Chelsea are being punished for their improper vetting of a French league footballer; the blues will be unable to sign any new players until 2011. The club is up-in-arms about it. But what’s the big deal? Why does a 215 million pound squad with the likes of Didier Drogba, Deco, Michael Ballack and Michael Essien among its number even NEED to buy anyone else for the next year and a half? It’s a big enough squad, with enough depth and quality to negate any need to further squander Roman Abramovic’s gazillions. Though at least the fans now have a new excuse if Chelsea fail to win the Premiership this season…

Our first ladies and PM’s wives are frankly a bland lot compared to the leading ladies of certain other spots on the globe. Japan’s imminent First Lady, a woman named Miyuki Hatoyama, claims to have been abducted by aliens. She claims in her book that she was taken on an alien craft to the planet Venus two decades ago, while asleep. She also claims to have been on very familiar terms with Tom Cruise in a past life. Now there’s  a First Lady I’d want to hear more about and much more from. And, by the by, there’s nothing outrageous about claiming alien abduction. It’s been happening for a long time, folks…

In one of the strangest marriage prospects since Michael Jackson wedded the daughter of Elvis Presley, this week the massive cultural landmark and legendary entity known as Disney gained ownership of the massive cultural landmark and legendary entity known as Marvel Comics. It brings to mind an image of a whale eating a whale. It is difficult to see anything particularly good about this extraordinary merger; as unquestionably brilliant as Disney’s back catalogue is (well, a lot it, anyway), one can’t help but have nightmare visions of the Little Mermaid popping up in the next X-Men movie or something equally as horrific. Magneto or the mighty Thor showing up in a Mickey Mouse cartoon? Or, worst of all, the cast of High School Musical gatecrashing the next Wolverine flick with one of their soul-destroying, teeth-gnashing routines.

Disney has produced some truly amazing and classic pieces of work, without doubt – some of the greatest motion pictures of all time, in fact – but all its best work was done prior to the 1970s (Jungle Book, Pinnochio, Fantasia, Dumbo, etc), and it’s hard to see what good Disney could do Marvel creatively and artistically; though the financial side of it no doubt has its merits.

Marvel Comics is a cultural icon; for fifty years it has produced the majority of the world’s most popular and lucrative comic-book heroes and lore; everything from X-Men and all its spin-offs, to the likes of the Silver Surfer, Warlock and the Infinity Watch, and the Avengers. Has the comic-book industry fallen on such hard times that this deal was necessary? Given the sheer number of big-screen blockbusters derived from the Marvel melting-pot, one wouldn’t have thought so.

Then again, most of those movies have been pants; so Disney control of Marvel-derived motion pictures might not be that much of a drop in quality. A Disney-style direction for the comic books, however, might be another matter. Although, I’d think it fair to say that the general quality of Marvel Comics has diminished greatly over the passed ten years or so. Like Disney, Marvel’s best days, creatively, are behind it; but, like Disney, its best days commercially might be right now, particularly given the motion-picture franchises. So maybe the merger does make sense, after all.

Speaking of money, India’s first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, has been lost contact with. The probe, designed to map the lunar surface, is feared to be lost for good. Oh well, these things happen; it only cost fifty BILLION pounds. I lost a novelty pen a few days ago, which had cost about three quid – and that pissed me off majorly. I can only imagine the strings of expletives echoing through the halls of India’s space agency at the moment…

Thank heavens Cate Blanchett wasn’t more seriously hurt when a prop radio was thrown at her head whilst she was on stage performing in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Sydney Theatre Company. Without doubt one of the finest actresses in the film industry, Ms Blanchett was treated for her head injuries, but is expected to return to the stage this week.
On the subject of things flying across this stage, Liam Gallagher has quit Oasis. It’s the end of an era. Well, no, not really, actually; it was the end of an era about five eras back. Blur was always the superior force anyway, and they’ve just reformed. Is there some possibility now for Noel Gallagher forging a John Lennon type solo career? And of his brother Liam forging a Paul McCartney type spin-off career too? Probably the answer is no, on both counts.

And Michael Jackson has finally been laid to rest; in Forest Lawn, in Los Angeles; the resting place of, among others, Stan Laurel and Walt Disney. Elizabeth Taylor was in attendance, among others, though the event was broadly kept from being a media circus. God rest his soul. But I still find it very peculiar that it’s taken two and a half months to bury him. The fact that it was a closed casket might also add fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories that Michael Jackson is not actually dead (after all, an open casket wouldn’t have been out of place, and in some ways might even be expected, a’la James Brown’s funeral).

Speaking of burial places, one lucky customer has managed to secure his own final resting place in a crypt directly overlooking Marylin Monroe’s place of eternal rest at Westwood Village Memorial Cemetary in California. The choice death-spot was purchased via eBay for 4.6 billion dollars. God, the stuff you can buy on eBay…