per cent. My grandmother lived on a farm – we knew she had Parkinson’s disease when the bulls began queuing to come into the milking shed.
There’s talk of a pesticide ban to halt declining bee numbers. I feel partly responsible, as I use their pelts to make pom-poms for my cheerleading hamsters. We must help, as they give us so much. I’ve been trying to get hold of some beeswax to polish my antique wardrobe but I just can’t get the cotton buds in their little ears. Butterfly numbers have also crashed. I say good; for once we can leave our butter out unprotected. I confess I collect the dead ones and dry them out, as my pet mouse just loves flying kites.
Of course, the most common pets in the UK are cats and dogs. It’s said that 80 per cent of cat and dog owners display photos of their pet at work. Not me, as I struggle to think straight when I’ve got an erection. Actually, get this. A survey suggests that 275,000 Swiss people, out of a population of eight million, have sex with animals. No wonder they’re so laid back about euthanasia. You’re probably laid back about most things once you’ve pumped a beagle.
A cat sneaked into its owner’s suitcase and got into Disney World. The owner was surprised when she opened up her case and found she’d accidentally packed her cat, but not nearly as surprised as her neighbours when they went round to her house to feed her dildo.
A Dutch artist fitted remote-control propellers and turned his dead cat into a toy helicopter. It’s not unusual to use beloved pets as toys – I used our tortoise as a goalpost after he died. And immediately before. In many ways it’s lovely to see a cat fly without the assistance of an eight-year-old with a banger. It’s about time cats caught up – dogs were piloting space rockets way back in the 60s.
Cats that glow in the dark have been created by gene scientists working on a cure for AIDS. But you sense that this is all a prelude to making people with AIDS glow, so when you’re in a nightclub you know not to shag them. Scientists have also come up with a fish that glows when exposed to polluted water. Considering the state of the nation’s finances, I fully expect to see all lamp-posts turned off and replaced with plastic bags filled with piss and a luminous mullet doing laps.
Puppies will have to have a chip containing their owners’ details in an attempt to stop irresponsible pet ownership. I think that’s a great idea. So long as the chip’s still readable underwater.
There’s been a lot of talk about dangerous dogs. I saw one just this morning playing with one of those things that squeaks when they chew it. What’s it called? A toddler. OK, so micro-chipping won’t stop them biting. But it might lead to an app to help you get through the park. People do buy dogs without thinking. I got one as I’d heard it was a good way of picking up women. It actually worked, but unfortunately I ended up with a girl who likes having sex with dogs.
Surely the solution is to ban all breeds except poodles. Then you can just get out the clippers and trim it into the shape of your desired breed. If you get hassle from some cretin with a pit bull the trick is to stare into the middle distance while making a low hum. Then slowly move your hand from side to side and this will mesmerise the beast. As for the dog, fuck knows.
A man was left to walk six miles home after he wasn’t allowed to take his pet sheep on public transport. He should have worn dark glasses – if anyone had questioned him he could have said it was his guide dog. Then when it was pointed out that it was a sheep he could start crying and say that meant he must have eaten his dog.
There’s a drug being launched to help depressed dogs. Well, when you keep bringing that stick back just for it to disappear again, you probably start to wonder what the point of life is . . .
The government gives all of your money to the banks so you have to get food from a food bank. No wonder the people of Britain are angry at banks. Sorry, I mean mosques. Bankers are looting the world. You’re not in the middle of a recession; you’re in the middle of a robbery. It’s a robbery and the whole culture is just Stockholm syndrome. When you’re actually standing in the City of London it radiates a kind of 1970s sci-fi wrongness. If the country were a person the City would be classified as a disease centre, a wound or a tumour, and al-Qaeda would look suspiciously like chemotherapy.
The reason rich people are so unhappy is that luxury is only designed to be aspired to. It’s part of the sales pitch of capitalism – the advert. You’re not supposed to actually have it, any more than you’re supposed to eat the picture of a hamburger off a menu. Take that holiday brochure in which a waiter serves you a romantic meal on a beach. In reality, your chair leg would sort of sink into the sand at some odd kind of angle and you’d have to shift your weight in the other direction to try to counter it. The table would sink into the sand, too, altering its angle every time you pressed your fork down on to the plate. You would be dimly aware of being annoyed that you could see your waiter smoking under a palm tree between courses. Later, he would startle you by laughing explosively with a passing member of staff and you would vaguely wonder if they were talking about you. There would be little flies everywhere but they wouldn’t spoil the food, because all the food would taste of sand.
It’s an illness really, the pursuit of wealth. Beyond a certain point money is fucking useless. A pair of diamond-encrusted high-heels costing £276,000 are the most expensive shoes in the world. If you encrust anything with enough diamonds it can be the world’s most expensive. Stick a £50 note in dog shit and you’ve got a world record.
Only the very rich and the very poor can boast about the sheer act of having bought a thing. For the middle classes it’s all about connoisseurship. You can’t boast about your spending power, so instead it’s about your taste, as you burrow deeper and deeper into the marketed life. Connoisseurship is what used to be boasted of by merchants – ‘Look at all the lovely stuff I’ve gathered to sell.’ We’re still merchants but now we’re selling the idea of ourselves. And, of course, our personal taste is largely meaningless, but it’s all we’ve got, so we give it the force of moral judgement.
I’m studying for the economics of the future, trying to find out as much as possible about the currency potential of gold teeth, homemade antibiotics and monkey slaves. Soon, the days when our lives were dominated by the confidence people felt in the relative values of fictions that we watched through electronic screens will seem to our embattled children like we worshiped river spirits and forest dryads.
We could be in the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. That’s judging by the three main measures: GDP, employment and the size of coin most people would be prepared to pick out of a urinal. And to this day my gran still uses Bisto instead of stockings. Can’t say I approve; seems to me to be a pretty racist way of robbing a post office. But don’t despair, there are lots of ways to make a bit of extra cash. My tip is to go along to your local shopping centre dressed as a fountain.
Quantitative easing and low interest rates are just ways to make money for speculators by taking it almost directly from savers. There’s no point in saving any more. I’ve less interest in my bank account than I have in the Blue reunion. William Hague’s said there’s only one true growth strategy for the UK. Work harder. Advice that really paid off for that horse in Animal Farm. But he’s right. Unless we can at least look industrious, in a few years’ time the Chinese might overlook us and buy Spain or Ireland instead.
New disability proposals will affect me directly as I’m the owner of a prosthetic rubber fist that has resulted in my girlfriend being on disability benefits. Can she still claim? Iain Duncan Smith said he could live on £53
