what a bonkers world we live in......[updated]

Being the news tart that I am...... my eye could not help but be caught by the odd stories published over the past few days.....

Imagine being the rookie journalist, and filled excitement and ambition and your editor sends you off with note book, dictaphone, camera and with the instructions ringing in yours ears...find the human interest elements to these son....

Your first assignment: Dog pisses on plane.... [see postscript update below]

Well this story certainly top trumps my farts on a plane, but quite how a story like makes it into the  mainstream news I am not so sure, although I suppose dog pisses on a plane is mild compared to this....

I noticed that it was reported the dog was a guide dog for the blind, so one can imagine..... there sat the owner munching his pretzels washed down with a warm American beer, when all of a sudden he detects a warm flow to his trouser leg..... checking he hasn't turned his beer can upside, he continues with his munchies..... with the air hostess tapping him on the shoulder......excuse me sur.... your doog is relievin him self.... could you ask him to stop.... and whilst you're at it sur... could yoooou please stop fartin ......

And so impressed by your first ever published news report, the editor tells you to get on your bike and for your second assignment:

To interview Mr Robert Stewart. Of course what the editor didn't tell you was why Mr Stewart was news worthy, but no sooner do you remove your bike clips and whooooa..... now you know Mr Stewart shall make it to the front page.

And so it is, note book filled and pictures to grace any porn site, you wipe the man mess from your bike seat and head back off to the news room...

For what will be your most challenging assignment todate, assignment 3:

This you admit to yourself, is going to take some beating.

David Truscott, 43, repeatedly rolled around naked in liquid manure, called 'slurry', at a farm he had developed an obsession with in Redruth, Cornwall. 

Developed an obsession.... you don't say...... I think it might be a bit stronger than that surely ? And where I come from they call it shit not slurry....

He initially removed cow pats from Woodbury House Farm but his behaviour escalated so that Truscott regularly entered the farm in search of slurry. 

So it seems he started with the tame stuff, just removing cow pats, but once he had got a taste for it [so as to speak] he immersed him self fully in his obsession.

Prosecuting, Eleanor Purkis revealed that he had previously received a 16-week sentence for stripping naked in the cattle pen, releasing the cattle and climbing into the slurry spreader

I can see a pattern emerging here and I don't think this is what you can call a clean hobby... 

As you listen to Mr Truscott's tale unfold, you start to have doubts about your chosen profession, and you are seriously thinking of a change in career, if not a change in clothing having just interviewed Mr Truscott..... what ever you do, do not do the customary hand shake on departure...

Today's SoD was an easy choice

a repeat listening [but this is the
brilliant acoustic version]

but for sure 

I don't think they would have got it

on iTunes if they had used shit instead of dust

in the name of the song

[Dog pisses on a plane: postscript - It seems that according to other news sources, that Chris Law via twitter was reporting that the dog went the full 10 yards and started shittin all over..... So perhaps the story might have been this.....

There sat the owner munching his pretzels washed down with a warm American beer, when all of a sudden he detects a warm flow to his trouser leg..... checking he hasn't turned his beer can upside, he continues with his munchies..... with the air hostess tapping him on the shoulder......excuse me sur.... your doog is relievin him self.... could you ask him to stop.... and whilst you're at it sur... could yoooou please stop fartin ...... To which the dog owner thinks, jesus christ my farts smell fucking awful I don't remember eating that last night.....

And then I noticed the comment:

Diligent flight attendants on the US-Airways flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia tried to clear up the mess, but reportedly ran out of paper towels.

‘The second time after the dog pooped they ran out of paper towels, they didn’t have anything else,’ passenger Steve McCall said.

If only Dave Truscott had been on the flight, they could have rolled him down the aisle and hey presto. I seriously think US Airways should get hold of David Truscott, I can see a fantastic win-win situation for both of them

A country decends into further bloodshed......

It's been a long time coming but it now seems that Egypt is closer than ever to a civil war. How the populist democracy chant of the western media roared on  the Arab spring.... thinking that we the readers......all supported the roaring..... simply because it was done in the name of Democracy.

Sometimes, there is an arrogance about democratic nations who insist that all nations should be democratic.

I first visited Egypt some 30 or more years ago, and traveling through the Suez canal, on a supertanker barely able to make it through, with out scraping the sides ......[the super tankers sides not mine]......... I was 17 years old, and until I was 16 years old I have never been abroad, never had a passport. I don't recall there ever being an immigration desk at Mablethorpe, so in my house a passport was a luxury item.

But at 17 years old, here I was in the land of the Pharaohs fascinated by some of the place names, the heat, the sand [and therefore the dust] and by the shear exuberance of the local tradesmen.  I brought a leather hold hall, which to this day I still use, the quality of which I have yet to find since.

And so fast forward some 29 years it is late 2009, and as a middle aged 17yr old, I find my self back in Egypt for the first time since the trip through the Suez. This time I was looking at the burnt out wreck of a large expanse of warehouse, it's contents a mere smouldering wreck. But the warehouse could have been anywhere quite frankly, but it was in Egypt, a country that lured me back to be  fascinated once more.

The sand was still the same, the heat certainly was, the tradesmen just as exuberant. However, now instead of leather bags, I am buying exotic middle eastern jewellery for two late teens girls. They've seen my leather hold hall, they prefer jewellery.

During this trip, I was treated to a visit to the pyramids, a ride on a camel [obligatory it seems] and a guided tour around the key exhibits in the Cairo museum. I was even treated to a late night laser show at the pyramids.....sounds tacky ?.... actually no. Something quite different it turned out.

But seeing the latest headlines

..........you are left wondering how a state like Egypt can so rapidly descend into this madding violence. The news source for this report is not important, nor whether the photos are propagandist, but when you look at the content of the photo's, the sheer madness of a people who brought us the pyramids is quite disturbing.

Of course what is happening in Egypt today isn't new or unique and it sure as hell is not about who is right and who is wrong........ but when I look at that leather bag I brought 30 years ago it doesn't remind me of bloodshed or madness.

In my life on this planet for 50.5 years there have been endless bloody disputes and conflicts and as each one is seemingly solved another one springs up.

I recently commented on someone else's blog my support about the re-introduction of the death penalty in certain cases of murder and in reply someone chastened me as to my inhumanity.

Thinking about it is absurd to suggest that those of us who call for the death penalty for the likes of Ian Huntley, Dale Cregan, Mark Bridger and the rest..... are somehow inhuman and debase the human spirit. You only have to look around you each day to see that the human spirit is already debased.

For sure there is a huge swage of the human race who are good, honest, moral, non violent people, but as a race...... erm .... erm.... we have the capability of extreme violence, all in the name of our human rights..... killing another human being because he doesn't support your political stance ?

Is there ever a time it is acceptable to kill good, honest, moral, non violent people ?

There may be reasons why one nation or one group within a nation set out on a path of violence and death on another nation/group {delete as appropriate} and the reasons for doing so are never that straight forward.

For me as a child it started out very simple, the cowboys were the goodies, and the red indians were the baddies, the Allies were the goodies and the Germans were the baddies [they bombed our chip shop], the soldiers were the goodies and the aliens from outer space were the baddies, the cops were the goodies and the robbers were the baddies and so on and so forth..... but as a 50.5 yr old teenage boy you realise it is never that simple.

Remember the good old days of the Miss World contest.... Eric Morley - so Miss Bolivia what do you want to achieve as Miss World ? ...... Miss Boliva [all tanned and in gorgeous swim suit and pink satin sash...] flutters her eyelashes and smiles at the camera and says...... world peace...... oh how we fluttered our eyelashes and smiled back at the TV......

We are you now Miss Boliva when we need you most ?

Others can carve out 
their space
in tombs and pyramids.
Our time cannot be trapped
in cages.
Nor hope, nor laughter.
We let the moment rise
like birds and planes and angels
to the sky.
Eternity is this.
Your breath on the window pane,
living walls with shining eyes.
The surprise of spires,
uncompromising verticals. Knowing
we have been spared
to lift our faces up
for one more day,
into one more sunrise. 

[Imtiaz Dharker]