The forgotten victims of 911

Remember the way the twin towers came down. Everyone commented on the fact that it looked just like one of those building demolition jobs. Maybe it was. That’s what films like Loose Change allude to. But if it wasn’t, and if two planes flew into the towers and a few hours later they came straight down, then how do all the guys in the building demolition business feel?
Like losers that’s how.
These guys charge big money convincing people that what they do is an art form. That you have to spend days calculating the exact amount of explosives and the exact place to put them to ensure the building will come straight down without damaging the surrounding property. But turns out it aint that hard. You just fly a plane into the side of a building and wait an hour or two and she’ll come down neat as you like. One plane per building is all you need. It’s quick, efficient and with the number of airlines going out of business these days I don’t think it would be that hard to get an old passenger jet for a bargain price. As if that wasn’t damaging enough to the egos of the men in the building demolition industry consider World Trade Centre Building 7. You might not have heard much about building 7. It was only about 48 stories high. But about 5.30pm September 11 she came down too. Again, straight down without damaging the US Post office that was right next door. Now this building wasn’t even hit by a plane. Sure some bits of the World Trade Centre fell on it and it caught fire on a few floors but this was only the 3rd steel framed building in the history of the world to collapse after a fire. The other two being World Trade Centre 1 & 2. Look up 911 building 7 on google; there is a very interesting film with footage that most of the news networks never played. But hey, this story isn’t about conspiracies. But if I was making another 911 conspiracy doco and needed funding I would ring building demolition companies and ask them to stump up the cash, cause if anyone is going to be happy to prove that the World Trade Centre buildings we bought down by explosives it’s them.

7 Blunders of the modern world

At a star studded ceremony in Masterton New Zealand (star studded because it was held outside at night) The winners of the 7 blunders of the world were announced. Voters from around the world were invited to write their nominations on the back of used car park receipts and attach them to carrier pigeons. Perhaps it is a reflection of the fact that it is hard to find reliable carrier pigeons these days because only 8 submissions were received and the ink had run on one of them ( I think the pigeon flew threw a rain storm). So here they are.


Y2K
2000 US Presidential Election
The UN
The invasion of Iraq
The multi tune car alarm (WaaaWaaaWaaa DooooopDoooooopBeengBeengBeenb!)
Turning Paris Hilton & Lindsay Lohan into celebrity status
Aspartame

The death of the Saxophone solo.

Been sitting watching VH1 all morning and I was reminded of the fact that just about every music video in the 80’s had a saxophone player in it. Yeah, so saxophone players. Bruce Springsteen, Billy Ocean Spandau Ballet, Dire Straits, Tina Turner, Sade. All the big acts in the 80’s had a man or woman on Sax. Sometimes more than one. (What do you call a group of Saxophone players? Did you know a group of Crows is called a murder. Freaky eh. Unless anyone has any better ideas I think a group of saxophone players should be called a twort as in ‘Hey I went to see Billy Ocean live last night. You know he has a Twort of Saxophone players. Two guys and a girl. ‘

But I digress. Here’s the thing I was thinking about. Where are they all now? Clarence Clemons from the E Street band probably made a nice tidy sum playing with the Boss. But most of those poor suckers got 30seconds of fame per song where they were allowed to wander up near the singers mike stand and blow their little hearts out. Then they were sent back to their rear of stage beside the three black backing singers. By the 90’s saxophone solos were out. So where did they all go? They can’t all be playing in cover bands on Cruise ships. The people I feel really sorry for are the youngsters who only just broke into the music biz in the late 80’s. After years of practice they were finally ready to hit the stage. They move to London New York or LA of get in a band or do session work and suddenly… no one wants a saxophone player anymore. For those guys the big muscley bloke who played with Tina Turner would have been their idol. Not only was be super buff and got to play with no shirt on he even got a bit part with her in Beyond Thunderdome. For a young sax player he was proof of where the instrument could take you. But then the arse fell out of the sax solo market and I fear there are hundreds of musicians around the world with shattered dreams. Next time you’re in town and the haunting sound of an echoey saxophone wafts down the street go and find the busker. Take a good look at them. Maybe you’ll recognize them from a video on VH1 or perhaps they were one of the unlucky ones who got the party a little late. Toss em a few coins and say something like ‘Hang in there buddy. Your time will come again.’ It’s probably bullshit, but as they sit in their grotty little bed-sit later that night trying to get the last few drops of brasso out of the can, your words will keep them company.

You’d be a dope to be a professional cyclist

Shock horror! Another cyclist on the Tour de France has failed a dope test. Well pass the puncture repair kit Pierre. Why don’t the bosses behind men’s cycling just dispense with the pretence and embrace the fact that all their boys are chocka block full of roids.
Why fight it? If the competitors are so eager to use them, make it mandatory. They should still have dope tests, but if there are no traces of steroids found in the cyclists blood or wee wee, that’s when they fail!
It is a tough sport to be a part of. Grown men have to shave their legs to compete. Do you have any idea how much they get hassled by other professional sportsmen? Is it any wonder they try to ease the pain with huge horse sized hypodermics full of pedal power.
Cycling could do with the edge. It’s a boring sport. The only good bit is when you see those massive pile-ups. I think it would be hilarious to see roid raging riders with thighs as thick as 8 year olds pedaling round the Europe.
I imagine if the doctors were allowed to dope at full dose? A professional cyclist could end up looking like the Incredible Hulk. Come to think of it, the Hulks pants look like cycle shorts. Maybe he used to be on the tour.

Son of Surge

The problem with deadlines is they have a habit of creeping up on you. September must have seemed so far away when Bush first introduced his Surge. What to do….what to do?
Well luckily the American Command have sent in a Battalion of Army engineers to shift the goal posts. The new plan comes in two phases. No point in biting off more than you can chew. The “Near Term” goal is to achieve “localized security” in Baghdad and other areas no later than June 2008 (I thought that was what the Surge was meant to do by September 2007?) The new theory apparently puts a premium on protecting the Iraqi population Baghdad, on the theory that the improved security will provide the Iraqi political leaders with the breathing space they need to try political reconciliation. No surprise that this plan has been stitched together by General Petraeus, whose balls are well and truly in the sling with September approaching. And I’m sure the ‘breathing space’ will be welcomed with open arms by Mr Bush. June 2008 pushes the whole messy Iraq thing a long away away. From there it will be a short skip and a jump to the end of his presidency and then some other sucker can take charge of the mess.

Nostradamus

Saw a documentary about Nostradamus the other day. Freaky guy. He predicated some really interesting stuff. Maybe he also knew that in the future that people who were interested in predictions would also be really into poetry and that’s why he wrote all his predictions as obscure poems.
What a lot of people don’t realise is that seeing the future was something that ran in the family. While the Nosmeister’s siblings weren’t quite as prolific as their older brother they made some interesting predictions.

Flosstradamus foresaw a day when people would spend large amounts of money on dental care.

Lacrosstradamus predicated the rise of a game where men would chase a little ball with sticks that had nets on the end.

Mosstradamus, had visions of a non toxic bio degradable spray that home owners would be able to apply to driveways and paths to get rid of moss and mildew.

Ever seen John Malkovich and Michael Stipe in the same place?

All I’m saying is if the arse falls out of the acting business for John Malkovich he could make a decent living fronting an REM cover band.

The last of their kind.

I discovered them living in a box in a shoebox in the bottom draw of the desk in the garage. The last known surviving members of the ancient ‘Cassette Tribe’ thought to have been extinct in my home for many years. When I first opened the box, fear of heat damage caused most of the tribe to run for cover. But one brave warrior remained to face me. There were obvious language barriers. The Cassette tribe speak ancient analogue, almost unheard of in this digital age, but we managed to communicate through a crude sign language made up of basic dance floor moves from the 70’s and early 80’s. He told me of his tribes glory days when his people, plentiful in numbers, lived in their traditional homelands in stereo cabinet and car glove box. But things began to change when the shiny newcomers entered the cassette’s tribal area. At first the cassettes hoped to live in peace with the CD’s but as the 80’s progressed the CD’s numbers grew and the cassettes found themselves slowly pushed out of the homes they had known. The Warrior I spoke to had long ago lost his case and his marking were faded but he told me his name was Toto’s Greatest Hits. Just before he left to rejoin his people he let me take his photo.

My new theory on the war in Iraq

Could Rumsfeld and Cheney and the other war hawks really have got it so wrong about Iraq? All we read in the paper, online and on TV is how bad the war is going. What a mess it has been. How Bush’s boys were fools to go into Iraq against the advice of the experts and how things have blown up in their faces and turned into a big mess.

But what if the brains behind the war are secretly happy. What if things have worked out pretty much how they and their other experts planned?

Lets look at the facts. The big defense and construction companies that make money out of war are raking it in because Iraq is a big country and there is plenty of war to go round. The oil companies and other big business vultures are in there carving up the spoils. I’m sure corporations take a much more long-term view than us mere mortals. Sure it might not be as cost effective to remove oil from Iraq right now and there could be the annoying fact of having to replace equipment and men who keep getting blown up the insurgents. But in the long term things will work themselves out and then the oil companies will be ready to pump. In the meantime, the war in Iraq is helping to push up oil prices around the rest of the world. Good news if you’re in oil.

And what is the cost? You wont hear the companies that supply all the equipment to the US army complaining. Or the contractors, or the politicians who rely on cash from the companies that supply all the equipment to the US Army. You wont hear a peep from the thousands and thousands of dead Iraqi civilians. And our leaders in the west know that their voters are delightfully oblivious to large-scale deaths when they are dark skinned foreigners far away.

So that leaves us with the deaths of a few thousand US troops. I heard Michael Moore say on CNN that it is estimated that 18000 Americans die a year as a result of not having life insurance. Does that put the number of US war dead in Iraq in perspective for you? If US leaders are prepared to live with 18000 innocent dead at home a year, what is three and a half thousand over 4 years. I bet the men behind the invasion of the Iraq are rapt with such a low casualty count. Unluckily for them the US public’s tolerance for the death of their own boys doing democracy’s dirty deeds on foreign shores is a lot lower than it was back in the days of Vietnam. Rumy and Cheney know that eventually public opinion will force them out of Iraq ‘officially’. The trick is to hang in there as long as they can. And that’s not hard. The beauty of American democracy is that its leaders can pretty much do what they want. For example. They invade a country using false evidence of WOMD knowing the truth will come out eventually. But so what. It was too late by then and they knew no one would be organized enough to do anything about it. Even with the public finally awake to the big con and overwhelmingly against the war, the men running the oval office know they can just box on doing what they want.

But eventually noise control will get its shit together and drive over to Bush’s place to confiscate his sound system and shut the party down. The press and the Democrats will high five because the government has listened to the will of the people and withdrawn from Iraq. Thing is Bush’s boys wont care because they know the truth. What’s left behind is the15 square mile Balad Air Base and the $592 million dollar US embassy in Baghdad. Officially the US might be out of Iraq but unofficially the men who planned it in the first place are there to stay, to reap the rewards for themselves and the men that suggested they get in there. And I think they’ll sit round the table and congratulate themselves on a job well done.

Things I would do if I ruled the world. Part 1

Let me start by saying I have no major plans to take over the planet. If I had those kinds of resources I would be more inclined to put my efforts into looking for another planet somewhere else. This one is looking a bit manky and is too crowded.
BUT, if I did find myself in charge I would obviously have my own island with a hollowed out volcano and some kind of death ray device. It goes without saying that I would have a small army of men in matching jumpsuits who would drive around my island in golf carts and a personal body guard who could be an 8 foot Norwegian woman with a samurai sword or 1 Chinese midget with titanium claws that shoot poison for hands.
An island like that pretty much runs itself and despite the huge numbers of little men in lab coats you always see fussing round death rays they actually need very little maintenance. So I would turn my attention to other pursuits. First on the list would be the creation of that chemical that you put in public swimming pools that turns purple when people pee. That is an urban myth that deserves to become reality and as ruler of the world I would have the resources to get it done.

Al Qaida, Al Qa’ida, el-Qaida, al Qaeda?

No wonder they can’t find Osama Bin laden, no one knows how to spell the name of his company. George Bush probably sent him a really terse letter on September 12 telling him to hand himself in to the nearest US Embassy or KFC in Afghanistan but he never got it because they wrote Al Qida’s name wrong. If I worked for Al Queiada’s PR agency, which is probably based in Pakistan near the mountainous border with Afghanistan, because that’s where Osama is. I would be seriously looking at the branding problem. Can’t you see Osama in his cave hitting the roof each time he sees another report. Maybe that’s the cunning plan by the world’s media. To smoke him out into the open. Wait till he writes a letter of complaint to TV Guide about the consistent misspelling of one of the world’s most preeminent terrorist organisations, then track him down. While we are on the subject of tracking down Osama. Has anyone asked Readers Digest if they have his address? I moved home about 3 times and those guys always managed to find me and flood my mailbox with their crap direct mail. I don’t think Osama would fall for the old ‘This cardboard key could be the key to a real car’ but I bet the mailbox outside his cave still gets that rubbish, along with the bills for the kidney dialysis machine rental and catalogues for new AK47’s.

My big band idea. (big as in BIG, not trumpets and shit)

I don’t have enough musical talent to fill the little red helmet of a Playmobil fireman. But if I was ever in a band and lets say for the sake of this spiel it was called Feelings, but with a z to give it that retro feel. And lets assume we got to release an album. Then I would call it ‘Feelingz Greatest Hits Volume One’. I might even put a Z instead of S on hits but that decision would have to be a band vote cause it might be a bit over the top. But back to the genius of the Album name. It would be our greatest hits because we wouldn’t have any other songs. And people would assume we were really good and they would be embarrassed they hadn’t heard of a band that had enough hits to warrant a Greatest Hits album, so they would buy it. And the other great thing about this idea is you could avoid ever going through the hassle of going through the whole ‘what should we call our album?’ drama. Volume 1,2,3 and so on. We would never have to stress over the name thing again which would leave us free concentrate on the important part of being in a band. Deciding what artwork to use on the t-shirts. And the quality of the laminates for the backstage passes.

Coolest band name I ever heard about was an Aussie group who played the pub circuit called ‘Free Beer’. As you can imagine with posters outside that read ‘Free Beer Tonight’ they always played to really big crowds. Genius.