When I get that feeling ....

Who said that ours is a meaningless existence in an indifferent universe? Here's evidence of the truly divine design of things. This morning, on my way to work, I was introduced to the following charmingly wonky version of Marvin Gaye's most famous tune:



I admit, I was intrigued. I have a particular liking for brass bands, especially of the colliery sort (and when they play "Jerusalem"), but this is quite fun, too.

So far, so good. Little did I know that on my return home from an almost efficient day in the office, as I was granting myself my daily half hour internet chill, my morning serenade would be echoed by the following ad for some kind of sponsored web chat on feminine sexual dysfunction on a celebrity website I sometimes read accidentally stumbled upon.

Oh, don't the the world work in mysteriously circular ways? From "Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up" to "The Vagina Dialogues" in eight and a half hours - not bad for a day's work.

What struck me most about this otherwise mildly puzzling piece of public debate, however, is the line at the very bottom:

"Sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc."

For Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., you must know, is a mere ten kilometres down the road from here - an old family firm (still), one of the most important employers in the area and, indeed, a great public sponsor. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. not only supports internet debates on feminine desire loss in the US - it also sponsors a local university with which I'm on rather intimate ... ahem ... professional terms (to keep up the metaphor).

And this morning I was almost exactly level with Boehringer Ingelheim Inc.'s local plant when I listened to Hot 8 Brass Band's version of "Sexual Healing" on the radio.

There must be a God!

Disclaimer: This is not a clandestine ad for ... well, you know who.

Massengymnastik Italian Style

An interview in Süddeutsche Zeitung with the German band Zweiraumwohnung points us to a bewildering piece of musical history:

This is Adriano Celentano, godfather of Italopoppa, singing "Prisencolinensinainciusol" in a language that is only meant to remind one of English.

All the strutting and writhing is visually evocative, too, though:


Image via.

For all you Jeremy Clarkson fans out there ....

Jeremy C. recently got himself in hot water for calling the Prime Minister a "fibromuscular tubular tract leading from the uterus to the exterior of the body in female placental mammals and marsupials."

Well, one might respond that it takes one to know one.

Exhibit A:



Case closed, I'd say. Auf die deutsch-polnische Freundschaft!

And now for something completely different

Happy Jihad's recent reference to actress Suzanne Somers - she of the auto-estrogene therapy movement (apparently it keeps the menopause away) - provides a welcome cue to post a few visuals of the corrupting Anglo influences that spoilt my pre-pubescent brain forever.

Somers, John tells me, was in Three's Company, the American version of Man About the House - the latter a show I was seriously addicted to when -uhm, like, little - much to the dismay of my mother, who had a dismissive little formula to describe anything British: "bad hair, bad teeth, bad wallpaper".

You must know that I come from a family where wallpaper is considered to be intrinsically common.

So the following had my mother pulling her hair every Friday evening, because I absolutely had to watch it (and in fact found it funny):






I was in London and Northampton over the weekend and you know what - nothing has changed. Nothing at all ....

I was at that time (the late seventies) a raving-loony Anglophile who'd swoon at the sight of an Underground sign. Which is why, years later on a Monday evening I would watch Francis Matthews display his chesthair and fake bake in the BBC's much beloved (by me) language programme Follow Me:



Yes, this is what English had to sound like, plummy and right posh (though Matthews was born in York, and probably capable of quite impressive Northern diphtongs).

Oh yeah (oh yeah), those were the humble years before Blighty turned from a slum tout court into a slum where you could purchase avocados and everyone has a plasma TV:



As well as into "The Home of the British Nazi Party."

No news today

"Is this all we have to worry about?", FMOAK asks with regard to yet another embarrassing grand moment of British politics, aka Jaquigate.

Now, the home secretary's private porn collection really leaves me stone dead unaroused ("Jaqui Smith on a cold day" is just as effective as "Margaret Thatcher on a cold day" in toning down the effects of erotic excitation); however, I had a similar sense of flabbergastedness (flabbergastion?) as Peter Ryley when I read this here fashion jeremiad in today's Guardian.

The private quandary of disturbing dimensions around which the article revolves:

Wearing hijab is about more than throwing on a headscarf. It means committing to a broader dress code - for me clothing needs to cover everything but the hands and face, and be loose enough to hide my body shape. Since I like to shop on the high street, that's a bit of a tall order. Few among Topshop, H&M, Dorothy Perkins, Zara and Miss Selfridge can meet my needs in one or two garments. Fashions come and go, but I am committed to a life of layering.

I guess you can reproach Western high street fashion for a lot of things: collective tastelessness, non-sustainability, exploitation. But not catering to an individual shopper's personal religious convictions?

I mean let's face it: you don't order hosts in McDonald's, do you, and then complain when all they offer you is a McMuffin?

Das Urteil der Paris

I have, in the past, been scolded by textual purists for turning the random associations that typically cavort in my mind into blog text for public consumption.

To defend this charming feminine skill of mine against the masculine wit of some of our virile readers, I would like to point out the cognitive benefits of my little bouts of lateral thinking. Just remember those illuminating moments in the past couple of years when I merrily married vicious dogs and boring contemporary fiction, Jacques Derrida and a well-known Swedish furniture outlet and Jacques Demy and Charles Darwin. You did enjoy those, didn't you?

Not to mention the never published post on "Gordon Brown, the fifth seventh Python."

Yes, he does look a little like Terry Jones's long lost fraternal twin.

And since I'm clearly not the only one who violently yokes random ideas together on a regular basis, I refuse point blank to kick this habit of mine.

For instance, in his fetid rant space in the miasmic depths of tabloid Britain, Peter Hitchens elegantly hopped from private loss - the recent death of David Cameron's handicapped son Ivan at the age of six - to death in action - three British soldiers killed in Afghanistan the week before - in order to gripe about the government's lack of patriotism. Because, you know, whinge, whinge, the Commons cancelled Prime Minister's Question Time out of respect for the former, but didn't do so for the latter.

While in London, we watched Channel 4's mildly interesting programme about the crazy cold snap that paralysed Albion earlier this year, Britain's Big Freeze. The show compared, with Tourettish regularity, the heroism displayed by ordinary British bus drivers, alchemists and stock market analysts in the face of A FEW DAYS OF SNOW with that of ordinary milkmen, pantry boys and market gardeners during ... wait for it ... you sure won't guess what's coming next .... The Blitz.

Why is it that whenever the UK has to paper over embarrassing facts - such as that the country only owns three rusty snowploughs and a couple of bags of kitty litter for grit - with references to their glory days?

Meanwhile, in Germany, Walter Mixa, bishop of the Bavarian city of Augsburg, has reiterated the Catholic oldie-but-goldie that abortion is like the Holocaust.

And today’s Guardian is shocked at the proposed use of Berlin's Tempelhof airfield for a rock concert. Undertaking one of those great mental leaps so beloved by the Great British Press, Sean Michaels opens his piece not with a whimper, but - hey - with one hell of a bang: "If 2009 is to have a Summer of Love, the season's biggest event may take place at a former Nazi airfield."

Well folks, if you want a Nazi analogy, how about taking on Paris "Valium" Hilton? During our sojourn in London I had the dubious pleasure to watch a couple of instalments of that perfectly useless waste of time called Paris Hilton's Best British Friend - a show in which a bunch of fake-baked wannabes are bundled together in a claustrophobic space to compete for the privilege to "chill out in LA" with a dim anorexic heiress (wearing what seem to be whole minks for fake eyelashes) by a strategic combination of obsequious arse-licking, devious backstabbing and voluntary auto-humiliation.

Life's all smiles, "sweethearts" and touchy-feely camaraderie in the house until the next symbolic liquidation. The Big Brother banality is regularly broken up by show trials that inevitably lead to the "eviction" of members of the group for failing to "click" with The Führer Paris, or not seeming "real" enough. Usually, the choice is made not by La Duchessa, but by her weekly favourite (aka "the pet").

And you know what: They all dig the psychological cruelty of and absolute submission to their passive-aggressive, all-American dominatrix.

Yes, it would take a brave cultural analyst to discover the underlying totalitarian structures of this show, investigate their subtle fascism and then elucidate what this all tells us about contemporary Britain.

No country for old mogs

Well here we are, back in dear old Blighty, the country whose inhabitants have every reason in the world to be worried indeed: The country's plumbing is essentially a piece of Victoriana nicked from a working museum, THE CREDIT CRUNCHY has slowed down sales of UGG-boots, skinny jeans and Red Bull to a worrying extent, 98.7% of Britons believe the earth is a 48-year old Blue Peter experiment and The Battle of the Girl Giants is likely to be won by the new Queen of Hearts and her criminal consort.

To cite that marvellous snob Noel Coward: There are bad times just around the corner - and there's no reason to indulge the optimistic belief that obese, inert and generally gaga Britain can take it.

This country is doooooomeed.

So, Britons ought to be worried about all those truly terrifying things that await them - and yet what do they seem to fear most (after flying, at least if you try to answer that question with the help of dubious research methods conducted on the internet)?

Cats. As in kitties. Pussymogs.

This is a displacement activity with distinct Jungian undertones, if you ask me. It's all about the all-engulfing cosmic maternal yoni.

Springtime for Winslet?

Is it just me, or is this headline in today's Mirror about the whole Kate Winslet-The Reader brouhaha kind of ... funny?


Yeah, because what you really want is to coast into Oscar-Night on a wave of pro-Nazi sentiment.

A note to Bristol Palin

From a German perspective, to call one's baby "Tripp" is a trifle ambiguous. For "Tripper", as you probably won't know Swansea Nuneaton Bristol, is a colloquial (to put it mildly) German term for "the clap".

Now of course it's highly unlikely that anybody in Wasilla middle school would call your little nipper "Tripper" during recess, with the express intention to make a nasty joke worthy of a Pinkerian analysis at his expense. But (even) you must admit that in the right light, and from the right angle your child's name might be seen as infelicitous.

And of course the clap is the last thing we would wish upon that innocent little babby of yours. Especially as he is doomed to live in this naughty cesspit of immorality that is our world, where - as you have (almost) candidly garbled pointed out yourself - abstinence is one heck of an unrealistic idea.

Naked mole rats have particularly perky proteins, yay!

One of the weirdest dreams I've had in recent years featured a children's book with a cartoonish cover in hot pink decorated with sparkly stuff called "Billie, Stefan and the Naked Mole Rat."

Honi soit qui mal y pense. We don't do Freudian dream analysis in this house anymore.

The dream was so vivid it felt more like a memory, and immediately on getting out of bed I embarked upon a deep online search for a book which - for about two waking hours - I was convinced I had read at one point of my life.

'Course I didn't find the book - it had been a figment of my imagination, after all. My great brain, having nowt better to do, made it all up.

Ever since then, the naked mole rat has had a particular place in our personal mythology, ugly as hell though it is.


And this is why I was happy to learn today via Der Spiegel that the amazing longevity of the naked mole rat is down to the species's unusually stable proteins. These hideous creatures can live to thirty years in their underground burrows, doing whatever it is naked mole rats are doing and not get bored for a second.

Which is more than can be said about many human beings I know.

Alien Moment

Since even the normally serious-thinking Ophelia over at B&W has taken to talking about trout-pout octomum (I agree with Ophelia: those lippy things are not Ms Suleman's own), I thought I might chip in, having formed a vehement opinion of my own about this particular case of egomania.

This is truly horrifying.

Dance, dance, dance little doctors

You learn something new every day. For instance, that in the US there is an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sponsored competition called "Dance Your Ph.D." in which scientists do precisely that: dance their doctoral dissertations. According to an article in Stern, competitors are judged by the expressiveness of their product and its ability to bring across the project's central message.

I don't think Francis Sedgemore will be impressed by the efforts (or their heuristic value, for that matter). But see and judge for yourselves:

Here's Vince LiCata and team dancing "Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids"



Closet patriot that I am, I was particularly happy to see that there's a winner from Germany: Miriam Sach from the University of Düsseldorf, dancing "Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography. A comparison between single subject and group analysis"



She clearly has a background in classical ballet, fruitfully spiked here with a good dose of Pina Bausch.

More videos can be found here.

I can't think of any of my colleagues who'd be willing to do something quite as compromising AND post it on YouTube. But one may dream, mayn't one?

At this point I would have liked to post a clip of Landlord Marty's dance from The Big Lebowski, but sadly none could be found in the infinite depths of the World Wide Web. So you have to imagine.

The Berlin birdman

Authorities in Berlin are worried about Gerhard A. and his 500 budgies. So they should be - quite obviously it is a crazy thing to want to keep several hundred of Melopsittacus undulatus in your tiny apartment.




This is a sad story, I grant you that. However, my immediate association on reading about this poor man - apart from Burt Lancaster and Alcatraz - was a passage from Dracula:

[Renfield] has managed to get a sparrow, and has already partially tamed it.His means of taming is simple, for already the spiders have diminished. Those that do remain, however, are well fed, for he still brings in the flies by tempting them with his food.

19 July--We are progressing. My friend has now a whole colony of sparrows, and his flies and spiders are almost obliterated. When I came in he ran to me and said he wanted to ask me a great favour, a very, very great favour. And as he spoke, he fawned on me like a dog.

I asked him what it was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his voice and bearing, "A kitten, a nice, little, sleek playful kitten, that I can play with, and teach, and feed, and feed, and feed!"

I was not unprepared for this request, for I had noticed how his pets went on increasing in size and vivacity, but I did not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows should be wiped out in the same manner as the flies and spiders. So I said I would see about it, and asked him if he would not rather have a cat than a kitten.

His eagerness betrayed him as he answered, "Oh, yes, I would like a cat! I only asked for a kitten lest you should refuse me a cat. No one would refuse me a kitten, would they?"

I shook my head, and said that at present I feared it would not be possible, but that I would see about it. His face fell, and I could see a warning of danger in it, for there was a sudden fierce, sidelong look which meant killing. The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac. I shall test him with his present craving and see how it will work out, then I shall know more.

10 pm.--I have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner brooding. When I came in he threw himself on his knees before me and implored me to let him have a cat, that his salvation depended upon it.

I was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the corner where I had found him. I shall see him in the morning early.

20 July.--Visited Renfield very early, before attendant went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly catching again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace.

I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away. There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.

11 am.--The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. "My belief is, doctor," he said, "that he has eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw!"

Which is why the beige psychologist's benevolent commentary on A.'s multiple disorders in the video will not do. The man needs shock therapy - of the sort that involves having to walk around Charlottenburg in a pea green Crimplene suit and a Kelly Bag in hand:




[Image via]

Legomandias

The story of the 6ft Lego man washed up on Brighton beach reminds me of the following:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Speaking of Shelley: apparently Lily Allen is the new Wordsworth.

Katy Brand and I beg to differ:

Glee of the day

I know one shouldn't laugh - we're all human and prone to make mistakes (don't I know it?) - but these exam howlers are very funny indeed.

Acts of Urban Heroism

Act # 67: Putting on make-up while travelling on public transport

During my brief stint as a city dweller I was reminded over and over again of what adaptive little critters Homo Sapiens are. Just think of how adept we have become at opening plastic food wrapping (though we somehow balk at shrunk-wrapped CDs), slotting devices into USB ports, hacking text messages into our mobile phones as we are crossing Euston Road while deep in conversation with Sasha from Human Resources (Act of Urban Heroism #42).

In situations like these, our species affirms its crown of creation status on a daily, nay hourly basis!

Today’s heroic deed refers to the intimate acts of beautification usually committed in the privacy of one’s bathroom (and in front of a large, preferably well-lit mirror). Or so I have always thought. Yet in the cramped twilight of the London Underground I have seen many a woman dangle a make-up bag on her knees three times the size of the one I have at home, performing feats of artistry well beyond anything I could ever achieve, even with world enough and time and both my feet firmly planted on the ground. In amongst total strangers, it’s all “eyeliner, rosehips and lip-gloss, such fun”, like in that lovely old ditty from Lou Reed’s Transformer.

And no, these women don’t ever stab themselves in the eye with their khol. They never accidentally prise back their eyelids with an eyelash curler in freak accidents recalling the famous torture scene from A Clockwork Orange. Nevertheless, I’m convinced the tabloids will someday bellow the headline “Woman impaled by mascara on the Victoria line.”

Why then do women engage in dangerous acts that might well leave them maimed for the rest of their lives? Now, here’s my theory (which is mine). These are acts of costly signalling, whereby women inform the world about the status of their fertility. They are complex statements in a kind of behavioural morse code whose erratic beeps announce the following: “Hi - I’m a strong, high-quality female and capable of performing complex tasks in untoward circumstances. You - yes, you - should mate with me.”

The implicit logic of such acts runs as follows: "If we can do this on the tube, just think what we might do in the suburban home (that you will be paying for). We will have babies aplenty (as bawling containers for your - yes your - genes) and keep them entertained while we dangle the cat on our knees and roll a batch of vegetarian sushi at the same time."

Judging by the many, many pregnant and/or bechilded women I’ve seen over the past weeks (man, what a reproductive country the UK is!), that strategy seems to be successful.

It also goes well with the obnoxious reality show that I didn't really watch while here: Tribal Wives, a kind of Big Brother for the more discerning viewer, based on the silly conceit that ambitious albeit burnt-out career women might be brought to their senses by being sent to live with remote tribal cultures for a weekend or so. After that they usually ditch "that job interview" scheduled for next week in order to have a/another sprog. Because they want to find out what is really important in life.

Like passing on those damn old genes!

This is a crazy city indeed, and not a place I would find it easy to live in. But right now I'm kind of sad to leave.

Next AUH: Surfing dog poop in your flip flops. Watch this space!

UPDATE: For more on career women out of touch with their feminine side, see here. I'm utterly bored with the sanctimonious waffle by hypocritical career women telling other women what they shouldn't be doing that seems to be all the rage at the moment.

Vive la différence!

I am happy and relieved to learn, via the Guardian, that the letter "ß" (read: "Eszett"), probably the most idiosyncratic feature of the German language, has been granted the status of "special consonant found in western European languages" by the International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO).

Never heard of that organisation. But I guess it's an occasion to celebrate.

Bad press

Today's Independent has an article with the following headline: "UFO sightings should be taken more seriously."

Intrigued by this promising piece of tabloidy trash, you read on and learn that David Clarke, lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, "believes that UFOs are a worthy subject for academic study."

So you continue further, mildly aghast at the fact that The Independent - which you naively thought to be one of the last few halfway serious papers around in the UK - would pay and publish such ... stuff (and completely muddled ... stuff at that).

Mr Clarke complains that he has so far failed to obtain funding for his UFO research:

Nobody's interested in it because it's got this image. It's a real shame, because there's massive amounts of interesting material, but we're too close to the material in time. It's perfectly acceptable for historians to study witchcraft mania in the Middle Ages, but because this is happening here and now, and these are people we can go and speak to, it's a little too close.

The "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio/Than are dream't of in our Philosophy" argument is of course a long-standing strategy amongst sectarian maniacs who wish to construe scientifically-minded rationalists as dangerously blinkered positivists and a serious threat to the progress of science.

The aim of such arguments, however, is exactly the opposite of the alleged salvation of scientific knowledge. "There are always mysteries in life," Van Helsing tells Dr Seward in Stoker's Dracula, brandishing his host and rosary and positively salivating at the opportunity to drive a stake through the hearts of the undead. The Professor's credo functions as a powerful peer group adhesive for his annoying posse of Aryan Vampire hunters, who thereby seek to assert their superiority over all others - be they vampires, rural Romanians or women.

One general point needs to be made here, though: to study the medieval witchcraft mania does not mean that you also believe in witchcraft per se. Methinks Mr Clarke is confusing things a little.

In a similarly confusing twist, he then aligns the belief in UFOs with other types of religious belief:

People used to come up to the astronomer Carl Sagan after lectures and ask: "Do you believe?" He was struck by the question. Not, is there evidence? But, do you believe? It's a matter of faith to a lot of people and UFOs can become a substitute for religion. What they like is the mystery, they don't want a solution. In 1956, an American sociologist joined a flying saucer cult, predicting the end of the world. Obviously this didn't come to pass, but rather than the people who followed this cult saying what a load of rubbish, they went on to strengthen their belief.

Fair enough, Mr Clarke seems to have a point there. But he is clearly jumping to all sorts of conclusions when he interprets the pyschological phenomenon of heightened stubbornness in the face of critical resistance as a proof of the existance of UFOs. Some people - among them sociologists, apparently - may be manic enought to believe in flying saucers. This does not mean that flying saucers really did hover over Shropshire last week. And so all scholars can do (if they absolutely must) is research the apparently widespread belief in UFOs as an expression of an individual and/or collective mania that bears structural similarities to religious belief.

Mr Clarke however, doesn't quite seem to be able to make the distinction between fact and fiction, which kind of also shows in the style of his concluding passage:

So there is a massive amount of material for sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists to study. And the Ministry of Defence itself has come to the conclusion that UFOs do exist, but are not spaceships. So these are reports of some kind of natural phenomenon we do not understand, which could be studied by atmospheric physicists. It's a pity no one takes it seriously.

Can someone tell me what this man is saying? Material to study what? Real existing maniacs or real existing alien spacecraft?

Is that the style of journalism taught at Sheffield Hallam?

And what the hell drove the editors of a serious paper to print this ... stuff?

[UPDATE: After this brief encounter with the "Flying Saucers are for Real" set, today's Independent appears to assert the paper's rational credentials with an article by David Randall which puts the alleged recent spate of UK UFO sightings in perspective. So what now? I really think the editors at the Independent have to make up their mind whether they are on the side of the sane or the silly.]

Why we love Philip Lahm

Via.

See what I mean?


Via.

On Names and Diets

The Times has an article about very young children, boys as well as girls, obsessing unnecessarily about their weight. That is a disturbing fad indeed and goes with the whole sexualisation of childhood thing that was unheard of when I was small. I wish someone gave these kids back their childhood.

Maybe a good way to begin that process would be to start giving children serious first names, rather than burden them with fantasy labels that come dangerously close to sounding super-bling:

Teleisha Coulson, from Northampton, is a ten-year-old girl who is acutely conscious of her body and weight. “I don't like my stomach area because I think I'm fat. I worry about my stomach.” Teleisha monitors the fat and calorie content of what she eats; she swims three times a week, regularly works out on a cross trainer and runs and cycles constantly. “I think it's important to look good because it sets a good impression. I want to look good so that other people think nice things about me. If not, I think maybe people would talk behind my back and say things such as ‘Oh she's big'.”

Teleisha? Teleisha?? Might that name be the root of all evil?

I reckon it's about time for a major, EU-funded academic study investigating the first name/body sensitivity nexus.