Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Hezbollah and Israel

The media are notably bad at assessing how military campaigns are progressing.  Everyone will, I am sure, remember the prognostications of doom from CNN and the BBC (less so from Sky, whose coverage was more balanced) during the liberation of Iraq, when we were told that the offensive was stalled and that Baghdad would be the West's Stalingrad, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties upon the struggling infidels as the Fehdayeen and elite Republican Guard fought house to house.

So when the media says that Israel's military is rocked by the fierce resistance they are meeting from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it is worth asking what the strategic aims of Israel are.

Israel's goals are not territorial aggrandisement.  They don't want a bunch of fly-blown villages and rebellious donkey-powered farmers.

Nor do they particularly want a strip of demilitarised land in Southern Lebanon, whether that is patrolled by themselves, te Lebanese or the UN.  They will accept such a measure, but it is a tool, not an aim.  Particularly given the fact that a 20-mile-wide strip would not prevent the use of 70-mile-range rockets.

What they want is the neutralisation of Hezbollah.  Luckily, that is what the USA, the UK, the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraquis, Turks and every other non-terrorist state in the region wants.  Only Syria and Iran - who almost certainly made the mistake of provoking this conflict using their Hezbollah stooges, in order to divert focus from their nuclear program, which a few weeks ago was beginning to come under extreme focus - wish otherwise.  Iran wanted, probably, to offer a ceasefire from Hezbollah in return for concessions over the nuclear issue.

And why is this relevant to whether things are going well for Israel?

Well, the nightmare scenario for Israel would have been Hezbollah melting away ahead of them.  They are an irregular force, and Israel could have expended much money and international opinion shelling empty buildings and levelling villages to no avail had Hezbollah simply retreated ahead of them.  This is what the Vietnamese did after they worked out that irregular non-Western troops cannot fight a Western army, and it worked.  Leave your superior opponent punching at air and connecting with civilians, all the time declaring your love of peace and sympathy for those suffering around you, and you have the makings of a successful terrorist force.  Lenin would have told them that, amd he would have told them, also, that trying to pick stand-up fights was reckless egoism that a revolutionary cannot afford.

So the Israelis must be delighted that they are getting a chance to do what they came to achieve: Hezbollah fighters are apparently standing and fighting, which doubtless means that they are dying in large numbers.  If they become too few, the problem will not be the Israelis - the moderate Arab world can only give Israel so long to do their dirty work for them against the Islamists - but rather the host country, who may despise the Israelis, but will also undoubtely know who brought the storm down upon them.

This Is Probably The Greatest Scots Joke In The World

Probably the best Scottish joke I have ever heard:

Teacher: "Good morning children, each Thursday we're going to have a general knowledge quiz. The pupil who gets the answer right can have Friday and Monday off and not come back to school until Tuesday."

Wee Eric (a typical Scottish wag) thinks, "Ya dancer. Ah'm pure dead brilliant at ma general knowledge stuff an' that. This is gonnae be a dawdle, it’s a long weekend fur me.'

Teacher: "Right class, who can tell me who said 'Don't ask what your
country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?'
Wee Eric shoots up his hand, waving furiously in the air. Teacher looking round picks Jeremy at the front, "Yes, Jeremy."
Jeremy (in a very English accent): "Yes miss, the answer is J F Kennedy -his inauguration speech in 1960."
Teacher: "Very good Jeremy. You may stay off Friday and Monday and we will see you back in class on Tuesday."

The next Thursday comes around, and Wee Eric is even more determined.
Teacher: "Who said 'We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them in the air, we will fight them at sea. But we will never surrender?'"
Wee Eric's hand shoots up, arm stiff as a board, shouting "I know, I know.
Me Miss, me Miss."Teacher looking round and picks Timothy, sitting at the front: "Yes Timothy."Timothy (in a very, very posh, English accent): "Yes miss, the answer is Winston Churchill, his 1941 Battle of Britain speech."
Teacher: "Very good Timothy, you may stay off Friday and Monday and come back to class on Tuesday."

The following Thursday comes around and Wee Eric is hyper, he's been studying encyclopaedias all week and he's ready for anything that comes.
He's coiled in his wee chair, slavers dripping in anticipation.
Teacher: "Who said 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind'?"
Wee Eric's arm shoots straight in the air, he's standing on his seat,jumping up and down screaming "Miss, me miss, meeeeee!"
Teacher looking round the class picks Rupert, sitting at the front: "Yes Rupert." Rupert (in a frightfully, frightfully, ever so plummy English accent):
"Yes miss. That was Neil Armstrong. 1969. The first moon landing."
Teacher: "Very good Rupert. You may stay off Friday and Monday and come back into class on Tuesday."

Wee Eric loses the plot altogether, tips his desk and throws his wee chair at the wall. He starts screaming: "Fur f*cks sake, WHERE did all these English B*STARDS come from?"
Teacher, looking round the class: "Who said that?"
Wee Eric grabs his coat and bag and heads for the door, "Sir William Wallace, Battle of Falkirk , July 1298. See you on Tuesday!

Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man's Chest

It pains me to do this, it really does.  I should have preferred to keep some sort of a respectful silence on the subject of [takes deep breath] Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man's Chest.  But my search logs are nigh on full to the brim of people attracted by titular links to zombies, pirates and monkeys, and I can picture each, hopes dashed, trudging away into teh intarweb, disappointment etched upon their rugged, proletarian features.

You see, I entered the Vue/Omni/Warner Village/whatever it is this week Cinema in Edinburgh, agog with anticipation and cursing myself for not having had the foresight to look out a pirate hat or a small, portable monkey.  And I left downcast, sore of back and a little glad it was finished.

The film is too long.  Faaaaar too long at seven minutes shy of two and a half hours.  I don't often say this, but director Gore Verbinski needed some strong producers to tell him "you don't need the two 'we can do Apocalypse Now, journeying upriver in the swamp' scenes, the cannibal island sequence is overblown and protracted, the opening is weak, unnecessary to the plot, and serves only to set up a single visual joke."  He has enough of those jokes - Depp yet again shows how superb he is as a comedy actor - for a hilarious 100 minute movie.  But the extra 43 minutes make it drag more than a little.

It rather reminded me of another occasion, when an excellent first movie saw me scratching at the door of the sequel, eagerly awaiting a worthy sequel.  But that film - Matrix: Repetitions, or Matrix: Regurgitations, or Matrix: What Would Baudrillard Do? or whatever it was called - was an unworthy successor, and so was this.

Yes, there are plenty of good jokes, although they milk the piratical comedy duo too hard. One Woody-Harrelson-in-Cheers-says-something-terribly-erudite joke works well.  But they are done repeatedly, and the setup of the characters is inconsistent: instead of seeing him as an occasional, comedy idiot-savant, we end up wnodering seriously just how well-read is the (supposedly illiterate) one-eyed pirate Ragetti?

The enemies are too monstrous.  Only Tom Hollander is of human scale.  It is hard to see a charismatic or vaguely proportionate threat from a 1000-ton kraken, a Scottish/Welsh/Dutch bloke in a squid mask, a hammerhead shark, or a terrifying, ermm, hermit crab.

Jack Sparrow is supposed to be a really, really great pirate who appears not to be at times: look at the way he steals the ship in the first movie.  He is also supposed to be phenomenally selfish but - when it comes to the clinch - capable of being rather decent and heroic in a drunken, philandering, exasperating and exasperated way: a roll of the eyes and a dive into the dock to save the girl.  But here he does a number of the most evil acts imaginable, attempting to condemn large numbers of innocent bystanders to horrendous suffering.  And he does so incompetently: at one point we see him, effectively, as a giant comedy kebab, running around looking foolish.  So much for: "That's got to be the best pirate I've ever seen...So it would seem."

The fight scenes try too hard.  The three-cornered duel on a rolling waterwheel was ridiculous, and ruined any suspension of disbelief (although it did allow one fairly good - if a little too zany - double-take visual joke.  The Leviathan fight goes on foooorreeevvveeerrrr, and soon throws away tension by making the outcome of each round inevitable.  At least it finally reminds you what this is: a very, very high budget Sinbad movie.  With some very, very bad blue-screening.

Captain Jack had better play a big part in the next one, because Orlando "Honest, I'm Tougher Than Aragorn" Bloom is a black hole of interest, sucking up any life occurring on screen when he appears.  I am a big fan of Keira Knightley, but she isn't going to carry an action movie.  A lot is going to rest on the shoulders of Geoffrey Rush.

Tom Hollander, as the wicked but clearly lost East India Trading Company representative, was fun, and he gets to play a very bad Mr Collins opposite Knightley's Elizabeth (Bennet, not Swann).  Bill Nighy does his best, which is always good, but his CGI appearance makes that rather difficult: essentially he is voicing a cartoon, with the resulting separation from his character obvious on occasion.  Jack Davenport is rather good - even better than in the first, I would say - and with a nicely sardonic, ambiguous character.

Most of all, there is nothing nearly as fun as this:

Jack Sparrow: You, sailor.
Mr. Gibbs: Cotton, sir.
Jack Sparrow: Mr. Cotton. Do you have the courage and fortitude to follow orders and stay true in the face of danger and almost certain death?
[pause]
Jack Sparrow: Mr. Cotton. Answer, man.
Mr. Gibbs: He's a mute, sir. Poor devil had his tongue cut out, so he trained the parrot to talk for him. No one's yet figured how.
Jack Sparrow: Mr. Cotton's... parrot. Same question.
Parrot: [squawk] Wind in the sails. Wind in the sails.
Mr. Gibbs: Mostly, we figure, that means 'yes.'

A Chap In Edinburgh

Having stumbled across the BBC's coverage of the Chap Olympics in London last week, I picked up a copy of the magazine (The Chap, committed to the fight for Global Chapitalism, and including useful articles on topics like "Giving Jerry the Slip" and "The Semiotics of Neckwear"), and joined in the frivolities at their online version of the Drones, the Sheridan.  By way of introducing myself, I posted to the directory of useful locations, as Edinburgh was only lightly represented.  I reproduce that article here, feeling that others may benefit from it.  Noblesse oblige, old bean.

After Mr Johnson's taut and well-argued exposition of the sartorial high-points of Edinburgh, there seems little more to add to the topic.

If, however, I might suggest a few establishments that have been known to come in handy when a chap wakes up of a morning under a motorcar, his chums strewn to the four winds and he himself lacking one or two items of dress without which the doorman at the New Club will turn a gimlet &c. upon him:

Jenners, Princes Street - Sadly acquired by a national company, but still an emporium of impressive diversity and functional usefulness.

Stirlingshire Saddlery - A misleading name, given that it is now in Wallyford, Musselburgh, and sadly no longer with a branch in the West End.  Still useful, whether one needs a riding crop for horse, servants, or a particularly game mistress.

Crombie - George Street - A Crombie coat is quite de rigeur during Edinburgh's winter months.

Hamilton & Inches, George Street - As far as I know, the only jeweller in Scotland.  I have heard rumours ofother, but they all turned out to be some sort of tawdry vendor of quotidian gew-gaws and bawbles.

Pinks, North Castle Street - If threatening and demanding letters from irate tailors seeking payment for one's late grandfather's best worsted have driven you far from Jermyn Street, here you will find some solace in your Caledonian hiding-place.

Stewart Christie & Co., Queen Street - Bespoke tailors and country outfitters.  Be sure to place one's orders for new tweed well in advance of the Glorious 12th, when there is something of a backlog.

The Cumberland Bar, Cumberland Street - My own watering-hole of choice.  Divided into numerous snugs and cubby-holes, with a fire in the winter months, and a delightful beer-garden from where one can make quick work of the monthly remittance from the ancient and beloved pater, this is, nonetheless a resolutely ugly bar, which keeps away the worst of Mr Thomas Cook's customers.

Robert Graham, Esq., Rose Street - Tobacconist.  Edinburgh has its share of such outlets, each of which will sell a fine pouch of snuff or refuel the old Briar, but RG's is best when one seeks a fine cigarillo with which to celebrate the end of a particularly fine meal  

The Howard, Great King Street - When one has the pleasure of spending an afternoon in the company of a lady, the Howard does a particularly fine afternoon tea.  Blessed with only two tables, far superior to the Balmoral.  Be sure to ask for the central table, the chaises longues of which are sufficient to allow one's companion's great aunt to perform her chaperonely duties in comfort.

The Black Bull, Picardy Place - Of an evening, one occasionally requires a special addition to one's tobacco in order to impress the young bucks of the Hellfire Club.  A little time spent at the Black Bull will procure anything that can be smoked, ingested, or ground into a fine paste and smeared directly into the corners of the eyes (a filthy habit I picked up in Constantinople).

N.B. - The true Edinburgh resident crosses St Andrew's Square in order to avoid the premises of a certain arriviste calling himself Harvey Nicholson, or some such moniker.

I hope that this will help.  I weep for the young pup, turned down by Oxford in place of some chimney-sweep's scamp from Salford Grammar, and  sent to Edinburgh by a family who, on the basis of better drowned than duffers, have not given him so much as a well-informed gentleman's gentleman for guidance.

The Glenbuck Cherrypickers and Wikipedia

I have taken the plunge and created my first Wikipedia article, on the subject of perhaps the most remarkable football team ever to exist: the Glenbuck Cherrypickers.  Only in existence for fifty years, and drawing for players upon a (now-long-disappeared) town of only a thousand men, women and children, the Cherrypickers gave the world no fewer than fifty professional footballers, many playing (and managing: Bill and Bob Shankly were both products of Glenbuck) at the highest level in the Scottish and English leagues (then by far the premier footballing competitions in the world).

For contrast, that is equivalent to London producing 50,000 top-flight professional footballers a year, every year, for half a century.

But why do I tell you all this, when it can be found on Wikipedia?  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the nursery of Scottish football: the Glenbuck Cherrypickers.

Zizou - dignified and self-controlled, apparently

If you were a writer for the Times, you might not be delighted that your glowing profile of Zinedine Zidane, written before the world cup final, had appeared the day afterwards (yesterday), saying things like:

There can be no more dignified and proud exit from football than to make the World Cup your point of retirement.

Oh dear.  Dignified as in the sense of "red-carded for doing an impression of a rutting stag"? Given the ease of editing in these post-industrial days, you would think that the journo, Penny Wark, might have popped in at the weekend to submit a couple of changes to alter the rather hagiographical tone of her piece:

He has also been lauded for his integrity...the motif of his mature playing years has been his control and self-discipline

It reminds me, just a little, of the change in tone of the coverage of Princess Diana after she decided seatbelts were for wimps.  The Private Eye said it best:

In recent weeks (not to mention the last 10 years) we at the Daily Gnome, in common with all other newspapers, may have inadvertently conveyed the impression that the late Princess of Wales was in some way a neurotic, irresponsible and manipulative troublemaker. . . We now realise as of Sunday morning that the Princess of Hearts was in fact the most saintly woman who has ever lived . . . (Private Eye, September 5th 1997)

Zizou in collaboration shocker!

Old habits die hard.  No sooner does a Frenchman let his country down with a violent act in Berlin than his compatriots are crying "collaborateur!":

"Heureusement qu'il y a eu la vidéo pour que la France se rende compte ! J'en viens même à me demander si tu n'as pas voulu torpiller ton match et sortir le ballon délibérément lors de ton penalty ? Pas de chance il est rentré !" (C. Benoit)

Seems slightly far-fetched to me, but then I don't shave womens' heads for drinking with Germans.  Well, not any more.

Forza Italia!!!

I was delighted to see Italy win the World Cup tonight, for a number of reasons.  No, this is not down to my knee-jerk dubiety about the French.  Let's put that to one side.  In any case I have been brushing up my French by following the tournament in le Monde.  One of the reasons was that I love Italy, take every chance I can to go there, and have a soft spot for (apparently doomed) Juve.  Another reason is that it tonight's result saw me win the work fantasy football competition.

But it delighted me particularly because I utterly and completely despise the French coach, Domenech, and everything he stands for.  He is weak - he had no control over his senior players - and vain.  But most of all, this is a man that chose his squad on lines decided by his idiotic astrological beliefs.

No Robert Pires, despite his appearing in the European Cup final?  Domenech tells us that this is down to Pires being a Scorpio.  He doesn't want any Scorpios in the side, So Ribery took his place.  I had difficulty understanding the absence of European Cup Winner Ludovic Giuly from the French squad, until I discovered that he, too, is a Scorpio.  Nor did Domenech want too many Leos, he said.

Discarding one twelfth of footballers in France simply because of their star sign is moronic logic.  Perhaps he would say that logic is a foolish Anglo-Saxon idea that will soon be defeated by the might of French post-structuralism, which shares a similar grounding in, and despisal of, ideas of probative truth.  For now, I revelled in the post-match expressions of this stupid man and his thuggish (that's red card number 12 for Zizou), head-butting captain.  Yet again a world-cup final is decided by the head of Zidane... 

Healey kinda gets it and Ahmadinnerjacket is a loony

I just watched Labour Party old-timer Dennis Healey being interviewed on Sky News's Straight Talk, by my fellow Scot, the moderately repugnant Murdoch sock-puppet, Andrew Marr.  When asked about his willingness to give up Britain's nuclear deterrent in the face of North Korean and Iranian proliferation, he said:

"These countries are a lot more organised and cohesive than in my day.  There really is no military point in keeping our own nuclear weapons.  They're really just a political gesture."

Ummm, this man was one of Britain's most senior politicians for five years of the Cold War, from 1974 to 1979, and he only just now realises that almost the whole point of nuclear weapons is political?  The fact that they are called "special weapons" wasn't a clue?  The whole thing about us focussing on having a "strategic nuclear deterrent" wasn't niggling at the back of his head the whole time saying "I really should look up that 'strategic' thingy"?

I mean, yes, intermediate and tactical weapons would have been useful in dispersing the Soviet 3rd Shock Tank Army as it swept through the Fulda Gap.  But dear old Mr H. doesn't seem to have spotted that we don't have any of them any more.  Strategic weapons, which have never been used, are not intended to have military roles on the battlefield.  If we ever used them then we have lost.  But they are very good at stopping anyone else using their own weapons.  So waiting until a lunatic like Ahmadinejad is on the verge of building his own nukes and then throwing them away is startling logic at best.   Remember, Mr Ahmadinnerjacket is a man who has, since his election, happily and openly stated that he desires nothing more than to imminentize the eschaton/reveal the Hidden Imam by provoking armageddon (ie nuke Israel 'til it glows).  He already has the ability to kill every man and woman on earth (I'm not going to do something as dumb as go into explanations of that statement here, but every physicist knows there are far more globally dangerous ways to use a moderate quantity of plutonium than to pack it into a critical mass).

And NATO's openness about its first strike doctrine - if the Warsaw Pact advanced successfully towards the Rhine then we would use medium-yield weapons to destroy their spearhead formations - should have pointed out that even this was political gesture.  Militarily, it would have been better to have remained quiet and gain surprise.  Here's a rule of thumb: if you publicise in advance exactly how you will use a weapon, then it is a political weapon.

The North Koreans are slightly less dangerous potential nuke-wielders.  They have, at least, a thread of sanity and rationality running through their provocations, which all aim at forcing concessions, defending their corrupt positions and warning off external interventions (this assumes that incometence and a tiny budget don't lead to some horrendous accident).  Ahmadinnerjacket is not just an ex-torturer with a personal history of murders and executions.  He is also fruit loops.  If you think I exaggerate, look at some of these articles.  When the Guardian and the Telegraph agree on the Middle East, it's got to be big.  George Bush got pelted when he used the evangelical euphemism that he felt God "spoke to him".  Ahmadinnerjacket actually believes that he was - quite literally - surrounded by a glowing green light while addressing the United Nations.  He says that every politician and diplomat there also saw this light, which served to protect him.  Uh-oh.

And the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament actually supports the Iranians in their nuclear research and enrichment program.  I'm not kidding.  But when trying to make sense of this it's worth bearing in mind that the Socialist Workers' Party, through a campaign of entryism, have dominated CND for several years now.

I don't ask Mr Healey, at his age, to go and read Clausewitz or Machiavelli.  But that one of the three most senior cabinet members should have, in a period dominated by a certain weapon, wholly misunderstood its nature, hardly bears thinking about.  Did he honestly think that Trident, and Polaris before it, were there for fighting battles with?  The Soviets understood as well as we did that they are there for stopping others fighting wars.  The problem comes when some loony eschatologist thinks that annihilation isn't really a deterrent.  But so long as he has people around him that might object to a thousand atmospheres of overpressure in a retaliatory strike, we need to have our own "political" nuclear weapons.

Gobsmacking

Undoubtedly the stupidest, strongest, most accomplished crazy athlete I have ever seen:

Crazy Russian doing some sort of, erm, "street athletics" thing

Small-budget production companies could save a fortune in CGI by just having this bloke around: "just jump backwards off this 25-foot-high ledge would you, Ivan?"  The sad thing is that such skilled, idiotic strength which once would have got him a place as a stuntman is pretty pointless these days.  People would see it in a movie and just assume wire-fu.