Mes: febrero 2019

I inadvertently missed out on some other gems from the little boy misister of defence in the UK… you know the one with the supermarket drones as a war strategy who wants to send a big boat with no planes to the Pacific to warn China…
 Well, in another speech last week about Russia and the Cold War, he described it as ‘The Cool War’.
Cool! said Bart Simpson upon realising that he knew more than the minister about anything.
Said minister suggested loading guns on tractors as a way of stretching the shrinking defence budget.
But the best one refers to Spain and Gibralter… he suggested firing paint-balls to prevent Spanish fishing ships from trespassing into Gibraltar’s waters.
Paint balls??????????????
Be afraid, world, be very afraid!

So he wins the «stunning idiot of the month» award for February. No one can be worse than this, can they?

My daughter in Cardiff has started to prepare for the Brexit by stockpiling food in her room. She isn’t the only one. All foreign students and staff at Cardiff university are doing the same.

With elections announced in Spain, I expect some form of clusterfuck to break the surface amongst the ambitious there.
But it is a pity that Spanish news papers do not openly portray the incompetence of politicians there. Too respectful altogether!

Back next week with another dose of other people’s madness.

f

And good morning to you all!
It seems that the sunshine and temperatures above those that would kill a semi-naked human within an hour are enough to allow one to imagine that one’s health is improving. But it’s all an illusion.
For this week, I have to mix things up and will not discuss sex at all. No doubt you are relieved after the pornographic onslaught of last week. I cannot avoid Brexit, or rather the quality of minister in her majesty’s government, but will also visit Spain, Kondo-mania, happiness and other things. So let’s get the British out of the way first, since I have not mentioned them much in recent weeks. The point is that no matter how bad you think things are where you live, it is often a lot worse elsewhere.
And as a bonus, I will not be mentioning the Orange Shit Gibbon either.

Concerning the British, it isn’t their failing Brexit that interests me but the utter stupidity of the crown ministers. In the past, these guys were at the top of the diplomatic tree and showed their worth against any international opposition (whether they were against us or with us at any given time). I didn’t like them but had to admit that they were formidable intellects.
Well, that’s all changed and radically so.
So far we have had the female minister who complained that the Europeans were treating the British unfairly by not allowing them seats in the European parliament after Brexit, no representation of the various European Union councils, no Euro-deputes, no use of European funds… again, after Brexit. Please try and get your head around that one. I am still slightly bewildered.
This was followed by the next idiot who claimed that he could simply go to Dublin and get an Irish passport by asking for one, and only because he is 100% British, with no connection at all to Ireland. He must be delirious in his personal fantasy world.
There were the Brexit ministers David Davies and the even more stupid Dominic Raab and now there’s another one whose name I don’t know. Tusk’s and Barnier’s comments about them were careful so as not to be seen as insulting those intellectually deficient people who suffer from accidental or genetic disorders. These ministers are almost a new prototype of single brain cell entities.
Then we had the present misister of transport who gave 20 million Euro to a «shipping company» who had no ships, no staff, no experience, no contacts and no permission to use the two harbours in question to ship goods. He is also previously responsible as minister for prisons for stopping the inmates having access to books. I am not making ths up.
However, in the race to see who is the most incompetant and most useless minister… and the most stupid, we have a new contender… «the minister for war… sorry, the minister for defence». That verbal piece of sarcasm was spoken yesterday by the Russian minister for defence, Lavrov.
This particular minister (name : Gavin Willianson) is worth googling just to get a look at him. He makes a complete break with the British diplomatic past by looking like someone who graduated three years ago from a low ranked university, last in his class, with a degree in selling insurance or second hand cars. When I looked up his past just now (having typed that), I was actually shocked – and not shocked – to learn that he was actually a fire-place salesman before he went into politics. Not shocked that it’s true as that’s what he appears as and totally shocked that anyone on the planet at any time in human history would give him a job as defence minister for the UK.  It is impossible to accord his face any credibility. You just know, that since he was named defence minister, he has been spending as much time as possible alone in his office making plastic model aeroplanes and tanks and ships. He knows that they are British models because it says so on the boxes. He would then be playing with them as if he were Lord Commander of the air force, the fleet, the army, charging at the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans and the Europeans and beating them all… in his little boy’s imagination.
His real world stupidity comes in with the award of 9 million pounds for the purchasing of «drones, to fight against the enemy, waves and waves of drones». That’s a fucking quote!!!!! Fortunately he didn’t go as far as to specify the enemy in question… just imagine the consequences! Well, he wouldn’t be a contender for the most stupid boy in the world if that were still the case.
He also misunderstood the types of drone needed by the military. He was basing his «calculations» of the drones cost by what you can buy on the internet or in a supermarket, you know, the little ones, with cameras. The military ones cost a lot more, a lot lot more. What he also didn’t work out was that each drone needs a human operator to control it. Sending in a thousand drones against this imaginary enemy would require as many operators. One army general at the official meeting was heard to mutter the word «idiot» while rolling his eyes to the Heavens. But things never stop with the first mistake, or the tenth, or the twentiest, in this case. His pronouncement last week that he would send the new British aircraft carrier (which, incredibly, has no planes yet, but are you really surprised?) to the Pacific to keep the Chinese in check and show them that the British mean business when others are being naughty. He actually said «the UK [was] prepared to use lethal force to deter countries that flout international law.You have to ask: Is he living in the year 1850? Or is he abusing the opium? Or is his IQ the same as his age?
Amidst the guffaws of some and the despair of others, the Chinese responded.
They hinted at their displeasure. That is a serious rebuke by their standards in case you don’t have experience of how the Chinese operate diplomatically. The follow-up was announced yesterday (Saturday) when they told the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (one of the only strong and educated minds in the present government) that his long planned visit to China to discuss trade agreements after Brexit was … cancelled, just two days before he was due to travel.
Ouch!!!
Meanwhile, the boy minister for defence is planning his next move against someone else, maybe the Russians.

Please understand, I am not making any of this up. It is all real and it all happened. I am not even exaggerating. I wouldn’t dare as the reality is just too awfully funny.

But Brexit is a success according to their Trade minister (a man named Fox who has a penchant for sharing a bed with his male business friend while on government business trips, just to save money for the country… yeah, right!) Having announced that there would be at least 40 countries ready and willing to sign advantageous trade deals with the UK after Brexit, he just announced that he had signed a follow-on deal with … the Faroe Islands. He even urged everyone to celebrate his achievement. When it was pointed out to him that all other countries were sticking with the European trade agreements with the EU and didn’t really care about the post-Brexit UK, he immediately claimed that the Japanese had be told by the European Union to not make any deals with Britain. I would love to have seen Barnier’s and Tusk’s faces when they heard that one. Apparently the Japanese are none too pleased either with the British comment.

Having followed all this with morbid fascination, I’d be astonished if any of them could tie their own shoe laces.
But enough of that depressing yet fatally amusing nonsense!

In fact, the best way to describe the whole thing is to consider them like the crew of the Titanic deciding, by themselves, that the iceberg really must get out of the way.
Good luck with that!

I see that the Catalan gang who are now on trial have been giving indirect interviews via family and lawyers about how they have all become born again Catholics. They all (with one exception) go to Mass regularly, one of them even got married in prison, and they are generally now all pious.
Prison does that, you might be given to say.
I don’t.
For me this is their play to become allies with Vox, the ultra right wing party of zenophobes. They were obviously made for each other.

Combining both Spain and Britain next, and this is what you will not be missing when they have gone…

A flight from Glasgow to Malaga had to be diverted after a fight broke out on board. The Ryanair (who else??) plane landed in Madrid where a disruptive passenger was met by Spanish police on Thursday evening.
The flight then continued its journey to Malaga.
The fight started when one drunk man started pestering women in a hen party. None were sober, really.
Two men were trading punches in a full fist fight in the aisle … in a plane…. in mid-air!!!  Even more incredibly, the cabin crew had to ask the passengers for help. That’s when the drunken women tried to «help». Only on Ryanair and only the British.
Complete chaos at the back of the plane. I wonder how they are now enjoying their holiday in Malaga.

Forget about these American serial killers that they make films about. Russian police are investigating whether an 80-year-old woman is a serial killer after her lodger’s dismembered body parts were found in her fridge. The retired farm worker was arrested after the 52-year-old victim’s remains were discovered. Who discovered them? Another lodger? (I want a cool beer… opens fridge door… grinning head looking back out from among the beer cans.)
The investigating detectives suspect she could be linked to the disappearance of up to seven people.
What was she doing? Eating them? Serving them up to new lodgers?
The arrested woman reportedly slaughtered pigs as part of her farm work and since burning human flesh gives off a smell similar to pork… I don’t want to think about that one any more.

No one seems quite sure whether Raphael Samuel, the anti-natalist from India who plans to sue his parents for having been born without his consent, is for real or not. My natural cynicism makes me think that his logic is somewhat fragile. Does he want his parents to kill him? Does he want the right to officially be considered not to exist for tax purposes? Is he writing a book?
Personally, I hope that his parents retaliate by counter-suing him for being an ungrateful miserable bastard and not the son for which they had hoped.
Or maybe not…. There must have been plenty of times when my parents felt like suing me for damages.
Thinking more about this, who can I sue for the fact that one day I am going to die?

Research from the Resolution Foundation (that can only be American) uncovered the curious finding that people are at their happiest at the ages of 16 and 70. Given how crap my life was when I was at 16, I will not comment on the second date until I get to 70, if I do. I can’t imagine that I will be taking month long cruises to fill in the time but I will ensure that I won’t be spending time with people with much more money than me. How depressing would that be?
I don’t know about you lot at 16 but I spent most of my time hiding in the shadows of my own life, desperately wishing I was someone else. I was a spy in school (I groan with embarrassment thinking about it now still), an undiscovered footballer who would win the world cup (yeah, with no ability, no vision, no potential and no hope, I was going to go far.), a unique boy with X-ray vision (you don’t really think I was normal, do you?) and a future Pope (an actual possibility compared to the previous).
I don’t know when I grew up. 

Not only the Eurovision, but the Grammys, the Oscars, the Baftas, the Goyas and whatever French version they have, are all coming up soon. With no television I can avoid all that shit. But you can’t, can you? You all have televisions.
And someone in your house is going to be watching them… and you will just fall in line and watch them too.
But why?
Not only do these programs invariably overrun in time, all you get are people you’ve sometimes heard of give rambling acceptance speeches, thanking people you’ve certainly never heard of. The format is numbingly predictable. A bad joke, someone reading out the four nominations, a few clips of the show in question and then the winner is announced. Repeat for four hours, ending with a lifetime achievement award for someone the organisers think is getting old and might die soon.
Why? Why? Why, Lord, why???

And speaking of losing the will to live, I get to Marie Kondo…..  the latest in a long line of people put on this earth to make others feel bad about themselves. Do not deny that you have heard about this ordeal of a person. I am also willing to bet that you are taking her seriously.
Step back please and try to get your head around the idea that being tidy is not the invention of Marie Kondo.
Her plan is to SELL you order (rather than disorder) so that your life will take on order too, so she says. If your wardrobe is all nice and ordered, your emotional life will benefit.
An orderly home is an orderly life.
The fuck? Such bollox!
Just throw out all those things you don’t use any more…. books, kitchen impliments, tools, clothes, shoes, bags, pictures, furniture, knives, forks, plates, cups, glasses, food, cars, beds, rooms, phone numbers, addresses, CDs houses, jobs, husbands, wives, ungrateful children, grandparents… aaaarrrggghhh Throw away everything!!!! Just think of how happily ordered your life will be afterwards!
The only thing you end up throwing away is the money you spent on her books.
The French have bought into this too, as well as the Spanish, the Irish, the English, the Americans (of course), but not, apparently, the Japanese. Or the North Koreans… though that may have to do with the fact that they own nothing and therefore have nothing to throw away.
The secretary in the department was watching a video on-line this week and I watched for five minutes, coldly and with morbad fascination (again).
Watching Kondo kneel on the floor, patiently teaching stressed out middle class parents how to fold a T-shirt (for fuck sake!!!!), fills me with something closer to eternal sadness for humankind. She just doesn’t seem to have any problems in her life at all. What’s hidden?

The idea of «sparking joy in the world through tidying” is such bullshit that I get angry just thinking about it. Why is it that the neuroscientists have been pointing out that untidy people are usually the sharpest intellects?
Well, they tidy ones are, by extension, idiots. Or Brexit ministers.
Have you picked up items in your homes recently and looked at them with the question: does this spark joy in my life?
If the answer is no, then throw it out!
Applying the same idea to friends and family is not suggested in her drivel, though it is the only one that would bring any happiness to anyone.
The KonMari method (as it is called) also claims that couples can deepen their ties through tidying, but, personally, I can’t be arsed with that. Go on, start sharing the tidying with your husband, wife or special friend. The fight starts within five minutes… don’t put that there, you didn’t clean here, that’s not mine, I’m not cleaning up after you and so on. Horror!

Let’s face it… this is nothing other than Obsessive Compulsive Disorder being sold as an advantage to life. It isn’t.

And I like collecting things. Even clothes from 40 years ago. And toys from 50 years ago. And Christmas decorations from 100 years ago.
And when I see this type of normal desire for having a clean house being appropriated by someone in order to make money, I just want to make a mess.

I hope you enjoyed this weeks untidy mess.
love and dirt to you all
f

And I’m looking forward to all those beers soon. Make a gap in your untidy calendars please!

Another week (or two) of women and men. One always causes the other problems. And sometimes not. Men are at a serious disadvantage and everywhere you look, most problems can be reduced to…. sex.
At least that’s what the news throws up this week. And when I say throw up, I am closer to the sense of vomiting rather than discovery.
Let’s start with the harmoneous advantages of married life. Okay, I have no personal experience of such wonderful harmony and none of you do either, but it appears to be a thing. I will make my comments inside square parentheses.
The latest «research» courtesy of University College London suggests that if you can make your marriage work, you’ll reap the benefits.
[Please list any benefits, if any, from your own personal experience.]
It appears that older people who are married are physically fitter,
[Yeah, because the man is constantly looking to get away from the bins, painting, repairs, washing up, complaining, grass cutting etc and goes for very long rapid walks to the pub every night.]
have a stronger grip
[Due to masturbation no doubt.]
and walk further and faster than their divorced counterparts.
[See above!]
The researchers [who pays them for this shit? And can I get one of those jobs?] studied more than 20,000 people over the age of 60 in England and the US to get to these conclusions.
Furthermore, they then go into the «secret of a happy marriage» with input from old fools. Don’t blame the other person! is the main way of avoiding difficulties in a marriage. [What’s the point of a marriage if you can’t blame the other person?]
Interestingly, the time before serious problems are addressed via marriage counsellors is after 13 years. But come on! If the marriage is dead, get the fuck out! What are you supposed to do with these counsellors? Forget the past years of shite and go on as if nothing happened?
The other marvellous advice is to show your vulnerability to the other person. «Showing your vulnerability is very brave and, actually, you’re probably at your strongest when you can do that.» said the head of the Council for Psychotherapy (CP).
[And at your most stupid and you deserve what you get. All you are doing is showing where you can be crushed.]

So, that might be my cynical attitude, but can any of you indicate the advantages of not blaming (when the blame is right there pointing itself at someone) or of showing vulnerability?
Didn’t think so.
And really, when was the last time when you didn’t think of saying to the other person «when was the last time you understood anything?».
Oh, and divorces peak during early January.

But men can be idiots too. Inevitably, at this time of the «me too» movement (who are effectively claiming that all men are rapists and should be castrated) we get to the latest heavily awaited documentary series (soon to hit the televisions of Spain too) about Lorena Bobbit.
Who?
She was suddenly notorious in the early 1990s as a perpetrator (of sexual violence), a victim (of sexual violence) and a punchline all rolled into one.

This young Venezuelan woman, with a name that sounds like a short, sharp chop (surely you remember her now?) married her small-town husband who was called (I kid you not) John Wayne – and he was a US marine. As a teenager she had moved from Venezuela to America and got a job working as a manicurist. She met John Wayne at a dance hall and they were married in 1989, when she was just 20 and he 21.
Ah, nice! The American dream come true.

Not!

The marriage was not a good one. Where are those marriage counsellors when you need them? She blamed John’s sexual and physical violence for the problems. There you go… the blame game again. She also alleged he forced her to have an abortion. He claimed she was greedy. The fights got worse.
Their house was repossessed. They broke up and got back together. It didn’t last.
Then, one night she got her famous revenge when she took his penis in her hand. Of course he simply presumed she was giving him «a handjob». An hour later, Lorena was flinging his severed penis out the window of her car into a grassy patch as she drove through the town.

Ouch!

She phoned the police to tell them and they went out and actually found the penis. By a miracle of surgery, doctors then managed to re-attach it to the heavily sedated John Wayne (Bobbitt). The documentary reveals, when he awoke from the operation the surgeon told him «the surgery was a success, but your penis may turn black and fall off again».

Now please do not try to tell me that you didn’t laugh out loud just there.

The trial was on daytime television non-stop. All in the public interest. Yeah, right! John Wayne (Bobbit!) was eventually acquitted of abusing her during their marriage and she was, at length, adjudicated not guilty by reason of temporary insanity for her moment of madness with the kitchen knife. He became a novelty porn star and was employed for a time by Dennis Hof. Remember Dennis? He was the dead man who was voted into the Americal Congress recently in Nevada.
And all this because they blamed each other.
But she certainly knew where he was vulnerable.

and the Spanish version from this week.. a Spanish man (51 years old, who couldn’t walk fast enough or far enough, obviously) was arrested in Leganes for trying to cut out his wife’s tongue with a kitchen knife. She is from Honduras.
Lesson?
Avoid South American women at all costs!

Staying with Spain… another study claims that libido drops with cold weather. You have too much money in Spain.
The researchers found that only 33% of women want sex in winter, 48% in Spring and 54% in summer. Mind you, they didn’t say how often it was proposed during each season.
This joint study was with researchers from Switzerland and Holland.
The Swiss input was to suggest that the man and the woman wear socks. I know of no woman on this planet or any other who would accept that the male wear socks. I have no clue as to how I would consider a woman with socks. Violence?
The Dutch neuroscientists (yes, neuroscientists!!!) suggested that orgasm was easier with socks on.
And this was published in Nature?

Lads! Lads! Just turn the fucking heating on!

Meanwhile, a man in Sidney, Australia is under investigation after making a call to emergency police services because his wife expected him to pay for the entirety of their Chinese meal.
When the police arrived at the restaurant they first reminded the man that the emergency number is for actual emergencies.
«Police are unsure of who eventually paid for the remainder of the delicious Chinese meal,» North Shore Police Area Command said in a statement. I wonder what the sex was like afterwards and did he hide all the knives?

To France now and on Thursday, the famous French rugby club Carcassonne announced that they were entering into a commercial partnership with the pornographic website «Jacquie et Michel», claiming that they “share values of power, endurance, and vigour”.

Dear Jesus! Save us from spin doctors!
Carcassonne’s general manager, Christine Menardeau-Planchenault, [a woman!!!!] explained that “as a family club” [you could have fooled me!] they had put limits on what Jacquie et Michel could get up to. “There won’t be any naked young women at half-time or any naked rugby,” she explained. Despite that, Menardeau-Planchenault added that while it is normally “hard to get people to the stadium”, tickets for their upcoming match against Biarritz were now “flying out of the ticket office”.
I know the French too well and all the supporters (from now on, all male) will be expecting a different type of show at half time and they will riot if they don’t get it. I feel sorry for the players.

Okay, headline of the week goes to this one in El Mundo on Wednesday of this week, from a short series of articles on «Prostitución en Tierra Santa»:
A los 18 años, yo elegí esta profesión (prostituta) de forma voluntaria ya que no me fue bien como camarera [o cuidando niños como a mis amigas].
Maybe it’s me, but I find the leap from being a poor waiter in a bar/restaurant to being a prostitute a bit difficult to imagine. Is it just me?

The annual gay pride song contest … sorry! the Eurovision song contest, is fast approaching. Let’s get moving on the choice of song, say the homosexuals. When is the contest, we ask.
May!
So how is it going in Spain this year?
The reason that Ireland has failed so spectacularly during the past 15 years has to do with winning it almost every year during the 90s. We were unfortunately unstoppable. And since, when you win, you host and pay, the national television company was in serious danger of going bankrupt because of it. So, they made the deliberate decision to choose the worst songs and artists ever, knowing that they had no chance of winning. Of course, they said the opposite. That still doesn’t explain sending a vulgar turkey puppet to sing «Irlande douze points» in 2008. It was the worst ever, seriously. Judge for yourselves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfuJaf6IBpk
Utter shite!
And we didn’t even win. In fact, we got zero points.
So what is Spain’s excuse for sending crap songs?
Spain hasn’t troubled the top half of the votes since Franco died. Ireland, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal etc (consider, Israel have won it twice in recent years and they’re not even in Europe) have done so badly that they can’t do worse this year.  The selection criterion seems to be “probably won’t come last”, a bar so low you’d need limbo training to navigate it…. probably an advantage if you are gay.

I see that the grave stone of Karl Marx in London was attacked and damaged. The police are saying it was the work of right wing extremists.
WTF??
I read the definitive biography of Karl Marx. When did he ever become a Marxist?
Answer: he didn’t.

Extremists these days: no knowledge of history or anything else.

The Orange Shit Gibbon is at it again. The latest tweet from the Brain Donor’s Club president comes when parts of America are in the grip of a double cold cyclone from the Arctic, with temperatures of close to -50°C, a phenomenon that occurs increasingly with even slight global warming.
His tweet?
«What the hell is going on with global warming? Please come back fast! We need you.»
This guy’s gift is to render sarcasm and satire redundant.

As a final gesture I offer a warning with these three web links from the Guardian newspaper. Remember, this is the most serious of newspapers in the UK and the content of the links has been published in their entirety in their weekend magazine. In colour.
Please do not open them in the company of others and not at work.
If you are of a sensitive disposition, do not open them!
This is considered serious journalism, but not by me.
You have been warned.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/06/womens-breasts-laura-dodsworth-photography

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/09/me-and-my-vulva-100-women-reveal-all-photographs

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/may/27/me-and-my-penis-100-men-reveal-all
I don’t know whether to be disturbed or frightened. However, if I said these were published in a national newspaper, no one would believe me. I had to share my personal shock.

But I still don’t know if I’m normal.

and not even one mention of Brexit.
Back to normal next week, as long as my health improves. I am still in a bad state.

Blessing and (stop looking at the images!) warmth be upon you all without socks
f