Wherein your favourite Big Funky Gerbil takes a brief look at the headlines and tries to figure out what it's aal aboot without actually reading the article.

 

I have been funkily perusing the Guardian website again, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with my proclivity for middle-class carbon-friendly consumerism, and more to do with my sexual attraction to Charlie Brooker's column.

 

But after getting my fill of the best columnist since Clive James stopped reviewing the TV shows and became an intellectual twat, my attention strayed inevitably to the headlines. And they were as crass as ever:

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Economic report into biodiversity crisis reveals price of consuming the planet

 

"Simon Stuart, a senior IUCN scientist, has warned that for the first time since the dinosaurs humans are driving plants and animals to extinction faster than new species can evolve."

 

Fuck me! That's news? I would have thought that IUCN would be trumpeting a rather different headline as a result of that startling bit of research. Something like "Meteorite theory shite - it was humans wot really drove the dinosaurs to extinction."

 

Maybe Simon was misquoted, in which case it must be the DUMB FUCKING JOURNALIST who believes that humans were around at the time of the dinosaurs. Or else the online subeditor is illiterate - which wouldn't surprise me. The last time I was in the Guardian office, trying to flog them a piece about how the number of seats in Parliament ought to be linked to the number of decent pubs remaining, they were trying to stop the subeditors flinging shit through the bars.

 

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And then there were two pieces about teenagers trying to outdo each other:

 

Mount Everest:13-year-old's goal:
US teenager arrives at base camp in bid to be youngest to summit

 

and

 

Jessica Watson sails round the world
Voyage said to make 16-year-old the youngest sailor to circle the globe solo, non-stop and unassisted.

 

I reckon this quest for being the youngest to do anything is getting out of hand. What next?

• "3-year old toddler becomes Britain's youngest convicted paedophile"?
• "Foetus free-dives to the bottom of the Marianas Trench"?
• "Spermatozoon elected President"?

I'm getting worried that there will soon be nothing left to for me to make my mark on, apart from a soft mattress.

 

Tell the truth, I'd be more impressed nowadays by a headline that said "23-year-old walks through Newcastle city centre on a Saturday night without being sexually assaulted, robbed, or vomited on".

 

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Chickens
Pets plus eggs: Julia Hollander on the pets that just keep giving

 

Sunday dinner plus chickenshit all over the back yard, more like ...

 

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Now here's one that sets the no-taste glands tingling:

 

Why are breasts getting bigger?
In recent years the average UK bra size has expanded from 34B to 36D. Retailers and doctors explain...

 

Well that's not so hard to explain, is it? British lasses are getting fatter. Nowt wrong with being cuddly missus, but don't try and make it into a mystery when it's clear for all to see. And feel. More pies = bigger tits.

 

But, the doctors exclaim, it's not that simple! Mammaries are composed mainly of glandular tissue, not fatty substances, and the increase in the number of conservative politicians being suffocated between the breasts of well-endowed dominatrices is not in the slightest way correlated with the rise in the Ginsters share price. Think about it, you sniggering blokes. Think of the equivalent glandular protuberances on your own bodies. When you get fat do your testicles get fat? Do they bollocks! Your gut balloons, your buttocks start dragging along the ground, and your penis turns into a clitoris, but your nads remain slim and attractive. Well it’s fucking well the same with tits say the doctors, testily. There's got to be some other explanation.

 

I was surprised to see, however, that the Guardian did not attribute it to global warming, nor to the loss of biodiversity. One day I may read to the end of the article and see exactly what they did attribute it to.

 

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White House Rodent problem
Obama press gathering interrupted by a rat: or was it a vole?

 

I'm not even going to bother commenting on this one. It's been done to death already in the States. I'll just note that there were so many rodents outside the door of number 10 when Camelegg of Conlibdem strode up to pull the sword from the stone that a herd of coypu could have rollerskated by without anyone raising an eyebrow. How the hell can a PRESS gathering be interrupted by a rat, for fucks sake! It's like a gathering of dolphins being interrupted by a dolphin.

 

Oh wait a minute. My tiny, hairless, and exceedingly sensitive brother has just peered round my shoulder and said that it was obviously a gerbil, fallen out of Obama's bunghole. Thanks, TFG. For nowt.

 

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After rolling my eyes at the headlines I ran them down some of the comments on the Guardian's blogs. They weren't completely fucking pig-ignorant like some of the shite you get on the Express or Mail sites (here's an express reader on the FA Cup - "Watching the final between Chelsea and Portsmouth I wondered how many true "English" players were on the pitch and what chance do up-and-coming English players have of being able to take part in the competition"), but fuck, were they snide!

 

Like the bloke responding to Charlie Brooker's review of the iPad - "Why does (sic) PC owners moaning about Itunes always make me laugh? Can't you simply hook up your Zune or whatever it PC's use and run some Microsoft crap or half baked Linux to sync it?". Where's the sarcasm? The wit? The pointed banter? This is just gamma-male whining.

 

Which brings me to the destination of this particular ramble. The flame wars going on in the Guardian blog-comments about effete Apples versus redneck PCs sound to me just like some of the crap flying through the air between Republicans and Democrats. The self-righteous tone, the obvious unwillingness of either side to admit that the other might have even the tiniest right to exist, and the ponderous put-downs - they're almost identical in tone. I'd be interested to know how Mac and PC owners vote in the States.

 

I've tried a few different types of laptop over the years (there's a lot of white vans with loose doors around out bit) and as long as the cat finds the keyboard comfortable and it doesn't break when I bounce it off the dog's skull then, frankly, I couldn't give a shit about the label. The British have already reached that stage in politics where folks have realised that the parties are interchangeable, and nobody really gives a toss who gets in, as long as they're different from the last lot, but it sounds like we have a long way to go when it comes to choosing between computers.

 

To hell with it. I'm off home.