Fungal emotions

Thinking about the fungus affecting ash trees, I have been wondering if there are other fungi affecting our lives adversely.

In particular, I wonder if there is a fungus which makes otherwise rational people who do not even seem to like children, except as some kind of animated toy, desire strongly to become parents.

It could explain a lot.

Yesterday I was in Moribunds Supermarket when I heard the cockatiel screech of an uncontrolled child. Or so I thought.

I am so sick of the noise I tried to ignore it, but the sound grew louder and presently two young but exhausted people came towards me pushing an elaborate armoured vehicle, a baroque perambulator, from which came a chorus of avian sounds.

I looked in and saw the little face; but it was a bird's face; and just under the covers there were feathers and a wing horribly crushed in an attempt to hide it, I believe.

What are you doing? I shouted. You have a bird there. You'll hurt it. What are you doing?

They began to say shsh, a sound that would-be proud parents often make.

Don't shush me, I began, so cross that they were dressing up a bird as a baby.

Please, Sir, said the man. PLEASE. Please don't tell on us. We so want a baby.

Well, have a baby, I said; but don't confine a wild creature

We can't have a baby, he said. She muttered the same thing.

Adopt one, then, I said. I keep hearing how there is a shortage of foster parents. If you actually like the things, apply.

It takes too long, she said.

Yes, he said. We can't wait. We want to be normal. And this sounds like a baby.

What do you mean by normal? I asked

Normal, he said. Like everybody else. We want to be normal.

I called the RSPCA and they were taken away, screaming they would kill me for being heartless and intolerant of basic human desires.

Beetle juice

Many years ago now I wrote several drafts of a short story which I never took to completion. In it, an Iraqi scientist goes in to see Saddam Hussein and announces that he has almost perfected the ultimate weapon and can he have some funding to finish.

This was long long before the dodgy dossier etc

He calls his invention beetle juice, from a substance supposedly in common beetles. I had been watching stag beetles making their way across a garden, clambering over each other when necessary. It occurred to me that it was quite odd from a human point of view although probably quite reasonable from the beetle's point of view.

But sticking with that sense of oddity, one might envisage some bodily fluid which does something or other the insect needs but has an odd side effect of taking away its sense of space.

So, says the scientist, to Strong Man Hussein, I have made some of this stuff in the laboratory. It affects humans in much the same way as it affects beetles, but with the further effect that because some human beings are more self-aware than stag beetles, it has great potential for starting fights. And the effect is irreversible. One sniff and your sociability is trashed for life.

I had some fun with the story, or began to; because, as I say, I didn't finish; and I had them debating how to trash the west and evaluating different approaches. The scientist, who was trying to be funded, persuaded the big cheese that one should take the long view and not be in too much hurry to defeat a member of NATO because that might bring its own problems. Let me atomise a few litres of this stuff in the air of London,e said; and within ten years the whole country will disintegrate.

I only mention it because I am wondering if there isn't something in the idea; and someone has done it.

.

Ash trees

So now we are to lose our ash trees, even though the people who put themselves in charge knew it was coming. I heard some minister or other – all Tories blur into one for me on the radio (or into a few apparent breeds when you can actually see them) on the radio yesterday insisting that all was being done as quickly possible because... a ban would come into effect today

They didn't say well the Labour Party didn't do anything either, which would have been true but irrelevant, because they weren't admitting that there was any avoidable problem.

But one found out, as this and that was said over the day, that the government (Labour and from 2010 Tory / Libdem) was asked to act some time in 2009. So we're probably looking at three years for this disease to get hold during which well-paid liars played with themselves.

At some point – I think it was today's Farming programme – I heard that we couldn't have done anything because of the EU. The Farming journalists tend to be a little more alert than the political and this one asked if that was the case. He coughed in murmured reply and said he thought so, but he couldn't say for sure.

Fiddling with themselves for three years.

Fashionable Idiocy Handjob Maestro of the Month announced

On 7^th October 2012, I awarded J. McDonald of j.mcdonold@gmx.com my Handjob Maestro of the week. This was for sending me information I did not want and had not asked for, the content of which of which suggested to me that onanism is the sender's main mental process. I was left to unsubscribe. Well, this faecal excrescence has sent me much the same crap again to the same email address, the email address from which I unsubscribed. I have unsubscribed again and notice that the best this vermin offers is “You should not receive any further email.” He still doesn't seem to be able to spell his own surname He quotes at the end of his email “When angry count to ten; when very angry, swear.” I shall award him my Handjob Maestro of the Month

Government spending

Mr Cameron is accused to divulging figures which have been given him in confidence and thereby manipulating the markets.I'm glad that he realises they have to be manipulated.

I am glad too that he realises the importance of spending money to stimulate the economy. We threw away billions on sport in the Olympics but he is happy to take the credit for the anti-recessionary effect of that spending.

He could now authorise a similar expenditure on the arts and improve the economy even further. He could build houses and not airports.

We don't need green fields built on but the industrial wastelands dealt with, just as we did for the Olympics. Housing and Art. That'll start the economy.

& introducing a proper population policy for the rich as well as those on benefits will take pressure off the taxes in the long term.

Chatter

You probably know the joke. In case you don't, I'll tell you the version I have.

God calls Adam to him.

“Yes,” says Adam, in a surly fashion.

“I've got an upgrade for you.”

“Another one? It's nothing but upgrades.”

“Ah,” says God, “but this one's a major upgrade.”

“Oh joy,” says Adam.

“Yes,” says God, “its marketing name is the thought and sex experience. I am going to give you the most powerful brain of any creature. No more simple reactions to your environment. That just makes you grumpy, as we have seen. Now you can interact with and change your experience.” Adam grunts. “And I am going to give you what we call private parts. No more splitting in two to make offspring. We're rolling it out across a range of species – but only you get the brain too. Now you'll be able to reproduce and keep all your memories. You'll be the same person.”

“What's so good about that?” asks Adam.

“You'll see.”

“I suppose I must.”

“There's only one thing.... There's a slight technical hitch. We're working on it, of course; but for now you can only think OR have sex. You can't do the two together. Now go to sleep...”

That joke occurred to me this morning as I was walking down the high street trying to avoid people on mobile phones.

I thought of language being invented overnight: and God said “Let there be language”

How astonishing that would be.

How astonishing would that be?

There's the Emerson quote about the stars appearing once in millennia.

You know we'd get used to it.

I looked at people clasping the little boxes to their ears and chattering away and wondered how much had been achieved by all that communication

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