Across Difficult Country

Apologies for the minimal recent lack of content, I’ve been busy inventing a dippin’ sauce that a person can dip dippin’ sauce in. I’ve also been working on a dipping sauce. At any rate, my discoveries are terrific news for all you fatties.

Now that the Hitler's Cross restaurant controversy has abated, I wonder if I’m the only who was appalled not by its ridiculous Führer theme, but by the placing of the apostrophe after the ‘s’ on the restaurant’s sign ? ________   Sixteen Volts linking to the Stupid Comics website reminded me I’ve been meaning to write about one of the comics derided there, Fantomah . Because it's not stupid, it's fantastic. That row of apes is wonderful, as are the heads peeking over the tops of the bushes. I suspect from his style the artist was some sort of idiot savant.

Jurist, healer, horse racing aficionado, psychic, raconteur - the extraordinary Judge Florentino Floro Jr is all these things, and more. Now he has responded in the comments to my recent item about his dismissal to provide further details about his case and the injustice being perpetrated upon him by Philippine government. I encourage all my readers to email Judge Floro [judgefloro@yahoo.com] and let him know of your support. Those possessing psychic powers should feel free to contact the Judge and his mystic dwarf associates directly via telepathy. Readers can also contact the President of the Philippines , the Supreme Court of the Philippines , and the United States Embassy in Manilla and complain.

According to the committee of the International Astronomical Union the solar system has three new planets - Armand, Luis and Angel. But I refuse to acknowledge them, as this ‘discovery’ has the stench of a publicity stunt, the work of a group of bored and undistinguished scientists trying to draw attention to themselves by redefining assorted space rocks everyone’s known about for years as planets. The scientists themselves admit that because of the new definition: “dozens of objects as small as 400 kilometres in diameter that orbit the sun could be designated as planets in coming years,” Which means that additional new ‘planets’ are sure to follow, and sure enough the committee is already threatening to invent six more in the near future: Sedna, Quaoar, Igoo (which everyone knows are merely iceballs) and Vesta, Gloop and Tundro (which everyone knows are only large asteroids).

From Erbil, Iraq comes word of a major innovation in dental care: a tree that cures the toothaches of those that hammer nails into its trunk. How the tree does this no one can really say. Unsurprisingly dentists are mad about the competition: “Dentists, however, are not among the believers. Friyad Kamal, a practitioner in Erbil, says the tree has hurt his business” Which is why it’s unlikely the powerful American Dental Association in the United States will ever allow this treatment to take root in the United States.

In the Philippines Judge Florentino Floro Jr has been dismissed from the bench for using the advice of his three dwarf friends Armand, Luis and Angel, to decide cases. According to Judge Floro, the mystic dwarves, or “dwendes”, communicate with him using psychic powers. This sad tale illustrates how, even in these supposedly enlightened and tolerant times, the ugly prejudice of heightism continues to ruin lives.

When I tell people I'm a neo-monarchist , the usual response is to question my motives: “Oh, so you wish you were king?” No, I don’t actually (jester, perhaps, but certainly not king). It’s an ugly side effect of democracy: the assumption everyone must be grubbing after power, stemming from our being taught, falsely, that in a democracy all have equal chance of acquiring power. The response also reflects how democracies (must?) propagate the repulsive notion there is no difference between kings and tyrants. Very few people in democracies truly wish to be kings, but many, if not most, desire to be tyrants. But it is entirely legitimate to ask who, if we were to have monarchy, should be king. Because the answer is by no means obvious. As I little need to remind my readers, idiots, frauds, and fools surround us on all sides. Given the current putrid state of politics, academia, and the arts, it can be safely assumed anyone presently in any of those fields is automatically suspect, a...

"In our recent crusade to make the world safe for democracy [World War I] it was currently assumed that democracy is the same as liberty and the opposite of imperialism. The teachings of history are strangely different. Democracy in the sense of direct and unlimited democracy is, as was pointed out long ago by Aristotle, the death of liberty; in virtue of its tyrannical temper, it is likewise, in the broad sense in which I have been using the term, closely akin to imperialism" - Irving Babbitt, The Choice We Must Face: Democracy and Imperialism, Or Democracy and Standards ?

[Trevor-Roper] begins by explaining that “in this university, as in all institutions (see the Bible passim) there is a Party of Light” (to which, naturally, Trevor-Roper belongs) and a Party of Darkness (those who hold different views). Fortunately, he included me in the Party of Light. We see a university “as a place of learning and pleasure”; the Party of Darkness sees it as a place of administrative efficiency. Darkness has been spreading since Trevor-Roper’s death. There is also a third party, which Trevor-Roper describes as the Jellies - the Jellyfish, or party of compromise. They are “distinguished by the complete absence of any views”. They have, however, two important qualities. “First, though sometimes submerged, they never sink. Secondly, though unable to control their movements, some of them can, if touched, sting.” - Robin Lane Fox, Across Enemy Lines , a review of Letters From Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson .

Saturday, August 12, 2006 Sunny day. I decide to read (Ruskin’s Praeterita ) outside. A cylindrical bodied, orange, black and white striped fly lands on the page. It occurs to me I have never seen such a fly as this before. If it were a new, as yet un-catalogued species, the discovery of which would bring me fame and fortune I wouldn’t even know. That’s how it always is with me and fame and fortune. I reflect on the fact I know next to nothing about insects. The interesting fly departs, and I read: "Both mountains have had enormous influence on my whole life; - the Dole continually and calmly; the Righi at sorrowful intervals, as will be seen. But the Col de la Faucille, on that day of 1835, opened to me in distinct vision the Holy Land of my future work and true home in this world." My reading is interrupted by the jibbering of a squirrel up in a nearby tree. I wait for him to stop, but he seems to be agitated by something, and goes on and on. I decide to throw a rock ...

Oliver Stone’s new movie, World Trade Center is coming out. I won’t be seeing it, but I noticed it stars the same moustache who did such a terrific job in the highly acclaimed 1973 film The Last Detail . World Trade Center The Last Detail

From Dennis Mangan I learn my health is at risk because I live in a cloudy climate which has weather similar to the weather in the UK: “[S]olar exposure and the subsequent manufacture of vitamin D are crucial for your health. For example, an adequate level of vitamin D causes an 80% drop in the risk for colon cancer.” Mangan quotes from the British Medical Journal : “Active sunbathing which exposes the whole body can supply up to 10,000 IU per day(7,8). To obtain something approaching the optimum annual amount of vitamin D a person would have to sunbathe in a swimming suit on about 100 sunny summer days. This is, for practical purposes, impossible in the UK even for a dedicated nudist… Northern Europe is an extreme climate for man. Human beings evolved in tropical Africa where the sun shines strongly every day...the cloudy maritime weather of the British Isles makes our climate one of the most extreme in Europe so far as sun deprivation is concerned.” Since I have no intention of mo...

Man who claims to have seen giant bat with 12-foot wingspan may have been lying.