Andy's Glasses

So you get married, say, on Tuesday, and during the Jewish ceremony, though anyone can do it really, long as they read hebrew and have a rabbi hanging around, 7 blessings are said to the couple. To, errrr, bless them and keep them holy, and because its nice. And then, after the wedding ‘breakfast’, the blessings are said again. In case the couple have forgotten them (bigger problem for late-life weddings) or need reassurance, or just because its still nice. You can never have too many blessings.

So then what you do is: for the next 7 days the newly weds are taken to various homes where they are forced to receive more blessings. The same 7, in fact, thrust upon them, every night for a week. “You wanna sit and chill at home, just the two of ya; catch up on Love Island or watch re-runs of last season’s Match-of-the-Day (as all newly-weds really want), TOUGH! You’ll bloody well go round to Auntie Mable/Uncle Shlomo/Grandpa Tevya and get bloody blessed!!! Again.”

And last night I became Uncle Shlomo. As we hosted, as they’re called, a ‘sheva b’rucha’ (seven blessings). I’d never been involved in such a thing before. I’ve been to Seven Dials, watched 7 brides for 7 brothers, and Se7en, seen the 7 dwarves, even worn a number 7 shirt, but not a sheva b’rucha.

Thus 23 people were in our garden in the balmy tropics of norf-west Lundun. Even though some of them were actually from… Manchester!!! where they’re more used to polar bears and excessive rain. I haven’t actually spent much time in Manchester and hence I’m guessing a bit but surely can’t be far wrong. And we ate (lots) and we drank (more) and we sang and we blessed brides and grooms.

And looking round as all these people were talking, shouting, laughing (and eating my bloody food) I realised that religion can only take you so far. That the real reason for having such events are even nicer. Firstly, the stated reason, obviously to ‘keep the party going’ for the couple of the moment, and so that for a week they don’t have to cook or even order Deliveroo. But the culture goes deeper still. It bonds the two families who have suddenly (in some cases; very suddenly) become inextricably linked. It elevates ‘meeting someone’ to ‘knowing them’ a little bit more, even sometimes even liking them. EVEN, some-other-times, if they’re from Manchester! How great for the bride and groom to feel all the warmth and wonder of family and friends bonding loudly. And that is a great thing. Well worthy of all those blessings.

Yours blessedly,

A xxxx

Mesut Ozil, the Arsenal and former Germany midfielder, is no longer going to play for his country of birth. That’ll be Germany then. He won’t play for England, nor Turkey, nor France. They wouldn’t have him in France; its enough they put up with Pogba. But Ozil, Germany, its over.

The only real difference this will make to that international football team is that they can re-use his shirt number. His absence will be almost the same whether he plays or not. He’s always been good at ‘hiding’ in big matches.

I kind of admire why he quit from the national team. When he plays well, as in the previous world cup, the one Germany won, he’s a ‘national’ hero. When he plays… less well, as in this one, he becomes ‘that stinking Turk’. Or some such sentiment. Which is a form of racism, something the Germans have generally excelled at over the centuries. Odd really, as ‘Germany’ itself is less than 150 years old. And even though he was born in Germany, due to his Turkish parents, he can always be put down as ‘Turkish’, which suddenly becomes a grave insult.

Uli Hoeness, himself a world cup winner, back in the day, and present president of Bayern Munich, slagged Ozil off something rotten. Saying he’s useless, lazy, won’t tackle, all the things we already know. So Uli wasn’t really advancing the argument. Instead he pretty much joined the Germanists in slagging off the ‘foreigner’, who was born in (then) West Germany. So, as much as I have very little time for Mesut Ozil, generally speaking, his stance is a worthy one. Even if he does choose to share the proverbial platform with President Erdogan, not his finest moment of judgment.

Went to a wedding on Tuesday. That’ll be the bride then, the one wearing the bride’s dress. But enough about her. The younger daughter came all the way over from Berlin (nothing to do with Ozil, wasn’t a ‘protest’, more a bridesmaid thing) and Lila and her mum were there too, the former being a ‘flower girl’. Who neither held nor presented flowers but did try to pull a few out on the way to the ceremony.

Yet because Mel is an identical twin, with the mother of the bride, these cousins have an uncommon genetic make-up. The ‘identical’ in the twin thing is because such twins emerged from one single egg and thus are 100% genetically identical. So their daughters, rather than sharing 25% common genes as do most first cousins, actually share 50% of their genes. Like normal siblings do.

I married into a freak show.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

‘Middle of the Road’ is an expression of mediocrity, a metaphor. It was also a really crappy band in the 70s who had a song called ‘chripy chirpy cheep-cheep’ which wasn’t, musically, so much ‘middle of the road’ as ‘right in the fucking gutter’.

But now ‘middle of the road’ is where everyone seems to want to drive. And if some aggressive bastard (errr… that’ll be me then) decides that in actuality the road has perfectly sufficient space for two cars to pass each other, almost comfortably, without smashing door mirrors, and thus fails to ‘yield’, these pathetic ‘middle of the roaders’ just panic and stop. Staring dead ahead because they know, on some level, that they’re tossers that lack the wherewithal to do anything positive. When you follow one of these down a narrowish road they do the middle thing, then when faced with a car in the distance, they don’t so much ‘pull over’ into a space, but park. So when the oncoming vehicle has passed it takes them ten minutes to get out of the parking space to continue. With me sitting behind them with smoke coming out of both ears, teeth gritted and shouting endless obscenities.

And I don’t know when this happened. Driving in London has always been about narrow roads and ‘jousting’. But then someone decided to drive down the middle instead. Like excessive use of high beams for no apparent reason, these offences should carry a death penalty. And I’m volunteering as judge, jury and most definitely executioner.

Driving in the middle lane when the slow lane is empty is worth at least the loss of a hand. Or a foot. And driving in the fast lane with no cars inside, at below the speed limit; hung, drawn and quartered. Mere death is way too quick.

All of these can be encompassed in what will be known as ‘Andy’s Laws’ and can be reduced entirely to the useful phrase: GET OUT’A MY FUCKING WAYYYYY!!!!!

But we don’t have the death penalty here. We’re British. We haven’t murdered a murderer since nineteen fifty-whatever. We let them rot. Generally for about 10 years then we let them out to do it again. And we won’t send our more ‘international’ of criminals to any countries where they might be tortured or executed. Because it upsets the Labour party. Who are always worried about the ‘human rights’ of the murderously evil. Then yesterday, the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, agreed to send two ex-Brits (citizenship already revoked) who were IS fighters and noted Jihadi Johnists, to America to stand trial, without the usual requests demanding ‘no execution’. Mainly because if he had made such a request they’d have been sent to Guantanamo Bay instead, and We (Britain) really, REALLY don’t approve of that place. So a major shitstorm has developed.

I don’t want these two most evil of men executed. Because it would be a short trip to the martyrdom that they love. A life in some high security hell-hole in Tennessee would be much better, getting raped every day by a white supremacist biker gang from Nebraska.

Its all a question of morality. And no ‘middle of the roading’.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Stephen Jay Gould was a wonderful ‘populariser of science’, who unashamedly never ‘dumbed down’ his writing for the non-academic masses. And as he tended to write in paragraphs a yard long comprising maximum of 2 sentences in each, the reading was sometimes rather difficult. Speaking as an unacademic mass. But it was always worthwhile. Because as professor of geology, evolutionary biology, history of science and about 6 other heavyweight topics, Stephen Jay Gould was a clever boy (‘was’ because he sadly died of cancer about 10 years ago) but always wrote with wit and humour and with a nod to his passions of opera, baseball and chocolate. Ya gotta love that. Except the opera. And baseball.

He was a typical east coast intellectual liberal. A democrat. Who anyone south of the Mason-Dixie line would call a ‘commie’. And when he wrote about the history of science, about times when science itself was the exclusive domain of privileged, white rich men, he implores the reader not to judge their views by our contemporary standards. Because they came up with theories about white supremacy, about racial inequalities and inadequacies, about male superiority, all backed up with loads of data and calculations, but all based on the prevailing zeitgeist of their generation. Which was that educated rich white men were the pinnacle of God’s achievement. They could prove it. Empirically. And statistically. Every which way. But Gould would implore NOT to judge people, however abhorrent their ideas seem to us today in our post-milennial, post-feminist, post-obsessively PC world view. They can only be judged by the values of their times, not by those of ours. Mainly cos they weren’t here now. If ya get my drift.

And these were the men who justified colonialism and slavery and all manner of political evil. The scientists would give them a ‘framework’ of justification. And often accompanied by the church and theologians who would give moral and ethical blessings to such horrific practices. Apartheid was started by the Dutch Church in South Africa and rolled out from that. Where a nice ambiguous passage is found in the bible one day and the next all the rights have been taken away from the indigenous majority because they have different coloured skin.

So when they decide to take down a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford because some of his actions 100 years ago were not particularly ‘PC’ by 2020 standards, that breaks Gould’s guideline. And when Rudyard Kipling’s work is defaced at Manchester University because he was a product of colonialism, that does too. His crime was to think in the only way he could, given his circumstances of birth and time. He lacked the foresight to think like a man 100 years later and fall line with modern-day liberalism. How the fuck could he?

He wrote Jungle Book. Leave him alone. He was merely a man of HIS time.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

You kind’a expect a ‘legacy’ to be a good thing. A nice thing. A thing with value, either financially beneficial or emotionally rewarding. Auntie Rita dies and leaves you £362 and 47 lottery tickets (all old, used and worthless). Ahhhhh. Uncle Jack dies and leaves you his war medals. Ahhhhh.

So why does a ‘legacy’ become something different when in the public domain? When does the old cottage your dear grannie left you become The London Stadium? The Olympic ‘legacy’ which, although massively financially beneficial to West Ham United, has screwed the public, and is continuing to do so, out of more and more obscene amounts of money after that football club created the ‘deal of all deals’ to ensure they can play football forever there for 50 quid a week and the government can pay the rest.

Whereas David Cameron’s ‘legacy’ is even better. He left us a referendum. That most divisive of things. Because he was scared of Nigel Farage. And in doing so created the Mother of all Shitstorms which just carries on ‘giving’. But Cameron himself slimily slid away with his paltry resignation, as if it was the morally correct thing to do. To leave everyone else to try (and fail, and fail, and fail) to clean up his mess.

In a poll by the Times they found that 34% of Brits would now vote for a ‘hard brexit’ party. They’ll be the ‘leavers’ then. The lib-dems have been around, in various guises and changing names, since the Whigs in… 1634, or 1873, fucking long time anyway. And they have about 35% of the vote. Ok, they’re fairly cretinous but really, but even so. Scarier still is that 24% of pollees would join an anti-immigration, anti-Islam party. They’ll be the leavers too. Because despite anyone’s protestations, Brexit was always and only about immigration. As I’ve repeatedly stated. I’m not calling all ‘leavers’ racist, just the odd 98%. Or anti-immigration at least. My motto at the time: UKIP is the BNP with ties. Still applicable even though there’s (virtually) no UKIP and the BNP are a new acronym too because every time neo-nazi organisations are made illegal they just change their name and tweak their swastika-in-current-guise.

And this ‘new hard Brexit’ party is not merely hypothetical. They’re talking about it. Farage (quel surprise), Boris and a group of other mainly Tory defectors. Reckon they already have a £10mil fighting fund. Much of it sourced by Steve Bannon, Trump’s ex-guru and as far right as you can get in America without wearing a white robe and hood. And Bannon is also creating a new group over here called ‘Movement’, presumably nothing to do with constipation, in the literal sense, which will be the anti-Momentum group. Far right activists.

Otherwise, the country hasn’t been divided or polarised in any way, shape or form by (FUCKING!!!!) Brexit.

An interesting time for Britain. How do you spell ‘Canadian Passport Application’?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So Steve & Joey were called back east. After an intense and grueling 4/5 months of working 1 or 2 evenings a month and hanging round the pool the rest of the time, New York was a’calling. And they promised to reveal the secrets of ‘the locked room’. And with it, hopefully, kind’a explain what the fuck they’ve been doing in LA other than tanning. Which is why we’d assumed they were hit-men. Loads of money, did nothing that even vaguely resembled work, and even then not very often.

But they weren’t hit-men. They weren’t ‘family’, nor ‘connected’ other than, as it turned out, rather peripherally. So when the room was finally opened, there was no plastic lined torture chamber, no chopping block and axe, not even any guns.

What there was…

was a blackjack table, a roulette wheel and a craps table. All beautiful dark wood and green velvet, casino quality. Steve and Joey were croupiers. Based in Atlantic City. Where gambling is legal. Which it certainly ain’t in Los Angeles. That’s why god made Las Vegas, a mere stone’s throw away. If you can throw a stone about 200 miles.

Ahhhhhh, croupiers. And this is what happened.

Steve and Joey’s boss? mate? colleague? would sit at a table in Vegas. At a big casino in a high stakes game. And he’d chat to the other players. Who were all generally businessmen over in LA, who loved to gamble. And, particularly if they were Orientals, who just looooooove to lose money, he’d kind’a, just, sort’a mention, that if Mr Kim, or Mr Son or Mr Cheng would like a game before returning to… the East, he knew of a ‘private casino’ right in LA. In Hollywood in fact. You know, where Andy lives? Right in that block. Ahhhh, sohhhh…

No-one ever enters a casino and thinks; ‘when I’m 20 grand up I’m gonna stop’. No. People, even habitual gamblers, are wise enough, or perhaps stupid enough, to set limits according to what they’re prepared to lose. And lose it they will. Whether it takes 30 minutes or 7 hours, they’ll just keep on until its all gone. So all Steve and Joey did was to facilitate that process. Make them comfortable, give them drinks, make them snacks (after a ‘work night’ we’d always go up to their flat which would be fully laden with wonderful things that had to be eaten within 3 days), and let them gamble. The tables were real, the wheel proper, the cards unmarked. But the house always wins. Even if that ‘house’ was in fact 1886 Hollywood Boulevard, appartment 317.

So although our croupiers were the loveliest guys you could meet and ‘no-one got hurt’, it was illegal. Which doesn’t bother me. You can own a gun anywhere in America but you can’t put 5 bucks each way on ‘Son of a Bitch’ to win the 3.30 at Hollywood Park. Yet that illegality makes you wonder. About who organises such a thing.

When I left LA, on the way home I stayed with Joey for a couple of weeks on Long Island. It was like living with The Sopranos. And one night we borrowed his ‘uncle’s’ car. And in the boot was a whole load of dynamite. My uncle’s car in England had a spare tyre (remember them?) and some jump leads. Joey’s; dynamite. Which, of course, we had to ‘try’ and after a rather boozy night at a club, we found a portaloo on a building site and tested Alfred Nobel’s contribution to society. Which, let me tell you, definitely works. Not sure it would win any peace prize though.

How many 65 year old men have a boot full of dynamite? I may have asked some questions, but certainly received no answers.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

There’s sayin’ things and there’s sayin’ things. There’s gilding lilies and there’s calling spades spades and there’s evading issues and there’s cutting to the chase. And then there’s Margaret Hodge. Dame Margaret Hodge. Bless her saintly Baronetcy.

Because ever since Jeremy Corbyn emerged from his cocoon (not a racist term) and thrust himself into the political spotlight as new Labour leader sounding a lot like an old communist leader, there have been ‘issues’ (hateful, all-encompassing, totally vague type word that we all sometimes have to use, so I apologise) with anti-semitism in the Labour Party. Things happened, words spoken, attitudes aligned, in such a way that Jezza, whilst always claiming that ‘he abhors all kinds of racism’ without ever managing to separate the anti-semitism or give it any kind of individual status, he appeared as a wonderful and powerful magnet for anti-semites and Jew-hate narrative. They were drawn to him. Like flies round shit. And he hedged and he hummed and he said the usual ‘taken out of context’ and ‘that’s not what he meant’ (when ‘he’ probably said he wished the rest of the Jews had died in the war, or something nice like that) and he has systematically skirted the issue. With the help of his gang of total, all-out Jew haters like Seamus Milne. The Labour Party has a very strong policy on antis-semitism; deny, deny and deny again.

So they set up an ‘enquiry’ headed by the (exceedingly recently) ennobled Shami Chakrabarti who found there was absolutely no problem whatsoever. Ah, brilliant, job done, all over now, fab.

Whitewashing tossers.

Meanwhile the antisemitism continues unabated to such an extent that the newspapers barely bother to even report it. Like infighting within the Tory party, there’s just too much of it. But Labour set up some committee, because that’s what they do, and in order to ‘keep out the antisemitism’ that they don’t even think exists, they first have to have a good, working definition. Oh, its ok, one already exists. The same definition used in every organisation in the country and every country in the civilised world. Yeah, but we can’t use that one. Huh? No, unfortunately, its not quite antisemitic enough in its defining of anti-semitism for Labour to use. There’s no room within that definition for 98% of our members to speak freely and openly about the sodding kikes. Oh. Ok.

So Labour brought in their own one. Without consulting any Jews, obviously. What the fuck would they know about anti-semitism. Especially the 96 rabbis who complained about the unacceptability of the new definition

And so to Dame Margaret Hodge, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, who encountered Le Corbyn in the hallways in Westminster. And called him a “fucking anti-semite and racist”.

God Bless Margaret Hodge. The Jewish God, at very least.

And of course, Labour, specifically Seamus Milne, has immediately started action for her suspension for disloyalty to the party. Far quicker than anyone ever acted in cases of antisemitism, it must be noted.

Ahhhhh, happy Friday

A xxxx

I kind of ‘grew up’ with Cliff Richard. He was there when I first started appreciating music beyond ‘the wheels on the bus’ but before ‘careful with that axe, Eugene’. I really liked The Shadows, his backing band who were always much better in his absence. He was hailed as ‘the English Elvis!’ but he was as much Elvis as Jeremy Corbyn is Churchill. He was Elvis like Barbar Windsor (god rest her soul) is like Christiano Ronaldo.

Because, other than the fact that his voice always disappointed, weak and breathy with no substance, there was something definitely creepy about Cliff. Always was. Then once he found Jesus (no idea where, loads have looked, possibly in a cave in Thailand?) his creepiness quadrupled. He never married, nor was ever seen in the company of the usual ‘rock’ (to stretch that word beyond any normal limit) hangers-on. No groupies, no actresses, just Sue Barker, the tennis babe, for a while. But even then you got the impression that this was a ‘marriage of convenience’, something for the public to see rather than a relationship in any normal sense.

Was he gay? He’s had long enough to come out for fuck sake. Was he just ‘celebate’? Odder things have happened. He was just a bit… different.

On the basis that every actor/singer/celeb today will, in 40 years time, be up for ‘historical sex offence’ charges, Cliff’s time was now. Whilst the mud was being slung, some of it just had to stick to Cliffy. Poor Cliffy. So the police went to investigate. Check his computers, search his house. No arrest was made, not even cautioned, but ‘an investigation’. And the key bit ‘relating to child sex offences’. Historical, obvs.

The BBC somehow found this out (‘somehow’ being that they were told by the police) and were there the day the battalions of officers arrived, thrusting their big furry mikes at poor, deer-in-the-headlights Cliffy

The investigation concluded, the searches ended and they found… nothing. Not a single jpeg of indecency (unless you count religious shit as offensive, like I do) was found, not a sniff of old underpants, not a phone number that didn’t go straight to God, not a solitary nuffink. Ok, so that’s all fine then, you can go back to living normally again.

But he can’t. And he never will. Because once any sentence includes your name and the words ‘child sex offences’, even if the middle bit says ‘was never even remotely involved in…’ you’re fucked. Royally shafted. You will FOREVER be tarred with the brush that had no tar on it in the first place. You can unscrew a lightbulb but you can’t unscrew a pregnant woman. Nor can you remove the stain that is forever ‘Cliff the kiddy-fiddler’. And that is absolutely awful. Even if you can’t sing for shit and really never could.

So, much as I don’t like ‘Cliff’s Law’ as it will be known, because it will in future gag the press from naming suspects until they’re formally charged or arrested, when they get it wrong, as in Cliff’s case, it could ruin the life of a sad old perv-, sorry, of a national treasure.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So after a year in Los Angeles, it just seemed to be coming to an end. Not that I wasn’t loving it there but it just seemed to be ‘a sign’ as our merry band of players started to dissipate. Then I heard on the radio (we listened to that in 1982) an advert for ‘The Hawaiian Express’, a daily flight from LAX to Honolulu and back. Gonna be cheap. And for the first however-many to book, it was stupid-cheap. $99 return. Irresistible. So irresistible as to be impossible to get through on the phone. You only had 3 days to get that price and they had, I think, one phone that they just left off the hook.

But I went to a bar in Santa Monica with Steve, the hit-man(?), one night. And indeed did we drink. And went afterwards to sober up in a diner, those wonderfully indispensable American places of comfort, coffee and refuge for the chronically drunk and hungry at 2 in the morning. And sitting in the Denny’s that night were two really gorgeous girls. Not just, like, ‘gorgeous’ gorgeous, but California gorgeous that bespeaks $250 haircuts and the nails and the clothes and the gloss… everything. “So what do you do?” I enquired of one, or perhaps both. The reply came: “I’ve just finished UCLA, Business Studies, and started an airline”. As you do in California. What you do is get an idea, say… cheap flights to Hawaii, then daddy buys you a second hand (from Al Italia) Boeing 747 and you fly to Honolulu and back every day. I was sobering up with Ms Hawaiian Express. Holy shit. So the next day I called, on HER number, and booked my flight. Booked for my mate Paul too. Not because I’m naturally generous and lovely but because he has a sister who lives in Maui.

I went a few days early because I wanted to see Waikiki beach. Hawaii 5-0, surf’s up, dude, the whole thing. I HAD to see Waikiki. It was only once I arrived there I realised why Paul passed up the opportunity. Its a man-made beach dumped in a shit-hole of sleaze and military-on-leave. So its easier to get a hooker than a taxi and there are far more drug dealers on the streets than burger bars. But heh, I survived my days there, hooked up with Paul at the airport and over we went to Maui. Which is as wonderfully, gorgeously Hawaiian as Honolulu isn’t. Spent a wonderful two weeks there, playing tennis, eating steaks (not particularly Hawaiian, I know but man’s gotta eat), driving jeeps up volcanoes and just hanging on black sand beaches (volcanic; odd but quite wonderful).

One night as we parked the car there was this really loud… ‘noise’. Deep, throaty, sharp. Then again. And again. We, very slowly, walked towards the source by the bushes and there was a frog. The size of a dinner plate, but rounder, more like a football. Biggest fucking frog I’ve ever seen. Had no idea frogs could even reach such a size. My mind immediately went to ‘what is going to eat HIM’. I’m not scared of frogs. I’m scared of their predators. Cos that’s life. And dinner. And then I learned that there are no snakes on Hawaii. None. Because if there were they’d be as big as houses.

And then I went back to LA, obvs, its the only place you could fly on that airline, to tidy things up before I left for good. And to finally learn the secret of Joey and Steve.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

another Monday another Trump meeting with a disgrace figure world leader. We’ve done Kim, yesterday it was Poot’n. Next week maybe Assad? Erdogan? Maybe Macron. But ‘its good to talk’. So we’re told. Though it depends indeed what is said.

Trump’s one-on-one with Poot’n went, according to Donald, ‘very well. Very well indeed’. Because? We discussed?? Decisions were made? Plans formulated? Continuation talks agreed??

We’ll never know. What was said in Helsinki will apparently stay in Helsinki. Trump being Trump and only ever saying the headline, twice, obviously, with no substance to follow. No substance to follow. Tosser. Tosser.

What we do know is that Poot’n emphatically denied that Russia had any influence whatsoever on the US presidential elections or the Brexit referendum. Trump believes him. Even though Poot’n’s default position is always denial. And I always believe him too. He had nothing to do with the Scripals poisoning in Salisbury. Nothing to do with Litvinenko. Nothing to do with Ukraine. Is not currently systematically murdering Syrian civilian populations on a city-by-city basis.

But Trump’s… naive? stupid? calculated? acceptance of Poot’n’s denial because it was ‘so strong’, immediately puts the Prez at odds with his entire intelligence network, all of whom are assured of Russia’s involvement and interference. Yet Trump decides to believe his new mate, rather than the acronym squads of the CIA, the FBI, NSC and ITV. The NRA have yet to comment, but safe to say, they don’t like commies. Even multi-squillionaire ones like Poot’n who loves guns and fires them often. Trump has already been accused of ‘treason’. Probably only ‘thought-treason’ where you think an enemy is right and 22,000 intel bods in your employ must therefore be wrong. Maximum sentence 97 years. Though for Trump who always says things twice, make that 194 years.

Its all meaningless. A PR exercise by both countries to show the world that the two nations in possession of collectively 90% of the world’s nukes aren’t going to have a war any time soon.

For which we can all be eternally (quite literally) grateful. This week at least.

Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday

A xxxx