Desperately Seeking Something

Sad news. People in Sweden have built a straw goat, which has burnt to the ground. Poor goat.

Well, let me expand a little – the 43-foot straw goat, a “traditional Scandinavian Yuletide symbol” was erected this Christmas in Gavle (just north of Stockholm) as it has been every year since 1966.

Though also every year (well almost – only 10 times since goat number one has this not happened), the goat is vandalised in some way, usually by being set alight and burning to the ground.

And this has happened to poor Mr Swedish Goat yet again, as he went up in flames early this morning.

Now, initially I sat here sniggering – oh, those Swedes! Building straw goats! And then always burning them! But then…I found out that the straw goat has his own blog. Gavlebockens (snappy name! Ahem, though it just means “Gavle’s Goat”) posted regularly (in both Swedish and English – a bilingual straw goat, you can’t get more impressive than that), even finding time to post whilst he was going up in flames. This appeared this morning:

Terrible night! Slept so well under my beautiful snow blanket, when it suddenly became awfully hot. It was fire!!! At 3 AM, someone managed to set me on fire and destroy the amazing Christmas spirit in Gävle. So sad that I can’t celebrate Christmas with you all, but thank you so much for now, dear friends. I’m sad to sad to say that I must go now. I’m going on holiday now to get some rest – but will of course be back for next Christmas. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

You know I’m now sitting here sobbing my eyes out over this poor, straw, not-even-real goat. (Hey, I’m a girl, I cry at anything.) *sniffle* He didn’t even get to see Christmas…

You rotters! Who sets upon a poor, defenceless straw goat? Anyone touches ol’ Gavlebockens next year, they’ll have me to answer to.

• BBC News: Swedish Christmas straw goat burnt

P.S. Ohmagawd, there’s something about Gavlebockens having a baby brother that was vandalised and never came back, and he was said, and…*waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh*…

P.P.S. Oh wait, then there’s another post about him watching Swedish Idol. Urgh.

Although, why do we use the word “staycation” anyway in this country? We don’t actually use the word “vacation” in the first place. Harumpf.

Anyways, you know the situation. You’re a pooch and your human may be willing to put up with the crappy weather the UK is having this summer, but it won’t fly with you. You start bringing home brochures to Carribean holidays; you bark every time that weird Thomson Holidays-creating-a-beach ad which always drags on far too long is on; you act all enthusiastic when your neighbours come round brandishing their holiday snaps; and you get so close with booking a Ryanair flight to Ibiza only to get foiled by the credit card booking fees as they’re too high and you can’t remember where you’ve put your debit card and then the booking expires and OH WHY IS THIS SO HARD.

So, you’ve really got to take matters into your own hands…er…paws. And for a dog, that’s surprisingly easy. You simply hop on a train to your nearest airport and fly out! Ha ha ha, take that!

But you get foiled by some more stupid humans. Why do they hate you so?!

• BBC News: Runaway dog takes airport train

I know what you’re  thinking. You’re thinking, “Hmmm, the best story, EVER? It must surely involve a cat in some way.” And of course, you would be right. Because the best stories always involve cats – FACT.

A postman in Somerset has begun doing part of his rounds with a neighbourhood cat called Charlie. The cat jumped in the postman, Nick Lock’s, bag one rainy day and has now been “helping” him out most days since. Kind of like a real life Postman Pat and his black-and-white cat, Jess.

By “helping”, I do of course mean running the whole show. Charlie the cat just lets his human think he’s in charge.

It does make me think…I wish I lived in Somerset. They’ve probably got cats serving in pubs, driving taxis, running the local council and more down there.

• BBC News: Cat helps deliver town’s letters and video at Postman cat helps deliveries

A sad day indeed. The Sudanese goat – forced to get married to a man after he got, ahem, slightly frisky with her (or should that be the other way round?) – has apparently died. The poor animal, named Rose, apparently choked to death on pieces of a plastic bag. Could happen to any loved one really. Saddest of all, she leaves behind a son who will hopefully be cared for by Rose’s human husband.

Sudan’s famous goat ‘wife’ dies

A pair of otters at Vancouver Zoo have become an Internet sensation after a video of them that was posted on YouTube has been viewed 3.8 million times. The video shows the two otters floating on their backs in the water in their enclosure, seemingly napping and holding hands. At one point they separate as they drift into the sides of the enclosure…before one gets close to the other again and REACHES OUT FOR HIS HAND! How cute!! Animals are great! Think of all those celebrities out there that are increasingly doing more and more desperate things for a bit of coverage…fake relationships, rehab, no knickers. And then two little furry creatures get all this attention by holding hands. This is the way forward. I expect a Heat-style magazine for the animal world to appear any day now.

If you’re not one of the millions that has seen the video:

 

This time baby polar bear Knut is on the cover of the Vanity Fair Green issue with Leonardo Di Caprio:

Wow, how did they get him to pose like that? And Knut looks cute, too! Ha.

German superstar Knut, the three-month old polar bear, is on the cover this month of Vanity Fair Germany. The front cover headline literally reads “I Knut A World Star from Germany”. Who needs all those vacuous celebs whoring out their latest project, when you can have someone as beautiful and innocent as baby Knut?!

 Vanity Fair Germany

Knut is a three-month polar bear that resides at Berlin Zoo. He is currently being hand-reared as he has been rejected by his mother, a 20-year old former peforming bear - typical celebrity mum, has kids and then dumps them on someone else! But just look how cute he is!

More on Berlin Zoo’s website. I don’t read German (or perhaps I would if I had paid more attention during my GCSE, grr) but I imagine the accompanying text says that Knut is currently the world’s cutest baby animal, and that he enjoys playing with footballs, toilet brushes and rocks. And quite frankly, what baby doesn’t?

Here’s a clip of Knut from Youtube – I love the fact that first bit of the video is inexplicably based on the opening credits of Dallas.