This Mortal Coil

Badger and I settled in comfortably on our staff's laps the other night to watch the Royal Wedding. We both had a great pile of lettuce to work our way through and lots of strokes to absorb, so it was quite a busy night. We were both impressed by the stupidity of many of the ladies' hat and I'm proud to say that the stupidest of them all belonged to Julia Gillard - our esteemed Prime Minister. The whole hat thing reminds me of a story Badger told me the other day. Stop me if you've heard it before.

It seems that Prince Charles had been invited to open the new library in Cooroy. It was January, the hottest, most humid month of the year in Queensland. During the ceremony His Majesty was standing outside with the other dignitaries and the Mayor couldn't help but notice that the Prince was sweating madly under a heavy fox fur hat.

The Mayor was curious. "Excuse me Sir," he said deferentially. "I was just wondering why you are wearing a fox fur hat when it's 90 degrees in the shade, with 90 percent humidity."
 "Well," replied the Prince. "When I received this invitation I had no idea what I should wear. So I sought advice from Mummy. I said, Mummy, I've just been invited to open the new library in Cooroy. What do you think I should wear. Mummy looked up from mopping up a corgi do-do and said. Cooroy? Wear the fox hat."

Just lately I've developed a very useful skill. I can do a very passable imitation of a dead guinea pig and if I pass bottom wind at the same time I even smell like I've been dead for some time. I lie very still and flat on my straw bedding, eyes wide open and unblinking. I've managed to fool my female staff a couple of times already. When she sees me in this position she gasps and calls out "Oh Billy darling! Are you alright?" Then just as she reaches in to the cage to pick up my cold furry corpse I leap into the air and shoot into my little red shelter, where I sit in the doorway, laugh and say "Ha! Gotcha!" Look. It may sound cruel but it gives the poor old girl a little excitement. God knows she gets little enough being married to my male staff who's been told by the human vet that he has to do something about his cholesterol, whatever that is. Apparently if he doesn't "do something" about this cholesterol thing he won't have to pretend to have karked it because he'll be doing it for real. Then my poor female staff will have to dig a really big hole under the tree where Tiki and Wiggles the budgies ended up when they shuffled off this mortal coil.

Interestingly, the term "Shuffled off this mortal coil" comes from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. What does a guinea pig know about the plays of the great Bard? Quite a lot actually. It's a little known fact that he kept several guinea pigs as pets and that many of his plays were actually written about them and the titles were changed later to appeal to a wider audience. Romeo and Juliet were actually his two favourite guinea pigs.
He also wrote "The Taming of the Guniea Pig", "Much Ado About a Guinea Pig", "Two Guinea Pigs of Verona", "King Cavy", and my personal favourite "The Merry Guinea Pigs of Windsor".

   

Aussie Rules Rules.....OK?

Twitter is a weird and wonderful place. I regularly tweet with humans, other guinea pigs, rabbits, dogs, capybaras and even a gecko. Talking of reptiles, there was a wonderful tweet on Anzac Day/Easter Monday by a certain Jim Wallace - the Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby. His tweet went like this. "Just hope that as we remember Servicemen and women today we remember the Australia they fought for - wasn't gay marriage and Islamic!" What an extraordinary thing for a man of God to say on a day that is supposed to celebrate those who sacrificed their lives for the Australian ethos of tolerance and a "fair go" for all. In one fell swoop Mr Wallace proved himself to be a bigot and an utter twat. A semi-literate one at that. It makes me proud to be an atheist.

Like most Peruvians, Badger is Catholic and as such does not believe in contraception - condoms are right out. He does believe in spreading HIV/Aids as rapidly as possible, filling the world with unwanted children and banning the clergy from sex so that they go half mad with frustration and start molesting children and sheep, at the same time as telling the rest of us not to have a quick naughty outside of marriage even if we are consenting adults. It makes my fur stand on end. Then again I might just be bitter and twisted because my staff won't let me near Badger's bottom these days.

Badger and I watched our first Australian Rules Football match on the telly the other day. It seems to me that the word "Rules" is a bit redundant, because as far as I could tell their weren't any. It was great fun to watch though, in a homoerotic sort of way. There were lots of scantily clad men sloshing around in the mud chasing a ball that seemed to have been coated in butter prior to the game. It was like watching a lot of grown men fighting over a bar of soap in the shower. The game itself is played on a large oval field upon which at any one time there may be a hundred or so participants, including players, umpires, trainers, doctors, physiotherapists, paramedics, helicopter evacuation crews - complete with helicopter, policemen and a drunk wearing nothing but a silly hat.

It is a hybrid of rugby, soccer, Gaelic football and gay porn. At either end of the field are four evenly spaced posts. The idea is to kick the ball (Which isn't a ball at all, but a big pointy egg.) between the middle posts, for which the successful team is awarded six points. However, if the ball misses and goes between the outer posts the umpire awards one point for trying in case the kicker gets all upset and goes home in a huff. I did actually manage to decipher one rule, that is that you can thump a member of the opposing team in the head, so hard that he has to spend the next twelve weeks sucking pureed steak and chips through a straw, and get awarded a free kick because you tripped over your victim's unconscious body. Yet if you accidentally touch an umpire's shirt you will be jailed for several years and are made to apologise to the Prime Minister for disgracing the nation.

At the end of the game the winning team has a group cuddle and sing the team song as loudly and tunelessly as possible before heading off to the showers for another game of hunt the soap. Meanwhile the losing team trudge miserably back to the changing room where they sit about the floor in various stages of undress for hours until it is safe for them to leave the stadium without getting beaten up by their own supporters. Yes, it only took one game for me to become a convert. Now, like millions of Australians, Australian Rules Football is my true religion.

Faux Pas

Things have been a little strained with my staff lately. They went shopping a couple of days ago and my male staff went into one of their regular shops while my female staff was off doing something else - having her toe nails pulled out or her boobs refilled or whatever it is that women do as soon as they're out of sight of their husbands. Anyway, the lady in the shop is a regular reader of my blog and in all innocence asked my male staff "How's the pig?" Being in an unusually jovial mood he replied "You can ask her yourself, she'll be here in a minute." Unfortunately my female staff had finished whatever it was she was doing and unbeknown to my male staff had been standing behind him long enough to overhear the conversation. Seeing the lady wince slightly he looked behind to see my female staff standing there, arms folded and foot tapping. All it needed to complete the picture was a rolling pin tucked under her arm.

At least my male staff isn't the only one to make the occasional faux pas. One of his work colleagues had an appointment with two clients she had never met before. It was a 2pm meeting and his colleague knew his clients were eating lunch at a nearby restaurant prior to the appointment. When they arrived they were two extremely portly people who's backsides would barely fit in the chairs. What did my male staff's colleague say? "You look like you've had a good lunch." She might as well have said "God! You're a pair of fat bastards aren't you." Another of my male staff's friends asked a client when her baby was due only to be told indignantly that she wasn't pregnant. Honestly, you have to be so careful what you say to people these days - they can be so sensitive.

As you know Auntie Shelley has been visiting over the last couple of days, she's gone back to New South Wales now, left about an hour ago actually. Thankfully she was a lot less demanding than Auntie Jan who wanted me to perform all sorts of tricks as if I was some sort of circus animal. I know I live with a couple of clowns, but that was taking things too far. I liked Auntie Shelley, she was all cuddly and didn't talk down to me, spoke to me as an equal in fact - which actually was rather underestimating my status but never mind, she's only human. She has animals herself, just a dog and a couple of cats - nothing intelligent.

More guests arrived for lunch not long after Auntie Shelley's departure. This time it was Uncle Rob, Auntie Lesley and my favourite person in the world, their daughter Elly. I could sit on Elly's lap all day, in fact I did. She's the David Beckham of pig-stroking, only with fewer tatoos. She feeds me lettuce and treats me like an adult rather than some retarded human child, unlike my staff. Apparently Uncle Rob and my male staff are planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in October. I'm just grateful that I don't have to meet them at the bottom and listen to their endless whinging about their sore legs. My male staff still complains about the after effects of climbing Mount Kinabalu thirteen years ago, which was the last time he climbed anything bigger than a medium sized pile of bush chocolate. Funny isn't it? Some human males buy a Ferrari or have an affair with an exotic woman when they have their mid-life crisis. Others sail around the world or dye their hair. Not my male staff and uncle Rob, Oh no! What do they want to do? Climb a hill on the other side of the world.
I won't mention their age though, at least not in their presence. That really would be a faux pas.  

What an Arsehole Looks Like

Badger and I get to run around the lounge room floor every night. I like to potter around, exploring nooks and crannies and wheeking at the moon through the screen door. Occasionally I come face to face with a possum and that can be pretty scary - pink nosed monsters. Anyway, the point is I like to make the most of my floor time. Badger on the other hand prefers to sit in a half shoe box, just staring at everyone in that psycho, Hannibal Lechter way of his, only emerging to nibble on a treat now and again. He's probably imagining it to be my thigh bone or something. I never wee on the floor, but I will admit to leaving the odd sample of bush chocolate in strategic places. My staff are discreet enough to avert their eyes while I'm doing my business, but for some reason they're always watching whenever I try to mount Badger - the sexy little black-bottomed minx.

Whenever my staff lift Badger off the old towel that he sits on there is always an extraordinary pile of bush chocolate left behind. I've no idea how he manages to produce so much of it. I reckon if you held him up and turned his ear round and round he's shoot his pellets across the room like a furry gatling gun. It's quite incredible. The military would love to get hold of a weapon like Badger's bottom passage.

Last night while I was sitting on my male staff's lap watching telly, Channel Ten made a glaring error. They interrupted the commercials with a programme. It was the news. Commercial TV news editors' priorities have always confused me. The lead headline is usually something like "Oprah Winfrey sneezes, but denies she has swine flu." Or, "Tiger Woods denies being seen with Calista Flockhart. Says - It was a 3 iron." Then squeezed in somewhere between the sport and the weather comes "Japan hit by massive earthquake and tsunami. Twenty thousand dead."

On this occasion there was a news item that proves Australia can be just as good as Singapore at breeding cowardly, low life, scum sucking bags of bush chocolate.

(See http://pemery.blogspot.com/2011/03/killer-ibis.html and http://pemery.blogspot.com/2011/04/best-friend.html )

A nice young man called Kale Falchi deliberately ran down a black swan on his jet ski at the Gold Coast. The swan was badly injured and a wildlife sanctuary spent four months trying to save the bird before having to euthanise it. This pathetic excuse for a human was too stupid to carry out this act of bravery away from  the public's gaze and witnesses heard him say to his passenger "Watch this." seconds before he hit the swan. He was even filmed in the act. You can see it on You Tube, though I don't recommend it. When asked why he didn't turn back after he's hit the bird he said "I was late for my lunch." It would have been nice to see him go to jail, but the magistrate fined him $11,000 and sentenced him to 180 hour community service.

On a brighter note, Channel Ten did release his name and show his face, so now everyone knows what an areshole looks like.

Population Control

I was in such a hurry to get at my breakfast this morning that I skidded out of my little red shelter and sprayed my straw bedding all over the place. I like to do this every now and then anyway because it gives me the chance to read the newspaper underneath. It also gives my staff something to do - clean up the straw from the lounge room floor. Anyway as luck would have it the part of the newspaper revealed to me on this occasion was the "Letters to the Editor" page - my favourite. It gives me the chance to see what everyone else is whinging about, and believe me, humans whinge about the strangest things.

On this occasion there were several letters from people complaining that they had been caught and fined for speeding in their cars. They rabbited on (Why rabbited? Why not guinea pigged?) about how the police were just revenue raising and that it wasn't about road safety at all. I was tempted to write in myself to remind these whingers that some models of cars now have a device which when used properly prevents the driver from ever being caught speeding. You may have heard of it. It's called a speedometer. It works like this. The driver looks up from texting and sees a speed limit sign at the side of the road, then he glances quickly down at his speedometer. If the road sign said 60 and his speedometer says 120 it's a fair indication that he or she should remove his or her right boot from the accelerator and place it on the brake (That's the middle pedal in a manual car.) firmly enough to slow the vehicle, but not so firm that his or her can of rum and coke is spilled or he or she loses the ash from the end of their spliff.

Once the speedometer needle drops below the 6o mark it is then safe to take your boot off the brake  and place it more gently back on to the accelerator, once again taking great care not to spill your rum and coke.
With a little practice you can then drive along quite happily within the speed limit, leaving a trail of frustrated policemen in your wake. Once you have mastered this simple technique it should be safe to take another swig from your can of rum and coke, another suck on your spliff and continue texting.

Badger and I took our female staff's car for a joyride the other day, not that there's much joy in cruising around in a Hyundai Getz. Badger steered by running in the appropriate direction along the top of the steering wheel while I operated the accelerator and the brake by jumping on them at a given signal from Badger. Of course we couldn't get out of first gear because neither of us could reach the gear stick; however, we managed to drive around the garden without hitting much, which makes us a whole lot better than many Queensland drivers who seem more determined to die than my fellow rodent - the lemming. Indeed I sometimes wonder whether the government only allows Queenslanders to drive as a form of population control.

Bollocks

Badger and I had a great old piggy giggle yesterday. My male staff had just left for the office when there was a knock on the door. Assuming it was my male staff returning because he had forgotten something my female staff went to the door in her underwear, swung it open and declared "Hello darling, you're back already." This somewhat surprised the lawn mowing man who had knocked on the door as he was new and had never met my female staff before. My female staff squealed like a girl and shut the door in the poor man's face before rushing to grab a dressing gown in which to continue the conversation. I'll bet the lawn mowing man had no idea that lawn mowing could be so rewarding or that new customers could be so affectionate. My female staff's face is still a very fetching shade of pink even now.

Well, my second Easter is approaching. I don't remember much about my first. I was only 2 months old, but I do remember a lot of talk about the Easter Bunny, which worried me greatly at the time because rabbits are known to kill guinea pigs when housed together. However, no rabid rabbit appeared and so I survived to see another Easter. This time I will be spending it with a pair of fruitcakes and I get the feeling that there will be no mention of the Easter Bunny in this household. For my male staff it's yet another opportunity to stomp around the house muttering "Bah! Humbug" and complaining that there have been "bloody Easter eggs" in the shops since early January. Not that it stops him consuming these much maligned eggs like a famished monitor lizard let loose in a hen house.

For someone who studied theology my male staff is not particularly religious. In fact he says that his study led him to believe that the whole religion thing is a "bowl full of bush chocolate" (I think that might be a theological term.) and that the world would be better off without it. I think that makes him an apiarist or something. (Or is that someone who is intimate with apes?)  Anyway, you get the gist. He's not at all religious, and as such would make a great minister in the Church of England. He laughs at people who belittle aboriginal beliefs in the Dreamtime and the Rainbow Serpent, saying that such beliefs are naive and primitive, but then go on to say that they believe in the Virgin Birth and Resurrection. Apparently in certain parts of the world they still believe in Creation, that God created the world in six days and had a cafe latte and a piece of cheesecake on the seventh something less than ten thousand years ago, and that some dude called Methuselah lived to the age of 969 years - must have cost a fortune to fund the old bugger's pension.

Now here's an interesting paradox for you to think about. In the world's most scientifically advanced nation - the United States of America a Gallup poll found that 40% of the population believe in Creationism. That figure rose to 50% when Republican voters were polled. There is even a movement to have it taught in schools under the title "Intelligent Design." George Dubya Bush loved the idea of Intelligent Design, probably because he had so little intelligence himself. My male staff says he has a more appropriate term for it - "Bollocks"

Mind you, even here in Australia we aren't immune to lunacy, at least two senior politicians admit to being sympathetic to the idea of creationism. There's Steve Fielding, the nutty independent and Tony Abbott the almost as nutty leader of the opposition who believes in intelligent design at the same time as saying climate change is "crap". Not a big fan of science - our Tony. Anyway, if there was a God I'm sure he wouldn't have given me testicles that drag along the floor.

Grey Gonads

We have more visitors. My staff brought them in last night dripping wet from the pouring rain, like a couple of bedraggled stray cats - poor things. They were introduced to Badger and I as Uncle Dan and Auntie Jo from somewhere called Dubbelyuay. We were plucked from the comfort of our beds to meet them. They smelled funny - like hot sand. Badger was so alarmed by the smell that he leapt from our male staff's arms and made a dash for the laundry with the intention of hiding behind the washing machine until they'd gone. But unfortunately our male staff is surprisingly quick and agile for a gorilla and Badger was re-captured before he even reached the laundry, let alone the washing machine.

My staff have had a few friends to stay lately and they never ask me if I mind. Sometimes they treat this place like a hotel. Anyway Uncle Dan and Auntie Jo are leaving today and heading back to Dubbelyuay. I'll miss Uncle Dan because he really gives a good back scratch and my female staff taught him how to massage my feet. I rewarded him by not leaving a sample of bush chocolate on his lap. Badger took a real shine to Auntie Jo - once he got used to the odd smell. He sat on her lap enjoying being stroked, his little bulgy eyes staring ahead unblinkingly. He never blinks, in fact he's a mysterious creature altogether with his food inhaling and somewhat unnerving gaze. I sometimes wonder if he isn't some sort of physcopath on the quiet. Perhaps when he's staring at you he's thinking of how nice your liver would taste with some fava beans and a bottle of chianti.

Uncle Dan claims to be an American, but he didn't seem to have a gun so I'm not sure that I believe him. He says he comes from Iowa and as Bill Bryson said, "Somebody had to." There several things that don't quite fit with Uncle Dan's claim to be an American. For a start he doesn't weight two hundred kilos and he laughs at British comedy shows that don't have the cue of canned laughter so that the audience know where the funny bits are. He's outraged that so many people in his home country believe poor Mr O'Barmer is a Muslim. He say's so what if he is? It's better than being a bloody Baptist. He reckons that there is a nice Australian gentleman living in America who has more power over the direction of American politics than any politician. I think he means Rupert Murdoch, but I guess it could be Paul Hogan.

My staff's other great friends Uncle Mike and Auntie Hazel are away in Tasmania looking for evidence of intelligent life. I don't think they've had any luck so far because my staff haven't heard from them for weeks. They've probably been kidnapped by mountain men and even as I write are no doubt being used as sex slaves - lucky sods. Apparently Uncle Mike and Auntie Hazel are travelling around in a Caravan. My male staff says they are "grey gonads" or some such thing. This is apparently the official term for humans who like to spend their time clogging up the roads by driving so slowly that an arthritic tortoise could overtake them if there was room. Australia is full of these gonads according to my male staff. He says you can't even drive to the shops without getting stuck behind a "bloody great caravan full of gonads" none of which seem to have the faintest idea where to find either the indicator or the accelerator. He reckons the one good thing about not being able to afford to retire is that he'll never feel the urge to travel around Australia towing a road blocking caravan and whinging about the price of fuel on the Nullabor Plain.


 

Best Friend

I like to sit on my staff's laps in the evening. I stretch out, snuggle down and poke my feet out the back for a massage. They brush and stroke me while I lie there and I can keep an eye on Badger who is invariably in the lap of whichever staff member isn't holding me. Yes, it's a good life being a guinea pig living with these two fruitcakes. I particularly enjoy sitting on my male staff's lap because after half an hour or so of being stroked and watching the utter crap that they like to watch on TV, I get a little bored. If I'm on my male staff's lap I relieve this boredom by biting his trousers as close as I can get to his dangly bits without actually sinking my teeth into them.  Yeeuch! What a thought. This simple action causes some highly entertaining yelping and often spilling of wine. For some reason this same biting behaviour has little or no effect on my female staff. Ah well, no brain, no pain I guess.

Anyway, sometimes while I'm on my male staff's lap he tells me stories. Yesterday, for example, he told me that when he was about four years old (Jeez, that's middle aged for a guinea pig.) his family moved to a bungalow in Oakham, England. That first day he was playing in the front garden - probably eating worms or whatever four year olds do - when he spied the lady next door pruning roses. He immediately dropped his worms and went around to introduce himself. He crept up behind her and loudly announced "You're my best friend." This naturally made the poor woman jump and she stabbed herself savagely on one of the rose thorns. Furiously sucking the blood from the dripping wound she turned and stared at the snotty nosed little horror who'd caused the injury. "You're my best friend." He repeated. And so it was. The lady next door was forever known simply as "Best Friend." My male staff would disappear into her house at every opportunity for the next four years to play shops, watch the wrestling on the TV or simply to sip sweet milky tea and eat great chunks of cake. Best Friend passed away a few years ago, but before she died she taught my male staff a poem which he fondly remembers and which he recited to me with, I'm almost certain, a little tear in his eye.

How can a guinea pig show he's pleased
When he hasn't got a tail to wag?
All little animals you will find
Have got a little tail stuck on behind.

If they'd only put a tail on a guinea pig
And finish off a decent job,
Then the price of a guinea pig would run right up,
From a guinea up to thirty bob.

Now if you think that's soft, listen to this. Remember my recent post "The Killer Ibis" wherein that poor Singaporean solicitor's ham sandwich was brutally attacked by a vicious ibis? So savage and determined was this attack that the poor legal eagle had to stomp on the bird's neck and head several times in order to save his lunch from a fate worse than...........being eaten by a solicitor. Well, now there is the story of the Singaporean soldier who got his maid to carry his rucksack for him while on a military exercise. Good grief! What sort of men are they breeding in Singapore?  Yep this hero was pictured in The Straits Times newspaper marching along in his fatigues while his diminutive maid trudged along behind lugging his pack. This man is obviously a member of the SAS. (Singapore's Armed Sissies). This elite and secretive regiment is sent into areas of armed conflict in order to sabotage the enemy's make-up supplies, steal their nail clippers and covertly replace their tissues with sandpaper so that they get a really sore nose. If Lee Kuan Yew were dead he'd be spinning in his grave right now.

The Morals of a Randy Guinea Pig

My staff have just bought a new vacuum cleaner and it really sucks. I mean that in a good way. It slurps up stray bush chocolate even faster than I do, and that's saying something. They've also bought Badger a new, lighter food dish. This means that he no longer has to inhale his food from a distance but can now drag his dish to the door of his house and have breakfast and dinner in bed. When I asked for a similar dish I was told that I'd have to continue to walk to my food because I'm too fat and need the exercise. Bloody cheek! Is that any way to talk to a celebrity?

Did you get through April Fools Day unscathed? I think I did. Badger didn't. I told him that my staff were thinking of making us share a cage and he spent the whole day with his backside pressed hard into a corner. Actually he's still there now I think. My male staff was telling my female staff about his favourite April Fools pranks. There was a TV programme in the UK called "Tomorrow's World" - a science programme. Apparently they had good ones every year. There was the one about the spaghetti tree where a reporter stood in front of a tree draped in spaghetti interviewed the "spaghetti farmer" about how good his crop was. They also had one concerning a proposed bridge between Australia and New Zealand which took people in despite the distance between the two countries being well over a thousand miles. His favourite, came from a Sydney radio station who made hoax calls to people purporting to be from a telephone company. They told whoever answered the phone that the telephone company was about to carry out line cleaning and that a blast of compressed air would be sent down the line to rid it of dust, therefore it would be a good idea if the handset was placed in a plastic bag to prevent a cloud of dust being spread throughout the room. The poor phone company received dozens of calls complaining about the inconvenience. The radio station received one call from the telephone company's solicitor.  

However, my own personal favourite April Fools joke concerns Transocean Ltd, one of the companies who along with BP brought you the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year. It has been reported that their CEO Steve Newman was handed a bonus of $374,000, taking last year's earnings to almost $6 million. This bonus was due to the the company have an "exemplary" safety record under his leadership. The company apparently noted with regret the loss of 11 lives and the spillage of 757 million litres of oil into the Gulf.  It's a great joke isn't it? I bet the people laughing hardest are those in the fishing industry who have had their livelihoods destroyed and are still waiting for compensation. You really have to admire some of the big multi-national companies for their sheer breathtaking arrogance. They have all the morals of a randy guinea pig - I should know.