Huntley, Paris Hilton's dog and the awesome world we live in

The world is awesome. There are a million cool things to every bad thing. Like this giant rat they found in Papua New Guinea. It is 82cm long. It’s way bigger than a cat and most dogs for that matter. And it looks like a complete mate. It just sits there and lets the TV dudes give it a scratch behind the ear.

When you scratch pigs behind the ear, they do this funny twitching thing and then just fall over in a stupor. They love a scratch. They understand the simple life. They also love to eat sprouts. Which is good for them because a man in the UK has just grown a really large one. I read about it at the airport.

A lot of people like to complain about planes … “My flight better not be delayed or I’m gonna give it to them! ” … Come on, once that metal bird is up in the air you can go from London to Sydney in less than 24 hours. That journey took Captain Cook almost a year. And he didn’t even get to stop over in KL for some duty-free shopping and a Curry Laksa. And you’re complaining about a couple of hours. Imagine if you’d got the middle seat back then. Shit the bed, you woulda been bummed. No, planes, airports and even security checks are cool. They can see right through your laptop! That’s some sort of miracle in my book.

Like the song from Paul Simon … “these are the days of miracles and wonders. This is a long distance call”. Damn, Paul Simon got all stoked about calling long distance. We don’t do that no more. It’s a shame. No one tell Paul Simon about the iPhone, he may pop with excitement. The iPhone. I haven’t got one. But they are around me all the time. A dude on an obscure cliff out on the corner of Portugal where the next stop is America told me that the wind should die down by the morning. His iPhone had turned him into a fricking psychic. A soothsayer. If he’d been born just 300 years before, we’d burnt that mo-fo at the stake.

But we don’t do that no more. Well, not that much any more. We’ve moved on. We’ve got way better ways to entertain ourselves now. Ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, four hundred different types of beer, Xbox, PSP and wide-screen TVs. But still people are always moaning: “I’m bored.” Kids used to have to get by with bones for toys. I saw it in this museum — there were these bones, just rubbish bones and the little sign said it was a child’s toy. Apparently it was an ox wagon and a span of oxen. Just looked like a load of ass to me. Well, the bones of one anyway. And this wasn’t like some sort of cavekid exhibition — Childhood in the Neo-Palaeolithic age — no, this was like just the other day. 1836. It was little Voortrekker kids who’d had them as toys. No wonder they got all angsty with the world. You’d be pretty mad if your dad gave you a bunch of bones for Christmas. You’d be looking for someone to blame. I’m not trying to excuse them, I’m just saying. Look at Hitler, he got all shirty because no one liked his art. Imagine if he’d been given some bones for his birthday? Which reminds me, if you’re ever in Vienna and you see some struggling street artist selling his wares, buy something, you could be saving the world a whole lot of bother. But anyway, that was then and this is now. We are living today. In Paul Simon’s days of miracles and wonders. There’s no reason to stew. No cause to bitch. We got all sorts of goodies. In fact, we’ve got so many good dinguses and awesome thingamabobs, we can’t even remember their names.

But why do we need to remember anything? That’s what the internet is for. Google anything and you’ll find the answer. Ask if you can walk down the road in your underpants and it will have an answer for you. (BTW the answer is yes, so you should do it more often). The only other place I’ve heard stuff like that is in a fairy tale. Magic mirrors that can answer any question in the world and all that. And we thought only people like Paris Hilton and Peter Pan got to live in La-la-land.

You know what is cool about Paris Hilton? That dog, the one in her bag. That’s just amazing, somewhere out there some person had the gumption and the patience to breed a dog that fits in a bag. And not a big sack but little under the shoulder number. Incredible. But I’m not the first person to realise the genius of the Paris dog. A gal in America (where all great inventions come from) has gone one step further and turned the dog into the bag. The Louis Vuitton Chihuahua. She also turned a pig into a football but that’s another story.

How inventive is mankind? We’re totally awesome. Just look at that chap, Brandon Huntley. Did he let his lack of skills get him down? No way! He just got out there and made stuff happen. He turned a negative into a positive. He played the cards he was handed. And he pulled off an almighty bluff. You could call it a lie but I’m going with good stuff here. And I’m not sure why everyone’s angry at him, he got what he wants and South Africa got what it wants. No more Brandon Huntley.

It’s like my American colleagues say: It’s a win-win situation. The Americans are good like that. They know how to take negatives and turn them into positives. Like Burger King. It amazes me that we can take that much sugar, fat, chemicals and other things I don’t know the name of and turn it into the world’s most awesome sandwich. Or the hamburger as the rest of us like to call it.

People are always on the bandwagon about fast-food and obesity. The world is going to hell in a hand basket. So we got a couple of extra rolls along the way but we all seem to have forgotten that we are way better off today than we ever were. Global life expectancy is the highest it has ever been. Even the poorest nations are living longer than the richest nations did a hundred years ago. Yes, I know all the stuff about overpopulation, but it’s pretty good to know that you may even be around long enough to see the planet end. Well, hopefully only at the movies.

I just got back from holiday. (As you can probably tell). And there’s an email in my inbox from a nice gentleman in Burkina Faso named Mr Soumaila Sorgho. He tells me he works in a bank and he’s got a business deal for me that could land me a sweet share of $5.5 million in unclaimed funds. Can life get any better?

Tune in tomorrow for more filth and grime.