Here we go again

Thank the Lord! They have finally found Noah’s Ark.

Well…they are 99.9% sure it is Noah’s Ark. Ah - but my experience has been that that missing 0.1% is the fly in the ointment every time – especially when those pesky archaeologists get involved and cast a more critical eye over the wonderful finds of the Evangelical Christian filmmakers - who are always on the scene first.

But let’s not be churlish. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. They say that there are shelves and straw (straw?) and I am really hanging out to see where the beetles were. As I have mentioned previously (I have a beetle fetish) there are more than 350,000 species of beetle and it must have been a devil of a job to collect a pair of each and bed them down in the ark - and keep the little blighters together - and in pairs - for 40 days.

No doubt Noah did beetle-sexing 101 at college while he was also doing carpentry to work out how to build a wooden boat the size of Staten Island. But I am being flippant simply because this nonsense makes me want to vomit.

And – just what we needed. British scientist Stephen Hawking has said that ‘Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating. If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," the astrophysicist said in a new television series, according to British media reports. On the probability of alien life existing, he says: "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.”

Oh Excellent! That’s just fabulous! Thank you very bloody much Stephen.

Not that we don’t have enough trouble with Sarah Palin and Arizona and Glenn Beck and the Tea Party and the fucking Republican Party you have to go and wake up all the bloody UFO and Alien ratbags who will emerge blinking into the sunlight scratching their fat hairy asses and shouting ‘ We told you – there are aliens – Stephen Hawking says so’.

Brilliant. More clattering of empty heads and flapping jaws across the airwaves adding to the cacophony of vacuous honking shouting nonsense that now passes for information and debate in America.

I see vistas of new sightings on YouTube, whirling silvers disks whizzing across the sky. Area 51 will be festooned with tents full of stark raving loonies hunting for alien husks. There will be prayer meetings asking for deliverance from the alien hordes (and for money).

The steaming nitwit who runs The Rapture site will sharpen his keyboard and think of another bilious colour he can add to a site that you cannot look at unless you have taken Travacalm.

John McCain will tell us that any Aliens found in Arizona will damn well better have ID papers or they will end up in the slammer.

It’s all too much....I can't go on...until next week.

He was just not stupid enough!

There is a weird system in Austria that if you declare your religion (on one of the numerous forms you have to fill out to live here) - then the authorities deduct money from your salary and give it to that church.

I guess this serves to ensure that only those with some commitment will actually make the declaration and pay the money to the church. Beats the hell out of having to wreak havoc in the community with just what you can get by passing the plate around on Sunday.

The Austrian Independent yesterday that:

“More Austrians than ever in history are expected to leave the Catholic Church this year.

Official figures show that 30,004 people left the Church in the first three months of this year, up by 42 per cent compared to the same time span of 2009 when more people than ever cancelled their membership.

These developments mean that between 70,000 and 80,000 Austrians are expected to leave the Church throughout this year after last year’s record of 53,216 people leaving the Church.”

There are of course some obvious reasons for this exodus - but we also have our own Resident Catholic Church Nutter (RCCN) in Austria. I think every country has at least one.

Ours is called Gerhard Maria Wagner and he resides in Windischgarsten in Upper Austria. As reported in the Austrian Independent:

“Wagner branded the bestselling Harry Potter books by Joanne K. Rowling a "work of Satan" and called homosexuality a "curable disease". He also claimed that natural disasters such as tsunamis and hurricanes were God’s punishment of human sin. Wagner hit the headlines this year when he claimed that January’s Haiti earthquake was God’s penalty since "nine in ten people living there believe in voodoo".

Of course being a RCCN is no barrier to high office in the Catholic Church and Father Wagner was nominated by Pope Benedict XVI to become auxiliary bishop of Linz diocese, but eventually announced he had decided to stay at his local parish.

So it is nice to see Austrians voting with their feet in response to the immense dishonesty and corruption in this tragically irrelevant but destructive institution. But not all Austrians are so sensible – as reported yesterday.

"An Upper Austrian farmer died after his hair dryer plunged into the bathtub while he was taking a bath last night (Mon). The Rutzenham resident’s girlfriend told police the man used to put the hair dryer on the windowsill and turn it on to heat up the bathroom. An emergency doctor who arrived at the house within minutes tried in vain to resuscitate the 35-year-old man. Police said they ruled out suicide and assumed it was a tragic accident. Investigations focus on why the old farm’s fuse switch failed to work."

I submitted this story to the Darwin Awards but it was rejected. The man was simply not stupid enough and his sad tale is eclipsed daily by such monumental acts of horrendous stupidity that it almost leaves you breathless.

Paris is my second favorite European city

Merlin - the finest cat in Paris.

I am having the worst hay fever of my life. I have never experienced anything like it. My eyes are puffy and almost sightless. I am sneezing – nay – it would be wrong to call them sneezes – more explosive paroxysms or even involuntary detonations. The cats leave the room when I come and go somewhere quieter. I am stuffing down the required tables which are having little effect. Tissues cover the floor like snow. When will it end (When spring ends I should imagine).

I cannot imagine that there is a better city in which to live than Vienna. It has a quality of life that most people can only dream about and – as far as I can tell – only a minimal number of Republicans. The smoking of course is another matter and I am not going to go on about that again.

Although….. (Oh God here he goes again) My best mate John was here last week. He is a long time member in Australia of Rotary and Rotarians go to each others meetings when they are in other cities, or countries. So John went along to a Rotary meeting last week at the Hilton Hotel and met about 60 other local Rotarians. The guest speaker was the Wiener Bürgermeister Michael Häupl.

The Bürgermeister said that his major problem in Wien was making it smoke free and therefore more acceptable to the many tourist who come from all over the world – where they do not blow smoke over you when you are eating a meal in a restaurant. Good luck Michael – you will need it.

Where was I? I know. Wien is the best city in which to live. (Actually the best city to live in is the one in which Cate is but if I say that she will think I am just grovelling because my iMac cost so much).

But my favourite city has always been Paris. It is special. Sure I worked for a French bank so went there often at their cost and stayed in fancy hotels. I usually stayed in the Hotel Meurice – and I have always loved it.

It is of course my second favourite European city now because my daughter Melissa lives there with her cat Merlin. He is a most delicious cat. Plump - but regal and gorgeous. It is a big call but Merlin is the finest cat I have ever known. (Gasp! It’s OK – my cats don’t read the Blog).

You remember Melissa? She is the one with Musophobia.

The point of this is a video on You Tube. It is the background to a Snow patrol song ‘Open Your Eyes’. It is shot in the streets of Paris in the 1970s. There is a very interesting (to me anyway) story about this film and you can read about it on Wikipedia

I love this. It always brings back memories of Paris then and now. It finishes at Sacre Coeur – near where my daughter lives in Montmartre.