Lord thank-you for this day, bless us as we go out after this guy, let us catch him real fast in Jesus' name Amen." DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER
Everybody's talking about Haiti right now and it's a genuine pity, because they've cancelled tonight's episode of Jeopardy to give us the latest news.
People are chiming in with their "two penn'orth" on this interesting subject. This has been a poor show for the people of Haiti but it has provided excellent publicity for Twitter. I can't seem to escape the ubiquitous "tweets" at the moment. No doubt some bold dragoon in the Humanities Department of YOUR university is even now "drafting" an essay (or even a "think-piece") on how the Haitian disaster was a "global turning point" for Twitter.
What possesses people, I merely ask, to hold forth passionately on subjects wholly removed from them? It is, I suppose, only a percentage of the human race that does it; unfortunately they are the most vocal percentage. These are the people who actually respond to fatuous requests for e-mails from radio shows and news anchors. These are the people who write to New York Magazine. They pledge money to NPR. They must speak - they must be heard.
It might be said that I am doing the same thing even now with these my words. The difference, my dear, is that absolutely nobody will read these words I am writing.
Anyway, so... on Dog the Bounty Hunter... uh...
You know I like Baby Lyssa, but it must be remarked that she is a confirmed yellow-belly. She recoils from even the rumour of danger. That's right - I'm calling her a coward.
Female cowardice is not a clearly-defined or well-studied thing. Women seldom get called cowards - it is almost exclusively an epithet applied to men. Like "bastard." When did you last hear a woman get called a "bastard"? It doesn't happen. Likewise the female coward.
Women can obviously be cowardly; why is it never remarked?
When, come to think of it, did you last hear of a woman being called a pillock?
Sometimes my canny observations are rejected by sober society. No matter. I tried, for a period, to claim at every opportunity that "nobody actually likes champagne; they just drink it when it's offered them." This is true for me, so I chose to see it as a universal observation. Nobody particularly refuted it for the longest time. Then I said it at New Year I think and Jonny Ames-Lewis, of course, said, "Nonsense Fabe. I like champagne."
The same is true, I argue anyway, of popcorn. Nobody genuinely likes popcorn - unless it is that popcorn so saturated in either cheese or caramel that it is no longer popcorn in anything but name. Even then, the only person who likes it is Oprah Winfrey - and she is famous for her debauched, haywire omnivorousness. She's like a grizzled grizzly bear that hesitantly sneaks to the fringes of an urban area, gingerly eating willy-nilly from the garbage. She can't distinguish good from bad, so long as it has "that crunch",. People at the cinema eat popcorn and soda solely because they are on sale in the foyer and they think that they must therefore do it. Idiotic thinking. All these supposedly critical people who were sitting at Film Forum watching Kurosawa's Stray Dog, munching on popcorn. When, I wonder, does a person become a pocorn-eating cinema-goer? When do they make that leap, that affirmation, that lethal twist? Generic people usually drink cola. They eat McDonalds and they play computer games. They tweet about Haiti. But when do they actually become generic people?
They're pillocks.
