The Crown of Creation at work - another one of those days

It's been another successful day in the life of the Crown of Creation. To refresh your memory ... then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." As you might recall, God is omniscient, omnipotent and God happens to be 'good'. Well, no big surprise then, that on the sixth day of genesis God had a look around and "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good". Very good indeed it was!

Well, let's see how our perfect Creator's work has panned out. Hey, why not check simply today's almost certainly glorious news to see how wonderful God's good creation is doing?

USA: Ethnic minority women die in Los Angeles and New York hospitals, respectively, because nobody attends to them in her dying moments. People see one of them lying on the floor and walk carefully around her.
PHILIPPINES: A gay guy cuts off his lover's penis because he suspects his lover might have slept - oh horror - with a woman.
GERMANY: A bunch of guys kidnap women and keep them as sex slaves in their flat, renting them out as prostitutes, make them sleep in dog cages and walk them around on a leash in the flat.
ISRAEL: A bulldozer driver rampages in Jerusalem and kills a whole bunch of people.

Yo God, thanks for nothing. If that's the best you can do, seeing your omnipotence, omniscience and 'good'ness, I kinda wonder whether you really exist, or, if you exist, whether you really are omnipotent, omniscient, indeed, I can't help wondering whether you're a good guy. But hey, that's just me.

Where there is organised Christianity there is censorship

Heinz, ye, the producer of red and white health risks designed to be added to your fries, has recently produced a cute lil ad to promote the sales of its white blubber. Well, to be honest, it's probably a good thing that the sale of its mayo cannot be promoted as much as the company had planned to, given the health risks involved in this fatty product. However, the reasons for why the lil ad never saw the light of the day had nothing to do with our health, but everything to do with organised Christianity exercising its God given right to determine on our behalf what we may or may not see. It threatened Heinz with a boycott campaign because middle-aged guys were kissing in the video. Look at the video yourself. It's about the most obviously non-sexual, non-obscene thing you will have seen in your whole life. So, the issue really was that there were two men kissing, and according to God's earthly reps that just isn't on. Sadly Heinz caved in to the God squad's black (or shall I say, Christ-) mailing. So, in my own little subversive way, without further ado, here's a link to the ad. Check it out! It's lighthearted fun. Even your kids will enjoy it.

AU - an acronym for FARCE

The AU meets currently in Sharm-el-Sheikh. Competent mostly at doing nothing, this remarkable organisation succeeds once again in doing nothing. While, based on its own statutes it should have expelled Robert Gabrielle Mugabe from its ranks and from his big leather chair, because he wasn't democratically elected, he has been welcomed. He was also asked to start negotiations with the elected President of Zimbabwe, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai. Sadly Bob Madhat has no interest in doing so, and that's the end. The end. Prospective dictators of the world, learn your lesson: you WILL get away with it, unless you're planning on kidnapping an oilrich country. If you do (see Kuwait and Iraq), the world suddenly is concerned about the country in question. So pick a reasonably poor place without major natural resources, and - really - you can do what you want.

Hey, while I'm at it, the AU is, of course, sponsored by Western taxpayers, courtesy of their governments. Why not stop sponsoring expensive luxury hotel stays for those comedians (pardon me, African leaders) altogether.

Thousands and a million spectators at Toronto Gay Pride

Hey, I had a great weekend! I went to join in the fun that's Toronto's gay pride party (and march) this last weekend. Great stuff, lots of stages with non-stop events, and security asking for my ID to check my age (trust me, when you are about to turn mid-40s you do appreciate that someone is kind enough to check whether you've reached maturity).

Well, the march was ... long, very long, something like 4 hours (my mid-40s feet started hurting eventually), and ... ummm ... somewhat boring. Compared to the in-your-face kinkiness that Sydney and Berlin tend to offer to the (very much suspecting) public, this was a sedate affair, all in all. The occasional naked marcher popped up, even some leather folks, as well as a naked pre-op transsexual. And that was that. In any case, it's been a great great show that these volunteers put on. I am truly grateful for the time people put in in order to make this a memorable gay pride. This being the mainstream event that it is, even my bank had its own little float, as had other banks, radio and TV stations, the armed forces, firefighters, huge contingents of the Liberal, NDP and Green parties (kindly the Conservatives decided not to show up - this should conserve its Western prairies votes quite nicely - well done Mr Harper!), as well as the police, nurses and the list goes on and on and on. Mind you, even the hotel where I was staying, the downtown Hilton had its own contingent in the march. Good on them! There were even gay Christians like Catholics, Anglicans and assorted other Christian sects (they should really have another look at their God's bible, my hunch is that they just might have missed something there...)

The guy leading the march was a Jamaican gay activist (probably looking for asylum in Canada, seeing how militantly homophobic that creepy little island state is). No doubt this has been a very smart choice as it keeps reminding people how terrible the situation for gay people in even reasonably close-by places is. You'd find in the local Toronto papers suggestions that Canadian tourists should boycott Caribbean tourist destinations that do not protect the human rights of their gay citizens. Great idea!

Of course, gay events and alcohol go well together, so the main sponsor of much of this seems to have been the producer of a drink called xyz ice or something. No idea what it is, but whoever they were, they certainly splashed out, trying to persuade the partying crowd to buy their 7$ a pop drink. No doubt there were hidden stickers saying 'drink responsibly'. And you know what, people even party responsibly in Canada. I saw very very few people who were seriously over their limit. All in all, it's been a family friendly event (and I don't necessarily mean gay families, but any kinds of families). Nice one!

Oh ye, about the heading of this blog entry, check out this link... CTV, the media sponsor of this year's pride kinda couldn't decide how many people lined the streets to cheer on the marchers. The title says 'thousands of spectators', in the articles it says 'a million spectators'. I do accept that many thousands eventually translate into a million (and potentially more than that), but it's odd nonetheless.

On that note, glad I went. I even bumped into a colleague from Toronto Uni. Small world.

South Africa's seemingly unstoppable march into oblivion

Na, I'm not going to rave again about Pres Thabo-the-man (Bob Madhat's significant other) or health prevention minister Whiskey-Manto-new-liver-for-me-ASAP, but here's a tell-tale sign as to how rapidly South Africa's heading south: Amazon has stopped delivering to the country, because theft of parcels has become so rampant that it's bad business to do business any longer with South Africans.

Thank you Paddy Ashdown!

At long last, someone is speaking sense in the 'international community'. While the slaughter in Zimbabwe continues unabated, and the delusional, syphilitic and somewhat deranged dictator running the show there declares that he can only be removed from office by God, Africans are once again paying the price for the useless leaders they elected to high office. The one country that could long have made a difference in Zim, South Africa, has been governed by Zanu-PF's (oops, the ANC's) Thabo Mbeki. Remember: Thabo-the-man hasn't seen anyone yet die on AIDS in the country that he has misgoverned for the last 8-10 years or so, and (while holding hands with Bob Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe) he declared that he doesn't think there's a major problem in Zimbabwe. So, the millions of illegal Zim refugees in South Africa are not really an indication that Bob Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe stuffed it up. Not at all, according to Thabo and his lover Robert Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe. That much is clear. Reassuringly the leadership void that is Thabo Mbeki has been filled by many African leaders who have condemned the rapidly escalating genocide in Zimbabwe.

Comes Paddy Ashdown. He suggests in today's TIMES that may be the time has come for a military intervention in Zimbabwe, to stop the thugs governing the country from destroying what's left of it, and to stop them from killing more brave Zimbabweans. Sadly, however, Zimbabwe has no oil to speak of, hence this almost certainly is not going to happen any time soon. All we've got is black-on-black violence, and as anyone knows, that doesn't really count. If there is no other reason than to preserve their lives, we can almost be certain that no truly international intervention will be forthcoming. To be fair, SADC or the AU could send their own troops, but they're probably equally unwilling to interfere with this Zim home-made problem.

Airlines taking us for a ride - oops, flight!

You know, like most people who have to fly for work related reasons - I hate air travel sufficiently to not fly in order to get to a vacation destination - I have got used to the ongoing offensively lousy customer disservices that outfits like Air Canada inflict upon the traveling public. So I'm used to flights getting canceled for no good reason other than that it was an 'act of God' (hello, can't us humanists at least get a slightly more intelligible explanation?), or that on long-distance flights they offer a dry roll wrapped around one slice of cucumber in lieu of a vegetarian breakfast, stuff like that. Yes, I got to be honest: the more of them go bankrupt the better off both the environment and the remaining traveling public will be.

Here's one gripe I have, however, and I hope regulators will step in soon to stop their shenanigans in that regard. Melbourne's THE AGE newspaper reports today that JAL is planning to levy a 1000 A$ fuel surcharge on flights from Down Under to Europe. Truth be told, I don't care what they charge. My gripe is that in order to compare like for like, airlines should be forced to quote one price for the trip from A to B and that's that. What is all this gimmickry including fuel surcharges, taxes, looking at planes twice, toilet fees, utilisation of seats etc? It's ridiculous. Of course, if you want to fly an airplane from A to B you need - hint - fuel. So, buy it and include it in your price, but spare me the ridiculous surcharges. If you're too incompetent to budget properly, don't make that my problem, just get out of business! I mean, they also have other cost factors, like running their planes, salaries, etc etc. Surely there is nothing in principle different between these costa and fuel costs or 'taxes', hence all of that should be included in one final price, and that is what the airlines should be forced by regulators to quote.

Otherwise it's a bit like a baker charging me a gas surcharge on the baked cake she's selling me, or a doctor adding a heating surcharge for the time that I spent in her heated waiting room. It's plain bizarre. Nearly as bizarre as Northamerican mobile phone companies charging you 'long-distance' fees for calls on the continent. Like, hello, don't you people understand the concept of satellite based communications. There is no such a thing as a long-distance call in any meaningful way on a mobile phone, yet these arbitrary charges are SOP of mobile phone operators in Canada. Oh well, getting off my soap box for this weekend. Enjoy yours. And remember, use the bicycle if you can.

Bob Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe

Nuff said

5* Hotels and the Pharmaceutical Industry

You will probably know that pharmaceutical companies (despite quadrillions of ethics codes of conduct that were usually produced by bioethics consultants of sorts) try hard to persuade doctors to prescribe their medicines as opposed to equally effective cheaper products. So they go about this by means of giving doctors plastic pens, inviting them to fanciful dinners, and much much more. Anyway, one way of keeping selected medics on their side has been to invite them to 'educational' events, usually in a nice city like Paris, Sydney or Berlin. All expenses on those junket trips are naturally paid for by industry.

Well, there has been a bit of an outcry over this, seeing that many people are unable to afford the medicines their obliging doctors prescribe them, private health insurance fees have gone thru the roof, and public health care systems resort to ever more draconian resource allocation measures to deal with the rising prices. So, unsurprisingly perhaps, it has been suggested that luxury hotel accommodation like 5* outfits for such junket trips are kinda unacceptable. Pharmaceutical companies have, hence, become reluctant to book such venues in recent years. Clever hoteliers in Berlin have found a way to deal with this (and I am not joking!). 5* hotels like the Hilton, Steigenberger, Intercontinental, Swissotel, and the Esplanade are giving one of their stars back to keep the pharmaceutical industry bookings rolling in. The service levels remain the same, of course, and so do the prices. It's a scheme designed to permit freeloaders and their service providers to continue feeling comfy again without having to worry about how it will look like in the public eye.

Gay Marriage? - Whatever ...

I don't care much about the gay marriage activism, so the drama playing out in California kinda bores me to death. It's essentially a conservative agenda as most feminists have long realized. I also don't care much about the internal US politics on that issue as the country is stuffed so substantially that a small 'victory' on a by and large unimportant civil rights issue should not divert attention from how bad things really are over there.

Just to be clear, gay people as much as anyone else are perfectly entitled to see their relationships legally recognized (ie visitation rights in hospitals, retirement planning, access to partner's medical plans and so on and so forth). This, however, doesn't seem to be the activists' issue as they have claimed in many countries that civil partnerships that guarantee to same-sex couples the same legal rights and protections as to married couples (except the word 'marriage' won't be used to described those relationships) are insufficient and hugely discriminatory.

Well, here's my main problem with this: In my little universe, marriage as an institution has been an overwhelming failure. Roughly every second marriage today ends up in the divorce courts, and there is an even larger number of people who would get divorced but stick together in unhappy marriages due to religious or other cultural pressures. - And that's just for straight folks. Now, explain to me, why do gay folks clamor so hard for the 'right' of access to the same flawed institution? We do not seem - well, most of us anyway - to be hardwired to sustain marriages as the life-time type institutions that they're supposed to be.

To my mind, the state should not be in the business of sanctioning marriages. Leave it to religious organizations as a special membership benefit. So, queer churches such as the MCC - ignoring anything the bible ever said about homosexuality - can then offer to their gay flock marriages at a discount.

Beats me though, why there is this hysteria about marriage...