Champion liars

For celebrities who happen to be stupendous liars, the prestigious Pinnochio Award—which I'm thinking of organizing—will be a kind of annual Nobel prize.

Several brilliant candidates have already appeared on the scene. Ever since the interview of 17 January 2013 with Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong has been a n° 1 contender for the award.

Between now and the end of the year, however, many things can happen. Many monstrous untruths can be propagated. And it's quite possible that various excellent liars will be making an effort to overtake the Texan... which has become a perfectly feasible task now that Armstrong has stopped absorbing his customary cocktails.

In France, for example, the politician Jérôme Cahuzac provided us with a spectacular performance of blatant lying, not so long ago, when he swore to his comrades, in an eye-to-eye declaration, that he had never had a bank account in a foreign tax haven.

                                       — photo AFP/Jean-Pierre Muller

His claim to the Pinnochio Award must be taken seriously, since this was the first known case of a French minister telling lies to the president himself, then being revealed as a liar and obliged to resign. There are rumors, too, that Cahuzac has amassed vast financial funds, from mysterious donors, enabling him to envisage lobbying operations on a grand scale for the greatly-desired Pinnochio Award.

This morning, we heard of a humble but determined Pinnochio candidate from an unexpected domain: the Jewish religious hierarchy in France.

Gilles Bernheim, the 60-year-old chief rabbi of France, had admitted that his book Quarante méditations juives [Stock, 2011], created with the assistance of a ghostwriter, contained plagiarized excerpts. Prior to resigning, the distinguished rabbi also pointed out that he had falsified his curriculum vitae. Contrary to what has been declared in Who's Who and other places, Bernheim has never obtained an agrégation (high-level French academic distinction) in philosophy. Definitely not nice...

I would be a liar if I did not admit that, personally, I've been wondering whether I myself could maybe be considered as a serious candidate for the much-coveted Pinnochio Award. In that sense, let me start the ball rolling by revealing a well-kept secret. Up until now, I happened to be one of the rare individuals who knew that the French rabbi seen dancing in the following famous video was in fact Gilles Bernheim, disguised by means of a false beard, when he was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris (where he picked up doctorates in molecular biology and cosmology).

I swear to God—cross my heart and hope to die—that the secret I've just revealed is absolutely true and easily provable.

POST SCRIPTUM: In the Jewish folklore arena, I must include this hilarious image, for those who haven't seen it yet elsewhere on the web:

Apparently the passenger in a bag is an ultra-orthodox Jew who is using transparent plastic in an attempt to protect himself, during a flight to the Holy Land, from unspecified obnoxious emanations. Since the gentleman appears to be calm (sleeping?), we might suppose that this interesting method does in fact work. On the other hand, I must point out that I've been unable to find any factual evidence concerning the physical state of this pious passenger when he reached his destination. Was he still alive? Indeed, there's a credible rumor going around that the individual in the plastic bag was already dead when the photo was taken. Other passengers (well and truly alive) were simply taking their deceased relative back to Israel for burial on the slopes across from Jerusalem. It's surprising however (to say the least) that the corpse would have been accepted by the airline as cabin luggage.

Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins has dragged out a spectacular video:

When you look at things objectively, compared with all these crazy cries and gesticulations (which might disturb, not only other passengers, but the flight crew), a few tiny lies in a curriculum vitæ or a few borrowed paragraphs in a book are neither here nor there. I can comprehend, in a way, why a distinguished religious leader might find it worthwhile to employ dubious methods in order to enhance his intellectual reputation. But I remain totally totally incapable of understanding what might be going on in the heads of those guys in the airplane.

Australian scholarship

If you're interested in big pricks, a pair of researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra are sure to attract your attention. One of them is Michael Jennions, a biology professor.

                                    — photo Jay Cronan

He and his doctoral student Brian Mautz certainly deserve an Ig Nobel Prize [click here for explanations] for their earth-shattering discovery that heterosexual ladies appear to prefer king-sized male genitalia. Let's listen to the professor presenting their findings.

In the domain of painting, miniatures have always exerted a fascination upon countless art collectors. Maybe the Australian researchers might move beyond their present big-is-beautiful preoccupations and pursue a fascinating and little-known field of investigation: the refined tastes of a female elite who prefer tiny little pricks of an exquisite kind that are best observed under a magnifying glass. Other possible penis-oriented research topics might be gleaned from this excellent song by the Frenchman Pierre Perret:

Chain-saw attack of the Sun King's elephant

If this story had emerged in the press next Monday, I would have concluded immediately that it's an April Fool's Day tale. We learned this morning that an unfortunate animal in Paris was incapable of resisting the attack of a maniac armed with a chain-saw. In any case, the beast in question—an elephant that been given to Louis XIV in 1668 by the king of Portugal—had been dead for ages, and was residing in peace (up until last night) in the natural science museum in the Latin Quarter.

The 20-year-old attacker, who had succeeded in crudely hacking off the elephant's left tusk, was captured in a nearby street by police who had been alerted by the unfamiliar morning sounds of a chain-saw inside a museum. We must of course presume that the alleged chain-saw assailant is innocent, at least up until a law court were to condemn him. Whatever the precise description of the crime with which he'll be charged, the fellow will be better off than if he'd been charged by the living beast itself, back in the days of the Sun King... who would have promptly had the culprit drawn and quartered for daring to touch the tusks of the royal elephant.

The end is near

Here in France, it's still only 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the penultimate day. So, everything still exists here, and it's business as usual. But, at the moment I'm writing this blog post, New Zealand is no doubt starting to fade out forever as a civilized community.

And my native Australia should be getting ready to go Down Under. Everywhere, particularly among the enlightened folk in Byron Bay, there's a feeling in the air that the end is near.

The great Jim Morrison once expressed this doomed feeling in a poignant style:

TV reports inform us that French highways are already crammed with vehicles heading to the south-west.

Their destination, of course, is the tiny village of Bugarach, whose mountain allegedly has room for some 30 million survivors.

As I've already pointed out in this blog, I persist in believing that Mayan cosmologists got their computations slightly screwed up, and that the right place to be protected from extermination is in fact the magnificent magic mountain just across from my house at Gamone: the Cournouze.

Consequently, I'll be packing up here this evening and wandering across to Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne, with Fitzroy and the two donkeys. In the middle of the forthcoming dark night of celestial tribulations, if I can find an operational Internet connection in Châtelus, I'll write a blog post to describe what's happening here. Before publishing it, I intend to do a quick check, of course, to see whether I still have any potential readers throughout the world. Otherwise, there's no point in carrying on my blogging. So, if you hear from me within the next 24 hours, that will be good news both for you and for me. Meanwhile, to all my still-existing readers: Happy Apocalypse!

BREAKING NEWS: Here on the edge of the French Alps, I'm happy to say that my constant belief in the magic survival powers of the great Cournouze mountain seems to have paid off, because the alleged Final Day has dawned and everything's fine, including the weather. On the other hand, the Antipodes worry me greatly. There are rumors on the Internet that every sign of normal humanity in New Zealand has been wiped off the face of the earth, and that only the Hobbit population remains, hidden deep in Middle-earth. As for feedback from Australia, I'm getting no intelligible signals whatsoever from Byron Bay, not even from their flourishing Raelian community. (In an initial version of my remarks here, a regrettable slip of the pen caused me to write "intelligent" rather than "intelligible".) So, I'm forced to conclude sadly that the good old days of whale spotting from the lighthouse, surfing among the sharks and drinking beer in the local pubs are almost certainly a thing of the past. The world will miss you all...

BUGARACH CALLING BYRON: Trying to get through. How many survivors in Byron? Everything normal Bugarach. Extraterrestrial visit this afternoon. Nice fellows.

Byron received extraterrestrial visits? What color? Can we forward you Bugarach extraterrestrials?

Beware of flooding

Imagine a millionaire, with a constant urge to make more millions. At a religious level, let's suppose that our millionaire happens to be a young-Earth creationist. They're the crazy folk—like our Aussie nitwit politician Steve Fielding, evoked here—who believe that God spent a busy week making the world, before being overcome by a psychopathic desire to destroy the results of his week of toil by means of a huge flood, designed to exterminate mankind. Finally, let's suppose that our rich creationist is Dutch. That's to say, he resides in a land that could rapidly be flooded dramatically if ever sea levels were to rise as a consequence of global warming... or because of an act of God in another homicidal mood. If the fellow whom I've asked you to imagine were to actually exist today, in flesh and blood, what would he be doing? The answer is obvious. He would be building an ark.

That's exactly what Johan Huibers has been doing over the last couple of decades. Construction of the huge vessel has been completed, and it was officially launched a few days ago. And Johan is henceforth awaiting, with confidence, the Apocalypse: first, the Mayan business, then maybe, with a bit of luck, a tidal wave or two. In any case, even creationists never know the surprises that God's got up his sleeve...

The replica uses measurements obtained from the Bible, but the builder has taken the liberty of incorporating various features that God and Noah overlooked. For example, the Dutch ark can welcome up to 1500 visitors at a time, and these Biblical tourists have access to a big restaurant and a movie theater. As far as non-human animals are concerned, they're mostly sculptures.

The Gallica website recently displayed here a small series of beautiful medieval images of the Biblical ark. As soon as we analyze these images, however, it becomes clear that artists in those days (the Middle Ages) must have had a terribly fuzzy conception of reality. Consider, for example, this presentation of the construction of the vessel:

It looks as if they're putting the finishing touches to a carnival float representing a big walnut. There's no way in the world that this thing they're building might sail upon the flood waters with a gigantic cargo of specimens of all of God's creatures. But my negative remarks are unkind, and they merely reveal my lack of faith. The following image proves that Noah's adventure got off to a delightful start:

I wonder what role the lady in red will be playing during the voyage. Would this be Lady Noah? Her clothes are not quite right for work as a deckhand, feeding the animals and shoveling out their dung. The following image is meant to show us how everybody has been housed aboard the vessel:

Here's another depiction of the ship's quarters:

The respective sizes of the various creatures have been handled by the artist in a very loose fashion, as if he wasn't greatly worried about reality. I wonder if he actually noticed that his ducks were bigger than horses, or whether this trivial detail escaped his attention.

Believers (like the crazy Dutchman) would probably tell me that images such as these must be taken merely as symbols, rather than realistic diagrams. Fair enough; nobody in his right mind would ever consider this artwork as realistic. But symbols are a convenient notion for trying to hide the obvious fact: namely, that there can be no plausible reality whatsoever behind the story of Noah.

Finally, the voyage went over well. And the following image suggests that, when they were about to return to dry land, many of the supplies stored down in the lower hull hadn't even been touched.

I would imagine that it had been such a fabulous and exciting trip that none of the passengers had even thought about eating. I hope that visitors aboard the Dutch ark won't behave like that, because Johan Huibers will be needing a constant flow of hungry clients in his big restaurant. Otherwise, no white dove will descend from the heavens to tell him that there's a fortune in cash on the horizon.

Don't throw bananas onto the track

A 30-year-old Japanese sprinter, Kenichi Ito, has just established a new world record of 17.47 seconds for the 100 meters. Click here to admire a video of his performance.

In an Olympic context, if I had to choose between synchronized swimming and running on all fours, I wouldn't hesitate in preferring to watch the monkey business. In fact, when I observe some of the swimmers' contortions, I wonder whether some of these women might not be able to turn themselves into top-level monkey runners.

As far as exciting spectator sports go, I would even place monkey running ahead of curling.

There again, maybe there could be some sort of amalgam between the two sporting disciplines, by requiring curling competitors to slide around on the glass on all fours, in the style of seals, with their noses down at the level of the granite stone.

Restoration of the holy image

I was inspired by Cecilia Gimenez for her restoration of Ecce Homo.

The original was indeed a bit dull, and it needed fixing.

Like many other Internet artists, I felt like getting involved in this fascinating field of restoration. And I was inspired, too, by Clint Eastwood's recent contribution to the Mitt Romney circus.

You can find a huge collection of masterpieces here.

Darwin nomination

You've probably heard of the prestigious Darwin Awards:

In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival.

So, the winner of a Darwin Award [click here to visit their website] is necessarily a dead idiot whose disappearance inspires us in the sense that we would like to see more individuals of his kind removed forever from our gene pool. The award winner is the posthumous symbol of a branch of humanity for whom our dearest and deepest (unspoken) wishes would be extinction.

I've just found my personal candidate for the forthcoming award. I'm happy to present this silly dead bugger to my readers. First, you need a few elements of US backwoods culture, straight from Monsanto. You see, folk in that part of the world have met up, for ages, with a legendary apelike creature known as Bigfoot, whose rare sightings are awesome. The following image of Bigfoot proves that he exists.

But, even in Monsanto, lots of folk refuse to believe in Bigfoot. So, they need a little nudge, otherwise belief in Bigfoot might subside, which would be a state calamity. A bit of military gear does the trick.

This outfit is known as a Ghillie suit, used as close-combat camouflage, and you can buy one through the Internet.

A certain Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, Montana was apparently alarmed by the recent drop in Bigfoot sightings. He decided that the most efficient promotional act would consist of buying a Ghillie outfit and wandering around on a local highway, in the hope of arousing talk about the legendary creatures. Sadly, the silly bugger got run over, Ghillie suit and all, by a passing driver. RIP, Randy. I hope and pray that you'll get a Darwin Award. You deserve it. There should be more deaths like yours.

The day started nicely

This morning, things started out quite well for me. After being woken up by the dull thuds of one of my donkeys (the young female) rummaging around in my pumpkin patch, I was relieved to discover that Fanette had in fact behaved quite daintily, in the sense that she'd simply gobbled up a few carrot and turnip plants, but hadn't crushed any of my pumpkins. Here are some dismal photos of the pumpkin patch in the heat of day:

The pumpkin plants were in mourning. The right adjective is "droopy".

In the midst of that stultifying droopiness, that pumpkin is probably ripe. Besides, how do you know whether a pumpkin's ripe or not?

Happily, a few hours later on, in the cool of the evening, the plants emerged from the doldrums, and all the stalks and leaves returned to their normal erect state, as if they'd always looked like that.

Naturally, a sprinkling of water made them perk up even more, as the cool evening set in. Incidentally, I'm convinced that professional photographers working for gardening magazines must operate either very early in the morning or during the evening (maybe with artificial lighting). Their editors would never accept the spectacle (authentic, nevertheless) of midday vegetal droopiness.

OK. Let me get back to my subject. I was happy, this morning, because I finally found a way of solving (I think) a challenge that has pursued me ever since I started to write this blog, back in December 2006. I'm talking of the possibility of consulting easily and meaningfully the archives of my Antipodes blog. The more I write, the more I feel that many of my past thoughts and feelings have become submerged, unfortunately, in the historical bulk of the blog. For a time, I played (unfruitfully) with the idea of a potential software tool that might facilitate access to the Antipodes archives. Theoretically, the search box up in the top left corner of the Antipodes page lets you find almost anything and everything. But readers don't necessarily know what search arguments they should enter.

In any case, the new approach I've decided to adopt is based upon the Blogger phenomenon of so-called static pages. I've started to build one such page, labeled Gamone, which you can find in the right-hand side bar. For the moment, apart from the concept itself, don't expect too much. The creation of these pages will take a lot of work, and I'm just beginning...

Well, everything was fine until I sat down in front of my faithful Mac and took a look at the major news events of the morning. And that's when the Holy Shit struck the fan. Prince Harry's bum!

For those who preferred a front view, carrot-haired Harry was obliging.

Stone the crows, I say. Enough is fucking enough. It's high time to get rid of that royal bunch of dimwits. But do whatever you please, my dear British brothers. I can understand perfectly well that your grand theoreticians have studied in depth all these questions based upon data concerning the Royals, the Games, the Pound Sterling, etc. And, even if Harry were to get involved in porn videos, the analyses of n° 10 Downing Street would continue to take everything in their stride. That's what made Britain great. But shit: Internet images of Prince Harry's bum?

Later on in the day, I was annoyed to discover that some kind of bug was infesting the Antipodes blog. Both inside the blog itself, and in associated files, every occurrence of the term "English" was accompanied by a tiny piece of software spam shit.

I lost little time in tracking down the cause of this annoyance: a nasty piece of nonsense known as Text Enhance, which invades your personal working domain and attaches little pieces of shitty publicity. When I started to complain about this state of affairs, I was amazed to receive an e-mail from the perpetrators of this shit, who directed me to a website telling me how to get rid of their nasty stuff. As I see things, I would suggest, it it were possible, that the perpetrators of Text Enhance might stuff themselves up Harry's princely bum. And we might all live happily ever after.

Yes, the day started nicely. And it ended nicely too, in wisdom. I've learned that we're really living in a crazy place. But, for an atheist such as me, adjusted to Sisyphian joy, what the fucking hell!

French wallaby living dangerously

For the last few days, a wallaby that escaped from a property in south-west France has been gallivanting around the countryside, often alongside busy highways.

When the animal happened to stop for a rest in a roadside parking zone, French gendarmes tried to capture it, but they were dismayed to discover that the wallaby simply hopped away.

Experienced Australian readers might be able to suggest reliable methods for capturing the animal before it gets annihilated by a vehicle. Maybe the gendarmes should simply try to put salt on its tail...

Exciting foot and leg wear

Recently, somewhere out in the wide wild world of fashion design, a genius came up with the following prototype:

Let's say that you could wear these shoes, for example, when you're out on a surfboard in the waters off the West Australian coast, waiting for a wave. There's no way in the world that a big hungry fish might try to snap off your snappy shoes, chained safely to your shins.

I imagine an elegant high-end steel-gray version of this footwear: the jailbird model.

Curiously, after their brilliant prototype, the designers of the Adidas model seem to have run out of imagination. They could have easily added extra chains, in colorful hues, extending up to the wearer's wrists and—why not?—his stupid neck.

Suddenly I'm reminded of a trivial but true anecdote, many years ago, in the family flat of our concierge (guardian) in the rue Rambuteau. One of the youths was trying to lower a heavy bed from a first-floor window to the pavement in the courtyard, several meters below the window. To support the weight of the bed, he had coiled the ropes around his shoulders and neck. All of a sudden, he lost his grip on the ropes, and the big bed jolted downwards until it was suspended in the air about two meters above the surface of the courtyard. Meanwhile, the ropes had tightened around the fellow's neck, and he was choking for breath. We terrified onlookers lost precious seconds while we climbed onto chairs and boxes to take the weight of the bed, enabling the silly bugger to unwind the noose that was strangling him and get loose. In fact, he had a few screws loose, as they say. Fascinated by firemen, he always got around in the rue Rambuteau wearing bits and pieces of a fireman's uniform... in spite of the fact that no self-respecting unit of firemen would ever accept such fellow in their ranks.

Antipodean exploits

The first exploit is simply an unbelievable catch in a game of cricket in New Zealand. The ball was about to touch the ground beyond the official boundary of the playing field, in which case the batsman would have made a substantial score. To avoid such a happening, a fieldsman in the other team leaped into the air at the last moment, and grabbed the ball. Then, during the half a second that he was still in the air, this fellow tossed the ball to a fellow fieldsman who was located well inside the playing field, and this second fieldsman had no trouble in catching the ball. So, theoretically, the batsman was caught out. Here's the video:

The second exploit concerns an Australian girl who went bungee jumping in Zimbabwe, on the edge of the Victoria Falls.

When she was down near the surface of the water, the cord snapped, and she got carried away (her ankles still tied together) by the rapidly-flowing Zambezi River. Miraculously, she survived with no more than a few bruises. Here's the video:

Enough to turn an aging gentleman off women forever

I warn you. This is an incredibly nasty video:

Survivors might cry out for help. I would dearly love to direct fellow males to interesting images, for a minimum of erotic appeasement. Alas, I seem to have mislaid my book of web addresses.

At times, it helps if you're blonde

It goes without saying that, for young American women, there's no stigma attached to being blonde. Here's a delightful specimen, whom I believe I've presented already, several years ago:

The color of a woman's hair is of no significance whatsoever. But, in certain cases, it helps...

Windy wedding in Arizona

This short video shows memorable moments of an Arizona wedding:

As you see in the video, it had been been planned that, during the ceremony, the bride and groom would take up two jars of sand and mix their contents together in a third container, thereby symbolizing the eternal fusion of two souls in the holy union of wedlock.

Jeez, that lovely symbolic message sure came through loud and clear. In any case, I would like to imagine that the newlyweds will live together in calm harmony for ever and ever. But I have my doubts...

Holy spirited driver

My mother used to tell us an amusing anecdote about a car excursion from South Grafton to the beach at Yamba. Her oldest brother, Eric Walker, was at the wheel, while their mother (whom my siblings and I always referred to as Grandma) was seated in the rear. Suddenly, on a narrow stretch of the highway running alongside the Clarence River, they were overtaken in a dangerous manner by a speeding vehicle. They noticed immediately that it was the black sedan owned by the Roman Catholic church of South Grafton. The driver, alone in the vehicle, was the local parish priest, Father O'Meara. Eric was so startled that he started to curse the priest, whereupon Grandma came to the defense of the speeding ecclesiastic.

GRANDMA: He has probably received a phone call asking him to rush to the bedside of a dying parishioner.

ERIC: Like bloody hell. He's speeding to get to the pub in Maclean in time for a beer before closing time.

I thought of that anecdote when I read an amazing article in today's Australian media. A few days ago, the local priest from South Grafton, Father Peter Jones, was stopped by police for driving dangerously on the road from South Grafton to Yamba, in the vicinity of Maclean. Alarmed drivers had phoned the police when they saw the priest's white Toyota zigzagging from one side of the road to the other.

[Click the photo of Father Jones to access a newspaper article]

When a police officer attempted to use a hand-held breathalyzer to determine the priest's blood-alcohol state, his intoxication was so high that the machine was incapable of supplying a result. So the offender was taken to the police station in Maclean, where a more sturdy apparatus gave a reading of 0.341. Not only was this result some seven times the legal limit, but the drunken priest supplied one of the highest blood-alcohol readings ever recorded in the history of the New South Wales police. A specialist explained that guzzling down beer alone would not be able to produce such a high reading. So, the priest had surely been imbibing a large quantity of far more potent spirits. Thank God that nobody struck a match near the good man, for they might have all been consumed in a ball of fire.

My grandmother would have said that, in such a state of inebriation, the priest was surely being protected from an accident by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Good idea for a hat

Here's a picture of the kind of hat I have in mind:

Let me refer to it as an iHat (even though I would imagine that this term is already being used out in the wide world). The top hat style—which is just one suggestion among others—has the advantage of offering a rigid lightweight structure to house both the electronic components and the wearer's skull. The size of the hat and the position of the flat screen would have to be adjusted so that it could be worn by people who don't necessarily have receding Neanderthal foreheads.

The front section of the hatband conceals an elegant pull-down keyboard. Inside the crown of the hat, above the top of the wearer's head, there would be ample room for the power source and a rich assortment of components.

To help pay for the high-tech hat, the wearer might decide—from time to time, when he's not himself working with the iHat—to display publicity in the style of TV ads, aimed at viewers seated opposite him in public transport, waiting rooms, etc. At sporting events, the screen might display the colors of the team that the wearer is supporting.

Interesting and beautiful variants of the iHat could be designed for special occasions, such as weddings or horse races of the Ascot kind.

Naturally, people wearing particularly exotic iHats equipped with high-powered electronic devices emitting intense electromagnetic radiation would be advised to have their brains scanned from time to time, just to be sure there's no damage.

It would be advisable to secure the iHat to the wearer's neck by some kind of metal chain or cable. It would be silly if a valuable iHat were to be blown off by the wind and crushed by an automobile, or grabbed by an evil strike-and-run hat thief.

No problems

It's easy if you try.

Postman needs a vacation

This true story about a French thief is similar—on the surface—to the anecdote described in my recent blog post entitled Lovers lanes for an ex-husband [display].

In the city of Moselle (province of Lorraine), over the last ten years, a middle-aged postman has stolen 13,000 items that he was supposed to deliver. Amazingly, he stored all this stolen mail in his attic, where it was discovered in a more-or-less intact state. The most intriguing aspect of the thief's behavior was his predilection for simple postcards, of the trivial kind that tourists send back home to their loved ones.

Not surprisingly, psychiatrists concluded that the postman was a compulsive kleptomaniac, but he's thought to be totally responsible for his acts. In other words, he's by no means clinically crazy. The postman himself is incapable of explaining objectively why he committed all this theft, but he admits that he has always been fascinated by the kinds of simple family letters and postcards that he stole.

The poor guy is likely to be sent away on a three-year vacation for theft, accompanied by another three years for a fuzzy crime described as "violation of the secrecy of private correspondence". I would have imagined that, in our Internet age—where organizations and individuals are constantly sticking their noses into other people's business—the latter concept would have become somewhat obsolete.

I hope the authorities will give us the guy's address in jail, enabling well-wishers to send him friendly postcards.

This story has a happy ending. The postal authorities are in the process of forwarding all the stolen mail to its rightful receivers. Since we live in the best of all possible worlds, I'm sure that many people will be so thrilled to receive this long-overdue mail that they'll spontaneously dash off a thank-you postcard to the postman.

Jesus walked on the waters of Irene

I can't help loving Americans. [And I promise not to use a single swear-word in this blog post.] They're innocent childlike observers of the calamities of the universe, and they're especially skilled in Biblical stories concerning the Deluge. Jesus Christ is constantly just around the corner. Often, a delightful word seems to describe adequately the attitudes of certain descendants of the Founding Fathers: dumbfounded.

The journalist Jojo deserves deserves some kind of prize for perseverance. He should be sent off immediately to a front-line war zone in Libya. I have a gut feeling that Jojo would rapidly unearth Gaddafi, because Jojo wouldn't be deterred by side-effects and noise. Outstanding US media professionals like Jojo tend to talk well in front of a microphone, but we may not necessarily learn much from what they're saying.

Back to the studio for further last-minute news…