Thursday, July 10, 2008

Why Clarkson oozes dude-ism from every pore of his skin.

Reading Jeremy Clarkson's work is like trying to read the clues of cryptic crosswords as a novel. You don't understand a word he said, but you continue to read to the end and chuckling at every turn and finally felt cheesed off because you suddenly realised that he had just insulted your intelligence and yet you want to give him an round of applause and you actually hate yourself later for doing that.

But you see, Jeremy was a good boy. He grew up trying unsuccessfully trying to be a newspaper editor and never passed his driving test. So, in order to camouflage this twin shortcomings, he reckoned, and rightly, the best course of action was to be a famous car reviewer. and the rest as they say is his story. All the the cops on the British Isles wouldn't dream of stopping this famous man asking for his driving licence and no Brits in their right frame of mind dares to say he writes craps. Of course before he attained this cult status of sorts, the trials he endured warrants another write-up if not a best-seller, but that's another story, really.

Anyway back to his works, you really had to expend unnecessary energy trying to crack the trails of teasing clues he'd left peppered in his piece. Like this opening salvo in Dante's new hell: my work canteen "Where did you buy your ironing board? You didn’t, did you? You were born with it. Everyone is, which is why everyone has one". See? I can hear your gnashing teeth already and this is just for starters. Then there's "...Dante got everything wrong.There are not nine circles of hell. There are 10." And then there is.....oh please do not run away.

And you start wondering if he was barking up some wrong kind of tree. That, or you've just lost your marbles.

Mr. Clarkson doesn't spun out convoluted philosophy much as you think he's totally capable of, since he can cleverly manoeuvre a hairpin bend with a dexterity of an orangutan with an amputated limp in an automatic geared Perodua Kelisa, whom he once famously described as sounding like a disease, and had our Minister of International Trade hopping mad in her baju kurung (Malay dress).

No, I mean, the word "philosophy" is not found in the dictionary of Mr. Clarkson, either he had the word obliterated with indelible ink or the publisher customised a copy for him with many other omissions (as per his instruction of course) as well.

Which come to my next observation, that is the UK is a very dangerous place to be bringing up your kids or to pursue a rewarding career. I mean, here we have a man, basically possessing all the faculties of sight, hearing and so on, but is totally lacking in cohesive thinking, and absolutely lacking the ability to make himself understood in his writing and we have 56 million Britons (with the exception of some disgruntled Scots and Welshmen) fawning over him, and better still or worse still (depending on who's listening), wanting him to sit in 10 Downing Street! Iraq, meet your saviour!

Do you know what kind of bottomless pit Prime Minister Jeremy Clarkson is going to take you to? He's going to campaign for motoring to be a medal event in the London Olympics! It's going to make Adolf Hitler look like Colonel Sanders in apron raining fried chicken wings over London. Its not Dante's Inferno, its not Satan's Hell, it's Jeremy driving a Mini (read economy) and ended up on a cliff hanger ala The Italian Job, then he coolly steps out of the car and it tips over and c-r-a-s-h! And you know what? He doesn't even grimace or cover his ears at the sound of the crash! That's quintessentially Jeremy for you! That's dude to the power of a bazillion. And don't you just love it?