Personal Blogs

The other day I was wasting more time than I really can afford to on Face Book – as you do – when I saw a rather lovely poster someone had posted of a 1950’s vision of ‘the city of the future’ and life within it. Of course, it had all of the brilliant stuff I’ve moaned about feeling short changed over before – the jet-packs, underwater motorcycles and two-seater ‘George Jetson’ stylee hover cars etc – but what really struck me the most about it was how positive it all seemed. All the streets were clean and tidy, pedestrians travelled safely and contentedly along motorised walkways (should that be ‘glideways’?), children rode antigrav scooters and skateboards through unpolluted parks and ornamental gardens... It was all, unequivocally, delightful.

In contrast, all current forecasts suggest the real future is going to be pretty grim, with mass overcrowding rather than wide, open parklands, and the horrors of food shortages, global warming and depleted fossil fuel stocks rather than the New Eden promise of plenty for all and chromium plated leisure time. Bugger.

Well you read it here first, people, I think I just might have the answer to all our problems (and, sorry, I've just patented it): A METHANE & KINETIC ENERGY BASED SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL COMMUNITY...

The first step is to convert all cars to run on methane, and then convert the back seats of all the poxy 4x4's and people carriers that drive around pretty much constantly with only 1 person in into mobile cowsheds, with a hose running straight from the bum of said cow into the converted petrol tank. Smaller cars could also be methane powered by fitting boot racks filled with chickens, or by converting them to run on the chicken fat, skin and gristle produced as by-products of all this new-fangled, chicken driven technology. This would also reduce the availability of those same chicken by-products for use in the manufacture of chicken nuggets and ‘poppers’, thereby directly impacting on the growing obesity problem that is currently bringing the UK health system to its (chubby) knees.

With this simple measure we could overcome the fuel crisis and restore the ozone layer (methane from cattle farming apparently being a bigger threat than any other single pollutant factor according to many statistics) while simultaneously solving the problem of food shortages by making available huge quantities of cheap beef, milk, chicken and eggs! Genius...
 
And before anyone says 'what about the cows and chickens' I reckon they'd love it: constantly changing scenery, plenty of fresh air, all the soylent green they can eat (and there's the population problem solved too - 1 child per family, but no restriction on the ethical farming of humans for conversion into cattle-cake and chook feed! That solution to food shortages has been overlooked for far too long, as anyone who's read the political writings of Swift will vouch) – they’ll be happy as pigs in poo!

And talking of pigs in poo, we come to phase two: What better way to provide hot water and electricity around the home than a couple of pigs in the attic? No more recycling kitchen waste and leftovers – you just feed it to the pigs. Being the intelligent animals they are we could train them to poo directly into a bucket that feeds straight into the slurry fired boiler and heat exchanger for the central heating and water, and by lining the rafters with conveyor belts and dynamos their general snuffling and moving about should provide enough electricity for a family of four. Better yet; provide them with Wii Fit style motivational games and stuff (‘snuffle a truffle’ would be a popular title, I’ll warrant) and they’ll probably generate additional electricity to feed back into the national grid for those households which are too small or otherwise unsuitable to house a pig of their own: A NATIONALISED electricity system in which we all have a stake again – now wouldn’t that be something?

Of course, another facet of pigs in the attic is that pigs can make lovely pets. Even the ugliest, most truculent pig, for instance, would make a much nicer pet than your average fucking Chihuahua, as carried, yipping and crapping, on the arms of a million mindless Katie Price wannabies these days. And while we’re at it we could get rid of all the pit-bull stylee dogs favoured by the tracksuit wearing numpties who think that swinging a dog round on the end of a stick in a park crowded with toddlers is a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I mean, with the possible exception of the worst of all Hannibal Lecter movies, when have you ever heard of people being hospitalised by their pet swine?

Birds are another source of potential energy. They fly around all day, flapping their wings and eating eight times their own body-weight or whatever it is with never a thought for the rest of us, the greedy buggers. But what is a bird if not, effectively, a mobile wind turbine? If everyone had a coop up the back garden or a dovecote on the roof and filled it with homing pigeons we could attach tiny dynamos to their wings and harness all that energy they expend in flying and put it to good use. Let them out in the morning, and by the time they come home for their evening meal you’d have at least a couple of AA batteries worth. Actually, if you attached collars to them (collared doves!) with LED lights on they’d make very effective wind up torches. You could keep one in the glove box of the car, and if you ever break down you just get it out and startle it a bit and Bob’s your uncle.

Anyway, just a few simple ideas on how we could combine current technology and animal husbandry to provide for a better future. It would also offer a justification for all the Chelsea Tractors on our roads (which isn’t as good as getting rid of them completely but is at least a step in the right direction) as well as ridding the world of Chihuahuas and other undesirable canine varieties. Remember, you read it here first.

IN OTHER NEWS:

It’s official. I am old. I finally gave in and purchased myself, much to my son’s amusement, a nose and ear hair trimmer from the pahnd shop t’other day. Now in fairness to myself it’s not really that either of those things has become a particular problem for me – in fact, my ears are completely (to my knowledge) hair free. No. It is more a case that I have a couple of hairs, just a couple of hairs, that insist on growing just a millimetre or so too far North from the rest of my moustache for comfort and at an angle that only compounds the problem. That said, it can only be a matter of time now before it starts to look like I’ve inserted a badger up each nostril and a squirrel in each ear.

Hmmmmm.... Squirrels... I bet they generate a lot of electricity......

Oh well, back to the drawing board: No peace for the hairy nosed wicked.