United Wastes of America

Our visit to Disney World corresponded with Memorial Weekend in the US. Many aspects of the American way of life frustrate and distress me, not least the culture of over-excessiveness and wastefulness, but one thing I can admire the US for is its national pride in its armed forces. Memorial Weekend, and the days leading up to it, feature giant Stars and Stripes flying from buildings everywhere and signs on diners, bus tops and billboards urging citizens to ‘support our troops’.

Walking through the Disney parks that week was a sobering experience: you couldn’t help but notice the significant number of young men on crutches or in wheelchairs with missing limbs and scarred flesh. Most were with their friends and families, doing their best to overcome their disabilities and enjoy a day out. Most were wearing their combat fatigues or T-shirts proudly proclaiming that they were ‘combat wounded’ or ‘a recipient of the Purple Heart’. Artificial metal legs were on show under shorts, rather than covered-up and denied. Young men whose lives had been damaged – some might say wastefully – in service to their country.

And alongside them, riding their mobility scooters towards the snack stands and restaurants, were the obese. Those too fat and too lazy to carry themselves on their own two intact legs, killing themselves due to relentless over-indulgence and service to their stomachs. Mingling with, and making a great hideous mockery of, those struggling on crutches or being pushed by wives in their wheelchairs who had sacrificed their bodies in service to their country.

The End is Nigh

Strong rumours have it that Oxford United will go into administration today, probably just before or during the club's televised game versus Cambridge United tonight. Ian Lennegan apparently wants to draw a line under the business so he can concentrate on his new Wigan rugby league venture.

The situation is inevitable, and if the club doesn't go bust today, it will happen sooner rather than later. I had thought the end of the season, but it's clearly going to be before Christmas. The business model is unsustainable. Merry and Lennegan's business plan assumption that we would bounce back up at the first (or at worse second) attempt has been undermined. Things cannot continue as they are and the credit crunch has killed off any hope of new investment or buying the Kassam Stadium.

Fingers will be pointed at Kassam, but Merry & Lennegan have to be held responsible for striking poor acquistion and stadium rental deals with Kassam, and Jim Smith is ultimately the manager who failed to keep us up, drank away our chance of bouncing straight back and then frittered the transfer money away on poor signings and big wages.

I'm upset and gutted to the pit of my stomach.

Cannibal Rampage

The Times published an article last week on the very real threat of global famine and the causes behind it (climate change, population growth, wealth growth & changing tastes in China, meat production, resultant hoarding of stable foods and cereal by governments and food price hikes).

If you type the word famine into The Times article database, you quickly find a host of articles relating the unsavoury, but historically accurate fact that in times of famine, desperate people have no choice but to turn to cannibalism to survive. 14th Century England, Stalin's USSR, airplanes crashing in the Andes, the list of examples goes on and on...

Clearly an early, controlled, adoption of cannibalism in the Western World (i.e. before we get too desperate) would help control climate change on two fronts: a ready and waiting nutritious food-supply that would dampen population growth. Perhaps we should start with butchering and eating old people?

I can almost see Delia cooking herself on TV.

I'd make a lovely sausage.

Loco loco!

Ticket to Ride update: I watched Channel Five's Lockdown a couple of weeks ago. It featured some high security prison in the San Francisco area jammed full of white tattooed-up nazi gang members who were at war -- that means randomly shanking/stabbing -- hispanic tattooed-up ganag members. The two groups clearly had a lot in common: a love of crime, a love of gang membership, a love of tattoos, a love of boby-building and stabbing each other. They also shared a coverted gym, where 190 of them all slept together, with no bars or guards separating the two warring factions. As someone unused to prison life, I would describe the set-up as scary.

Anyway, half-way through the programme, the camera pans across the gym, and in the no-mans land between whites and latinos there are sets of tables and chairs, and there, on one table, are two muscled-up latino ganagbangers playing...

Ticket to Ride.

In the shadows

There seems little doubt that Maddy McCann is dead. You have to hope otherwise, but reality bites down hard. With India only being a few months younger than Maddy, it's been particularly distressing for us to guess at how both her parents must be feeling, and most horrifically, the fear and terror Maddy must have felt during her kidnap and ordeal. We know how India would have reacted, and it doesn't bear thinking about.

But it's very difficult not to think, especially when your daughter bears a passing resemblence to the missing girl. There was a moment last week on holiday when India and I got out of the apartment block swimming pool (imagine my toned body raising from the water like Craig whatsisname in Casino Royale) and I quickly wrapped India up in her Jedi-style wearable towel. A German lady, who had not seen us before, caught my eye -- she was staring at India. Really staring. And it occurred to me that she was thinking "is that Maddy?!".

And it certainly affected our behaviour whilst away, especially Vic's: she was even concerned about leaving the children by themselves in the apartment room next door to where we were sat outside with my mum and dad. 5 yards. Within earshot and in visuals.


I hope they get the bastards who did it and the McCann's get some proper closure.

I really hope Maddy's still out there unharmed.