A Telephone in the Head is Worth Two in the Bush.

   I'm sitting here with a fine bottle of port, nibbling on tiny teddys by the fire and thinking about the old days when ol' Filthy was just a young cub out on the Canadian tundra. Those were the days.
   I bought my first real six string at a five and dime. I tell ya, I must have played until my fingers bled. I think it was the summer of 89'.
   You see me and some guys from school, we had a band and we tried real hard. But you know how it is. Jimmy quit, Joey got married...
   I should have known we'd never get far.
   Jimmy and Joey were fuckheads.
   But I've met some nice people along the way. Some I've stayed in touch with.
   There's this lady who knows all that glitters is gold. I last saw her riding a stairway to somewhere.
   Who rides a stairway? Isn't a stairway that you ride called an escalator? I suppose "She's riding an escalator to heaven" wouldn't have had the same punchiness, but then I've never really liked that song, so who cares.
   Its the chocolate bunny holiday at the moment and I've been thinking maybe its time to sit back for a moment, stop everything, and think long and hard about what this holiday truly means.
   "What does it mean Mr Filthy?" I hear you say.
   Well I'll tell you what it means tender lumplings.
   There's the chocolate of course.

 Its tasty as hell. I always think the best chocolate is Easter chocolate. Doesn't matter how cheap it is, if its wrapped up as a bunny or an egg, it just tastes better. Its like normally chocolate is just chocolate, but for a few weeks of the year it can also be meat, or an omelette. How good is that? I don't know why they don't make chocolate into the shapes of more things, like cows, little baa-lambs and robots.
   Speaking of robots. I love this little fucker.

  

   But robots, though retardelly cool, just don't seem like the real meaning of easter. 

   There's the bunnys...

   They hop about and make a lot of smaller, more compact, bunnies, which I suppose is the point of the original pagan origins of easter. (The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eastre. She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." ₁ Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre.") which was to celebrate the coming time of fertility in the Northern Hemisphere, but thats outdated a bit now.    

   There's the eggs. 

   Woops! Wrong slide.

   Okay not exactly what I was after but it'll do.

   We used to pick eggs that were nearly hatched and write backwards messages on them in felt ink pens. Things like "otirrub ecin a ekam annog er'uoY" "otsep htiw llew tnew mum ruoY" "team etihw rehto eht...nekcihc ybaB" "muy-eldood-a-kcoC" and other such stuff. 

   In this way we avoided the cruelty of a surprise death and warned them fair and square of their impending doom before they were even hatched.
   Eggs are only part of the true meaning though aren't they? Besides, a chicken's menstrual cycle is not what I want to think of on Easter Sunday so I'm gonna ignore it.
   Look...I think we all know where I'm going with this right?
   Let me elaborate a little for those of you who don't know the story.
   Ol' Filthy once met and almost had sex with a supermodel.

YAAAAAYYY!

   I was working in a swanky wanky London hotel, carrying bags, stealing chocolates from the store room, hooking people up with prostitutes, looking the other way when rich twats overdosed in the hallways, things like that.
   So this supermodel from a number of years ago...well...to avoid any legal suits we'll just call her Maomi Pambel. She walks, neigh SWANS, in and takes a room. We set her up in a nice suite and don't hear from her for an hour or so when the phone downstairs rings and her name comes up on the phone as it did with all visitors. I answer and she says, "I can't get the water out of the bath. Could you please come up and help me."
   Its not rocket science so I go through the steps of taking the plug out, ie; grip with hand, pull gently (we're still having a clean conversation at this point) but she says she tried and asks again that I come up to her room and help her.
   Being a somewhat accomodating bear I agree and hang up the phone. As I go to head for the elevator however, my boss, another foreigner like me, asks what Naomi...I mean Maomi wanted.
   I told him and he refused to let me go up. Instead he sent a gay fella that I worked with by the name of Fabian (now seriously, was he ever going to be anything but gay with a name like that? He wasn't even Italian or anything. He was a white sydney lad. Why not just call him Fleur de la Fleur or some shit.)
   Anyway Ita Burtose comes racing out of the lift a few minutes later screaming like a little girl and wincing as if he'd just been vomited on.
   When asked what happened, this is what he said;
  "I knocked on the door. It was slightly open. She said 'Come in. I'm in the bathroom'. So I went in, opened the bathroom door and there she is, laying in the bath stark naked, no soapy suds, no bubbles, just a naked supermodel. She said, 'Are you going to help me unblock the hole?' To which I nodded. I then rolled up my shirt sleave, knelt down beside the bath and reached in for the plug.
   She then lunged forward, grabbed my hand and forced it up between her legs!"
   Now ol' Filthy is losin' it at this point. Its half fantasy, half possibility and I'm thinking He's gay! What a waste of a supermodel! But the story continues.
   Fabian:- "I tore my hand away from her vagina and ran out of the room. Oh it was disgusting, it was disgusting, eww eww eww!"
   To this day I still want to kill the bastard.
   So without another word, I marched toward the lift doors, hoping that the plug was still in position and that Maomi still required the aid of a gentle paw.
   My boss stopped me again. He barricaded the lift and refused to let me into heaven. Apparently this had happened on a number of occasions over the years and many hotel staff had had a close brush with jail time because of it. Rich toffs get smashed on whatever drug is the latest deal and sleep with staff, then wake up and cry rape because they were either too shit faced to remember or too embarassed to admit to anything else.
   Its not uncommon. I'd heard stories of similar things.
   Like one girl who apparently looked like  "Vlad Schmidt's" (name changed to avoid legal hassles) wife, Genifer Banniston. She had sex with Vlad, only to be told the next morning that he only did it because he missed his beloved wife so terribly and was only fucking a stranger because she reminded him of her.
   Ummm Brad...I mean Vlad... I'm pretty sure its still considered cheating if the girl looks like your wife. I don't think that makes much of a difference. In fact its a little creepy.
   So there you have it...the true meaning of Easter. Its a message that we should all try to remember and instill in the minds of the children. Its a story of hope, of supermodels and of plug holes, but most of all its about self-esteem.
   I personally decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow. If I fail if I succeed, at least I lived as I believed. No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity. Because the greatest love of all is happening to me. I've found the greatest love of all inside of wine.
   Oh there's that stuff with that fella on the cross too but how many holidays does an omnipotent  and omnipresent being need anyway?
   Not that I'm complaining. Its a 5 day weekend after all.
   Stay Filthy.

If you are what you eat then I'm a Cadbury Cream Egg.

   I never wear underpants. Its a thing with us bears. We're not good with clothes in general. Its not our forte.
   You see I'd end up forgetting that I was wearing them. I'd eat a big old salmon baritto, drink a bottle or two of the red stuff, feel the call of the bowel munchkins and promptly make a mess of myself. But look even if I did wear underpants, I don't think I'd wear them on the outside of my other clothes.
   Superman does.
   And Batman does too.
   But why?
   Batman is supposed to be all dark and tough and stuff, but how scary can a person be with blue undies over a gray spandex catsuit? I can see why they make him all black and leathery in the movies.
   Speaking of making a mess in your undies, have you ever heard of Timothy Treadwell? No? Well Timothy Treadwell was this fella from America who was...how shall I say...stupid.
   Timbo was a bear "enthusiast". He was into us bears in a way that was somewhat intrusive, somewhat ignorant, somewhat obsessive. Tim felt that he and us bears had an affiliation with one another, that he was one of us in some way, that he was "special". He spent almost 13 summers hanging around some of my cousins up in Katmai National Park in Alaska, thinking that he was being accepted into the fold in a way that no-one ever had before.
   Tim gave my cousins names, names that were not their real names, human names. Slimey, Slippy, Gastro and Barfy, good Bear names, were replaced with things like Ramona, Caroline, Rochelle. The bastard didn't even ask for their true names, and so my cousins never spoke to him.
   They remained silent, hoping that he might get the hint and fuck off, but he never did. In fact his intrusion grew over time.
   Like a pedophile he would often coerce the cubs into playing with him, fondling them and rolling around in the grass. He was a voyeur, an intruder and...well...one of my uncles...he sort of ate him.

   But Timothy isn't the only person to act like this. Loads of people like to think that they have an affinity with wildlife of one sort or another. Its usually the popular animals;

DOLPHINS

WHALES

WOLVES

PANDAS

   But its rarely if ever the less attractive animals such as...

RATS

WORMS

COCKROACHES

   Sea Shepherd would never work if it was warthogs or horseshoe bats that they were trying to save. All those Sea Shepherd stickers you see on cars wouldn't sell very well if they stood for wood lice or that little fish that swims up your penis in the Amazon.

   Actually when you think about it Sea Shepherd are a lazy bunch. It must be easy as piss to get donations for dolphins and Whales. The ones that need your help most, the ones that struggle are groups like www.pegasusfoundation.org (I didn't think there were any pegasus left but if there are they need help), www.wingsforgreyhounds.org (who wouldn't like to see a greyhound with wings) and www.nodowners.org (a happy animal is a good and tasty animal).

   People like to humanize animals, to give them attributes and personalities that are like their own but newsflash...we're not like you. Dolphins are known gangrapists, chimps tear other smaller monkeys limbs off, wolves...oh wait...I guess we are like you, but not in the fuzzy "warming the cockles of your heart" way that some humans like to think.

   Basically the best thing that people can do for us animals is leave us the fuck alone.

   I went to Seaworld on the GoldCoast the other day to visit some distant cousins, Chilly and Frigid, the polar bears. Much like the brown bears in Melbourne zoo, Chilly and Frigid walked laps over and over and over again. Its a behaviour seen in animals in captivity the world over and isn't, as some people think, their way of getting exercise. Its actually a mental illness that forms in the brain when animals are trapped.

   I have a mental illness. Its also from being trapped, not in a cage but in a world full of dipshit humans. Unlike Frigid and Chilly however, I have alcohol to keep me from straying too far from the path.

   A lot of humans have a path. Its a bit weird, a bit windy, a bit hard to fathom and a bit ridiculous. It takes some twists, makes very little sense and seems to be riddled with potholes. Its called religion.

   Now don't get me wrong. I used to have an imaginary friend when I was a cub, so I know how comforting it can be to believe in something that doesn't exist, but I grew up and I don't know if its healthy to continue with imaginary friends into adulthood. I'm sure if I spoke to Mr Gargles, my imaginary friend, these days I'd be considered crazy, but how is it any different than religion. Mr Gargles was there for me when my body was going through changes, he was always there with a smile, always there with a helping hand. Our relationship was much like a belief in god...with a few small differences.

   Instead of a deep booming voice he had a high lisp. Instead of long flowing white robes, he wore a long overcoat. Instead of kneeling in a church I had to kneel in a public toilet block and instead of making thousands of fish out of one, My Gargles would often produce milk from his....

   Sorry, I'm getting off the track a little and you're not really interested in Mr Gargles.

   I have a theory on Jesus that I'd like to share. Wanna hear it? Sweet!

   I've thought about the whole son of god thing and tried to imagine an alternate, more believable version of events at the time.

   You see back in Jerusalem in its heyday, the whole adultery thing was taken much more seriously that people seem to take it today. If a woman was found to have slept with someone behind her husband's back it was a serious crime, one that may have resulted in execution.

   Now just imagine that Joseph was a hard working man. Lets say that he was busy, perhaps not home as often as Mary would have liked. and because of this his marriage is failing. Mary is getting bored with her life and starts hitting on...let's say...the local donkey salesman. We'll call him Roger.

  So Mary sleeps with Roger while Joseph is at work and after one such rendezvous she falls pregnant. Its obviously not Joseph's cause he's always so tired that they haven't had sex in months, so the question arises as to how she is up the duff.

   Mary knows her answer will either save or sink her and so, not wanting to be executed, she comes up with an elaborate story. She tells people that an angel came to her and that god himself is responsible for the sudden miraculous pregnancy. Its a last ditch effort but Mary is good at telling a story or two and the people, including Joseph, eat it up.

   They eventually have the baby Jesus. The lie gets a little out of hand, what with three wise men and all turning up to the birth, but its too late for Mary to back out and so she charges ahead.

   The problem arises years later when Jesus grows up. He knows the story but he also knows that he ain't no son of god and so he starts an investigation into his own beginnings. 

   It becomes pretty obvious that Mary had gotten up to some suspiscous things in her day. He basically starts to think that his mum is a slut.

   So what does our friend Jesus do? He goes and finds himself a prostitute named...of all things...MARY. He was projecting his disgust over his mother onto a rent girl. Its all very Freudian if you think about it.

   And the crucifiction? Stag party gone wrong. You've heard the stories. People are always being tied up to lamp posts naked and stuff. 

   They didn't have lamp posts back in Jesus' day, but they did have crosses. I guess the disciples drank too much at the last supper. 

   Mary, the Mary hooker or the Mary disciple or whatever, (he really had a problem with Marys) must have been pissed when she found that they'd crucified Jesus and fucked the wedding for her. 

   Drunk idiots.
   Luckily there aren't any crosses in Surfers Paradise or Saturday and Sunday mornings would be a messy affair.
   I wonder if they'd let a bear into church..?