Spent last night at another prime slice of Americana – a monster truck rally at Bank One Ballpark, watching five-ton behemoths destroy cars, the surface (the baseball groundsman could be heard weeping over the sound of 1500-horsepower engines) and the already-flaky atmospheric quality in Phoenix. Only in the United States could this kind of wanton disregard for planetary ecology be considered family entertainment. Though it was way cool. 🙂

It does, however, shed some light on precisely why George Bush is so keen to invade Iraq. In the light of this, we offer the following, which summarises our feelings on the looming war better than we could. And, hey, anyone remember this guy called Bin Laden?

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE. I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ. MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER, WHO HAS LONG BEEN ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE EXTRACTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND BRAVELY SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

IN THE DECADE OF THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES, MY FATHER, THEN VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SOUGHT TO WORK WITH THE GOOD OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ TO REGAIN LOST OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN. THIS UNSUCCESSFUL VENTURE WAS SOON FOLLOWED BY A FALLING OUT WITH HIS IRAQI PARTNER, WHO SOUGHT TO ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING EMIRATE OF KUWAIT, A WHOLLY-OWNED U.S.-BRITISH SUBSIDIARY.

MY FATHER RE-SECURED THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF KUWAIT IN 1991 AT A COST OF SIXTY-ONE BILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($61,000,000,000). OUT OF THAT COST, THIRTY-SIX BILLION DOLLARS ($36,000,000,000) WERE SUPPLIED BY HIS PARTNERS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER PERSIAN GULF MONARCHIES, AND SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS ($16,000,000,000) BY GERMAN AND JAPANESE PARTNERS. BUT MY FATHER’S FORMER IRAQI BUSINESS PARTNER REMAINED IN CONTROL OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ITS PETROLEUM RESERVES.

MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM FROM POWER. UNFORTUNATELY, OUR PARTNERS FROM 1991 ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOULDER THE BURDEN OF THIS NEW VENTURE, WHICH IN ITS UPCOMING PHASE MAY COST THE SUM OF 100 BILLION TO 200 BILLION DOLLARS ($100,000,000,000 – $200,000,000,000), BOTH IN THE INITIAL ACQUISITION AND IN LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT.

WITHOUT THE FUNDS FROM OUR 1991 PARTNERS, WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE OIL REVENUE TRAPPED WITHIN IRAQ. THAT IS WHY MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES ARE URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR GRACIOUS ASSISTANCE. OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLEAGUES IN THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION INCLUDE THE SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, RICHARD CHENEY, WHO IS AN ORIGINAL PARTNER IN THE IRAQ VENTURE AND FORMER HEAD OF THE HALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY, AND CONDOLEEZA RICE, WHOSE PROFESSIONAL DEDICATION TO THE VENTURE WAS DEMONSTRATED IN THE NAMING OF A CHEVRON OIL TANKER AFTER HER.

I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE. THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL FUNCTION AS OUR TRUSTED INTERMEDIARY. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MAKE THIS TRANSFER BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH (15TH) OF THE MONTH OF APRIL.

I KNOW THAT A TRANSACTION OF THIS MAGNITUDE WOULD MAKE ANYONE APPREHENSIVE AND WORRIED. BUT I AM ASSURING YOU THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AT THE END OF THE DAY. A BOLD STEP TAKEN SHALL NOT BE REGRETTED, I ASSURE YOU. PLEASE DO BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO CO-OPERATE IN THIS TRANSACTION, PLEASE CONTACT OUR INTERMEDIARY REPRESENTATIVES TO FURTHER DISCUSS THE MATTER.

I PRAY THAT YOU UNDERSTAND OUR PLIGHT. MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL. PLEASE REPLY IN STRICT CONFIDENCE TO THE CONTACT NUMBERS BELOW.

SINCERELY WITH WARM REGARDS,
GEORGE WALKER BUSH

Final entry in the TC log for 2002, and what a marvellously…palindromic year it was, particularly on February 20th. It is, however, another 20th – July – that sticks in my mind, as I made the final step in transition from lone wolf, confirmed bachelor and anti-social animal in general to… [shock! horror!] a family man.

How things have changed. I stumbled across an earlier editorial recently, dating back to the earliest dawn of prehistory – all the way back to 1998, to be precise, in which I wrote: “The prospect of marrying someone…seems highly strange…and as for the prospect of kids, I’m firmly with Amanda Donohoe in Lair of the White Worm on THAT topic.” But here I am, married, with children. And odder still, the happiest I’ve ever been.

I will admit that the marriage itself is something of an irrelevance, in that neither it, nor anything else, could make me more loyal, faithful or in love with Chris than I am anyway. However, the immigration people do not hand out green cards on the basis of “undying adoration” – though given the current backlog, I’m not scheduled to get mine until 2005 anyway. And marriage has a nice ring of permanence to it, even if I still look at envelopes addressed to “Mr and Mrs. McLennan” and want to forward them to my mother and father.

I’ve even settled into the parenting thing with less trouble than I thought. All you have to remember is that children are just like little adults – except with no grasp of logic or sarcasm. This isn’t quite true in Robert’s case, since he is already towering six inches above both Chris and I, and has already reached Advanced Irony, if not quite perhaps sarcasm. He turned 18 on Friday, so the next time he leaves the house, we will be changing the locks. 🙂

Maybe we should also lock Emily in – she is now 15, and every time we don’t let her get some part of her body pierced, Chris is convinced she hates us. As a relatively late arrival on the scene, without the first 13 years of maternal bonding, I am less concerned, and feel sure we could trade Emily in for a more reliable model on Ebay. Together, my cynicism and Chris’s motherly instincts combine, and I like to think we strike a reasonable middle-ground as parents. Mind you, Fred and Rosemary West probably thought so too…

And so we look forward to 2003, with a great deal of optimism, and much relief that there is no ominous, wedding-shaped cloud, looming on the horizon. Though an upcoming trip to Vegas may provide an opportunity for a quickie, possibly involving an Elvis impersonator. Our business is going well, despite the best efforts of Bank of America to drive us into bankruptcy – a long, nasty story involving them holding back $27,000 of our sales for two weeks – and if 2002 was the best year of my life, I see absolutely no reason why 2003 shouldn’t be even better.

I hope the same can be said for everyone reading this too. Here’s to a merry Christmas, a peaceful New Year, and may 2003 bring you as much happiness as 2002 has brought me.

7 o’clock in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, the phone rang. Chris struggled to consciousness to answer it, for whoever was calling at that time on a holiday clearly had a crucial message to convey, right? Wrong. “BEEP…..BEEP…..” The offending creature was a fax, tarnishing even this sacred festival (well, sacred to the consumption of far too much honey-baked ham, anyway) with random efforts to deliver junk advertisements for T-shirts, financial advice, or even, in a masterpiece of recursiveness, the faxing of junk advertisements.

I think that was probably the straw for me. I’m now prepared to stand up and say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.” Junk phone calls, junk faxes, junk emails – life is too short to deal with them all. I think the problem is probably worse here in the States, then it was back in Britain, because here, local phone calls are free. The spammers can thus spend all day dialling numbers, without having to pay a cent.

It makes me wonder whether there might be a justification for that occasional hoax email which claims that some governmental body or other is going to tax email. If they were having to pay even 1/10 cent per email, a lot of the spammers would be loath to blitz millions of addresses as they do. Of course, there are problems with this, not least collection, given the fly-by-night nature and foreign location of a lot of them. And then, there are the legitimate mailing lists, which you actually want to get mail from, which would be crippled by such a fee.

One alternative approach is to go after the spammers aggressively. Chris Gore of Film Threat took that approach, after someone hacked their mailing list, tracking down the home info and other details of the people responsible and publishing it all on their site. This did seem to have some effect – we faxed the spammers a polite request to stop their anti-social activities, and gratifyingly, got back our fax next morning with “FUCK YOU” scrawled across it. Gore is now filing a lawsuit against them. More power to his elbow, even if it’s probably entirely futile.

If you can afford the time, perhaps the most plausible approach – and certainly the most entertaining – is that taken by the War on Spam website, who basically yank the chains of the spammers, attempting to waste as much of their time as they waste of ours. The entire process is documented, and the transcripts published on the site; it’s immensely pleasing to read the results. Probably wisely, those involved operate largely under pseudonyms such as “Jason Hardknob”, since there is nothing more dangerous than a pissed-off Nigerian, trying to fleece you out of tens of thousands of dollars, who has just realised that he has been screwed with. No praise is high enough for those who take on these dangerous jobs, which border on a divine mission.

Unfortunately, while undeniably amusing, it too is perhaps all Canute-like, for the odds are that the volume of spam will increase in the future. There will always be idiots out there who want to increase their penis size, see Hot Barnyard Action, or simply MAKE MONEY FAST!!!! At least it’ll hopefully keep them busy, and out of the way of the rest of us.

I’d like to talk to you today about narwhals. These animals are proof, if any were needed, that whatever consciousness is in charge of things, possesses a wicked sense of humour and a fondness for real ale. For narwhals are the sort of animal that would only make sense after a long session down the pub – “lishen, Gabriel, let’s take a whale…and…and…lishen…let’s STICK A GIANT CORKSCREW ON ITS HEAD!” [Sound of a deity falling off a barstool] Between the narwhal, the sawfish and the hammerhead shark, I suspect God spent lunchtime of the fifth day down Home Depot, and that somewhere in the depths of the Pacific Oceans lurks a fish inspired by a Black & Decker Workmate.

Not only did the narwhal start off in life with an evolutionary disadvantage – though I suppose any predator would likely be too busy sniggering to chase them – they also don’t get the kind of press other members of the whale family do. You don’t find members of Greenpeace defending them in inflatable boats, though this is because rubber dinghies and animals with sharp, pointy noses are probably a bad combination. Nor do they get movies made about them – imagine how much better Free Willy would have been with a narwhal instead of a killer whale. He could have skewered the irritating child actor during his leap to freedom, and swam off into the sunset with a kid shish-kebab.

Here at Trash City, Chris and I feel such a creature deserves recognition, and so we did what we usually do in such cases – typed ‘Narwhal’ into Ebay’s search engine to see what comes up. We were impressed with the Huge Rare Antique Ivory Narwhal Tusk Nice!!!, which went for a cool $4,250. We particularly liked the photo of it lounging on the seller’s couch. Now that’s what I call a conversation piece – albeit in the “Will you please move that thing off the couch so we can sit down?” kind of way. Note the use of the word “antique”, to prevent the seller from being firebombed by animal-rights activists, rather than “newly hacked off and still bleeding from the stump”. We also found the Whale Narwhal Toy Rubber Replica 11″ Rare Toy appealing – even tossed our hats in the ring on that one, but lost out to a bidder named whaleshome1. Clearly a cetacean fetishist, if ever we saw one.

So, for the moment, we remain in a state of rubber narwhallessness. It’s an intriguing idea though, and we wonder if somewhere in a back room at Sanrio lurks the discarded concept of Hello Narwhal, with huge eyes but no blowhole. We yearn for someone to set up an Adopt a Narwhal scheme, whereby you get quarterly letters from the aquatic mammal of your choice, detailing life north of the Arctic Circle. We enliven tedious moments by sticking a straw to our forehead and doing narwhal impressions. Next week, it’ll quite possibly be sea-otters, but just for the moment, we’re in a narwhal state of mind…

Yesterday was mid-term election day here in the States, something I could watch as a detached observer, being disenfranchised because of my status as an alien. It’s all rather different from what I’m used to, not least because you get to vote for a lot more things. In Britain, it’s pretty much just local council, House of Commons, European Parliament – here, there are school boards, judges, and even the state mine inspector to be elected. This is actually kinda disturbing: if I was a miner, the last thing I’d want was Joe Public choosing the guy in the corner, prodding at the pit-props. Especially when, looking at the ballot, the electorate require detailed instructions (with diagrams) on how to vote.

This wealth of choices perhaps explains why turnout is so woefully low. In this, the land of the free, if one in three voters exercise their right, it’ll be about what’s expected, which is a pretty sad state of affairs. Mind you, just as in Britain, it’s easy to understand such apathy – no matter who you vote for, a politician is still going to win. The choices for governor of Arizona were particularly poor: the current attorney-general, a woman of dubious ability, versus a Mormon. Truly a choice of the lesser of two weevils.

Another interesting US/UK difference is the presence here of various ballot measures, ranging from the obscurist (municipal debt limits) to the controversial (legalizing the use of medical marijuana). The most contentious here in Arizona were three separate propositions, regarding casinos. At the moment, slot-machines, etc. are only allowed on Indian reservations, but there was a huge spat between the tribes and the racetrack owners, who want a slice of the action. The various groups spent almost $40m on advertising during the campaign, and the outcome is still murky, with quite possibly none of the suggestions getting voter approval.

Such are the joys of democracy in action: whoever has the largest bank-balance usually gets in. Every candidate swears they’re going to stick to the issues, but eventually out will come the nasty adverts, insinuating their opponent is homosexual/soft on crime/racist/a borderline psychopath. Voters say they don’t like these tactics, yet they happen in every campaign, and the slot-machine debate was largely each camp telling you loudly how bad the others were.

A weird concept on the whole though, handing out legalised vices as compensation for past injustices. If the Indians get gambling, should we give African-Americans a monopoly on cigarette sales? And maybe the Eskimos could run the liquor stores? I’ve been to an Indian casino – once – and the air of desperation was in sharp contrast to the surreal-but-fun atmosphere in Vegas. The irony is, it seemed as if the main customers there were our local underclass, the Mexicans. One set of oppressed people turning another upside-down and shaking their loose change out. Brings a whole new meaning to ‘scalping’ though.