THE RANTING BRUMMIE'S SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS …

I'm searching for modern happiness in 2015. That retro, old-fashioned kind simply takes just far too long. That sort of happiness requires patience and I don't want to wait for it. I want upgraded happiness. I want beta release patch 4.02, the "new and improved" version. This is meant to be the 21st century, the era of hot and cold running digital television and remote controlled bathwater and I demand instant gratification.

Once upon a neanderthalithic time, when men were [hairy] men and deer and sheep were worried, you had to wait to eat your meal. Even when the Mammoth Burger walk-through was open, they offered only self-kill meals. And when you brought them home, you still had to ask Mrs Neanderthal to get the fire started.

"What ?? Mammoth burger AGAIN ?? How you cook ??"

"Ugh. Start fire for cave lady."

"Hah. You probably burn cave down."

"Hah you. No can burn cave down. Buy insurance policy."

"How you start fire ??"

"Rub twigs together. Make big flame. Cook mammoth burger."

"Last time you burn fingers."

The thing is, nobody lights a fire these days. People don't even light their ovens anymore. It takes just too long to heat up a meal. It takes just too much patience. I'm hungry now, not 40 minutes from now. That's why God gave us microwave ovens. Just pop the food in and … whrrrrr … BEEP … out it comes, nicely warmed for immediate consumption. That's how I want my happiness … toasty warm and right now !!

"Ooh. No more burn fingers."

Consider the Internet. You type "electric toothbrushes". You hit "enter". Google responds: "Search took 1.02 seconds." You think "Google is ready for the geriatric ward". You click on the first result – something about an electric eel eating a balanced breakfast – and a blank screen appears. You wait. And then wait some more.

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TRIVIA QUESTION: 

Did you know that William Shakespeare once waited almost twenty seconds for a web site to appear, so he could find a word that rhymed with cardiologist ?? The web site finally appeared in 1997, but he had given up waiting by then.

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Five seconds pass. Time's up and still no site has appeared. Your instant gratification cells are offended. You surf to another site.

"Ugh. No get Mammoth Burger web site. This thing no work." Go to Mammoth Burger walk-through instead".

I don't want to walk to get happiness. I want it delivered now. Not twenty seconds later, even if it does rhyme with cardiologist. Not 1.02 seconds later. I want happiness NOW. Remember when you had to extract your posterior from the couch to change TV channels ?? That took such a monumental effort that most people sat through whole nights of television without bothering to change channels at all. Of course, that might have been because the other channel was playing Columbo.

Back in the four-channel universe there was always something on. Now we flip through 5,472 channels, which keep us busy while fishing for something worth watching. Thanks to the remote control, we can now flip channels at a relaxed pace of 15 to 20 per minute without even breaking into a sweat. It’s also pretty much the same when you buy your fruit and veg these days. No more popping down to Fred the Greengrocer, then over the road to Keith the Butcher followed by a wander up to Mike the Chemists, it’s all available under one roof at Morrison’s.

Last week I had to pick some up extra sundries and ended up asking a question that I’ve never previously asked before in my entire life … "Where are your bananas ??". It seemed like a logical question to ask. For all of my thirty-three trips around the sun, bananas were a key item to place in the shopping trolley. For the first time I could recall, the banana basket was empty. So I asked a store worker where the bananas were.

"We don't have any," he replied. "We'll be getting some in tomorrow." It took me a few moments to absorb this information.

"What do you mean, you don't have any bananas ??" I thought. "Every store has bananas." True, sometimes they are green enough to pass for bent cucumbers and they occasionally appear to have lost an arm-wrestling match with a watermelon. But there are ALWAYS bananas of SOME sort in the store … aren’t there ?? And this was where it struck me. We expect our machines each day to break yesterday's speed record. Our cars seem to be slowing to a crawl because more and more people are squeezing onto the same bit of road space trying to go faster and honking their horns louder (because we all know that cars move faster when their horns get honked LONG and LOUD, right ??).

And I expect bananas on the supermarket shelf even when it is snowing outside and they’re still hanging on a tree somewhere in Barbados. Happiness, though, is not like a microwave oven. Nor like the Internet. Not even like a remote control. Happiness does not run on the instant gratification system. Happiness takes time and patience.

Dear Lord, please grant me the patience I lack … and I want it right now !!

SEASON'S GREETINGS

At this time of year I often think of the not-so jolly programmes you see on TV, such as “Grumpy Old Men At Christmas”, where various celebrities over the age of 50 moan, whinge and complain about how much of a pain in the bottom it is.

Don’t worry though, for once, I’m actually NOT going to be one of them ...

Naturally, though, there are always the odd irritations. I hate it, for instance, when you walk into Debenhams and are nearly choked to death in a stinging, blinding haze of sample perfumes and aftershaves pumped into your face by shop assistants who look as if they’ve applied their make-up by means of loading it into a blunderbuss beforehand and firing it at their faces. And my sister and I have an uncanny knack of buying the same thing. It’s why our parents have 4 DVD players and 6 sets of kitchen knives.

Speaking of which, we now have 'Black Friday', a shopping tradition that began in the USA and is now apparently 'a thing' over here. Every year, on the first Friday after Thanksgiving, hordes of deranged shoppers play a deranged game of British Bulldog with each other in a bid to get their hands on discounted items.

It’s like watching a shoal of starved piranhas stripping a cow down to its skeleton, but only marginally less civilised. I used to think it would take a lot to make civil society break down completely, but in reality, it seems the promise of 15% off a Transformers Stomp-&-Chomp dinosaur is enough to turn neighbour on neighbour into a fight to the death worthy of a Star Wars lightsaber duel. It's probably also why the Star Wars lightsaber barbeque tongs I spotted in HMV vanished before I could think, "My mate Claudio would like …."

But generally, on the whole, I actually enjoy Christmas. Our rope lights come out of box untangled and work straight from the off. I manage to watch what I eat and drink … mostly. I like creating and writing out cards for friends. I find it satisfying to wrap presents. I look forward with baited breath for the “Doctor Who” special episode and the enforced bonhomie of New Year’s Eve. My Mother’s Boxing Day buffet is always a riot and I see nothing wrong with getting some new socks, mostly because my current ones are more holey than righteous.

Christmas is definitely the best, most funniest and most magical time of the year; it’s also certainly the most frenzied. And I've got a theory as to why. A theory so ill-conceived and thought-out, that it probably doesn't even scrape the underside of "vaguely correct".

But nevertheless it's a theory, OK, and in today's chaotic world in which technology changes so quickly that you wouldn't be surprised to look in the mirror on day and discover you've been replaced with a robot and are actually now living on the internet, and that apple you're eating is made entirely out of pixels, it’s important to have one.

You're trying your hardest to keep on top of it all, but that's like attempting to maintain a sturdy grip on a length of greased rope attached to a python that’s been doused with itching powder - in this out-of-control fairground ride of a world we need all the theories we can get, right ?? You don't have time to think of an answer to that, so I'll give you one.

My theory is time is packed into year-sized units it doesn't quite fit into, a little bit like my shoes in a way, which is why it starts being compressed sometime around November and becomes hopelessly crushed right about now. To put it another way, it's like writing something on a piece of paper and running out of room just as you get to the edge, so you have scrunch all the words up together at the end.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not whining. I love Christmas, but I am under no illusions that getting it right constitutes a lot of thought, planning and a healthy dollop of hard work. I'm just saying it's made me think a lot more about how, in the run-up to Christmas that everything automatically feels 50% more hectic than it would if it were happening in the middle of spring. I can't even go to the toilet at the moment without staring at my watch and panicking about how long it's taking.

It’s no wonder that “Die Hard” was set during Christmas. Watching Bruce Willis crashing head-first through windows and machine-gunning terrorists in an ever-dirtying vest would have been downright boring if he'd have been doing it on Pancake Day, Pentecost or on a Bank Holiday Monday.

And it's still the best Christmas movie out there by far.

Period.

So, whatever you're up to, have fun, eat drink and be merry, yet be thankful for what you have. Make the most of these days that only come around once a year, because they may never come again.

Merry Christmas, to all my family and friends, and those who mean so much.

LOONEY ECO-TOONS

In the pantheon of children's television, where the noble quest for edutainment often clashes with the spectre of didacticism, "Captain Planet and the Planeteers" stands as a curious artefact of the early '90s. Created by Barbara Pyle and Ted Turner, and brought to life by the animation wizards at Turner Program Services and DIC Enterprises, this series was an ambitious attempt to marry environmentalism with superheroics, a union as unlikely as a marriage between a tree-hugger and a caped crusader.

The premise, as simple as it was earnest, involved Gaia, the spirit of Earth, portrayed with gravitas by Whoopi Goldberg in the initial seasons, sending five magic rings to five young heroes from different corners of the globe. Each Planeteer, from Kwame's earthy wisdom to Wheeler's fiery North American bravado, was endowed with a power that, when combined, summoned Captain Planet, a blue-skinned, green-haired superhero voiced by David Coburn with the kind of earnestness that could make even the most hardened cynic crack a smile. Captain Planet's arrival was always heralded with the rallying cry, "Go Planet! The power is yours!" - a slogan that could easily double as a mantra for a wellness retreat.

The show's animation, particularly in its earlier DiC seasons, was a study in the utilitarian. It wasn't the lush, detailed worlds of Disney or the slick, modern lines of contemporary animation; rather, it was functional, much like the environmental messages it sought to convey. The switch to Hanna-Barbera in 1993 brought a slight uptick in quality, with a more mature tone and orchestral music replacing the synth-rock of yesteryear, but the essence remained the same - straightforward, serviceable, and occasionally jerky.

The show's villains, the Eco-Villains, were a parade of caricatures straight out of a political cartoonist's sketchbook. Each villain, from Hoggish Greedly, the embodiment of overconsumption voiced with gusto by Ed Asner, to Duke Nukem, a radioactive mutant played with sinister charm by Dean Stockwell, represented a specific ecological sin. This was satire as blunt as a sledgehammer, yet effective in its simplicity, much like a well-placed editorial cartoon.

What James might have appreciated, with his penchant for cultural critique, was the show's attempt to tackle real-world issues. Episodes like "A Formula for Hate" daringly addressed the AIDS crisis, a topic as taboo in children's programming as discussing the finer points of nuclear physics at a kindergarten tea party. Here, Captain Planet wasn't just cleaning up oil spills or stopping deforestation; he was educating about tolerance and fear, with the help of real-world figures like Neil Patrick Harris and Elizabeth Taylor, lending a gravitas that was both unexpected and commendable.

Yet, one can imagine James's eyebrow arching at the show's moralizing. Each episode concluded with a "Planeteer Alert," a segment as earnest as a public service announcement from a bygone era, where the characters would directly address the audience, encouraging them to take action. This was television as a sermon, the kind where the congregation is not just entertained but instructed, perhaps a bit too zealously for James's taste, who might have quipped that the show was less about saving the planet and more about saving the viewer from ignorance with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

In true James fashion, he might have concluded by saying that "Captain Planet and the Planeteers" was a show that, like a well-meaning but overzealous environmental activist, sometimes forgot the art of subtlety in its mission. It was a series that, in its heart, wanted to change the world, one child at a time, through the power of animation and moral storytelling. The power, indeed, was ours - to either embrace or gently mock this earnest endeavour of environmental edutainment.

DIE HARD POETRY

For those who’ve never seen an action film starring Bruce Willis in an ever-yellowing vest, this is a famous poem used in the film “Die Hard with a Vengeance”.

"As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives.

The seven wives had seven sacks.

The seven sacks had seven cats.

The seven cats had seven kits.

Kits, cats, sacks and wives, how many going to St. Ives ??"

The answer is of course, ONE, as the bloke with all the wives was NOT going TO St. Ives, but actually coming FROM it. But let's examine this poem in detail.

First of all, we have a man with seven wives. Little bit dodgy, but for all we know he could be a Mormon, so let's not pass judgment on him on that front, shall we ??

Next line; the seven wives had seven sacks. This doesn't mean that there was one sack each, oh no. This means each wife is carrying seven of these sacks. No mention of these wives being hot air balloons, so they can't be ballast. So the question remains: why is each wife carrying seven sacks ?? If it's for the purpose of carrying stuff, why not just have one big sack, or maybe a horse and cart running behind them ?? It's asking a bit much to ask each one of your concubines to drag along seven great big stonking brown hessian bags.

Moving on, the poem examines the contents of these sacks. The answer: cats.

Each of these sacks is carrying seven cats. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't PETA and the RSPCA trying to put a stop to this sort of thing ?? Cats are social creatures up to a point, but the point does not extend to being tied up in pitch darkness with six of their fellows. These will not happy cats be. And unhappy cats tend to transmute very rapidly into violent cats. So it’s safe to say that each one of these sacks is probably wriggling like a python that’s been infected with an especially bad case of mad cow’s disease.

Let's do some math here whilst we're at it, seven cats x seven sacks: so therefore each wife owns 49 cats !! With seven wives, this brings the total of cats to 343 unhappy felines, a force to be reckoned with probably worse than a Dalek with a headache.

But no !!

These sacks are not full yet !! It's bad enough that seven cats are being forced to coexist in a rather small bag, they had to bring the family too !! Each cat is nursing a litter of seven kittens, so as well as the adult cats each sack contains forty-nine little ones, all of whom are probably learning to fight very quickly. So we now know something else ... every single one of the 343 adult cats are females who have recently given birth.

Ah, I think a picture is forming. Obviously this chap owns a cat farm, and was taking his female cats to another cat farm in St. Ives, or in this case, a cat stud farm. But this doesn't explain the sacks. Nor why each cat had exactly the same number of kittens.  The suspension of disbelief of this poem is being stretched so hard that the underpant elastic's showing.

Some more maths - we have forty-nine kittens and seven adult cats. If we count a kitten as half an adult cat, each sack now contains THIRTY-ONE AND A HALF cats. This is one sack, remember, and each wife has seven of these. So now each wife is staggering under the weight of a whopping 220.5 cats !! If we say each cat weighs about four kilograms, which would make them rather scrawny, that makes 882kg being carried by one wife !!

That's nearly a whole metric tonne !! And add insult to injury this Mormon cat-farming bloke isn't carrying a damn thing !! And what’s more, this brings the total amount of cats in his party to a rather mind-blowing 2041 !!! So we now have the sorry state of affairs of over two thousand rabid moggies screeching, mewing, scratching, biting and struggling all over each other, not to mention shredding vast quantities of kitten lumps everywhere and sending clumped, matted hairballs flying all over the show !!

I think I can understand why the narrator of this tale felt moved to write a poem. It should have gone like this …

"As I was going to St. Ives I met a Mormon cat farmer with seven wives.

The seven wives were groaning under the weight of seven sacks each.

The forty-nine sacks were making rather distressing screeching noises, what with there being seven cats within each of them, engaged in several dozen fights to the death.

Then this Mormon cat farmer took me aside and said: 'Look, do you think you could take some of these cats off my hands ?? They're driving me up the wall'.

Whereupon I kicked him in the knackers, set his own wives on him, released all the (remaining living) cats and threw the sacks into the river because I don't appreciate this sort of thing complicating my holidays.

Then I went down the beach, put my I-Pod on and listened to “What’s The Story [Morning Glory] all day long."

And BTW, the original "Die Hard" is still the best Christmas film ever.