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Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
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To have your emails deleted please write to me at renatoobeid@hotmail.com
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Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid
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"Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.”
-Jane Perrone, The Guardian
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Tuesday, December 30, 2003
RENATO OBEID IS RENATOOBEIDSWORLD'S MAN OF THE YEAR
"I'm shocked and stunned!
This is just so unexpected - a total surprise!
When did this happen?"
- www.renatobeidsworld.blogspot.com's Man of the Year, Renato Obeid on learning of the honour.
RENATO OBEID ANNOUNCES MOON MISSION
Thats it!
I'm putting a moon on the moon!
For a while I've been marvelling at the fact that they can put a man on the moon but that so and so cant do this or that etc - i.e that it would be easier for me to put a man on the moon then for so and so to do such and such and that I might as well put a man on the moon then try and get whatever it is done.
The final straw and launch of my space program was the service driver I stopped on the Jounieh highway who couldnt comprehend that I wanted to get off at Jal el Dib (some ten minutes away) on the highway but on the left hand side (permisable and quite common in Lebanon) and not on the right hand side so I wouldnt have to cross the busy highway.
He kept insisting that he's not going into Jal el Dib proper (that is the town) just through Jal el Dib (on the highway) and I said that thats where I'm going but on the left.
We finaly appeared to of reached an understanding and I got in - only to be dropped off about a kilometre down the road when he said (surprise,surprise!) that he's not going into Jal el Dib proper (that is the town) just through Jal el Dib (on the highway) and I said that thats where I'm going but on the left.
Short of making a scale model of that section of the highway and using a pointy stick (military style) to push a toy car over from the right side of the highway over to the left side of the highway I wasnt going to convince him so I decided to put a man on the moon instead.
It will cost about a billion dollars.
editors note : it sounds like renato obeid is already on the moon doesn't it readers? (snigger,snigger)
8:29 am
Monday, December 29, 2003
3.10 AM
Just got back from Beirut where I caught up with Iyad and his friend Catherine who are visiting from Sweden.
While at Burger King this evening, we saw, on the TV screens there, live coverage of the state reception (i.e. President, Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, Foreign Minister and other political and religious dignitaries) at the airport of the plane carrying the bodies of the victims of the tragic crash of a chartered plane shortly after take-off from Cotonou, Benin on Christmas Day in which over one hundred Lebanese expats on their way home for the holidays perished.
I found it bitterly ironic that the same Establishment that essentially drove these people to the airport and exile should now receive their bodies at that same airport.
This is indeed a national tragedy and not a time to be scoring political points (which this piece is by no means attempting to do) but Lebanese emigration is essentially a modern form of transportation carried out by the Lebanese Establishment.
Hundreds of thousands of the best and brightest (thus potentially troublesome) Lebanese have been forced to leave their country in search of the mere basics which they're denied at home.
There is an invisible Statue of Illiberality at Beirut International Airport.
The inverse of the New York landmark, it faces outwards (the direction it sends Lebanese in) telling the world to "take my tired, my poor, my huddled masses"
Most of them don't leave because they want to but because they have to – this is borne out by the fact that so many of them regularly come back for holidays, as the victims of the crash were doing, or permanently when they can.
My hope is that one day Lebanese are not forced to leave their country but will willingly travel and live abroad, driven by their spirit of worldly multiculturalism and a yearning for education, experience and knowledge, and that they will not have to do this as petitioners, penitents or refuges but as ambassadors spreading the word about this proud nation.
In fairness, I do think that it was very admirable of the State to pay so much attention to looking after their citizens involved in this tragedy – the reception at the airport, Foreign Minister Jean Obeid rushing to Cotonou (the first such mercy mission by a Lebanese Foreign Minster that I know of), sending a Lebanese Army rescue and recovery team, medical teams, etc, and airlifting casualties and bodies back to Lebanon.
3:30 am
Thursday, December 25, 2003
HAPPY CHRISTMAS (WAR ISN'T OVER)
6:19 am
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
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5:56 am
Electricite du Liban
go fly a kite!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I reduce my electricity bill from one hundred and fifty US dollars a month to zero US dollars a month?
A: Become a Shiite.
5:48 am
Friday, December 19, 2003
VIVE LA FRANCE!
France "unveils" - now every Frenchman can be proud to show his face!
The only "covering" in France should be the proud tricolor that was born of the fight against fundamentalist religious fascism and now stands up to it again!
The sons and daughters of liberte, egalite and fraternite should not, can not,need not and will not hide their faces!
9:45 am
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
HE'S MAKING A LIST HE'S CHECKING IT TWICE
Ariel Sharon has barred Yaser Arafat from attending Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem for the third straight year.
7:10 pm
Sunday, December 14, 2003
I’LL TAKE YA’S ALL ON
I’m not one to brag but today I won the pub quiz all on my own.
My team is away, so I went solo and beat seven other teams.
I would have scored my first solo victory a couple of weeks sooner I believe had I not been sabotaged – I was ahead after the first round when a girl from another team (AKA femme fatale double agent) “defected” onto my “team” (of one) and “we” ended up coming last after she answered every single question incorrectly.
Being a gentleman I had deferred to her answers and also because, no matter how sure I am, I always defer to someone who thinks their answer is correct.Of all the clubs in all Beirut she had to walk into mine.
8:00 pm
Thursday, December 04, 2003
RECOMMENDATION
-How to read renatoobeidsworld
If you don't like what you read at the top here I invite you to read on.
I considered stacking the articles here in the same way punnets of strawberries are stacked with the bigger,better and juicer strawberries (so to speak) at the top but this would skew the chronological order.
Discarded first draft of above piece.
RECOMMENDATION
-How to read renatoobeidsworld
If you don't like what you read at the top here I invite you to fuck off!
9:39 am
"MATE" - AUSTRALIA'S LINGUISTIC STALEMATE MATE
Played chess today and won.
This being Australia*, where you have to add "mate" to the end of every sentence,my victory declaration was a bit tautolgous - "checkmate mate!"
*Technically I'm not in Australia at the moment but its a state of mind anyway.
8:21 am
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
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6:56 pm
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
The television news headline - "Latham elected leader of Australian Labor Party"
What I heard - "It's burst into flames!...Its crashed...Get away from it...This is one of the worst catastrophe's in the world...Its crashed to the ground...Oh the humanity...I cant talk to people*".
One of the oldest political parties in the world,the Australian Labor Party (the ALP),has been assassinated.
The ALP hasn't been immune from the global lurch to the right but yesterday it crossed the Rubicon - electing Mark Latham (see 07/12/2003) as its leader.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I wouldn't be surprised if Mr Latham is a Liberal Party mole infiltrated into the ALP with the aim of destroying it (as it is said of Mikhail Gorbachev and the downfall of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party).
If he isn't a mole per se,then he might as well be one because that is what he and his ilk have effectively done and will now finish off.
You need no further proof of this than the fact that Liberal friends of mine were celebrating his election.
One of them said to me that Australia needs to go further to the right.
Yeah, I agree - further to the "yeah right".
Australia needs to go further to the right as much as Francos' Spain did!
I said that if we were to go any further to the right we'd be off the radar and that we cant go any further right then this!
He said that we could - Pauline Hanson.
I said that Pauline Hanson is Gandhi compared to Latham
She never acted out her fantasy's whereas Latham has - two years ago he broke a migrant taxi drivers arm.
Where have you gone Gough Whitlam?
The answer is that Gough Whitlam has gone right to Mark Lathams side!
Why Mr Whitlam,why?
I've always considered you the father of today's ALP and the president (in internal exile) of the (undeclared) Republic of Australia - the only statesman and world class leader Australia has ever had and subsequently the only Australian leader to be overthrown in a coup de etat (which your dismissal was).
Lathams no Gough Whitlam and (I hate to say this - I don't want to sound presumptuous,disrespectful or arrogant)) neither are you anymore and I'm no Laborite anymore.
Despite dallying with the idea, I never joined the ALP but I have been an informal Laborite for about twenty years (since my early teens).
I'm not leaving the Labor Party, the Labor Party is leaving me and all the other True Believers who made it what it was and whom it has abandoned.
Good luck as the Liberal party's B team.
It's the last call before (permanent) closing at the Old Labor Party Saloon, nothing but ghosts left there anyway.
As the last of our old ideals crash to the ground somebody yells out "taxi" (the traditional cry in Australian pubs when somebody breaks something - as in its time to go home).
Mr Latham, your taxi's here.
Good luck and break a leg,you've already broken his arm and our hearts.
The Australian Labor Party
1891 - 2003
*Radio reporter Herbert Morrison describing the explosion of the Hindenburgh (May 6 1937).
8:19 am
Thursday, November 27, 2003
GEORGIA ON MY MIND
Last weekend's main international news development was the surprisingly quick and efficient (practically movie-length) peaceful toppling of Georgian President Edaurd Shevadnaze after protestors invaded the country's parliament in Tblisi.
Those developments vaguely resembled the much more dramatic scenes of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the downfall of communist regimes across Eastern Europe but on a much smaller scale - Perestrokia Lite.
They don't make 'em like they used to anymore - just like Gulf War Two was but a mere shadow of the original, Perestrokia Two was close but no cigar.
6:35 am
The Sadam Hussein News Agency (Al-Arabiya TV) has had its Baghdad offices closed.
The Osama bin Laden News Agency (Al Jazeera TV) was not affected by the Governing Council decree.
6:09 am
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Voters in Switzerland have narrowly approved proposals to allow closer international military co-operation by the Swiss army.
Traditionaly, the Swiss army has concentrated on making knives.
1:42 pm
I RECKON
That the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to a slut or sluts in general.
Sluts have done more for the cause of world peace and happiness than all the previous recipients combined!*
*This sounded so much funnier when I was drunk but, I don't care, I'm sticking with it!
I have self-censored an adjunct to that that read "besides, a slut hasn't won it for -- years"
For the complete uncensored version of that please refer to The Hole In The Wall pub (Beirut Lebanon) last night.
UPDATE
LOBBYING FOR 2004 PEACE PRIZE BEGINS
(5.00pm Thursday 27th November)
Several women have objected to this entry - "sexist", "stereotypical", "cheap", "offensive to women" blah,blah,blah.
I think that theyre just upset that I didnt nominate them directly,specificaly and exclusively.
Sorry babes, but your'e just going to have to share the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
And you can start earning it now!
So stop your blabbering and get busy - "a little less conversation, a little more action".
1:28 pm
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Royal Commission to determine “who let the dogs out?”
4:21 pm
Know what I hate?
I hate it when you don’t know what a word means, you look it up in a dictionary and you STILL don’t know what it means!
Although I tend to blame that on the dictionary – dictionary failure.
4:19 pm
SMOKER HIT BY BUS
-“You Could Get Hit By a Bus Tomorrow” theorem finally proven
-Widow glad he hadn’t given up smoking
4:00 pm
The “You Could Get Hit By a Bus Tomorrow” Theorem (used to justify smoking) is the main reason why I smoke.
As I understand it, either you smoke or you get hit by a bus and I’d much rather smoke!
4:00 pm
A recent study warns that Australia risks becoming a “technological backwater”.
The report says that there has been an exodus of Australian technological workers overseas – including some eighty mathematicians who have departed over the past seven years.
According to my calculations that’s about twenty-five a year
But my question is do we really miss those mathematicians, do we really need them?
Who needs them?
3:50 pm
A girl I know showed me this yuppie natural toothpaste she brought because she believes that regular toothpaste causes breast cancer.
I said to her “you must be using it wrong, its toothpaste not titspaste”.
3:45 pm
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
PRINCE CHARLES WELCOMES AMERICA'S KING GEORGE II AT HEATHROW AIRPORT
- heir to Windsor throne meets heir to Bush throne at start of state visit
7:18 am
Friday, November 14, 2003
SEND IN THE CLOWNS
Testing new medicines on animals just isn't working.
I propose we test medicines in development on clowns.
Clowns are VERY FUNNY,have a great sense of humour and don't seem too concerned with their personal safety and wellbeing (clowns are always tripping over banana peels - that's pretty careless isn't it?) so why don't they use that negligence to help society rather than just hitting each other in the face with cream pies?
They can also be useful in testing make up - clowns are very silly and wear lots of make up!
8:22 am
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
This Ramadan when I go to iftars (the meal at sundown breaking the all day fast during the Muslim holy month) I urge my hosts to serve the meal quickly – “come on, come on, hurry up, I haven’t eaten for at least an hour, I’m starving!”
An hour being the transit time – it takes roughly an hour to get to the predominately Muslim cities of Beirut and Tripoli*(where I’ve been attending these iftars) from the Christian heartland here.
I recall the wonderful hostess who invited my father and I to an iftar (my mother was already staying at her house – she tends to spend a lot of time with her family during Ramadan understandably) who was fretting that the meal wouldn’t be ready in time for the firing of the cannon which marks the breaking of the fast – saying she’d be so embarrassed in front of my father and I.
Her brother jokingly and logically said “youre worried about them, what about us? – They’ve come from home where they’ve had lunch, we’ve been fasting all day!”
Last Thursday I went to another wonderful iftar at that wonderful lady’s house – she had insisted I attend, even saying that the whole iftar was especially for me.
I jokingly told her that this was not the time for us (Christians).
Lebanon is a multi-confessional country.
The state officially recognizes nineteen different religious sects (including Judaism).
LEBANON: NINETEEN FLAVOURS – TRY ‘EM ALL!
Other sects (outside the nineteen) are, off course, tolerated and respected but not officially recognized by the state – i.e. if the state is at a party and sees one or more of those unrecognised sects it will pretend not to see them, look away or something.
But if pressed, if one of those sects approaches them and says something like “hi, its me Buddhism!” the state will say, “Hey, sorry I didn’t recognize you!”
Even some of the religions that are recognized by the state aren’t that recognized by the populace.
During the height of the Lebanese Civil War, my Syrian Protestant godfather**, caught in traffic in Beirut when the fighting flared up, was stopped by a Muslim militiaman who put a gun to his head and asked him whether he was Muslim or Christian.
He replied Protestant and the gunman just dismissed him (he was obviously gunning for Maronites)You can just imagine him saying “who’s got time for you people? Can’t you see that we’re busy here? Now do something useful and go get me a Maronite!”
A Muslim relative of mine was asking me if I was going to visit him on the Eid (Eid el Fitr- literally “the celebration of breaking the fast” - at the culmination of the month of Ramadan is the major Muslim holy day) and I replied, jokingly, “you mean Eid el Miled?”(literally meaning “the celebration of the birth” – i.e. Christmas).
He said “no, I’ll visit you at Christmas.”
A wonderful example of coexistence and pluralism in what Pope John Paul 2nd says is “a message not a country”.
*Being from a multi-confesional background I find that I can easily flit between the two environments and faiths and find I need very little preparation when I go from a Christian area to a Muslim area.
Except I have to bear in mind and remind myself of a major cultural difference which I coach myself in and try to memorize all the way to Tripoli (Beirut being a lot more progresive,modern and wordly) - "kiss the men and shake hands with the women; kiss the men and shake hands with the women right?; ok, remember, kiss the men and shake hands with the women; thats kiss the men and shake hands with the women, men - kiss them, women - shake their hands, men=kiss, women = handshake,got it?"
***I was a heathen for the first seven or so years of my life.
How a Maronite came to be baptized at the age of seven with a Syrian Protestant godfather is something you’ll have to ask my parents.
I was a deprived child.
My friend Ronnie had already been baptized twice by that age.
His Orthodox mother spirited him off to an Orthodox church and had him baptized while his Maronite father was overseas.
When his father came back and found out, he righted the wrong by having him baptized again as a Maronite.
Talk about The Two Ronnies!
There was no religious tug of war between my parents – my siblings and I didn’t even know that our mother was a Muslim until we were in our early teens although her brainwashing us with Nasserism and the Palestinian cause should have rang alarm bells.
When my sister was preparing for her First Communion she asked mum what kind of dress she wore for her First Communion and mum answered ‘’like your dress’’.
We’re not to blame – even grown adults can’t spot the heathen so easily.
A friend of a friend visiting us en route to a visit to Harisa about ten years ago asked me if I knew what time the Our Lady of Lebanon sanctuary in Harisa was open till.
I didn’t know and she suggested that maybe my mother would know.
I suggested that she didn’t count on that.
My friend Tonino jokes that no Catholics would accept to be my Godparents.
It’s all jokes of course.
I can joke about my Godparents because I don’t have Godparents, I have second parents which is what my Godparents are to me.
Besides, my Godfather is ancestrally Lebanese Maronite.
His family moved to Syria from Lebanon after a village dispute and converted to Protestantism because Protestant missionaries developed their deprived and neglected village in Syria.
So originally they were Protestants of convenience and then it just stuck.
I think that it is simplistic to say that all Lebanon's discord is due to religion but yet I think that it is also simplistic to say that this discord is not due to religion.
The first myth about the Lebanese civil war is that it was about religion; the second myth about the Lebanese civil war is that it wasn’t about religion.
4:38 pm
Sunday, November 02, 2003
HELLO IRONY!
The American Consulate in Baghdad has issued a travel warning advising Americans not to travel to Iraq.
Why is Iraq such a dangerous place?
Iraq is such a dangerous place because that advisory is seven months too late - because seven months ago hundreds of thousands of Americans TRAVELLED to Iraq, invaded and occupied it!
If only the Americans had of issued that same warning seven months ago, then Iraq and the rest of the world (even the Americans) wouldn’t be in this dire situation where they need to (most ironically I say) issue travel advisories to their citizens – warning them not to visit an Iraq that is so dangerous due to the very actions of American “visitors”.
Nonetheless, better late than never – why don’t they head their own advice and fuck off!
It must be noted that I am not anti-American.
I’m just not enamoured of some of their actions.
I would even say that I am pro-American – pro-Thomas Jefferson’s America (a very different place from what it is today).
12:54 pm
Thursday, October 30, 2003
SANDY TO MOVE TO A COMPASIONATE NEIGHBOURHOOD WHERE DOGS CHASE PEOPLE AND NOT VICE VERSA
- dog chased out of Paradise (Buildings) by people who think they own them
Where dogs chase people in theory anyway because Sandy is a peaceful friendly dog who wants to live on a FUCKING PUBLIC STREET where she can be around people – befriending and protecting them.
Not be chased by people (a reversal of the natural order) who think they FUCKING OWN THE STREET AND THE BUILDINGS ON IT!
WELL THEY DON’T FUCKING OWN THE STREET OR THE BUILDINGS ON IT!
My relocating Sandy to the North is not an acknowledgment or recognition of their self-styled fiefdom but a civic action (I don’t own the street or the buildings either so I’m not going to impose a dog on the neighbourhood if there isn’t total consensus) and also in her interest - to protect her from what these people euphemistically call “taking her somewhere else”.
By the way, I didn’t impose her on anybody – she’s not my dog and I didn’t actually bring her here.
She came here, wasn’t causing any harm so I and the good people of this neighbourhood reciprocated her affection and friendship.
Rather then throwing away our food scraps and leftovers we feed them to her (which is also environmentally friendly).
She chases their children playfully,sees them off to school in the morning and meets the school bus and welcomes them home in the afternoon,follows and accompanies any of them walking in the forest or anywhere for that matter.
She is our communal dog and gives the buildings a much needed community atmosphere and is so diplomatic that everybody thinks she's their dog - i.e. I think she's my dog, my cousins think she's their dog, the Sri Lankan thinks she's her dog, the manouchie man thinks she's his dog and the policeman thinks she's his dog (these are just the ones I know about!).
And she is my dog and she is their dog and she'd everybodys dog - just like the eponymous Kim in Rudyard Kiplings novel she is "the friend of all the world".
We're all Sandynistas - El Commandanta Sandy has sparked off a peasants rebelion in these buildings.
Recently in the middle of the night I espied her from my balcony chasing a much smaller housedog who appeared to be enjoying it’s all too brief escape from its cloistered domesticity.
What did she do when she caught it?
She played with it and they went off exploring the road works (“they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” but that’s a another story).
I’m not an animal liberationist but I just believe that a harmless domesticated dog should not be sent into exile.
And Sandy is as domesticated as they get – complete with her own “dining room”!
Recently a new maid placed some food (in a bag) for Sandy near the entrance to one of the buildings – Sandy fought off her brother* who had begun to eat, picked up the bag in her teeth and took it to her designated “dining room” (a patch of forest just away from the buildings were we all feed her) and they both proceeded to “dine”.
So, why do people behave like this?
I put it down to meanness, pettiness, poverty of spirit and utility - quite simply they can’t imagine anything living WITHIN SIGHT of the buildings they built BUT NO LONGER OWN (ALL THE APARTMENTS ARE NOW INDIIVIDUALY OWNED, CAPISCE?) and them not benefiting from them in any way (i.e. Sandy isn’t about to buy an apartment from them).
But the best explanation comes from my fourteen-year-old cousin who said “they don’t like anything that’s beautiful”.
From the mouths of babes!
The way to really judge a person or a people is by the way they treat weaker creatures.
My consolation is that Sandy will enjoy a bit of respite from my incessantly asking her “whooo’s a Sandy? Am I a Sandy? Nooo! Is so and so a Sandy (so on so forth)? Nooo, Sandy’s a Sandy!”
This is my way of pampering her.
My young cousins get quite annoyed when I pamper them this way but I’m quietly convinced that Sandy loves it (although she’s never admitted to this) – who wouldn’t?
So, one final time before you go Sandy – “whooo’s a Sandy?
The answer is simple.
We are all “Sandys” – we are all Gods creatures and visitors to this paradise!
This is entirely a one off, in no way do I advocate the unfettered accumulation of dogs around the buildings which has been happening lately – throughout the course of a recent night I saw as many as six different dogs at different times at different places around the buildings.
It’s beginning to look like a scene from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel around here (“on the eve of the epidemic several dogs were seen in the neighbourhood”) or maybe a canine version of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” is transpiring.
*Oops!
Maybe he isn’t exactly her brother.
I’m not naïve or anything but I just assumed he was her brother because he looked a lot like her (but, then again, they all look the same don’t they? – that’s why it was so easy to clone a sheep, who’s going to know the difference) but they’re a lot closer than that.
For further details see my (eleven year old cousin) Omar.
If I had a dollar for every time he had started saying this sentence – “He put his…” – and I’d stopped him there I’d be a millionaire (“ok Omar stop, stop, I know – I’m thirty three years old).
UPDATE
SANDY CLASHES WITH POLICE
- controversial dog not a genius
At around 7.00 am this morning (Monday 3rd November 2003) I heard a dog yelping.
I looked outside and saw Sandy and a dog that’s recently appeared here and appears to be her brother or at least a close relative “clashing” with a policeman (the police in Lebanon are a paramilitary force who are armed and wear fatigues).
True to her habit of being very friendly to and following everybody (friend or foe) Sandy and her brother were obviously bothering this policeman (who’s a assigned to somebody in the buildings) and trying to make a new friend.
He didn’t appear to be too keen on all this and was trying to shoo them away - though I’ve since learned from the kids and the Sri Lankan maids* (the intelligence apparatus of any Lebanese community) that he is indeed one of Sandy’s many friends and actually feeds her but just didn’t want to get his clothes dirty.
He must of tried to forcibly (hence the yelp) impress upon them the idea that they should leave him alone and they hadn’t done that.
But even after that they continued to follow him (albeit rather sheepishly) and he kept on trying to shoo them off (peacefully this time – he was now in good cop mode) and eventually they got the message and moved away.
“Move on, move on – nothing to see here!”
Advice to Sandy : do not mess with an armed policeman Einstein!
Trouble with the police!
What will our Sandy do next?
Not all dogs are good (just like not all human beings are good).
Sandy is a good dog but she appears to of fallen in with bad company – her “brother” doesn’t appear to be a very bad dog but not a very good dog either.
They’ve taken to barking and carrying on in the middle of the night (and in the middle of every other time too) and fighting with two dogs that appear to be attached to the buildings above ours.
So it looks like we’ve got some major turf wars happening here.
Very early this morning I saw them run across the highway very carelessly (which is something Sandy would never of done before), nearly get run over and bark at their apparently invisible foes who were nowhere to be seen – they hadn’t ventured as high up as the buildings but were at the foot of the road that leads up to them.
So they do appear to be engaging in unprovoked aggression and provocation.
This is confirmed by “intelligence” I received from my young cousin who told me that this evening he rescued one of those foes from a small roadside grotto shrine where he had sought refuge from Sandy et frere (smart dog – he knows where to seek asylum, he’ll be going to embassies next).
I was told that Sandy wasn’t as enthusiastic as her brother but was still a participant in this.
More the reason why Sandy should be saved and relocated (under the witness protection program with a new name and identity, i.e. as a cat) as soon as possible.
*If you want to know anything about what’s happening in Lebanon on a community level you need only ask a kid or a Sri Lankan – but be warned that half a Sri Lankan domestics conversation is about coconuts though (man, they’re keen on coconuts!)
And they’re pretty keen on non-sequiturs too – one once said to me, apropos of nothing, “there are many tigers in Sri Lanka” (so what's that bloody lion doing on the flag then?)
There may very well be but I was left scratching my head and wondering whether this was some sort of Tamil Tiger code phrase or something – “on the count of ‘there are many tigers in Sri Lanka’ we attack Colombo Airport!”
Yet she made no mention of the corn nor the luscious fruit that the Sri Lankan anthem boasts of (‘’laden with corn and luscious fruit’’ which is, to my knowledge, the only mention of corn in a national anthem).
A few years later when that Sri Lankan went out to fetch manouchies and never came back I just assumed that one of those "many tigers" who has so tormented her mind had somehow managed to get over to Lebanon and finaly track her down (what have you been saying about me?).
Seriously though,its quite common for Sri Lankan domestics to do a runner on their employees (do you blame them?).
UPDATE
SANDY PATCHES UP DIFFERENCES WITH POLICE
- step right up, step right up its The Incredible World Famous Waiting Dog!
Early this afternoon (Wednesday 12th November 2003) I saw Sandy waiting with the policeman by the side of the highway – it later transpired that they were waiting for the tow truck that was to help replace the buildings electricity transformer which was knocked out by lightning during a storm three days ago and subsequently left us without mains electricity for three days.
Sandy is very good at waiting with people.
This I think is her real talent.
She’ll actually stand around and wait with you (usually if you’re waiting for a service down the mountain but she’s not fussy) and she’ll actually look as if she’s waiting – wagging her tail, looking around some what expectantly, appearing to survey the ends of the road for a possible ride, etc.
That’s got to be much harder and more impressive than shaking hands (which Sandy cant do) which is a pretty base trick and doesn’t require the empathy that waiting with somebody does.
I don’t think it can be easy for a dog to actually affect waiting (as Sandy does) in that I don’t think they have a concept of time (ergo waiting) and furthermore, in Sandy’s case, I think it’s a pretty impressive achievement to not only affect waiting but to affect waiting when you don’t know what it is your waiting for but actually look like your waiting for that thing you don’t know your waiting for.
I.E. it looked to all intents and purposes like the policeman and Sandy were both knowingly and consciously waiting for the tow truck when only the policeman was.
Hands up who thinks I should get a life.
PLEDGE
I am so confident of Sandy's placidity that I make this pledge - if Sandy bites anybody* I will bite her**!
*Conditions apply.
-Fraudulent claimants will themselves be bitten by me (it is a remote possibility that I am spending too much time with this dog).
**Conditions apply.
-Bite not transferable or redeemable for cash.
-Staff of renatoobeidsworld and their family and friends not eligible.
Especially Omar who has shot her twice with a high-powered replica pistol (that’s just what I know about) - if she were to have bitten anybody it would of been he.
-Offer not redeemable with any of my other offers including but not restricted to "...I'll eat my hat!" and "I'll bet you anything you like..."
-Offer restricted to one bite per household.
-Offer not redeemable on Sundays and public holidays.
-Offer not valid where prohibited by local law.
-Offer not valid where in contravention of European Union Common Agricultural Policy.
-Offer not valid where in contravention of World Trade Organization (Doha Round) directives.
-Offer not valid where in contravention of World Health Organization guidelines.
-Offer not valid.
If all this is too much for you I suggest you just bite her yourself.
STAY TUNED TO RENATOOBEIDSWORLD FOR ALL THE SANDY LATEST!
1:47 pm
Monday, October 27, 2003
PRESIDENT HU (OR SOMEONE LOOKING VERY MUCH LIKE HIM) VISITS AUSTRALIA
Chinese President Hu paid a brief visit to Australia - the highlight of which was his historic address to a the Australian Parliament (the first by a Chinese head of state).
DISCLAIMER : www.renatoobeidsworld.blogspot.com cannot gaurantee that the visitor in question was actualy President Hu as "they all look the same".
www.renatoobeidsworld.blogspot.com cannot be held legaly responsible for any mistaken identity and losses or damages theirin incured by our readers
www.renatoobeidsworld.blogspot.com regrets and apologizes for any inconvenience and regrets that all people dont look like Westerners.
3:24 pm
Monday, October 20, 2003
NEW BIN LADEN TAPE VERIFIED
The CIA has verified as authentic the latest Osama bin laden audio message and confirmed that it was recorded as recently as the weekend.
As with other bin Laden tapes, recent occurences were mentioned - this is believed to be the Saudi born fugitives way of proving that he is still alive and that the tapes werent previously recorded.
Analysts point to his closing remarks (below) as indication of this.
"And finaly those all important weekend lotto results.
The numbers you needed were,
8, legs 11, unlucky for some - 13, 25, 33 and two fat ladies - 88.
A lucky Mildura citrus farmer and his wife were the only first division winners and subseqeuntly are 1 000 187 $ richer.
Not bad for a days work is it?
Sportsworld is up next with all the weekends sports highlights - including a stunning win for..."
2:17 pm
PRIVATIZATION - NEW LABOURS ONE TRACK MIND!
Investigators in Britain are working to determine the cause of two train derailments in as many days.
I'll save them the time and money and tell them the cause of those and other accidents - privatization!
*Also known as extinction.
The covered-up truth about the extinction of the dinosaurs wasn't that they were hit on the head by some rock but was due to the fact that the government of the day privatized them - thus they became extinct like all public services that are privatized are reduced by their new owners to the point of extinction.
If you don't believe me that dinosaurs were public services, I need only refer you to The Flintstones.
They didn't have ladders in those days did they?
I think that the best way to of gotten rid of Saddam wasn’t to invade Iraq and depose him but to privatize him – then he'll disappear, we'll never see him again! (Just like the buses, trains etc).
1:52 pm
Thursday, October 16, 2003
A certain Lebanese sporting team's*games resemble a Scooby Doo cartoon - it starts of scary ("oh no,theyre in trouble!") but, lo and behold, by the end of an apparently close game they win in the end,often by only one point ("if it wasnt for you pesky kids I would of got away with it!).
Im no sports expert but to my eye this seems to happen every single game and has gone way beyond mere coincidence.
The one advantage of all this is that the luckiest team in history has single handedly popularized basketball (NOT THAT THE AFOREMENTIONED TEAM IS A BAKETBALL TEAM - THERE ARE POLO TEAMS WHO POPULARIZE BASKETBALL.NOT THAT ITS A POLO TEAM - THERE ARE CROQUET TEAMS WHO POPULARIZE POLO WHO POPULARIZE BASKETBALL.NOT THAT ITS A C..) and thus sport in Lebanon.
I sleep during the day to the reassuring thud,thud,thud...of my little cousins and their friends playing basketball.
The next Micheal Jordan is practicing out there!
The kids are pretty quite otherwise - except Omar who's voice is the only voice heard,but its a wonderful voice of a wonderful child whos simply got a lot of life and energy and a lot to do and say and in a VERY LOUD FUCKING VOICE!
*I wont disclose their name as I dont want to ruin the fantasy and boy do people need fantasy in this country today (at least people are getting one part,the latter part, of the "bread and circuses" covenent between the government and the governed).
3:51 pm
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
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12:46 pm
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
RUMSFELD CLAIMS IRAQI SOLDIERS RAN WITH SCISSORS
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today listed a series of alleged Iraqi breaches of the Geneva Convention on the rules of warfare during the recent invasion of Iraq.
Rumsfeld said "Iraqi soldiers resisted invasion,defended themselves and, most seriously, ran with scissors".
The Defence Secretary went on to say "all these are a clear violation of the Geneva Convention as we understand it and furthermore running with scissors is also a blatant violation of teachers conventions".
Responding to press incredulity and ridicule on the last charge Rumsfeld replied "its funny until somebody loses an eye!".
DISCLAIMER: This, off course, didn't actually happen per se but neither did the moon landing - so we're even.
10:10 am
Monday, October 06, 2003
DRIVING ME CRAZY!
- it's Yahweh or the highway for Christian group
In the United States the Evangelical Environmental Network (a wonderful combination of the fascism of religous fundamentalism and the fascism of environmental fundamentalism) thinks, like most of these groups, that they and they only know exactly what God wants, requires and mandates - right down to Jesus Christs motoring choice!
They ran TV ads asking "what would Jesus drive?".
If your'e not too sure what the answer is I suggest you phone a moron who'l tell you that the answer is "not an SUV".
But even a moron could warn of the dangers of mixing Church and Statesman (the Statesman is a popular General Motors Holden model in Australia) and the importance of seperating the two and the dangers of groups with indulgent vested interests and personal agendas disguising these with and dressing them up as Godly requirements!
I certainly know what the Evangelical Environmental Network "drive" - a trojan horse!
I also know what Budha would drive - a Hummer.
As for what Jesus would really "drive" - historical records show that Jesus would drive the money changers, the charlatans and other people who usurp and coopt His name for their own vested interests and personal agendas out of the temple!
The Evangelical Environmental Network and all!
5:06 am
Friday, September 26, 2003
My doctor says I shouldnt drink - I got to stop going to muslim doctors!
12:07 pm
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
The 58th Anual Meeting of the League of Nations began in New York today.
12:11 pm
Friday, September 19, 2003
RATINGS REVIEW
Visited by only one person (myself) www.renatoobeidsworld.blogpsot.com is the most exclusive site on the web!
Extrapolating on those figures,
-Of that one visitor, one of them returned making a one hundred percent reader retention rate!
-Renatoobeidsworld offers advertisers the oportunity to reach a highly defined, segmented and specific demographic target group (of one)!
don't visit www.renatoobeidsworld.blogpsot now!
1:11 pm
Thursday, September 18, 2003
ANTI-CRUSADE CRUSADERS
In the late 1990’s a delegation of apologists from various European nations went around the Middle East apologizing for the Crusades.
Somebody I know in Jbeil (Lebanon) woke up one morning to what must be the very definition of surrealism – a group of Europeans (going from door to door) knocking on his door and apologizing for the Crusades!
He said something like don’t worry about it, let sleeping dogs lie and that what they were doing would only open up old wounds and create further sectarian discord in the country (he’s a Christian).
And that is an absolutely 100% totally true story!
The following scene isn’t – it’s a Monty Pythonesque scenario envisaged in my mind when I was told about this incident.
It’s definitely true to the surrealism of the whole affair.
Scene: a house in a street of identical old style terrace houses – similar to the stretch of houses you see in the opening and closing scenes of Coronation Street.
A John Cleesesque officious, pompous man in a bureaucrats suit (APOLOGIST) knocks on the door early in the morning.
A middle-aged harpy type housewife answers the door.
APOLGIST: Good morning madam, I’ve come around to extend my most profound apologies for the Crusades.
HOUSEWIFE: The what?
APOLGIST: The Crusades, terrible affair – you know, looting, pillaging, murdering, raping etc! Remember?
HOUSEWIFE: You isn’t a copper is yer? Well if you are, I don’t know nuthin’ about ‘em – never seen nuthin’, never ‘eard nuthin! When was they?
APOLOGIST: Oh, about a thousand years ago madam. That’s just the thing madam, we can’t remember exactly when they were – you see, most of the lads were intoxicated at the time. You know lads, being what they are – had a couple of pints and a couple of curries and next thing you know they were here Crusading.
You know that sort of thing, happens practically every weekend around here.
HOUSEWIFE: Oh them Crusades! Well, its awright you apologizing for ‘em but who’s gunna pay for mi front room carpet?
APOLOGIST: Your what?
HOUSEWIFE: Mi front room carpet! Them, them , um…Crusaders just barged in ‘ere like they were, were, ah…Crusaders, didn’t wipe their feet and brought in all the mud from the street onto MY front room carpet! Ruined it, been scrubbing it eva’ since! Can’t get it clean though.
APOLOGIST: (confounded) But that was over a thousand years ago madam!
HOUSEWIFE: Well its awright for you rich Europeans, buyin’ new carpets every ‘undred years, but us Arabs is poor working folks – our carpets ‘ave gotta last us at least a thousand years!
APOLGIST: Oh very well madam! Here’s a hundred pounds, will that do?
HOUSEWIFE: ‘Awright, I’ll let you off lightly this time but don’t do it again – coz if ya do I’ve got mi rollin’ pin ready!
APOLOGIST: Very well madam, no hard feelings – good day.
The housewife accepts the hundred pounds, closes the door and trudges over to her front room where her husband, dressed in a singlet and shorts, sits in an armchair, which is on a mud stained carpet – watching the football on TV with a beer in hand.
HOUSEWIFE: ‘Ay Saleh, some geeza’ jus came round and apologized for ‘em Crusades and gave mi ‘unred quid for mi front room carpet what they ruined!
SALEHEDIN EL AYOUBI: (Historic Kurdish chieftain who defeated and repelled the Crusaders – ending a reign of some two hundred years).
About bleedin’ time, Ive got ‘alf a mind to charge ‘im interest!
Now what’s that – ‘unred pound for a thousand years at 10% interest…?
HOUSEWIFE: You’ll do no such thing - you’ll get off yer arse, go out and get a paper and find a job! A thousand years of you indoors and underfoot is enough for me!
I ‘eard they is hiring Crusader repellers in Iraq – cant ya’ mate Saddam,you know the one what reckons he’s you, get you a job?
Ends to the strains of The Pillage People singing (from their Live in Baghdad album) “U.S can’t stop the looting, nobody can stop the looting…”
FINIS
10:19 am
Sunday, September 14, 2003
IM NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORIST BUT...
Is it possible that the Washington created an American prescence in Iraq (a shooting gallery) to deflect terrorist attacks from American soil (politcaly unpopular to say the least) and deflect them to and concentrate them on an American franchise in the Middle East (where most of the people with a serious and violent grudge towards Amercians are)?
Coraling terrorists and terrorist attacks into the one place.
Just like a child harnesses the entire power of the sun into a single beam of light and onto a single ant using a magnifying glass.
In this case, the sun is terrorism and the ant is Iraq.
If that sounds insane then why is that exact thing happening? - by design or default (it doesnt realy matter because the effect is the same) Iraqi civilians and American soldiers (not to mention international aid workers) are sitting ducks for the worlds terrorists, Iraq has become a terrorist magnet and Jiffy Mart and appears to be holding an international terrorism convention.
This is compounded by the hundreds of thousands of abruptly and arbitrarily decommissioned Iraqi soldiers and Baath Party members who suddenly find themselves with a lot of time (and weapons) on their hands – disbanding the army and the Baath party was definitely a case of throwing the baby out with the Baath party.
To those misguided souls who claim that these attacks are the work of "freedom fighters" "liberating their people from ocupation" I have one question for you - how can attacks on your own people (the car bomb that killed over a hundred Iraqis' in Najaf recently is just one of many examples) "liberate" them from anything other than their own lives?
It's black and white, you could tap these details into a calculator and get my result, come to my conclusion!
1:27 pm
WHY DONT THEY...? 1
Just declare L Paul Bremer 3d President of Iraq, put his pictures up all over the place,have him fire a rifle into the air whilst addressing a crowd from a balcony wearing a top hat and turn the Israel Hotel (formerly the Palestine Hotel) where the occupation forces are based into a presidential palace?
The only drawback I can envisage is that somehow Iraqis' chanting "with our souls, with our blood we redeem you oh L Paul" isnt quite the same as the Saddam version.
WHY DONT THEY...? 2
Just formalize what has become an informal proper name for Iraq - New Iraq?
All you here these days is "new Iraq this", "new Iraq that" - everyone from George Bush to the media and even the Iraqis themselves (I just saw the Iraqi foreign minister on television refering to "the new Iraq") is talking about "the new Iraq"!
Just formalize it (on the pattern of New Zealand) and get some American advertising agency to relaunch Iraq as "The New Iraq".
"New Iraq - now with added Americans!"
"100 percent more looting and common crime!"
"Saddam free!"
"Vase free!"*
"Only 87 billion USD (recommended retail price)!"
*Recall all that endless TV footage of countless Iraqis' looting countless vases - I'd hate to be a florist in "the new Iraq"! (a vase, a vase, my kingdom for a vase!).
10:16 am
John Howard is stepping up to the plate to bat for the One Nation Party again – criticizing Pauline Hanson's three year jail sentence for misusing electoral funds.
Nothing new for Mr. Howard, during One Nation's heyday in the late nineteen nineties, Howard usurped and co-opted One Nation – essentially turning them into the extreme right-wing faction of the ruling Liberal/National Party (known as the National's) Coalition.
Presto! It's the "One Nationals"!
The National Party end of the Coalition spectrum is the natural home of One Nation and One Nation was able to cater to a lot of disenfranchised disaffected erstwhile Coalition voters, particularly as One Nation's main body of support was in the rural redneck parts of the country that were previously served by the National Party.
The de facto Liberal/National Party/One Nation coalition ought to just rename themselves "The One Nationality (Anglo-Australian) Party".
Speaking of "nationalities", I find it very unusual that some Australians (usually Australians of non-Anglo ancestry) go around asking each other what "nationality" they are (referring to ethnic heritage).
5:47 am
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
It appears that the Iraqi's do not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD's) - as the previous regime maintained all along.*
Now, every week the North Koreans confess to having nuclear weapons and every week the Americans clamour to disavow that; making up all sorts of lame excuses to excuse what has just been said in so many words by a sovereign nations government - "this is just typical North Korean bluster", "theyre bragging", "they were pissed (drunk) at the time" etc.
UPDATE : On Friday 18th October the North Koreans even went as far as offering to SHOW the world their nuclear weapons ("Here it is,look how shiny it is!") - the Americans (surprise,surprise) dismissed this as "a negotiating tactic".
*Call me old fashioned but I believe that not finding any WMD's in Iraq over four monthes after the fall of the regime would indicate THAT THEY DONT HAVE THEM!
As a matter of fact the biggest proof of this (and also proof that that most members of the US administration are just stand up comedians in disguise) would have to be Donald Rumsfelds comments on the eve of the war in Iraq.
When asked by a reporter whether he thought iraq would use WMD's in the impending war Rumsfeld responded that no,he didnt think that they would.
Doesnt that indicate that the Americans knew that the Iraqis' did not have WMD's and doesnt that belie American accusations that they did have them?
Surely a besieged Saddam would use everything he had.
Rumsfelds' words were the most telling of the entire war,pre-war and post-war and nobody picked up on them (except my friend Peter Casey and I) - here's America about to invade Iraq ostensibly because they claim Iraq has WMD's yet on the eve of war their Defence Secretary says he doesnt believe they'l use those weapons!
Doesnt that mean that the Americans knew Saddam didnt have WMD's or, as is widely suspected,a deal had been done between them and Saddam that Saddam and most of his cronies would quitely slip out the backstage door during the intermission of this elaborate set piece - without taking a bow at the end and without using there "fireworks" (WMD's).
Funny old world, isnt it?
UPDATE : The frequency of North Koreas nuclear confesions appears to me to be increasing.
Everyday now North Korea says "we have nuclear weapons" and everyday America says "no,you dont".
"Yes we do".
"No you dont".
"Yes we do".
"No you dont"
"Do".
"Dont"
"Do".
"Dont"
Ad finitum.
11:59 am
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Caught up with Jenny, who’s en route back home to the UK after, thankfully, surviving the truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
She told me that the first thing that came into her head after the explosion was “who let that bomb in here!?!”
Jenny also recounted how, some months ago, she’d been paying a social visit to some American counterparts in the Green Zone and people were popping their heads into the office and casually discussing a "bomb threat at six o’clock" (half an hour away) as if it were like a staff meeting or something.
Fortunately, their “six o’clock” did not eventuate.
Jenny’s head of the UNICEF Mine Risk Education Program in Iraq.
I don’t know how one becomes a deminer but Jenny has studied theology and Middle Eastern politics and both those subjects are certainly minefields.
12:00 pm
Friday, August 29, 2003
The just published inquiry into the break up of the space shuttle Columbia has determined that mission controls last words to the shuttle were "we cant hear you - your'e breaking up".
10:41 am
I SEEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT ON BROADWAY
("ultra" edited version)
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
…Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
The Star Spangled Banner
(Francis Scott Key)
On Thursday 14 August some sixty million people across North-eastern America commemorated President George W Bush Day (also known as The Festival of No Lights) in the form of massive state-wide electricity blackouts.
The man of the hour, President Bush, made a live address to the nation – reassuring them that it was not the end of the world.
My parallel counter-address to the American people is, quite simply, “get a life and stop blaming Canada!” – its not use blaming them, as far as I know they don’t even have electricity!
Furthermore, I don’t think my welcoming Americans to the real world is schadenfreude – it’s an astonishing fact that more people today are living in the dark than during the Dark Ages!
This is merely how the “other half” live!
It certainly doesn’t warrant the blanket Breaking (so-called) News! coverage it received on U.S television!
The “star” of that coverage would have to be CNN’s Wolf Blitzer who offered
what I’d consider pretty obvious advice in the form of “a warning to viewers using candles – don’t let them spill over”.
First of all, that’s pretty elementary and furthermore it’s a non sequitur - if you're actually using candles then you wont be actually watching television in that you wont have the electricity to watch TV
And also its very low-tech advice from CNN – the polar opposite of the high tech involved in putting CNN to air and the polar opposite of the techno babble they usually bombard us with (yet very welcome respite).
Which just goes to show how in this high- tech era we can go from A to Z almost instantaneously and all it takes is just for the power to go out.
We’ve got all this technology but we don’t have the technology to actually be able to handle life without this technology - i.e. during a power failure when all that technology becomes useless and CNN, one of the most technologically advanced outfits on the planet, resorts to Candle Information which is pretty much all they can do in these circumstances.
I’m no Wolf Blitzer but still I humbly offer the only blackout advice I think one will ever need – look out for the “iron supplement’.
During my time in “electricity challenged” parts of the world my bête noir in the noir (so to speak) is always the ironing board.
Whenever I go looking for a candle in the dark I’m always surprised to find that an ironing board always pops up from nowhere and painfully ambushes me somewhere along my path.
Attack of the Killer Ironing Boards!
There may not of been an ironing board in the house, in the country or even in the entire world for that matter but as soon as the power goes, there it is – the malevolent ironing board from hell!
If you ever need an ironing board or simply cant find yours (although they’re pretty hard to lose) try this – turn out the lights (power cut simulation for those not lucky enough to have them) and it will come to you!
But, when all is said and done, there’s a silver lining in every cloud.
As antiquated electricity grids worldwide struggle to accommodate larger populations (coupled with increased demand) and power outages increase I urge anyone experiencing any sort of power outage anywhere to see that silver lining in those dark clouds of darkness.
Enjoy the all too brief respite from the world, technology and the twenty first century.
Catch your breath; lie down in the darkness and, God forbid, actually think!
Listen to the BBC World Service on a transistor radio or, God forbid, actually talk to people rather than bombarding them with stupid indecipherably abbreviated text messages or stupid unfunny emailed jokes and attachments.
Read a book by candlelight.
Look at the stars.
Make shadow puppets on the wall using a flashlight – the easiest is a bunny rabbit (although the novelty of this wears out pretty quickly).
But, if all that fails and your still not happy and you still cant live without electricity then I suggest you go fly a kite!
It worked for Benjamin Franklin!
10:32 am
I SEEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT ON BROADWAY
(edited version)
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
…Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
The Star Spangled Banner
(Francis Scott Key)
On Thursday 14 August some sixty million people across North-eastern America commemorated President George W Bush Day (also known as The Festival of No Lights) in the form of massive state-wide electricity blackouts.
The man of the hour, President Bush, made a live address to the nation – reassuring them that it was not the end of the world.
My parallel counter-address to the American people is, quite simply, “get a life and stop blaming Canada!” – its not use blaming them, as far as I know they don’t even have electricity!
Furthermore, I don’t think my welcoming Americans to the real world is schadenfreude – it’s an astonishing fact that more people today are living in the dark than during the Dark Ages!
This is merely how the “other half” live!
It certainly doesn’t warrant the blanket Breaking (so-called) News! coverage it received on U.S television!
The “star” of that coverage would have to be CNN’s Wolf Blitzer who offered
what I’d consider pretty obvious advice in the form of “a warning to viewers using candles – don’t let them spill over”.
First of all, that’s pretty elementary and furthermore it’s a non sequitur - if you're actually using candles then you wont be actually watching television in that you wont have the electricity to watch TV
And also its very low-tech advice from CNN – the polar opposite of the high tech involved in putting CNN to air and the polar opposite of the techno babble they usually bombard us with (yet very welcome respite).
Which just goes to show how in this high- tech era we can go from A to Z almost instantaneously and all it takes is just for the power to go out.
We’ve got all this technology but we don’t have the technology to actually be able to handle life without this technology - i.e. during a power failure when all that technology becomes useless and CNN, one of the most technologically advanced outfits on the planet, resorts to Candle Information which is pretty much all they can do in these circumstances.
Nobody here in Lebanon (where I am at the moment) needs that sort of information – although the civil war here ended more than twelve years ago we still have irregular power supply and daily power outages.
You certainly wont see wall-to-wall Breaking News! coverage on Lebanese television of power outages (even if they’re affecting entire cities)!
Actually, strictly hypothetically though as we’re a long way away from this, what you probably would get is wall-to-wall Breaking News! coverage in the very unlikely eventuality of power “inages” so to speak – that is electricity being on in entire cities.
Our situation here reminds me of a joke popular in Nigeria – “what did we have before we had candles? – electricity”; meaning that many such countries actually had functioning electricity before then going on to destroy that through war, corruption, incompetence, negligence etc (or all of the above and more in some cases)
And if that’s not bad enough, sometimes we even have to pretend that we don’t have power even when we do!
I’m not disclosing any state secrets here – its pretty much common knowledge – but during at least one of the Israeli incursions that happened every couple of years during the nineties (separate from the war of attrition that went on everyday) when Israel would conduct a one to two week concentrated blitzkrieg on Lebanese infrastructure (electricity being a major priority – several substations were destroyed) it would appear (it was pretty blatant) that the authorities had ordered all the electricity in Beirut turned off at night to give the impression to the Israelis that we weren’t home (TRY NEXT DOOR!).
Seriously, it would appear that that was done to give the Israelis the impression that they’d already succeeded in their mission and that they’d blown up and destroyed all our power plants and that they could just go home now – “ Nope, no electricity here! Move on, move on, nothing to see here!
Despite having one of the most powerful armies in the world, the Israelis weren’t my main concern at the time - my bête noir the in noir (so to speak) during that and other outages has always been what I call the “iron supplement’.
Whenever I go looking for a candle in the dark I’m always surprised to find that an ironing board always pops up from nowhere and painfully ambushes me somewhere along my path.
Attack of the Killer Ironing Boards!
There may not of been an ironing board in the house, in the country or even in the entire world for that matter but as soon as the power goes, there it is – the malevolent ironing board from hell!
If you ever need an ironing board or simply cant find yours (although they’re pretty hard to lose) try this – turn out the lights (power cut simulation for those not lucky enough to have them) and it will come to you!
But, when all is said and done, there’s a silver lining in every cloud.
As antiquated electricity grids worldwide struggle to accommodate larger populations (coupled with increased demand) and power outages increase I urge anyone experiencing any sort of power outage anywhere to see that silver lining in those dark clouds of darkness.
Enjoy the all too brief respite from the world, technology and the twenty first century.
Catch your breath; lie down in the darkness and, God forbid, actually think!
Listen to the BBC World Service on a transistor radio or, God forbid, actually talk to people rather than bombarding them with stupid indecipherably abbreviated text messages or stupid unfunny emailed jokes and attachments.
Read a book by candlelight.
Look at the stars.
Make shadow puppets on the wall using a flashlight – the easiest is a bunny rabbit (although the novelty of this wears out pretty quickly).
But, if all that fails and your still not happy and you still cant live without electricity then I suggest you go fly a kite!
It worked for Benjamin Franklin!
10:26 am
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
I SEEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT ON BROADWAY
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
…Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
The Star Spangled Banner
(Francis Scott Key)
On Thursday 14 August some sixty million people across North-eastern America commemorated President George W Bush Day (also known as The Festival of No lights) in the form of massive statewide electricity blackouts
My Dictaphone was not affected
Here’s what it recorded
2.50 AM on Friday 15 August.
Breaking (so-called) News! on the main networks and has been for about two hours (although the BBC has since dropped it but CNN persists) is massive power outages across several American cities (centred on New York) and apparently Canada as well.
And right now word coming in that the Canadian Prime Ministers Office says that lightning struck a power plant there (I didn’t know that they even had electricity in Canada!) - thus the cause of all those blackouts (hello! – ever heard of a lightning rod?)
Mayor Bloomberg has just been saying that there’s no evidence of any terrorist connection.
I’m just reading at the bottom of the screen on CNN that apparently twenty-one power plants shut down within three minutes.
Wolf Blitzer has just given what I’d consider pretty obvious advice in the form of “a warning to viewers using candles – don’t let them spill over” etc.
First of all, that’s pretty elementary and furthermore it’s a non sequitur - if you're actually using candles then you wont be actually watching television in that you wont have the electricity to watch TV
And also its very low-tech advice from CNN – the polar opposite of the high tech involved in putting CNN to air and the polar opposite of the techno babble they usually bombard us with.
Which just goes to show how in this high- tech era we can go from A to Z almost instantaneously and all it takes is just for the power to go out.
We’ve got all this technology but we don’t have the technology to actually be able to handle life without this technology - i.e. during a power failure when all that technology becomes useless and CNN, one of the most technologically advanced outfits on the planet, resorts to Candle Information which is pretty much all they can do in these circumstances.
So far the Americans are lucky because its still daytime but, as night falls, I think obviously that is when the trouble begins.
That’s not just for the obvious reason – that its harder to see in the dark – but also that in a lot of these “civilized” (developed) societies you turn the lights out or have the police go on strike and its complete pandemonium, complete regression, complete chaos and law of the jungle (looting, robbery, murder, etc).
I don’t think its schadenfreude to say to the Americans “welcome to the real world” – its an astonishing fact that more people today are living in the dark then during the dark ages!
Now the comparisons begin and the most obvious one I can think of is Lebanon, which I’m familiar with.
For all our faults, problems and tragedies even we don’t go crazy when the electricity goes off and there certainly isn’t a breakdown in law and order when the electricity goes off – that is apart from the usual breakdown in law and order.
What I’m saying is that there isn’t any additional breakdown in law and order – it’s just the usual normal regular breakdown in law and order.
By the way, that “breakdown in law and order” as I put it that we have in Lebanon isn’t what you’d expect when you hear that sort of term applied to somewhere like the Bronx - in Lebanon its simply a matter of controlled chaos (if that sounds like an oxymoron to you then you haven’t lived in Lebanon) like the crazy driving, the undisciplined individualistic nature of the people etc but perfectly orderly and civic to an extent.
I still have to struggle to resist the urge to shoplift every time I’m in a shop here and the electricity goes out.
God forbid, but I think New Yorkers might be actually wishing that this were a terrorist strike after what may ensue during the hours of darkness to come.
In that at least, God forbid, a terrorist strike is confined to a particular area or a particular building and is also external – coming from without.
Whereas an escalation in what I don’t think I’m exaggerating in calling the civil war that is ongoing in most American cities during the best of times would be widespread and random and across an entire city – coming from within.
Another comparison, you certainly wont see wall-to-wall Breaking News! coverage on Lebanese television of power outages (even if they’re affecting entire cities)!
Actually, strictly hypothetically though as we’re a long way away from this, what you probably would get is wall-to-wall Breaking News! coverage in the very unlikely eventuality of power “inages” so to speak – that is electricity being on in entire cities.
Although the civil war here ended over a dozen years ago we still have irregular power supply and daily power outages across the country and particularly in regional areas away from the cities.
Our situation here reminds me of the joke they say in some African country – “what did we have before we had candles? – electricity”; meaning that many such countries actually had functioning electricity before then going on to destroy that through war, corruption, incompetence, negligence etc (or all of the above and more in some cases)
The cause of Lebanon’s power problems appears to be that whilst most of the infrastructure appears to me to of been fixed or well on the way to this it appears that there are political factors that are now coming into play.
I’m not really following Lebanese affairs too closely (which I’m sick of and are always repetitive and it would actually a step up to say they were parochial, they’re less than parochial they're village politics) but apparently there’s a big kafuffle over the state owned Elecricite du Liban regarding outages, running out of fuel,etc.
I’ll get further details on that later (only to make fun of it) but it would appear that the increased shortages (does that make any sense or is that an oxymoron or have I invented an entirely new syntax?) we’ve had this summer have been due more to political factors, as usual in Lebanon, rather than actual technical infrastructure factors plus, once again as usual in Lebanon, corruption
Quite simply, somebody stole all the money!
That’s not the only time that politics has played a role in power outages but in the instance that I’m about to relate it was understandable and more a matter of national security (albeit futile).
I’m not disclosing any state secrets here – its pretty much common knowledge – but I remember that during at least one of the Israeli incursions that happened every couple of years during the nineties (separate from the war of attrition that went on everyday) when Israel would conduct a one to two week concentrated blitzkrieg on Lebanese infrastructure (electricity being a major priority – several substations were destroyed) it would appear (it was pretty blatant) that the authorities had ordered all the lights in Beirut turned off at night to give the impression to the Israelis that we weren’t home (TRY NEXT DOOR!).
Seriously, it would appear that that was done to give the Israelis the impression that they’d already succeeded in their mission and that they’d blown up and destroyed all our power plants and that they could just go home now – “move on, move on, nothing to see here!
Despite having one of the most powerful armies in the world, the Israelis weren’t my main concern at the time - my bette noir (in the noir so to speak) during that and other outages has always been what I call the “iron supplement’.
Whenever I go looking for a candle in the dark I’m always surprised to find that an ironing board always pops up from nowhere and ambushes me somewhere along my path.
There may not of been an ironing board in the house, in the country or even in the entire world for that matter but as soon as the power goes, there it is – the malevolent ironing board from hell!
If you ever need an ironing board or simply cant find yours (although they’re pretty hard to lose) try this – turn out the lights (power cut simulation for those not lucky enough to have them) and it will come to you!
But, when all is said and done, there’s a silver lining in every cloud.
As antiquated electricity grids worldwide struggle to accommodate larger populations coupled with increased demand and power outages increase I urge everybody anywhere experiencing any sort of power outage anywhere to see that silver lining in those dark clouds of darkness.
Enjoy the respite from the world, technology and the twenty first century.
Catch your breath; lie down in the darkness and, God forbid, actually think!
Listen to the BBC World Service on a transistor radio or, God forbid, actually talk to people rather than bombarding them with stupid abbreviated text messages or stupid unfunny emailed jokes and attachments.
Read a book by candlelight.
Look at the stars.
Make shadow puppets on the wall using a flashlight – the easiest is a bunny rabbit (although the novelty of this wears out pretty quickly).
But, if your still not happy with all that and you cant live without electricity then I suggest you go fly a kite!
It worked for Benjamin Franklin!
12:15 pm
TWELVE APATHETIC AUSTRALIAN MEN
-An apathetically short play by Renato Obeid
CHARACTERS: Twelve jurors.
SCENE: Twelve jurors in a jury room are deadlocked and unable to reach a consensus on a guilty verdict as one solitary standout juror has voted "innocent".
ACT ONE
DISSENTING JUROR: He's innocent I tell ya!
JURY FOREMAN: But we all reckon he's guilty!
DISSENTING JUROR: Enough already, all right I give up - he's guilty!
JURY FOREMAN: Guilty it is by unanimous consensus!
FINIS
12:07 pm
GOODBYE AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH
Iceland has withdrawn from the International Whaling Commision.
11:51 am
Friday, August 15, 2003
The first contingent of American troops has arrived in the Liberian capital Monrovia to instigate,supervise and oversee the post-conflict looting.
The chaos in Post-Saddam Iraqi is to be used as a model.
Excerpt from U.S Army manual pertaining to dealing with looting
"Scenario : persons involved in unauthorised reallocation of property (looting) to your left. Course of action to be taken : look to your right (the other way) - we're not local policemen,we're global policemen."
11:31 am
I was talking to someone at the pub the other night who regurgitated the old chestnut that pornography is exploitative of women.
Now, I don't know about that - women in pornos look pretty happy to me and seem to be enjoying themselves.
Besides, what better a way is there for a girl to make her parents proud of her than to appear in a porno?
11:10 am
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
PULLING UP STUMPS
- yesterdays "cricket" scores
Charles Taylor out for 7 (years),bowled Bush,caught Obasanjo
11:00 am
I'm at an internet café with my fourteen year old cousin Fouad, attempting to stop him from subscribing to some site or other that requires you to be over eighteen (need I say more?).
"You can't, you have to be over eighteen" (just one of the reasons why I won't let him).
"On the internet I am eighteen".
He doesn’t have the internet at home as his parents won't allow it yet for obvious and justified reasons.
What does he have to say about this?
"They read too many newspapers".
He goes on to say "and the only things newspapers write are the negative aspects of everything – including computers and the internet".
I don't think parents need to worry too much about a son like that.
Fouad was recently telling his father and I how he’d chosen ‘’schizo’’ as a nickname for himself in some computer gaming group.
His father objected to the name and recommended that he change it.
Foaud thought that it was a perfectly reasonable name and asked rhetorically ‘’what am I going to call myself, diarrhoea?’’
‘’Does it have to be an illness!’’ was his father’s bemused reply.
9:10 am
Friday, August 08, 2003
TERMINATOR 4 - RISE OF THE MACHINE
AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE
Automaton actor Arnold Schwazeneger has announced his candidacy ( as a Republican ) for Governor of California.
This after Democrat Governor Gray Davis was recalled ( Total Recall to use another Schwazeneger pun that the media may not of got hold of yet )
We have "recalls' in the Third World too - e.g. Saddam Husseins' "recall" of President Bakr In 1968 - but we call them coups d'état.
Schwazeneger married a Kennedy and now thinks he's a politician.
Um...wrong side Arnie - the Kennedys' are Democrats ( i.e. the OTHER party ).
Furthermore Arnie "your'e no John F Kennedy" but the one advantage you have over J.F.K is that at least you can pronounce "ich bin ein Berliner" and also mean it ( Arnies' from Austria but it's the same thing ).
10:28 am
Thursday, August 07, 2003
BLAH,BLAH,BLAH
Liberian President Charles Taylor says he'l step down on Monday - handing over the reins of power to Vice-president Moses Blah.
We shall see, we've heard this from Mr Taylor before.
Lets hope that this Moses doesn't have to wait fourty years.
12:03 pm
"I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT FUNNY!"
On the pattern of Unilevers' successful rebranding of margarine as "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!" I propose rebranding the following political parties with new names that more accurately reflect what they really are.
-Sein Fein becomes "I Can't Believe It's Not The IRA!".
-The Australian Labor Party becomes "I Can't Believe It's Not The Liberal Party!".
-The Australian Liberal Party becomes "I Can't Believe It's Not The Labor Party!".
-The Lebanese Phalange Party becomes "I Can't Believe It's Not Tashnak!" (no offence or disrespect intended but an Armenian heading the Phalange is like a Korean heading Sein Fein!).
-The American Republican Party becomes "I Can't Believe It's Not The Israeli Likud Party!".
-The American Democrats become "I Can't Believe Its Not The Israeli Labor Party!".
-The Israeli Labour and Likud partys become "I Can't Believe It's Not The Nazi Party!".
-The PLO becomes "I Can't Believe It's Not Hamas ( Islamic Jihad,etc )!".
P.S : On the pattern of Britains' Liberal Democrats the Australian Democrats become the Liberal Democrats because that is literaly what they are - the yuppie wing of the Liberal Party ( "they looked from Young Liberal to Democrat and couldn't tell the difference anymore" ).
11:55 am
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC
Are Protestants efficient,industrious and hard-working or what?
The stereotype rings true.
Whilst it takes the Catholic Church weeks,months and often years to rig innocent "verdicts" in "investigations" into charges against their clergy their Protestant counterparts do all that in UNDER TWENTY FOUR HOURS! ( instant innocent "verdicts" - an inversion of Stalinist instant guilty "verdicts" )
The American Episcopal House of Bishops took LESS THAN TWENTY FOUR HOURS to clear Canon Gene "Is That A Cannon In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?" Robinson ( that churchs' first openly gay bishop ) of charges leveled against him during a vote yesterday that was meant to confirm him as the Bishop of New Hampshire.
The Protestant work ethic is alive and well!
Too bad about other ethics though!
P.S: Mr Robinsons daughters' ( he was previously married ) defense of her father is an honourable case of filial loyalty but she shouldnt get too carried away.
She should bear in mind that she wouldnt be alive if her father hadnt of been less than 100% diligent in what she's so staunchly defending - his homosexuality.
10:03 am
Sunday, August 03, 2003
"THOSE RUSSIANS"
I saw a documentary on Rasputin last night and I was disappointed - it was nothing like the song!( I much prefer the song! )
Having heard the song ( "Rasputin" by Bonnie M ) and based my entire knowledge of Russian history on it ( along with the 1980 song "Moscow" ) I was very disappointed at the historical inaquaracies in the documentary - e.g they claimed his first name was "Grigor" wheras we all know it was "Rahrah" ( as in "Rahrah Rasputin,lover of the Russian queen" )!
10:33 am
THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW AGAINST...
Smart-arse pilots ejecting to safety before crashing their planes into crowds at air shows and killing scores of onlookers whilst doing smart-arse tricks ( modern kamikaze pilots in every aspect except the suicide part ).
What's the difference between the 9/11 pilots and these pilots? - the 9/11 pilots stayed in "their" planes.
THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW AGAINST...
Air shows - like we don't know whats going to happen!
The only purpose they serve is to provide spectacular footage for the closing moments of T.V news bulletins ( as the "News Music" plays and the graphics roll ) on days where there is'nt any footage of cute animals being born at some zoo somewhere or South Koreans rioting ( what is it about South Koreans and rioting? ).
10:12 am
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
“THE BELL TOLLS FOR THEE”
The weekends failed mini coup d’état ( Coup Lite ) in the Philippines in which some three hundred disgruntled junior army officers took over a shopping mall for an entire weekend ( and didn’t buy a single thing ) is a sign of the times and a harbinger of things to come ( apart from a continuing decline in retail figures ).
In the modern ALL- NEW! ALL- CAPITALIST! NOW WITH 25% MORE CAPITALISM! sans Berlin Wall world seizing radio stations, parliaments, presidential palaces and other archaic symbols of power are things of the past.
Coup plotters need now only seize their local Westfield ( shopping mall ).
Just as disgruntled consumers may boycott these “palaces” of capitalism, disgruntled political consumers can also make a point by inversing this – seizing the seat of capitalism ( the only seat of power in the modern world) to make a point that all is not well in their corner of the New World Order.
In an instance of perfect convergence, their complaints and demands were also of a very capitalist nature - “more money please”.
Which is a fair enough end, but I’m not too keen on the means.
They’re reminiscent of those brave anti-American and/or anti-globalisation ( is there a difference?) “warriors” who choose to confront the Yanks not by the cowardly method of fighting the worlds most powerful army wherever they may find them but by courageously attacking McDonalds outlets PACKED WITH THEIR OWN COMPATRIOTS! ( McDonalds is meant to be a happy place people! )
I.e. here in now peaceful Lebanon we had a spate of ( fortunately non-lethal ) bomb attacks on American fast food franchises ( mainly McDonalds – I knew that crap was bad for you! ) by fundamentalists protesting American and Israeli policies in Iraq and Palestine.
Good one! Protest massacres of innocent Arabs by massacring innocent Arabs! Hello! ( excuse me for temporarily lapsing into the detestable American habit of saying "hello" out of context ).
To paraphrase Shakespeare's Shylock "hath not Ronald McDonald two eyes, two ears,two all beef patties...on a sesame seed bun?"
Despite the government’s denials that the thriller in Manila was not an attempted coup but rather a “mutiny”, “rebellion”, etc, it was indeed a coup attempt.
The only difference between these euphemisms for coups – “mutiny”, “rebellions”, “army’s having a bad hair day”, etc – and actual coups is that they are merely coups that nobody attended and thus didn’t work.
In other words, if a coup attempt happens in the forest and nobody sees it – did it still happen? Of course it did!
Unlike Philippine President Gloria Some Middle Name I Didn’t Understand Arroyo’s soft coup d’état two years ago which was very well attended ( by the army and the populace ) and thus succeeded.
Question – what does a Third World leader do immediately after coming to power in a coup d’état?
Answer – ban coups d’état! ( “New rules!, new rules!” or - my elder brothers favourite line when we were kids and my younger sister and I would want to imitate something verboten he’d JUST done – “no, YOU cant do it, mum and dad will find out”* )
Arroyo overthrew Joseph Estrada in 2001 with the military’s assistance and is now peeved and alarmed to learn that what’s good for the goose ( herself ) is also good for the gander ( Estrada ) – i.e. the army that overthrew Estrada on her behalf can also overthrow her on Estrada’s behalf! ( as the weekends shenanigans apparently were an attempt at ).
The symbol of the Philippine army should be a double-edged sword.
But, then again I suppose we shouldn’t begrudge and deprive the Third World of their national sport ( coups d’états ) as its often their only form of , albeit slightly imperfect, democracy.
Put it this way, at least a coup prone continent like Africa can get to change , swap and vary dictators ( a change of blood – too bad about the spillage ) whereas the Middle East has to put up with the one dictator for life!
Furthermore, Ms Arroyo’s rise to power (just like her Indonesian counterpart Megawati ) is a further example ( if needed ) of the dangers of giving women their so-called “rights”.
Both the Philippines and Indonesia “enjoy” universal suffrage but no, that’s not good enough for Ms Arroyo and Megawati.
They both became Vice – Presidents of their countries (which is a lot better then cooking or washing dishes, etc ).
Do you think they were happy with that?
Nope!
They both overthrew their male presidents!
Women! Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile!
*Of course we never went as far as actual coups d’état but several regimes ( municipal councils that is ) did breath a sigh of relief when we matured though.
10:30 am
VATICAN TO MOUNT CAMPAIGN AGAINST GAY MARIAGES
- "Priests arent supposed to marry"
7:56 am
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
BLAIR MURDERS DISIDENT
- British Prime Minister not as gay as he looks
- Freedom of speech is like... so "old Europe"
- God save the Queen because nothing will save this "queen" - Kelly Affair will be the downfall of Tony Blair
10:05 am
Friday, July 18, 2003
RENATOOBEIDSWORLD - "WE DISTORT, YOU DERIDE"*
( *no apology to Fox News )
12:30 pm
IN-DEPTH NEWS ANALYSIS - UGANDA
Ugandan President Yoweri Mussevini has a VERY funny name.
Whilst Mr Mussevini is the darling of the international community ( who consider him the father of Ugandan democracy ) he, in actual fact, varies very little from his ( dictatorial ) predecesors who also had VERY funny names ( dont the names MILTON Obote and IDI Amin just crack you up? - funnier part of name emphasized in block letters ).
Lets face it - the name Yoweri Mussevini sounds a lot like the name of the crazy farmer who was always trying to shot Bugs Bunny in the cartoon!
African renaisance my foot!
P.S : Uganda is also landlocked.
Boohoo, boohoo - poor little landlocked Uganda.
"We're landlocked! - we're stuck!, we cant get out!, what are we going to do?"
Winge, winge, winge!
Enough with the complaining already!
Go climb a tree! ( those things attached to coconuts )
I've got problems of my own!
One man can't solve all the worlds problems on his own ( as I've been doing on this weblog ) - feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and unlocking land!
Talk about compasion fatigue!
If I never hear the word "Uganda" ever again it wont be soon enough...soon after...sooner enough or something like that!
Whats good for the goose is good for the Uganda!
12:23 pm
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
PIECEMEAL
Ariel Sharon is indeed a "man of peace" as George W calls him.
He wants a piece of Palestine, a piece of Lebanon, a piece of Syria, a piece of Jordan and a piece of Egypt.
10:34 am
Friday, July 11, 2003
SEING DOUBLE
Singapore doctors are attempting to seperate the Australian Labour Party from the Liberal Party.
The Siamese twins are joined at the Mark Latham - the Labour partys' poor mans Liberal.
Latham suggested a Marie Antoinetesque solution to poverty - he proposes that struggling Australians be encouraged to invest in shares.
He sees this as a way of weaning them off welfare dependancy.
Good one! - get people off welfare dependancy and get them onto gambling dependancy!
Besides, poor people are too busy trying to "invest"in FOOD!
Something not easy for people governed by facists such as Latham to do!
12:34 pm
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
Kuwaiti men went to the polls on Friday in men-only parliamentary elections that have drawn criticism from womens rights groups ( anarchists - giving women their "rights" would surely lead to anarchy ).
Typical women, always complaining -nag, nag, nag!
I'm all in favour of women getting the vote ( in Kuwait or any other country ) that way we men get two votes - ours and our wives.
That’s a t least two votes – if you have multiple wives (as some people do) or you have daughters or sisters or other women that you have influence over, that’s even more votes.
11:06 am
THE TAYLOR OF LIBERIA
Liberian President Charles Taylor is up there with the Palestinians in the Civil Wars Caused category.
He's tailor-made civil wars in three neighbouring countries ( Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Guinea - collect the set ) and now they've boomeranged back to him at home.
What a proper charlie!
UPDATE : The Americans are reportedly on the verge of giving Taylor an ultimatum to step down.
But, emboldened by their success in Iraq, they wont be affording him the luxury of the 48 hours that Saddam had.
My sources ( who I cant name because I made them up ) have leaked an advance copy of the ultimatum to me.
It reads,
"We're going to turn around, close our eyes ( we promise not to peek ) and count to ten realy slowly ( the countdown includes 9 1/4, 9 1/2 , 9 3/4 ).
When we've done that and we open our eyes and turn around we expect President Taylor to be gone"
10:59 am
Friday, June 20, 2003
I'M TOO SEXY FOR MILAN
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Hariri has rigged a parliamentary vote granting him imunity from corruption charges ( amongst others ) against him currently being heard by a Milan court.
12:04 pm
A female contraceptive patch has gone on sale in Europe .
Didn't that used to be callled a chastity belt?
11:51 am
Having agreed to meet a visiting friend of a friend at her Beirut hotel at 10.30PM, I committed what is in Lebanon a social faux pas – I arrived on time!
"How could you come on time?" she asked me when I spoke to her from reception.
I told her that it was a gentleman's duty to be on time and a lady's duty to keep him waiting and proceeded to wait in the lobby for some forty-five minutes for her and her friends to finish getting ready for our big night out at the "Les Tycoon" nightclub.
Who's Les Tycoon?
5:48 am
Saturday, June 14, 2003
FILM REVIEW - "ROAD MAP"
Writen and directed by George Bush Sr.
Grand Wizard productions.
Running time : until the next suicide bombing
Hot on the heels of his inferior "Gulf War" sequel comes George Bush Srs' "Bible" sequel.
Movie-goers who have waited some five thousand years for a sequel to the still playing "Bible" classic ( CNN calls it "Conflict in the Holy Land!" ) will welcome this road movie tragicomedy.
It stars Mahmoud Abbas and Yaser Arafat as mismatched good cop/bad cop ( respectively ) Israeli policemen.
These two partners just can't seem to get it right or to get along and are always having their "arses hauled in" by their grouchy ( but loveable ) chief Ariel Sharon who's always threatening to "come down on you so hard you won't know what hit you!"
Appearances by George Bush Jr as the bumbling sherif, King Abdallah as "The Wests Good Arab", Hosni Mubarak as "The Wests So So Arab" and Tony Blair as the assistant sherif - most famous for his ongoing role as manager of an American petrol station ( Britain ) in Europe.
Colin Powell had been considered for a part as one of the cops ( to satisfy the buddy cop genres criteria of black cop/white cop ) but was deemed unsuitable for the role after his unconvincing portrayl of a black man in "Cabinet" ( Eddy Murphy he's not).
Powell can take solace in his Academy Award for his since abondoned role as a dove.
Not the most original film idea and doesn't differ much from previous unsuccesful films in the genre - e.g. the "Security Council Resolution" series, "Camp David", "Madrid", "Oslo Accord", "Mitchel Plan", "Tenet Plan" and "Wye River"/"Cry Me A River".
Furthermore, it's disapointingly derivative in parts - the scene in which Yaser Arafat's Ramalah compound is destroyed mirrors a scene in another American cop comedy, "Lethal Weapon 2", in which Mel Gibsons beachside house is destroyed.
Don’t expect any cartographic wonders either, Wrong Way Arafat has never been good with maps – when the PLO were based in Beirut, Arafat’s “Foreign Minister” Farouk Kaddoumi famously said “the road to Palestine (south of Beirut) goes through Jounieh (north of Beirut)."
How about ''the road to Jerusalem goes through a proper map''?
Despite playing to a "captive" audience in the Holy Land ( the entire Palestinian population ) the films popularity in the West depends on George Bush Jr's rather short attention span.
That attention span could get even shorter as George W runs for election ( note : election not re-election as he wasn't elected in 2000 ) in 2004.
My final verdict on "Road Map"?
Quite simple - borrowing another cliche from the cop movie genre - "move on, move on ,nothing to see here".
Check your newspaper headlines for details as session times ( and indeed session availability ) are subject to change depending on suicide bombings.
11:56 am
Australian Prime Minister John Howard says he won't retire but will continue to allow plebiscites on his rule ( what passes for an election in Australia these days ) a la Saddam.
I think the Australian opposition in ( internal self inflicted ) exile won't be as lucky as their Iraqi counterparts - removing Saddam was easy, John Howards 69 % approval rating in the polls means the ALP leader Simon Chalabi need not pack his bags for the Lodge anytime soon.
But, the polls aren't always right ( except the Poles who last week wisely approved their country's Europen Union membership in a referendum ) and aren't much to go by.
Neither is previous election performance.
Saddam scored a modest 100% at the last plebiscite ( a .04% swing ( up from 99.96% in 1995 due to his success with aspirational voters, i.e. those who aspired to stay alive ) yet months later he was over thrown by a bunch of brave Kurds armed with nothing but the worlds strongest army.
Funny old world.
P.S : The Kurds used to be my favourite oppresed ethnic minority but now I feel that they've sold out, gone commercial, mainstream!
Kurd overkill in the media - Kurds this, Kurds that, Kurds and whey!
Enough with the Kurds already!
Now, how about those Nubians?
10:57 am
Football : ENGLAND DEFEAT HALF A COUNTRY
The England football team defeated one half of the former Czechoslovakia, Slovakia 2 - 1.
The other half, the Czechs were in the mail.
Englands moment of glory in world football was their little vaunted defeat of another half country, West Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final.
England are reportedly keen to take on former Yugoslav republics ( who are one sixth of a country ).
COUNTRY PROFILE : UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND AND BASRA
CAPITAL : Bondi, Sydney
LANGUAGE : American
CURRENCY : "THE FUCKIN' POUND AND FUCKIN' PROUD OF IT AND THATS THE WAY ITS FUCKIN' STAYING"
HEAD OF STATE : Alister Campbell
GOVERNMENT : One party state ( Labour parliament ). Minority rule ( Scotish cabinet ).
POPULATION : Pakistani
NATIVE POPULATION : The Yugoslavia of Western Europe is made up of balkanized waring ethinc and religous based nations - primarily English, Scotish, Welsh and Irish.
They are held together by the Tito of Western Europe, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd.
EXPORTS : Convicts ( hist ), football "fans", tabloid "journalists", backpackers, Benny Hill.
ALLIANCES : - The European Union where they are the hermetic isolated North Korea of the E.U.
- NATO ( aka American Petrol Stations Association ). The U.K is the American military's main refueling stop in Europe.
- United Nations. Siamese twinned ( joined at the Blair ) with the U.S on the Security Council.
- Britain is also the political/diplomatic wing of the United States ( the U.S being its own military wing ).
COLONIES : Basra ( Iraq ), Northern Ireland ( Ireland ) and a volcano ( Montserat ).
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