Americas aerial landscaping of Iran. Put September in your diary.

The War President has told the American people that they can expect to know if the surge is working around September. The evidence will come out that the surge has not worked not matter how much spin Bush tries to put on it. So what happens then? Bush isn’t going to admit defeat. He has publicly stated that the US won’t leave Iraq while he’s in charge. Lack of public support for the war and his Titanicesque ratings haven’t put him off. He is in this to the end. What he needs is a distraction and a chance to refocus the public’s attention on the worldwide war on terror. So I am predicting that around September is when Iran is going to get a visit from some heavy-duty made in the USA airborne ordinance. I’ve bogged about this before so I’ll try not to repeat myself. On paper it might seem crazy to provoke a new fight, the American military is overstretched as it is. But this wont be an invasion. This will be a powerful concentrated attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Think about it. Neither the Saudi’s nor the Israelis want to see Iran gain nuclear capabilities. Sure Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations will denounce the attack but behind closed doors they want it to happen. There is no way Israel will ever let Iran get the bomb but the yanks know Israel cant attack Iran because that would force the other Arab countries to side with Iran and possibly trigger a bigger middle east conflict. No. The yanks will do it because everyone wants it. And when Iran responds that will be the perfect ammunition for the Republicans to use in their assault on the 2008 presidential race.

Hardcore tourists

I love airport bars. Perfectly respectable well-dressed people can get a drink or four without being judged at any time of day. Beer for breakfast, no problem. Bar staff at airports assume you just arrived from a different time zone or you’re afraid of flying and need a little liquid aid . The other week I was at Cairo airport at 9am. Beer was the last thing I felt like that morning. I was propped up at the bar inhaling double shots of espresso. Now if a bunch of English soccer fans has walked in I wouldn’t have given it a second thought but instead, up rock two cheery middle aged South Korean couples who scanned the menu and ordered a round of Heinekens. Their hardcore efforts were offset slightly by the fact that they ordered straws for their beer but it kind of added to their, ‘Watch out. We’re jet lagged, South Korean tourists and we’re getting drunk’ aura they had about them. Now every Korean tourist I’ve ever seen has a camera strapped to his or her hand. I think they are handed out by customs when they leave the Seoul airport. But these Koreans didn’t waste valuable drinking time by taking photos. You can guarantee the pommy soccer fans would have ‘Yeah mate, this is us on the piss at Cairo Airport. Guess what time it was? Go one you’ll never guess. Guess. Go on. Go on.’ Maybe the happy Heineken holidayers had so many photos of them sinking a few early morning brews that they had just stopped keeping records of the occasion. I had my camera so I snapped of a sneaky shot. If I had been busted I would have pretended I was taking a photo of the stunning knitted cap so I could get my grandma to make me one.

Osama Bin Laden’s favorite show is the A Team

Remember the A Team back in the 80’s? They were a bunch of highly trained soldiers convicted of a crime they didn’t commit and on the run from the US Army. But they didn’t exactly keep a low profile did they. For a start they were hardly trying to blend in. Driving round in a big black van was bad enough but why Hannibal let B.A Baracas wear a Mohawk and three tons of gold round his neck I’ll never know. That aint gonna attract suspicion. And despite the fact that the full resources of the US army were dedicated to hunting them down, the A Team still found time to help out people in downtown LA every week. Sure the army couldn’t find them, but if a solo mother of one in a poor neighborhood was trying to run the burger joint her life savings had been put into, but was being forced to pay extortion money by the local bikie gang who were working for the local fat cat whose ulterior motive was to force the lady to sell the burger joint to him before the big motorway company bought the land at an inflated price, then she could find the A Team no problem. An episode of the A Team was only on for 1 hour a week and she had to find them in the first 5 minutes so there was enough time for them to help her. And every week people like her found the A Team. When you consider that it puts the hunt for Bin Laden in perspective. Watching re runs of the A Team from his remote cave somewhere on the rugged and inhospitable Afghan/Pakistan border, he must be feeling pretty confident that he’ll never be found.

Jordon’s web of intrigue.

Remember Lloyd Cole and the Commotions? Great pommy group from the 80’s. Do ya self a favor and goggle them. Anyway heard an interview with Lloyd once and apparently they were big in Portugal. The place Port comes from. Be cool to have a type of booze named after your country. Especially a classy after dinner one. But back to Lloyd. It got me thinking about celebrities begin famous in other countries and I wondered if Jordon’s manager (the big boobed chick married to Pete Andre) had ever looked into whether Jordon would be big in Jordon. I don’t know much about the country or the chick but they could do great things for each other. She could be their spokesperson at the UN. That would glam the place up a bit. She could do ads in skimpy bikinis with headlines saying ‘See more of Jordon’…… Anyway, I got bored thinking about that and then I got to thinking about how imagine if Jordon’s (the chick) Manager had been onto it and registered Jordon.com and then Jordon (the country) found out and approached them and said. ‘Give us the web site that is ours by right’ and the manger says get stuffed and then it becomes a matter of pride. The Jordanian ambassador to the UN get laughed at by some of the other ambassadors who think it is a hoot that a chick with big hooters won’t give Jordon their web site. So. Jordon send a crack squad of Jordanian secret service blokes to England to knock Jordon off. I mean this wouldn’t happen I don’t think Jordan has crack squads of secret service blokes. But I thought it might make a cool movie. I bet I can get funding from the Jordanian Film Fund Commission. All they ever get given are scripts with blokes on camels in the desert and here I am with one that has secret service guys, the Internet, a chick with big boobs and a soundtrack by Pete Andre. I’m going to call it killJordon.com

Welding for God

So I had this idea for a t-shirt it and I got my mate Jeremy to mock one up for me. Idea came to me in a conversation with another friend Chad. I don’t know many people named after a small country in Africa. If I was him I would go to Chad and demand a free holiday and I would buy heaps of souvenirs with Chad written on. His wife could wear an ‘I love Chad t-shirt, his daughter could wear a t-shirt saying ‘I come from Chad’. One other cool thing about Chad. He’s from Texas and his dad is in oil. Of course. Anyway, when Chad’s daughter was born Chad’s dad named an oil well after her. How cool is that. Anyway, so me and Chad are talking about how he is gonna do a welding course. Just for fun. Someone comes over the see him and the wife says ‘Chad is out the back welding’ I’d like to know how to weld. If anything broke round the house I could weld it. When you weld shit it stays welded. Handle comes of a coffee cup. Forget the super glue. ‘Give it to me honey, I’ll take it down to the garage and weld it.’ My daughter comes home with a school project. Say, Whales. No problem. Down to the garage and we weld up and life size whale using old car parts. So Chad is talking about his welding course. Chad’s Texan accent is hard to understand and sometime I tune out. He was going on about the shit he was gonna weld and I started thinking about an idea for a short story. This bloke who discovers god and is also a welder. So he goes off around the world welding for god. Orphanages, churches, water wells. Anything that can help people with a bit of welding. This guy wears sandals because Jesus did and monks do. But he wears a mask cause he is safety conscious. Anyway I got to thinking how the mask could have a cross instead of a slit. Then I realised that would make a killer t-shirt so I sketched it out. Still working on the short film.