Bloody Foreigners

I may have mentioned this before. My male staff is a people smuggler. Don't tell anyone I told you, particularly not the Australian Federal Police. People smugglers are not popular in Australia right now as they keep bringing dark skinned people in perilously leaky boats to Aussie waters, where they either sink and drown or are carted off by immigration officials to miserable detention centres in the desert. Here they are demonised by politicians and press alike as being illegal immigrants, which they are not. They are refugees seeking asylum.

I'll say this about the mainstream media in Australia; there's only one thing they dislike more then xenophobia, and that's bloody foreigners. The idiotic shock-jock Alan Jones, so called radio personality, (Though actually he has none.) even went as far as suggesting that Australians should boycott Kit-Kat chocolate bars because Nestle had labeled them as halal. This is a deeply ignorant man. Does he think that Kit-Kats have to be slaughtered in a certain way to make them halal. This is the level of discussion we have to put up with. The terrifying thing is that Jones has a lot of influence. People take notice of what he says and then take up the issue with their elected politicians, most of whom have neither the courage nor the intellect to tell them to get a life.

Having said that my male staff is a people smuggler I should add that he calls himself a travel agent. I can't see the difference myself. Both are paid vast sums of money to get people to where they would rather be, though I think people smugglers get to keep more of it than travel agents. In any case my male staff is not very good at it. People give him lots of money, he gives them an airline ticket, and bugger me if they don't come back a couple of weeks later. He must be sending them to some truly awful places - like Adelaide. But here's the thing. They come back to him a few months down the track and give him more money. Once again he gives them an airline ticket and sure enough in two weeks time they're back. You'd think they'd learn a lesson and try a different people smuggler wouldn't you; someone more competent, someone who knows where better places than Australia can be found. Humans! I'll never understand them.

Another fool with a lot of influence - at least in Australia is Lord Monckton. I saw him on telly through the bars of my cage last night - damn his goggly eyes. It should be him in a cage not me. This geezer is the world's leading climate change denier, which would be fine with me if he had a jot of scientific evidence to back up his argument, but whats he got? Nada, zilch, sod all and nothing. In his native Britain he's ignored, or at best treated as the poor demented soul he his. He has to come to Australia to get anyone to listen to him. We do listen too. He even scored a gig speaking at Notre Dame University, sponsored by guess who. Yep - Gina Rinehart, mining magnate and serial greenhouse gas producer. He's entitled to his loopy theories of course, same as I'm entitled to mine, but I have a more scientifically based background than he does. At least real scientists perform experiments with guinea pigs.  

Wild Eyed Velociraptors

June 30th is approaching fast. This is the time of year that Badger and I hibernate until my staff have completed their tax returns. It can get very unpleasant; their language - never angelic at the best of times becomes positively demonic and at any moment I expect their heads to spin around and their mouths to spew pea soup all over the living room floor.  They range through the house like a pair of wild eyed velociraptors searching for prey. From room to room they hunt missing receipts, snarling and hissing at each other and roundly cursing the Australian Tax Office for having the temerity to want to know how much they've earned. Although the word "earned" in my male staff's case is stretching the meaning of the word somewhat. Personally I wouldn't call loafing around the house, drinking coffee, helping me to write this stuff and sending people to Africa "earning", would you? At least my female staff spends her working day in the health field, doing whatever people do in a field - picking daisies, having picnics, avoiding charging bulls etc. I suppose.

As small, fat, hairy beings with long whiskers and four digits on each paw Badger and I are exempt from tax in Australia, except for the state of Tasmania where we might well be mistaken for locals. Nevertheless we earn our keep by being cute and conning my staff into believing that we are fond of them by snuggling into their laps whenever we're wrenched from our cages and often our beauty sleep. What is remarkable is the number of complaints concerning tax that I read in the 'Letters to the Editor" page of the local rag that lines the bottom of my cage. I can thoroughly recommend the Sunshine Coast Daily for it's absorbency by the way. At this time of year it's quite remarkable how many humans whinge about the amount of tax they have to pay, and yet you can bet your life that these people are the same ones who whine about police services being cut, the lack of hospital beds and the state of the roads. The trouble is that these plonkers are being encouraged by certain politicians who, in a mad rush to win the contest for being the most popular politician, promise huge tax cuts without bothering to say where the money is coming from. Hells bells! Even a guinea pig knows that you can't have low taxes and decent services. You choose humans. One or the other.

Meanwhile, my female staff is in deep mourning. Daniel Craig has married Rachel Wiesz. The love of her life (Daniel that is, not Rachel.) is now unobtainable, and she's moping about the house in a sort of daze, dabbing her eyes from time to time with a black lace handkerchief and sighing a lot. My male staff has been doing his best to console her, saying things like "He may be ruggedly handsome, fit as a butcher's dog, incredible in bed, and rich and talented, but can he make good scrambled eggs? Does he ever do the washing up? Does he make the bed? Does he like guinea pigs?" My female staff just stares at him, sniffs and says "Who gives a shit?"

Utter Nutters

I hate it when my staff try to cut my hair. When my male staff did it I ended up with a bald patch on my bum, which was very draughty, and now my female staff (Alias "The Butcher of Black Mountain") has had a go and I look like a miniature triceratops. Badger squealed like a girl and tried to bury himself in his straw when he saw me, which I have to admit was quite satisfying. He's lucky; being a short haired piggy he never gets the demon barber treatment. He's always so sleek, smooth and shiny that he doesn't even need brushing - the little creep!

Have you noticed how nasty the Australian parliament has become since the last election. I mean, it's never been a pleasant place, there are for too many politicians hanging around the joint for that. It seems to be getting worse though. The Prime Minister's own Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd calls Julia's official residence - The Lodge "Bogan-ville" alluding I presume to her rather ocker accent, her love of Aussie rules football and the fact that she wears throngs and tracksuit pants into parliament house. I'm kidding of course. Actually she usually has bare feet. Kevin is a bitter and twisted man these days, since Julia stabbed him in the back and pinched his job. Nevertheless I suppose he has a point. Her recent Question Time comment about Tony Abbott being in a "state of hoi dungeon" was straight from an episode of Kath & Kim, albeit true that Tony should be in a dungeon, or at least a padded cell.

Talking of utter nutters, Badger and I really enjoy watching out of the window when my male staff cuts down one of his banana plants to get at a bunch of bananas. It really does consistently provide very fine entertainment. Firstly he saws through the trunk with a bow saw and then is invariably too slow to get out of the way when the tree falls. Consequently he gets tangled up in the dry dead leaves at the top. In itself this is probably quite painless because they're very dry and soft. What makes the whole spectacle so entertaining is that these dry leaves always contain a good number of large and impressively hairy huntsman spiders. Many of these creatures - irate and upset about being evicted from their home, seek alternative accommodation inside my male staff's shirt. From my viewpoint at the window I can tell when this point in the operation as been reached because he suddenly starts flapping his arms about like an epileptic pigeon, and shouting things like "Aaaaeeeee! Shit, shit, shit." Towards the end of this display he normally rips of his shirt and flings it as far away as possible before vigourously rubbing his hands up and down his body as though soaping himself in the shower. This is often accompanied by more shouts of "Aaaeeeeee!" when he finds one of the creatures stuck to his hand. Finally he calms down, picks up his shirt, examines it with great care, shakes it thoroughly and puts it back on. He then look around to make sure nobody has seen him, picks up the bunch of bananas and walks casually back to the house as if nothing has happened. Badger and I give each other a high five and think to ourselves that if only he'd stand for parliament we'd certainly vote for him - he's certainly bonkers enough. 

Orthodox Jews With Peculiar Views

Sometimes, in fact very often, human religion sucks like a black hole. Listen to this and tell me whether or not you think these people are sick puppies.

A Jewish rabbinical court has sentenced a dog to death by stoning because they feared that the animal was a reincarnation of a lawyer who had insulted (probably justifiably) its judges about twenty years ago. The unfortunate animal had apparently wandered into the court building and had refused to leave. It gets worse too; one of the judges from the court in the ultra-orthodox Mea Shearim neighbourhood of Jerusalem even asked some of the local children to carry out the sentence. A court manager told an Israeli journalist that the stoning had been ordered because the court deemed it an appropriate way to 'get back at " the spirit that had entered the dog. Appropriate to order children to stone a dog to death? Someone please remind me. Is it 2011 AD or 33BC? By the way, you'll be pleased to hear than the dog escaped before the sentence could be carried out.

I much prefer the recent ruling of an Islamic court in Sudan where a man who was caught in a compromising position with a goat was forced to marry the animal. Apparently they are very happy and have just celebrated their third anniversary. They have two children who unusually for toddlers will eat absolutely anything. With Islamic courts' penchant for punishing women who have had the audacity to have been raped, it bodes well for Middle Eastern peace that extreme Islam and extreme Judaism have something in common - even if it is only lunacy.

On a far more important topic than the Middle East peace process I'm pleased to say that Badger's recent visit to the vet went well. Don't worry Badger fans, there was nothing wrong with him. He just had a general check-up and his toenails clipped. Of course he let me know how brave he was and reminded me that I had squealed like a girl and widdled on my female staff when I had the horse thermometer shoved up my bottom passage. However, I am reliably told (Actually not that reliably - it was my male staff.) that he sat there and trembled throughout the entire consultation, and he didn't even get the horse thermometer treatment, which is probably just as well since his eyes are already pretty bulgy.

Returning briefly to the subject of Islam and Judaism, I wonder what they're attitude to guinea pigs is. Does the fact that we have the word pig in our name make us unclean? Followers of these religion would do well to remember what anthropologists now believe is the probable origin of the thought that pigs and dogs are unclean. It is widely held scientific theory that both animals' intelligence were considered too closely related to that of humans and so, long ago it became taboo it eat them. In the meantime however, it has become apparent that the intelligence of both the dog and the pig has developed far beyond that of religious fanatics of all denominations.

Cane Toads & Cockroaches

Last night Badger and I watched our first game of rugby league on the telly. Or rather I watched the game and Badger gave the players his death stare. It was the second game in a three match series between the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales. They call it Steak & Oranges or Snakes & Orgasms or State of Origin. Something like that anyway. Now I know many of my overseas readers won't know what a game of rugby league looks like since hardly anyone plays it outside of Australia and a couple of northern counties of England, so calling the Rugby League World Cup a global event is almost as daft as calling the Baseball World Series ............... the Baseball World Series. However I will endeavour to educate you all.

A team consists of thirteen players, none of whom are permitted to have a neck. Each team must have at least eight players who's knuckles drag along the ground and a minimum of four must have spent time at least an hour in a Rwandan rain forest being filmed by David Attenborough. The main thing that you need to know about the game of rugby league is that a team progresses by throwing the ball backwards and then running like crazy to make up the ground they've just lost. The team without the ball can stop their opponents by using pretty much any means they like - a short jab to the chin, a swinging arm across the nose, or by simply pulling down their opponents shorts so that they trip over. This last option seems to be the most popular. A score is made when a player accidentally falls over with the ball behind the oppositions goal line. Yes, to sum up, it's a sort of thinking man's gridiron.

This particular game was watched by over eighty-one thousand spectators. That's way more than double the amount of brain cells on the field of play - including the referee. I can't help but wonder if the game would be more attractive if the teams had better nicknames. New South Wales are called the Cockroaches. Is it wise to name your team after what is probably the most loathed creature on earth? This is an insect that even vegans stomp on. Meanwhile the Queenslanders have decided to call their team the Cane Toads. This is even worse. Cane toads (bufo marinus) are seriously ugly, poisonous vermin - at least in Australia. On second thoughts maybe it is quite appropriate to name a team of rugby league players (nullus neckus) cane toads.

An interesting link to past games occured during last night's match. Will Hopoate, the son of rugby league's most famous player made the winning score when he tripped over the corner post while holding the ball. His father John Hopoate rose to fame with his unique finger up the rectum style of tackling and soon became known as "Public Enema Number One."  

The teams pre-match training consists of visiting nightclubs, getting totally rat-arsed and then fighting with the security staff before finding a brightly lit shop window to urinate against. The game was invented in Papua New Guinea three hundred years ago, where rival tribes of head hunters played the game using a victims head instead of a ball. The winning team would then eat their vanquished opponents rather than do a lap of honour which has become traditional in the modern game. Apart from that, little has changed. Can't wait for game three.

Super Sex

It seems to me that my staff's lives revolve around horsepiddles and old folks homes these days. My female staff recently visited her Dad's old folks home - Sunny Days Aged Care Facility, or Stalag 17 as it is affectionately known by the residents. Once she got past the razor wire, the minefield and the German shepherds her Dad gave her the full tour. Someone was in the "slammer" incessantly tossing a baseball against the wall, while other residents had organised choir practice to hide the noise that the digging of escape tunnels was making.

As they sat there enjoying a cup of dirty grey liquid purporting to be coffee, something of a kerfuffle was heard to be taking place, One of the female residents had finally cracked - gone stir crazy. Instead of making a desperate dash for the fence only to be mown down by the guards' machine guns and left hanging there for the crows to pick at at their leisure, she was going from one male resident to the next, lifting her nightie and yelling "Super Sex!" at the top of her voice. Now, it should be remembered that this resident was ninety plus years of age and the goods on display were somewhat past their use by date. She approached my female staff's Dad, raised her nightie and yelled "Super Sex!" He eyed her with a certain amount of distaste and said simply "Mmmm. I think I'll have the soup please." 

Yes I know I live in the sub-tropics of beautiful, sunny Queensland, but will someone please tell my staff that it's time they bought some heating. They're always banging on about how it's only chilly for about a month and that all they need to do is wear a few more layers of clothing. Well hello! What about me and Badger? We can't trundle down to the nearest fat person repository (shopping centre), whip out a visa card and come away with a nice warm woolly jumper can we. All we can do is rub two pieces of dry bush chocolate together and set fire to our bedding and there's not much future in that when you're confined inside a metal cage. Hells Bells! Badger and I can't even cuddle up to each other for warmth since we're in separate cages, all because whenever we're together I try to bonk his brains out. I ask you. What's wrong with that? Thankfully, the temperature rarely drops below ten degrees centigrade here at night, so you probably think I'm being a bit of a wimp, but it's all relative isn't it? All the same I can't help wondering how all those piggies living in really cold climates like Canada manage. Do they find a polar bear to snuggle up to? Or is it just that their staff aren't as bloody tight-fisted as mine? 

Pig on a Plane

Occasionally it's not hard to dislike my male staff. He assured me that it would be about forty degrees when we landed in Dubai so I grew my winter coat with all due haste. You'd have absolutely loved me. My fur was thick and lustrous and beautifully warm. It was indeed forty degrees when we landed in Dubai. Forty three actually, centrigrade that is. I really wish my staff would be more specific. My gorgeous thick winter coat immediately stood on end in the heat, so that I looked like a bloody porcupine - most undignified. Anyway, justice was seen to be done in the end because every time my male staff touched me he received a hefty jolt of about five thousand volts due to all the static. The yelping and swearing was almost worth the indignity.

So anyway, finally it was time to fly back to Australia. It's a fourteen hour flight from Dubai to a place called Sinnyorstraya, so my male staff said I wouldn't have to travel in his suitcase this time. He smuggled me onto the plane in the same way he used to smuggle me into the hospital to see his Mum - by shoving me down the front of his trousers. While he watched probably the most stupid film ever made - Snakes on a Plane - (I didn't know snakes growled.) I poked my head out of his fly and ate his limp airline salad for him. Then once I'd finished that I leapt out of his fly and helped the lady in the next seat eat hers. I don't think she was expecting a large hairy thing to burst from her neighbours fly and land in her food tray. In truth she seemed a little shocked. However, once she regained conciousness she was quite good about it really.

So then I decided to stretch my legs and have a look around. I mooched about on the floor, biting people's toes and tidying up any stray limp lettuce. In this way I passed the long flight quite happily and even found a few wires to chew, though I didn't tell my male staff this until after we'd landed safely.

Sinnyorstraya is a funny place. It's a bit like Singapore I suppose only colder and the humans (called Sinnysoydas for some reason) are much ruder. It appears to be a tradition in Sinnyorstraya to dress in black in winter and this lends the place a rather sinister air, especially at dusk when homeward bound pedestrians are flitting all over the place like shadowy bats.  Like Singaporeans they charge around with cell phones glued to one ear or texting furiously and not looking where they're going. However, unlike Singaporeans they are not so good at avoiding each other and there are frequent collisions which often results in a fight. My male staff says that this is because they are either drunk or in such a hurry to go somewhere to get drunk that the least delay in getting there provokes violence.

In any case it's good to be home. Badger is fatter, the budgies are noisier and my female staff is still a fruitcake. I wonder where I'll go next.

Over-Sexed Rogues

Well, I'm nearing the end of my short stay in Olde England and I've come to the conclusion that despite what you might imaging from watching Hollywood movies not all Englishmen are utter prigs with a stainless steel rod up their bottom passages like most of Colin Firth's characters. Neither are they lovable, over-sexed rogues like most of Hugh Grant's characters, indeed like Hugh Grant himself from what I can tell. No, many Englishmen are total nutters like my male staff. His sister is something of a fruitcake too, although this can come in handy sometimes. Like the time she, her husband and my staff's dad went to an airshow. With my staff's dad driving they pulled up next to the man taking the entrance money. My staff's sister was pulling faces at her husband, something she does quite a lot apparently. The nice man taking the money assumed she was intellectually challenged - a quite understandable error, and gave her a free pass. He also assumed that her husband was her carer and charged him half price. My staff's dad is a senior citizen and so he was also entitled to half price. So all three of them got into the airshow for the price of one. Sometimes it pays to be slightly deranged.

Another thing I've noticed about the British is that they've stopped sending their criminals to Australia and started electing them to parliament. Here's an interesting statistic for you. 0.14% of the British general public are in prison. 0.6% of Members of Parliament are in prison according to Private Eye. So, Members of Parliament are four times more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence than the general public. Dozens of MPs and Peers who sit in the House of Lords have been found guilty of rorting their very generous parliamentary expenses - some have gone to prison. The latest greedy bastard to go to jail is Conservative peer Lord Taylor of Warwick.  He fiddled the British tax payer out of eleven thousand pounds in false travel claims. The funny thing is that the House of Lords has no regulation of expense payments as Peers are considered to be above such swindling. Who voted against having these regulations? Yep - the Peers themselves.

Not only have the British stopped sending their criminals to Australia, but Australia has started sending it's criminals to Britain. Forty seven year old Clifford Tucker had lived in Australia since he moved from Britain with his parents at the age of six, but her never took Australian citizenship. He only held permanent resident status. In the eighties and nineties he was jailed for violent crimes but he hadn't been in prison since 1999.
Now, the Aussie authorities may have been within their rights to kick this guy out, but don't you think it smacks of shirking their responsibility. This bloke is effectively an Australian. He obviously learned his criminal ways in Australia since he'd been there since he was six years old. Do you think it's fair to him or the British that this Aussie criminal should be dumped in Britain - a country he has absolutely no connection with other than his birth forty seven years ago?

One last thing. I've just been watching the BBC news coverage of the battle for the USA's Republican presidential candidate. OMG! Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin? What a choice. Mitt has all the personality of screwdriver and Sarah has the brains of a ............... Republican presidential candidate. Good luck guys.