Earthlings untie ... er ... unite

I’ve just received an email from Jodie, an American friend of mine.

Now, I know some people myopically don't like Americans, period, but I’m quite fond of many Americans.

I like the way they do weird things like carry out research that shows that 40% of American woman have thrown footwear at a man. (Does this explain why American women like shoes with sharp stiletto heels?). And that 90% of Americans believe in divine retribution (although nearly half the female population will try to exact their own via airborne shoes) while 82% believe in the afterlife (this can be used to explain airborne shoes).

The plaintive email I received from my friend, obviously sent out in bulk to this lady’s many acquaintances, was a comment by an American commentator that said:
“ I am sorry but after hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Spanish -- enough is enough.”

I found this astonishing! Americans still fervently sing their national anthem?! What *are* they?!

Here in New Zealand we don’t do that sort of thing. Over time, we’ve substituted for the embarrassing ordeal of singing the national anthem, the performance of the Kiwi version of line dancing - the haka. But even this is under review since the latest haka done by rugby players has them pulling their fingers across their throat in a throat-cutting gesture.

I really can't see this haka gaining wide acceptance. While sometimes appropriate, it simply wouldn't be politically correct at events such as parent/teacher meetings.

Americans sing their national anthem?! Can you picture a crowd of Kiwi rugby enthusiasts singing the New Zealand national anthem?! The result could only be rude.

I mean, the words are sure to be subverted to something like
“God of Nations with smelly feet,
Isn’t bondage love so sweet,
Feed our vices, we entreat,
God defend our free love.”

But the Yanks stand like a lot of pussies at public events and *sing* their song! Geez, the last time I did anything like that was at primary school when everyone had to stand and sing "Mary had a little lamb."

Which reminds me, I never did find out if Mary had a ram or a ewe, whether she milked it (note I didn't say wether she milked it), shore it, or was just raising it for Christmas dinner. Us country boys like to learn the technical facts, you know...

But as much as I like Americans, they can be darn confusing to non-Americans. I once met an English guy who told me how an American prostitute had really confused him.

"We went upstairs," he said, "and had a bit of old narsty, and she looked up at me and said, 'Are you through?'”

Then again, the Yanks and the English, despite Prime Minister Blair’s every good intention, still rub each other up the wrong. To insert into the writing some rare social commentary on my part, I must say that it is the Englishman's authority position, as arbiter of elegance, speech, literature, etc., that makes him so awesome to certain Americans and so infuriating to others. The American immediately senses in the Englishman’s habits the notion of superiority, though he is seldom able to see, in his own opposite habits of flamboyance and overstatement, an anxious uncertainty as to whether he might not actually be inferior.

And things are not helped by events like the time an American was drunk on a train in Britain. The drunken Yank scandalised the passengers in the compartment by picking his nose, scraping the fur off his tongue and putting it under the seat, reaching into his fly and elaborately adjusting his genitals, etc.

For a while an Englishman watched him coldly from the seat facing, before finally saying, "Do you suppose, old chap, that you could conclude the entertainment with a rousing good fart?"

Of course, I’ve learnt that there are some things you never remind Americans about. One is Cuba. Americans get awful upset if you tell them that not far from their shores lives the longest reigning dictator in power currently, if you don't count Martha Stewart.

President Bush, who recently had a health check up and is pleased it showed that he didn’t have any venereal diseases caught from sitting in Clinton’s chair, is now threatening to invade Cuba. It seems that he’s just discovered that Cuban schools have some of the best mathematics teachers in the world. So he now has an excuse to invade - Cuba has weapons of maths instruction.

Ah, poor old George Bush. Every year is a little harder for him, thanks to Viagra.

But for all their differences, Americans are the same as everyone else.

For example, like every other woman, an American woman also never knows where to look when eating a banana.

And every American guy has also, at some stage while taking a pee, had the urinal flush half way through and then raced against the flush.

And we’ve all had an uncle who tried to steal our nose.

Ah yes, it’s a small world.

--
Allan

Sex and confusion

It seems that sex and confusion go … er … hand in hand in the experience of looking after pets.

I remember that, when I was about five years old, we used to have a pet cow called Nellie. I don’t remember all that much about Nellie except that she was very BIG, and one day she was sent off to visit a bull. I wasn’t really surprised about this, actually. After all, she’d been alone in a paddock for heaven knows how long and I figured that she was probably in need of some company.

Anyway, after that she got a bit fat and the day came when my mother earnestly took me out to see Nellie have her baby.

As an experience, birth was all a bit much for a five-year-old. All I can remember thinking is that I knew that kangaroos keep their babies in a pouch, but that was a *really* strange place for cows to keep theirs.

Now, after my story about the sexing of Scrooch, friend Sally has told me about her axolotls (pronounced Ax-oh-lot-uls), otherwise known as the Mexican Salamander or the Mexican Walking Fish.

You may have seen these weird fish-type things. They look like a cross between a fish, a lizard, and Kermit The Frog, and have these rudimentary legs, mainly because they, like politicians, are a backward step in evolution. They are descended from terrestrial salamanders.

Sally has two axolotls and, in usual pet owner fashion, wasn’t sure which was male and which was female. So one creature was named Python and the other was called Monty. As it turned out, Python laid the eggs and Monty made the sperm. So, given standard sexual practices, it follows that Python is the female and Monty is the male. OK. That problem was solved.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the term “standard sexual practices” when it comes to axolotls, because Sally tells me that axolotls have a reproductive system that most women would give their eyeteeth for.

Axolotls have a weird mating ritual where the male puts “packages” of sperm around the tanks and then “leads” the female over them. The female then picks up the ones she likes and inserts them into herself with her back legs.

Think about it! No longer any need for headaches as the male doesn’t come anywhere near you and, not only that, but having done his business alone, he then takes you shopping! I can see some women salivating at the thought of it all.

Sadly, the whole sex thing is a lose/lose situation for the male axolotl. Not only does he get no nooky and have to take her shopping in a situation worse than accompanying her into a lingerie store, but Sally says that a breeding female axolotl gets quite hungry and when you are blind and in a three foot tank, the male gets a chunk taken out of him at times. Thus, it’s probably quite understandable that Sally’s Monty is skinny, looks a bit put upon – and has a chunk out of his tail.

I can only say that if I were Sally’s Monty, I would welcome the site of her cat Eugenie sitting on the thick glass lid, and maybe even hope that the lid would slip one day and Eugenie would put me out of my misery.

Then again, it could be worse. Monty could be one of the eggs that Python has just laid. Sally says that she now has to decide whether to leave Python’s newly-laid eggs in the tank or remove them. If she removes the eggs, most of them will not survive. On the other hand, if she doesn’t remove them, Monty and Python, having the average fish’s two second attention span will, as Sally puts it, “forget the miraculous event ...and eat the buggers.”

Sally says that she has toyed with the idea of removing Python and Monty from the tank, but that will only mean she then has to find space for *another* tank of weird creatures.

I have great sympathy for Sally. And even more for Monty!

So, the more pet sex stories I hear from my friends, the more I’m convinced that I must write a book on the subject. I think I’ll call it “Sex and The Single Pet Owner”.

Films, foibles, and fantasies

(Sent to a few lady friends)

Hey, it’s going to fine weather all next week! Darlink, my heart bleeds for you, stuck inside at a desk all day. It must be terrible to have a boss so adept with superglue.

Ah well, this weekend you can enjoy all the sunshine and get an all-over-tan. OK, just a mild shading on the few bits of skin you dare expose to the winter sun.

Me, I'm stuck inside finishing the revision of my 1996 kid's book on Western Samoa.

Whoops! On Samoa. They changed the name of their country from Western Samoa to just Samoa in 1997, much to the chagrin of their American Samoa neighbours.

I was so taken with one quote I found while researching the revision that I just had to use it in this edition: "Someone once said that if relaxation was an Olympic games sport, Samoa is where you would go to train."

Anyway, I have now put that book to bed (hey, I don’t have any kids to put to bed and you are so far away...) so I will now start on my book on Sir Peter Blake. Ah well, at least he won't object to anything I write about him. And the kids will just love the fact that he was murdered by pirates. Of course, I can think of better ways of pleasing kids, but ...

Tonight I might well watch a film on DVD. I started to watch a Woody Allen film last night called “Scenes From A Mall”. I have to say that, as a comedy, it was about as funny and enjoyable as shopping at a mall. I could do better.

Indeed, I might just give that a go. With modern technology being what it is, and Peter Jackson's investment in film production in New Zealand, the country is all set up to take great advantage of the forthcoming trend to downloaded entertainment. I was reading the other day that the experts reckon that there is going to be an increased cash flow of billions of US dollars in the downloaded entertainment field in the next decade. Now, I'm not greedy. A mere million or two would be fine for me.

And that doesn’t count the fact that New Zealand is going to digital TV and the TV companies will be looking for content for their many digital channels.

So I'm going to get my little camera out and start taking little movies of my exciting life. Then I'll turn it into a film. Hey, I've just written a book on Peter Jackson. He has proved that horror comedies can sell.

--
Allan


And in reply to an email I got from sending this out…

Rachel sweetie.

You want to star in the horror comedy I’m making of my life?!

Darling, I’m sorry to say, but that is impossible. In order to do that, you and your terrible tyke would have to come up here and be a big part in my life or vice versa.

As it is, separated as we are by the Cook Strait and several million grass grub munching the South Island’s pasture, you can only have a bit part.

What do you mean, which bit? Well, with the distance between us, it certainly wouldn’t be my best bit!

But look on the bright side. You are freed of the threat of being flashed by paparazzi … or even me. And you can walk out of the bathroom wearing little more than underarm deodorant without worrying whether I will be waiting there to film the adult scenes of my movie.

Besides, life as a film star is just so tough. I mean, if you deprived your son of his television for disciplinary purposes, you’d be sure to be portrayed as an out-of-control freak in at least two tabloid newspapers. And if your G-string slipped into an uncomfortable region and you were photographed pulling it back into place, I hate to think what the tabloids would say!

So, unknown as you are, you are free to have a battle of wits with your son - even though he is unarmed - with no concerns except for the thought that what you think is latent rheumatism may be him and his mates experimenting with a voodoo doll.

However, when you want to become truly famous, just let me know and I will grab my camera and catch the next aeroplane down to see you. You do have an electric blanket on your bed, don’t you?

--
Allan

Sexing The Single Pussy

A new pussy has come into my life.

A young pussy, admittedly, but a lovely pussy all the same.

It’s a cute ginger tabby that seems to have adopted me. I have no delusion that it is my naturally attractive persona that attracts him to me. His is a cupboard love - when he comes to visit, I give him food and milk.

Scrooch, as I call him (I nearly called him Rover but if he and a dog came when I called him, life could get exciting…) Scrooch is at that cute stage when he will attack anything that swings enticingly and invitingly above him. So I never go naked in the house when he’s visiting.

At least, I think Scrooch is a he. Friend, Shirley was visiting when he last came to visit and I introduced him to her.

“Is it a male or a female?” she asked.

“A male,” I replied. Then I added: “I think.”

Shirley put on this knowledgeable look that comes from having read the 1947 Girl’s Book Of Caring For Pets” and said: “I’ll find out.”

So she swooped down, picked the cat up and felt between its back legs.

Now *that* gave Scrooch cause for concern. He looked at me as if to say: “Do you know where this human is squeezing me!?” and wriggled in protest.

“It’s a girl,” said Shirley, putting the offended cat back on the ground.

I offered Scrooch some jellimeat, and thankfully the transexual cat decided that it would forgo its indignation for food and started tucking in.

Scrooch was a she?! Nah. That cat didn’t strike me as a she cat. I looked at it eating up large and found myself wondering whether Shirley’s animal sexing abilities were all that good. After all, the 1947 Girl’s Book Of Caring For Pets probably didn’t even mention sex, or else it inferred that animal birth was all a matter of immaculate conception. And it certainly wouldn’t have told her how to distinguish between male and female genitalia by feel.

“Are you sure it’s male?” I asked doubtfully, “From the rear end it doesn’t look like that to me.”

Next second the poor cat was hauled up away from its jelliment and Shirley was again poking and prodding its nether regions. I could have sworn that cat was tossing up whether to spit out the food in its mouth and attack; or chew it up, swallow and just fart in self defence. Instead, it just did a quick swallow before wriggling in Shirley’s arms to escape those probing fingers.

“It could be a male,” said Shirley as she sadistically, if carefully, squeezed delicate parts of the poor cat’s personage. “On our cat, it’s balls were as large as an elephant’s.”

I restrained myself from asking her how she knew how large an elephant’s balls were and, as the cat’s tail started a slow wicked wagging, said: “If you don’t put him down, he gonna slice you.”

Shirley looked warily down at the lithe young cat in her hands and obviously decided that even if he had balls, she didn’t. So after one last squeeze, the cat was placed back down near its food. I have to say it was a tribute either to his nice nature or his greediness that Scrooch went back to eating, rather than starting to slice into Shirley’s nearby ankles.

A few minutes later, when Shirley and I had sat down to have a cup of tea, she looked down at the little ginger furrball now stretched out happily in front of the LPG heater and said: “Come to think of it, it must be a male. All ginger tabbies are male”.

It was right about then that the cat stopped cleaning itself and looked up at her. Now I’m pretty good at reading animal’s expressions, and I’m pretty sure I know what Scrooch was thinking:
“And you think of that AFTER you’ve given me sore balls?!”