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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (72638)	8/20/2003 4:58:26 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The lunatics have taken over the asylum Ian Fraser: FRASER'S RAZOR 19 August 2003 11:31 One of the drawbacks to daily news and the mass media's endless hunt for 'today's news' is that this rarely allows for any kind of in-depth overview to emerge. And added to this endless conveyor belt of daily reported news, there's a local tendency in the Media to simply 'report' and rarely, if ever, explain what it all means. So this week here's more news without analysis, to give you a glimpse of a world that needs a vigorous scrubbing with a wirebrush and Detol. The media here is offering few glimpses of the reality in Zimbabwe, apart from bizarre TV news items on 'how incredibly well the Zimbabwe stock market is performing' - so I thought a street-level view of what the ANC is allowing to happen, might be useful. Start off at this week's Letter From Zimbabwe. Then browse Cathy Buckle's main site African Tears. (As to whether there's any truth in whispers of a connection between certain ANC members and the buying of cheap Zimbabwean farmland and real estate, (with mineral wealth beneath) as being the real reason Mugabe has been allowed to bring a once inspiring African democracy to its knees, only time will tell). Now onto far more important things. Like whales and farting. Seriously. If you've always wondered - like me - what a whale fart would look like (not to mention smell like) then go stare at the big whale fart-bubble photograph and read the news report from the UK Sunday Mail titled Whale Fart Stuns Scientists. So now we know. My life seems so much richer somehow. I feel a song comin' on. Onwards into news items that can reach places the regular toothbrush just can't get to. The modern wave of UFO sightings began more or less in the period immediately after World War 2, in Sweden of all places. People began seeing what they called 'ghost rockets'. Read this translated article from a Swedish daily newspaper in 1988, Ghost Rockets of 1946. And here's another take on the original ' Ghost Rockets'. Why do I raise this issue? Simply because 'ghost planes' have been seen and tracked on radar over Chicago in the last few weeks. Read this news report from ABC News, Ghost Planes Over Chicago. As an example of the continuing slide towards the US becoming more and more conservative, read what happens if you sell a clearly marked 'Adults Only' Manga comic to an adult, in modern America: Comic Seller Goes To Jail and Comic Report. Longtime readers of this column will recall my hopefully not too boring diatribes about 'depleted uranium' (DU) weapons in the past. Well, the chickens appear to be coming home to roost for the poor sods in the US army who're stationed in Iraq, as the death toll from various sicknesses begins to mount, with all the experts throwing up their hands in confusion. Thus far, around 100 soldiers have caught pneumonia - among other strange illnesses and deaths (apart from the combat deaths). Read this BBC report Iraq Pneumonia Baffles US. Then read US Soldiers Dying From DU. Onto more serious things. What happens if you fall in love with a blow up sex doll? More importantly, what happens if you marry the sex doll and your parents not only give you grief about this, they actually try to puncture your wife? Do you realise you need urgent psychiatric help (or at least a lot of lubricant)? Or do you kill your parents? For a Brazilian man who faced this common problem, the choice was simple. Read Blow Up Bride Makes Brazil Man Kill Parents. Then continuing in the 'Sex made me do it' vein, read the story about the man who was finally arrested after years of sexually abusing female horses in the district he stayed in. No pictures of the horses though, perhaps they're technically underage in human years. Read Man Charged For Sexually Abusing Mares. But the world isn't only filled with deranged men with mischief and creature comforts on their minds, it's also filled with deranged corporations. Go have a look at the fun robot with swastikas on which someone at Coca Cola thought would be a cool thing to give away with their cold drinks: Coca Cola Promotes Swastika Robot. Here's a tough question: have you ever been in panties? Or wondered what a sewerage leak in panties would be like? I should hasten to add that 'panties' is a small town in Sweden, and they had a serious sewerage leak problem, providing dirty-minded giggles world wide to English-speaking newspaper sub-editors and readers. Go read the news report Sewerage Leak in Panties. And then, who was the genius brain surgeon who thought that selling manure could be enhanced by making a scratch and sniff catalogue? Go wish you could scratch 'n sniff through the poo on offer at The Scratch and Sniff Dung Catalogue. For a stool of a different kind, what happens when you combine alcohol, a motorized bar-stool, and the police? Correct: you get Man Arrested For Driving Motorized Bar Stool. As someone who finds most religions and religious belief only slightly less funny than Buster Keaton, or watching government ministers trying to be articulate, I was pleased to see that Voodoo has finally been officially granted 'religion' status in Haiti. But the world is truly strange, and people's personal fetishes provide a large amount of the fun. And the news reports we all pause and read through. For instance, how can you even think of avoiding to stop and read the report titled Man Found Tied Up And Begging For Rape. Or taking the sweatshop concept one step beyond. In order to reduce the toilet breaks, picture Argentinian Supermarket Cashiers Forced To Wear Nappies. Of course, combining a drunk Croat, a fence and a dog is always asking for trouble. Read about the painful incident when Dog Bites Drunk Flasher. Then there's Hustler creator Larry Flynt getting sued again for, among other things, having Sex Toys in Office Dishwasher. Consider what can happen if you combine a loaded gun, a handbag, and an oven. Yup, you end up with Gun In Oven Shoots Woman. Not to mention the Man Loses Leg on Rollercoaster: . Or Laundry Worker Dies Inside Giant Washing Machine. But the report that gives me hope, in a strangely pathetic low self esteem way, is the one looking at the sexual habits of salmon. Researchers have found that virgin and 'sexually inexperienced' fish go for the big fish, whereas the more sexually experienced home in on the smaller quieter types. Read this odd report on Big Guys Don't Always Get The Girls. Until the next time, if blow-up-doll owners dont get me. mg.co.za