France Strikes Again

Striking seems to be something of a national sport in France – with everyone from the bus drivers to high-school students joining in on the fun.  I can testify to this; in the five years I lived in France and the three years in which I was a high-school student, there was more or less a strike every year.  Of course, while it was nice to see even students stand up for their right to have a say in what was going on with their education, there was a large majority of those who simply striked (if that is the correct term) for the sake of it.

 

On the Guardian Website you can find a live blog of the current events of this particular strike.  From what I can surmise, it has been brought on by the pension reforms and Sarkozy’s unwillingness to back down in front of almost universal anger and outrage from the French people.  But since when has it ever been different?  It’s true what they say about short political leaders – they all seem to have a problem with public opinion.

In any case, I support this strike and support those out on the streets protesting, for the most part.  Just remember; trashing shops, burning cars and throwing bricks at the police may be fun, but doesn’t lend that much credibility to your movement: it just makes you look like a dickhead.

 

Anyways, time to finish my coffee and skeddadle.

 

Ciao

J

It’s a Funny Old World…

I decided to take a break from posting nothing but random bullshit on odd days, and decided to follow on Religious Bigotry Day with a brand spanking new feature: The Funny Old World.  For those of you not in the loop, Funny Old World is originally an article in the British magazine Private Eye which features a bunch of strange news items from around the world.  Each Sunday, I’ll post one of these stories, then comment on it for shits ‘n’ giggles.  Enjoy.

“We specialise in blockages of the lower colon,” Dr Alexander Kharchenko of the Mashuk Akva-Term sanatorium told reporters in Zhelenovodsk (a spa town near Stavropol), “and more than a hundred enemas are carried out here daily.  We want people to see this procedure as pleasant and fun, so we recently commissioned the sculptor Svetlana Avakova to create the world’s first monument to enemas.  Her bronze sculpture was inspired by Botticelli’s Venus and Mars and shows three angelic children raising a gigantic enema bulb syringe above their heads, as though in homage.  It weighs 350 kilograms and cost one million roubles, and we are proud to display it outside the entrance to the sanatorium.  It is gorgeous.”

Asked why he had comissioned such a bizarre monument, Dr Kharchenko replied that “there are unusual statues appearing all over Russia nowadays.  In May, a statue of a baby emerging from a pickle jar was erected outside a maternity hospital in Tomsk, while a monument to the letter e, or yo, was recently put up in Ulyanovsk.  And outside the Druzhba processed cheese factory, there’s a monument showing a crow and a fox holding a giant Druzhba cheese in their arms.  Unfortunately, the cheese was stolen last winter, but te factory owners offered a reward of 100,000 roubles for it, and eventually found it hidden in a large snowdrift.”

Believe it or not, the story is actually true.  Over at thepeeq.com they have a picture of the world famous (or at least regionally famous) enema sculpture, and boy is it something that puts Le Fontain de Pis to shame.  The question is, who the hell would want their region to be remembered for a bunch of creepy doctors who like pouring water up people’s asses?  And what the hell is the sculpture trying to imply; that a group of children (or midgets) are forever ready to scurry up your ass with a large bulb?  I mean, Richard Gere got into trouble for doing what he did with that gerbil, think of the ramificatons!

It’s a strange old world…  Stay tuned, next Sunday we’ll be looking at the new ‘environmentally friendly’ bomb!

‘Till next time,

James

Oh Lawd, the walls are closing in.

So, Madonna just turned 50.  How do I know this?  Ah, but that’s not really the question.  In fact, how could I not know it, seeing as it’s been on every single news station, every freakin’ hour of the day?!  A few weeks ago, I decided to start a little experiment, and didn’t pick up a newspaper, tune into a news station or read about it on the Internet to see just what I’d miss in that one week without news.  Guess what happened?  The Russians and the Georgians decided to play a game of fisticuffs.

But the one day I try to catch a little bit of current events, the one day I try to absorb a little bit of information, what do I have?  A bunch of idiots debating about whether or not Madonna is still the great role model she always used to be.  The woman drinks her own urine, for chrissakes.  I don’t care.  But the conversation was so inane I decided to give you all a little dramatic reenactment of the ‘debate’ they were having.

Uh, I think that… uh… Madonna is, like… Everything she ever was.

She taught children that it was OK to dress like a cheap hooker and make our eardrums bleed, though!  As a feminist, I find nothing more denigrating to women around the world!

Uh… Yeah, but… uh… She’s like… a pop icon. To still be doing what she does, gyrating those hips in a spasmodic frenzy without a zimmer frame?  Well, it shows little girls all over the world that drinking your own urine DOES have benefits!

So you see, this is what the news has become.  InfoTainment has won.  I give up.