Imagine someone suggesting a kids character called Winnie the Pooh in this modern age. Wouldn't even make it must the first round would it. A character named after excretment? And a bear no less. Does a bear shit in the woods? Well you can bet one with the surname Pooh does. No, Winnie comes from a more innocent time but why hasn't a toilet paper company cashed in on the little guy?
If I told you about a fish called a swordfish you wouldn’t be too surprised when you saw it would you. It has a nose that looks a bit like a sword and it ‘s a fish. So how do you explain the ladybird? It is just this kind of nonsense naming that is going to make us look silly when visitors from other planets start asking us questions about what we have been doing with our time down here, rather than resorting to trying to find out the answers with anal probes which quite frankly is such a 60’s form of knowledge gathering technology.
After 911 you couldn’t take box cutters on planes. The metal knives on the in-flight meals were replaced with plastic ones but strangely the airlines decided that forks would never be a weapon of choice for terrorists. If an Arab gentlemen in his 30’s tried to board a plane with a few balls of yarn and a half finished crew neck jumper confiscate his knitting needles by all means, but was a general ban on an item mainly carried by little old ladies necessary? Things got annoying when the guy with the bad facial hair tried to blow up his sneakers on a flight from Paris. Suddenly we all had to start taking our shoes off. And then last year the alleged uncovering of a plot to make a bomb on board a plane by mixing liquids meant we couldn’t take moisturisers, water or liquid of any kind through security. Thing is all this security is really about the airlines making the travelers feel safe. As if any terrorist is going to waste his time trying to put a bomb in a shoe or carry liquids on board now it is common knowledge. No. Mr terrorist is too smart for that. He’ll be planning something the authorities haven’t thought to look for yet. And that’s what scares me. How many ways are there left to smuggle dangerous stuff on board a plane. I can only think of one. Up the bum. Can you imagine if the authorities uncover a plot by terrorists to smuggle bombs on board hidden in condoms in their bowels? Drug mules do it with coke, so why not? And as we know from the liquids scare, it doesn’t even actually have to happen to set the authorities off. They just need to get a rumour of bum bomb technology to set them off. Overnight the way we feel about air travel will change. Some smart airports will no doubt try and put a positive spin on the new security measures. For instance they could tie in a complimentary prostate check for men but the only people who will be laughing are the terrorists and the people who make rubber gloves.
So the other day we went to this picturesque little Tuscan town called Siena that was very old. How old? Well to give you an idea, much of the town pre dated the Rolling Stones. A funny little Italian girl in 3-foot cork soled shoes took us on a 3-hour walking tour of Siena. We lasted an hour before my wife got distracted by shoe shops and I got distracted by beer. The tour started in a big church and because it was the start I was still paying attention. The lady balanced on cork told us about a young Italian woman called Saint Catherin who came from the town back in the 12 or 1300’s. She was a saint because she was mates with the Pope and didn’t used to eat much and rather than sleep she used to whip herself to make up for the sins of the common folk. Anyway she died in Rome but the townsfolk of Siena wanted her remains in their church so the head honchos in Rome sent them her thumb and her head and you can see them on display in the church. The head is in a little box covered in wax and the dried out thumb is on a little silver stick.
The lady didn’t know why there was a thumb and a head I suspect when the people of Siena asked for Catherin’s remains, the priests in Rome sent them a thumb. But the town got really pissed off and complained that you cant build a decent shrine with a fricken thumb and they demanded more. So a few days later a courier delivered a box with Catherin’s head in it.
After the church we walked down a street to see another church. It was next to a
Mc Donald’s. I explained to Dick and Sue the middle aged American tourists, that inside that particular McDonalds there was a glass cabinet with the desiccated thumb of the original Saint Ronald. They didn’t see the humor.
