Blood stained shoes

Shoes kill. Or say, shoe-fetish kill. Shoe-madness. Shoe-insanity. How shoes let the beast out of the cage.And kill....

A 46 year old woman got stabbed to death in South Africa during a fight over shoes. Her brother is in hospital with stab wounds to the chest. The shoe-killer is still on the loose.

New shoes and a bloody knife in one hand. Easy to spot.

The incident did not happen at a mad shoe sale in a large shopping mall. It happened at the home of the victim. A simple disagreement on who owned a specific pair of shoes got out of hand. Seriously out of hand. Slipped into insanity and ended up in murder.

Speaking of tainted shoes!

From strangely and bloody human behaviour to breakfast with a buzz.

The fire brigade drove out in full force. I think it was in London, UK. The automatic alarm came from a VVVIP. And thus red lights were flashing brighter and sirens sounded louder. Pedal to the metal.

And off they went. And they arrived at Tony Blair’s house. That former British prime minister, better known as Bush’s poodle. Interesting legacy Blair left behind. He modernised the British Labour Party which saved it from oblivion. And then blindly followed George Bush Jr’s orders and took his nation to war all based on some lies and spin.

Anyway. All the mad rush for nothing. It was just a burned toast. Will we ever know if at the start of it all it was white or brown bread?

Staying in the United Kingdom. That former world power, now just some industrialised nation struggling to cope with reality. Anyway.

So a German person died in the UK. Obviously the family wants to take the body back to Germany for a burial. But they fear the repatriation costs.

So they put the corpse in a taxi and drive to Liverpool airport to catch a cheap flight back home. Put the dead one in a wheelchair and roll him/her up to the check in desk. Act like he/she is asleep and see if the trick works.

It didn’t! Caught out and fined. You just can’t take dead meat onto an airplane. Regulations are there for a purpose! Strange Germans...

The world has gone astray. Murder for shoes. Burned toast. And a dead man wants seat 24C.

So the Brits are having national elections on May 6. Only 4 parties in the contest. With some weirdoes on the fringes here and there.

The 2 traditional ones, Conservatives and Labour. Then the not-so-new-kids-on-the-block-anymore Liberal Democrats. And then the up and coming extreme right BNP. So the campaign has started. Politicians and politico-wannabees crisscrossing the UK in the next 4 weeks. Serious carbon footprint this campaign stuff. Flights, busses, cars.

The Conservatives still live in the dream to revive the Margaret Thatcher era. Hallucinations. There was a time when Maggie and her clone Ronald Reagan across the Atlantic were the rulers of the world. The Iron Lady and the 2nd hand cowboy. What a match! But those days are gone and the damage done.

So the Conservatives now have a young lad on the posters trying to appeal to a broader based UK public. For now opinion polls put him in the lead. But many polls worldwide have proven too many times pretty wrong over the many years they are being used as the holy grail of political uncertainty.

The youngster with the private education is up against the bulldog-looking Gordon Brown from Labour. Brown was handpicked as Blair’s successor and thus is now facing his first real election test. He doesn’t look as slick as his opponent and he spins things less convincing too. And he’s got baggage. Baggage from being in government for a long time. And baggage is difficult to sell. The trick is to turn baggage into experience. Brown with the scars of having been in the hotseat versus the young lad with the baby face. How appealing are scars of life? So it's the too often sad looking Brown (in a boring suit) against the botox smile of the young lad.

And then there is the Liberal Democrat party in 3rd place. Also with a young face on the posters. They bring some kind of alternative to the 2 traditional dinosaurs of British politics. But will the so called LibDems finally break through and become the2nd largest party?

And then there are the dark horses from the British National Party. A traditional extreme right party like similar clones in France, Austria, Belgium, Holland,... Anti this and anti that. They have been growing recently cashing in on voters’ frustrations with the economy, immigration, bad weather and the quality of breakfast sausages.

So we’ll see how it all goes on May 6. Democracy is a beautiful thing. Plenty of potholes and pitfalls but for now the best power tool humans have invented to manage a free and fair society based on the rule of law.

I wonder if Gordon Brown also has toast issues in the morning?

Throw out. The Texas punkrock’n’rollers from Born To Lose have just released their new, 11-track album “The dreams of kids”. And once again it kicks ass. Loud and proud. These lads have been around for a quite a while now and every release has just been great. And they don’t seem to stop. Rolling on. Like drunken bikers through the Austin night. “The dreams of kids” is once more full of anthemic songs and greasy guitar. Close your eyes as track 4 - “The bored and the lost” – kicks off. You might think for a few seconds that you are listening to Motorhead’s classic of classic albums “Ace of Spades” from way back when.

C-Ya

collateral – April 2010