Le Mandrienne

A kitten was horrified today on waking up to find that the sky had changed colour. “For my entire life which is a whole month long now, the ‘above-the-hard-underneath-me-thing’ as I have named it, has been a rich deep blue with a bright yellow ball that moves slowly across it providing a most agreeable warmth.” He opined from the safety of his fluffy towel lined, cardboard box residence on the Corniche D’Or.

“Imagine my horror when I cutely looked out of the ‘hard-see-through-bit-of-wall’ this morning, to find that the golden disc had seemingly disappeared and that the ‘above-the-hard-underneath-me-thing’ had become an unpleasant grey colour.” He continued while preparing for a day of slipping endearingly across the tiled floor of the living room and tail chasing.

“The ‘invisible-breathey-stuff’ also seems to have become full of big drops of ‘clear-drinky-stuff’ that make a bad noise against the ‘hard-see-through-bit-of-wall’ and makes my fur sticky-together and cold.” He added from under a pile of newspapers.

Current kitten suspicions for the change in the way the entire world works are centred on the eight-legged-furry-monster that arrived in the garden a couple of days ago. “Too many eyes” He explained wisely while looking to see if the world looked better the other way up.

Starve the Beast





Vile

Read that. Is it not horrendous? Am I missing the point? Is this womans voice not like some little, Republican, money-obsessed gnat buzzing around peoples ears trying to distract them from what’s important?

“If you are considering donating a used vehicle, keep in mind the rules got much stricter this year. If you volunteer your time and services, these are never deductible. However, any travel, food, or lodging expenses you incur because of your volunteer work are deductible, so save these receipts.”

Save those receipts? What hell planet does she live on? Before you give to charity as a gut response to images of horror and suffering on the news and out of compassion for your fellow human beings, have a good think about how it can affect your tax deductibles at year end?

The US authorities lack of response to what G W Bush on Thursday called a “Temporary disruption that is being addressed by the government and by the private sector” is a direct effect of the 20 year old “Starve The Beast” policy. Reduce the money available to the public sector to reduce governments involvement in peoples everyday lives and to allow the private sector to fill that role… Sounds good until it erodes the infrastructure including the flood protection around New Orleans. Sounds good until that infrastructure finally cracks after years of underfunding in the face of a disaster that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency),a US Government department predicted in 2001, and a million people really need the government to get involved in their everyday lives. Shall we wait for the private sectors response? Let’s not all begin holding our breath until Halliburton start handing out food parcels shall we?

Don’t let them make you think like they do.

French Telly

5 things to know about French television;

1. Kojak is on every night. (Literally) “Qui T’aime Bebe?”

French Telly… (smirk!)

2. Dallas is on every morning but has different title music which is more martial than the familiar, wah-wah guitar drenched, disco classic, and, seems to feature the Village People or a Russian male voice choir singing “DAARRL-ARRRRRSE” with great gusto. They’ve given JR a REALLY evil French voice in the overdub too.

3. The French LOVE a chat show. They love a chat show that goes on for a marathon 6 hours every Saturday. Same host, millions of guests. The only ones I’ve recognised so far were Grace Jones (who speaks very good French) and Natalie Imbruglia (who doesn’t).

4. France has 6 free-to-air, normal, old fashioned, terrestrial channels. 5 of them constantly broadcast absolute dross. 1 of them (Arte) is excellent and shows either excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films, or, totally impenetrable, four hour documentaries about people who make excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films. I’m a big fan of excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films by the way.

5. There is a 7th channel that you can get through your normal telly but it seems to be scrambled to varying degrees. The daytime cookery programs are just a bit scrambled (eggs) so it looks like your aerial needs a bit of a nudge, evening movies are a bit more scrambled so it feels like your eyes have gone a bit wonky and your ears could do with a good dig around with a cotton bud, then after midnight it goes into full blurred-o-vision and a soundtrack of insect speech as they switch to France’s nightly dose of hardcore pornography.

I have an idea for a way to earn money on my return to the UK (21st September, Jet-Facile to Gatwick) which involves possibly not working for a company. It involves using a laptop computer. I’m working on it in my office here…

The view from my office “window” is this…

French for “That really pisses me off” seems to be “gener mar”. Probably best if you assume that that’s spelt wrong. This is pronounced “Johnny Marr” and the French think it’s REALLY funny when you follow them saying this with “And Morrissey too”, especially the younger ones who have no idea who, or indeed what, you are on about. Want another picture of the kitten? Oh, go on then…

Things to do…

1. Never put a new cooker upright in the back of a van and then drive along a very bendy road. Thud, crash.

2. Continue to not smoke. It’s good, and that strange feeling I’m having increasingly regularly feels like it might be health.

3. Continue to do exercise in the morning. Still religiously doing 8 Minute Abs DVD which has turned into about 15 minutes with the groundbreaking and clever use of the pause button, followed by 25, count ’em, press ups (which are called Pompes in France). Stomach is disappearing. Bye bye, layers of congealing American Corn Syrup, that used to live blancmange-like around my belt area.

4. Wonder where the word Blancmange came from. You’d guess it was French wouldn’t you given that translated it means “White Eat” but my confident assertion of it’s Frenchness was met with Blancstares (he he!) from French people.

5. Put a picture on this website… Vero took this… I like to call it, “You Can Count On Me-ow”

Le Monde

While I’m still in my hate-Bush-Cheney-it’s-their-fault-i-can’t-have-cigarettes-or-go-to-America mood, I thought I’d share this picture with you.

In other news Chaton (French for Kitten and more accurately descriptive of his behaviour if said out loud) has opened his eyes this morning, and so is seeing everything around him for the first time ever which has set me thinking. Whirr… Whirr..

deportation

First Click Here…

The US must change the Visa Waiver scheme because the London bombers would have been allowed into the US using it, and if they change it so that everyone has to be interviewed, the bombers would still get in because unless they answer “Yes I am” to the question “Are you going to let off a bomb in America” they’re just the same as everyone else. So they must change the Visa Waiver scheme for why?

We’re all clear?

I am a Russian spy, Tony. That’s what I am….

God this stuff makes me mad. Once upon a time a bunch of geriatric loons that couldn’t get over their impending redundancy at the end of the cold war, and the tumbling share price of their war profiteering company Halliburton, took over the most powerful country in the world, completely hijacked it, persuaded the poor news starved, ill educated people there that they were in danger, and proceeded to live in a Fox News masturbatory fantasy, turning the entire world into a millitaristic theme park full of imaginary enemies… I’ll go back to bed…

Replacement Therapy

“Smoking is for poor people…You never see rich people smoking. Truly rich people. Ever.” – Douglas Coupland.

Yes today I’m trying to become healthy again. You know that thing when you go through periods of wellbeing, generally brought on by being better to yourself; kicking the fags, cutting back on the sauce, having an early night, getting your arse off the sofa, eating a segment of an orange, going outdoors once in a while, inviting a vegetable on to your plate, that sort of thing? Well for some reason that feeling of wellbeing makes me want to smoke more, drink more, eat less veget… you get the idea; and then I start to feel rougher and the colds start to kick in again and so I try to start being kinder to myself by kicking the fags, cutting back on the…and round and round we go. Well today I have designated National “being-kind-to-myself-day” and like everyday with that title it involves alternating bouts of self-righteousness and desperate craving, the latter staved of by my trusty old Boots nicotine inhaler and large amounts of coffee, chewing gum and sugary coca-cola . BUZZZZZZZZZZ. Soon be healthy… Still doing 480 seconds of abs work out every morning (a whole 960 seconds the other day in a fit of must-get-fit-ness) and actually found some hard things below my ribs that kind of remind me of muscles I had 15 years ago, except they hurt more to get.

Gael the marine bought a motor bike.

Harvey had a ha-hyena.