In Ancient Greece, when minotaurs roamed the earth and gods came down for dinner, some very clever men discovered that life wasn’t just one big juicy olive, but that it was actually quite hard – like a fortnight old pitta bread. They pondered the big stuff so that men today can take it easy knowing we’re all essentially screwed but should try and keep a smile on our faces anyway. They called these great, head-scratching men Philosophers. They deserved a good title for all that top-notch thinking they did. Their intellectual travails were why the kebab was invented, to give us something to cry into when it all gets a bit much.

Last week I employed some of the fathoming skills that were characteristic of those bearded Greek brainboxes. Or rather, I had some questions about life and so took to our modern oracle. Google.

I poured my mortal wonderings into the ethereal pool of knowledge and fished around for enlightenment like it was a big lucky dip of facts at the Fair of Life. Google did not disappoint. I found, dear people, The Answers.

So, apparently, Twerking is, like, when you stick your butt in the face of someone you fancy and wiggle it about under the pretence of dancing so that they might see your animated derrière and think “Cor.” It’s essentially what lady baboons do in the wild, but with more lycra. I’m not sure what all the Miley Cyrus fuss was about. Most modern dancing seems to mimic the call and response of primitive life, so I don’t know why Twerking is any more offensive that any other moves employed by acts in need of some extra PR. A lot of modern dance relies on the display and suggestive movement of female bits; why is a jiggling arse any worse than a jiggling tit or hip? Maybe it’s because it’s ass-uming a certain submissive posture more reminiscent of being overpowered than being empowered, or with the right lascivious glint could imply that the girl ‘twerking’ will offer up some other orifice for a dude’s delight. Maybe prick-teasing as an artform is harder than you’d suspect to get right; perhaps it bizarrely requires a little subtlety or class. Perhaps it just wasn’t done well by Miss Cyrus, perhaps big girls do it better. Perhaps black culture commentators were right when they said that rich little white girls shouldn’t appropriate black moves to make themselves look cooler because they will fail and just look like vanilla dickheads with no style. I am no judge of all this. I can’t barely do the hokey-cokey without falling over. If I wanted to attract a male it would certainly not be with my moves or my arse because mine are rubbish.

Moving on – this one was not what I thought it was going to be. Fracking. It is a man made process for throttling the earth for even more of the natural gas resources we were already running low on at the old slower rate, to the detriment of the natural order and the environment. I was expecting to find it was what computer hackers do at sex parties or what people do to parking wardens down an alleyway when they’ve been given a ticket only two minutes after their time expired. I was very sad to find that it is yet another case of humans not learning their lesson, not thinking long term about our future on this revolving rock.

I then did a bit of reading about Syria and what all the big boys in suits we’re stuck with think we should do about it, and what they might wade in and do about it despite their electorate clamouring for the opposite. I often shut off from the news because it depresses me how little Man learns from his history (and until the sexes are equally represented in power, I think ‘Man’ is the continued acceptable term when directing blame or discontent), but last week I felt like I was being irresponsible and stupid for not know the sitch. So I read the news. As predicted it made me mad and sad. I was later cheered, as were most normal humans, by the Commons’ vote against military action in Syria. A nice and timely reminder that our country can’t always be harried into acts of idiocy.

While in my funk over the world I looked up something else to cheer me. I looked up pictures of micro pigs. Pigs in bonnets, pigs that fit in espresso cups, pigs being dwarfed by a daisy, pigs in veils getting married to a mouse. Tiny weeny pigs. I felt a little better. The oracle The Internet might educate, enlighten, and even be employed to change the world, but it also has a really good stash of cute stuff. And we’re going to need that too if we’re ever going to survive the next century I reckon. With all the twerking, fracking, and fucking shit up, we’re going to need our sweet reprieves.