Newspaper travel writing: Worse than necrophilia

(Necrophilia: Oh goody…!)

Well, by now I suppose most people will have heard that Jade Goody, former Big Brother star, slash racist monster, slash cancer saint has died. To those who haven’t I can only say that they have no idea how jealous I am of their non-Jaded life and that’s all I’m going to say about the whole sorry subject.

Which is more than I’d planned to do but, a bit earlier today, I was reading a newspaper article that seriously annoyed me - which led me to think about the many things that do irritate me, these days, about the media.

One of the things that immediately springs to mind is the way that the so-called mainstream or (God help us) ’serious’ media have embraced the vacuous world of celebrity news & gossip. It used to be only the tabloids that dealt with the likes of Jade Goody, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, or with stories about UFOs, Jetis and the (adopted) children and/or religions of various movie and pop stars. Nowadays, you’re as likely to read about Madonna’s Kabbalah crap or some starlet’s new tattoo in the London Times as in the National Enquirer.

Which is extremely aggravating but not the most irritating part of today’s dumbed down newspaper industry.

No, what’s truly annoying is the way our papers have become the proud propagators of any damn new life style fad that’s doing the rounds. Page after page after page will be wasted on ever new spas and diets – and if it’s not diets, then it’s a never ending stream of articles about other food fads, or cosmetic uses of certain food products.

Then, there are endless columns about dating, about sex, about children, about schools, about family holidays and single weekends – and all of them asserting that the problems (or, God forgive me: ‘challenges’) that we face now are truly different from anything mankind ever had to deal with.

The Bubonic plague; the first and second world war; Stalin’s gulags or Mao’s reeducation camps; all the Jewish pogroms throughout history…?

Psah! That’s nothing compared with today’s work stress, or weight problems, or sexual unfulfillment.

Still, even these moronic life style sections in today’s newspapers are not the true ham sandwich at a Bar Mitzvah. No, the worst of the worst are articles like the following:

“Some people would hate Knoydart. No shops, no cinemas, just 85 square miles of Highland heather, mountains and midges, where deer outnumber locals 10:1. There is a pub, but it’s an 18-mile hillwalk from the nearest road. There is a ferry from Mallaig, but it’s closed at weekends. See why some people might not bother?

Well, Knoydart is just about my favourite place on earth. It’s a land of rare, desolate beauty, a real wilderness. If that sounds good to you, read on: we’ve found 11 more wild, magical, abandoned Knoydarts around the globe.”

Yes, the travel section.

It’s not just the fact that almost all of these travel pieces are written by the kind of people you would hate to sit next to on any airplane: The hopeless hobbyist, the trendy Jet Set wannabe, the cheap skate weekend escapist, the cruise and four star elitist, the wildlife anorak and the pathetic beach bore.

In other words, the neighbours/colleague/uncle from Hell – the ones who will bore your head off with stories about their holiday and who will show you their photos and home movies until you manage to saw their heads off with the nearest more or less sharp instrument within easy reach.

Worse than these travel stories though are the kinds of articles that inform the millions of eager readers about some unspoilt, unknown destination. A tropical island with its coral reef as of yet untouched; a city that, so far, has avoided to become a stag weekend destination; a hiking trail or river that has been overlooked for centuries; an indigenous tribe that, till this day, had not heard of Big Macs or Big Brother…

Yes, the kind of article that serves as a map that points the rapacious tourist crowd towards the last few unspoilt places on Earth.

In a way, the people who write these travel pieces are far worse than those who make their money with their disgusting Jade Goody obituaries. No matter what you may have thought about her when she was alive, she’s gone now and well out of it. Whatever the tabloids (and mainstream newspapers) choose to do to her corpse doesn’t matter all that much. The dead don’t mind a bit of necrophilia.

These travel writers though are making their sad wages with the rape, and the encouragement of rape, of the last few virgin bits of our long-suffering planet.

Compared to that, fucking the famous corpse of a cancer victim is a more harmless and attractive life style choice.

Suicide watch over Austria’s “cellar monster” Josef Fritzl intensified – One question: Why?

(Humanity: Just one big game of ‘Happy Families’…)

There are many things I don’t understand.

Obviously, people can’t be allowed to dump their rubbish wherever and whenever they would like. (Actually, the fact that littering is more or less accepted by most is another thing I can’t understand – and something that’s very telling about the sad state our civilisation is in.)

Anyway, I do appreciate that we need laws to regulate certain forms of waste disposal. When we find ourselves with a defunct fridge or a crappy sofa, it shouldn’t be an option just to throw these items out of our sixth floor windows, drop them in the middle of a busy roundabout or leave them in Princess Diana’s memorial pond.

Same with nests of unwanted kittens or leaky grandparents: We shouldn’t be allowed to tie these surplus-to-requirements critters (with some complementary stones) in a sack and throw them into the nearest canal or fresh water reservoir.

Still, and as I started saying, there are many things I don’t get - and one of them is why any government would feel it is its business to interfere when we decide that it’s our own selves that we think are surplus to requirement.

True, people kill themselves for the silliest of reasons: From broken hearts and bad exam results, to things like Internet peer pressure – but humans have been acting stupidly and self-destructively since time began for us and I’m not sure it’s the role of government to protect us from these types of mad impulses.

So, the moment the doctor says that the cancer has spread and I have six months of ever more painful months to live through, I want to be able to say, “Stop this planet; I want to get off now!”, without any government’s official even thinking about interfering.

Same when I would hear I am in the early stages of Alzheimer – or, to be frank, for whatever damn reason I would choose to call it a day.

Anyway, all of the above ramblings were inspired by the following article – and yes, again, it’s something I truly don’t get:

“Prison authorities in Austria have intensified their suicide watch over Josef Fritzl, amid fears that the convicted child killer and rapist will try to kill himself after receiving a life sentence for abusing his daughter for 24 years.

Erich Huber-Günsthofer, the vice-president of the prison in St Pölten, where Fritzl will be held until his transfer to a psychiatric institution, said yesterday that his mental health had deteriorated since the verdict last week in his trial for kidnapping, raping and incarcerating his daughter, and murdering one of the seven children she bore him.”

Don’t you love it that they claim his mental health deteriorated AFTER all he did in that damn cellar…?

Like, “Yes, m’Lud, the defendant was fine, really: A perfectly healthy & happy little bunny, until those cruel cops arrested him and some sadistic judge decided to lock him up.”

Truly, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish’ doesn’t even come close to describing the situation, so why should the state try to keep the guy alive?

I’ve tried but I really cannot come up with one good reason why the state should be expected to walk an extra few inches or spend even half a Euro more, trying to keep this man alive, when he would choose to hop on the perdition express himself.

(Herr Fritzl, they are playing your song…)

Taxpayers Should Reward Gaming Industries--Win or Lose

Taxpayers Should Reward Gaming Industries--Win or Lose

By Grant Lawrence

Image via Wikipedia

Recently it was reported that casinos may not be allowed to use any of the federal stimulus money. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has asked for clarification of the Casino ban by pointing out that casinos are often the only suitable place for conferences and workshops.

I support Senator Reid on this.

I do believe that the federal government should be doing more to help the casinos. After all, look at what the federal government has done to help other institutions that engage in gambling.

For instance the government has pumped billions into AIG, a gambling operation that pretended to be an insurance company. Now the casinos make sure that they come out the winners in their gambling transactions but AIG must have been fairly unschooled in gaming so they lost big on their bets.

So here we have a case where the federal government is rewarding inefficiencies and bad business practices by giving hundreds of billions to AIG but not allowing successful casinos to get a little of that stimulus money.

But is that the message we want to send our young people. That you can be too rich too fail so we want to make sure that you are covered in your gaming practices. But if you are a successful gamer then you get nothing from the taxpayers. Or do we want to send the message that whether you win or lose, if you are a super wealthy gambler, we will reward your success as well as your failures.

AIG is only one example of gaming gone bad. Trillions are now being pumped into the hands of the Wall Street and banking gamblers that made their bets on "toxic assets," credit default swaps, off balance sheet dirivatives, and whatever other gaming that seemed a good bet at the time.

Some say that when it all said and done that there may be 5 to 10 trillion dollars that will have been used to save the losers in the Wall Street gaming industry. But casinos are an example of successful gaming and therefore they should also be rewarded with their fair share.

If we make sure all big time gaming is rewarded our young people will continue to have faith in the American system. A system that rewards success as well as failure as long as you are a part of the elite wealthy that control the country and the world.

So I stand with Senator Harry Reid in asking that all gaming be rewarded and not just the failed operations. We must reinforce American values here.

An America that values the failed rich and the successful rich and will continue to make sure that the super rich get to enjoy the fruits of the people's labors. An America where the people support their super wealthy with pride. An America where the super rich know that they have the full faith and support of the people as well as their government. An America that is also willing to do what it can to help cover the gaming of the super wealthy around the world. An America that puts their dollars into action by making sure that super wealthy gamers around the world know that they are loved and cared for by the taxpayers in this country.

I join with Senator Reid in asking for an America with deep pockets for those that need it most.
The super wealthy gaming industries.

Obama’s White House is channeling Churchill: Michelle is digging for victory

(Who do you think you’re kidding, Mr Limbaugh…?)

During World War ll, the British government thought it was wise to encourage the people at home to feel that they were involved in the fighting.

It is highly unlikely that all the home guards and ‘dad’s armies’ that flowered all over the land and kept themselves busy patrolling the streets, doing army type exercises and looking out for Nazi spies had any real influence on the way the war was fought and eventually won - but it was good for morale and that was important. Especially in the early days, when military success was far from certain and all the news from the various fronts was very grim indeed.

Another exercise in engaging the population at large was the famous ‘Dig for victory’ campaign, in which people, all over the land, were encouraged to grow their own vegetables. Again, it’s improbable that this scheme caused Hitler to lose much sleep but it did give the British people the idea that they were doing their bit. So, what with Churchill’s uplifting ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’ messages and planting spuds & dubious tobacco substitutes, morale was actually quite high.

Now, you may say that ours is a more cynical age, in which a news savvy and politicians wary population can’t be comforted, wooed or simply distracted by using World War ll methods.

Well, maybe so but someone in the White House disagrees with that bleak assessment.

So, with North Korea and Iran getting ever closer to becoming true nuclear players, with our rainforests disappearing as fast as our icebergs, with Osama Bin Laden and his kidney machine still hiding somewhere in some grim, fairytale cave and with the world’s economy as likely to return to life as Frankenstein’s monster during a power outage…

… it is quite a comfort that Michelle Obama, like a born again Churchill (sans cigar, sans jowls, sans bowler hat & sans drinking habits), is calling on the people not to lose hope.

(Winston would dig Michelle…)

Come Hell, high water or Rush Limbaugh, Michelle will bloody well keep on digging for victory:

“Michelle Obama has begun digging an organic kitchen garden at the White House which will supply the first family with vegetables for many of their meals. Michelle Obama went digging at the White House today wearing a pair of expensive-looking Jimmy Choos boots.”

The new “If you make it clean, I’ll make it dirty” condom campaign: The British government is grooming girls for the “ride of their life”

(In your dreams, little man; in your dreams…)

Dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Well, I’m sure by now you will have heard the latest piece of mass murderous crap, spouted by the Pope. He’s a great admirer of the NRA, is our Pope – only he has adapted their motto ever so slightly, in order to give birth to this mantra, “AIDS doesn’t kill people: Condoms kill people.”

Anyway, as I said, old news and not even exactly news the moment he said it but it is kind of topical. I mean, look at the latest bit of nonsense the British Health Minister has come up with. As I started saying, ‘Dear, oh dear, oh dear…’

“Ministers have been accused of promoting promiscuity after launching a new campaign to encourage young women to carry condoms. The £5.2 million publicity drive tells women in their late teens and early 20s that men are attracted to girls who carry the contraceptives.

It advises that “men like nothing better than a woman who knows what she wants”. The initiative, launched by Health Minister Dawn Primarolo, also gives young women advice on how to persuade men to use condoms. Recommended phrases include “If you make it clean, I’ll make it dirty” and “Let’s get you ready for the ride of your life”.”

The Pope will not be much pleased with this one.

I have to say though that those prophylactic chat up lines need a bit more work. “If you make it clean, I’ll make it dirty?” Good grief. That’s straight from the Porky’s high school of thought.

You can picture this sad subcommittee of middle-aged men, who never got laid before their wedding night with Mrs ever-so-earnest-and-boring Right, thinking up these lines – their reading glasses steaming up, fantasising about young, REAL women who would carry CONDOMS…!!!

The only type of men, in other words, who could dream of putting such pathetic drivel into a woman’s mouth, picturing same woman taken their own pathetic shriveled male bits inside her luscious mouth as a just reward, no doubt.

Anyway, for these types of males (and almost every politician really) there truly should be a special, one-size-fits-all condom that women could carry with them at all time. Airtight and virus proof, and big enough to hold these men – and a few largish stones – and easy to throw in the nearest river, like so many sad sacks of very much undesired kittens.

(”I am the Pope and I did not approve this message…”)