Tuvalu

Population: 11,000.
Located: No higher than four metres above sea level in the Pacific.
Known for: Dot TV.

I asked my friend Buddha what he knew about Tuvalu. Not in a meditative sense, nor in a religious way, but my flesh and blood friend who's parents devoutly named him after Gautama Siddhartha. The other night in a bar a Swedish Somalian introduced himself to Buddha. His name was Mohammad. Seeing as though we are in Spain a quick sweep of the bar would have found a Mexican named Jesus, for sure. Then Buddha and Mohammad and Jesus could have sat down and had a chat, worked some shit out.

When I was introduced to Mohammad a Canadian guy I was with, Matt, told him he looked like Brazillian striker Ronaldo. He then realised his faux pas and retracted saying, "not because of your teeth, because of your hair". For those of you who know of Ronaldo you would know that his prominent, bucked, teeth are his most identifiable feature.

Mohammad looked like he had sprung from a roll in the hay between a curly haired ET and Mr Ed.

When I asked Buddha about Tuvalu he said that all he knew of Tuvalu is that they were lazy, due to the fact they just stole the Australian flag and added more stars and that they were black.

This isn't entirely true. For starters they aren't entirely black. They are Polynesian, which, unlike Melanesians, tend to be brown. Think Hawaiian, Maori, Tahitian. Melanesians are blacker. We came across them already in Vanuatu and we will again in Papua New Guinea and The Solomon Islands. There are also Meganesians, which are the Australian Aboriginal people.

Poor bastards.

Tuvalu was formed when the Polynesians could no longer handle being lumped together with Melanesian scum whilst members of the British colony of Gilbert and Ellis Islands. Polynesians are proud, arrogant, fierce, regal. They wage war with sharpened clubs and dine on their enemies. They have monarchies that last 'till this day. They tattoo their life stories on themselves. They are the noble savage embodied.

Melanesians are friendly. Their hair is fuzzy and they live in the jungle. They are less noble and more savage. When provoked they will attack with ferocity and cunning, with machetes and improvised modern weapons.

The Polynesians of the Gilbert and Ellis Islands colony became Tuvalu, the Melanesians Kiribati.

Whilst not black, they are lazy. They are provided for most of their needs from the island and the sea. Their climate is hot. The menfolk do little but fish. Fishing for non commercial purposes is hardly an occupation. It is more of a pastime.

Tuvalu's history is rather mundane. They recognised the sovereignty of Taiwan. The Taiwanese, in turn, built Tuvalu's biggest building - a mind boggling three stories of absolute rubbish. Square and uninspiring.

Tuvalu also leased its internet suffix, .tv. This netted the government there a whopping 50 million dollars over a 12 year lease. This shows that white people will always be able to short change brown and, especially, black people. Even when it is no longer colonial policy.

In some years when, or if, the ice poles melt Tuvalu will be underwater. It stands at four metres above sea level at the highest point. If that happened soon the world may raise a solitary eyebrow.

If it happens in a decade or so our collective problems will have reached such a point that no one will either notice, nor care.

And we will wish that Buddha and Mohammad and Jesus sat down and had that beer.

Uganda

Population: 30 odd million.
Located: Land locked North East Africa.
Known for: Idi.

I met a Ugandan, once. I may have met others, but they have blurred into the same man, a black African man at university. I have met many black African men at university and they were always pretty strange, pretty rich, pretty opinionated and pretty keen to sell me on the idea of Africa being misunderstood. One even tried to sell me on his parents safari lodge. I assured him it was out of my price range.

The Ugandan I remember meeting was white. He was made even more white by his being afflicted by alopecia. There was no hair shading anywhere. At first I thought he was an albino but he didn't have red eyes. Albinos have red eyes.

He was a big bastard, a rugby player. He was a river guide in Uganda, a river guide on the river Nile. I thought the Nile was only in Egypt, but I'm ignorant. The Nile runs through Uganda also, and is volatile enough to extreme sport on, though when it gets to Egypt it is mellow and the population relies on it for water.

I wonder if Kiwis more readily associate the Nile with Uganda, given their hard-on for extreme sports. Most Kiwis bleed Red Bull, wankers.

The first time I came across Uganda, however, was as a child. My parents, in their infinite wisdom, had hired a movie called "Idi Amin: Rise and Fall" and allowed me to watch it with them. The movie was made in 1981 as was Mad Max 2 and Superman 2 and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I am sure we didn't watch it in 1981 as I wouldn't have remembered it.

I remember it. I remember a black man eating people. I remember a black man killing people. I remember a black man raping people. I remember a white man being a hero of some sort. The film was graphic, little more than violent pornography. It was scarred into my developing mind along with the main character's name - Idi Amin.

Idi Amin was the military dictator of Uganda between 1970 something and 1970 something. He was in power for around six years, more or less. He killed somewhere between 80 000 and 500 000 people. Hippies say 500 000 and nazis say 80 000. The world is that easily defined. Hippies and Nazis.

Of course I don't mean actual hippies and nazis. Actual hippies lived around the same time as Idi was in power, they had a much better time due to all the acid and free love. Actual Nazis killed many more people than Idi, but they never ate anyone, as far as I know. Idi Amin, who admired Adolph Hitler, once said that Hitler was, "right to burn six million Jews". Now come on Idi.

Hippies are left wingers and nazis are right wingers. These are terms I am going to use to make our lives easier from now on. There is also a third type of hippy. These are my least favourite type of people. They come from rich families and for a short part of their lives, usually while in university (which their parents pay for), present themselves as paupers. In Europe they drive in shit vans with mongrel dogs. They have dreadlocks and smoke dope and wear rubbish colourful clothes. They pretend to be poor because they don't want to do anything. They have enough of that lifestyle and go home and stay with their parents again. They sport bare feet and tread in dog poo and hate it.

Here in Barcelona many European kids arrive to reinvent themselves. Their reinvention ends with their hair in knots and with them flicking around sticks and giving me the shits.

But I digress.

Idi was eventually deposed and there was never any concrete proof that he ate anyone. He moved to Saudi Arabia and died there. He was a Muslim, though I don't want to insinuate that this is why he was a cunt. It was because he was an African. His way of thinking was shaped by the fact that his immediate ancestors were villagers. If you couple that with his desire for the trappings of the western world, a world he knew through Uganda's colonial history - the big man was in the British Army for a while and achieved the highest ranking possible for a non-white soldier.

He wanted the opulence but didn't know how to handle it.

In 2007 a movie was released called "The Last King of Scotland". It stars Forrest Whitaker as Idi and is pretty historically correct. There are some discrepancies, the main character never existed, for example, but otherwise it's pretty good. At the end the fictitious Scottish doctor escapes and Idi is furious and executes someone and then there is some archival footage of him yelling and then some text which reads:

"Forty-eight hours after some hostages were released, Israeli forces stormed Entebbe and liberated all but one of the remaining hostages. International public opinion turned against Amin for good. When he was finally overthrown in 1979, jubilant crowds poured onto the streets. His regime had killed more than 300,000 Ugandans and expelled tens of thousands of Asians who had made Uganda their home for years. Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia on 16 August 2003. Nobody knows if that was the day he dreamed about.

These days in Uganda children are forced to work for the Lord's Resistance Army. The boys are given guns and sent to the frontline. The girls are made into wives. The leader, one Joseph Kony, has over 60. There is another conflict in the north of Uganda which has resulted in thousands of deaths and displacements. The people are desperately poor and live in fear of being raided, raped, murdered, stolen.

In the picture Idi is being carried by some white businessmen, with some prominent Swede shading him from the sun with an umbrella, blind eyes firmly turned.

Ukraine

Population: Vampires, gypsies, skinheads, prostitutes, weightlifters and spies.
Located: In Russia.
Known for: I wish Ivan Drago was from the Ukraine, or that it was called Ukrainia.

Ukraine. This one of those countries where the girls look incredible and the guys have the heads of potatoes. I have never understood this. I have never understood how a society with such an aesthetic discrepancy between males and females can ever be repopulated. I always assume that the female spies would stay with the foppish Brits and plastic headed Yanks they are espionaging rather than go back to the lumpy headed, wide eyed vampires clawing at the other side of the Iron Curtain.

One of the uglier Ukrainian males is Victor Yushchenko. He is the Ukrainian president. His eyes are tiny, like the eyes of a lizard and his lips are thin, like those of a chicken. His nose is overwhelmingly human, though uninspiring, and this menagerie of rubbish is all positioned on a coupon inspired by a round root vegetable. And then, during an election campaign, his face swelled, making his eyes squint even more and his pores enlarged but didn't expand with his face, which went outwards and outwards, resulting in pock marks and the skin texture of a burns victim, if the burns victim's face was the moon getting pelted by a flaming hot meteor shower if the meteors were lit safety matches.

It came to light that he was the victim of espionage, no doubt effected by the previously mentioned splendid female Ukrainians. That is another aspect of these Slavic bastards - they are always creative with their assassinations, or attempted assassinations. No point shooting someone, or strangling them from behind with a piano cord. No way. Your Eastern Bloc assassin prefers poison, and not just poison that you find in your Grandpa's shed, not the stuff with a skull and bones on the label, but radioactive gear that makes you look like cancer, or other shit that made poor Victor's face swell to elephantmanentine proportions and threatened to close those shrimpy eyes for good.

When Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared while swimming off Melbourne Soviet espionage was blamed. The media proposed that Russians had appropriated the frolicking aquatic Holt with one of their submarines. They proposed that it was in response to the seven troops Australia sent to Vietnam. And, given the Russian propensity for elaborate espionage, the public accepted this as a viable explanation as to the Prime Minister's disappearance.

Like there was a lobster shaped sub that plucked him by his budgie smugglers as he negotiated the Portsea shore break. Surely, if the Soviets wanted off with our PM, and I dare say they didn't even know who he was, an assassination born by a simple bullet sent by sniper, even while he was swimming, would be more cost proportionate to the offending Australian troop deployment.

The motherlickers could even dip the bullet in poison, if that so tickled their creative murderous fancies.

Or, better yet, send some of those delightful femme fatales from the Ukraine. Perhaps they could entice Harold deeper and deeper, past the breakers, past where he could stand. They would flash their delightful Slavic breasts and beckon him to swim "just a little further", where they would marvel at the uniformity of his round head, the decent spacing of his eyeballs.

Then they would push him under and hold him there between their muscular thighs where, with the memory of their accents and his proximity to their caviar dispensers, he would die the pleasant of deaths. A death befitting of a statesman, a gentleman, a good bloke.

R.I.R Harry
Rest In Rips

United Arab Emirates

Population: A small amount of sheiks, a shitload of servants.
Location: Somewhere so hot and sandy it would piss anyone off.
Known for: Dubai and its slave labour.

Like the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union the United Arab Emirates is a collection of countries that could, individually, be states. They group together so that they can better combat the economic bullying of bigger countries.

The EU is a good idea because they are now the economic equivalent of the USA. The UK because it's a historical hangover.

The UAE is the same idea but made up of Arabs.

God help us.

The United Kingdom

Population: Tens of millions
Located: Off the coast of Europe
Known for: The Queen

Sorry for the delay. This has been a hard couple of destinations on Gravy's World. First the United States, and then the United Kingdom. It would have been much easier to write about their constituent parts. I have been for the UK anyway, remember the Wales piece?

I quite look forward to doing my guide to England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But I am suffering from anxiety as to what can be written about the entire Kingdom.

Before the wars the sun never set on the British Empire. Now it sets early in winter and late in summer.

Before the wars the British were the world's preeminent power. Their navy was unmatched in the world. They could fight two sea battles at once, in two different oceans, and still be supremely confident they would win.

They shot natives on every continent. You may say, "not South America". You would be ignorant. They had British Guiana and they shot natives there. They shot many natives in Africa, Australia, North America and Asia.

They shot natives in Europe in the form of Irishmen.

They went to Belize, in Central America, and shot natives there.

I think they shot the most natives on the Indian Subcontinent. There were many rebellions, which were ended by the British shooting the Indians. They were all Indians. When the British left they made them Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. They all don't like each other now.

Now the peoples from the countries that used to host the British are hosting themselves in Britain. Indians and Bangladeshis are called Pakis, as are Pakis. Nigerian youths ride buses with mobile phones held in hands and blasting rap music. The rap music is rubbish and the Nigerian youths dare you to say something.

When I first moved to the British Isles a Nigerian youth shot a lady in the head. The lady was at a christening and was holding the baby being christened. The youth shot the lady and he and his friends robbed the christening. This occured just around the corner from where I was living.

White British still make the majority of the population. The others, the ones of other colours make the minority. They may or may not do the majority of crimes, but that is the impression that one gets. In any event they commit a disproportionate amount of crimes compared to their slice of the demographic.

The White British demand they leave. They say Britain is for the White British. The immigrants ancestors used to say the same thing to the White British people's ancestors. The whites shot the coloureds. Now the coloureds stab the whites.

That is like doing a piss and the piss bouncing up and spraying your jeans.

The United States of America

Population: 300 million plus!
Located: Between Canada and Mexico.
Known for: Beer pong.


I watched Vicki Christina Barcelona last night. I remembered hearing that it was nominated for some awards, and that it was written and directed by Woody Allen, and that it starred the fantastically pneumatic Penelope Cruz. I assumed it was good.

I was wrong.

For those who haven't seen it two American females in their mid twenties, I assume, decide to visit Barcelona and spend a summer there. We are informed, by the fucked narrator, that they have different ideas about love, yawn.

They take a cab and arrive at their summer lodgings, the casa of a friend of a friend of Vicki, or Christina, I don't care. Their lodgings are amazing, they dine on the terrace, they are served by a South American maid. They explore the town, they dine out, they go to art exhibitions, they meet a man, a mysterious and sexy and overwhelmingly creepy man.

He is an artist. He comments on their eyes and their lips, he invites them to some town near Barcelona, they leave in an hour. He proposes a threesome. He just proposes a threesome, after finding the cajones to approach these two dining strangers, the gall of the man, declares the prude of the duo.

But the slut is into it, so he flies them there in a plane he borrowed from his friend. He can fly a plane and his friend has one. Catalunya isn't so large, but he wanted to fly, so they fly. They stay at a beautiful hotel. They eat in more fancy restaurants, he fucks on, he tries to fuck one, they listen to some bearded arsehole play guitar in a garden.

I am furious, I am nearly asleep. I know if I fall asleep furious I will have bad dreams. I press on.

They visit the artists father, he is a poet. He has never published his work, as a protest. He lives in a fine country house.

It is then I realise why I am furious. None of these people work. They float through Barcelona, dining when they please, indulging themselves in their respective arts, attending cultural events and sleeping in nice beds, and drinking fine wines.

These things cost money, and none of these cunts work.

I am watching this from my shared room in Barcelona. My clothes are strewn over the floor as there is no cupboard. My room is nice, but spartan, very spartan. I can't find work, I have no money. I want to work, but I can't find any. I am hungry, I stole pasta from the supermarket. I rely on my girlfriend. I can't fly a plane, nor can I envisage a time when I will be able to fly a plane.

The Barcelona portrayed is a million kilometers from the Barcelona I am living.

I realise that this is a movie, that it need be fantasy. That the story is a love story and where it is set and the circumstances of the characters are all aesthetic. That it is entertainment.

My stomach rumbles. There are some three hundred plus million humans in the United States. The majority lead fucked lives. The majority can't discern between fantasy and reality. This majority is led to believe that the fantasies presented on the small and large screens are potential realities for them.

So they toil. They fry food in the hope that one day they'll buy those Manolo Blahnik shoes that horse face from Sex in the City wears.

I deal with many Americans in my summer job. They are lovely, friendly, trusting. They talk alot, but it's mostly positive. They want to like you, you become a crazy Aussie. They have white teeth and their parents' credit cards. They study business and they live on campus in houses full of people exactly like them.

I meet them and I have faith in America. These people voted in Barak. They cannot be bad. This makes me happy, as I prefer wide eyes and white teeth to slanty eyes and communist teeth.

I am a racist in this respect.

The Americans I come across are studying abroad, doing a semester in Europe. They have passports.

They are a minority, by a factor of 7:3.

I am still hungry, Penelope Cruz materialises. I explain to my girlfriend that she was a contract partner to Tom Cruise. She inquires and I explain, I explain that in order to be a Hollywood sex symbol, Tom couldn't be gay. So he stopped being gay and dated women. His first was a red head from Australia, she emerged from the marriage ten years later, considerably richer, the most famous woman in the world, pretty much.

Penelope Cruz has a beautiful breast, but she is angry. She screams and her face distorts. I hate this Penelope. I hate Woody Allen.

He makes love stories. He married his adopted daughter. Love stories.

Uruguay

Population: A few million.
Located: Near Argentina.
Known for: Soccer World Cup Qualification.

In the movie Alive some Roman Catholic Uruguayans are forced to eat the flesh of their friends. They liken it to the Catholic ritual of Holy Communion, where the devout pretend to eat the flesh of Christ, which is actually bread.

The Uruguayans that eat their teammates flesh do so because their plane crashed in the Andes. If my plane crashed in the Andes I would like to eat, in descending order; Jesus' flesh, human flesh, bread. Why these stupid religious types felt the need to pretend they were eating bread is beyond me.

Idiots!

Uruguayans are more European than other South Americans. Being more European means more white. I think I would prefer to eat a white person to a black person, and definately more than a South American Indian. South American Indians have no neck, which means you are getting stiffed a neck when you sit down to deny the corpse.

I think the neck would be tough, but I think it would be good for soup or stew.

When I eat kangaroo I find it has not enough fat to taste nice on its own. So I make a curry. I would make a human curry too, with most of the corpse. Some parts I would eat as steaks - the buttocks, the thighs, the face.

If I was eating a female I would make a confit of breast. I would serve with gravy and potatoes. At no time of the eating would I think of pretending it was bread. I would enjoy my breast.

I think that when you are eating your friends it is important to appreciate the flesh. Say, "hmm, you've really taken care of yourself, I can taste it in this butt steak". They say funerals should be celebrations of life. They usually are. Usually they are droll affairs where people feel sad because they can't spend anymore time with the deceased. If you eat somebody you are really celebrating their life, celebrating it with your taste buds.

Come to think of it, when I die I would like to be eaten.

Uzbekistan

Population: more than Australia
Located: Butt Fuck Central Asia
Known for: What isn't it known for?

Travelling the world can be shithouse work. First you have to get there. For Australians we have to fly, which is fucked. Then you have to worry about visas and the arseholes at immigration, which is crap. Then when you get there you have to worry about the customs and laws of the place, you don't want to offend anyone, get arrested, murdered, sick from doing the wrong thing. So you are in this constant state of quasi-fear, always second guessing yourself, never able to relax, be yourself, because maybe these motherfuckers DON"T LIKE yourself. So you slither around like a little poofter, always worried about what everyone is thinking, taking care not to do anything out of line, heaven forbid you rock the boat....

Well I've got a solution - let's make a country!

First thing you need is some territory. You need land and you need definable borders. Many people trying to make their own country just try and make one within the borders of the country they are living in - maybe they are unhappy with the current government, maybe they just don't get along with anyone else. In any event this is a STUPID idea. You have three hundred and sixty degrees of enemies, enemies who wouldn't have been too happy that you forged a country out of their existing country. And I'm not merely talking about the government. There are going to be all kinds of upset civillians, nationalist idiots, red necks, the uneducated, the patriotic, who are going to try and get in. And once you have instigated your own utopia I am sure there are going to be types trying to get a slice, types you don't want, turning up at your borders, trying to get in, banging their dreadlocks and fire sticks on your walls. Fuck those hippies.

Islands are good. Water is a great, maybe the best, natural boundary. I choose the northern half of Madagascar, giving the southern half to the displaced Madagascans. There is enough jungle and mountainous terrain in the middle of Madagascar to slow down invaders. Also the weather is warm, there is heaps of fruit, there is surf, and there are lemurs.

Once you've got a territory you need a population. In my Madagascan utopia I am going to expel the current inhabitants and import my friends. I will employ South African mercenaries, because they are cruel motherfuckers and I will retain some of the locals for slave labour purposes, because I don't want any of my citizens to overexert themselves.

Now with your population and territory you need to establish some form of government. In Northern Madagascar you can do whatever you want unless I find it annoying. I find many things annoying, so I'll start a little (non exhaustive) list: reggae music, marijuana, hippies, shit locks, religious leaders, overly religious people, hard work, hippies and handicapped people. Also rubbish tats will have to be removed before entry is granted. I will be the ultimate arbiter of what is annoying and not, though I am definitely open to suggestions. Oh and people who care about cars, and people who get personally offended by things not personally done to them. Out! And it is a bit harsh to not allow handicapped people, so I'll accept them on a case by case basis; if you have accepted your handicap and get on with it, for example, you are more welcome than an able bodied person. But for every citizen if you annoy me you get two warnings, afterwards you are out.

Once you've got that you need an economy. We are going to grow dope and export every last dreg. We'll also sell good times, the most delicious rum in the world and mobile phones with cigarette lighters and bottle openers built in. And with a compartment for your keys. And see through toasters and beer cartons you can put your ice directly in. And, like other small countries, we'll register many boats and offshore bank accounts, so we can make a little bit of cheddar without actually dealing too much with the arseholes that own luxury yachts and require non-invasive banking.

The last step is creating some international relations. I am not fussed about getting accepted into the United Nations, but you need to be recognised by other countries in order to become your own country. I'll just approach some of the world's smaller nations, the little bird shit covered specks in the Pacific Ocean, the principalities of Europe, and some of the less ruined African nations and exchange mobile phones for their recognition. Even offer to buy some of their coconuts, diamonds, cheese, whatever.

Then we'll be a country.

Oh, and it will need a name. I like adding -stan to the end of words to make country names, so we'll be called "Gravistan".

The Uzbeks did this with Uzbekistan. They also, stupidly, carved their territory out of the former USSR. Then they populated the place along ethnic lines - you may look alike, but you probably think differently. Their laws, though, and leader are spot on. The leader, one Islam Karimov, has been in power since they gained independence from the Soviets in 1991. Like me he also disallows only that that annoys him, opposition to his rule, for example. He violently squashes any and all opposition and resistence to his rule, and I respect that, because he has his own country and he can do what he wants. He wouldn't be welcome in mine, but why would he want to come?

I'm not sure what his position is on hippies, probably similar to mine.

A few hundred people made the mistake to oppose his rule in 1992 and he blew the fuck out of them. I wouldn't do that, my South African mercenaries would after politely asking them to leave. They were Islamists, so they wouldn't be living in my country anyway.

The other thing he does, that I wouldn't do, is be corrupt. I'd be making so much cheddar from my see-through toasters that I wouldn't need to be.

Vanuatu

Population: Fuzzy Wuzzies
Located: In the Pacific
Known for: Luxury Resorts

I always thought Melanesians looked like the guy that ate hamburgers on Popeye. Wimpy. It was something about the nose, because Wimpy is short and white and fat and clothed and Melanesians are nothing of those thing. They are tall and tanned and svelte and nude.

Melanesians are found from Irian Jaya to Fiji. Papuans are Melanesians as are Solomon Islanders. Vanuatans are Melanesians and are the nicest. I base this on, a) they don't have 'internal strife' like the Solomon Islanders and Fijians, and, b) they were voted the happiest people in the world. I could have just listed the latter fact, but wanted to increase my worldliness in the eyes and hearts and minds of my four person deep readership.

Wimpy was Popeye's best friend. Popeye was born in a typhoon and Vanuatu is often hit by typhoons, which we call cyclones and I don't know what Vanuatans call them. They speak a funny language, called Bislama, which we would call Pidgin English. Without dragging you along a coral reef of boredom with my long-winded explanation canoe, it was a language created so the different Melanesians could communicate with each other on the cane plantations, it is a collaboration of English words and Melanesian grammar. The Vanuatu national anthem, for example, goes:

Yumi, Yumi, yumi i glad long talem se
Yumi, yumi, yumi ol man blong Vanuatu

God i givim ples ya long yumi,
Yumi glat tumas long hem,
Yumi strong mo yumi fri long hem,
Yumi brata evriwan!

and this translates as:

We, we, we are happy to proclaim (literally you-me = we)
We, we, we are the people of Vanuatu (all man belong Vanuatu)

God has given us this land (is giving place yes long you-me)
This gives us great cause for rejoicing (you-me glad too much long him)
We are strong, we are free in this land (you-me strong more you-me free in him)
We are all brothers! (you-me brother everyone).

Maybe you, like me, fell in love with yumi. You and me means we, goddamn that is charming. How about this one, yumitufala, or you and me two fellahs, or us. Erection inspiring shit. How about blong. Blong is one of my favourite words and comes directly from belong. Everything blong something. Headlights on a car are literally translated to fire belong truck.

They say that near the end of his life Ernest Hemingway spoke like this, that the economy of words that he was famous for got to such a point he just started speaking pidgin. He was one of the best manipulators of words the world has ever seen.

During World War 2 Popeye fought the Japs in the Pacific, many good ol' American patriots did. The kindness of one of them, or perhaps many of them, inspired a cult called the Jon Frum cult. This is a cult on certain Vanuatu islands that worships an unknown American called Jon Frum, who is set to return to Vanuatu and deliver prosperity to the people. It is said that when the Yanks turned up on these islands they had such amazing things and were so seemingly prosperous, that they were treated like Gods. Perhaps one, who identified himself as "John from America" (Jon Frum), promised to return one day. Some of the more bizarre Jon Frum cults believe that he is inside a volcano that periodically erupts, perhaps hoping he will be shot out of it one day, raining white goods upon the villagers.

They also speak French and English in Vanuatu, and are truly happy people. Some of the islands are remote, really remote, and some are covered in resorts. There is surf in Vanuatu, and volcanoes galore and cyclones sometime and no native mammals, bar a small rat.

It is also where they do that bungy jump without the bungy, just with vines. They do that when the boy becomes a man. They do it when they are younger, their bones supple, their environmental circumstances forcing them to mature earlier than us cream puffs in the developed world.

I would do it sometime next year, I hope, probably after my thirtieth birthday.

Venezuela

Population: More than Australia.
Located: Near where they make Cocaine.
Known for: Beautiful dictators.

I used to know Venezuela for its beauty queens. The Venezuelans had a stranglehold on the international beauty queen scene, their lithe long tanned legs wrapped around the bird-like necks of the judges and co-competitors. The Venezuelan beauty queens loved shiny things and buying things and all things capitalism and all things American. I loved Venezuelan beauty queens, I was intrigued by this land of beauties, it sounded warm and beautiful.

Now I know Venezuela for Hugo Chavez. He has a stranglehold on the Venezuelan economy, his stumpy little arms wrapped around the revenue spun from oil exports. He is a socialist. The most famous socialists were the Soviets.

The Soviet Union was neither warm, nor beautiful, in my mind anyway. It could have been beautiful, but it definitely wasn't warm. Now the Soviet Union doesn't exist, but Russia does. Hugo Chavez is a great ally of the Russians. They like him because he doesn't like the Americans, he likes them because not many other people like him. In his own country he has polarised opinion, the poor love him and the rich and the media do not. He feels like he is alone, he is less popular, globally, than the beauty queens were.

I like Hugo. I wish I could give him a big hug, and say, "lots of people do like you Hugo". His prophecies are self-fulfilling, he believes he is hated and consequently acts in a manner that makes people hate him. Kids in school used to do that, not great socialist leaders. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy his tirades, his diatribes give me a tiny little erection in my trackies, I like the way he waffles on in front of the United Nations, calling mortals devils and so on.

I have only heard him do this in reference to George, I hope he hasn't yet to Uncle Barry, I like Uncle Barry and I think Uncle Barry and Hugo could be great friends if Uncle Barry was allowed to play with him.

I like the way Hugo wants to fight the Colombians, because they are wankers. I like the way he gives money to poor people, because if I was in Venezuela I would receive some of that money. I like his beret, because he looks like a french woman.

I dislike it when he parades around with Che Guevara's likeness. Che Guevara may, or may not, have been a doosh bag but the bastards that wear shirts with his likeness definitely are. When Hugo parades around like that he aligns himself with a world of hippy uni student cock suckers. Breaks my heart a little bit. A little bit of my boner goes away.

I even prefer Hugo over the beauty queens. Both are great stimulants of the imagination, it's just that now that I've grown up I like to imagine with my cerebellum more than I like imagining with my testicles.

Ideally, though, give me a loud mouth socialist dictator, who is also a Venezuelan beauty queen in a red beret.

That would be a collusion of epic proportions between balls and brain.

Vietnam

Population: Nearly ninety million.
Located: East Asia.
Known for: Gary Glitter.

My friend's sister took he and I to a Vietnamese dinner in London a while back. The waiters had black hair and slim eyes, their cheekbones were invariably high. We drank tiger beer and our noodles were clear and duck a-r-o-m-a-t-i-c. If I didn't know, prior to dining there, that we were in a Vietnamese restaurant, I would have assumed we were in a Chinese restaurant.

This is because either I am ignorant, or they plain look alike.

A culinary give away, perhaps the only one, is the transparency of the noodles. But one gets so caught up in the infinite delights of the MSG that they don't notice these things. To this day I don't know if the noodles were transparent or translucent. Neither I, nor you, should care.

Like the noodles there are differences in the respective heads that only the anal pick up on. I am not anal so I cannot for the life of me list them. I'm am sure that either Chinese or Vietnamese have slantier eyes than the other but I'm not sure which way it goes. I assume that Vietnamese have the browner of the skin, because they are closer to the equator. Both will go to extreme lengths to lighten their skin.

In that region a tan is a sign of poverty, it's a mark of the rural, denoting countless hours spent bent back in the rice paddies. The upper classes aren't tanned, the middle classes buy creams to burn the tans off, the lower classes are covered in tan, apart from where their loin clothes lie. Both states, however, are classless utopias.

There was a pretty big war in Vietnam. First the French were kicked out, because they had no right to have a colony there, then the Yanks turned up because they're Yanks and that's what the cunts do. That turned into a shitfight, the Yanks dropped more bombs, then left, and inevitably there was a unified Communist Vietnam.

Hooray! Despite this there are still people with tans and people without tans. As in China.

Vietnam is also a place where a creep like Gary Glitter can get his rocks off. If Gary did that in China they would have immediately blown his head off. Perhaps that is a difference.

I classify Vietnam as East Asia, with China, with whom they are almost identical, and Japan, with whom they are absolutely different.

Japanese surfers have deep tans and punk hairstyles and are rad motherfuckers. Chinese and Vietnamese are not.

Virgin Islands

Population: Whatever it is minus 72 everytime a suicide bomber martyrs himself.
Located: In the Caribbean.
Known for: Hymens.

This is the source of the world's virgins. There are some people in the world that would say, "oh yeah, fuck yeah, let's go there". Those people are idiots that don't think things through. Like the people that want to blow themselves up in order to get seventy two virgins in the afterlife.

Seventy two shit roots, seventy two girls that are totally infatuated with you, seventy two multiplied by seventy two fights over you, seventy two hysterical crying teenagers writing shitty poetry in their diaries.

Imagine an island populated by them, populated by fourteen year old girls and sixteen year old dudes, pimply and awkward, and all of the rubbish first roots that would go on, and then the frantic washing of sheets afterwards.

There's a good reason you get that over and done with in your teens.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone for the eternal afterlife.

Wales

Population: Welsh people.
Located: England.
Known for: Tom Jones.

The Welsh flag is a dragon. That's pretty childish, isn't it?

Oooh don't mess with us, or our guardian winged lizard that breathes fire will get you. If I ever went to war with them I'd make my flag a fucking wizard with a massive wand that takes dragons down. And I'd put some dragons' teeth around his neck, on a necklace, like Dolph Lundgren in Universal Soldier.

In fact, I'd make my wizard Dolph, and give him a massive sword covered in dragons' blood.

That should scare the shit out of them and make them easy to defeat in warfare.

It's not that I have any interest in conquering Wales, apart from proving to them that their shitty little lizard is a ridiculous thing to have on a flag.

Wallis and Futuna

Population: More than a few thousand, much less than a hundred thousand.
Located: In the middle of nowhere.
Known for: It's not.

Wallis and Futuna are a couple of impossibly beautiful specks in the middle of the Pacific. Not many people live there and not much happens. The inhabitants are Polynesian and the islands are administered by France. Polynesians are big and savage and Frogs are poofters. The Dutch found the islands, the British backed up their findings and the Frogs sent out some missionaries. The missionaries sent back a request for French protection because the islanders tried to eat them, I assume.

Now the islanders don't eat missionaries anymore, they eat croissants and little wafers which represent the body of Christ.

Cannibalism for poofters.

The islanders now celebrate Bastille Day, which is a celebration of something that happened long before the first frog's legs hopped ashore bearing pastry treats and threats of eternal damnation.

The West Bank

Population: Dropping.
Located: Unfortunately close to Israel.
Known for: Watch the news pal.

The west bank is a dubious entry in Gravy's World. I use two sources to get my reverse alphabetical order right, well one for the reverse order and the other for a (reasonably) rational appraisal of the place. The first one is the CIA World FactBook, which gives 'facts' from the perspective of the CIA. Truth be told it is all pretty lame stuff. The other is the BBC world guide, which gives a little more information, less numbers. Anyway, the idea of Gravy's World was to never research properly anyway.

So the CIA I use for my reverse alphabetical order, because it has one whereas the BBC lists its countries according to region. Funnily the CIA recognised the West Bank where the BBC did not.

Hoo hoo, ha ha, goddamn funny that.

Anyway, all that I wanted to write was that I was excited to write about the West Bank until I found out that it wasn't the Palestinian territory that had surf. That is the Gaza Strip, which is coming up in a later post.

Of the two, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, I would have thought the West Bank sounded like the more likely possessor of surfable waves.

But it doesn't which would have mildly upset me five years ago, as I formulated an idea, stolen from somewhere else no doubt, that the solution to the problems around there would be to get them surfing together. You know, the Israelis and the Palestinians out the back together, sharing some waves, sharing the stoke.

Obviously that idea was ridiculous, and proves how much of a fuckwit I used to be.

Western Sahara

Population - A handful.
Located - West of the Sahara.
Known for - Sandy, sandy, bastards.

Western Sahara is a sandy slither of land located south of Morocco, sort of west of Algeria and north or Mauritania. It is controlled by Morocco though it is the home of the Saharawi people, who, with Algeria's backing, have been engaged in a sometimes armed struggle against Morocco.

I am not interested in this struggle, as it seems to me a pointless waste of time, for god's sake it is only sand, and though there is a little oil there, or maybe even a shitload of oil, some company from somewhere more civilised is going to grease in and steal all the profits anyway.

But I also understand why it is taking place, as pointless wastes of time are what people in this region engage in, it's what they ENJOY doing, what they get their KICKS out of.

So I am going to wade in and get my big nose in this one. I'm going to back the Saharawis. Why? Because they are the more aptly named participant in the conflict. They are not called the Congolese, nor are they the Uzbeks. They are neither the Saami from Suomi, nor the Sumatrans from Sumatra.

They are the Saharawis from the Sahara, even the SaharaWis from Western Sahara. See what they've done there? Taken the W from Western and chucked it on the back of Sahara, with an I that gives it a nice ring. Saharawi.

Bloody legends.

Sandy, sandy, bastards, but bloody legends.

The Moroccan Royal family has said they won't ever relinquish the Saharan territories they claimed, but it is hardly called Western Morroca, now, is it?

Yemen.

Population - Who is to say.
Location - Near Saudi Arabia.
Known for - Muslims.

Yemen is located right next to Saudi Arabia, on the Gulf of Aden. It has a tourism website entreating potential tourists to come and visit Yemen.

The website says Yemen's natural beauty, culture and cities are all reasons to visit Yemen.

Yemen is a fucking dirt pit populated by crazy Jihadists, ninjas and sandy, sandy bastards.

There are sixteen or something million people, half of them under fifteen. There are also an estimated eighty million weapons.

It is one of the world's poorest countries due to it's main export being terrorists.

The only reason I could think of for people going to Yemen is to visit an al-Qaeda affiliated training camp.

Zambia

Population: 11,862,740 exactly.
Location: Between heaps of places in the South of Africa.
Best known for: I'm not sure.



Madonna and Angelina Jolie didn't adopt children from Zambia.

There was a dictator in Zambia who killed a few people, but not that many.

It once had the promise of being a regional economic powerhouse, due to its vast copper fields, but copper prices fell and a powerhouse it is not.

My friend Martina was attacked by a hippo in Malawi, but Malawi isn't Zambia.

Victoria Falls are in Zambia, but Victoria Falls are also in Zimbabwe, which is infinitely more exciting thanks to Uncle Bobby.

There are no coups in Zambia worthy of a mention, no independence movements of any substance. Nobody wants nothing that bad.

Barak Obama's family is not from Zambia, and Zambia has never democratically elected a white president.

Dr Livingstone was in Zambia, but the famous inquiry, "Dr Livingstone, I presume" was uttered somewhere else. I think in Tanzania.

There are some eighty thousand Chinese people living in Zambia, who I assume have a real hard time fitting in.

There are a lot people with AIDS in Zambia, and heaps of poor people, and famine, and drought and malaria, and lions and monkeys and elephants and shit.

But isn't that everywhere in Africa?

Zimbabwe

Population - Eleven million and something
Located - Landlocked between South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique.
Known for - Bobby Mugabe

Many people are critical of Robert 'Bobby' Mugabe. He abuses human rights, they say, and he rigs elections, they cry. His policies are counterproductive to the interests of his people, he is oppressive.

I like him. I appreciate his mocha. I like the distance between his nose and his lip, I like the chasm in said distance and I like the moustache in said chasm. It looks like Adolph's moustache, and that, to me, represents mocha in a dictator - Hitleresque lip furniture.

The name for this style of moustache is a 'toothbrush'. Because the philtrum is similar in size and shape to a toothbrush. My philtrum is destined to be eternally as bald as the back of a laptop, which perhaps explains my adoration of Bobby's weird face.

Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia, and is where they first bred Rhodesian Ridgebacks - for the express purpose of taking down elephants. Mugabe's philtrum is so long and deep it could be the mold for said dog's said ridged back.

I also like Robert Mugabe because during his tenure the Zimbabwean treasury released a one hundred trillion dollar note. An egg cost fifty billion Zimbabwean dollars. How fucking cool is that? If you were a prostitute you would charge a trillion dollars for a full service, which would boost your self esteem, I think. I also think that you would have AIDS, most likely, which would be pretty shit.