WHY MOTHS LOVE LIGHTS
If you’re up now, maybe in front of a screen, of some kind, or perhaps hanging around under a streetlight waiting for trade, of some kind, or possibly even clung to the front of a moving vehicle, of some kind, you may well be sharing your space with a moth.
Now, we all know they love light like we love New York, but we don’t know why. I’ve scoured the entire web (insert insect/arachnid gag here) and some fat and clever books and I’ve yet to hear a decent reason. When we finally find out, in a roundabout way we shall solve the human headaches of time zones, arson, colour blindness, war and infertility - just don’t ask me to draw you a diagram.
Ask Paul at www.copyrightdavis.com
ULTRA-MICRO-CLIMATE
Micro-climates like to flex their stats. Findhorn and San Francisco brag temperatures that dwarf their chilly neighbours. Generalizing as I like to do, if you live anywhere hilly, near the sea, with a great gush of water ebbing in and out, you have a fair chance of qualifying for micro-meteorology.
If we stopped looking at climate through weather goggles and chose to treat it as a societal phenomenon comprised of millions of multi-cultures, we’d make progress. Homogeneity is no way to treat the diversity of the elements. By encouraging ice caps and deserts to travel and share the same postcode, we create climate equality, which in turn, allows the planet to blown hot and cold like a human being.
SUICIDE BIRDS
There are way too many birds flying headlong into buildings, trees, hillsides, and cliffs. These are static objects. You may not have noticed, but you will now. They make soon mistake you for one of the above as you wait for a train. It got me wondering the following:
Are windows cleaner than ever?
Have these birds been briefed by an extreme crow?
Are they struggling with a double dip recession a year or two ahead of us and therefore trying to tell us to cut our losses and die with glory?
Are mobile phones confusing the sonar frequency of birds thus making them crash?
Are birds about to evolve into a land-based on foot species?
If you wonder greater wonders, please add them here>
PROFESSIONAL FANS ON 1K A WEEK
Football can get bigger. But not on the pitch. In the stands and in front of the TV. By 2018, there will be the world’s first professional inter-league of super-fans who will be paid by the clubs they support. Some fans will be paid directly by players and they will share agents. Brands will also buy fans and contractually tie them into appearances with political figures and sponsorship deals. This trend will coincide with an incremental reduction in the salaries of players. Within 30 years, the actors and the audience will be evenly paid and then the beautiful game will once again find its feet.
HYBRID INSECTS
It’s warm today, hot even. The climate is starting to do strange things to our animal world. This morning, as I wrote to a friend about writing, a tiny dragonfly with the coil of a scorpion landed on my hand. It pirouetted, open its wings, then took off. Two hours later, an intensely red spider the size of a pin-head ventured onto my keypad. I swore he had ten legs, though his legs were so small, they could have been hairs. Later this evening I have a feeling I may meet a minotaur, as we’re mid-moon and the sky is clear. If you should come across any mongrel strain of new species, please capture them and drive ignoring any speed limits to your nearest vet.
WILL SELF & JOHN REDWOOD
If you removed the talent and the vice out of the former, you’ll be left with the face and the voice of the latter.
Sorry Will.
Don’t mention it John.
QUAKE SPATE
Haiti, Chile, China, not to mention Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and The Soloman Islands all registering over 7 on the Richter Scale.
Earth has it in for us right now.
She’s one upset mamma.
It could be morning sickness as first reported here (THE WORLD IS HAVING A BABY - JAN 4TH 2010).
Or, it could be penance for the way we’ve treated her, a geological form of self-harm.
But I believe there is a third and more rational reason behind this sudden spate of earthquakes.
The trouble is I can’t tell you.
Or she kills me.
And I don’t fancy martyrdom quite yet.
CATARRH & PHLEGM
are visually, structurally and medically onomatopoeic.
That you know.
Catarrh & Phlegm are also fine pet names for slugs.
That you didn’t know.
OVERESTIMATION OF DEATH
This morning I heard that the Chilean government has reduced the estimated number deaths in the world’s most severe earthquake from 750 to 250. It offered no explanation, so let’s try and guess.
There is a global media obsession with ‘quantity of deaths’ in that every natural disaster, on the whole, equates to a two week tot up of bodies to sustain the world’s interest in a domestic tragedy and garner its support, emotionally, physically and economically.
What I’m getting at is do they feel less loved than Haiti because (thankfully) only a fraction of their people died? It’s as though the quality of human life lost is irrelevant. As news, it is all about the amount of deaths in as short a time possible. Mass shootings in malls rank high because of their drama, yet famine barely makes the margins because of its slow-kill omnipresence. Even wars slip down the pecking order as they span years and rarely are thousands of people killed within hours.
The depth of death has shrunk. It’s not enough to die alone. You need to die quick, dramatically and among several million if you’re to make the front page at CNN. So, on behalf of the human race, can we plead to all you broadcasters, to try and place death in its true proportion. And on behalf of every Chilean who died, let’s have 250 minutes of silence.
FOOTBALL -1 POLITICS -1
This is not some anti-Andy Burnham rant. It is a mild observation that footballers and politicians have lost the ability to speak their mind. They answer indirectly. This approach is governed by fear. It is a path rarely crossed as the line of questioning is often as dumb as the answers. Richard Nixon, and more recently Joe Kinnear, have spoken their mind, through provocation or otherwise, and experienced the toxic nature of the media. If only Tony Benn hadn’t hung up his boots.