To Boldly Litter Where No Man Has Littered Before

The Earth is an orbiting garbage dump.  You know all of that stuff we persist in shooting into outer space.  Well it turns out that outer space isn't so outer after all and most of it doesn't come back.  There is a multitude of crap whizzing around our planet serving no purpose except to act as a hazard to navigation for anybody trying to visit or, for that matter, leave.  It has to be said though that being pelted with high velocity garbage is probably about as appropriate a welcome to planet Earth as we could devise.  After that the aliens could hardly say they weren't warned.

I think the presence of this orbital garbage is a good thing.  Alien invasions are going to be that much harder if the all conquering battlefleet has to steer like a roller coaster just to get into that position beloved of sci fi movies of looming ominously over the planet's major cities.  It also sends out a very powerful signal.  "If this is what its like in the space around the planet just imagine what you're going to encounter on the surface".  Nobody travels several hundred million light years to invade a garbage dump.  I personally wouldn't cross the street.

The more I think about it the more I realise that massive levels of pollution and environmental degradation aren't signs of short sighted, greed driven consumerism.  Instead they are the result of a subtle, carefully thought out planetary defence strategy to protect us from alien domination.  Which makes environmentalists not just irritating but actual traitors.  They are fifth columnists of the worst kind plotting to deliver us into the waiting tentacles of their alien paymasters.  "Save the trees," these eco-Quislings howl with one eye cocked to the heavens hoping to gain the approval of our new masters.

Extra trees, saved whales, drinking water untainted by arsenic, these are all signs that our time as an independent species ruling our own planet is coming to an end unless we take drastic action.  Burn, pollute, destroy and above all keep shooting stuff into space and leaving it there.  If we do this future generations can look up at the starless night sky and wheeze a little prayer of thanks to their wiser (and no doubt longer lived) ancestors.

Why Cows Hate Me

I'm currently the recipient of a certain amount of gentle teasing from my co-workers revolving around what I like to eat.  Or more specifically, what I don't like to eat.  Apparently a distaste for seafood and wagyu beef are sufficient to classify me as some sort of mentally disturbed freak.  Which is funny when you think about it because there are much better reasons to classify me as some sort of mentally disturbed freak.

All right, I get the seafood thing.  Most people love it and I really don't.  Disliking seafood is a little unusual particularly when it extends to pretty much everything water related including, in all likelihood, seaweed, otters and low flying albatrosses but I refuse to accept there is anything strange in disliking wagyu beef.

Wagyu, I am led to understand (by wikipedia admittedly) is so damned delicious because of the marbling of fat throughout the meat which adds great flavour when cooked properly or something like that.  All well and good but I don't like fatty meat.  I cut the fat off any meat I get my hands on.  As far as I'm concerned you could get the same result as wagyu but cooking a regular steak in a bucket of lard and I wouldn't eat that either.

Then there is the sheer effort put into raising wagyu cattle.  Special diets, massages, loads of care and attention.  I fully approve of efforts to make food as tasty as possible but surely there comes a point when we have to admit its all a bit much for what is ultimately little more than a fifteen minute journey from plate to digestive tract.  Possibly the cows appreciate the extra attention.  It would be nice to think there was some sort of bovine status symbol attached to being a wagyu beef cow.  This may sound a little sad but the average cow's life consists of eating grass and getting killed.  Compared to that the attention lavished on wagyu cattle must seem a little special.  A slave's only source of pride is the price he brings at auction and equally a cow can only measure its worth by the care taken in preparing it for the kill and the price demanded for its meat afterwards.  Then I come along turning up my nose at all these classy cows and demanding the most plebeian of lean beef.  Cows must really hate me.  Sorry cows!

My Teeth Are Dentist Whores

I am deeply annoyed at my teeth.  I clean them, I floss them, I speak gently to them in the dark and they go and repay me by hurting occasionally.  It seems that no sooner do I visit the dentist than, bam, ten years later I'm back again.  Possibly my teeth just get lonely for the attention of somebody else.  This annoys me, we're supposed to have an exclusive relationship.  It's not as though I use other teeth occasionally.  If it was going to be OK for us to see other people that is something that should have been worked out at the beginning of the relationship not several decades in.  Still like many insecure people in relationships I will tolerate the occasional infidelity of my teeth for fear that if I don't they will leave me for ever.

I suppose it isn't to be wondered at that my teeth may stray occasionally.  After all, dentists are better educated than I am, they earn more money and they have lots of interesting toys specifically designed for the benefit of teeth.  I should be grateful that my teeth didn't run away with a dentist years ago.  Still it hurts, quite a bit actually.  The only thing in my favour is that dentists are total sluts.  They may make my teeth feel like they're the only ones in the world while I'm actually in the chair but we both know that as soon as I leave the surgery that wonderful dentist will be elbows deep into someone else's mouth.  That's the way it is with dentists, there's always another set of teeth walking in the door desperate for a little loving.  Who can blame them for taking advantage of their opportunities.

Of course what this means is that one day my teeth will leave me for good, hoping against hope that they will be the ones the dentist will cherish forever.  They'll wind up discarded and alone but it will be too late then.  By that time I'll have a set of dentures.  The relationship wont be the same of course but I'll be getting older by then and excitement will be less important than certainty.  At least I'll know that my dentures won't be developing cavities solely so they have an excuse to see that cute dentist.

Suck a Pebble

A hideous malady is sweeping the nation.  Dry Mouth Syndrome stalks the land spreading misery and despair in its wake.  Fortunately for the sufferers of this fell condition help is at hand.  At least so a recent television commercial informs me.  According to a professionally dressed woman who reads an autocue with the sort of nuance and depth of emotion normally associated with laundry lists Dry Mouth Syndrome (it is worthy of capitalisation) is a curse comparable with the biblical plagues at their worst.

However relief is at hand or so this woman woodenly assured me.  Apparently the world's top medical researchers have tossed aside their work on trivial crap like cancer and heart disease and by dint of furious effort their combined genius has been crowned with success.  This is the greatest leap forward for medical science since doctors stopped rubbing dirt into wounds to make them heal faster.  Dry Mouth Syndrome has been conquered.  This has got to be worth a Nobel prize for those involved or at least a carton of Marlboros and the afternoon off.

I can't help thinking that medical science has got ridiculously involved in recent times.  In the old days all you could catch was plague and you either died or you didn't.  Grim, certainly but refreshingly uncomplicated.  If anybody wanted to explain an illness to one of their medieval forebears nowadays the first thing they would have to do is give them a lecture on the last thousand years of medical history.  Actually the first thing they would have to do is invent a time machine but the medical history lesson would come second.

Don't expect too much sympathy from your ancestors though.  After sitting patiently through your long winded explanation their response is probably going to be something like, "Dry mouth?  Suck a damned pebble and get to work.  These fields aren't going to plough themselves."

Europe, Your Troubles Have Only Just Started

So, it would appear that I'm travelling to Europe next year.  My co-workers have staged an intervention and the upshot of it is that I have to take some holidays or they will put me into rehab.  It will be the first genuine holiday I've had in several years and I'm doing my best to look forward to it.  I shall be travelling to London, Berlin and possibly Prague or Vienna.  Now all I have to do is save money, find my passport, book things and renew my membership of the Inspector Rex fanclub.  I'm also hoping to persuade my sister in law to come with me.

Some people say that travel broadens the mind but then some people will say anything.  Travel certainly broadens your experience even if the experience largely consists of getting lost in a wide cross section of the world's airports.  At least travelling to other countries increases the probability that your taxi driver will understand English.  One thing travel doesn't broaden is your bank account.  I've done careful calculations and I think I can afford this trip if I sell a kidney and die no later than the age of fifty (probably not a difficult proposition with only one functioning kidney).

In return for poverty and a drastically reduced life expectancy I get to immerse myself in the culture of Europe.  Or at least I get to stand next to some of the more photogenic bits of the culture of Europe.  Or at the very least I will be temporarily in the same country as some of the more photogenic bits of the culture of Europe. 

Of course I'm taking a risk going to Europe at all.  The way things are going there at the moment I will be lucky if I don't get mugged by a desperate finance minister the moment I get off the plane.  It also occurs to me that by the time I get there the place may have been repossessed and put up for auction by various banking houses who for some reason thought lending money they didn't have to people who couldn't repay it was a sound business practice.  More likely though is that the place will be waist deep in euros as everybody attempts to refinance their existing unsustainable debt with new loan instruments and pay for the lot with a depreciated currency.  Which if you think about it is rather like putting your mortgage on your credit card and then trying to pay it off with bus tickets.

For souvenirs I'm just going to bring everybody back a couple of billion euros worth of Spanish government bonds.

Wow, A Blog Entry! Neil Must Have Woken Up Briefly

A month and a half without a blog entry isn't really a long period of time.  Indeed, it could be looked upon as a prolonged (or in my case entirely typical) period of laziness.  Yet I feel rather guilty at having neglected my blog and the audience that has come to enjoy reading it.  Said audience consists largely of my parents and, according to the statistics page, a bunch of Russians I've never heard of.  Still I should start writing my blog again or, alternatively, pick up the phone and call my parents.  All sorts of exciting things have happened over the last couple of months and I have recorded none of them.  OK, I don't know for certain that exciting things have happened but its statistically likely somewhere in the world yet their occurrence has gone unmarked on my blog.  Somehow the world has kept turning.  I guess that answers the age old question about whether if a tree falls in a forest and nobody asks a stupid philosophical question does it still crush a squirrel?  The answer to the more traditional version of that question is, of course, "no" ask any physicist.

In my defence I should point out that it hasn't been sheer laziness that has stopped me from making blog entries.  Or to be more accurate (and honest) it hasn't been only sheer laziness that has stopped me from making blog entries.  I have been busy studying for a diploma in Applied Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing something which sounds far more interesting than it actually is.  This has eaten into my blog writing time.  With the course triumphantly completed (note, I don't say "passed") I can get back to more important things.  Such as writing mindless inanities for a barely existent audience.  Since an inanity is mindless I suppose I can also add tautology to the list of grammatical crimes I have cheerfully committed on a semi regular basis since starting this blog.  It's good to see that I have returned to the field in top form.

Speaking of the diploma it is a little disturbing to note exactly how many of my friends reacted to news of my studies with comments like, "so, you're qualified to launder money now?".  Actually I'm not.  You need law or accountancy qualifications to do that.  Money laundering must be the only crime which requires more study than simply obeying the law.  One thing that I have learnt over the preceding nine months is that money laundering largely exists because nobody really wants to stop it.  Well, of course they want to stop it but they're not prepared to do what is required in order to achieve that goal.  In much the same way as a fat person wants to be thin but isn't prepared to give up eating nine meals a day.

It is actually quite easy to stop money laundering.  Ruthlessly enforced customer identification laws, transaction reporting and a decoupling of every secrecy jurisdiction from the global financial system would take care of most of it.  The only problem is if we did that the entire financial sector would find it rather difficult to operate (if only because most of their top management would be in gaol).  We'd also start to see a lot of impoverished refugees from places like the British Virgin Islands, Macau and Delaware.  The average customer in the street would probably be a bit annoyed at having to provide a DNA sample every time they wanted to open a bank account as well.

The truth is money laundering laws work like all other laws.  They're really just there to tell you why you're going to prison on the offchance you get caught.  There is an unspoken compromise between those who enforce the laws and the rest of us.  Essentially enough safeguards are put in place to ensure some people get caught so that the law doesn't appear completely useless while at the same time nowhere near enough safeguards are put in place to ensure that crime is eradicated completely.  This might not sound like a great way of operating but it is unlikely that human society would be improved terribly much if all of us were in gaol.

The Lethargy of the Long Distance Blogger

I was supposed to run the City to Surf today, I really was.  I collected my race pack, rose at a ridiculously early hour, showered, breakfasted and changed into my running clothes.  Then I looked at the weather.  I could have saved myself all that effort if I had just looked at the weather the moment I woke up.  If I had done that it is entirely possible I wouldn't have got out of bed at all.  Now I'm sitting in the cafe with a mixed feeling of guilt and relief hoping the weather gets worse to fully justify my decision not to run.  Naturally that will make it tougher on those hardy souls who did run but they all have to make sacrifices don't they.  Besides, imagine the sense of achievement they'll get from completing the run in a blizzard.  Who am I to deny them that?

Since I told most of my friends and family I was competing you might think I would feel a certain amount of embarrassment at admitting I didn't.  If so you don't know me terribly well.  Besides most of my loved ones were surprised I entered at all, the fact that I piked out at the last minute will surprise no one at all.  And yet I feel a certain amount of disappointment in myself, particularly since the weather has improved somewhat since I woke up.

Still, I shall bear that disappointment with the stoicism to be expected of someone who almost ran the City to Surf.  None shall know of the inner pain caused by my lack of activity.  Not a whimper shall escape my tightly pressed lips.  No word shall...Oh who am I kidding?  I'm glad for an excuse not to do it.  I shall relish every stolen moment and glory in my unexpected inactivity.

Exercise is something I feel I should do rather than something I want to do.  As such it is very easy to persuade me not to do it.  So easy in fact that I frequently manage it without assistance.  Now I come to think about it not doing exercise is one of the few things I can accomplish on my own.  I recently called an electrician to check why most of my lights don't work.  His advice can be summarised as, "try to be more careful changing the bulbs in future".  To his credit he didn't actually charge me very much for saying this.  Now at least some of my lights work.

Anybody who thinks they are truly independent should answer two questions.  Did you kill the food you're eating and did you make the clothes you're wearing?  I personally require so much external support its possible I should be reclassified as a parasitic organism.  I don't even generate my own chlorophyll.

Despite my uselessness at the simplest of tasks (I can't even build a pyramid without help) I can proudly and forthrightly take ownership of my lack of exercise.  Oh wait a minute, if it wasn't for the fact that the friend I was running the City to Surf with pulled out at the last minute I probably would have done it.  Apparently I can't even be lazy without assistance.