, the French army were probably all at lunch for most of 1940.

Here's the deal, eating a quick sandwich at your desk is most frowned upon. Most people head to the cafeteria where you select an entree, a main, a salad and a desert then a drink. The drinks fridge has water, juice, soft drink, beer, wine, cider and champagne in it! After a hearty lunch you'd think it would be back to work eh? No way, now it's off to the café for, well, café. These bastards do lunch in style.

If they could only start speaking English I think we could be best of friends.

Quick, to the Popemobile!

Holy shit, I almost missed it. The Grand Wizard of the Catholic faith is in Australia and I haven’t even made fun of him yet. But, like a large donator to the Church, my sin will soon be forgiven.

First up, it has to be re-said, he looks like the Emperor from Star Wars.


Seriously, he’s a black cape away from being sued by George Lucas. Some stolen photoshopped glory...


So on to the good old Christian bashing. I was listening to PM yesterday and they had a story on his Popeness and the young Christians that have flocked to Sydney from around the globe to see him. The piece was about Christian sexuality, or the lack there of. Classic quote from young Christian Brian Crawford:

“One of the toughest parts of dating in today's society is there's so much pressure to move beyond, you know, the physical boundaries. There's a lot of pressure to move, you know, straight into kissing, and even go beyond those boundaries.”

I remember being 15 and feeling the pressure to jump ‘straight into kissing’. It was mainly coming from my raging libido. I’m glad I repressed those urges until I got home, where I sinned into the midnight hours.

Another young Christian expands on the expectations of the adolescent faithful:

“...they're not going to get past the hugs and kisses and hand-holding and that sort of thing until like to the point that you're married.”

That’s pretty major right there, but I guess you have to respect the devotion. Whatever floats your boat I suppose, or, more correctly, whatever tortuously prevents your boat from being floated.

I don't hate Christians, but I do hate the uppity “let’s not have any fun” types or the smug “you’re going to hell while I enjoy the glories of heaven” types. I knew a reasonably hardcore Christian chick at college and she and her friends would stay up on Saturday and eat M&Ms and other chocolates all night. Fairly innocuous fun I suppose, but what shits me is when it’s presented as naughty behaviour, and they present themselves as the rebels of the Klemzig Christian Youth Chapter. That’s not rebellious; let me tell you what I was doing back then... actually, let me not tell you for fear of the ever-present internet police, but let me just say that it was ‘naughty’ in the same way that Ghengis Khan’s exploits in Outer Mongolia were ‘invasive’.

As the article points out, the whole point of reinforcing the Christian values of abstinence before marriage is to combat the rampant divorce rate in Australia. They may win a technical point here, because the divorce rate amongst Aussies is pretty high and climbing higher every year. I’m too lazy to Google for statistics, but I wonder if the success rate is higher for those who wait until marriage before defiling their bodies as opposed to the rest of us.

Even if it was, I’d still have to choose team whore. It’s analogous to the thrifty rich in a way. Sure, if you save all your pennies and don’t waste cash on booze and hedonistic activities in your youth you will grow up to be a wealthy individual, but you’ll also miss out on tonnes of fun because people will know you are a tight-arse and not invite you to parties. No brainer for Doctor Sin over here.

Oh, and one last dig at the Catholics. Did you know that the Vatican owns and runs its own airline dedicated to pilgrims? Vatican Airlines.

Ok, second last dig...

Q: Why do the ladies love Jesus?

A: Because he promised a second coming.


I’ll see you in hell.

Boom!

An Australian is visiting Northern Ireland and he’s heard from some mates back home that he has to be careful which religion he claims to be while he is there. He walks into a bar one night and is not quite sure if it’s a Catholic or Protestant place so he plays it quietly and sits at the end of the bar minding his own business.

After a few pints he needs to take a piss so he slinks off to the toilet, making sure not to make eye contact with any of the regulars. As he is doing his business he hears someone behind him and then suddenly a sharp knife is pressing against his ribs.

“Are you Protestant or Catholic” says the unknown man.

“Neither,” says the quick thinking Aussie, “I’m Jewish”

“Wow,” says the unknown man, “If I’m not the luckiest Arab in Belfast”


You ever been in a situation where everyone is telling jokes about a certain topic and you have one ready then just as the conversation lulls some fucker changes the subject and you don’t get the chance to tell it? I had that the other day, but I have a fucking blog so I’m going to tell it anyways. Take that front bar of the Velizy Holiday Inn. Samboy has the last word.

The joke topic was Northern Ireland but the preceding serious topic was IRA terrorism. Being an Australian almost completely ignorant of ‘the troubles’ there I pretty much sat back in listened. To do an injustice to the intelligent people I was speaking with I will bastardly sum up the discussion with the paraphrase “We had our 9/11 back in 1980.”

Now I was speaking to a bunch of Poms here, and they were specifically speaking about London living under the threat of terrorist bombings by the IRA. I must say that the atrocities on both sides were amply covered, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m only talking about the bombings in London. As I said I know next to nothing about the specifics of the situation but it was interesting to contrast the lack of hysteria they showed when they then talked about the actual September 11 attacks. I’m sure more knowledgeable people can correct me but London was under the constant threat of terrorist bombings for much of the 1980s.

I then happened upon a BBC World Service documentary series that was examining The Troubles and the massive contrast between the situation of thirty years ago and the situation now. They were interviewing folks on both sides of the arena and comparing their attitudes back then to what they are saying now.

The message stressed the most by the representatives on both sides who were interviewed was that dialog was the key to the whole Northern Ireland solution. Without dialog, without bringing the two sides together to talk there would still be a massive renegade army in Northern Ireland.

As you can probably guess I’m about to draw parallels with today’s terrorism situation. But why the hell wouldn’t you? Every bunch of bastards out there fighting a war is doing it for some cause they believe in, but I’m sure ninety percent of them would rather be working for the Post Office and going home to their families with all their limbs. A negotiated cease fire is a better for everyone.

This much is obvious, but the problem lies with blanket statements like “We will not negotiate with terrorists” and “you’re with us or against us” being spewed by the world’s seemingly number-one terrorist negotiator, the USA.

Israel negotiates with Hamas, the Sir Lankan government negotiates with the Tamils, the British negotiated with the IRA and the US better fucking negotiate with the loose collection that is called the ‘Iraqi Insurgency’.

The silly thing is that it is almost certain that this negotiation is going on between the US forces and the Iraqi Humvee bombers, but it cannot be talked about publicly because the US does not negotiate with terrorists. The sooner this backroom peacemaking can be brought to the headlines the better in my opinion.

The phrase “One man’s Terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter” is not new but I think it should be in the back of everyone’s minds when we think about the wars currently being fought around the globe. I’ll throw out a request to my Histbusting friend Tom to highlight the various historical terrorist groups that we hold in good favour.

What I’m trying to say in too many words is that the discussion of the resolution in Northern Ireland where a terrorist army, fighting against a government, laid down their guns and found an amicable solution has given me hope that finding peace in Iraq is possible. Rather than the thousand ‘lessons learn’ examples out there we have a ‘best practice’ example, and I think the yanks should run with it.