America. Mowing the lawns in Iraq

Back in January I was watching one of the American networks and the news host compared their invasion of Iraq to helping out a neighbor by mowing their lawns.
Now I like analogies, but helping a neighbor by mowing their lawns? What a load of bollocks. Here’s one I think is a little more accurate.

Some guy decides he doesn’t like the wasp nest on a property way over on the other side of town. He hates these wasps. Some say it is because one tried to sting his dad once. For years he’s been cutting off supplies to the property with the wasp nest. It hasn’t affected the head wasps at all but the people on the property have suffered. Now the man convinces his family and friends that the wasps from this nest could fly over and sting them in their own home. Some wasps have already done it. The fact they were a different kind of wasp from a completely different nest on a different property doesn’t matter. It is convenient for the man to lets his family think all wasps are related. To make his point about how dangerous this wasp nest is he produces ‘evidence,’ pictures and statements from men who say they know about wasps. It works, his family gets scared.

Now the man doesn’t sort out the wasp nest himself, he sends some people who work for him, in to do the job. Men with wasp nest fighting experience warn the man that he isn’t sending enough people to do the job but he ignores them. The wasp fighters fly in and smash the nest. They kill some of the boss wasps but lots of the other wasps fly away. Now there are wasps buzzing all over the property and the people who live there are getting stung a lot more than they were before. Wasps from other nests around town start coming to the property. Back when the wasp nest was there they couldn’t get in, but now any wasp can fly in and start stinging as much as they want. The men sent in to deal to the wasp nest find it a lot harder to fight the wasps when they are just flying around. They start to get stung more and more. Back at home the man’s family finds out they were lied to about the threat from the original wasp nest. They ask the man when he plans to bring the wasp fighters home. Some people argue that they got rid of the wasp’s nest, their job is done and the people on the property should clean up their own mess. The man says that what they need to do is actually send more wasp fighters over to deal with the new problem.

Simplistic bollocks that doesn’t come close to summing up the tragedy unfolding in Iraq? Probably. But a hell of a lot more accurate than making a comparison to helping a neighbor by mowing their lawns. Thanks for tuning in folks that’s all we have time for. Chad will be along with a weather update in just a moment.

Goodnight.

WHERE’S THE POINT IN THE PYRAMIDS?

From the moment you get to Cairo they bang on about these pyramids that you just have to go and see. I’m here doing some work so I thought I might as well check them out. They are right next to the city, which is a smart move on the Egyptians part. Not like Disneyland in LA, which takes ages to get to. My taxi driver obviously had trouble understanding my English. I asked him to take me to the pyramids what he heard me say was “Can you take me to the pyramids but first stop at a Papyrus Museum so I can buy some shitty paper and you can get a nice kick back.
It was the first museum I have ever been to where you can by everything that’s on the wall. I’ve seen papyrus before. In the 70’s people in Pakuranga liked to put it in their garden. And I have seen papyrus paper. You find it at those hippy shops that sell incense, pocket sized horoscope books and sandals made of Ethiopian cowhide. But I didn’t tell the nice lady. I didn’t really get a chance, she didn’t stop talking. She condensed the making of papyrus paper from 5 or 6 days into an efficient 14 minutes with the use of some classic,’ Here is some I prepared earlier.’ TV kitchen show moves. Very Hudson & Halls. She showed me how papyrus is shaped like a triangle, like the pyramids. Nice link. I also noticed It is green the color of the American money which she was very keen for me to spend on her papyrus drawings. Another spooky link. Consumers are looking for an interactive, personal shopping experience these days. Nike offer to print your name on their shoes. The lady at the Papyrus museum has embraced this concept. She has a little helper with gold and black felt tips and will write your name in hieroglyphics on the papyrus painting of your choice. I paid a little extra and got her to write the name of a good friend. She had never heard of someone called ‘I paid way to much for this naff picture of an eye’. With my wallet a few bucks lighter it was finally off to the pyramids. My Taxi driver was obviously very proud of the Cairo’s number 1 tourist attraction. I didn't have the heart to tell him that they have one in Las Vegas that looks a lot better. Sure Cairo has a few of them in different sizes, but they all look a bit rough. Made with blocks of stone, they look like they have been put up in a bit of a hurry. So fast in fact that the council couldn’t agree what to put in them. The one in Vegas has a hotel and casino in it. The ones at Giza have nothing! Not even a café selling expensive scones and cold drinks. But maybe that’s so you have to buy water and coke from the men that wander around outside. Another cause for concern was the fact that they don’t appear to have even finished these pyramids. They didn’t have proper points on them. Maybe they ran out of money? Or perhaps they are saving up to put a big eye on it like the pyramid on American money, which is where I suspect they got the idea from. Good on Cairo for taking the initiative and building a tourist attraction. Even if it has been done before. Sure they look a bit rough now but I think Cairo has big plans for the future. They have made sure there is plenty of desert behind them, so if the place turns out to be popular with the tourists there will be no problem adding more pyramids. Maybe one with a casino and an inflatable one for kids.

Cheers Boris.

Russian embalmers are famous for their work. Take Lenin. He has been lying in state for 83 years and looks fantastic. I don’t think they’ll need to worry about the embalming fluid with Boris, not with the amount of Vodka he consumed over his life. Funny how you can go to jail for driving a car drunk but it is ok to get behind the wheel of a country completely pissed. I always thought it was cool how Boris gave a speech from on top of a tank. George W says he is a ‘War President’ but the best he could manage was a talk on the deck of an aircraft carrier that looked like he was in the car park of a local Mall. He should have been straddling a cruise missile with ‘suck on this Saddam’ painted on the side. Unlike Boris, George doesn’t drink. He gave up booze years ago. Scary eh. Look at the mess he has made of his job completely sober. Kind of gives you newfound respect for Boris.

Surge. Not a European hairdresser. Just the Presidential bullshit machine working on the war in Iraq?

So here’s how it went down. A few months back Bush and his brains trust were sitting round a big table. Probably made of American oak and decorated with lace doilies made by his mum when his dad was in office.
‘Mr President. You know how back before you invaded Iraq those army guys said you needed to go in with more troops but Rummy said bollocks? Well it seems they were right. It’s all gone FUBAR and we need to send in more troops.’
Bush was busy playing with one of the Doilies. There was bottle of water sitting on it and he was trying to see if he could pull the doilie out from under it. Luckily one of his advisors was listening.
‘Troop build up. Are you crazy? The American people wont like that one little bit. That will make it sound like we aren’t winning the war and we have already told them we are winning the war.’
Everyone in the room agreed, except George W who was still concentrating on his doilie trick.
Then someone suggested they bring in the bullshit machine. It’s on wheels because it gets moved around the Whitehouse so much. The words ‘troop build up’ and ‘escalation’ were fed into the machine and it did its thing. Its ‘thing’ only takes a few seconds. That’s what you get when you spend billions of black budget dollars.
‘The word you are looking for is ‘Surge’ said one of those automated computer voices.
‘Yes!’ shouted the President. ‘Perfect.’
Everyone agreed, but it turned out the President was talking about the fact he just whipped out the doilie without knocking the bottle over. No one noticed. They knew ‘surge’ was a great word. It implied a short-term increase. You wouldn’t need extra troops for a short term if things were turning to shit would you? Then the brains trust realized their only problem was how to get the public to pick up on the phrase. That was easy. They just fed the word ‘surge’ into an even bigger bullshit machine. The Media. And it worked. Every news presenter you see on TV refers to the ‘surge’ instead of what it really is. Why? Well because all the other news people are doing it.
Speaking of build-ups and escalation, after his success with his doilie trick George W decided to up the ante and try it with a bigger bottle of water. He is pretty confident he’ll be able to pull it off (or out in this case) and has already had a new ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner made up