An Idiot Blogs About The World's Affairs
Blogdate 27 February 2011
I write after reading about Mr Saif Gaddafi, the son of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. I have been reading about how this son is arguing that there is nothing going on in Libya really, and all is well. His implicature is surely that it is an hyperbole of our Western News Agencies that is at the root.
This raises many a thorny issue, as I was discussing with my friend Mrs Anteloap (yes, that is really her name, the subject of many a witticism over the years) in the Butcher's yesterday. I embarked in search of scrag end, but came home with some honeycomb tripe and a head full of the subtleties of news-making. This is how I shall forever remember this fateful day.
I shall mark the day with a white stone, as Lewis Carroll used to say in his journals. Mind you, there is no connection really from me to him, in the matter of nude photographs. It is a matter of public record that my case was dismissed, there being no law against a single gentleman taking photographs in the nude in the privacy of a neighbour's gazebo, notwithstanding that the said neighbour was on holiday in Egypt (I had the use of the gazebo, I had it in writing, no children were embroiled).
Which brings me to the nub of what Mrs Anteloap and I discussed at the Butcher's, and again over a flapjack at the Mad Hatter's Tea Rooms (again, there is no connection, it is all purely incredental and incendiary).
You see, Mrs Anteloap ventured that it may be true what young Mr Gaddafi is saying, and all a tale told by the Press to distract us from the Cuts.
This set me on such a train of reasoning as I will here set off.
I told Mrs Anteloap that this was all very reminiscent of the debates about whether or not men walked upon the moon or not. My friend usually favours a conspiratic argument, and this was no exception. She has always denied the presence of men on the moon.
I expounded at length, saying, let us examine the evidents, what is evidenced, evidences, eviadence (words tend to lose their meaning if you keep repeating them or leave them on the bedpost overnight, like chewing gum).
I expustulated, saying as how it is not right, what Colonel Gaddafi's son is saying of his Dad, namely, Colonel Gaddafi never did set foot on the moon. Further, it is often wrongly believed that Michael Jackson was the first man to walk on the moon. Indeed, he is the most famous at present but that only shows the fickleties of fate and fame.
On that fateful mission, it was Cab Calloway, the bandleader, jazz singer and looney, who was first to walk the arid crater-pocked surface of the moon. Jackson then emerged from the Lunar Module as a follower. Colonel Gaddafi - even then wanting to be in command - remained aboard the Command Module in thin air (not that there was any in that spot to breathe - they had to use aqualungs like scuba, pending the growth of special gills in the top-secret labs).
Many still think it was Michael Jackson who invented it, but no. It was Cab Calloway. Others have followed in his waking.
Of the controverse around the belief that Mr Calloway's first words among the fine lunar dusts were a rendition of his hit song Minnie The Moocher, and the argument that this was dubbed over by NASA into the famous "one small step for (a) man..." speech - about this thorned issue I shall skirt a fine veil.
The most notorious expedition comprised mime artiste Marcel Marceau along with hydrogenous chameleon pop singer David Bowie, with dance teacher Lindsay Kemp in the Command Module. High hopes were held for these three, as they were all, like Mr Bowie, "chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature". However, it was never clear which was which, and, as there are four types mentioned, but only three men on the mission, this introduced a further layer of confectionary to the affair which was never properly resolved, there being constant bickering about who was comedian, Corinthian, etc. Even Mr Kemp's idea of a rota failed to set matters right, as it was still too complicated to work it out. It would of taken graph paper, which they had left at home on the sideboard with the doilies, fearing these to be very much "surplice to accoutrements", doilies seeming a mere frippery at the time, which was no doubt sound judgement, unlike the graph paper, which, as time has proven to all, was no mere tarradiddle, far from it.
It got off to a bad start, then. And what really made it a dog's dinner was when Marcel Marceau, who had started moonwalking beautifully, couldn't resist going into his famous "wind walk", pretending to walk against the wind.
The scenes of his walking against the wind which were then beamed back to Houston and then the world by international beaming ray technologies were what started all the conspiratating theories. People argued that there is no wind on the moon, so it must of been a hoax or spittoon.
I believe that this shows the mercury-coated personality of the French miming astronaut. It would perhaps have been best to go for a more reliable, if less-gifted, moon-walker, such as ice hockey star Alexei Kovalev. I know, they might have felt he would not gel, in a confirmed space, between David Bowie and Lindsay Kemp. But still, in my opinion it was worth condensation at the very least.
But then, I am not privy to the selection problems they may have engaged. I had the devil of a time when I advertised for a housekeeper a few years hence, admittedly the advert could have been misconstructed by devious minds. You would not of believed the replies, they needn't think it's funny, people have no respect of the needs of a single gentleman any more, especially when it comes to raking over old court cases.
Well, all this goes to show that politics and the media and conspiratical theories are all very constipated. You can't get a grip on it. Mrs Anteloap and I were agreed on that as we left the Mad Hatter's Tea Rooms.
But some of us try to at least be aware of the complicities, complacencies, convexities, implexities. There it goes again. Just like chewing gum.
Ah well. It grows chilly in here. Time for me to put some clothes on, close the volume of Lewis Carroll's photography, and face the world again, I fear.
For I have run out of suppositories again. Well, two a day doesn't go far, I find. Perhaps I should cut down, but I am afraid. Is it just me though, or do they taste horrible? You'd think they'd do something with fruit juices or peppermint. They've worked wonders with the fruit gum. Not with peppermint, but that doesn't tar the boat of my argument.
