Manchester 22.5.17

I Looked At Evil

 

I looked at Evil: it wore a suicide vest

My cause is just, it claimed

your murdered children my price

Kill me, and a thousand martyrs fall in behind

You cannot kill me, it smiled

for I am dead by a tug of this cord

 

You cannot kill me, Evil declared

You cannot buy me off

You cannot reason with me

Don’t bother to plead with me

for my ears are closed

my mind bankrupt

my heart already a corpse

You cannot kill me

for I am already dead

 

You cannot defend your children

for I am Evil

and I wear a suicide vest

 

 

 

Je Suis Charlie

Sad Paris

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Kill twelve

Kill thousands

Kill me

Speech must remain free

or there is no democracy

Je suis Charlie

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Joke 211

Thanks to Michelle in South Africa for this one; I think it originated in the States.

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces think I’m too old to track down terrorists. You can’t be older than 42 to join the military. They’ve got  the whole thing backwards. Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn’t be able to join a military unit  until you’re at least 35.
   
For starters: researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds.  Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than  28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.
   
Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a  dangerous soldier. ‘My back hurts! I can’t sleep; I’m tired and hungry.’ We  are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves  it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while.
   
An 18-year-old doesn’t even like to get up before 10 a..m. Old guys always  get up early to pee so what the hell. Besides, like I said, I’m tired and can’t sleep and since I’m already up, I may as well be up killing someone.   
   
If captured we couldn’t spill the beans because we’d forget where we put  them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.
   
Boot camp would be easier for old guys. We’re used to getting screamed and  yelled at and we’re used to soft food. We’ve also developed an appreciation  for guns. We’ve been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the  house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course, however. I’ve been in combat and  didn’t see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training.
   
Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too. I’ve never seen  anyone outrun a bullet.
   
An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He’s still learning to  shave, to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He hasn’t yet figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his  head.
   
These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm’s way.
   
Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple of million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them.
   
How about recruiting Women over 50 – in menopause! You think men have  attitudes…  
   
Send this to all of your senior friends.  Use big type so they can read  it.

I Can’t Laugh At This One

What will change, for you, for the U.S., for the world, now that Osama is gone?

I think today there is a little less evil in the world; but evil will be done in his name.

People have a right to rejoice; but the world, if it’s possible, is now an even scarier place.

Big Brothers

I haven’t watched Big Brother since the third series but I thought I would give this one a go as it’s the last Celebrity BB, and I have to admit that I am enjoying it.  It helps that the Hub is an amateur psychologist and that he reads body language like an expert: he predicted when the inmates would turn on each other, who would bully whom, what the micro-expressions were saying about their real feelings, and so on.  I think the reason I have really enjoyed it, however, is because there has been little in the way of arguments or nastiness, and the contestants might want more public exposure but at least none of them appear to be freaks.

I particularly enjoyed the cake episode.  I would show it to you but Channel 4 have blocked it on You Tube in this country.  What happened was this: Dane performed a secret task and was rewarded in the Diary Room with champagne and cake.  He was also told he could nominate someone else to receive a piece of cake.  He chose Stephanie.  When she sat in the BB chair, a hatch opened above her head and cake dropped on her; then she was free to leave the Diary Room and tell what had happened.  Each housemate was then called separately to the Diary Room.  Knowing what had happened to Stephanie, their anxiety was hilarious to watch, especially when Big Brother ordered them to move so they were directly under the hatch.  No-one else was caked, however.  Then Stephanie was called back, having bathed and changed, and was caked again.  It was much funnier to watch than it reads here.  My reason for mentioning it was that it was a perfect example of how terrorism works: one person was targeted and the rest feared the same thing would happen to them; it didn’t actually have to happen to anyone else to create an atmosphere of anxiety.

It is amazing how quickly housemates can turn on each other (especially, as I know from experience, when food is involved).  I saw it for myself this weekend: Tory Boy couldn’t make it last week for Spud’s birthday so he came this week instead.  He took Spud into Manchester for the day, buying him a City shirt with his name on; lunch (an I’m-shopping-in-Manchester-with-my-brother-and-we’re-having-a-great-day Sub – there really is a Sub for every occasion); taking him to the cool shops to spend his own money; and lending him the price of Batman Begins.

That was Saturday, when TB was the best big brother in the world.  Sunday, they were at war.  I won’t go into detail – having lost interest three seconds into their respective whinges – but it came to a head with sixty knocks in sixty seconds on one bedroom door and a retaliatory sixty texts in sixty seconds received on one phone; or it might have been the other way round.  Who cares?  At least there was no violence involved.

Tory Boy left last night and Spud complained five minutes later that he was missing him.  Brothers!