High Cuisine

I'm about to fly across the US, with the big novelty being that this is a "vacation" trip instead of a "business" trip. I have looked at the ticket and observed that on the trans-US portion of the journey there is "food available for purchase". What changed? Not much. In fact, unless you count the sudden absence of the eleven mini-pretzels or the tiny packet of almonds (who the fuck thought almonds were a good idea?) the lack of food does not represent a departure from the standards of air travel that we have all come to love.

When free food does manifest itself on a flight it's a mixed blessing. You feel you ought to eat it, simply because it happens so rarely that it's a shame to waste it, but the food itself is actually rather shite, so that you'd mostly be better off eating before you left or after you arrived. The exception is international flights and I'm sure the only reason they still serve food at all is to keep the passengers docile. When you fly coach they don't fuck about - it's a straightforward choice: you want the beef or the chicken? Spend more than a second making up your mind and the flight attendant gives you that withering look, as if to say "hurry up - they both taste the fucking same anyway". The tray holds your portion of hot food, a tiny bread roll, a small cup of water and an appallingly colored dessert that allegedly contains a fruit-based substance.

Up in business class the experience is different. Actually the food isn't very different: they bring you a menu, beautifully printed on quality card, and describing the various options in terms that would be actionable in most civilized society. Suffice it to say that nothing you receive will be recognizable based on the description you read earlier. Mostly the food is no worse than in coach - it just takes them longer to get it all served. On my flight last week, however, I experienced a salmon dish that had me wondering just what chef from hell assembled the ingredients. It was a piece of pink fish, supposedly salmon, but covered in a green substance that defied any attempt to describe it. It was sweet but sort of not. It had the texture of sawdust soaked in snot. And it was definitely inferior to the standard chicken/beef option that they no doubt had back in coach. Sometimes you can try too hard, and airline food doesn't generally get improved by too much fucking about.

Still, I can't really complain too much - I did, after all, get my small pot of hot nuts, which is the undoubted highlight of any such flight. We also had that rarest of species, a youngish flight attendant. You wouldn't call her exactly attractive - that's not the point. It's just that she wasn't some sixty-five year-old harridan, riddled with institutionalised hate from four decades of pouring drinks and having cursory sex with fat pilots in depressing airport hotels around the world. I wouldn't have given her one, unless I'd been drunk and significantly less married than I am, but if I had I would not have been forced into vomiting, which is something of a novelty on international flights with US carriers. It's a long time to be cooped up in one place and it's simply not fair that any semblance of a "flight attendant mid-air shag" fantasy is destroyed by the insistence on appointing the very ugliest women to these routes.

Anyway, when it comes time for our flight we'll be packing some food in advance. The only thing worse than disappointing in-flight food is getting fucked in the financial arse by providers of equally crap food in the airport itself, and having to stand in line with hundreds of stupid holidaymakers with poor personal hygiene, clothed from head to foot in ill-fitting brightly colored fabrics for the privilege. Some people are so thick and depressing it's enough to put you off your salmon-in-a-snot-sauce.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Burger Me

When I returned from the gym today Mrs Bison was experiencing an unusual craving for a large burger. Normally she avoids eating excessively unhealthy shit from fast-food places but every so often the urge becomes overwhelming and we make a pilgrimage to Hardees. There are better burgers here in St.Louis - my personal favorite is O'Connells which serves a ground sirloin burger that is as close to sex in a bun as you'll ever get. It's beyond my ability to convey just how good the medium-rare meat tastes as the blood runs into the bread. But when it comes to a basic fast-food chain burger Hardees is as good as it gets around here. They managed to reinvent themselves from irrelevant purveyor of crap food to certified arse-kicker in the burger wars.

If you have to eat at McDonalds then the double quarter-pounder with cheese isn't bad but the bits of pickle that they put in in taste like shit. If you get the six-dollar burger at Hardees even the pickle bits taste good. It also comes with enough mustard and mayo to ensure that you resemble a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Linda Lovelace when you're done.

The restaurant we went to today had those little score cards so you could give feedback on your experience. Obviously we didn't fill one in but it was interesting to see what they would have scored. The burgers were good, no doubt, and we didn't have to wait long for them. The bloke who delivered them to our table was friendly and brought lots of ketchup, which almost made up for the presence of worrying scabs on his arms and an impressive array of spots. The fat sow who took our order didn't score well - for a start the first thing she asked was "Can I get you a patty melt?" I so wanted to reply "If I wanted you to get me a patty melt I'd fucking order one wouldn't I? Why don't you ask me what I do want?" However, speaking the harsh truth to employees of burger chains can result in significant risk of phlegm in your food so it's generally best to avoid calling attention to any stupidity. The other thing the sow did was to hand me the coins from my change but place the dollar bill on the counter, as if to say "You'd like to leave this as a tip, wouldn't you?" Well no, actually, Bride of Lardenstein, I rather wanted you to take my order and give me all my change.

Having just come from the gym I thought I'd better wash my hands before eating (aren't I sensible, children?) The restaurant bathroom was OK but it did appear that someone had been having rough sex with a pig somewhere in the vicinity of the wash basin. (Maybe it was the sow behind the counter?) Anyway, the food was good and it will probably be a while until we need to return, by which time I'm sure there will be a new manager and completely updated staff.

It did occur to me though that one of the few advantages of the quarter pounder with cheese is that you have to open it to throw out the crap pickle slices and that when you do it would be easy to see if anyone had gobbed in your bun. There's only some mustard and ketchup so it's hard to hide any "special" ingredients. With all the condiments in a Hardees six dollar burger there could be jizm in there and you'd never see it, which is why politeness is always a good policy.

Nevertheless I can solidly recommend the Hardees burger range as practically the only choice for any self-respecting man heading out for fast-food burgers. Don't talk to me about the whopper. It isn't. It's a bit like billing yourself as a ten-inch stallion and then having to admit later that it's actually centimeters. (Two and a half to an inch for any Americans with low metric awareness...) And Jack in the Box has the funniest commercials by far, but the humor only goes so far when you're eating the food. At the end of the day, though, one of the major selling points of any fast-food joint should be that it doesn't gift you with sudden, overwhelming and explosive shits later in the day. I won't mention the establishment that last provided me with this joy (let's just call them "Snake and Shake") but suffice it to say that I was not impressed.

I know when I eat a burger I can practically feel my arteries hardening, can almost imagine the stent being inserted, can see the few people gathered around my casket to say farewell. So at the end of the day, at least make sure the bloody thing tastes good, OK? And no "surprises"!


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

MILF

Age is something that creeps up on you gradually (as opposed to maturity, which seldom occurs naturally in the male of the species and has to be faked). Because it happens gradually you may well wake up one day and find yourself having sex with a forty year-old woman. How did that happen? I'm guessing it wasn't by choice, in the sense that you didn't suddenly start thinking that older women were hotter than younger ones. You probably just married a younger one who aged into the role, as it were, or you found that as you got older it was impossible to get younger women to regard you as anything other than a father figure (or pervert uncle figure).

I had to explain this fact to a woman in the gym a few weeks ago: as men get older they don't stop wanting to shag young women. Our taste doesn't "mature" so that we suddenly find wrinkles, gravitationally challenged breasts and cellulite a real turn-on. (I'm talking about normal people here - I know there's websites out there dedicated to granny-sex but that's just wrong, OK?) In the same way I'm sure women don't desperately look forward to getting fucked by men with pot bellies, bald heads and double chins.

When you go to the pool they have young, lithe, female lifeguards, with bodies that practically define the word "pert". Wanting to do one is just part of being male, like shaving or scratching your balls, and women who don't realize this are either very naive or very dumb. Scattered around the pool are various women exhibiting the process of aging in all its forms. As the years go by the bikini becomes a one piece, and then one of those shorts-and-a-top outfits that attempts to disguise arse expansion. Eventually a small skirt thing is added to hide the arse completely and the transformation is complete. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, only in reverse.

And yet there are women out there who defy this easy characterisation - they are MILFs. I could attempt to describe what makes a MILF but you'll find that one man's MILF is another man's old slapper, and taste is highly variable. It's definitely true, though, that a certain group of older women is attractive regardless of the age of the male viewer. So if you do happen to find yourself up to the hilt in an older woman it's not necessarily a bad thing. If, on the other hand, your fantasies run to women with no teeth, a walker and their own warden-assisted secure apartment you should ask a friend to slap you very hard around the head. Perhaps with a rock.

Older women do seem to think that there's something wrong with men fancying younger women, though, as if it's somehow sordid or a sign of shallowness. Newsflash - we're all shallow; if a girl in a short skirt crosses her legs opposite us the thing that distinguishes "mature" men from "immature" men is not whether they look but whether they get caught looking. And don't make the mistake of thinking that us older men have more in common with an older woman than a young one - this is a common misconception among older women. We have little in common with either of them because they are practically a different species. They put cushions on beds, buy pot-pourri, use moisturizer, coordinate fabrics and talk during football games (on subjects other than football). What do we have to talk about? I once heard it said that the main attraction of a three-way with two women was that they would have someone to talk to afterwards so that the guy could relax, sleep, watch TV or make a sandwich. Plus there'd be more breasts.

So dating older women has nothing to do with maturity and is probably more a matter of necessity, but MILFs are nature's way of making it OK. In the meantime I'm taking a break from maturity and going swimming...



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Shave What?

The Tour de France has started, and I’m sure it’s only going to encourage the lycra-clad cyclists that infest the roads around here on weekends. They’re all out there, with their aerodynamic helmets, shaved legs and extravagantly patterned outfits, weaving all over the road as they participate in what seems to be some semi-organized event. I’ve got nothing against cycling – I actually bought a new bike a few years ago. But surprisingly I didn’t find it necessary to outfit myself like something from a West Coast Gay Pride event just to go for a ride. If the Village People re-formed today I’m sure that in addition to the construction worker, policeman and cowboy one of them would be a cyclist.

One of my old mates used to be a keen cyclist, years ago in England, before it was fashionable. He did the whole leg-shaving thing and used to ride what appeared to be obscene distances. Unfortunately he was terminally nearsighted. One day a car passed him and parked further up the road; he never looked up from his frantic pedaling and smashed straight in the back of it, launching himself through the rear window to land in the back seat, perfectly positioned to explain to the vehicle’s startled occupant just what the fuck he thought he was doing. This may sound like an urban myth but it's not - I knew a lot of people like this. Lucky me.

For some reason when someone gets on a bike to ride on the street they immediately assume that they are a morally superior being with a greater claim to the road than nasty car drivers, in spite of the fact that they all drive cars themselves. So they ride two or three abreast, blocking the road; they ride through red lights because rules don’t apply to cyclists, and they pull out to pass each other without warning because they’re involved in some little race. The ones who ride off-road aren’t much better. I like to ride in the woods now and again but I don’t have to wear tight-fitting shorts so that my nutsack is outlined for the world to enjoy, and I don’t believe that shaving my legs is necessary to add that fraction of extra speed. Let’s face it, if you’re a man and you shave your legs you’d better be an Olympic swimmer, triathlete or female impersonator; there’s no other valid excuse that I can see.

Anyway, there’s plenty of stupid things you can do on a bike without needing to dress for the occasion. Try riding cross-handed and see if your brain can make your hands move correctly. I did this once – it works for about five seconds, until you start to swerve. I ended up in a bloody heap in the middle of the road, hoping no-one noticed. Or you can make a ramp and jump off it, provided you are happy for your testes to implode on landing. In fact most stupid bike things are best done when you’re a kid (preferably before your balls drop, in the case of the ramp). When you’re a kid you can get away with playing dress-up too, so that would be a good time to get the whole lycra thing out of your system.

There's no doubt though that cycling as a form of exercise has some serious advantages over, for instance, running. For a start you can sit down the whole time, albeit on a saddle that seems specifically designed to induce haemorrhoids and terminal arse pain. You also get a frequent change of scenery; if you've ever tried running up a hill you'll probably have fixed on some object in the distance, such as a postbox or particularly ugly car. As you run, occasionally you look up but said object never actually gets any closer - it's incredibly depressing and boring. You could always go to the gym and get on one of those elyptical machines but bear in mind that everyone looks like a twat on an elyptical machine, especially if they chose to dress in lycra for the occasion. It's also only possible to use one for about three and a half minutes before complete and utter boredom sets in and you have to leave.

No, for aerobic exercise I'll stick to soccer. For a start no-one wears lycra, and no-one around here feels they need to wear a David Beckham outfit in order to improve their game. But more importantly, when I was growing up we never imagined ourselves riding in the Tour de France. We were going to score the winning goal in the FA Cup final, or win the World Cup for England. My heroes wore the claret and blue of West Ham United. And none of those blokes shaved their legs.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Search Me!

One of the ways in which people who create websites can stay humble is to check out their "stats" report and see just how many people bothered to visit their site at all, and what pages they viewed. This is a good way to remind yourself that it's a very big world, full of entertainment options, and next to no-one gives a flying fuck what you think. On the other hand the stats report does give you the ability to see what search phrases people used that ended up taking them to your site.

Obviously you hope that people discover you and, having decided that you're a creative genius, add you to their favorites list along with the all the sites with the funny videos. Then, hopefully, they'll go back and visit you from time to time, as well as telling about a hundred of their closest friends to check you out. (By the way, YouTube doesn't count as a funny video site, unless you're instinctively drawn to drunk teenagers staring into a camera and laughing at their own stupidity like they're the first people in the world ever to drink a beer.)

So, hopefully most people access your site directly but some are going to drift by when you get caught up in some online search they did. A lot of people devote enormous amounts of time to gaming this process by linking to other sites, embedding search phrases and all that crap. I posess neither the patience or the inclination to do this so my search phrases are really not a reflection of what I wanted to be associated with. In fact it's hard to imagine either a) why that particular search phrase led to my site, or b) why anyone would search that phrase in the first place.

About the most popular search phrase in terms of bringing new people to this site is "animal blowjobs". For fuck's sake, how many people are out there searching this subject?? And in the 51,900 results this phrase brought up, a lot with titles that include terms such as "animal sex" and "bestiality" (and the no-doubt delightful "dogfuckers.com") I have no idea where I rank, but trust me - it's not near the top! (I stopped looking after scrolling through the first 2,000 results.) I almost feel guilty - here are these poor perverts, just looking for a glimpse of some young lady sucking off a horse and instead they get me. They must be pretty desperate to get that far down the list of search results; I imagine them sitting there, dick in hand, cursing the people who post on the subject without including any actual pictures of people sucking off an animal.

I also get hits from the phrases "dog penis" and "dog fellatio", as well as the completely inexplicable "men hanging around public toilets". How did that happen? I've never even written about that last subject have I? Who are these people? Maybe they're serious researchers into the oral sexual habits of our canine friends, but I have a suspicion it's just more guys with a dick in one hand and a serious squint trying desperately to hunt down ultra-exotic porn.

But I'm not proud. I welcome all readers, from the faithful regulars to the just-passing porn-stalkers. Those of you in the former category, if I met you in person I'd shake you by the hand. You other guys, I'm glad you visited too but maybe I'll just wave, OK?


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Kaiser Chiefs

If you like music at the melodic intersection of rock and punk I'd suggest you check out the new Kaiser Chiefs album "Yours Truly, Angry Mob". It's fucking outstanding! I'm prepared to accept that lots of people may have musical tastes that don't intersect with mine (otherwise how the fuck would companies sell any country music?) but some of you will like this, and you probably won't hear it enough on the radio in the US. Even if you do hear it they never tell you who the band is, so there's little chance you'd ever go and buy it.

They have TRACK SAMPLES on their website which will save you dicking around on Amazon to find them.

You can also check out the band directly at www.kaiserchiefs.co.uk

Think of this as a public service announcement, a short break from the toilet-and-breast humor to introduce you to something that might make your morning commute mildly less shite than usual.


Edward Bison

Happy Mammaries

I was resting between exercises in the gym this morning when my workout partner happened to mention that, in his opinion, girls' breasts are getting bigger, and that this was, also in his opinion, a good thing. It's maybe hard for me to comment objectively - if you compare the average corn-fed midwestern girl with her British counterpart there's no getting away from the fact that her breasts are likely to be larger. Whether there is an underlying trend towards bigger ones is another matter.

I must point out that what we are referring to here is natural breasts; both of us have agreed in previous gym visits (you have to talk about something between sets) that natural breasts are better. This is in contrast to my previous workout partner who was very much of the opinion that large fake breasts attached to a thin woman were an excellent combination. Breast opinions vary greatly between men, which is probably a good thing because breast sizes and shapes vary a lot between women, and there is therefore likely to be someone for everyone. Rather like an assorted chocolate box, where some people prefer the orange creams while others go for the vanilla fudge. I have observed, though, that breasts are also like chocolates in another respect: while guys will pick out the chocolate they like best, if there are only coconut ones left in the box they will usually eat them anyway. Any chocolates are better than no chocolates at all.

Breast size is an area where personal choice plays a big part. Some men prefer a modest but firm, pointy construction while others are drawn to large, pendulous melons. And some of us just like lots of variety. One school of thought holds that any more than a handful is a waste, but others would disagree on the grounds that you are then unable to stick your whole head between them. Measurement is, in any case, very subjective. The generally agreed unit of breast measurement is the BSH or British Standard Handful, laid down in a pub long ago as the official means of expressing size. However by the time it got to deciding whose hands were "standard" there had obviously been more beer consumed and the subject must have moved on to football because there appears to be no record of the British Standards Institute ever documenting the result. Nowadays the European Union or US Federal Government would be responsible for any revised standard, and we'd need ASTM or Underwriters Laboratories to create a test method, which would be pointless because the unit is usually used to express the estimated size of breasts that are probably still fully clothed, over the other side of the room, not aware they are being measured and not likely to be revealed for closer assessment later. Unless we're lucky.

The investment quality of breats is another factor for consideration, if you're considering them on a more than temporary basis. What will they look like in twenty years? Large ones can go from bouncy to saggy, but you're not safe with smaller ones either as they can end up like roofers' nail bags. The old stand-by method of looking at her mother is as good a guide as any. Best be subtle about it though - staring repeatedly at your future mother-in-law's titties across the Thanksgiving turkey could be a real conversation stopper.

Some men labor under the sad misaprehension that women have the same reaction to dicks as we do to breasts, i.e. that there's a whole range of shapes and sizes but they're all good. In fact most women don't think about dicks at all, except when they're out drinking with other women, and then they tend to express the opinion that it had better be big. However they may have little idea what they're going to get until it's unveiled later. It used to be that men at least had the advantage of knowing before they got naked with a new girl approximately what size breasts they were going to be working on. Nowadays, though, with all the gel-filled, push-up, padded and size-enhancing bras out there you might find that what appeared to be a 1 BSH in the bar is considerably smaller when measured "in the hand" as it were. Is this the reality behind the apparent increase in breast size in my gym? Is it all just bra technology? Personally I think not, given the correlation between breast and arse size, and the substantial rear ends attached to some of the aforementioned corn-fed midwestern girls.

Ultimately breasts, like Beaujolais wine, are best appreciated while they are young, and if pushed, I'd ask for a firm 1.5 BSH please. But if all that's left in the box is hazelnut pralines then I'm OK with them too. By the way, if you're wondering why there's no photo of breasts accompanying this post then I need to remind you that, just a click away, are more breasts than you could possibly view in a lifetime. Enjoy!


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Mile High Shite

I just returned from Taiwan via San Francisco - I was on American for the San Francisco to St.Louis leg, which is usually a good option as I have high status with them (based on all the money I've been giving them). If I fly anyone else I'm at the bottom of the totem pole, an insignificant piece of self-loading freight, and consequently can expect to be treated only marginally better than the crated dogs that they put in the hold. On this occasion I was flying business class but in spite of aforementioned status American saw fit to give me the very worst seat in business class on the extremely aged 757 they were using. It was seat 6E - last aisle seat on the right, exactly opposite the toilet at the front of coach class. This meant that I was subjected to an endless stream of people opening and closing the door, and lurking by my seat; not only this, but I was treated to the delightful smell of industrial disinfectant and the sound of a high intensity vacuum every time the door opened, plus repeated flushing noises.

I might have hoped to sleep through the ordeal but if you've ever flown the 757 you'll remember that the seat backs are perfectly flat and recline a miserable two degrees from the vertical - it's impossible to get comfortable, and if you sleep for a couple of minutes your neck locks up. So I was forced to watch the movie, which was a) crap, and b) one of the ones I'd already watched between Taiwan and San Francisco to pass the thirteen hours of that flight.

It doesn't have to be this way. On the way over I flew an EVA Airlines 777 and the toilets were both plentiful and spacious, and did not smell like a chemical shitter in a campsite. Not only could you have joined the mile-high club with ease but it would clearly have been possible to carry off a mile-high threesome, an achievement that would get you in the Sex Hall of Fame. Unfortunately such an opportunity did not present itself and I was relegated to using the facility for its designated purpose.

When you fly to Asia there's a lot of time to fill and I, for one, tend to fill it by eating. I ate breakfast and a mid-morning snack. I had lunch at the airport in case they didn't feed us on the plane to LA, but then they fed us on the plane so I ate that as well. In LA I sat in the lounge with nothing to do but eat snacks. Once on board to Taiwan I had more snacks and a full meal, followed by cheeses and dessert. There was a mid-flight snack and another full meal before landing. We landed around 9:45pm local time, which was 8:45am back home, so not surprisingly my digestive tract decided about an hour before landing that now would be the appropriate time for me to lose some weight.

There's no delicate way to put this - it was a substantial transaction resulting in a deposit that rested in the bottom of the bowl rather like a small brown cat, curled up asleep. I flushed, announcing to anyone waiting outside that my departure was imminent, but on lifting the seat (perhaps not trusting in the power of the flush) I was appalled to discover most of the "cat" was still there. I flushed again, with little change. A third flush made no difference. What was I supposed to do? I couldn't stay in there forever, and it's not as though they provide a brush with which to sort it out. I was sure there would be people waiting outside (we were close to landing) and they all would have heard multiple flushes. They were probably already in fear of what they would encounter. I did the only thing a gentleman could do - I lowered the seat to hide it and walked out with my head held high. I was only surprised by the absence of an audible scream from the young woman who went in next.

Needless to say I was mindful of this when I was assigned seat 6E. Maybe this was Karma - my cosmic payback for the giant load on the outbound flight. It's not like it was my fault though - what could any reasonable person have done differently? I'm tempted to direct the question to one of those etiquette advice columns. "Dear Abby. I took a monstrous shit in an airplane toilet and it wouldn't flush away. Decent human beings were queueing outside and I needed to vacate. What should I have done?" Anyone whose answer involves "always take the free toothbrush in there with you, just in case" should check in for treatment immediately.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Sing A Song Of Bullshit

Have you noticed how there’s not a fashionable theme around these days without some bunch of overpaid, under-intelligent pop weenies having a concert for it? No sooner are we done with the Diana concert than there’s a whole series of concerts for climate change. Live Earth – what a complete bunch of wank. Let’s leave aside for the moment that this climate change movement is 100% USDA Grade A prime bullshit, just why is it that the thoughtful reaction of concert promoters, performers and agents everywhere, to any issue is “Hmm. Here’s an issue that the kids are getting excited about. It’s nice and left-wing. Let’s have a concert. We can all get involved and it’ll be excellent for our image. And our wallets.”

So the pied piper of pop music leads the dumbed-down rats to the altar of that pompous fat wanker Al Gore and his half-baked agenda. The thing is, young people follow pop stars, not because they are smart (the people or the “stars”) but because they are sheep. Why bother actually exploring the facts of the issue when someone will sell you a Live Earth t-shirt and you can wear it in your Prius as you smugly drink fair-trade coffee? The day you start getting your wisdom from Madonna is the day you should seriously explore sticking your head in a donkey’s anus as an alternative route to enlightenment.

Unfortunately a lot of people are very stupid and lazy. They are quite happy to believe whatever bollocks someone tells them, so long as that someone is a trendy pop icon. So it’s a perfect match – ridiculous causes get stars to pimp for them and in return those stars get free exposure and association with the latest fashionable cause. It would be perfectly harmless if those lazy, dumb people weren’t then allowed to vote.

Consider that carbon dioxide produced by humans is responsible for less than 0.1% of all the “global warming” effect of gases in the atmosphere. (Read Patrick Bedard’s definitive article in Car & Driver magazine – by definitive I mean straightforward, concise and easy to understand). This means that even if we stopped all human activity tomorrow, including breathing (and farting) the impact on the environment would be precisely fuck-all. If you accept this fact then the whole climate change movement is by definition built on a platform of lies and bullshit and they should all be laughed out of town. (Note that they stopped calling it “Global Warming” and switched to “Climate Change” so that it doesn’t matter if you think your weather is getting warmer, colder, drier, wetter, foggier or maybe just a bit cloudier on Saturday mornings – it can all be attributed to “Climate Change”!)

For sure the climate could be changing – after all the climate has been changing continuously throughout the history of the Earth, as it cycles in and out of ice ages. Why should it stop conveniently for us? The River Thames used to freeze over in the nineteenth century, so it would appear that the earth could be in a cycle of warming. But this is irrelevant – even if the climate is getting warmer, and even if it would lead to the extinction of half the furry species on the planet, there’s nothing we can do about it. No amount of reduction of our “carbon footprint” is going to make one single mouse-sputumly insignificant difference. So fuck off having stupid concerts about it.

Let’s get real here – Madonna’s not going to give up her private jet, Al Gore isn’t going to stop living in his mansion and pop stars aren’t going to stop flying around the world and buying a new wardrobe of clothes every other day. But these self-important arseholes want us to slam the brakes on our economy with more completely unwarranted taxes and regulations just so they can pat themselves on the back. The whole climate change issue is already treated as though it’s scientific fact when it’s basically fairy-tales, and contradicted by simple common sense, but in the spirit of all good weenie causes you will soon be looked upon as the equivalent of a Holocaust-denier for refusing to accept the orthodoxy of Gore and his bandwagon of bullshit.

Never mind – I’m sure you’ll soon be able to buy the CD of the concert, all made with plastics derived from oil, of course, but be sure to play it on your wind-powered CD player. And cut down on the farting – don’t you care about your carbon footprint?


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Special Guest

I’m looking out from the fourteenth floor of a hotel in Taipei. This is the Pyramid Floor, according to literature I received on checking in, and is specially designed for business travelers. I didn’t know I was booked on a special floor but I’m not complaining – after all, there are fourteen extras listed for people on this floor, including complimentary buffet breakfast, broadband internet access and welcome fruits. (I think that means to eat, but you never know in a strange country…)

The “fully equipped gym” was also included but I just visited and I have to say it was some way short of fully equipped. You can always tell when a gym was set up by someone who doesn’t actually work out – the machines are all new and shiny but they don’t have the right ones. How do you forget to order a chest press machine but include about four leg machines? There’s also a stand in the corner with free-weight plates on it, all the way up to 45lb and even 55lb (25kg). Unfortunately there’s no bench or straight bar to use them. There’s a curl bar, but no-one needs that much weight for curls. And why have a curl bar when you’ve got dumbbells as well? Wouldn’t it be better to have something else instead? I bet those plates only ever get moved when someone dusts them. I know, none of this matters to most people, but it’s a shame. I’m not holding it against the hotel though – the room is excellent. Modern, clean, spacious, with exciting angles in the bathroom, a drench shower head and one of those gadget toilets that cleans your ringpiece with a water jet when you’re done.

The room also has a plasma TV, on which Pyramid Floor residents can enjoy complimentary viewing of the hotel’s pay TV service. I checked this out last night, partly because I couldn’t sleep until the Ambien kicked in, and partly because I wanted to see if they had the movie 300 (which I didn’t finish watching on the plane). What I discovered, purely in passing you understand, was that this hotel offers a full fifty channels of digital porn, presumably as another service to the “business traveler”. Apart from the astounding choice, this kind of thing also gives you a chance to see how the rest of the world lives, pornographically speaking. What I discovered is that things are different over here.

For a start everything seems to involve men in business suits and schoolgirls. I know that most women in Japan/Korea/China under the age of thirty would look like a schoolgirl if you put them in a uniform (as, indeed, would some of the men) but it still seems a bit excessive. Maybe they just thought “Hmm a lot of guys like schoolgirls, and they’ll all be business men in this hotel, so let’s get lots of those movies in!” Many of the themes of the movies are a bit “different” too, judging by the titles. I won’t reproduce them all here but let’s just say that I don’t believe any of them were endorsed by the National Organization of Women. Your typical titles on “Spanktravision” don’t have words like “rape” and “incest” in them, in my limited experience. I guess it’s possible that, as with the gym, the purchasing was done by someone who doesn’t actually use the product. I mean, I wonder whose job it is to buy porn for a hotel. Do they sit with the porn rep and go through catalogues, picking out stuff they like? What if their personal taste happens to be something exotic like, say, three hundred pound mature women with genital piercings – it’s not going to “satisfy” the average hotel guest is it?

All these special services must have been developed by someone in hotel marketing. Perhaps they had a focus group with business travelers to find out what they really like in a hotel room. Judging by what I’ve seen, the answer in Taiwan was “Complimentary coffee, a daily newspaper and a really good wank, please!” And who am I to argue with the voice of the businessman on the street?


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Bass Boat

I didn’t have much experience fishing until my mate Waldo took me out in his boat to fish for bass. His wasn’t actually a bass boat, you understand, more of an ancient wood and fiberglass mongrel, and fishing involved me sitting on the front of it trying not to slide into the water while I attempted to retrieve yet another expensive lure snagged on an unseen underwater object. Bass fishing is a totally redneck activity - it makes NASCAR look like opera – and neither Waldo or I were rednecks (although he could do a passable impression of one). It was fun though, so we’d head out every so often and sacrifice more colorful lures in bizarre shapes to the seemingly non-existent fish.

Eventually I decided to get a proper boat. Well, not a proper boat – this would have been a huge, powerful, glittery fiberglass monstrosity with GPS and fish-finding sonar everywhere, comfortable seats, a deep-V hull and storage for twenty fishing rods. It would also not have fitted in my garage, so I purchased a 17 foot aluminum boat which had the merits of being cheaper and, well, that’s about the only merit it had really. At least I owned a truck. No matter which lake we frequented, all the other boats were towed by pick-ups. No SUVs, crossovers, sporty vehicles or Jeeps. Just pick-ups. I believe the resident rednecks kill and barbecue anyone who shows up in anything else.

My neighbor at the time looked with interest at my new boat and informed me that the happiest days of his life were the day he bought his boat and the day he sold it. I was about to find out why. For a start, if I wanted to fish I had to spend 30 minutes getting everything loaded and tied down, hooking up the trailer, pulling it out of the garage and getting gas. Then two hours driving to the lake (any lake – didn’t matter – every fucking lake was exactly two hours away). Then 30 minutes more getting the stupid boat (now invisible behind my truck) backed down the ramp into the water, unhooking it and tying it to the dock, parking the truck and walking back to the dock to start the boat. This was three hours and I hadn’t even cast a line out yet. Plus it would be three hours on the way back as well. Except that by now I’d be tired, covered in sunscreen (but still burned somewhere), bitten by bugs, frustrated by lack of fish and infuriated by the narrow garage into which I’d have to reverse the trailer, with about two inches clearance either side. I taught the neighborhood some new English words when I was doing that, I can tell you! So, when all was said and done, if I fished for just five hours it would make for an eleven hour day of “fun”.

Once at the lake I had none of the natural control of my equipment exhibited by my redneck co-boaters. As I backed down the ramp suddenly the boat would turn left, or right, and I would have to figure out how to correct this, inevitably leading to over-correction and a drunken zig-zag. (Which was ironic, given that I was probably the only person at the lake not arseholed on cans of pissy beer.) Loading the boat afterwards was even worse; the trailer was impossible to position correctly – it was either in too deep (which meant the boat would just float over it rather than resting on it) or too shallow (in which case the boat wouldn’t run up far enough. And no matter how I lined up the boat it would always drift off course as I attempted to traverse the seemingly tiny distance to the trailer. The only conclusion I could reach was that I had too many teeth in my head and not enough tattoos to allow me to figure this stuff out; that seemed to be the major distinguishing feature of everyone around me.

All this might have been tolerable had there been any actual fish involved. Unfortunately fish aren’t stupid and they’ve learned to ignore all the shiny things on a line dropped into the water and waggled around by idiots in boats. I read all the advice about where to fish and came to the conclusion that the best answer was always “not here”. One cold day at the start of the season Waldo and I went out to a lake – we knew it was too early for fish to be active but we were keen anyway. We stopped at a bait shop and asked the guy behind the counter if he had any advice. He pressed one of those devices that they give to people with no voice box up against his neck and, in a voice like Stephen Hawking, replied with no hint of humor: “Go home. Stay warm.” We should have followed his advice – we didn’t get a bite the whole fucking day, and I nearly froze my balls off.

The other thing that hits you is how much work a boat is, even a small one like this. First you have to tax it, and its outboard, and its trailer. Then insure it. Winterize it. Continuously tighten bolts. Grease the hubs of the trailer wheels. And fix all the myriad things that break. This boat cost about $10k – for that money I could have bought a brand new car, with warranty, capable of running for tens of thousands of miles, never letting in water, never going wrong, never needing its hubs greased, containing the most wonderful advanced engineering. When you buy a boat you get a piece of bent tin with some wood and carpet nailed on, a motor on the back employing utterly prehistoric technology and everything made with components of the quality you would hesitate to employ on a child’s toy from China. It’s a piece of shit, which you realize once you own it, and after a couple of years of pretending that you enjoy it, eventually you sell it to some other poor bastard who at least has the benefit of getting his misery on the pre-owned market. Was I glad to see it go? You fucking bet I was. I occasionally miss fishing – the quiet morning, before anyone is around, drifting noiselessly on mirror-still water while mist hangs in the half-light; the sharp cold of a day untouched yet by anything but the first rays of the sun; the occasional splash of a fish feeding around the vegetation at the edge of the lake, every noise magnified; the feel of a tug on the line and the twitch of the rod-tip. Yeah, that’s all great - so long as it’s some other fucker who’s bringing the boat.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Fireworks

I'm all ready to celebrate the 4th of July; in spite of its historical implications for a Brit it's still a day off work. And anyway, can you imagine what the country would be like if it was still ruled by England? Coast to coast Olde Tea Shoppes, "fun pubs" and traffic jams, with litter everywhere and your car stolen on a daily basis.

The best part of the day, apart from the not working, and the food, and, of course, the drink, is the fireworks. Here's the part where the US could definitely learn something from the old country. We celebrated the 5th of November - Guy Fawkes night - when a bunch of Catholics tried to blow up parliament and were hung, drawn and quartered for it. (Look it up - it wouldn't pass the "cruel and unusual punishment" test, that's for sure, but there were no repeat offenders.) Everyone built bonfires on which they burned effigies of Guy Fawkes, and let off fireworks. (Some Catholics apparently have a problem with this celebration, but if you join an organization that seems to have been built around torture, burning people alive and institutionalized kiddy-fiddling then I suggest you get over it.)

Anyway, back to the fireworks. In the UK everyone buys fireworks and every year people get burned, but it's only stupid people as everyone is taught the fireworks code from an early age - use a taper to light it, stand back, don't return to it to see why it hasn't gone off yet, don't lean over it, don't hold it in your hand, etc. etc. Fireworks are legal everywhere and in spite of the killjoys who want everyone to go to a nice safe organized display we all had our own fireworks parties. The other big difference is that houses are made of brick, with tile roofs, not wood with bitumenous shingle roofs, which is an important distinction when a giant "Moonfucker" rocket comes down still blazing and lands on one. Over here in well-regulated suburban St.Louis private fireworks are not allowed. However they are sold everywhere from big tents that suddenly spring up, so all these law-abiding suburbanites scurry out into the street and set off their little cache of fireworks, knowing they shouldn't, and completely untrained in how to do it.

The funny part is how shit they are at it, at least around here. They stick rockets directly in the ground ("Why hasn't it gone in the air dad?"), stand fireworks in the road ("Watch out kids it fell over - it's coming this way!") and try to light everything with a two inch match ("I nearly got it that time - ow! Fuck! My fingers!"). They light things and then wander back to see why they haven't erupted in sparks yet ("Hold on - let me just light it again. Jesus!!! That was close! Hand me another one kids!")

Years ago I watched a senior human resources executive over the road put on the most crappy, useless and dangerous mini-fireworks display I ever saw. He was a certifiable Class A prick when it came to anything involving fire and I'm lucky my house is still standing. This seems odd from a country that's celebrating its birth and where half the population is armed with lethal weapons. People should know how to put on a good display, do it in style and leave with approximately the same number of fingers and eyeballs with which they started.

Of course there's no getting away from the fact that all the houses here are built like a garden shed and no amount of skill is going to ensure that when I come home tonight I'm not confronted with a large pile of wet ash, a fire truck and a very long insurance form to fill out. In the meantime I'm having a beer - I've got some independence to celebrate!


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Car Buying

I've now confirmed that, having passed the age of forty, I'm constitutionally obliged to buy an old sports car, or a new sports car, or at least to lust after a sports car. It's a mid-life crisis requirement, apparently. The big problem with this is the whole car buying experience (and the money, of course, but let's leave that aside for the moment). People tend to fall into two categories - those who decide what they want, go out and buy one, and those who do exhaustive research into what they should pay, different models available and negotiation strategies before they go out and buy one.

My problem is that I know the auto industry is desperately trying to fuck me in the arse every time I go near them so I'm not going to show up and try to buy something without knowing the facts; unfortunately I hate doing the research because it's boring. What's the point in having a mid-life crisis if I'm going to spend it in front of the computer checking data on Edmunds.com?

When we first moved to the States I had to buy two cars, but I didn't have any idea how far my salary would stretch, or what stuff was going to cost, so I was reluctant to go out and splash on something new and shiny. I also don't believe in borrowing unless I have to, which is a limitation when you don't have piles of cash lying around. So I started out looking at pre-owned things in the "around $7,000 range". I might as well have said "show me something crap that I'll really hate" because dealerships disgorged the worst, old-fashioned, dreary vehicles for my inspection. The trouble was that, coming from Europe, all the models were different. By this time the US automakers were making decent cars but the ones on the pre-owned lot were, by definition, examples from previous years, and they were largely shite. One salesman proudly offered us something (it might have been a Buick) that was black on the outside but had red velour upholstery and a red vinyl dashboard. It looked like something you'd be buried in. Mrs. Bison actually laughed out loud when he opened the door.

I ended up with an $11,000 Taurus which was a good solid car, and easy to buy because everyone had some on their pre-owned lot so you could compare prices. This meant haggling with salespeople, which was still a novelty and therefore less of a total and utter pain in the arse than it is now. They would literally run after you when you walked away; one specimen even asked me to give him my watch as a "good faith" gesture so he would take my offer to his boss. I have no idea what that was supposed to achieve, other than making me get up and walk out, dismissing him as a wanker.

Nowadays the only fun part of the car buying experience is thinking about what you might want. Having to actually decide, research what you should pay and start e-mailing dealers' internet salespeople to get prices, is just dull. Plus, when you buy you have eliminated all other possibilities - all the pleasure is gone and you are left with the aggravation of trying to park it in spots where the dog-buggeringly stupid women and old people of St.Louis can't ding it when they throw their car doors open.

The other thing I have to consider is the wonderful St.Louis winter. Anything fun (Porsche-like) will be instantly transformed from road-hugging automotive joy to slithery ice-sliding, loose bowel-inducing, white-knuckle disaster on wheels. This means you either have to have two cars or pick something more sensible. And once you start thinking about what's sensible, before you know it you'll be buying a family-friendly crossover vehicle with plenty of luggage space, good fuel economy and lots of legroom in the back. By which time you might as well just kill yourself and get it over with.

In the end, choosing a new car is not unlike choosing a new wife. The looking, not the finding, is the best part. And for a lot of people the looking doesn't go much further than pictures on the internet. On the subject of which, I'm off to Edmunds to look at some car porn.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Eat Shit and Di

So the world and their dog just got together to celebrate the memory of Princess Diana with a concert. Big deal. I almost escaped the news, having the privilege of no longer living over there, but it managed to permeate even the parochial news coverage in St.Louis. And what a worthy line-up of artistes, including the inimitable Fergie. Fergie? When Diana was alive Fergie was the fat slapper Duchess of York who embarassed the royal family by having it away with a bald Texan and getting her tits photographed. Whatever happened to her??

I could never understand the huge media fixation with Diana. At the start I could see the attraction of having a potential royal family member who didn't look like they were the result of interbreeding between a horse and its jockey, especially since everyone wanted to see Charles get married before his nuts dried up completely. But as time went by and it became increasingly clear that she was as narcissistic and self-obsessed as he was inbred and loony it was hard to see why people still had any interest in her constant self-promotion. In spite of the academic advantages of her upbringing she had all the intelligence of an educationally sub-normal walrus, and yet the public listened to her witterings as if she had the insight of Stephen bloody Hawking. She was raised purely to be someone's wife; she was scarcely qualified to be anything else.

Having said that, I do owe Diana one wonderful day at the beach. On the day of the great Royal Wedding everyone in England was glued to their TV, watching endless speculation, analysis, interviews and dresses. Chris (the friend my parents least appreciated) and I decided to boycott all the wedding bollocks and go to the beach. It was a beautiful day, and once he'd rigged up one brake for his rickety bike we set off. The roads were empty; the beach was empty; the sun shone and all was idyllic. I watched precisely zero wedding and regretted it precisely not at all.

Maybe Diana was the prototypical celebrity for the modern age - famous for being famous (having achieved nothing), but the subject of endless news, comment, photography and speculation. Sort of like Paris Hilton, but without the porn movie and stupid little dog. It is perhaps fitting that her memory was celebrated by performances from Joss Stone and Kanye West, either of whom would be the perfect excuse for another cycle ride to the beach, in spite of the fact that from St.Louis it would probably take me a month.

It's so unfair - poor old Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and original Fergie, has a bit of a fling, gets chubby and becomes a poster girl for Weight Watchers. No-one gives her a second thought. Diana engages in a shag-fest which includes slime like the Al-Fayeds, and everyone thinks she's a saint. It's amazing what being dead can do for your image. Perhaps Paris Hilton should try it...


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison