Flights of Fantasy

Finally got rid of the last blow-up doll and closed a chapter on a business wonder scheme that looked like it would never fly.

All down to another Rapture forecast. Thanks guys!


Pranksters bought up the stock, filled them with helium and set them loose after I marketed them as 'I-cant-believe-it's-not-apocalypse' party ware.

The dolls were quite realistic, that was one of the design features but also their Achilles' heel. I think the real problem was the way they talked, not so much the speech sound (although I don't think I'd use Mrs B doing a  Phyliss Diller impersonation again for the voice) but the phrases used.

Based on my history of marital bliss with Mrs B I went for phrases I thought would provided the most realistic and immersive experience of erotic congress.

For example:

"What time do you call this"
"Not now: I have a headache"
"Mother was right, you are a beast"
"Not unless I get a new pair of shoes"
"At least take your hat off"
and hysterical laughter.

The dolls may now serve a more noble purpose, floating around in the stratosphere, reflecting sunlight and helping to hold down global warming. They are very durable and it would take years before they would go down on you. [Insert your own joke about Mrs B here]

Journalism, Jollies and Jealousy

I have received the following from an outraged (is there any other sort?) UK Daily Mail reader

Dear Baldric,

I find it scandalous that British journalists are swanning around Caribbean islands under the pretext of conducting investigations into British police officers allegedly swanning around Caribbean islands when there is more than enough muck needing raking back in the UK.

Why should UK readers have to put up with delays in back-biting and sniping about the latest fashion faux pas of a minor celebrity? Why should the readership have to forego grainy close-ups of cellulite on the thighs of rich and famous women. And who is going to write those essential stories that make the gaps between tea breaks bearable, like the reports of labrador dogs looking after orphaned ducklings and vice versa?

We all know they are just lounging around in hammocks, which is blatant duplication of effort since the FCO already supply Brits to do that.

Please use you best efforts to shame those journalists into getting back to where they are most needed NOW!

Your incandescently,

Rudi Beckia

Crafty Devil

Q. What's the difference between Nation Building and Buying Votes?

A. Twelve months in Northward

God, supposedly, moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform but Mac wants a piece of that action. So Mac created and administered a special fund, also in a mysterious way, for handing out public money to Ministers (church variety).

His Holiness the Pope of  West Bay

Pending God blowing the roofs back onto the churches he blew them off of during Hurricane Ivan, Mac takes matters into his own hands and gets them fixed. After all God helps those who help themselves and God knows Mac does that - to his elbows.

I don't know how many roofs you can put on the same church - maybe new oriental influences are ushering in the pagoda style - so it looks like the church ain't the only thing the money is intended to fix, if you catch my drift.

Presumably the Small Fries went along with this extraordinary ecclesiastical handout being, where not God-fearing, at least Mac-fearing men. But, it looks like the Governor keeps one eye half-open while dozes in his pew, for his hand-servant the Auditor General is now on the case.

Unwilling, as ever, to account for public money he's been splashing out,  Mac berates and badmouth his detractors from the bully pulpit of his office, even unto accusing them of being 'Devil worshippers'.

No Mac, the devil is in the details and, unless Joe Public gets to see them, there could be Hell to pay.
(Not Hell, West Bay obviously -that's already been paid).

Are we there yet?

Freetard: defn

A person whose ability to make rational decisions is impaired by the possibility of receiving something for free.

 
I bumped into the Duke of Earl the other day. I'd heard he was more or less off the booze. He only ever drank to forget and his memory is so drink impaired these days that, while he still drinks on the days he recalls what he was trying to forget, on the days he forgets what he's trying to forget, he's dry. Sounds less complicated than is is.

Hi Duke, how's it goin'?

Do I know you?

Sure you do. It's me Baldy.

Did you used to have less hair?

Nah. I'm wearing a wooly hat.

OK. Hey, are you the one with the wife that looks like Schwarzenegger?

You got me

Take a seat my friend and tell me how it's been goin'.

I joined him on his park bench and we talked of this and that and how the world seemed to be going down the crapper.

Why is that Duke? What's going on?

Too many freetards. Too many people feel entitled to take out more than they'll ever put in. If this keeps up, we are headed, my friend, to government of the freetards, by the freetards, for the freetards.

Duke, I know places where that process is nearly completed.

You mean West Bay and Cayman Brac?

Bingo.

Here Today Gone Tomorrow

So how was your Rapture?

I had fun putting a scare into Mrs B.

Mrs B is a pretty hard case - think Sarah Palin on steroids suffering from industrial strength PMT and wearing a fright mask. But she can be credulous if something like The Rapture is repeated in the news often enough and she had been drawn in.

She says she married me for my sense of humor, and I married her out of conviction, or the possibility of getting one if I hadn't married her. I'm still not convinced you legally have to marry a girl just because you left the toilet seat up in her house on the first date.

I'm so careful about that now.
 
Ayhoo she got a shock on Saturday evening, Rapture Day, when she came out into the garden to find I was nowhere to be seen and my sole earthly garment, vacant of its occupant, on the lawn.

From my hiding place up in the tree I heard her gasp, "O-M-G,  O-M-G. He's been RAPTURED"

Ruptured would have been closer, I don't know about you but I haven't climbed a tree, naked and in a hurry, since I was about 12. Apart from our honeymoon. But it was worth the effort.

I was shaking with mirth so much the tree was swaying,  spooky, because there was no wind. Not yet anyway. But when I crammed my fist into my mouth to hold down a fit of giggles what was suppressed at one end found an exit at the other. Yea the trumpet shall sound!

Even that sulphurous blast could have passed for one of the signs and omens of doomsday if only my cap hadn't fallen off, causing Mrs B to rumble me and look heavenward.

"Hey Baldie, your end is in sight. And it ain't pretty."

With some effort I got down from the tree and Mrs B, seeing the funny side of things (she certainly laughed each time she looked up), helped by letting me stand on her shoulders and lowering me to the ground. It was just like the old days when we scrambled over the back wall to avoid her mother's visits. Ah memories!

"What's with all the goo on your ankles Baldie?"

"That's Vaseline honey, to help me slide back down the tree"

"Jesus you're weird"

It wasn't true: just in case the rapture really did arrive on Saturday night I'd smeared my ankles with Vaseline so Mrs B couldn't hold me back or hitch a ride.

Nurse! Nurse!! Quick, the screens.

Jeez! What's Gordon Barlow been smokin'? Is he about to check into the rubber room?

The brain-dump that was his blog on the shooting of Osama Bin Laden makes for worrying reading.

 

I don't see how his blog intro, using a mildly racist Irish joke, and the peppering of Dead Osama 'jokes' squares with the normally tight-assed PC credentials of Oral Gob Drown (anag.). Perhaps it was intended to leaven the over excited, nay spittle flecked, body of the post. Still, perhaps I shouldn't be judging him by his own standards.

Opinion varies on what happened, not helped by the authorities providing an initial (possibly wishfully pre-scripted) account of events that needed correcting - and then that correction needed correcting and so on.

So Osama Bin Laden is or isn't dead and did or didn't plan and commission the 9/11 attacks on NY and was or wasn't shot while armed or unarmed in front of his or someone else's 12 year old daughter who was or wasn't in the room.

To help Old Groan Brow (anag.) reconnect with reality I'll state this:

Bin Laden is dead - if he wasn't all he had to do is pop up on Al Jazeera reading that days Jihadi Forecast.

Bin Laden took credit (and hence a bullet) for stuff he may not have done because he was a fantasist and a dreamer

However, he incited the killing of civilians for political ends on many occasions and said he'd squared it with the Koran - making him a liar as well as a terrorist.  What he was all about can be read, in his own words, in media interviews he gave if you trouble to search the web.

Did he deserve to die? Well he kinda talked himself into it over the years.

Did he deserve to die the way he did? Well it was quick compared to roasting alive in one of the Twin Towers.

Should he have been killed in front of his daughter? No. And the same goes for the parent(s) of the  8 children, all younger than 12, who were killed in the planes used for the 9/11 attacks.

The American political establishment hasn't ever looked far beyond it's own immediate imperatives in pursuing 'The War on Terror' and sometimes, to the wider world, their actions come across as ill considered, breathtakingly insensitive and counter productive in propaganda terms. The Islamists are often the more subtle propagandists - doesn't make them right though.

Oft times one side acts no better than the other in any conflict but, if it's a choice of systems, I'm going for the one that has separation of powers in a written constitution, that lets you pick your God (or no God) and allows both men and women to become whatever they are capable of becoming. And I even apply that to Mrs B.

Note to Gordon: Mellow out man - try and find a nice little Merino, maybe the bleating will attract one.

A Monument to Myopia

In one episode of the UK radio comedy the Goon Show parliament debates criticisms of extravagant and wasteful spending by the government. Defending against the naysayers the Prime Minister points out that no lighthouses were built in The Strand (think Broadway in NY) last year, only a single tunnel was constructed from the House Of Commons to the The Folies Bergère in Paris and it was lit with plain chandeliers and not gold and diamond encrusted ones as originally planned.

He finishes with a flourish, "Efficiency, Gentlemen, that must be our watchword. Efficiency! No expense will be spared to ensure money isn't wasted".

The comedic hallmarks of the Goon Show, twisted logic and demented schemes are,  in the Cayman Islands, the engine of its politics. For example government 'saves' money by doing something that didn't need doing in the first place in a less expensive manner.

The $9million  'Hurricane Hilton' shelter on Cayman Brac sounds a lot like a lighthouse on Broadway to me.

Brac politics is basically family politics. The political foundation of MLA Juliana O’Connor-Connolly, whose brainchild the Hurricane Hilton is, is a large extended family that procreated an entire Brac constituency to vote her into. They vote for her, she votes for them.

Some wags say Juliana O’Connor-Connolly's twin surnames are to maximise electoral appeal on the Brac, however, more and more, you hear a shorter name, 'Juju'. And though names may be shortened to convey affection I guarantee this diminutive isn't for that.

'Juju' has especially unfortunate heathen connotations for an in-your-face type of Christian like Juliana, being a name applied to traditional West African magical beliefs.  You know witch stuff.

Wikipedia defines Juju thus:

"An object of any kind superstitiously venerated ... and used as a charm, amulet, or means of protection; a fetish".

Hmmm  -  sounds familiar.

Juliana was flaunting her 'protective' credentials, the better to be venerated, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Hurricane Hilton - groundbreaking in the sense that ground was broken not in the sense of something original happening - policians have been dreaming up these overblown, self-agrandising projects for the last two decades.

In her speech Juliana played the martyr, the target of outrageous press and blog commentary and all because of her vision to provide 'her people' with the best hurricane shelter other people's money can buy. She was above it all however going on to state:

“When one studies history, one finds that great buildings were rarely appreciated until the person who had the vision had passed on and you read about it in the obituary,”

Juilana your political vision is so shallow it could be used to calibrate a laser for eye surgery.

 

Endangered Species

Concern for conservation and preservation in the Cayman Islands is on the rise.

Wendy Ledger wrote recently in CNS -  A sea change ahoy -  about grass-roots environmental (and cultural) concerns that may coalesce to form a new political party.

If that were to happen then, ironically, yet another species, the MLA Parrot,  would be immediately and critically endangered.

In contrast to other parrot species, which can be highly communicative and intelligent, these ones are quiet most of the time although, as a group, (or an 'Assembly of Parrots' to use the correct collective noun) they can engage in noisy, ritual territorial displays. But they seem most content spending their days building and feathering large nests.

Until recently the public have tolerated these birds, some finding their mimicry, ostentatious preening and sometimes colourful antics amusing, but that mood is changing. Increasingly they are viewed as pests and a danger to Cayman's environment.


Do they have a future?  Possibly - for the ones that can adapt quickly enough.

Cat Fight - well, kinda.

Stop it Girls! Or at least wait until I can find a camera.

Babbity Barwick (a real person) was taken to task by Knal N Domp (the assumed persona of a late-middle-aged male Insurance Pro.) for being lukewarm in her affection for her adopted Grand Cayman home,  - as reported in the Financial Times "A gilded cage" (sic)


Not that Knal has ever had a bad word to say about Cayman
 


On reading the infamous article I was astounded by the nerve of the woman - these are actual quotes

"has a lovely coastline, gorgeous sea, beautiful beaches and big skies"

"The large variety of restaurants, though, are good"

"The Caymanian old-timers are real sweethearts, very moral and stoic."

and if those hate filled words don't make your gorge rise here's the clincher:

".. it is bliss here"

Given such provocation can Knal's ad feminam riposte be overlooked?

For those like Babbity Barwick, living in Cayman is something that has to be endured- like English sex- and whilst enduring, think only and constantly, of England.

Hmmm ... maybe Knal needs to take a look in the mirror: I mean apart from when he's having sex with himself.

Phonies

The deputy premier, who is the minister with responsibility for communications, will be leading a Cayman delegation to Spain for the Global System for Mobile Communications Association Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Juliana O’Connor-Connolly and the team will be leaving the Cayman Islands Friday for the four day conference, which is an annual telecommunications industry event, bringing together mobile telecommunications providers, regulators and policy-makers, officials said.

CNS Article

 Now read on ...

Telecoms guru Juliana O’Connor-Connolly sits in her new office mulling over whether to get another name extension and some wider headed notepaper when her Executive Aid enters bearing some Gatorade, a hearing aid, a bandaid and some marmalade. His job is to deal with anything ending in 'aid' or 'ade' and he carries stuff around with him in case it is suddenly needed.

'Yo JuJu whazzup!'

'You overpaid aid, are your manners mislaid? I expect an accolade and you, the aforesaid, won't need to be soothsaid to know when I upbraid you could get waylaid and bio-de-grade. Yunnerstand?

'A thousand pardons madam'

'Dat better. Now wha'appenin?'


'Sensational news madam. I heard that the head of AT&T is here in person to persuade all Cayman's millions to move to his phone network. And a man just arrived saying he was from AT&T'

'Well send him in, send him in. And leave the marmalade.'

In order to impress Mr AT&T Juliana O’Connor-Connolly picks up her new executive phone from her new executive desk  puts it to her not so new, but little used, executive ear and pretends to be talking to the head of Verizon.

As Mr AT&T enters, looking a tad casual - but maybe he's on vacation, she whispers 'You from AT&T?', he nods and she waves for him to take a seat and gushes on

' .... your offer of free phone calls for the first four years is an interesting one Mr Verizon but I think AT&T may offer five years. Also I think two cents an hour for calls to the USA could be improved on even allowing for the free broadband for all schools. Well I must go now the head of AT&T is waiting to speak to me. Bye'

Turning to her visitor she greets him and asks, 'So, can you help me improve Caymans's communications facilities?'

'I guess so. I'm here to connect that phone.'