The Book of the Year Read online

  BORDER WALL

  Anna: Ideas proposed for the US border wall include a trench full of nuclear waste, a one-way mirror and three million hammocks.

  Dan: Three million hammocks?

  Anna: Well, that one isn’t really a serious proposal. After the bidding process started, a lot of people started suggesting ideas and, as well as actual architects, a lot of comedians and artists got involved.

  James: For one thing, hammocks wouldn’t work because people could just go under them …

  Dan: … or over them. It depends how high up the tree they’re tied.

  Andy: Is the idea that you get to the border, you see the hammock and you think, ‘I can’t be bothered now, I think I’ll just have a rest’?

  Anna: I’m not sure. They’re the idea of an artist called Jennifer Meridian. She’s also proposed a wall of pipe organs and a wall of thousands and thousands of lighthouses.

  Dan: Nice. And the one-way mirror is an incredible idea.

  Andy: Yes. That’s another artist’s proposal: meaning you can see Mexico from the USA but they can’t see you.

  Dan: What’s the point in that?

  Andy: Well, you could still see someone approaching if they were going to try and climb the mirror, but they don’t know if they’re being watched.

  James: Ah, OK. I thought if people got to the mirror, they might think, ‘It looks exactly the same over there as it does over here. I might as well stay.’

  Andy: Another proposal involves leaving a 4-inch gap at the bottom of the wall so little animals can cross. More than a hundred species cross the area, so if the wall goes up a lot of them will struggle to mate.

  James: I wonder if all the animals will then evolve to be 4 inches tall, so there will be tiny buffalo galloping across the plain?

  Andy: Very possibly.

  James: Either way, did you know the first ever demarcation between America and Mexico was just a line?

  Anna: Really? What did they draw the line with, a marker pen?

  James: I’m not sure. I suppose paint.

  Andy: You can’t paint sand!

  Dan: Well, you can, but then you can just nudge the line. So you might arrive one morning and think, ‘Hey, my country’s smaller than it was yesterday!’

  BRAZIL▶

  The president of Brazil moved out of his official residence because he thought it was haunted.

  President Michel Temer reportedly found the Alvorada Palace too spooky. ‘I felt something strange there,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t able to sleep right from the first night. The energy wasn’t good.’ Luckily he had a spare palace to move into.*

  Temer was perhaps right to feel a sense of foreboding. After being recorded allegedly discussing hush money with the Batista brothers, who run the country’s biggest meat-packing firm, JBS, he found himself in the middle of a huge corruption scandal that has engulfed Brazilian politics and has led (among other things) to the largest fine in Brazilian history: $3 billion, levied against JBS. Incidentally, the previous record – a $2.6 billion fine paid by the engineering company Odebrecht – also arose from the bribing of politicians, some of whom Odebrecht doesn’t seem to have held in particularly high esteem. Their code name for Deputy Congressman Jarbas Vasconcelos was ‘Viagra’; Congressman Paes Landim was ‘Decrepit’; and Senator Edison Lobão was known as ‘Squalid’. Rio de Janeiro’s ex-mayor, who is accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes before the Olympics, was called ‘the Little Nervous One’.

  Some people think the political situation in Brazil is complicated, but it can actually be explained in one sentence:

  In 2016, President Dilma Rousseff was impeached, the main charge being that she had massaged the country’s accounts to make it appear that it was doing better than it was, the impeachment being led by a guy called Eduardo Cunha, who was then found guilty (after an investigation code-named Operation Car Wash) of hiding $40 million worth of bribes in secret bank accounts, and who was then allegedly paid to keep quiet by Rousseff’s deputy president Michel Temer, who took over from Rousseff when she was impeached (despite the fact that he had already been banned from running for president for eight years for financial irregularities), whose aide Rodrigo Rocha Loures was arrested with a bag containing $150,000, and who was busted when he was recorded talking about hush money to the Batista brothers, who are the owners of a meat-packing company JBS, a fact that came to light when JBS was found not only to be selling rotten meat but also discussing $160,000 in potential kickbacks to Aécio Neves (who ran against Rousseff in the last election), as well as paying $150,000 in a suitcase to another politician, Rocha Loures (who later returned the money, claiming he hadn’t looked in the bag), and paying $500,000 to Aécio Neves’s cousin, who then deposited it into the bank account of another politician, Zezé Perrella, whose helicopter was seized in November 2013 and found to be containing 450 kilograms of cocaine.

  Brazil’s top court spent a lot of time debating whether to annul the results of the last election. If they decide to do so, then the president will likely appeal, a process which will take them to October 2018, when there’s another election due anyway.

  BREXIT▶

  For a wet signature, see Article 50; for a history of battlebuses, see Buses; for ruining a flower show, see Chelsea; for reporters who can’t call Britain ‘Britain’, see Journalists; for moving to a rusty platform in the sea, see Micronations; for Hubert Legal the legal eagle see Names; for what Gideon did next, see Osborne, George; for a patriotic colour change, see Passports; and for how voting to leave the EU has affected your Coco Pops, see Shrinkflation.

  BUDDHISTS▶

  Monks at a Buddhist temple crowdfunded money so that they could hold ‘techno memorial services’.

  Hosted in the Fukui City’s Shoē-onji temple in central Japan, each service features psychedelic lights and a 49-year-old Japanese Buddhist DJ on the decks, who drops heavy beats and Buddhist chants. By holding these memorials, the temple is attempting to make itself more accessible to the public. It started the experiment last year, but the services proved so expensive to stage that only two could be held. The monks therefore turned to crowdfunding. Launching their project on the site Readyfor, they successfully raised 398,000 yen (about £3,000, and 98,000 yen more than they had asked for).

  One group of Buddhists not interested in dance music is the Wutaishan Buddhist Association in China, which is threatening to sue anyone and everyone who uploads a video that incorrectly claims to show a collection of its monks partying at a nun’s wedding. Anyone who uploads the video can expect to hear from the monks’ lawyers.

  Meanwhile, three Buddhist monks were arrested in Myanmar after it was discovered they had been stashing more than four million methamphetamine pills in their monastery. The pills had a street value of over £3 million.

  You can now hire a four-foot robot to hold your Buddhist funeral service. Pepper the robot, who can be programmed to read scriptures, chant prayers and tap drums, is being marketed as a low-cost alternative to a human priest.

  BULGARIA▶

  Bulgaria elected a prime minister who was once voted the country’s footballer of the year.

  In 2011 Boyko Borisov was made footballer of the year, beating Dimitar Berbatov, who that same year had helped Manchester United win the Premier League. Borisov was 51 years old at the time and occasionally turned out for a team that came sixth in the second division. After his victory, he called for the award to be annulled, arguing that his success had been due to a protest vote by fans lamenting the poor standard of Bulgarian football.

  This year’s election campaign was a bruising one. Borisov sued the leader of the second-biggest party for slander after she called him a thief on national television, while Borisov was himself taken to court by a candidate for implying that she’d taken public money. A national television station, bTV, was censured when it showed a naked picture of 61-year-old Attack Party leader Volen Siderov, naming him the second most attractive naked Bulgarian after former Bi
g Brother and Eurovision star Azis. Meanwhile, another candidate, who owns a newspaper, wrote a book entitled Thieves of Democracy: They Plundered Bulgaria and then gave away a free copy with every copy of his newspaper. The electoral commission deemed this to be unacceptable. The candidate therefore pulled the book, but proceeded to sell his newspaper with a differently titled book that targeted exactly the same politicians.

  Bulgaria’s tourism ministry announced plans to post more than 400,000 cards to foreign tourists who visited the country, thanking them for choosing Bulgaria as their destination.

  BUSES▶

  Crystal Palace fans vandalised their own team’s bus by mistake.

  After their game against Middlesbrough, Crystal Palace football fans found what they thought was the team bus of their opponents, and vandalised it by spraying the words ‘Crystal Palace FC’ on the side. Unfortunately, it turned out that it was their own bus (although at least it may have helped them find it again). Crystal Palace refused to comment on the incident, but the cost of the damage was estimated at £40,000.*

  At least the coach was a coach, which is more than can be said for the buses used to transport passengers in Omsk, Russia. These were found to have benches instead of seats, and strange, curtained hatches at the back. On investigation, it was found that the bus company was using adapted hearses.

  During the UK General Election, as Theresa May travelled the country telling people how Britain would leave the EU, it emerged, to her embarrassment, that her battle bus had been the ‘Remain’ battle bus during the EU referendum. Back then, it had promised ‘More Jobs’ and ‘Lower Prices’ if Britain stayed in the EU. The ‘Vote Leave’ campaign’s bus, on the other hand, was made in Germany.†

  Nottingham City Council unveiled a fleet of 53 biomethane buses, powered by gases given off by poo and farm waste. The anaerobic digestion industry reckons that animal and human sewage could eventually power half the UK’s buses. Sadly, the prototype of Britain’s biomethane buses, Bristol’s Number 2 bus service, was scrapped last year for lack of funding. With luck it will come back as a political campaign bus.

  BUSHES, HIDING IN▶

  US Press Secretary Sean Spicer definitely didn’t hide in a bush.

  According to reports, when Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the press secretary to the White House spent several minutes ‘hidden in the bushes’ in the dark, working out what to tell the press. After the Washington Post reported this, White House officials complained, so the Post clarified: ‘Spicer huddled with his staff among bushes … on the White House grounds, not “in the bushes,” as the story originally stated.’

  Spicer joins a long list of people who have definitely not hidden behind foliage to avoid awkward questions. As culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt was once spotted hiding behind a tree to avoid the press when heading to a dinner with media boss James Murdoch. He later firmly denied hiding, telling the Leveson Inquiry, ‘There may or may not have been trees.’

  There are times where it’s worth doing. While walking her dogs, the Queen once hid behind a bush in Buckingham Palace gardens to avoid bumping into communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was visiting at the time.

  In Nigeria in May, a suicide bomber accidentally blew himself up while hiding in a bush and waiting to attack a university. Nobody else was hurt, although the condition of the bush was not reported.

  In Japan, a missing giant tortoise was found in bushes. After two weeks of frantically hunting for Abuh, who had escaped from the zoo where she lived, the Shibukawa Animal Park offered a 500,000 yen (£3,500) reward to anyone who found her. The bushes in which she was eventually discovered were 140 metres from the entrance to the zoo.

  CANADA▶

  For pregnant parachuting bison, see Airdrops; for unusual bangs in official residences, see Brazil; for glow-in-the-dark money, see Coins; for a metallic falcon, see Drones; for a six-storey high bird, see Ducks, Rubber; for a chunk of ice that went on a nationwide tour, see Icebergs; for celebrating how great men are, see International Women’s Day; for offensive cars, see Licence Plates; for the death of a pizza salesman, see Pizzas; for an anthropomorphic turd called Mr Floatie, see Retirement; for photos with a runaway moose, see Selfies; for avoiding a spell in prison, see Witchcraft; and for what you absolutely can’t do with the Prime Minister, see Trudeau, Justin.

  CANNABIS▶

  Since 2010, the number of dogs getting stoned in New York has increased by 144 per cent.

  Vets say they treat canine marijuana poisoning every day, and because the owners who have brought the dogs in are often stoned as well, it can be difficult to persuade them to take it seriously. Symptoms, as with humans, include lethargy, wobbling gait, and urine and saliva dribbling, but they’re not life-threatening. Dogs constitute 95 per cent of pet marijuana poisonings. Cats, as ever, simply don’t seem interested.

  Elsewhere in cannabis news:

  ▶ America’s first drive-through cannabis outlet opened in Parachute, Colorado, though, to be honest, it’s more of a ‘drive-in-and-out’. By law, all marijuana transactions have to happen inside an establishment, so you have to drive your car into a warehouse and wait for the door to close behind you before you can pick up your fix.

  ▶ At the US–Mexico border, a consignment of what appeared to be 34,764 key limes was discovered, when peeled, to be 34,764 green spheres full of cannabis, totalling two tons in weight. The discovery came days after 3,000 pounds of marijuana was found being smuggled across the border inside fake grapefruits.

  ▶ Uruguay became the first country in the world where you can buy weed in pharmacies. To do so, however, you have to register as a marijuana buyer with the government, and submit a digital thumbprint every time you want to make a purchase.

  ▶ In Vanuatu, authorities have been giving local youths free gardening tools to encourage them to plant vegetables instead of marijuana. Unfortunately, the scheme has largely backfired. It transpires that the tools are just as useful for cultivating cannabis as they are for cultivating potatoes, and the locals prefer growing the former.

  ▶ A Canadian consultant hired to look at how sales might look if the country legalises the drug has reported that they will be ‘unbelievably high’.

  A man called Harry Potter appeared in court, admitting to possession of cannabis. The 19-year-old from York said he’d been planning to sell three wraps of the drug to his friends at college.

  CARNIVALS▶

  ‘I want to apologise to anyone who may have been offended’ – Father Juan Carlos Martínez

  A Catholic priest from Cuntis, Spain, apologised for his choice of float at a local carnival parade. He realised, in retrospect, that it was inappropriate for a priest to be dressed up as Hugh Hefner, travelling on a bed covered with satin sheets, accompanied by two men dressed as Playboy bunnies, and having one of them simulate sex with him along the way. Father Martínez was sent on a spiritual retreat by an angry archbishop to reflect on what he had done.

  CARS, DRIVERLESS▶

  In the first ever race between two driverless cars, one crashed and the other nearly ran over a dog.

  The race, which took place in Buenos Aires in February, wasn’t the best advert for the new technology. After getting up to speeds of 180km/h, one of the cars, Devbot 2, misjudged a corner and crashed into a barrier. The other, Devbot 1, had to slow down to avoid running over a dog which had wandered on to the track (press reports described this as ‘one of the highlights’). It did avoid hitting the dog, no thanks to a race marshal who forgot the car had no driver and frantically waved a yellow flag at it. Justin Cooke, chief marketing officer of Roborace, said, ‘We don’t learn as much when we do perfect runs.’

  In Greenwich, London, driverless car trials have been taking place, but they’re not very sophisticated: the maximum speed the pods are allowed to go is 10mph, and they have to issue constant warning beeps. Rather more ambitious trials were carried out by Nissan in March. Their vehicles managed hundreds of accident-free miles
along London’s roads. Since there was a human in the driver’s seat (who intervened occasionally as necessary), few people would have realised what was going on.

  If you’re thinking of buying a driverless car the bad news is that that you’ll need two insurance policies – one for when you’re driving and one for when the car is.

  For other driverless cars confused by animals, see Kangaroos.

  In August a mysterious driverless van was seen moving around Washington, DC. In fact, it was taking part in a study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute of how people react to driverless cars. It turned out the vehicle had a driver – but he was disguised as a car seat.

  CENSORSHIP▶

  Victims of censorship this year included Smurfs, aliens, celebrity gossip, and saying you’ve been censored.

  ▶ Country: China

  Censored: Aliens, from the new Alien film. When shown in Chinese cinemas Alien: Covenant was found to run six minutes short. Fans noted that the monster only appeared for a minute or two in the whole movie. China’s government also cracked down on ‘abnormal’ beards, the name Muhammad (both moves designed to crush religious extremism), watching computers play games (see AI) and celebrity gossip websites.

  This year, people in China were allowed to watch films featuring zombies for the first time. Previously, these had been banned on the grounds that they promoted ‘cults or superstition’. In the interests of filling cinemas, audiences were finally allowed to watch zombie-filled movies like the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film.

  ▶ Country: Saudi Arabia

  Censored: Families in paddling pools. A Saudi company advertising swimming pools edited a photo of a family in swimming gear so the father and the children were depicted as completely clothed from head to foot. The mother, meanwhile, was removed altogether and replaced with a Winnie-the-Pooh beach ball.