A Horseradish
Sunday 5th January 2020 10:08pm [Edited]
8,475 posts
Iran : An Academic Synopsis on Vinyl
Side One
1. Bore
Within less than one week, 2020 has officially been transformed from Shangri-La to Deja Vu. My God, ain't the Middle Easterners such a bore. Round and round and round they go on the same old tripe. They are just like callers to our phone-in radio stations. Thank the lord, then, that one or two things in recent years have actually changed. The oil used to be running out within the next 30 years. Back in the day, they said so at every leading university. Then the number of the planet's cars and planes and people and central heating systems and space stations rocketed with wild abandon as if that fact didn't matter. Luckily, it turned out that it didn't matter as it was never a fact. It was a believed-by-most total lie. There is now more oil than anyone knows what to do with, only none of it is wanted for the future as that will kill the earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyRD4ppZBww
2. Armageddon
Google "The Guardian" and "Iran ; Climate Change" and you will find an interesting article in which a left leaning journalist clearly describes how that country has made huge strides to address the droughtier aspects of climate change. Water there abounds in a way that it has never done before on account of effort, commitment and advanced engineering techniques. This of itself puts the west in something of a pickle for to hit at such life sustaining infrastructure would incur the wrath of every environmentalist when almost everyone is an environmentalist now. Attacking 52 cultural sites as planned - the same number as the American hostages which were seized many decades ago, obviously - is on paper no more appealing unless, as is quite possible, each is a monument to the joys of living in caves following armageddon.
3. Git
So it would probably be best if oil sites were instead targeted in the coming days. Targeted in a way, silty, chemical or otherwise, which not merely puts them out of action until April but makes all the oil there impossible to use by anyone for ever more. In other words, ensure that the fake predictions in the 1980s are made right, albeit late in the day and with that speed up the climate change initiative. Of course, Tabitha and Jocelyn and Kylie and Wayne will immediately have to dump the six cars in their respective concreted driveways. There would be fewer actresses pontificating from pink boats in Central London. But ambulances could again get their needy patients to hospital. And there would be just enough space on the pavement for me to be able to fulfil my lifelong ambition. Ever since I was a very small boy, I have wanted to be the sort of peculiar old git who walks around with a sandwich board proclaiming that "the end of the world is nigh."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmbCMfpexV0
4. Sweat Pants
As always in these things, age matters. Nothing has been said in the news about the respective ages of the Ayatollah and the General only one of whom is currently still alive. The former is 80 and the latter was 62. So the latter was soon to take over the former's role, albeit in a less overtly pseudo-religious way than the Ayatollah himself, and even possibly via the artificial appearance of an election. He was very popular, after all, as all the most sinister folk tend to be. The ones who are still unfeasibly in fatigues when decent types of their age have retiringly opted for sweat pants, slippers and a tortoise. Those who desire to be a President with a hotline to the gods of the first Year Zero in that call centre of gods beyond the stars. And why isn't that age consideration mentioned by Fox News, the Daily Mail and the BBC? Because Trump and Biden are not far off 80 themselves and even dear old Michael Bloomberg and Nancy Pelosi are a splendid-or-not 77 and 79.
Side Two
1. Vegan
Nor given the long term absence of National Service in the west and the all round anarchy which has been sold to our obese young people can any news outlet inform you of the condition of Iranian youth. As it happens, only 20% of them do any exercise when the world average is 60% so had we gone vegan earlier we could have been gloating. Unfortunately on the basis of that alone, it looks rather like - and here I am using a metaphor from Iran's favourite spectator sport - a 1-1 draw. It is also a draw when it comes to drug usage although here such things are more recreational. Iran did rather well at London 2012, gaining a dozen medals, but only because it is awash with performance enhancing drugs. A blind eye was turned because, hey, it isn't as if it is the Soviet Union (sic) or nothing. Far better, the policy makers felt, to rally against the atrocity in Russia of not permitting gay marriage than to risk war against a regime which only (sic) executes gay people.
2. Quibble
If the EU was serious then it would by now have incorporated the entire Middle East rather than merely allowing its populations to migrate to Germany, Italy and Sweden. Mostly it chose to quibble constantly over the largely fascist absolute waste of space that is Ukraine. Even if Iran had not been turned into a member of the EU, it could have been allowed to have participated in the Eurovision Song Contest. But, oh no, the jury voted for Australia instead on the grounds that it is sexier. So, yep, Deja Vu. Some things have changed. Most things haven't. And mostly as with all things cyclical it all seems much the same. Blimey was it as long as eight years ago when this was No 1 in all our bedrooms?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSXrpekd_dM
3. Liverpudlian
And can it have been almost 40 years ago when in my first week at university, I danced with a very large Liverpudlian woman at a disco before penning a note to my mother? Yes, it can. The letter mentioned the girl. It mentioned extreme worries about Iran. And it included drawings of cartoon animals. The girl is almost certainly now a great-grandmother living in a six bedroom mansion on The Wirral while my political obsessions just look like naïve and wrong beliefs in the cruciality of the here and now. These days the letter would therefore only include the cartoons. They would be more animated than they were back then, each partying like it was 1999, to Travis so far as that was ever possible if not Oasis, the Stone Roses or the Sex Pistols. And under them would be just one simple sentence reading "That's All Folks".
4. Strange
Sure, it would be much the same as the nigh thing I took to the streets on my one man eccentricity drive but it's jollier as befits anything sent to a woman of 90 rather than something that is designed for anyone who can be bothered to read me. Will it make a difference? Not as much as the millions of e-mails currently heading towards Dominic Cummings. I almost did one but then I decided that the world had passed me by and I was now far too old. I'm also too astute. The point that leapt out at me when I read what he was specifically searching for was that he didn't know what he was searching for. Strange as from the description that seemed pretty plain to me. It was precisely a description of himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeERupuicHE
. It's always a proud moment for democracy when the President of the United States threatens to commit war crimes.
