Only in China these days can you find cruelty like this (in the picture below). Oh if only that were true, but sadly you will find cruelty similar to the Chinese inhumane treatment of this Black Bear in India and Pakistan and a lot of places that consider themselves to be civilised these days.
In this concerned Cat’s opinion there is one word for people who enjoy hurting animals and that is ‘scum.’ And India and China are the scum of the world.
You know I think that BP may have been passed ‘The Cat Towers’ my Prague HQ, and the centre of my ever growing empire, because there is the most enormous oil spill outside on the footpath (see below).
The enormous oil spill here prompted me to ask a favour of anyone living on the Gulf of Mexico coastline. If they could take a stroll down to one of their now black beaches and sniff a tarred pelican or two and then let me know if they smell of Vegetable Oil, because I have a feeling that is the odour that is drifting up to my office window and of course if the beach and the wildlife do smell of Vegetable Oil it will confirm my suspicions and I will start to make my compensation claim.
BP say that they have a 20 billion dollar fund that they will use to pay for the damage they have created which is a hell of a lot more than the 1.28 billion dollars that Exxon reluctantly spent in 1989 after the Exxon Valdez hit the rocks off Alaska.
I wonder if BP will wash whiter? Because people who live on the coastline that the Exxon Valdez sprayed with oil say that they are still suffering the ill effects all these years later, but then as the general public have a very limited attention span who out there cares? Definitely not Greenpeace those guardians of the environment who spend so much of our hard earned money on their offices, ships and of course staff needed to collect even more of our hard earned disposable income.
I only know that they don’t care about those poor Alaskans because nowhere on their website do they say that they are doing anything for those poor sods, but then the Exxon Vadez doesn’t have the cachet of the BP disaster does it? And that means that Greenpeace couldn’t use that old Alaskan disaster to make a grab for more of your money could they! The Exxon Valdez disaster is now only relevant to Alaskans.
But think about it can you blame greedy corner cutting corporations when it is ‘you’ that they are getting the oil for at the cheapest possible price so that you always can use your car and don’t pay too much for gas!
Tell you what, if you are ‘that’ concerned about this disaster then the obvious answer is to give up your car, don’t fly anywhere and then happily the developed world will need less oil.
If we give up our cars and trucks and save loads of oil then that will leave the two biggest polluter China and India (who of course don’t have any international legal obligations to stop polluting) to pay ever greater amounts of cash for oil, which I have to say is a nice idea isn’t it?
Still thinking about the BP disaster for a moment – did you know that the BP disaster is not the worst oil spill ever, yes, you wouldn’t believe it would you? There is at least one worse oil spill. It happened when that arch villain Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and then offered a “Mother of all Battles” then ran away before ‘Mother’ arrived and the battle could begin.
During Saddam’s brief time in Kuwait he was worried about the American Marines landing from the Persian Gulf and so being the ‘hero’ that he was he ordered that the valves at an offshore oil terminal be opened. The result was a loss of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and a 4 inch thick oil slick that covered 4000 square miles.
To give you an idea of what that was like just imagine Rhode Island not only covered in oil but swamped with it to a depth of a foot.
Lastly on an equally unhappy note I recently travelled to Hungary to write a little more of my next book which is a Travelogue, now you can see why I went to Hungary it wasn’t for any sort of literary inspiration or anything I hope you didn’t misunderstand.
The whole trip was awful because basically Hungarians are the rudest people I have ever encountered and I have met Prince Charles!
You can read all about my trip in the book when it finally comes out, but I thought I would share an observation and show just why people are acting unwisely if they wear t-shirts with writing on.
As I passed through downtown Budapest I saw a t-shirt which had a very odd message on it! It said “I Love BP” actually it was one of those even worse than dreadful t-shirts that said “I” then had a little graphic representation of a heart “BP” if you see what I mean.
As you can imagine I thought that this was a very risky stance for anyone to take on behalf of BP in the light of what they are doing to one of the prettiest places in the world, but this was Hungary and as I explained, though I hope not too critically, 99.99% of Hungarians are rude bastards.
It wasn’t until I was on my way home and had spent several hours sighing with relief to get out of Hungary alive it sort of dawned on me “I ♥ BP” meant “I Love or ♥ Budapest.”
As you can now tell it was such a dreadful place, because of the Budapestians that it never ever entered my head that someone would love Budapest, or dare wear a t-shirt that showed any love to the oily polluter either for that matter.
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BP, Budapest, China, Exxon Valdez, Gulf of Mexico, Hungary, India, My Next Book, Oil Spill, Prince Charles, Travelogue, Saddam Hussein, Persian Gulf
Look she is only little, so why do people make such a fuss about poor Oh Eun-Sun? According to the 3ft 3inch sturdily build Korean (there is only one Korea to Koreans) she has managed to climb all of the highest peaks in the world which is quite an achievement for someone who must think that a MacDonald’s counter is at the top of the world when she is dying for a Big Mac but being ignored.
So why oh why does some clever Richard or is the “clever dick” keep saying that poor little stocky Oh Eun-Sun has missed a significant peak and therefore failed to climb all of the world’s highest mountains, when poor plucky petite Oh Eun-Sun is probably at home with her mountaineers socks off warming her frost bitten chilblanes and trying to recover from a diet of Yaks, milk which apparently turns your stomach into a dangling mess after as far as she was concerned running out of very tall mountain peaks to climb.
Personally I think that the clever Richard is jealous and just because poor little Oh Eun-Su might have become confused at the end of her mountain climbing odyssey and turned right instead of turning left to climb Mt Kanchenjunga, on the border of Nepal, India and China, and gone home instead, it is nothing to get too hot under the thermals about.
Lets face it, if all you have been doing since 1997 when Oh Eun-Sun, who of course is not very tall, started climbing the world’s highest peaks you would get rather disorientated and may forget to climb a mountain or two wouldn’t you especially if it is the last one and some one has called you on your rather outdated mobile phone to tell you that the Shin Ramyun is ready?
Actually I have to confess to getting confused when travelling recently. As I have been writing my latest blockbuster, my wonderful “Travelogue” I have accidentally taken a wrong turning or two myself, but usually I have to add, aided by Dave the Cat’s dreadful directions and appalling map reading skills.
You know, I vote that we vote that poor dwarf-like Oh Eun-Sun be crowned Queen of the Mountains or whatever useless title she is after and let’s brush the Mt Kanchenjunga ‘incident’ under the carpet shall we? After all isn’t it an achievement to climb nearly all the highest mountain peaks in the world? I should say so. Between you and me I get out of breath and giddy just climbing the stairs when slipping off for a snooze on ‘their’ bed so I think that the precocious vertically challenged Korean climbing wonder should get the cake or whatever the prize is don’t you for climbing all of the tallest mountains in the world after all who really cares?
PS
I may have got the exact height of the Korean tiny terror of the Alps wrong, there is nothing in the news to suggest that Oh Eun-Sun is as small as I imagine, except of course the word ‘Korean!’ And that is said with love, Koreans and other tiddlies are really rather nice and happily the Cat can look some of them in the eye without them bending which is handy.
I think the captions says “I need to go to the loo can you turn the camera off for a minute!” But then I might be wrong!
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1997, Cake, Cat, China, India, Korea, Korean, Mountaineering, Mt Kanchenjunga, Nepal, Oh Eun-Sun, Queen of the Mountains, Worlds Highest Mountains, Travelogue
Well my long suffering, oops I mean faithful, readers here is another moan about www.google.com and unbelievably some praise for www.bing.com well the maps department anyway.
At the weekend friends of mine told me to go and have a look on www.rightmove.co.uk at a house that they were thinking of buying!
By the way www.rightmove.co.uk is a great little English website, it is small, only run by a couple of people trying to do a good job, where you can find property to buy and rent which if you are actually looking for property to buy or rent is, you have to admit, pretty handy isn’t it?
Sadly www.google.com that ever annoying and bulging behemoth is trying to send little companies like www.rightmove.co.uk out of business by offering free listings of properties so that they can get even more advertising revenue buy stealing it away from family style companies like www.rightmove.co.uk or at least that was what I was reading on www.bbc.com the other day.
Well I have deviated from my point but that means I have a lot to say and am not a ‘deviant’ honestly.
So my friends said have a look at a house called “Knapp Farmhouse” which they said was in the odd and I think rather distinctive sounding village of “Puncknowle” in the delightfully charming English county of Dorset.
Being inquisitive (it is such a nicer word than ‘nosey’ isn’t it?) I decided to not only have a look at the pretty pictures of the property that my friends were thinking of buying and closely study the property particulars, I decided to find out exactly where the oddly and distinctively named village of “Puncknowle” was and how close it might be to the sea and the lovely fresh fish especially Prawns that people pull out of that bit of the English Channel, just in case I get invited to stay and on the off chance get offered fish.
Now we all know because we have been told by www.google.com that their map search thingy is second to none and with street view it is even better because you can get to see into peoples houses – sounded good to me and so I copied and pasted the address of the house my friends were thinking of buying into Google maps, and here I have to say that www.rightmove.co.uk are sticklers for accuracy because they give to entire address of the property that they are marketing even down to the post code (or zip code as my lovely American readers would know it better).
Then I waited for the magic to happen!
Imagine my surprise when this good looking Cat got not only a picture of the house my friends are thinking of buying but also an advert which said that the property was a sort of guest house that we only have in the UK I believe and call a “bed and breakfast,” these places are sort of like motels but with limited parking, but are fun to visit because the people who run them are usually mad and do odd things like pre-Basil Fawlty’s and on a smaller scale.
Knapp Farmhouse according to this advert (and the brochure that popped up when I clicked on a link) was indeed a bed and breakfast and strangely enough it was a completely different building to the one on www.rightmove.co.uk.
I was astonished that my friends were obviously considering ‘trade,’ were they that far down on their luck poor things? And my shock and horror grew as I noticed that the address of the property on Google maps was completely different to the address I had been given by them and also the nice website www.rightmove.co.uk.
My suspicions began to grow, were my friends trying to tell me something? Because with the help of Google maps had I discovered that they were about to move and didn’t want to give me the address of their new home and were thinking of disappearing forever – bastards!
Happily I am not the sort of clever feline that jumps too far to any conclusion and so I first checked to see if maybe some clumsy stroke of a furry paw had pasted in the wrong address – but no it wasn’t that.
Then I checked to see if the address my friends had given me was the same as the one on www.rightmove.co.uk – no that wasn’t the reason for having a different address and indeed picture on Google maps.
I called my friends and checked the address with them “yes” they said “that’s the right address, what did I think of the farmhouse and also the guest accommodation?” (A converted barn big enough for about twenty Cats).
“Very nice I said!” And put the phone down in confusion, it was obvious that they weren’t trying to get rid of me as a friend, they had asked me about the guest accommodation hadn’t they?”
So that meant that there had to be some other reason for the glaring discrepancy between the pictures of the house on www.rightmove.co.uk and bed and breakfast brochure on Google maps! They were so different and so it led me to think that they must be two different properties, but the smarties at www.google.com couldn’t be wrong could they? They are bright, they are clever, they are at long last moaning to China about their really dreadful freedom of speech issues, they are the next best thing to god aren’t they?
They have most of the same letters in there name as ‘him’ after all and they seem to control and manage everything and if they don’t like you or what you say they aren’t above a bit of censorship of their own are they?
So what to do, this little problem was gnawing at me, was there a way of checking whether www.rightmove.co.uk had made a mistake – yes there was they have an aerial picture of the property which probably most people would look at first and so now I checked that and it was different too www.google.com, then I thought maybe I should see what another aerial picture would look like and so I went to www.bing.com.
www.bing.com have a map and an aerial picture thingy, the map is actually much better than www.google.com and has a lot of map type information and not a lot of ads and guess what you can make the map full size so that you can see more of the map unlike Google maps which has more space for ads that are on the left hand side of the screen and can’t be made smaller to show more, well any of the map.
The aerial picture is not as good on www.bing.com but who cares about that? When I searched www.bing.com with the same address (glad that I had copied it and could paste it in so many times www.bing.com found the right property which agreed with the address that my friends had given me and also the pictures on www.rightmove.co.uk, bit of course not with Google maps.
So I think that unbelievably, because I am not a great fan of Microsoft at all, www.bing.com has won a little more of my heart, it isn’t as inaccurate as www.google.com, it is less committed to plastering ads all over your screen when you are snooping on your friends new home in the map section and you can even ‘see’ what you are looking for full screen after you have found it and not a collection of adverts unlike Google maps and soon it will be the search engine of choice on the iphone.
Now of course the reason Apple Computers are changing their search engine on the iphone according to the www.bbc.com is that Apple Computers are annoyed that the iphone has some competition in the shape of the Google Android (‘phone’ as it has been described) – some competition har ha – and they are annoyed that they might only sell one billion and one iphones instead of one billion and ten iphones next year or something petulant like that.
So I have decided that for the time being that like Apple Computers I too like www.bing.com and I seriously suggest that you have a gawp at it too!
Currently one of their screen pictures is of a Cat as well, a rather fine Cat as well let’s hope that the rather fine Mountain Lion is pouncing on the idiot who works at Google maps and was responsible for England and in particular Dorset, let’s face it Google maps should get rid of that idiot as fast as possible it is giving them a bad name.
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Android, Cat, Good Looking Cat, iPhone, freedom of speech, China, Europe, www.google.com, www.rightmove.co.uk, www.bing.com, property, fish, bed and breakfast, motel, Motel, Apple Computers
I think that the snow might be making me aggressive, what about you? Yes you? I am talking to you! Why are you ignoring me! Wanna paw sandwich – oops see what I mean!
So to take my mind off the cold and hopefully to become less aggressive I thought we should talk about one of my specialist subjects – fish!
Fish is or is that are? Anyway fish is always a great topic of conversation amongst Cats and as amazing as it may seem I have never ever run out of things to talk about when talking about fish in particular or in general.
It is true to say that the Japanese and I have a lot in common with our love of fish and in particular with our mutual love and of course respect for raw fish (especially cold raw fish) I have to say it is my favourite, and the way it feels as it slithers down your throat is… well it raises the fur on my back I can tell you.
Because I like fish so much you can often see me at Sushi bars fighting people who are not much taller than me for a Sushi roll or ten. Yes the Japanese take their fish as seriously as I do and have been known to come to blows where fish is concerned, but then so do other nations, have you got enough grey hair to remember the Icelandic Cod Wars? Iceland and the UK fought over fish with the same animosity as they are fighting over ‘funds’ now.
I do like Sushi bars as I mentioned by occasionally I get a little mesmerised by the food as it gets conveyed passed me, and on one occasion when I fell onto the conveyor belt I was selected as a ‘dish of the day’ by some Chinese tourists.
When this happens I can tell you it is not nice, which bring me to a point or two of sorts, first the Japanese eat too much fish and don’t leave enough for me, especially Blue Fin Tuna because they are becoming extinct poor things and secondly why do the Chinese tuck into Cat that’s what this good looking Cat would like to know?
Here are some facts that I think are just terrible, in Guangdong as many as 10,000 cats are eaten everyday! That’s not nice is it?
The trade in Cat and Dog meat in China alone is worth $950 million a year, and speaking for 50% of the menu I think that it is time to stop this and do it quickly!
Mind you I suppose if this was a fish’s blog then it might be focused on the amount of fish eaten each day around the world, now that sounds yummy – sorry ‘fishies’ that was in bad taste wasn’t it!
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Good Looking Cat, Chinese, Japanese, Blue Fin Tuna, Sushi, Guangdong
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Getting Out [Paperback edition] at Amazon.com
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