A Talking Hippo

I like to sit on my female staff's lap of an evening. If I'm in a generous mood I'll allow her to brush my fur, massage my feet and feed me treats. Then while Badger is busy peeing on my male staff's lap and my male staff occupies himself with placing Badger carefully on the floor, peeling of his moist trousers (Much to any house guests consternation.) and stuffing them in to the washing machine, my female staff and I watch telly. Just occasionally, squeezed between commercials for acne cream, cat food and laundry liquid, (which thanks to Badger my staff are very interested in.) are some programmes. You have to pay close attention. Blink and you'll miss them. A two hour movie on commercial telly lasts about six hours these days thanks to all the commercial breaks. Because of this my staff and I have not seen a movie all the way through for months.

It's easy to tell when my male staff has had Badger on his lap. (Or so he claims.)

We all generally fall asleep long before the closing titles. Many's the time I've woken up on my female staff's lap to find a late night infomercial on the telly and my fur soaked with my female staff's drool, while she snores like a chainsaw. On such occasions I have to bite her thigh to wake her up so that she can put me to bed and top up my dry food.  Anyway, the other evening I woke earlier than usual, I don't know why, maybe my male staff passed bottom wind or perhaps an extra large drop of my female staff's drool landed on my nose. Whatever the reason, I looked up to see that the movie on the telly was "The Greatest Story Ever Told." There was John Wayne dressed as a Roman Centurion but still looking like a cowboy. He was squinting up at Max von Sydow aka Jesus, who looked remarkably well considering he'd been nailed to a cross and had his side pierced by a Roman spear. I fully expected Mr Wayne to say to Jesus "Git aahf your craahss an' drink your milk" in that slow I've just drunk half a bottle of vodka voice of his.  But no, what he said was "Trooly this mayan is the son of Gaaahd." in his best Roman soldier accent.

John Wayne as a Roman centurion has to be one of the worst pieces of casting in the history of Hollywood, surpassed only by the disastrous casting of Ronald Reagan as the President of the United States of America. That was truly appalling, he was completely unbelievable in the role. No nation on earth would ever elect someone as obviously affected by dementia as he was - certainly not twice.

Ronald Reagan spent much of his second term believing he was a moose.

I must have drifted off to sleep again soon after that because when I awoke John Wayne had gone and been replaced by what I at first assumed to be a talking hippo. Having blinked the sleep from my eyes and wiped away the worst of my female staff's drool from my face I saw that it was in fact the world's richest woman - Gina Rinehart. Her vast fortune comes from digging holes like a demented mole all over Australia and then selling whatever comes out the holes to the Chinese and the Indians.

Ms Rinehart takes a short post lunch power nap.

What she was saying gave me a proper piggy giggle. She was rabbiting on about how Australia has become too expensive and that companies like hers should be given tax breaks, especially if they want to dig holes in the north of the country. The billionaire then went on to say that Australian workers are being paid far too much and that in other parts of the world people are paid two dollars a day - like that's a good thing.. Goodness me, even Badger knows that it is the mining companies themselves that have made Australia such an expensive place to live.  The resources boom is a real double edged sword, because while it generates untold wealth for a few and contributes very nicely thank you to the nations coffers, it also makes it hard for companies outside the mining sector to compete with the stupid wages being offered by Ms Reinhart and the like. It's bumping up rent and house prices in dumpy towns like Mackay, so that anyone not employed by the mines can no longer afford to live there and visitors have to fork out vast sums of money for a night in a the type of motel that makes you itch when you see the bedding, let alone actually lay on it.

Of course hippos are as much entitled to express their opinions as guinea pigs, but for one particular billionaire hippo to complain about the problems of doing business in Australia when the hippo itself to a large extent is contributing to many of the problems is a bit rich, like Gina Rinehart. It's also not a good look for a billionaire who inherited a vast fortune from her Father to be telling Mr and Mrs Average Australian that they should be working for less. This so incensed my male staff that he dropped his pants and mooned the television, much the the surprise of his Mother-in-Law who was sitting the the sofa at the time. Fortunately my female staff was asleep and didn't witness this outrage, but for some reason her mum didn't want her usual sausage and eggs for breakfast the next morning.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE 
None of this has got anything to do with my feet, or anyone else's, for that matter so I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to say. That being the case, I'll just publish a very cute photo of myself and have done with it.