Sold my car, bought an Innocent Smoothie.

So let’s look at this with a little perspective. For every ten times I cursed his foreign policy, his social policy or his environmental policy, his words provided me with a single, genuine belly-laugh, and that my friends, is a very special gift. For George Dubya Bush was the master of the off-the-cuff fuckup (OTCF), even when dealing in familiar territory.

So the Saying Goes

Remember these wise, wise words and if they moved you, like they moved me, share them with your children:

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.“

Prophetic, no? Well…..no.

International Diplomacy

If poor ol’ George was going to flounder recalling timeless Texan proverbs, then God help him on the International stage.

“Should the Iranian regime — do they have the sovereign right to have civilian nuclear power? So, like, if I were you, that’s what I’d ask me. And the answer is, yes, they do.“

What the fuck was that?

Then this happened:

“The German asparagus are fabulous.“

Breathtaking! Sometimes you astound me George, you follow up that Iranian drivel, with something as prophetic and beguiling as your take on German asparagus. You truly are an enigma.

“Oftentimes people ask me, ‘Why is it that you’re so focused on helping the hungry and diseased in strange parts of the world?’“

Like Germany?

“The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur”

Strange! Yet uneducated and yokel both appear in the French dictionary.

Inter-Species Diplomacy

But at last we finally had someone in the Oval Office who stood up for the sea kittens:

“I believe human’s and fish can co-exist peacefully“

A President with a fishy vision, or was he:

“I didn’t grow up in the ocean — as a matter of fact — near the ocean — I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I’m fishing.”

What was all that co-exist peacefully talk?

Dancing

“Yesterday, you made note of my — the lack of my talent when it came to dancing. But nevertheless, I want you to know I danced with joy. And no question Liberia has gone through very difficult times.“

I am sick to death of people linking Liberia and dancing! They are two totally different issues, get over it. Let’s move on!

White House Shenanigans

When we think of hanky panky in the White House, for most of us, kinky Bill “I did not have sexual relations“ Clinton leaps to the fore, but if these following quotes are anything to go by, Dubya and his cohorts got up to all sorts of freaky shit over the years:

“We’re concerned about Aids inside our White House – make no mistake about it“

Needle sharing, unprotected sex, you decide? But I must admit, homeland security was always an area I thought the Bush admin had well under control, until this:

“I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office“

I knew Kim Jong-il and his loyalists were working on some heavy-duty, top-secret shit, but this really takes the biscuit. Hell yeah I’m concerned.

“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.“

I knew it, I told you Mum, it is stupidity, not merely a case of brilliant subterfuge.

Education

“Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?“

Wanna know why that question are rarely asked?

Families

One day back in February I remember feeling down, deflated even. I’d spent most of the afternoon on the couch, eating cheese and onion crisps off my girlfriend’s back, pondering life, food, family. What really troubled me that day — I can only just talk about it now — was that no-one had ever seriously addressed the issue of where wings take dream. I mean, never really gotten down to the basics. Well….all that was about to change!

“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.“

Of course! It all made sense now. You saved me that day George, you got my life back on track and gave it purpose. And as if to drive your words home you reminded me of the following:

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.“

A problem I’d been tackling only minutes earlier. A problem that you helped me put in perspective. I problem, that eventually, you helped me overcome and for that, I’ll always be truly thankful.

The End of an Era

From a satirical perspective, will there ever be another political figure so qualified to provide the public with so many genuine moments of ‘what the fuck‘? I doubt it.

It would remiss of me not to leave the parting words to the man himself and bury the hatchet so to speak.

“I think we agree, the past is over“.

Another job from down under, where satisfaction is guaranteed, is Condom Tester for Durex. No, really! Okay, so the pay is pretty crappy but the perks, oh the perks. Actually there are no perks. You get $60 worth of free condoms for which you have to “provide honest feedback“. Next!

Careercast drop their oar in the water and attempt to churn up a list of the 200 best jobs but damn me if they haven’t gone and placed accountant in the top 10. I’m not saying being an accountant necessarily sucks but I bet if you confidentially surveyed a bunch of them, accountant wouldn’t slot into their top 10. They’d rather be ski instructors or shark testers. I mean let’s face it, I bet there ain’t too many accountants waking up this morning shivering with anticipation about the upcoming bank reconciliation they’ve got to have finished by COB.

In fact, lets take a little closer look at the criteria CareerCast have used in ranking their top 200. I’m of the opinion that their list is a little flawed. Here it is, you decide: stress, work environment, physical demands, income and outlook. Damn me if they haven’t left out the most important criterion of all, enjoyment. Surely enjoyment could slide in there ahead of physical demands? Gotta get into shape, gotta feel the burn, got a balance sheet to prepare!

So back to our friends at the BBC. They’ve obviously snuck enjoyment into their criteria list. Although using CareerCast’s criteria, the Hamilton Island gig would still rank fairly close to the top – up there with software engineer and actuary.

If you’ve got the dinero why not visit Private Islands Online, make your purchase and collect your own mail. I could help?

I’d love to hear your opinion on the perfect job – accountants welcome.

What’s better than a freshly baked croissant for breakfast? A croissant where the pastry is flaky and still warm, the ham is straight off the bone and the cheese is melted to perfection. I can almost taste that bad boy now. Mmmmmm, sounds good huh? But now there’s an oily film on the top of my imaginary latte. But I digress.

Unless you’re spending a night in a swanky hotel, how is it that you can get hold of a piping hot croissant first thing in the morning? I mean, it’s not as if there’s a sort of shop like a butcher shop or a grocer shop that sells bread and bread type products is there. I wish!

And who knows how to make those little bastards from scratch huh? I mean, what’s in a croissant? Is there fish in there? What sort of herbs should you use? Can they be steamed or should they be boiled? Doesn’t boiling kill a lot of the vitamins in a croissant? How do you make them so high? So many questions. Who knows that shit? Am I right? Am I right?

Anyway, back in Helsinki they’ve got the whole issue of home-cooked croissants sussed. Never again will you need to stay in a posh hotel just to get a croissant fix. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce, croissants in a can (see picture above).

Yes, after years of laboratory testing the good people at Danerolles (that’s Danish for fuck you France) have managed to apply can technology (the very same technology that was applied to little hot dogs in the 70′s) to the humble croissant. And I for one, just couldn’t be happier. Really!

So it’s that time of year again – the end of it.

My body’s in decline as we inch toward the shank of the party season and the rejuvenation that January promises. Just one more day, just one more day. This December has been particularly taxing. After spending last December in the sunny clime of an Australian summer, I’m back in Europe, and the cold, dark top of it to boot.

The shortest day of the year (December 21st-ish) in Helsinki has just passed – a day when the sun poked it’s head up at about 10.30, lazily arced across the horizon for a few hours and disappeared sometime just before 3. It’s playing havoc with my sleep patterns. Some nights I’m still racking up eleven hours. I’m yet to determine whether it’s a good or bad thing. I’m just praying that come June, there’s not some sort of weird calender-based compensation which sees me having to get by on 3 hours a night!

So on a personal note 2008 was a bit of a hoot – it started off with a mad, visa-renewing dash with Heidi to China, Hong Kong and Macau and ended with a freighter trip from Australia to Italy (past our friendly machine-gun totting, tanker stealing, Somalian friends in the Gulf of Aden – I slept pretty well in the Red Sea after that little episode, just let me tell ya) and an overland jaunt via Eastern Europe to Finland. All good fun, though I think on the travel side things have got to slow down a touch in ’09. Just like Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, I’m getting too old for this shit.

So, 2009 huh. We should be brimming with optimism right? I was optimistic this time last year and now look what’s happened! World markets in free-fall, big business bailouts (I’m crap at business too, where’s my billions?), violence on the streets of Lhasa, Mumbai in flames, cyclones in Burma and earthquakes in Sichuan. As I type, Gaza is being bombed back to the Stone Age and over in Iraq, the war that ended back in ’03 mysteriously rolls on.

But there’s been some positives – our man Obama heading for the big house (yes he can), that li’l prick Johny Howard finally ousted from power down under (ok, technically that was December 2006 but for the sake of flow) and small indications that, following some minor hiccups, David and Victoria Beckham have finally settled into the LA lifestyle. You little ripper!

So on to 2009. Well for starters, it’s going to be shorter than 2008 by a whole second – a leap-second – but that’s about as far as I’m willing to take it on the prophecy front. As for brash predictions on a world scale, I’m steering well clear. Based on years past, I got no idea. But it can’t be a step backwards from ’08, can it? I’ll start with a touch of optimism again and we can take it from there.

Whatever happens, I wish you all a happy new year for 2009 and hope you’ll drop by from time to time, sign up to my feed, leave a comment or 2 and help me get this Astray Buffet thing off the ground.

Remember, party hard but respect the fish!

Cartwright P. Moocjheenie

A youthful Mooc battled Bill Cosby – though Bill was young and impressive then – and would have had him too if the law of the day had allowed his tactic.

At a not-so-recent ceremony he employed a tuxedo so powerful and ingratiating that he received an on-the-spot lifetime achievement award. All this at the age of 26 and with little or no achievement to speak of. That was, that is, the Mooc. Enigmatic, sure, phlegmatic, yeah why not, passionate, without doubt, egotistic, fuck off!

The tux aside, clothes and the Mooc have enjoyed an on again, off again relationship. He wears them with aplomb when he does and swings majestically when he does not.

Pleasantries are not required in his presence. He’ll force you down if you persist and drag you if he feels the need. Once at a rally for those in need he gave a speech so inspiring, 17 died and 12 were injured. On another occasion he argued that colour didn’t exist. He won that! He wins most.

I produced a report on the frequency of meetings, which concluded that, “meetings are good”. This report was then discussed at an executive management meeting and the findings relayed through our director at our section meeting. It appears Management agreed with my findings adding the word “very”. “Very meetings are good”.

Another meeting was held to look at the placement of the word “very” in my initial statement and it was decided by a majority (eight votes to five) that the statement should read “Meetings are very good”.

I now have a car space in the buildings basement, my gross annual salary has increased by $12,000 and the Chief Executive Officer chatted about the intricacies of Thai cooking with me at the urinal on Tuesday afternoon – I stood there nodding intelligently, offering timely remarks and praying for my stream to begin – all due to that single report.

I’m currently working on another.

I begin with lists. Plenty of lists. I’ll resurrect my backpack account, I’ll update online calendars, spreadsheets sprout like newly sown lawn, bills get paid and I’ll start writing letters and emails with an almost evangelical zeal.

This last week has been just such a week. It was while writing a particularly lengthy letter to my friends (don’t slip on the sarcasm) at Paypal that I recalled a favourite book that I haven’t come across in a while.

I beg you all to read, “The Timewaster Letters” by Robin Cooper (aka Robert Popper) who corresponds with all manner of organisations requesting or suggesting the bizarre, the obscure and the downright dubious.

The comedic genius lies not only in Robert’s letters but in the replies he receives. It’s a simple idea, executed brilliantly and something only a Brit could ever hope to get away with.

Take a peek at a letter or two online and then go on over to Amazon and grab yourself a copy. I got a list to get back to.

So Saturday just gone was Finnish Independence Day, in itself no bad thing. But instead of being celebrated like any of the other 2,500+ national Finnish celebrations – where you might light three candles and spin twice, balance a slew of berries on one shoulder or answer the door to a torrent of song from young girls in pinafores – Finnish Independence Day sets aside a very special form of torture.

Yes, at 7pm sharp on the 6th December, life as we know it – in Helsinki at least – takes a drastic turn for the worse. For the next three hours any Finn of any note ever forms a black tie line-up to meet and greet the President. And I’m talking any Finn, of any note, ever! Weather girls, lowly politicos, pop idol contestants, Eurovision also-rans, the list is long and nauseating. The action repetitive and self-indulgent.

And far from presenting itself as a sound reason to leave the house or at the very least, change the channel, the majority of Finns I know sit glued to this spectacle. They actually look forward to it and plan little events around it.

Still, you can leave the room, I hear you cry! Normally, without question, but on this occasion I was at one of these little events – a house-warming – where all the action took place in a tight-knit semi-circle around the tele. I was doomed to one hundred and eighty minutes of hellish teev, that is, until I was introduced to the Criminally Bad Elf.

The Criminally Bad Elf was a not a kleptomaniacal escapee from Santa’s Grotto as the name implies, but rather a British barleywine weighing in a hefty 10.5% alcoholic volume. And after a pint of it’s berry flavoured loveliness I could have been the President for all I knew.

So my advice to you when next you’re confronted with a night of local customs that you’d rather flee than endure, invite the Elf and get updates from a friend the following day. It worked for me.

Me:

My Friend: A blog, what the hell for? Haven’t you got like ten web-sites sitting out there silently gathering cyber-dust already? Why not re-vamp one of them?

Me: Because I want to write what I want to write, when I want to write it, I’m slightly aroused by the ease with which I can incorporate WordPress plugins and none of my sites up until now have had a yellow logo……but mainly the writing thing.

My Friend: What are you going to call it?

Me: Astray buffet dot com.

My Friend: Ashtray buffet, you don’t even smoke, that’s just weird!

Me: No, astray buffet.

My Friend: Oh……that’s weird too, and nonsensical!

Me: So what, it rhymes. That’s important right?

My Friend: What are you going to write about?

Me: I dunno, all sorts of stuff.

My Friend: You’re going to get on your soapbox aren’t you?

Me: No!

My Friend: I bet you will. You’re going to rip the piss out of easy targets like late night informercialists, Judge Judy and Eastern European fashionistas.

Me: Easy tiger!

My Friend: You’re going to rant and rave about the fundamental genius in films like The Kentucky Fried Movie and Top Secret, you’re going to rally for the return of Arrested Development and you’re going to call for the culling of a largish percentage of TV chefs.

Me: So?

My Friend: I bet you’ll write a piece a week pretending to be someone else like a Russian oil tanker captain, a Moldovan farmer or a Cuban dissident. You’ll play on national stereotypes, prefix every noun with about eight adjectives and look for cheap laughs using gutter humour.

Me: You going to take a breath?

My Friend: You’re going to incessantly bang on about how crucial coffee is to morning productivity, you’ll wax lyrical about advancements in toothbrush and razor blade technology and you’ll talk with forged authority on far away places that you know no-one else has visited. One day in a fit of desperation after a prolonged bout of writer’s block you’ll share your chicken and mushroom risotto recipe with your oh-so-lucky readership, building it up to be some top-secret ambrosia and not the crunchy white mud it is.

Me: I hate you!

My Friend: You’ll blather on about Formula 1 and Le Tour de France like you know an air intake valve from a 48 tooth sprocket and I’ll put money on you eventually mentioning you wish you: a) could play the guitar b) were a carpenter and c) had perfect teeth. Oh……and I bet there will be some links to your second rate photography somewhere on……are you crying? You are aren’t you, you’re crying! You’re bloody pathetic, you know that! I’m outta here!