I’ve got a solution for the rainforest: napalm the lot

[Chiral]

SOURCE

I've spent the past couple of weeks in Bolivia, and I didn't shoot a baboon. This is because there aren't any. In fact, there is no evidence of intelligent life at all. Let me give you a small example. I was lying in my hotel room one morning when, without so much as a knock, a cleaner walked in. With a mumbled, "Buenos dias", he went into my lavatory, closed the door and took a dump.

Let me give you another example. The electrical shower head in another hotel I stayed in was connected to the wall of the cubicle by several bare wires. There was even a fuse box in there as well. This, then, was a bathroom that could get you clean and give you an amazing new hairdo all at the same time.

If you ask a Bolivian to do something, he either won't do it at all or he will do it wrongly. This is because most Bolivians live at extremely high altitude where there simply isn't enough oxygen to power your limbs and your brain at the same time. You either sit in a chair all day and think or you move about and don't. At one stage I spent several moments trying to light a cigarette with a battery.

You may wonder, then, why the Bolivians don't simply move out of the mountains and down to lower ground. Well, that's because all the country's low-lying area is covered with a massive and hideous wood. We call it the rainforest and say it is the "lungs of the world" but plainly it isn't. Or there'd be some air in La Paz, and there isn't.

The rainforest is portrayed by rock stars and schoolteachers as a magical and mystical place full of wonder and majesty. This is nonsense. It is the worst place in the world, and the sooner a burger company chops it all down, the better.

Everything in the rainforest is specifically designed to make your life either a little bit worse or completely over. At one point my left arm brushed against a leaf, and even now, many days later, it is a mass of weeping sores and pain. And that was just a leaf.

One of my friends was bitten by a brown recluse spider. Another was chomped by a 12ft anaconda. Twice, I climbed into my tent to find a bloody tarantula in there.

Strangely, however, it wasn't the deadly wildlife that caused the most annoyance. It was the stuff that buzzes about and tries to make a nest in your ears.

We have flies and beetles and spiders in England, but nothing prepares you for the sheer size of the flies and beetles and spiders in the rainforest. They were big enough to have recognisable faces and character traits. One beetle I found, with Denis Healey eyebrows and a bit of a harelip, spent his night walking around my tent snipping the hind legs off grasshoppers.

Well, I say grasshoppers, but of course they were no such thing. These things were four inches long and actually bled when their legs came off. I swear to God I heard one calling for its mummy.

Sleep was impossible. You would spend an hour in your tent, bashing everything you could find over the head with a shoe until you were convinced all was well, and then you'd lie down and close your eyes and, within a minute, you'd sense that a JCB was driving up your leg. This is extremely frightening.

Bashing rainforest insects over the head with a shoe is pointless. It just makes them sad. Setting them alight doesn't work either.

At one point I ignited the spray from a can of deodorant and used the whole lot on a particularly stubborn cockroach that looked a bit like Sean Connery. Only with curly hair. Net result: he survived intact, I smelt nasty the next day and my tent caught fire.

You might imagine that it's worth putting up with the insect misery for the breathtaking array of flora and fauna. You're wrong. There are no flowers at all, and apart from some absolutely beautiful butterflies that are the colour of an LSD trip and the size of Boeings, it's all either dreary or deadly.

One tree in particular caught my eye, quite literally, since it was made entirely from cocktail sticks. Others hide their roots under a thin veneer of moss so that you trip over them. And it goes on like this for ever.

We're told that an area of rainforest the size of Wales, or the Albert Hall, is cut down every day, and that may be true. But this pointless and unpleasant wood still goes on for thousands of miles in every direction. Frankly, I'd napalm the lot.

Occasionally you do reach a clearing, but this doesn't necessarily mean you are out of the woods, so to speak. Because often it is full of armed men with mad eyes and sniffly noses who will shoot you in the head. Or, if you are unlucky, it will be a tumbledown and filthy village full of gap-year Brits with dreadlocked hair who have told their parents they wish to follow in Gordon Sting's footsteps but are actually spending six months gradually giving their trust fund to Pablo Escobar.

Tribes? Elders? Chaps with saucers sewn into their lips? They may well be in there somewhere but the only locals I saw were crowded round a television set getting agitated about Carlo Ancelotti's new diamond formation at Stamford Bridge.

If there are any people in the middle of the forest, it is not because they want to be there. Otherwise why, when they do get out, do they choose to live in La Paz, where all you can buy is cement and motor oil, and there is no air, and strangers take a dump in your lavatory every morning?

It is our duty to help these poor people. Someone, then, must start a charity as soon as possible with the sole aim of turning that insect-filled forest of death, rain and misery into something a bit more like Hong Kong.

This dickhead gets my award for the month for this pathetic article.

[Torsten]

because it is sometimes hard to be sure what he actually means, I thought I'd post a quote from wikipedia:

"Clarkson is not sympathetic to the green agenda. He once said: "I do have a disregard for the environment. I think the world can look after itself and we should enjoy it as best as we can". He has little respect for groups such as Greenpeace, and believes that the "eco-mentalists" are a by-product of the "old trade unionists and CND lesbians" that hadn't gone away but merely found a new cause.[20] Clarkson is not however a climate change denier, commenting on the effects of global warming - "let's just stop and think for a moment what the consequences might be. Switzerland loses its skiing resorts? The beach in Miami is washed away? North Carolina gets knocked over by a hurricane? Anything bothering you yet?"[21] He does not, however, believe that man is responsible for global warming - "Excuse me, but I have yet to be convinced that man’s paltry 3% contribution to the planet’s bank of carbon dioxide affects the climate.""

[SunChaser]

Notice how he talks about the lack of intelligence from others, then goes on to say how he tried burning a bug in his tent with a spray can.

[JDanger]

Relax, dudes. He's an entertainer, not a scientist.

[reshroomED]

He's a fucking dill.

I've seen several of his shows, but only two stick in my mind.

One where they tried to kill a Hilux and failed (weak as shit, I've killed one with far less expense than they went to).

The second was where three of them went 'camping' in a caravan.

This is a task that the most disfunctional Aussie family seems to pull-off each year with minimal mishaps, yet this goose and his mates barely even got to their camp-site, let alone their misadventures in the following 24hrs. In a caravan. In a caravan park.

He's obviously a bloke who expects to be waited upon, and finds the idea of actually doing something for himself distasteful.

Chuck such a bloke out in the bush and all he's gonna do is whinge. More than he usually does.

So I'm with JD, he does have humour-value, but that's about it.

ed

[SunChaser]

They do some pretty cool tasks on that show I gotta admit. Like going to Africa and buying a complete shit heap and driving accross a desert that nobodys tried to drive accross before. Or going to Vietnam and riding motorbikes accross it, that was actually really funny cause jeremy couldn't ride a bike and ended up having a few pretty hard stacks, LOL.

Anyway, I'm sure he could find a better way to get a laugh than this shit his written.

[nabraxas]

goes on to say how he tried burning a bug in his tent with a spray can.

i think that was a joke.

i know what he means though.

i find staying in the rainforest/jungle rather annoying; strange large animals moving around at night keeping you awake, scary to go out to the toilet at night, the constant buzz ov disease carrying mosquitoes &, like he says, during the day the cloud ov insects that hover around your ears just visible in your peripheral vision driving you mad; without a full strength DEET product you get eaten alive, but using it burns your skin & probably gives you cancer...

[Chiral]

The guys a douchebag no two ways about it...he uses his celebrity status to make fun of in a sarcastic way sensitive global issues. he could use his popularity and money in a more positive way rather than thinking he is funny and entertaining. he reminds me of my old man...he always used to say that Governments should round up "abo's, hippies, muso's and anybody on the dole and kick the lot of them off a boat in the middle of the ocean. I've been hearing these sorts of comments and so called "humour" coming from people like Clarkson and racist white middles class immigrants for way to long...it's not funny and shows a lack of acceptance, understanding and tolerance. These are the sorts of people who also think that every drug is bad, yet slug thousands of dollars in booze down their gullets every year, whilst performing their pathetic sarcastic overviews of anyone who is not like them.

Jeremy Clarkson is twit and should be rounded up with any of his sympathisers and followers and dumped off a boat into the ocean.

If you still think he's funny then read what he has to say about Aussies in his highly enlightening quotes here.. IF I RULED THE WORLD , BY JEREMY CLARKSON

[JDanger]

He uses his celebrity status to make obnoxious comments that get a laugh from the mainstream beer drinking, V8 driving middle class and rile up sentimental left-wingers in one fell swoop. He's an entertainer appealing to a particular yet dominant social group, and he does it well. I personally like his material. I don't agree with the content as taken literally, but I find it funny and generally well executed. Top Gear was one of the only shows I watched, even though I hate cars and would probably dislike most of the target audience. It was an excellent program, and I don't think it would have been nearly as entertaining had Jeremy Clarkson not been the star presenter. The character he presents to the public is just that; a character. I really don't think his off-hand comments are to be taken seriously.

I didn't find his article on Australia particularly offensive, though I can certainly see how some could take issue with the insensitive comments regarding the Aborigines. We make fun of the English all the time for being stiff-necked colonialists with annoying accents who suck at cricket because they drink too much tea and have bad weather. I don't think we should give him a Nobel Prize, but I certainly don't think he should be crucified for being an outspoken grumpy old man with a smartmouth.

At the very least he's better than Kyle Sandilands. Now there's one guy who invariably gives me the runs.

[ballzac]

Clarkson on QI:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-09WHp4fGU

 

I actually find him funny because he's so over the top about it. I don't know how serious he is about it, but either way I think his comments do more to inspire environmentalism than to stir up hatred for it.