When your penis is made of ice you care about global warming.

High in the Himalayas Hindu pilgrims are rushing to see a miracle. The natural formation of a sacred fertility symbol ‘lingam’. Not quite such a miracle when you consider the symbol is phallus-shaped. When something is referred to as Phallus-shaped that means it looks like a penis. Now a penis is a no brainer for a fertility symbol but if you go looking for penis shapes you’ll see them everywhere.

This particular re creation of the phallus shaped Lingam symbol is a stalagmite made of ice. Hundreds of thousands of devotees make the trek to cop a perve at the chilly prick every year during the two months it’s around. Problem is, this year, due to the unseasonably warm weather it is melting faster than usual so the rush is on.

I remember hearing about the picture of the Virgin Mary who appeared in a toasted cheese sandwich. Now that is a miracle. I would travel along way to see something like that. And after the thrill wore off I would probably be hungry so I could eat it. But a stalagmite that looks like a penis. It’s not much of a stretch is it? Have you ever seen a stalagmite that didn’t look like a penis?

Global warming is threatening to wreck the whole party and last year there were allegation that tourism managers made the ice form themselves. But this is just the kind of smart thinking mankind is going to have to employ if he is to cope with the ravages of global warming. Seems to me all those pilgrims would be hungry after their big climb to the cave. Someone could make a lot of money selling toasted cheese sandwiches. Or if you wanted to capture the moment and make the most of the natural resources around you I think you could do an excellent range of flavoured cocksicles.

Wild ways of the Wild West.

Saw a cowboy movie on TV the other day which featured that classic cowboy movie scene in the bar where someone shouts ‘boys, the drinks are on me’ and I began to think about the problems that lead to. Invariably when it happened the bar was full and it wasn’t always the richest man in town who made the offer. The invitation was always met with unbridled enthusiasm but given the frequency with which it seemed to happen in you wonder weather many cowboys ever had to actually buy a drink themselves. Would someone really have shouted ‘the drinks are on me’ that statement could be construed by a half cut cowboy to mean that the rest of the night’s drinks were being paid for. Perhaps ‘the next drink is on me’ would have been a more prudent announcement. You never hear that so lets assume that in the Wild West whenever someone said ‘the drinks are on me’ everyone except a newbie from back east would have taken it to mean the next drink of their choice was complimentary. I say their choice but from my observations the only booze available in the Wild West was whiskey. So lets assume it is one drink per person. Who was supposed to police that? The bartender? If a wealthy benefactor was paying for the drinks them it is in the interests of the owner to dish out as much free booze as he can. And even if he did try to make sure no greedy guts came up for second helping a lot of cowboys pretty much looked the same under those big hats. Ok, lets say everyone at the bar gets one free drink of whiskey. There didn’t seem to be a top shelf back then. The whiskey bottle was always directly behind the barman next to the big mirror, which always got smashed by a flying chair before the end of the film. So it was one free drink of plain old Wild West whiskey, which always seemed to cost a buck. But how come the barman always just started dishing out the whiskey to the eager patrons without first getting the bloke who made the offer to put a large sack of gold coins behind the bar. Or his credit card. Or at least have a brief discussion with him about how he intended to settle the bill. Maybe in the excitement of the moment the barman just forgot. Remember, a ‘the drinks are on me’ moment was usually triggered by good news. Anything ranging from ‘May Beth’s agreed to marry me boys’ right up to ‘ Sheriff Brady just gunned down big bad Buster Watson and the extra man with the rifle who was hidden in the upstairs window. With Buster Watson out of the way, this town is now free to live in peace without worrying about his marauding band of thugs who, now their boss is dead will naturally wander off to some other unlucky shithole.’ No wonder in the heat of the moment the barman just started pouring without thought to securing some form of guarantee of payment. And that, I suspect, is the reason the Wild West is littered with ghost towns. Because after one too many ‘drinks are on me’ sessions the local bar would go bust. With nowhere to play cards, watch showgirls, drink booze and smash up all the furniture, what point was there staying in town. Maybe the West was just a little too wild for it’s own good.

America reminds me of my toaster.

So I was thinking about how I saw George Bush in Rome a couple of weeks ago and it got me thinking about toasters. Mum still uses the toaster I grew up with. That thing has been through more bread than Michael Jackson. And I thought it would be the same when I bought my first toaster. I thought it was the start of a long happy relationship. But it wasn’t. Me and the missus are onto our third one now and the reason why is because they just don’t make things to last anymore. It seems to me the same can be said of Empires. I wonder if George pondered on the fact that the Romans Empire rose to power and stayed there for hundreds of years. But poor old America will be lucky to make a century as a superpower. Maybe that’s just the way things are in this fast paced world. Maybe trying to spread global influence takes a lot more than it used to. The disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing America lives, credibility and lots and lots of money. Will historians look back at Bush’s tenure as the beginning of the end of America the superpower? The Romans left us sandals, sewers, roads, gladiator films, aqueducts and Toga parties. America, we’ll always love you for your hamburgers, Hip Hop, Disneyland, Coca Cola, Prozac and Velcro. You will live on. The world will come to visit you and listen to tour guides talk about the days when America was the centre of the planet. And maybe in a few hundred years the leader of the current world super power will speed through the streets of Washington, gaze out at its buildings through the heavily tinted bullet, rpg and mini nuke proof glass and wonder where it all went wrong for the USA.