Let's give all the petulant whingers something to really cry about

Jaundiced is too charming a word to describe the way many punters are feeling about the state of the world.

For goodness' sake, get the crash - meltdown, burst bubble, default, hissy fit, whatever you want to call it - over with, already. Sheesh.

I had a beer on the Parkview golf club balcony the other day with a guy who splits his time between Braamfontein and Switzerland, in the process working his handicap down from 13 to 5. Hard life, you know. Anyway, he's an old lefty from way back and asked me if I didn't also crave, deep down, for some kind of apocalyptic cataclysm to roll around and wipe the slate clean.

Yeah, now you mention it!

I believe The Onion, a while back, ran a sly story along the same lines, albeit political. It suggested voters quite fancied the idea of putting their "X" next to Sarah Palin's name, just to see what would happen.

Bring it on. The world may be in the biggest hole it has ever been in since, er ... 1929? 1966? 1981? 1996? 2001? 2008? But hell's teeth, we're all acting as if this particular nastiness is something civilisation has never before experienced. Get over it, maaan.

I have the greatest respect for the people who actually fought for South Africa's liberation in the late 1970s, being as I was a slack student with a delicate taste for Gramsci and Althusser, not gunpowder. That's why the Occupy Wall Street protesters make me chuckle. Next thing they'll be sticking daisies into the guns of the National Guard.

No, what America needs is for the military to wade across the Potomac and seize the White House.

Hell, yes. I can't bear this petulant whinging from the newly "militant" left. They're as bad as the bloody Tea Party, just not as pretty. That Michele Bachmann mommy is quite hot.

Seriously, is there no end to the craziness? It makes me wish Hunter S Thompson was still around to pour napalm on the wretched mess.

What we're stuck with are smarty-pants pundits like Michael Lewis and Matt Taibbi, the best of a bad lot. If you've got one of those iPad camera-phone things, subscribe to Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. The two blokes mentioned above provide the most bitterly reasonable polemic on the travails of the world.

Neither have suggested firing howitzers onto Capitol Hill, Westminster or the Bundeskanzleramt, but you get the distinct feeling they're itching to do just that.

Have you watched any of the eurozone bailout waffle happening, lately? Or listened to the debates by the Republican Party presidential hopefuls? I don't even want to mention (hold me back, Beavis) the HOUSE OF COMMONS!

That lot up there in the north make our dainty little parliament look like kindergarten.

Buffoons? Yup, we got 'em, but in a different weight class to those dunderheads. Check Sarkozy and that German guy, Merkel, making like they know what the %$#@ is going on.

Or Obama. Lord love him, but what a nebbish. Hope and change, ek sê. Take a look at how well his campaign contributions are going, and then see who he's got running his fiscal affairs: they might as well name the US treasury Goldman Sachs.

So the best we can hope for from the White House is small change. And a bloodbath next year when President Mitt Perry is sworn in.

Ja, so. My editor gave me a pitying look on Friday afternoon when I pulled back my sleeves to begin this missive. Nothing much happening to remark on, she said. Too true.

How many more times can you say "markets went up, then they went down, and this is what I think about it".

Nah, far better to flick a lighter at the whole house of cards and watch it burn.

Now ... [tugging on a scholarly forelock] ... since it's only Friday evening, do you think - as you read this ullage on Sunday - that I can begin celebrating Wales's win, yet?