Across Difficult Country

The Khaleej Times reports the drummer of the Scorpions is being held captive in Dubai . If this were the 80’s I would scour the dive bars, pool halls, and fast food restaurant parking lots to assemble a crack team of metalheads and hard rockers, and we would go give the Mussulmen what for. But this is the 21st Century. I don’t even know where those guys are these days. Some got fat, some are dead, some drink white wine and listen to Mumford & Sons. What the rest are doing, I don’t want to find out.

Those who called my proposal to put oldies in lava tubes cruel will have to reconsider now that there is a hotel which puts trendy travelers in concrete tubes. I’m reconsidering as well - I now think lava tubes might be too luxurious an accommodation.

We’ve grown so accustomed to bears being fat, furry entertainers who amuse us by ice skating, juggling, wrestling, and "inexplicably" murdering people , that it’s easy to forget bears can also be heroes. Heroes waging one-bear wars against terrorists : A wild bear mauled to death two militants of the Hizbul Mujahideen outfit in a south Kashmir forest on Monday, officials said. A spokesman of the army said a wild bear entered the forest hideout of the separatist guerrillas and killed two of them in Kulgam district. "The bear entered the hideout of the terrorists in Dand Nar forest area in Kulgam district today and killed two Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists identified as Saifullah and Qaiser," the spokesman said. The spokesman said Saifullah was the district commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen for Pir Panchal area while Qaiser was a tehsil (sub-district) commander of the outfit.   Surprisingly , the tangly jungle of the Kashmiri mountains is safer than most large...

I’ve become so inured to vehicular assaults perpetrated by oldies I hardly paused after reading of the septuagenarian who fights “ illegal drug use, out of her car ” that slammed into an apartment building yesterday in Florida. And then an hour later I had one of those flashes of insight only great minds are capable of: with war in Mesopotamia and the Hindu Kush having left our troops stretched thin, couldn’t we deploy our oldies overseas? Imagine thousands of horrendously bad elderly drivers , off our streets and behind the wheels of armor plated vehicles, rolling in erratic zigzag fashion across the plains of Afghanistan, turning unpridictably to crush suprised Talibani hiding in the weeds or in apartment buildings. Many oldies are so bored they would happily volunteer for such a mission. There are many more so addled they wouldn’t notice any difference between driving a Buick from the retirement home to the IHOP and driving a Humvee from the barracks to a Taliban encampment. The re...

The tainted pet food scare has my poor Granny in a panicked state, despite my reassurances the brand she eats isn’t one of the ones that’s been recalled. But then oldies never listen, do they?

Oldie rams car into crowd, injuring 27 (update) Roller-coaster accident injures 27 Woman stabbed 27 times Torrential rains kill 27 people in Jiangsu Province 27 New Aids cases recorded in Armenia Train 27, now arriving Tibet

As the Zephaniah of the oldie menace , I would be remiss not to mention two recent news items involving oldie crimes against humanity (I looked for news items about oldies doing good deeds, unsurprisingly I was unable to find any). From the UK comes the story of an elderly woman who took advantage of the latest in fertility medicine, and the lack of ethics of Italian doctors, to become pregnant at age 62. She just squeezed a 6 pounds 10-1/2 ounce baby boy from her dusty womb. If this trend continues you will have parents and newborns wearing the same brand of diapers. I have no idea why she did this, it wasn’t even her own egg (couldn’t she have adopted one of those needy African children one hears so much about?), but I’m sure the boy will turn out fine as the old broad's a child psychologist. The other oldie making headlines is the 89-year-old man who drove his car into a crowd of younger people at a festival, running over dozens, injuring 27. I’m sure the mainstream media ...

Delta Airlines is red-faced after a granny passenger on a cross country flight whom everyone thought napping turned out to be dead : According to the flight crew and passengers, no one realized she had passed away until after the plane landed.  Flight attendants and some passengers said they only realized what had happened once the plane began to empty out and she didn’t move.  One EMT at the scene said the woman was dead long enough for rigor mortis to set in. Such embarrassing incidents could be avoided if more people did what I do whenever I see an oldie who might be sleeping: I grab the oldie by the shoulders and shake him or her vigorously while loudly asking “Are you dead yet? Are you dead yet?”

Apparently stealing our money is not enough - oldies are now learning how to use canes to strike young men in the balls and various other places. One malicious granny who mastered these so-called 'Combat-Cane' techniques broke a fellow's "nose and two of his ribs." Why am I not surprised? And this is after young people were nice enough to invent the RI-MAN helper robot to clean up after them, and care for them, and cradle their disgusting wrinkly bodies in his robo-arms when everyone else refuses to touch them. Modern oldies are an ungrateful lot.

The Japanese have invented a robot for the home, named RI-MAN, capable of carrying a life-like, realistic sex doll in his robot arms. This is a tremendous breakthrough for feeble and lazy perverts of the life-like, realistic sex doll persuasion, who no longer have to get out of bed. In the future RI-MAN the robot may also be used to care for Japan’s elderly, so RI-MAN has been programmed to distinguish eight different kinds of smells. I’m guessing one is doo-doo smell, one is that weird old people smell, and one is banana pudding smell. That leaves five smells I’d rather not try and guess. In the future, experts tell us, America will use Mexican immigrants to take care of her excess elderly, and that with a little training many of them can be taught to distinguish as many smells (ocho) as RI-MAN . I wonder if this preference for Mexicans isn’t motivated by robo-phobic bigotry. It’s claimed Mexican immigrants are cheaper than robots. Perhaps, but look at RI-MAN’s hands - he could...

It’s no secret that the costs of aging populations pose an ever increasing threat to the economies of developed countries. 1 Now news from Japan suggests that the threat to civilization posed by oldies may be greater than mere economics: TOKYO (Reuters) - Crimes committed by elderly people in Japan have risen sharply in the past 15 years, a trend that has officials worried as the population ages rapidly due to longer lifespans and a falling birth rate. Police data shows that people aged 65 and older accounted for more than 10 percent of those arrested or taken into custody for crimes other than traffic violations in Japan in 2005, compared with just 2.2 percent in 1990, the Asahi newspaper said on Monday, citing National Police Agency data. Theft topped the list of crimes committed by the elderly in 2005, while 141 elderly people were arrested for murder -- more than three times the number in 1990, the newspaper said. Nearly one-third of the victims of crimes committed by the elderly...

In the past, when I’ve criticized oldies (see here , and here ) I’ve received hate-mail, not just from the powerful oldie lobby but also from otherwise rational people who can’t understand my antagonism toward the aged. These critics almost always justify their favorable view of oldies by invoking their own, mostly fond, childhood memories of grandmothers. I too remember grandmothers as being kindly and harmless figures, liked for their skill at baking pies and other goodies. Would that were still the case. Sadly, modern grandmothers are a debased as most of the rest of society, as exemplified by a group known as The Raging Grannies , who describe themselves as being “independent women” dedicated to “activism, social justice” and “politics”, which is a nice way of saying they are horrible, meddling old crones who enjoy annoying normal people. How bad are these hateful hags? A recent article describes how they’ve written a rap about hurricane Katrina: "A Granny New Orleans Rap...

Steve Sailer is taking suggestions as to what subject he should write a book about. A subject I hope he doesn’t choose is saving Social Security via the creative storage of oldies (in lava tubes , in cars at the bottoms of ravines, on cruise ships , etc.), as that’s a book I plan on writing myself. What does market research tell us? According to the New York Times, the current hardcover nonfiction bestsellers are: 1. THE WORLD IS FLAT, by Thomas L. Friedman 2. FREAKONOMICS, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 3. A LOTUS GROWS IN THE MUD, by Goldie Hawn with Wendy Holden 4. BLINK, by Malcolm Gladwell 5. MY LIFE SO FAR, by Jane Fonda So in order to have a bestseller, one must either be a bullshit peddler or a has-been actress ( Goldie Hawn ??). A sex change is easily obtainable, but I wonder if Mr. Sailer isn't too busy for acting lessons.

Scientists may have invented an anti-nicotine vaccine . This is terrible news, for I happen to enjoy smoking, and if the vaccine works, it is only a matter of time before smokers are forcibly injected with it. Once the vaccine becomes mandatory for school children, in a generation smokers will be extinguished everywhere, and civilization will be poorer for it (ponder for  a moment how many great artists and writers didn’t smoke). The anti-nicotine vaccine is obviously a precursor to the invention of many more vaccines and medications to suppress all sorts of normal human urges the bureaucratic class deems unacceptable. A vaccine eliminating any urge to drink alcohol will surely be next. Then ones to eliminate negative feelings toward homosexualists, negroes, oldies , etc. I can even imagine science finding a ‘cure’ for inappropriate laughter. I don't want to live in a world where no one smokes while drunkenly laughing at homosexualist negro oldies falling down. I think the ...

Despite the amount of tedious debate regarding Social Security ‘reform’, never mentioned is the extravagant oldie lifestyle of air conditioned apartments, golf, cable TV, and brunch at Denny’s. None of which, as this recent incident demonstrates, are essential: KINGSTON - A 75-year-old man is doing OK after spending an estimated five days in his car after it rolled down a 30-foot embankment near Kingston...Apparently, the man had been attempting a U-turn when he accidentally went backwards into the ravine. Physically incapable of climbing out, he told crews that he spent the next five days in his car. Until the car battery failed, the man entertained himself by listening to the radio. It is now undeniable that oldies are more durable than they would have you believe, they’re capable of living in unusual habitats (from ravines to lava tubes ), they require little food to sustain their shriveled bodies, and when forced to be creative are able to devise inexpensive ways to amuse thems...

The morons who run our government strike again: Hawaii Evicts Woman Living in Lava Tube WAILUKU, Hawaii (AP) -- The state has evicted a Maui woman from a lava tube she has lived in for the last three years. Karen Mayfield, 50, has pleaded innocent to three misdemeanor charges for illegal camping, disturbing a geological feature and littering. Her trial is scheduled to start May 31. Mayfield said she isn't allowed to stay in the lava tube while her court case is pending. Hawaiian authorities have it backwards - oldies should be forced to live in lava tubes. It’s an inexpensive and space saving way to store them. I wish I’d thought of it myself. This Karen Mayfield woman is not a criminal, she’s a pioneer, and one day surely will be recognized as such. To those who object that oldies are too delicate to live in lava tubes, there’s a growing body of evidence which suggests oldies are far more durable than previously thought.

Exciting news from Kenya , where the locals have stumbled upon a solution for the ‘child care crisis’ that threatens working mommies throughout the West: A dog foraging for food retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a forest in Kenya and carried her to its litter of puppies, according to media reports yesterday. The stray dog carried the infant across a busy road and a barbed wire fence in a poor neighbourhood in the Ngong Forests area of the capital, Nairobi, a witness, Stephen Thoya, told the independent Daily Nation newspaper. Notice these clever Kenyan pooches can care for children from instinct alone, so I imagine with minimal instruction the dogs can be taught to also care for oldies, thus solving that expensive problem as well.

An horrific story in the news today: " Medicare to cover Viagra ". As if the oldies rubbing their shriveled bacons together in defiance of nature, morals, and good taste weren't bad enough, now my tax dollars have to pay for the chemicals necessary to allow the indecency to occur. The only positive is that the promise of romance can be used to help lure the geezers onto cruise ships .

A new, innovative idea for caring for our nations old people is to book them permanent passage on cruise ships, as it would be cheaper than housing them in ‘assisted living facilities’ (what used to be called ‘old folk’s homes’ before the politically correct decided the term ‘old folk’s’ was an offensive slight, harmful to old folk’s self esteem (does anyone really think the geezers are unaware of their own decrepitude?)). Once all the oldies have been lured onto ships, the second half of the plan consists of sailing the ships out to middle of the ocean and sinking them. Or at least I hope that’s what the second half of the plan is, no one (understandably) is saying.