I know three ways to kill a mouse. Squeamish already? Then stop reading right now, the going will get even worse. Reading on? Then don’t bitch later that I didn’t warn you! So let me start again. I know three ways to kill a mouse.

1. Hold the mouse down by pressing the first three fingers of your left hand on its neck and with your right hand pull on its tail until you hear the crunchy sound of a bone snapping. This is called cervical dislocation.

2. Take dry ice in a tall jar. Put a cloth on top of the dry ice. Then drop the mice, one after the other, into the beaker and cover it with a lid. If you are of the perverse kind you can take immense pleasure in watching them twist and jump, suffocating inside the death jar. I’ve seen some mice jump 10 times their height. Teach them pole vault and Sergei Bubka will develop an inferiority complex. Dry ice is frozen carbon-dioxide, all of minus twenty degrees cold. The mice die for lack of oxygen. The CO2 fills up their brain and starves it of oxygen. The cloth is to collect the involuntary discharge of pee and poo.

3. Inject Avertin, twice the body weight of the mouse. It goes into a coma. Now comes the moment of truth. Open it up and have a bloody ball. Cut out its liver, dissect the muscle and take out fat. You can have the brain for free, only, you will have to cut the head off and open the skull up. Avertin is a muscle relaxant sending the mouse on a ride to rodent heaven or hell. I don’t know.

Ok, I lied. I know a fourth way too. Cut open its head with one slash of a sharp scalpel. I know a fifth way too. Hit its head with a heavy object to crack open the skull. But the last two methods are obviously forbidden. The Animal Welfare Committee does not approve of such barbaric practices. Not that I, or anyone I know, follows these last two methods.

Enough about killing and torture. I’m not a sadist and such talk makes me cringe. Let us move on to more civilized topics. Shall I talk about war? War seems to be in fashion these days. You do not like the beard of some country’s president? Alright, let’s bomb his country back to the middle ages. You do not like someone standing up and defending themselves against your uncontrolled aggression. No problem. Pound their cities into pebbles and rubble. Yeah, ok, a few people will die. So what? Umm…whatchamacallit, yeah, it’s just collateral damage. Oh, before I forget let us give a prize to the person who coined that term. Sheer bloody genius at work. Hmm…so you think nuclear power is only your forefather’s preserve and no one else can work with it? You have got it! Let’s go to war with those mad mullahs and drag their civilization back to where it belongs. Yippee! War is so much fun!

War doesn’t interest you? Too soft? Ok, does religion interest you? It is a safe topic, isn’t it? A benevolent god, love thy neighbor, spread hope and other sublime stuff like that. NO! Which age are you living in love? Religion has always been about control. Make blind sheep of people; manipulate them with the remote control called faith. Beard, no beard, circumcision, caste, bible, koran, they are all accessories to fool you and me. What religion wants is blood. Blood in the name of a benign god. A god who needs a constant infusion of blood supply to live and go on with his creative work of producing ever more misery. Too harsh? Too bloody pessimistic? Look around with open eyes and a clear heart and you will see what I mean.

Oh well, I guess you are too sensitive. God cannot be faulted, after all he is the bastard who made us. Ok, time for another topic change. Let us talk about poverty. You are yawning! Boring you say? Passé? An old hat? Oh, come on, did you see the latest issue of that business magazine? The world’s ten richest have more wealth than the thirty poorest nations or something to that effect. You know how bad I’m with numbers. What? Poverty doesn’t matter? It exists only in Africa, a lost continent? We should wash our hands off that godforsaken place?

Well then my dear, I’ve run out of interesting topics to talk about and it is getting late. I’ll go and curl up with that latest graphic novel I downloaded the other day, eat some snacks and grow fat on my own complacency. At least, they are not scared to talk about sex, drugs and blood. Over and out.